by Timothy Zahn
“Tell them to hurry,” Pellaeon snarled. Once the alien ships gained some altitude and speed, there would be no way the Chimaera’s crews could hit them on manual control. “Move it, Lieutenant,” he said. “We’re the only thing standing between them and the Admonitor.”
“Fire!” Han called.
With a crackling stutter from the Golan’s electromagnetic rail launchers, the racks of heavy proton torpedoes began emptying themselves out into space. Six—eight—ten—twenty—Han gazed out the viewport at the stream of torpedoes heading for the missile ships’ lair, feeling a strange mixture of awe, approval, and uneasiness. It was good to have this level of firepower on their side.
Problem was, it usually wasn’t on their side. Usually, this was the kind of weaponry the Rebel Alliance was facing.
“All torpedoes away,” Nills reported tensely. “More ships rising from concealment; still clustered. Leading edge impact … now.”
With a distant flash of light, the first torpedo detonated. And then the second, and the third, and the fourth.
Suddenly the whole edge of Poln Minor lit up like the inside of a small star.
“What the—” Barcelle gasped as a visible ripple of firestorm shock wave blew outward through the planet’s thin atmosphere. “Major, what was that?”
“That was a whole bunch of Caldorf VII interceptors getting hot enough to self-ignite,” Han told him with grim satisfaction.
“Ah.” Barcelle watched the fading fireball in silence for a few seconds. “And, uh, we’re sure those were enemy ships, right?”
“Trust me,” Han said. He looked over at the tactical holo. “Or trust him,” he added pointing. “Eight more Firekilns have just jumped into the system. I guess Nuso Esva was counting on those missile ships.”
“So what happens now?” Nills asked anxiously.
Barcelle squared his shoulders. “We get on the turbolasers,” he ordered. “We may be out of the main battle over here, but we still have a world to defend. Let’s get to it.”
AS LARONE HAD EXPECTED, THE FINAL ASSAULT ON THE CELLAR CAME from the supply lift.
Though technically, it came from the crater where the supply lift had been before the massive set of shaped charges from above ripped through the top, tore across the shaft walls, and blew the inner door halfway across the cellar.
Through the smoke and flying debris eight men and aliens dropped from the alley above into the charred hole, their blasters blazing.
“Get down!” LaRone shouted, ducking his own head a bit as he and the others opened up with their E-11s. Fortunately, he’d anticipated their insertion point well enough to have thrown together a new redoubt in the cellar’s far rear corner.
Only he and the others hadn’t had time to move the big kegs that had formed their original defensive barrier. Their new position was mostly made up of smaller kegs, piled on top of one another where necessary, with the old redoubt still in its original position barely five meters away from them.
Brightwater had wondered if the attackers would spot the old barrier and simply settle into its protection for their attack. As LaRone’s blasterfire staggered one of the aliens in the middle, the group did exactly that.
“Now what?” Marcross shouted over the staccato screams of the blasterfire. “LaRone, we’re trapped!”
“Keep firing,” LaRone shouted back, keeping an eye on the other end of the room. If whoever was running this attack was smart, he ought to be opening up a second battle vector just about now.
Right on schedule, there it was: three more figures dropping from the stairway door to the cellar floor, their own blasters silent. Keeping low, they headed stealthily toward the loud exchange of blasterfire at the other end of the room, clearly hoping to catch the defenders in a crossfire.
Just as stealthily, two Troukree rose up from concealment under broken pieces of walls and stairs as the three attackers passed them.
“Keep firing!” LaRone shouted again. The blasterfire itself ought to drown out any sounds the Troukree or their victims might make, but a little extra noise couldn’t hurt.
He needn’t have worried. The Troukree reached their targets, and with a flicker of light from their knives all three attackers collapsed silently to the floor.
