by James Luceno
And down the three went, bursting back into the daytime blue sky of Lando’s planet.
“Shields strengthening,” Anakin reported.
The TIE fighters roared over the city, swerving in and out of the tall towers. Jacen called out first, spotting the flight of enemy fighters coming in hot, their volcanolike cannons firing repeatedly.
The three TIEs soared out of the southeastern corner of the city, charging to meet the challenge.
But then the surface cannons roared to life, a blazing, thunderous volley of blue-streaking energy bolts filling the sky.
“Back!” Jaina called, pulling into a loop that turned her back for the city, and her brothers followed suit. As they came back around for a visual, Jaina’s eyes confirmed what her sensors were already telling her: the strafing enemy fighters had all been destroyed.
Far from satisfied, though, the battle-hungry trio went right back up to black space.
“Widen the formation,” Jaina ordered. “And keep your eyes open. Let’s get the next group before they get in range of Lando’s cannons.”
Even as she finished, a smaller group of enemy fighters soared down at Dubrillion. The three TIE fighters rushed off to meet them, Jaina in the middle, with her brothers moving out wide at her flanks. As they approached the incoming five enemies, the boys rolled back in, wingtip to wingtip with Jaina. They worked in unison, seeming more like one starfighter than three, each with its single laser cannon roaring to life.
A pair of enemy fighters disappeared under the sudden barrage, but the remaining three reacted fast, leveling to meet this new threat. Their cannons blared, and the three Solos didn’t try to evade, but took hit after hit.
The shields held; the ships came together.
A trio of torpedoes, a burst of laser fire, and the threat was gone.
That particular threat at least, for now calls from Dubrillion’s surface mingled with the cries from the swerving and dodging fighters above. More enemies had come in at the city, from every angle, and the three Solo kids knew that Lando’s gunners were hard-pressed.
“This is Gauch in TB-1,” came a call from one of the TIE bombers. “We’ve got them.”
Jaina led her brothers back into blue space and saw the TIE bomber rolling out from the city, trading hits with several enemy fighters, but taking all they could hand out with its enhanced shields.
The city, though, was starting to take a beating, with fires burning in several buildings. The surface turbolasers continued to thunder away, scoring hit after hit, but for every enemy fighter that went down, a dozen more seemed to take its place.
“Let’s go!” Jaina cried.
“Belt-Runner I here!” came a cry. “We’re hit! We’re hit! Taking shield energy back!”
“We’re stripped!” Anakin confirmed, and Jacen and Jaina, too, glanced at their instruments to confirm that Belt-Runner I had taken back the shielding power. “What do we do?”
“Don’t get hit,” a grim Jaina returned, and she led the way down, soaring in between the buildings, dodging the volcanic missiles and tremendous surface-cannon blasts, her lasers blaring away.
“I’m hit!” came pilot Gauch’s voice. “Can’t hold it! Can’t—”
A huge fireball rolled up from the eastern side of the city, a poignant reminder to the three young Jedi that this time was for real.
Jacen got the first kill, firing off a shot as he rounded a tower, scoring a hit blindly on an enemy fighter and luckily avoiding the return shot.
Another enemy had him in line, though, and he started to cry out.
Jaina blew past him, firing her second torpedo, and that enemy, too, went away.
“Thanks, Sis,” Jacen remarked, and he followed Jaina’s bank down to the left. They found Anakin pursuing one enemy, but with a trio pursuing him. He shot through a gap between towers, then pulled up fast as the fighter he was chasing crossed through the crosshairs of one of those mighty surface cannons and seemed to simply disintegrate. And as Anakin rose, he found his siblings diving down on either side of him, lasers blasting away.
Anakin cut sharp to the right and reversed throttle, breaking his momentum. He hung motionless for a moment, then, just as he started to drop, kicked the throttle in full and double-kicked his foot yokes, right and then left again hard, dropping his nose so that he looped right under and about, slashing down. A subtle shift in his angle of descent put him on the tail of a fleeing enemy fighter, which he took out with a trio of laser blasts, left, right, and dead center.
