by James Luceno
And while they went to work, Kyp fashioned a report concerning Belkadan, a general call for someone to find out if the station there needed help.
Luke didn’t even begin to slow as he plunged into the asteroid belt, didn’t even hear the warning from Belt-Runner I that their shield generator was still acting up and they might not be able to offer him any protection.
He rolled the TIE fighter about one asteroid, then dived down through a pair of rocks that appeared suddenly around the back side of the first. No instruments for Luke; he didn’t even have R2-D2 strapped in behind him, as was customary on the X-wing. He was flying by instinct and the Force, feeling the flow of asteroids and searching, searching, for the emanations of Han and Chewie.
He dodged another boulder, dived down under and around another, then shot up before a wall of the spinning rocks, leveling off and cutting deeper into the flow as soon as he noted a break in the array. He had come into the belt near where Han and Chewie had gone off the screens, but he couldn’t recognize the asteroids he had been watching on the viewscreens.
Still, he knew that he was in the right vicinity.
“We’ve got the shields up and running,” came the call from Belt-Runner I.
“Does that include the shields on the TIE bomber?” Luke asked, hoping for some confirmation that his friends were alive.
“If it’s out there, and not too badly damaged, it should have shields,” came the less-than-confident voice on the other end.
Luke continued to dodge and swerve, and was somewhat encouraged at first to find no debris.
But then a solar wing panel, smashed into a pulp, whipped by.
Luke took a deep, steadying breath. Leia was on the speaker now, pleading with him for some information. How could he begin to tell her?
He recognized then that his own grief would be no less than hers. His relationship with Han had started on rocky footing and had continued somewhat stormily for a long, long time. But despite the occasional arguments and philosophical disagreements, there was indeed a deep, deep bond between the two, as true a love as brothers might know.
How could Han be gone now?
Leia continued to plead; Luke shut off the communicator, deciding it would be better to tell her face-to-face.
He brought his TIE fighter into a barrel roll and flipped it head over heels halfway through, so that he came out in the flow of the belt instead of against it.
And then he saw them, perched on the back of an asteroid like a sand fly on the side of a moisture vaporator back on Tattooine. Somehow Han and Chewie had put the TIE bomber down on the large rock, and that feat seemed all the more impossible when Luke considered the damage the craft had sustained, with one wing torn away.
Luke came in slow, adjusting his thrusters so that he was barely inching in on the rock as he followed it along its course. Slowly, hindered as much by fear for his friends as by respect for the dangerous asteroid, Luke crawled up, up, past the TIE bomber to a point where he could get a look into its cockpit.
There sat Chewie and Han, arguing as usual, Han pointing one way, Chewie another, and both shaking their heads at the same time. Han had some blood on his forehead. Chewie noticed Luke in the TIE fighter then and gave a great Wookiee roar—Luke could tell because of the way Han grabbed at his ears.
“They’re all right!” Luke called, clicking on the communicator.
“Where are they?” Leia cried.
“Why can’t we see them?” Lando asked at the same time.
“Are they out of the belt?” Mara asked.
Luke started to answer Leia, then Lando, then Mara, then Leia again, and then just laughed at the futility of it all. It struck him then that Han and Chewie always seemed to be doing inexplicable things, that this was just another in a long series of amazing dodges against the claws of the grim specter of death.
“Han, can you hear me?” Luke called, rolling through the channels.
In response, to show that he could indeed hear but couldn’t respond, Han held up his microphone, dangling at the end of a torn cord.
Luke nodded back, then inched his way around the downed craft, inspecting the damage. It wouldn’t fly again, he knew, or at least not with any stability, and how Han and Chewie had ever put it down safely on the asteroid, Luke could only guess. Also, given that the ship’s drives showed no signs of life, Luke doubted that the bomber had any kind of deflector shield working.
How, then, was he going to get Han and Chewie out of there?
“Lando,” he called. “Are you guys reading my signals?”
“Got you loud and clear,” Lando replied. “Hanging out behind that big asteroid. Is that where Han and Chewie are?”
