Star Wars - X-Wing 02 - Wedge's Gamble

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "I don't know, but I think if we're dead, you won't be able to convince them that you and your loyal crew have been waiting for them for ages." Pedetsen raked a pile of chips toward himself and started to shuffle the sabacc deck. "Your choice, sir. Do what you think is right."

  Needa thought for a second, frowned, then nodded. "I think I choose not to choose. If we do something, we risk death. We can't do anything anyway, so there is no reason to choose."

  A tremor shook OSETS 2711. Needa braced himself against the bulkhead as the mirror started to shift. "We're moving."

  "I know, Lieutenant." Pedetsen smiled. "Looks like someone just made your mind up for you."

  On Home One's bridge chaos reigned. Hundreds of voices competed with one another, each filled with ur­gency. Admiral Ackbar sat at the center of it, listening in­tently to comm feeds from his group commanders. The two Imperial Star Destroyers entering the battle were the Triumph and the Monarch. Already Emancipator and Liberator had begun pounding the ships. Triumph's shields had collapsed on one side, prompting the Captain to execute a roll that brought undamaged shields up be­tween the destroyer and the Rebels.

  Though the Triumph's difficulties heartened Ackbar, the Golan Space Defense platform off the port stern sick­ened him. It had engaged many of the smaller ships in the fleet and was hammering them mercilessly. The Com­mander on the platform had targeted ships with multiple proton torpedoes while saving his turbolasers for snubfighter defense. TIE fighters coming up from Corus­cant seemed content to fight beneath the umbrella of his fire. The fact that the station could not move made it marginally less lethal than the Star Destroyers, but in the time it took for them to be taken out of action, a lot of smaller Rebel ships would die.

  He looked up at the Quarren who had just appeared beside his command chair. "What is it, Commander Sirlul? Something about the station?"

  "Perhaps ..." A tremolo distorted her words as she pointed out the port side viewport. "The mirror is mov­ing."

  "Why would it . . . ?"

  Before Sirlul could offer a possible answer to Ackbar's question, the mirror's panels swung and locked into reflective position. The whole structure contracted slightly, sharpening the solar beam. Though the re­flected light remained all but invisible in space—only showing up where it shone upon and incinerated debris—

  its brilliant focal point could easily be seen. It appeared as a bright dot on the edge of the Golan III station.

  Silvery lines, like cracks forming in ice or rootlets spreading through the earth, began to appear at the edges of the circle. Delicate and almost brittle, they snaked away from the station and drifted into space. The bright spotlight shifted right ever so slightly, leaving in its wake a black crescent. The argent rootlets clung to the cres­cent's outer edge while opposite them some of the rootlets spun off into space.

  The Quarren clasped her hands at the small of her back. "At its focal point the solar beam is approxi­mately 12.5 meters in diameter. Roughly the length of an X-wing."

  The hole on the end of the station grew as the beam shifted slightly. Already half the turbolaser batteries had stopped firing. Ackbar could easily visualize the destruc­tion as the beam pierced bulkhead after bulkhead, burn­ing from one end of the station to another. A sheet of metal would glow red, then white, then evaporate. The solar beam would stab deeper, igniting whatever it touched, then begin on another bulkhead.

  Ackbar looked up. "When the platform stops shoot­ing send the Devonian and Ryloth over there. I want our people on that station to assess it and help those who have survived."

  "Sir, the Ryloth and Devonian have less than one hundred troopers on board. The station has over a thou­sand."

  "Not anymore, Commander." Ackbar half closed his eyes as something near the center of the station exploded. "Those who are left aren't going to be hostile. They'll want to get off that thing and we will oblige them. Send them to the other Golan stations, let them tell the story of what happened to their station. It'll give their Command­ers a lot to think about and maybe, just maybe, save a lot of lives on both sides."

  45

  Corran glanced at the fuel indicator on his command con­sole. It showed he had another ten minutes of fuel. A re­turn to Tycho's base would only take two or three min­utes and refueling would take a half hour or so. He wasn't certain if with the fleet orbiting above the Palace district, Wedge and the others in the computer center would face danger from Imperial forces, but in many ways that question was moot given his fuel supply. He suspected the others were not in much better shape.

  "Hunter Lead here, report with fuel status."

  Everyone else in the flight reported being in the same situation he was. "What we will do is this: Everyone take a long-range scan of the area. If we have no immediate things to worry about, we head in, refuel, and come back out."

  "I copy, Hunter Lead," came the replies.

  "Corran, I caught that, too." Wedge's voice paused for a moment. "Winter shows no activity in your vicinity and we look pretty secure here, too. Head in and hurry back."

  "Will do, Wedge. Horn out." Corran brought his Headhunter around in a vast circle, letting the others fly

  in on a more direct route toward their hangar. First up, last in. He smiled. He knew the others didn't need him to provide a good example. The fact was that the five of them had accounted for over a dozen Imperial starfighters and Interceptors, proving the Rogues had not lost their edge and that Asyr Sei'lar was a good pilot in her own right.

  He punched his sensors over to long range and imme­diately picked up a number of signals on his scanner. Corran keyed the comm unit. "Pash, I'm picking up nine or ten hits."

  "I copy, Corran. Looks like small civilian vessels. The exodus is beginning."