LaRone returned his attention to the eight attackers crouched behind the keg. Or rather, to the five attackers who were still firing, apparently unaware through the ongoing firestorm that three of their original number were down. Beside him Marcross gave another shout, some kind of alien-sounding battle cry, clearly calculated to keep the noise level up. The number of attackers at the barricade went to four, then three, then two.
Abruptly, the last two survivors seemed to wake up to what was happening. They both spun around, dropping down with their backs to the kegs, their weapons tracking around to their rear …
Toward Grave, lying in his now open-topped bacta tank, the blaster he’d concealed as the attackers ran past with barely a glance braced against the edge of the opening. His weapon spat one last shot, with his usual deadly accuracy, and one of the two aliens collapsed to the floor, his own final bolt shattering another piece of wall.
The last attacker was still lining up his blaster when Quiller fired from his own stack of concealing debris across the room and ended the battle.
Cautiously, LaRone rose to his feet. “Governor?” he asked, turning to look at the figure curled awkwardly behind the extra pair of kegs behind him.
“Don’t worry about me,” Ferrouz said. He’d argued against the stormtroopers giving him any extra protection, but LaRone could tell from his face that he was just as glad he’d had it. “What about you and the others?”
“I’m fine,” LaRone assured him, wincing as he turned back around. With the adrenaline of the battle fading, the pain of a dozen blaster burns was starting to throb in his arms, chest, and left cheek. “Report?” he called.
One by one, the others checked in. It was the usual: blaster burns, damaged equipment, drained power packs. But they’d all made it through alive, as had the four remaining Troukree. If anything, in fact, the green-scaled aliens had gotten through it with fewer injures even than the stormtroopers.
A fact that Vaantaar had clearly noticed, and was apparently not happy with. “You take too much of the battle upon yourselves,” he chided LaRone as he awkwardly swapped out the power pack on his blaster for a new one.
“I don’t see how you can say that,” LaRone said. “Especially since the only death so far has been one of yours.”
“We serve and die willingly,” Vaantaar said. “But we wish fuller service against the enemies of our people. The next battle will be ours.”
“Actually, there may not be another battle,” Marcross pointed out. “They have to be running low on people by now.”
“Not to mention that even with shaped charges, blowing the supply lift was a little on the noisy side,” Brightwater added. “Hopefully, there are some patrollers on the way by now.”
“If not, maybe we can call them,” LaRone suggested, checking his helmet’s comlink as he left the redoubt and headed over to Grave. But the crackle of static in his ear showed that the jamming was still in place. “Or not,” he added. “Good shooting, Grave.”
“Thanks,” Grave said, breathing heavily, his gun hand hanging limply over the edge of the tank opening. “Not my best work, I’m afraid.”
“It was more than good enough,” LaRone assured him. “How are you feeling? Will you be ready for—what are we up to?—Round Four?”
“There will be no further rounds,” a voice called from the top of the open lift shaft beside them.
LaRone spun around toward the shaft, snapping his E-11 up into firing position. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Marcross circle quickly to the other side of the shaft. He settled into covering position and nodded.
Carefully, LaRone eased forward and peered up the shaft. Nothing was visible except the tops of the surrounding buildings and a darkening evening sky
. “Hello?” he called.
“You have been worthy opponents,” the voice said, and now that LaRone was listening closely he could hear the faint alien intonation in the words. “But it comes now to the end.”
“Fine with me,” LaRone said. “Come on down, and we’ll have it out.”
“It comes now to the end,” the voice repeated. “Our master has achieved his goal of luring his enemy to this system. We no longer require that the governor die in any specified way.”
LaRone gripped his blaster a little tighter. That didn’t sound good. “Commanders are always changing their minds that way,” he commiserated. “So we’ll be going our separate ways, I assume?”
“We shall go our way,” the voice said. “But you have caused deaths among my people. Deaths among we who are the Chosen. Those deaths will not go unavenged.”
LaRone grimaced. He’d been afraid that was the direction the conversation was heading. “No problem,” he said. “As I said, come on down and we’ll see what we can do about giving you your revenge.”