“Hanging right on the back,” Luke replied. “Any idea of how we can get them out of there?”
“Help’s already on the way,” Lando assured them. “We’ll use a tow ship and suck them right out of there.”
Luke, who was back in position above the downed TIE bomber’s cockpit, saw Chewie howl again and saw Han’s grimace, and knew that they, too, had heard. That brought another smile to his face, the thought of Han’s disgrace at having Lando’s machines come and pluck him out of danger. He’d never live this one down!
Luke stayed with the downed craft until Lando’s tow ship arrived, bouncing through the asteroids. They did an impromptu check using a grabber arm to ensure that the shields were working well, then brought the shields down long enough to hook on a tow cable.
“It’ll be bumpy on the way out,” the pilot of the tow ship warned.
Luke stuck around just long enough to see Han’s wry smile, then he turned his TIE fighter about and headed away, looking for an exit from the belt.
“We’ll ignore the time spent baby-sitting Han and Chewie,” came Lando’s voice. “Just eleven more minutes riding upstream and you’ve got the new record.”
Luke smiled, but he didn’t even seriously consider the remark. He wasn’t the least bit interested. He found his exit point and zipped away, cutting a smooth line through the belt and clear into the open space, heading back to Dubrillion, arriving on the planet long before the towing operation had even begun back at the belt.
He found Lando and the others still in the central control room, with Lando wearing a headset and bending over one panel, talking excitedly into a microphone.
“Always the hero,” Mara said with a smile, and she wrapped Luke in a hug. Leia moved beside her and took her brother’s hand.
“Give the credit to Han and Chewie,” Luke explained. “I still don’t know how they got that broken piece of space junk onto the back of that asteroid.”
“They always find a way,” Leia said.
“The modified tractor transmitter,” Lando explained, putting down the headset and moving to join the group. “The ion generators were still working on Belt-Runner I, but they couldn’t get the power boost signal out to the other ships. You went in there naked, my friend.”
Luke nodded and didn’t seem either upset or concerned.
“Off-ship shielding is still a good concept,” Lando pressed. “Planetary defenses will be all the stronger with fighters that can take battle cruiser–class hits.”
“A limited, and limiting, concept,” Luke replied calmly. “The backup systems needed to make sure all the shields don’t blink out would be daunting. And if they did blink out, you’d have a bunch of ships running around in real trouble.”
“They’d still have the shields from their own systems,” Lando argued.
“But the safety net would be gone,” Luke explained, concerned more with the psyche of the pilots. “They wouldn’t appreciate how to fly it. It’s the ability to operate on the very edge of disaster that makes a good pilot.”
Lando shook his head and started to reply, but realized that, in light of Luke’s rush into the belt shieldless, any rebuttal would prove difficult. Before he could even begin his argument, a shaken Han and Chewbacca walked into the room, Han with a towel wrapped around his
cut forehead.
“That tin can you sent to get us hit every asteroid in sight on the way out,” Han complained, but the others, too relieved to see the pair alive, merely smiled.
Chewie, though, wasn’t finished with the complaining, and with a Wookiee, complaints usually took the form of action. He headed straight for Lando, arms outstretched as if he meant to choke the life out of the man. Luke and Mara, Leia and the three kids, all stepped in between, but all started sliding back as Chewie continued his stalk.
Finally, though, with Lando retreating to match the Wookiee’s progress, Chewie backed off.
“Did we beat Moss and Twingo?” Han asked, breaking the tension.
Lando looked to his technicians. “We lost them at four forty-one,” one replied ironically, the exact mark set by Moss and Twingo. Lando started to declare a tie, but took a glance at the still-fuming Wookiee, and abruptly decided, “Add five seconds for the time it took to hop on the back of the asteroid. Four forty-six, a new record.”
“Who cares about the record?” Leia asked. “The flying alone to get you onto that asteroid was nothing short of remarkable, according to Luke.”
“Best flying those two have ever done,” Luke agreed.
