by James Luceno
“All the way. When that gravity gun opens up, we’ll hit back. Massively.”
“Have you seen the armor on this place? It’ll take you hours to pound through!”
“If we shoot the armor.”
Another pause, then: “I scan. Lando, don’t wait for us.”
“Fenn—”
“We’ll never make it. Do what you have to. Save the fleet.”
“You don’t understand what’s about to happen—”
“We’re Mandalorian. This is what we live for. This is how we die.”
“Stop it! I hate that garbage!” Lando chewed the inside of his lower lip for a second or two, then took a deep breath to keep a grip on his courage. “TacOps: Are Lancer, Paleo, and Unsung reaching position?”
“Scan reports affirmative.”
“When the Slash-Es hit their marks, execute at will.”
The transponder alert in Wedge Antilles’s cockpit blared a warning: he was in the kill zone of friendly fire. A quick check of his short-range scan showed three converted Corellian freighters on approach through Mindor’s shadow toward the flying volcano. Not far behind them, the four surviving Slash-Es were strung out in a curiously slanting sort of line. He couldn’t guess what they were up to, and he didn’t have time to figure it out; all three of the converted freighters were already swinging broadside and going into slow barrel rolls: an old navy trick to deliver maximum suppressing fire. Their main cannons had fire rates restricted by their ability to shed waste heat and recharge their capacitors; the barrel roll let them continuously bring fresh guns to bear while the recently fired guns were repowering.
Wedge triggered his general comm as he yanked his X-wing through a slewing arc that shot him away from the flying volcano. “Republic fighters: Break off and fall back! This is hot space. Repeat: We are in hot space!”
Starfighters scattered like roachrats surprised by sunlight. The Lancer, the Paleo, and the Unsung opened up with synchronized fire, blasting broadsides in precise sequence to maintain a near-constant rain of supercharged plasma on the ion-turbo cannons and the gravity gun. This was done less to inflict actual damage than to act as a particularly violent counterscan measure; radiation scatter from the ongoing barrage prevented the emplacements’ targeting scanners from locking on.
Two of the ion-turbos had been successfully spiked by Republic marines; the other three opened up full-bore with counterbattery fire back along the vectors of the incoming blasts. Silent explosions lit up the flanks of the three Corellian ships; soon they were firing through clouds of their own vaporized hull armor. Then the central dome, over the gravity gun, dilated like the pupil of a vast, pale eye.
“Everybody hang on to something!” Captain Tirossk shouted over the comm, rather unnecessarily. “Here it comes!”
The gravity gun opened fire.
A sharp-eyed observer, looking in precisely the right place at precisely the right time, would have been able to actually see the flight of the gravity bombs. As they hurtled through the plasma storm created by the synchronized turbolaser blasts, their tiny event horizons swallowed all manner of highly charged particles that released a continuous stream of hard radiation as they fell out of the universe forever. That radiation in turn charged the plasma around it, creating instant blue-white flash-streaks straight as a laser.
The gravity gun unleashed such a blast every three seconds, spraying them all through a narrowly spiraling arc without any attempt to target specific ships. It didn’t have to: even a near-miss could literally tear a ship apart.
Which was exactly what the spray of gravity bombs did to the Unsung.
The bridge crews of the Lancer and the Paleo could only watch helplessly as the Unsung was twisted and wrenched and finally ripped apart; though hundreds of kilometers separated each of these ships, the other two were also jolted by wave after wave of gravity shocks.
The breakup of the Unsung left a brief gap in the suppression fire. Alarms screamed as hostile target locks acquired the two remaining ships. “Prepare to increase fire rate fifty percent,” Tirossk rasped. “Resynchronize with Paleo.” When the fire-control coordinator protested that this risked burning out the turbolasers, Tirossk only shrugged. “They’ll be burned out for sure when the ship blows up. Execute.”
The spray of gravity bombs streaked on, and more came in their wake. They hurtled toward the cluster of capital ships still huddled helplessly in Mindor’s shadow: ships without shields, with no armor or weapon that could protect them.
