The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  “But how did they know where we were?”

  Salm’s face darkened slightly. “The presence of a spy in your midst cannot be fully discounted.”

  Wedge glanced at Tycho but saw no reaction to the remark at all. A better man than I not to shoot back. “No spy at all would leave the same evidence as a very good spy—one in so deep we couldn’t find it.”

  “That is still no reason why we shouldn’t look for a spy.”

  Tycho shook his head. “Security at the base was tight. We had no unauthorized messages going in or out.”

  “That you know of.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Or,” Salm smiled, “that you’re choosing to report.”

  “General, Captain Celchu is reporting the results of checks I performed myself. There were no leaks from Rogue Squadron.”

  Ackbar waved the discussion away with a flip of his hand. “It is more than likely that the Empire planted a number of passive sensor devices in the buildings there after Vader killed off the colony. If such sensors gathered data and then sent it out on a delayed basis, or in a format we would not easily recognize, we would miss it. While we did have teams sweep the area, detecting passive devices is not easy.”

  “It also could have been blind luck.”

  Salm looked at Tycho. “What do you mean, Captain?”

  Tycho raked brown hair back from his forehead. “Imperials tend not to be subtle. If I’d been in command and I knew where Rogue Squadron was, I would have brought in everything I had. We know Rachuk command has an Interdictor and at least one Strike cruiser that can carry three squadrons of TIEs. Since all of that didn’t show up, I suspect they just sent out stormtrooper platoons to recon uninhabited systems in the sector—assuming, of course, that they have spies in most of the inhabited systems. One platoon found us and the commander decided to be ambitious and destroy us himself.”

  Ackbar nodded. “Another logical conclusion drawn from the evidence at hand. There has also been a fair amount of traffic by small trading ships into and out of Talasea.”

  “Yes, sir. Emtrey can give you the data on them.”

  “He already did and they all appear to be clean, Commander, but one misstatement by one crew member and your security would be compromised. Ultimately, though, the reason the Talasea base was discovered is less important than our discovery of the source of the stormtroopers. It has been two standard days since the stormtroopers died, so chances are very good that their absence has been noticed.”

  Wedge folded his arms. “Standard Imperial response would be to move in, secure the planet, and prevent us from using it again.”

  “We expect the Havoc and the Black Asp to be used to prevent Rogue Squadron from making a quick hit and run on the Talasea expeditionary force; they won’t be defending Rachuk.” Salm reached out and touched the holographic world. The island he selected grew up in place of the world of which it was part. As the image expanded the computer added buildings, mountains, ion-cannon batteries, and other details of military importance. Two steep mountain chains—the edges of an extinct volcano’s crater—enclosed the base like parentheses. “We have other information about the locations and patrol routes of the Rachuk sector’s ships. We believe Vladet should be open to a reprisal strike, and Grand Isle here is the place to hit.”

  Wedge took a step closer to the holographic island floating in midair. “Defense shields?”

  Salm smiled and Wedge was pleased that predatory leer wasn’t directed at him. “Not if they want to fire their ion cannons. The island, as you can see, is part of an old volcano. The generators are geothermal and old and not up to the strain of raising the shield and powering the ion cannons.”

  “And if they choose to go turtle instead of trying to shoot?”

  The bomber pilot traced a circle around what would have originally been the edge of the crater. To the south the wall had broken down almost completely and much of the base had been built on the flat stretch of land that linked the volcano and the bay. On the north side of the crater the wall had begun to erode, but it was just a small divot compared to the gap to the south.

  “The shield generator has to cover everything from the beach to the tops of the mountains. On the north side it should be possible to blast through the mountain and open up enough of a gap to let our bombers in. Once we’re under the shield, the generators go and it’s over.”

  It looks like it should work. Wedge rubbed a hand over his chin. “Are we hitting and running, or moving in?”

  “We want to cripple Vladet so the Empire will have to move new forces in.” Ackbar hit another button on the arm of his chair and the island vanished. “The Rachuk sector is immaterial at the moment, except as a symbol and a wound the Empire must stanch. We want this raid to go off in twelve hours. What will Rogue Squadron’s operational strength be then, Commander?”