The others added their platitudes, with words like brilliant and amazing thrown about.
Han was going to explain that Chewie deserved the credit, that the blow to his head had knocked him senseless for those few critical seconds, but the Wookiee interjected a long wail, a confirmation of their teamwork effort. They were a unit, comrades, the closest and most trusted of friends, and by definition of that bond, the credit for either one’s exploits would be deservedly shared by the other.
Han took it all in with a wink to his Wookiee counterpart. “No problem,” he assured them, his face twisting into a wry smile.
He did frown a bit when his gaze drifted to Lando, though, reflecting his honest feelings: fear and even a sickness deep in the pit of his stomach.
No problem indeed.
They came out of hyperspace and into the Helska system in a rolling, living formation, the Dozen-and-Two Avengers alternating their respective places in the wedge with coordinated barrel rolls and tight loops, brilliant precision flying that kept them on the edge of disaster—and also made their signal on any watching scanners much harder to decipher. Kyp Durron kept the lead at all times, though, with Miko Reglia on his right wing.
The system wasn’t large, with only seven planets, and none of them too widely spaced. R5-L4 kept the data streaming across Kyp’s viewscreen, detailing all the knowledge about the planets and the system, as the squadron cruised past the seventh planet, and then the sixth.
The fifth was a gas giant, an uninhabitable ball of roiling fury, so Kyp rolled past it with hardly a thought, focusing on the fourth planet, an intriguing ball of ice.
“I’m getting some readings from the fourth,” Miko called in a moment later.
Following Kyp’s lead, the squadron slowed. What had they stumbled upon? he wondered. A smuggler’s den? Another scientific outpost—and if so, then why wasn’t it on the charts, as required by New Republic law? It made no sense to him, and yet, he knew that the Spacecaster-class shuttle hadn’t exited the system—if it had, the buoy would surely have detected it.
“Shields up and torpedoes ready,” Kyp called on the open frequency to all the others. “Offset the wedge, two to my right.”
The speedy A-wing on Kyp’s left did a snap roll that put it right in line behind the trailing ship on the right-hand line of the wedge.
“Off-planet movement,” came Miko’s call, and Kyp’s astromech confirmed it even as his wingman cried out. Indeed, he soon confirmed visually, there was movement, dozens and dozens of …
Of what? Asteroids?
Kyp’s instruments revealed little at first, bringing in a jumble of signals that seemed to indicate some sort of life energy. “Hold back and cover my tail,” he instructed the others, and he swooped away. His next impression was that these were indeed asteroids, albeit spectacular ones, showing many different colors. But as he drew even nearer, a chill ran up Kyp’s spine.
R5-L4 issued a stream of protests, flashed signals on Kyp’s screen that showed that there were some life-forms ahead, and then another, even more urgent signal brought Kyp’s attention to his instruments. A tremendous energy bubble surrounded the frozen fourth planet.
Kyp looked back to the multicolored asteroids, noted the specific geometric shapes. Not one of the things looked exactly like another, but they all shared some features, the tapered nose, the aerodynamic sides.
These were craft, starfighters!
Kyp throttled up to full and yanked back, turning his nose up in a sharp loop. As he hit the top, he rolled about to upright and leveled off, shooting back the way he had come.
And on came the pursuit—“a swarm” was the only way Kyp could describe it.
“They’re enemies!” he cried, and even as the words left his mouth, R5-L4 screeched and his X-wing lurched, slammed by something.
Kyp went through a series of evasive maneuvers, spinning down and out to the right, snap-rolling back to the left, and with full throttle the whole time. He took some comfort as he neared the rest of his squadron, screaming ahead in tight formation, laser cannons firing, torpedos flashing away.
“Meet me left, Miko,” he cried, and he hook-turned to his right and continued the turn until he was facing back the other way, with Miko obediently on his wing.