Ships whose only defense was the ingenuity of General Lando Calrissian.
The lead ship in the array of Slash-Es was the Wait a Minute, under the command of Captain Jav Patrell, a grizzled veteran who had been serving on, later commanding, interdiction ships for thirty-five Standard years. When his navigation officer announced detection of the first oncoming gravity wave, Patrell didn’t hesitate. “All ships,” he said. “Execute.”
As his bridge crew turned crisply to their tasks, Patrell’s XO leaned close and half whispered, “You really think this can work?”
“Of course it’ll work!” Patrell snapped, which was an impressive display of confidence, given that he was, at that precise moment, entirely certain that there was no way in any Corellian hell that anyone could actually pull this off. His certainty was the product of long experience; in all his years of service aboard Corellian-made inderdictors, he’d never seen any indication that the artificial gravity wells they projected could be tuned or timed with the precision this sort of stunt required.
However, none of his thirty-five years’ experience included an operation controlled by the main processor array of a Mon Calamari battle cruiser.
As the first of the stream of gravity bombs passed Lancer and Paleo, the gravity-well projectors of Wait a Minute began to pulse. The interaction of the two powerful gravity sources dragged each bomb a few degrees off-course, at which point the next Slash-E pulsed its own projector in a similar sequence, further diverting the bombs’ trajectories so that they would not only miss the task force, but avoid the planet altogether. The final two Slash-Es, however, were stationed on the opposite side of the gravity bombs’ path; the first’s task was to direct the bombs back toward the planet. Not at the planet, but along a tangential parabola that would allow the final Slash-E to drag them into a trajectory that had been precisely plotted by the titanic processor array that was the brain of Remember Alderaan.
All of Captain Patrell’s training had insisted that the gravity-well projectors of interdiction ships were never to be activated any time the ships were deep within a natural gravity well, such as that of a planet, because the projectors themselves created much too powerful a gravity field of their own. For Mindor, it was equivalent to having four medium-sized moons suddenly pop into existence entirely too close to the planet’s surface.
The first groundquakes began only seconds after Wait a Minute initiated the sequence, as whole sections of the planetary crust were sequentially lifted and dropped and twisted and wrenched. These quakes were exacerbated by the close passage of the stream of gravity bombs as their altered trajectory became a slingshot maneuver described by General Calrissian as “Right back atcha, scumball; see how you like it.”
In roughly eight and a half minutes, the first of the slingshot gravity bombs would reach the near vicinity of the flying volcano and begin to rip it to pieces.
Unfortunately, the movement of the gravity gun and the physics of gravity waves meant that all the calculations included a small measure of uncertainty.
It was that uncertainty that caused the second in the crooked line of the Slash-Es, the Hold ’Em—instead of diverting one particular gravity bomb farther from Mindor and the task force—to divert the bomb toward Hold ’Em’s own hull, just forward of the portside projector array. Hold ’Em’s captain had just enough time to understand the sensor readings and remark “Whoops …” before the gravity bomb’s impact.
The point mass of the gravity bomb lanced thro
ugh Hold ’Em almost without resistance, but the effect of its passage was very much like that of the gravity slice that had cut free the flying volcano: an instantaneous burst of high-energy radiation powerful enough to vaporize a hole so big that a fair pilot could have flown an X-wing in one side of the ship and out the other. The shock wave blew the ship in half and sent the remnants tumbling away from each other.
Even before the radiation flare from Hold ’Em had died, Captain Patrell was on comm. “General Calrissian,” he said calmly. “We have a problem.”
“So I see.” Lando was already watching the laser-straight streak of blue-white radiation that marked the path of the first of the gravity bombs to enter Mindor’s atmosphere. The impact lit up the distant planetary horizon like a fusion bomb. “I’m taking the rest of the task force back up into orbit; it’s our best chance to survive. Except—”
Except that Remember Alderaan’s ultrasophisticated sensors had already detected a widening gravitic anomaly, spreading through the planet’s crust from the huge crater left by the volcano’s departure, and the ship’s brain had already calculated that in approximately two Standard hours, the planet would no longer be a planet. It would be an expanding spheroid of newly formed asteroids … and every impact of every gravity bomb would shave those hours ever thinner.