Anakin went up as Jaina and Jacen went up, the three, each with another kill, rejoining above Lando’s main center. They heard cheers coming over the comm, followed by a “Keep ’em running!” declaration by Lando, but it seemed as if the city was secured for the time being, for many of the enemy fighters were gone and the cannons continued to pump away at those remaining.
“Dad told us to stay low because of the shields,” Jaina called to her brothers, and before they could answer, she turned her nose to the sky. “Shields are gone anyway,” she explained. “Let’s go and join the bigger fight.”
“We can’t …,” Jacen started to protest, but his voice trailed away.
Jaina smiled. She knew that her father wouldn’t quite see things the way she had put them to her brothers.
But that was a fight for another day.
The three TIE fighters soared into black space, out of Dubrillion’s atmosphere altogether. They saw the streaks of light of the continuing battle; their instruments told them that many other craft were all about them.
Multicolored coral blew to sparkling bits before them as one enemy fighter, and then another, fell victim to the thundering quad lasers.
Han focused on that sight, the opening escape route for the Falcon, while Leia worked the bottom guns, taking out another stubborn enemy. Their right flank got hit several times, until Kyp had the forward path cleared enough so that he could swivel the big guns around and begin popping away.
“Oh, dear,” C-3PO wailed as the Falcon took another shuddering hit. “I do believe there are too ma … aa … aa … ny!” he added, flying away under the jolt of another hit, waving his golden arms frantically, and though his eyes couldn’t really widen with horror, to Leia, turning about to regard him, they surely seemed to. “We’ll all be killed!”
“Shut him up, or I’ll toss him out,” Han warned.
Han put the Falcon up on edge, ignoring Kyp’s protests to “keep it steady,” and ran the gauntlet between several enemy fighters. He saw an X-wing cut down from the left, four lasers blasting away, but with a swarm of pursuers on its tail.
“Too hot!” the X-wing pilot called. “Breaking for Dubrillion!”
“Go!” Han muttered under his breath. On the other side, an A-wing tried to streak away, but got pummeled by volleys of rocky missiles, heated stone that latched on and bored through the hull, pocking the ship. The pilot cried out for help, but Han couldn’t get to her in time, and then, as she tried one last evasive maneuver, she cut back too fast and slammed headlong into one of the pursuing enemy fighters, both ships exploding in a shower of tiny bits.
“We’re running out of ships,” Leia warned.
“Shields gone!” came a cry from the X-wing pilot, a call they had heard repeatedly over the last few minutes, and one that echoed ominously Kyp’s description of his first encounter with the enemy fighters.
Han banked that way. “Clear them out!” he called to Kyp, as the pursuers of the diving X-wing came into view.
“Got ’em!” Kyp assured him, and the quad lasers blasted away, clearing off a line of those pursuing ships. Still, Kyp and the Falcon couldn’t get them all, and the X-wing seemed doomed, but then, suddenly, came a burst from the other side, rising from Dubrillion as it grew larger and larger in the Falcon’s viewscreen, a trio of laser-cannon pulses taking out the pursuit and allowing the X-wing to break free toward the planet.
Han and Leia’s elation at the rescue lasted only the few seconds it took
them to discern the source of the reinforcements: three modified TIE fighters.
“Break back to the planet!” Han cried to his children. “Use Lando’s shields!”
“Belt-Runner I’s down,” Jaina replied. “No shields there, either.”
“Break back!” Han screamed.
“Too many up here,” Leia added. “We’re all heading home. Let the surface guns take them!” Even as she finished, the three TIEs zoomed past the Falcon.
“Go ahead,” came Jaina’s voice. “We’ll fight the retreat.”
“Break back!” Han screamed again, trembling with a fit of rage.
Leia called out to him over the comm, sensing, and sharing in, his distress. She knew it was worse for Han, though, understood that he was on the very edge of control here, his grief and horror for Chewbacca wrapping itself around his fears for his children, elevating his sense of loss and dread to the breaking point. He put the Falcon into a tight turn—Leia wasn’t surprised—bringing her around to follow the TIE fighters, and already the two parents could hear the banter of their children as the three intercepted a host of enemy fighters.