Miko was firing, and so, too, was Kyp as he came out of the turn, blindly, desperately. He scored a solid hit on the nearest enemy, and that rocklike starfighter spun away, but the second zoomed past him, and in that close encounter, he saw that these were piloted ships. There was a canopy, resembling mica more than transparisteel, and behind it he saw the pilot, a barbaric-looking humanoid, its face a lump of pulsating flesh.
He shook off the disturbing sight and led Miko back to the right, back toward the rest of the squadron.
And they were into it thick, with enemy fighters swooping all about them, firing projectiles out of forward and side cannons that looked more like strange, miniature volcanoes. To their credit, the Dozen-and-Two were handing out most of the hits, many taking chunks off enemy vessels. But those vessels usually went into a spin and then came back out of it, leveling and heading fast to rejoin the battle.
“They can take a beating,” Miko remarked.
“But they can’t hand one out,” Kyp noted, seeing several projectiles slam against a B-wing’s shields, only to be repelled. “All right, Dozen-and-Two,” he called. “Our shields’ll beat them. Let’s get organized and knock them off one at a time.” He turned back to his droid. “Elfour, try to call them, all channels. Let’s see if they’ll surrender.”
Even as he finished, a cry came back, from the B-wing. “My shields are down!”
Before Kyp could even respond, a host of enemy fighters soared into position and let fly swarms of volcano missiles, and that B-wing was halved again and again in rapid sequence, until a thousand little pieces littered the dark sky.
And then another cry of lost shields, and a Headhunter swiftly suffered the same fate.
Still, the remaining Avengers held their formations and hammered at the enemy fighters. Several were blasted into little pieces with concentrated laser fire, drilling chunk after chunk in the same spot until the whole of the ship cracked apart. But for every one lost, another dozen replaced it, and more and more were swarming up from the planet.
“No shield!” Miko cried.
Kyp looked at his wingman, perplexed. How was that possible? Miko hadn’t even been hit, for he and Kyp weren’t in the thick of it yet.
“Gravity well! I felt a tug, like a dozen g’s pulling me out of my seat,” Miko tried to quickly explain. “And then a hole in the shield, and then, nothing. My droid’s babbling about magnetic fields, but I don’t know!”
“Get out! Get out!” Kyp cried, to Miko and to all the others, and he poi
nted his own nose toward the main battle, thinking to cover the retreat. He came in spinning and firing, hitting one with a laser blast and then neatly tucking a torpedo into the cavity the laser had caused, blowing the enemy fighter to bits. He swerved between two more, taking a couple of inconsequential hits, then reversed throttle, with R5-L4 howling all the while, and flipped his X-wing about, a vicious maneuver that nearly stole his consciousness despite the fact that his inertial compensator was running at 97 percent. Kyp kept his cool and came out firing and had both the enemy fighters he had just passed spinning away, with pieces of them flying.
An A-wing flew past him, the pilot frantic, taking hits, with some of them thudding against the side and latching on, like molten goo.
“Oh, no,” Kyp moaned, seeing those missiles melting right through the hull, one going right into the ion-drive connectors.
The A-wing blew apart.
Kyp spun about to meet the pursuing swarm, got a few shots off and took a few hits, but got past them.
He went in close enough to the bow of one enemy ship to spot another facet of it, or perhaps an added piece, for this looked more like a breathing, pulsing creature, a disembodied heart, and the readings coming from it were very different from anything Kyp had ever seen.
He felt a sudden tug and knew that his shields had dropped, and knew that this ship, or creature, or whatever it was, had just ripped them away with some type of magnetic or supergravity field. He focused his wrath on that notion, on this thing that had brought death so quickly to several of his friends.
Torpedoes away!
But they didn’t get near the thing, seemed to stop in midflight, as if they were pressing their noses against an impenetrable barrier, and then just crushed in on themselves and blew apart.
“What?” Kyp cried, not daring to slow and inspect things further, for he was naked now, without shields, and with a host of enemy ships in pursuit.
“I’m hit!” Miko cried.
Kyp turned and turned, dived and spun, trying to find his friend, firing his laser cannons all the while, though he couldn’t even slow enough to locate a target.