“The revenge is already prepared,” the voice said. “Die in agony, enemies of the Chosen.”
There was the faint sound of footsteps moving away. LaRone keyed up his helmet’s audio enhancers, listening hard as the steps faded down the alley. Heading away to the east, he decided.
He stepped back to the bacta tank, gesturing the others to join him. Marcross nodded and moved around the blackened shaft, his eyes and blaster still pointed cautiously upward. Brightwater was already on his way from the redoubt, where he’d been standing guard over Ferrouz, and across the room Quiller was hobbling toward them on his injured leg, two of the Troukree supporting him as he walked.
“Thoughts?” LaRone asked as Marcross and Brightwater reached him.
“I’m guessing more explosives,” Marcross said.
“Certainly the simplest approach,” Brightwater seconded. “Probably going to lay them where the tapcaf joins the stores on either side. Hitting those supporting walls properly should bring both buildings falling inward on top of us.”
“They’ll probably be planting them on the alley side,” Quiller added as he limped up beside Marcross. “Street side’s a little too public.”
“Especially after that last blast,” LaRone said, nodding. “And if they’re in the alley, that means there’s a chance we can still stop them. I think their spokesman went east, but we should probably send two of us in each direction.”
“Agreed,” Marcross said. “Well, gentlemen. It’s been an honor to serve—”
“What’s this two stuff?” Grave put in, grabbing the edge of the bacta tank and hauling himself gingerly up into a sitting position. “What am I, chopped entrails?”
“We’ll need to do some jumping to get up there,” Marcross reminded him. “I don’t think you’re up to that just now.”
“Neither is Quiller,” Grave retorted, pointing to Quiller as he hung somewhat precariously onto Brightwater’s shoulder. “If he goes—”
“Hold it,” LaRone said, staring at Quiller. He’d come over with the help of two of the Troukree.
Why was he hanging on Brightwater’s shoulder now?
He took a quick step back from the group, looking around the cellar.
Just as two of the Troukree took off from opposite directions, running toward the lift shaft. “Wait!” LaRone snapped, trying to get around Marcross.
He stopped short as Vaantaar put a restraining hand on his arm. “No,” the Troukree said softly. “I already said it. This battle is ours.”
There was nothing LaRone could say. Nothing he could do. The first Troukree reached the center of the shaft and was thrown up through the opening by the third Troukree, who was waiting for him there. Even as the first alien disappeared from LaRone’s sight, the second reached the shaft and was similarly hurled upward, arcing toward the other side of the alley. There was a warbling call, followed by a multiple burst of blasterfire.
And then, nothing.
LaRone looked at Vaantaar. “It is over,” Vaantaar said, letting go of LaRone’s arm, his expression oddly serene. “Come. We may now leave this place.”
LaRone nodded. There were some alien cultures, he vaguely remembered, that used the phrase as a term for death.
But it didn’t really matter. There was still a wounded Imperial governor in here, and a threat to his life out there, and LaRone and the other stormtroopers had no choice but to head out and try to stop it. “Marcross?” he said.
“On it,” Marcross called back, already rolling one of the smaller kegs into the shaft. “You and me?”
“You and me,” LaRone said, popping a fresh power pack into his E-11.
And it occurred to him that he’d been right, way back when this whole thing started.
One way or another, the Hand of Judgment was most definitely going to go out with a bang.
The two men on the stairs fired again, one of their shots blasting some of the rust from Luke’s ore car, the other shot missing completely. Leaning out from his cover, Luke fired a shot back at them—and quickly ducked back in as another burst of fire burned past from behind him. The kidnappers from the other end of the cavern, coming up fast.
With a curious sense of detachment, Luke realized he was about to die.
He was pinned down. So was whoever that was up there on the crane rail. Luke’s only weapons were a small borrowed blaster, which had to be nearly out of power by now, and a lightsaber that he barely knew how to use.