Mostly it was coordinating banter, the you-break-left-I’ve-got-the-right sort of calls that pilots always shared, but there was something else, something that unnerved and bolstered Leia all at once.
It was their tone.
For the kids were into it with all the passion of seasoned warriors, flying heart and soul, full of energy, full of spirit. Han and Leia heard the whoops of delight as enemy fighter after fighter went away in a burst of sparkling pieces.
But both parents held their grim countenance, for both had seen enough battles to understand that those whoops of delight would become cries of despair in an instant if one of the three got blown apart. And now, by their instruments and the visible streaking lines before them, it seemed as if the element of surprise had flown, as if the enemy fighters were converging in an orderly and devastating fashion on the three hotshots.
“Get there, get there,” Han muttered repeatedly through gritted teeth, pushing the Falcon to her limits.
Something jolted them hard then. Not a missile, but a grabbing beam, and a moment later, indicator lights began flashing that the Falcon’s shields were faltering.
Up above, Kyp blazed away with the cannons, but those hits that Han had been ignoring, the glancing blows to the side, began to take on more profound implications.
And both Han and Leia heard their three children calling out that there were too many to fight.
“Break back to Dubrillion,” Jaina cried, the most welcome call Han and Leia had ever heard.
But then Anakin’s voice, cold and calm, chimed in. “No,” he said. “Follow me.”
“Too many!” Jacen complained.
“We’ve run the belt, they haven’t,” Anakin said grimly.
Leia’s eyes popped open wide. “They’ve got no shields,” she whispered, more to herself than anyone else. But she heard Han’s groan and realized that he had heard her.
A series of whumps from the top laser cannons reminded them that their children were beyond their reach, that they, too, had no shields and there were simply too many enemy fighters between them and the kids, between them and the belt, for them to get anywhere near the three TIEs.
Han pulled the microphone from the console and roared into it, “Break back!”
No response, just static—the kids had already entered Lando’s Folly.
Jacen was the third in, and nearly the first out, for almost as soon as he entered the asteroid belt, he had to dive into an evasive turn and roll to avoid one spinning rock. He cut around the bottom of the asteroid, but couldn’t begin to breathe easier, for he found an enemy fighter coming in hard from his left, firing away, and there was no way he could dodge that missile.
An asteroid rushed past his left, taking the hit, and then came a second, larger explosion, as another asteroid swept past, colliding with the enemy fighter and its distracted pilot.
The reprieve proved short-lived, though, for a horde of enemies had come in right behind the three young Jedi, braving the asteroids with fanatical single-mindedness.
Anakin, in between his brother and sister, saw Jacen’s near miss, then near takeout by the volcanic missile, and though his own path had been somewhat clearer thus far, he could certainly understand Jacen’s call that they had to get right out, that it was simply too noisy and wild in here.
The three swooped and dived, Anakin nearly colliding with Jaina; only her deft flying kept the two TIE fighters apart. And all the while the enemies came in fast pursuit. Another smashed into an asteroid, but that hardly deterred the horde.
“Take us out, Jaina,” Jacen implored his sister.
Anakin ignored the call and fell into a sense of calmness. Something had guided him in here; something had beckoned to him, promising him a better battlefield against the overwhelming odds.
The Force.
He knew it was the Force. In here, the three young Jedi could use their insights where the pilots of the enemy fighters, whatever they might be, could not. He knew that, instinctively, but now that he was in the midst of this insanity, asteroids, missiles, and enemy ships buzzing all about him, doubts began to fester and grow. He saw Jaina cut up ahead of him; then, using a brilliant barrel-roll-and-swerve maneuver to cut between a pair of asteroids, she rolled off the face of a third and came around firing, her single laser striking three rapid hits on an enemy fighter.