  “I’ll be down two pilots. I could give Captain Celchu Forge’s X-wing.”

  “No.” General Salm shook his head adamantly.

  Ackbar opened his mouth in a smile. “What General Salm meant by this is that we will be using the Eridain as a command and control center. Captain Celchu will operate there to coordinate Rogue Squadron and Defender Wing. This is at Captain Afyon’s request.”

  Wedge frowned at General Salm. How is it that you will trust Tycho to direct all our forces, but won’t trust him in the cockpit of an X-wing? Isn’t it obvious where he can do the most damage? “Is that acceptable to you, Captain?” He put enough of an edge in his voice that he felt certain Tycho knew he’d fight Salm if Tycho wanted to fly in the raid.

  “Yes, sir. I’ve not logged enough time in an X-wing to be mission qualified anyway, Commander, so I’ll be happy to do flight coordination and control.”

  Salm tugged at the hem of his blue coat. “I’ll have my own flight controller on the Eridain. You’ll work with him.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  And your man will decide whether or not to relay orders. Wedge nodded to himself. “We’ll make it work.”

  “Good.” Ackbar closed his eyes for a moment and Wedge took that as a sign of appreciation for his cooperation. “You are returning to the Reprieve for the memorial service?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If you don’t mind, General Salm and I will fly over with you in the Forbidden to attend ourselves.”

  Wedge smiled, more at the Admiral’s offer than Salm’s clear look of surprise. “We would be honored, sir.”

  “And we will honor your dead.” Ackbar turned to the bomber pilot. “And you will want your Defender Wing pilots there, too, yes, General?”

  Salm hesitated, then nodded. “Perhaps if we mourn together before we fly together, our units won’t have so much to mourn after we hit Vladet.”

  Kirtan Loor ducked involuntarily as he felt the tremor rip through the soil. A muffled report reached his ears a second later. The comlink clipped to his lapel hissed with static, then calmly reported, “Four-Eighteen and Four-Twenty are down.”

  The Intelligence agent shivered, and it wasn’t the cool Talasean night that shook him. The stormtrooper making the report had reacted as if the Rebels’ little booby trap had killed droids, not people. Of course, stormtroopers are hardly people, are they? Brought up to be fanatically loyal to the Emperor, most of them seemed slightly distracted by his death. While this did not dull their efficiency, it did seem to make them care less about their own lives.

  On Talasea care for one’s continued well-being seemed to be a required skill. The Rebels had rigged up a lot of explosive surprises for whoever followed them to Talasea. Just who that would be was not difficult for them to figure out.

  Loor straightened up. “Not that it matters how many stormtroopers die. There must be a factory that stamps them out.”

  He started to smile at his own whispered comment, but a cold dagger of fear plunged into his guts. Two stormtroopers in white armor emerged from the fog like wraiths risen from the grave. They stopped directly in fro
nt of him, but neither one bothered to crane his neck back to look up at Loor’s face. “Agent Loor.”

  Kirtan nodded and did his best to wear a mask reminiscent of pictures he’d seen of Tarkin. “Yes?”

  “Priority message relayed from Vladet. You are ordered to return to Vladet immediately and await further orders.”

  “What does that idiot Devlia think he’s playing at?” Kirtan had been furious when he learned Devlia had sent a single stormtrooper platoon to check Talasea. He had recommended using a probe droid and then following it with a full-scale attack. Devlia had ignored his recommendation and had sent stormtroopers because they were, in his words, “a renewable resource.” The same could not be said for probe droids.

  Nor could it be said of stormtrooper transports. Kirtan stared down at the stormtrooper. “Send a message back to Admiral Devlia and tell him I will return to Vladet when I am finished with my survey of this base.”

  “Sir, the message came from Imperial Center, not Admiral Devlia.”

  He purposely, slowly, raised his head and stared off above the white domes of their helmets. He knew his efforts to hide his shock and fear were useless. I suspect stormtroopers smell fear the way animals do. “A ship has been sent for me?”