When the planet broke up, there would be no more shadow to shield the Republic ships from Taspan’s ever-increasing flares.
As the task force left the atmosphere, Lando could only stare back down at the impact flares. It didn’t seem possible. Luke was down there somewhere. And Han, and Leia. And Lando had just helped blow up the planet.
His only consolation was that he wouldn’t live to regret it. None of them would. He turned his gaze on the flying volcano and thought about the slingshot stream of gravity bombs, eight or ten of them on their way, and his lips peeled back off his teeth. “And you won’t live long enough to celebrate.”
He snapped out another string of orders, and the surviving ships of the task force swung into formation for full assault. Remember Alderaan soared into orbit, with four battle cruisers fanning out to its flanks. Two hundred starfighters spread through the formation, then kicked wide to come at the flying volcano in a tightening noose that kept their guns toward the enemy and themselves clear of the capital ships’ field of fire. The three remaining Slash-Es split the difference, tugging gravity bombs as far from any ships as they could manage.
“Let’s not give them a chance to even guess we’re about to feed them their own weapons,” Lando said. He turned to his XO. “Fire.”
The entire task force rained destruction upon the flying volcano. With no shields of its own, without even armor, great chunks of the volcano flash-burned into clouds of supercharged plasma—a vast glowing shroud that swallowed turbolaser blasts and detonated proton torpedoes. But that was all right, Lando decided, because all that really mattered now was the flight of eight or ten gravity bombs heading right back where they came from.
Before the planet broke up and Taspan’s star storm consumed the task force, he would have the satisfaction of watching the flying volcano pulverized by its own weapon. He didn’t anticipate being especially comforted by that, but it was all he had left to look forward to. All any of them had left.
This is a lousy place to die, he thought. It’s a lousy place for the Republic to lose Luke and Han and Leia and Chewie. And the Rogues. And me.
At least we’re taking the bad guys with us.
He found himself contemplating, with a kind of awe, all the stories that would end here, in this little backwater system six jumps off the Hydian Way … He wondered briefly how the holothriller producers would tell this story. He had a feeling they’d try to make it into something grand and glorious—some legendary Last Stand of the Last Jedi, with a dash of the Romance of Doomed Lovers and a splash of Reformed Gambler Goes Out as a Hero … instead of what it really was.
We just got beat, he thought. They outplanned us. Suckered us in. And we went for it headfirst because we thought we were invincible. We thought the good guys always win.
Of all of them, Luke was the only one who had never suffered under that delusion. Well: not never. Han had told him once that something in Luke had changed after Bespin. Somehow Luke understood—in a way that Lando never had, that Han and Leia and Chewbacca had simply never grasped—just how dark a place the universe really was.
Lando guessed that was where Luke got his humility. His kindness. His gentle faith that people could change for the better. That must have been why he rarely smiled, and almost never made jokes. Because that goodness was all he really had. It was his lifeline. The rope to which he clung, dangling above the abyss.
And we all clung to him, Lando thought. He was our hope. As long as Luke Skywalker was alive, we always figured somehow everything would turn out okay.
That’s what the Republic was losing today.
Hope.
Given what was going on dirtside, Luke was probably already dead. And even if by some miracle he was still alive, what could he possibly do? Had there ever been a good reason to burden one man with the hope of the whole galaxy?
Though this question was both rhetorical and silent, he got an answer nonetheless, as the lieutenant at ComOps said, in a voice hushed and hoarse, “General Calrissian, I’m picking up a signal … a ship on intercept course … General! Transponder signature confirmed—it’s the Millennium Falcon!”
Lando felt as if the universe had shifted a couple of degrees to the right. “What?”
Was it possible?
“They’re broadcasting, sir. On all bands.”