She was in the mode, Anakin realized without doubt. If only he could tap into it …
Hear me, came the youngest Solo’s telepathic call to his siblings. Join with me.
“Anakin?” came Jacen’s conventional reply. Jaina didn’t reply, and Anakin sensed that she had already accepted his call.
Three as one, the young Jedi telepathically imparted. Let go. Lend me your eyes.
It all happened in a matter of seconds, the three young Solos finding communion, a telepathic joining and bond. Now each flew with the added perspectives offered by the other two flanking craft, giving each extra eyes, extra perceptions. No reactions now, just the purest of anticipation, as all three gave in to the Force.
They wove with perfect precision, replacing each other in the line, bringing cannons to bear from slightly different angles, ones their enemy-fighter counterparts couldn’t anticipate or react to in time.
They came around asteroids with ease, beginning their firing before they ever could logically know that an enemy was around the back side, but shooting with perfect accuracy, blowing fighter after fighter out of the sky, or taking those in close pursuit through such a maze of asteroids that the enemy ships inevitably slammed into one or were forced to break off the chase.
Their symbiosis mounted, and Anakin, as the focal point, felt they were working together and with the Force as he had only dreamed was possible. The perfect squadron, joined in thought and purpose, communicating with each other as quickly as the internal workings of his own brain.
The enemy fighters couldn’t come close to pacing the trio; any that got near were just blasted out of the sky or run into asteroids.
Anakin led his siblings in a turn, rushing hard back into the bulk of the enemy forces, dodging asteroids and missiles, scoring hit after hit.
He fell deeper into the Force, his hands moving as a blur, his mind whirling. Under one asteroid, over another, around a third and then a fourth, firing at those precise moments to score hits, spinning snap turns at those precise moments to dodge enemy missiles.
Faster and faster it went, all a blur, Anakin trembling under the strain, feeling the pressure from his siblings as they, too, fell deeper and deeper. It was perfect fighting, perfect teamwork, the three slicing the enemy ranks apart, thinning them with every pass and forcing more and more to abandon, if they could, the insanity of Lando’s Folly.
Too much information coursed through Anakin. He was trembling violently, he knew, though he hardly felt it. Missile after asteroid after missil
e zipped across his line of sight—or was it Jacen’s line of sight? Too much, he knew, too insane.
He trembled; he telepathically called to his siblings. He desperately tried to hold the bond together.
“Anakin!” he heard Jaina’s call over the comm, and he realized then that he had passed the breaking point, that the bond was gone.
“Can’t—hold—it—” he called back through gritted teeth as he descended into a trembling fit of the purest intensity, fighting hard to hold his consciousness.
“Vector out!” Jaina cried, and one thought accompanied those words: Jacen’s telepathic instructions to turn and burst into hyperspace.
The course angle indicated by those instructions continued to change as Anakin went on, Jacen keeping pace with the movements of the TIE fighter and the relative asteroids.
Anakin clipped one, just a bit, causing little or no damage to his ship but sending him into a disastrous spin.
Go! came Jacen’s command, followed by the almost-magical weight of persuasion of the Force.
Anakin pumped his yokes desperately, trying to level off, trying to hold his focus as the stars whirled about him, as the asteroids and enemies cruised past him. He couldn’t straighten at all; it was only a matter of seconds before he was splattered, and then …
He was gone, shot out of Lando’s Folly in the blink of an eye.
He heard Jaina’s calls for him for just an instant, and then he heard no more as blackness rushed up to engulf him.
Jaina and Jacen managed somehow to extricate themselves from the belt, with some fancy flying and a good share of dumb luck.
Han and Leia, returning from the gunnery pod, watched it all from the cockpit of the Falcon, sitting in stunned silence. They could hardly believe what they had just witnessed, the beauty and the precision, and the loss of their youngest child.
The fighting was over, for the time being, at least, for the remaining enemies were fleeing, headed for the outer planets, and then beyond.
“Where is he?” Han cried at Jaina and Jacen.
“He jumped to hyperspace,” Jacen tried to explain. “He was in a spin. He had to get out—”