  “You’re to take one of the shuttles, the Helicon, directly to Vladet. It is waiting for you in the landing zone.”

  “Thank you for relaying the message.” His voice carried no conviction with it. “Carry on.”

  The two stormtroopers marched off through the swirling mist, leaving Kirtan to be assaulted by cold air outside and cold dread inside. Iceheart must have already gotten my message about this fiasco. If she’s looking to place blame for this disaster, it won’t be on my head. He forced himself to smile and bolstered his effort by visualizing a trembling Admiral Devlia. “Tremble you shall, little man. In ignoring me, you have angered my mistress and I suspect her anger can be decidedly lethal.”

  The seven caskets lay atop a repulsorlift platform, each one draped with white cloth to which had been afixed a blue emblem. For six that emblem was the Rebel crest. Lujayne Forge’s shroud bore the Rogue Squadron crest with one of the dozen X-wing fighters cut away. The caskets had been laid out in the center of the starboard fighter bay aboard the Reprieve, with Lujayne’s in the middle.

  Directly behind them stood all the members of Rogue Squadron save one. Andoorni Hui had been allowed out of the bacta tank for the duration of the ceremony but she was still too weak to stand unaided. She lay back in a hoverchair, her dark eyes half-lidded and her limbs nearly lifeless. She looked, to Wedge, the way he felt inside—all crushed down by the squadron’s loss.

  Behind the pilots stood the techs and crew who had been evacuated from Talasea. Flanking them were the men and women of Salm’s Defender Wing, as well as some of the crew and medical personnel on the Reprieve. The gathering reminded Wedge of the assembly held on Yavin 4 to honor Luke, Han, and Chewbacca for their destruction of the Death Star. I only wish this occasion were as happy a one as that had been.

  Wedge stepped out from between Admiral Ackbar and General Salm, looked down at the caskets, then back up again. “Over seven years ago many of our brethren were gathered together in the aftermath of a great battle to commemorate the heroism of our friends. None of us thought, at that time, of how desperate our situation was, or how long our battle against the Empire would continue. The future was, for us, the next minute or hour or day or week. Life expectancy, especially among pilots, was measured in missions and seldom were multiple digits involved in the calculations.

  “At that gathering, on Yavin 4, we were able to celebrate our victory as if, with the destruction of that one terrible weapon—the first Death Star—we had brought the Empire crashing down. We knew it wasn’t true—we knew we would abandon Yavin shortly thereafter—but for that time we were able to forget how desperate and difficult our fight for freedom would be.

  “We could forget how many more of our friends would die pursuing the common dream of freedom for all people, all species, within the galaxy.”

  Wedge swallowed hard against the lump thickening in his throat. “That dream still lives. Our fight continues. The Empire still exists, though its strength ebbs, its tenacity slackens, and its grasp on its worlds weakens. Dying though it is, it can still inflict death and these, the bodies of our comrades, make that fact abundantly clear.

  “I will not tell you that Lujayne or Carter or Pirgi or the others would want you to keep fighting, or that your fighting will make their sacrifice worth it. That’s trite, and our friends deserve more than trite. They have given up what we fight to preserve. Our duty, and their silent charge to us, is to continue to fight until the Empire can never again strip life from those who want nothing more sinister than freedom for all.”

  He stepped back, then nodded to a technician near the launching bay’s external port. At his signal the repulsorlift platform gently rose and floated toward the vast opening. The ranks of pilots and ground crew parted to let the bier drift past, then closed up again as the platform entered the magnetic containment field around the external port. Once outside the ship, the platform dropped away from beneath the caskets and they hung there, surrounding by stars and vacuum.

  The technician used a tractor beam to impel the caskets, one by one, on a gentle course toward the red dwarf burning at the heart of the star system. Off on a final convoy … As the white shrouds picked up the sun’s red highlights, the string of seven caskets took on the appearance of laser bolts, traveling in slow motion, on a looping arc that would stab them into the distant star.