“Put it on speaker.”
“… Skywalker. All Republic ships, disengage and withdraw. All Imperial forces: Group Captain CC-1000 is hereby promoted to air marshal. Air Marshal GC-1000: You are now in command of all Imperial forces in the Taspan system. You will order deactivation of subspace jamming, power down all gravity stations, and execute unconditional surrender with all available speed. When surrender is complete, you will assist in the evacuation of noncombatants.
“Repeating: This is Luke Skywalker. All Republic ships—”
“Cut it off.” For what seemed like a long, long moment, Lando could only stand and stare into space. Had he really heard this? Did Luke actually believe he could simply order Imperial stormtroopers to surrender?
That was beyond preposterous. It was completely bloody insane.
“Sir?” TacOps said. “TIE fighters are withdrawing.”
Lando said, “What?”
ComOps looked over his shoulder. “Wait a Minute reports that the gravity gun has ceased fire.” He blinked. “Subspace comm is operational.”
“What?”
NavOps could only shake his head. “Mass-shadows diminishing—the gravity stations are shutting down, sir! Jump window projected to open in twelve minutes.”
And Lando found, to his astonishment, that his feet were striding forward and taking the rest of his body along with them, and his hands were gesturing, and his mouth was snapping off orders about jump coordinates and rendezvous points and search-and-rescue priorities, while his mind was still, for the most part, doing nothing except saying, What?
Fenn Shysa pressed his back against the bulkhead and scowled down at the red-blinking charge meter on his blaster rifle. Ten shots. One grenade. Maybe just enough to last until Lando’s counterstrike vaporized them all.
He exchanged a grim look with the mercenary commander who stood in an identical posture on the other side of the blown-open hatch between them. The mercenary commander was at his side because in the proudest Mandalorian tradition, he would cover his men’s retreat or die in the attempt. Fenn Shysa, though, wasn’t there because he was a commander. Or even because he was commandant of the Mandalorian Protectors, or because he was Lord Mandalore. He was there because he was Fenn Shysa.
He’d discarded his helmet at some point—a glancing hit had disabled his heads-up display, and the malfuncti
on had triggered the autopolarizer to black out his visor altogether—and now he had a fresh burn streak along his temple where a near-miss had set his hair on fire. The haze in the bunker flickered and flashed with scarlet streaks of blasterfire, and it smelled like smoke, roast meat, and lightning.
The blasterfire through the doorway paused for just an instant, only long enough for a pair of thermal dets to tumble in and skid across the floor. On the dets’ first bounce, Fenn swung through the hatch and went right, launching his anti-armor grenade on the run. As blasterfire out of the smoke tracked him, the mercenary commander slipped in and went left a millisecond before the blast of fire from the paired thermal dets roared through the hatch behind them.
Fenn located the focal point of the blasterfire. He ran in a tight arc, holding down his rifle’s trigger, not aiming, putting fire on their position to keep their heads down and spoil their shooting as he threw aside his empty rifle and turned his tight arc into a straight-line charge, just wide of the line of fire pouring at the stormtrooper position from the mercenary commander. He charged partly because he still had his gauntlet blades, and if he could get into hand-to-hand he could rearm himself with the blasters of dead enemies—but mostly he charged because he was Fenn Shysa, and if today should bring his death, he would fall with his teeth in the throat of the man who killed him.
But before he could get there a new source of blasterfire erupted from a different angle and lanced through the smoke. Fenn clenched his jaw and kept running, because he could take a hit or two and still bring down a few men before he fell—but the blasterfire didn’t strike him; it didn’t seem to even be aimed at him. The bolts flashed high, directly over the helmets of the stormtroopers toward whom he charged, and were accompanied by authoritative shouts to surrender; but he was ready to die, so he ignored the shouts and put his head down and didn’t even slow until he reached the first of the stormtroopers ahead and hooked his left hand’s fingers under the jawpiece of the nearest and drew back his right fist to plunge his blade into the trooper’s throat—