Maybe the blaster had been the other intruder’s only weapon. Certainly he hadn’t heard any return fire from up there.
And against the two of them were at least twelve men, counting the two on the stairs. With death sentences facing all of them for the kidnapping of Ferrouz’s family, they had nothing to lose by adding another murder to their list of crimes.
Another two murders, actually. With a lot of their fire trained upward, it was a toss-up as to which of them would die first.
And then, through the scream of blasterfire, Luke heard the snap-hiss of a lightsaber. Frowning, he leaned out.
He was facing an extraordinary sight. The person on the rail—a woman, he could see now, her hair glittering strangely in the red lighting—was on the move, running along the rail toward the stairs and the small room where Ferrouz’s family was being held. She was swinging a lightsaber as she ran, the blade deflecting the sudden extra fury of blaster bolts now coming from Stelikag and the other kidnappers below her.
But the blade wasn’t simply cutting across the incoming fire the way Luke blocked such attacks in his practice sessions. It was flickering rapidly on and off in an irregular pattern, flashing like a magenta strobe light. She kept running, gradually twisting her torso around as she moved past her attackers, keeping the lightsaber blade between her and their fire as it began to come more from behind than from beside her.
Axlon had said there was an Imperial agent on Poln Major who carried a lightsaber. But after all the rest of the traitor’s lies, Luke had assumed he’d been lying about that, too. Apparently not.
But what was she doing? The lightsaber was still flickering as she ran, and each time it went off it opened up the possibility that one of the blaster bolts would get through. Was there some kind of defect in the weapon?
Luke caught his breath as he suddenly understood. She was turning her lightsaber on and off as she ran to keep from slicing through the rail’s support struts while she swept the blade across the incoming fire.
For a moment he just stood there staring, frozen in amazement by the level of sheer control and artistry the maneuver demonstrated. She deflected a shot, swung the lightsaber toward the next one, flicked the blade off and then on to bypass a strut, deflected the next bolt—
A shot from the stairs sizzled past Luke’s shoulder, abruptly breaking the spell. “Right,” he muttered to himself, spinning around and firing another two shots of his own at the men on the stairs—
—only to discover that wh
ile he’d been watching the lightsaber display above him both men had managed to make it up another section of the stairway.
And he realized to his horror that they were now out of his blaster’s range.
He dropped back into the ore car’s partial cover and turned to face the group still running toward him. If the ones on the stairway were out of range, those in the distance were even more so.
But even useless shots fired in their direction might distract them from the agent running along the rail above him. It was, he realized heavily, all that he could do.
Luke was out of the fight. From this point on, it was all up to her.
Dimly, through the Force-created combat tunnel vision, Mara saw she was nearly to the control cabin.
So were the two men climbing the stairs toward it.
With an effort, she pulled a little of her focus away from her defense. The men were climbing, but she saw now that both of them were moving slower than they should have been. She pulled a little more of her focus and saw that both were limping badly. Apparently in all the shooting he’d been doing, Skywalker had managed to wound both of them.
At least he was good for something.
The crane rail jerked and twisted beneath her feet as her lightsaber slashed through one of the support struts. Clearly, she’d diverted a bit too much of her attention. She brought her mind into focus again, blocking the attacks on her as she ran.
Suddenly she was there.
She braked to a halt, nearly slamming into the cavern wall before she was able to stop. Below her was the roof of the control cabin, and she slashed her lightsaber at it, slicing out a circle of old metal and plastic and sending it crashing to the cabin floor below. Deflecting the last two blaster bolts sizzling toward her, she dropped through into the cabin.
They were there, all right: Ferrouz’s wife and daughter, looking tired and disheveled and scared, but with the hint of quiet defiance in both their expressions that Mara would expect from the family of an Imperial governor. They were sitting in rough wooden chairs at the back of the cabin, the woman’s arms protectively around the girl.