  Ackbar rested a hand on Wedge’s shoulder. “It is never easy to let your people go.”

  “No, and it never should be.” Wedge gave the Mon Calamari a firm nod. “If it is, then we’ve become the enemy, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

  21

  Corran’s first glimpse of Vladet after coming out of hyperspace revealed a blue ball streaked with white and stippled with dark green. “I think we ought to take it and keep it, Whistler. It looks a lot more pleasant than Fog-world ever did.”

  The astromech piped agreement, then brought the tactical screen up on Corran’s monitor.

  Corran glanced at it, then keyed his comm. “Three Flight is negative for eyeballs.” He raised his left hand and flipped a switch above his head. “S-foils locked in attack position.”

  “I copy, Nine. Stand by.”

  “Standing by, Control.” Ahead of him, speeding in at the planet, two of Defender Wing’s Y-wing squadrons flew with an escort of four X-wings each. Because his flight was two ships shy of full, he and Ooryl were assigned to Warden Squadron. Champion, with General Salm flying lead, and Guardian squadrons were to go in first and soften things up so Warden, with its “understrength” defenses, could sweep through unmolested.

  From the briefing Corran knew the base on Grand Isle would be no match for two squadrons of Y-wings. In addition to two laser cannons, the Y-wings sported twin ion cannons and two proton torpedo launchers. Each ship carried eight torpedoes, which meant either of the squadrons packed enough firepower to turn the lush, verdant landscape of Grand Isle into a black, smoking mass of liquid rock.

  “Rogue Nine, continue to follow Two Flight, then orbit at Angels 10K.”

  “As ordered. Call us if you need anything.”

  “Will do, Control out.”

  Corran thought he caught a hint of his own frustration reflected in Tycho’s voice. The orders he had just given Corran were being relayed to the members of Warden Squadron by Salm’s own controller. The dual command chain was supposed to guarantee good command and control during the operation, but Corran doubted it would do anything of the sort. In CorSec, when we were working a joint operation with Imperial Intelligence, the dual control became duel control, and that didn’t work well at all.

  The ride down through the clear atmosphere got a little bumpy, but having a little resistance to fight with the controls felt good after six hours
of doing nothing during the hyperspace run. Corran leveled the X-wing out at ten kilometers above the surface of the planet. “Control, Three Flight on station. Can you send me tacvisual from below?”

  “Here you go, Nine. From Rogue Leader—returning the favor.”

  Corran’s cheeks burned as he recalled his sensor data being used by the rest of the squadron on Folor. “Relay my thanks.”

  The visual feed from Wedge’s X-wing showed four Y-wings swooping in at the northern face of the volcano’s crater. From about a kilometer out, each of the slow craft launched a pair of proton torpedoes, then peeled off. The blue balls streaked out toward the mountainside. They exploded against it at a point where the abundant rains had already eroded and weakened the rock.

  The rippling series of explosions cast smoke, rock, and burning plants into the air. The visual feed went vector, with green grids representing the land hidden by the smoke. Where there had been a gentle, curved dip in the crater’s rim there now existed a sharp, jagged rift that looked as if some titanic vibro-ax had been used to chop the rock away. As Corran watched, the gap grew larger and he suddenly realized it was because Wedge was going in.

  “Tighten it up, Deuce.” Wedge’s X-wing plunged through the smoke. “Mynock, make sure Control is getting a topo-scan of this trench.”

  The smoke cleared almost instantly, showing him a bristle of shattered volcanic rock a dozen meters off each wing. Wide enough for the bombers, but not much room for error. He nudged his throttle forward, distancing himself from the Y-wings following in his ion wash, and emerged from the split rock faster than any prudent pilot would have flown.

  The laser shots from a quartet of TIE starfighters illuminated the air behind him as he came into the crater beneath the shield’s protective dome. He immediately inverted and dove toward the base of the crater. Wind whistled from the S-foils. He rolled 180 degrees, filling his cockpit canopy with sky and pulled back on his stick to level the X-wing out.