  Corran ruddered his ship to port and dove down to do a flyby on one of his sensor contacts. It did in fact ap­pear to be a luxury yacht, with gentle flowing lines and a gaudily painted hull. Like the other ships it was heading northeast to slip beneath the edge of the Rebel umbrella. The ships would sail around to the daytime side of the planet and head out into hyperspace from there, using Coruscant's mass as a shield to prevent the Rebels from attacking them.

  Corran was certain the vast majority of the people heading out firmly believed the Rebels would steal their wealth, dispossess them of their treasures, defile their sons and daughters, torture, maim, and kill resisters, and commit any number of other crimes against them. He didn't think plunder and raping were foremost in the minds of most Rebels, but here at the core of the Empire the belief in lies used by the Emperor to justify his dicta­torship ran deep among some folks. And even those who knew better than to believe such lies did truly feel they had something to fear since the idea of bringing Imperials to justice had always been one of the Rebellion's more ap­pealing tenants.

  He found himself of two minds about the fleeing peo­ple. Part of him wanted to bring them to justice. He could easily have sideslipped his Headhunter and blasted the hyperdrive engines from the hull of the yacht. That would

  trap its occupants on Coruscant and force them to face retribution for their crimes against their fellow citizens. The other part of him sympathized with them. The Empire had forced him to flee from Corellia, carrying with him little more than a change of clothes. He even had to surrender his identity, as would these refugees, for to remain who he was would have left him vulnerable to the Empire's hunters. He had been forced to change who he had been and had been forced into an entirely different lifestyle just to preserve his life. Because of the constant fear of discovery, of being made to run again, that life seemed more punishing than any prison term or even ex­ecution. Better no life at all than one lived in constant fear.

  He didn't know if he'd heard those words before or composed the line himself, but it struck him that those words embodied the nugget of Rebel opposition to the Empire. Mon Mothma and the other leaders had enough foresight to look ahead and plan out the course of the campaign against the Empire, but f
or people in his posi­tion, the fight was one to defeat the forces who made them fear. The fact that after each battle, each victory, there was just that much less to be afraid of became al­most tangible and served as a very sweet reward indeed.

  Corran nudged his stick back and climbed up away from the fleeing yacht. Run, but always know you cannot run far enough.

  He started to bring the Headhunter around on a course to the hangar, but he saw an anomalous blip on his sensor screen. He initiated an identification program, but the contact faded and returned, depriving the com­puter of enough solid data to make a match. It seemed to settle on an unknown fighter and a Super Star Destroyer. "Pash, what have you got for a contact at 352.4 de­grees?"

  "Nothing. Do you have something?"

  "Yeah, but it's weird. Probably a storm ghost. I'm go­ing to check it out."

  "Want a wing? I can abort my approach."

  "Negative, I'm just doing a flyby. If I need help, I'll need you all ready to go." Corran glanced at his fuel gauge. "One pass, then I'm in."

  With the Golan Space Defense platform gone, Admiral Ackbar sent a signal to the fleet that started an evolution of the battle. Originally the Rebels had expected two or three times more by way of Star Destroyers than had ap­peared to defend Coruscant. That only the Triumph and Monarch remained to oppose them surprised him because neither ship had a particularly illustrious reputation or crew. At last reports Emperor's Will and Imperator had also been part of the Coruscant defense force as well, and their participation in the battle would have made things much more difficult.

  Liberator, Emancipator, and Home One formed a line moving past Triumph and Monarch. The two lines exchanged fire and missiles, savaging each other. Shields held at first, then, inevitably, crumbled. Beneath them the ships' heavy armor had to absorb the force of the missile blasts and laser bolts. Some shots, guided by the Force or the product of pure chance, hit turbolaser batteries or tor­pedo launch tubes, vaporizing them, crushing them, and destroying them. Others just nibbled away at a ship's hull or superstructure. Molecule by molecule they weakened the barrier between the ship's interior and the void.

  As always with war the best strategy was to hit with­out being hit back. With ships the size of Star Destroyers and heavy cruisers, avoiding being hit was, at best, diffi­cult. The closest that could be managed in that regard was to minimize the number of weapons bearing on the ship. With the two lines passing broadside to each other, the ships were exposed to the maximum possible damage inflicted by the other side.

  At Ackbar's signal another Mon Calamari heavy cruiser, Mon Remonda, turned from its position in line behind Home One, and pointed its bow toward Corus­cant. It surged forward, cutting across the Imperial Star

  Destroyers' line of flight. In doing so it was able to bring all of its starboard firing-arc weapons to bear on Triumph while the Star Destroyer could hit it with its forward arc weapons.

  Mon Remonda's gunners began to pour fire in on Tri­umph. The Imperial Star Destroyer had already lost its shields, so the turbolaser strikes played easily up over the spine of the ship. Even more devastating were the hits by the Mon Calamari cruiser's ion cannons. Their blue light­ning chased all over the destroyer's hull. Explosions trailed in the lightning's wake.

  The same time that Mon Remonda moved to strike at Triumph, the umbrella force began to separate. Assault frigates—a fanciful name for refitted freighters—began to close a net around the two Imperial warships and their smaller support ships. While they could not sustain the sort of damage the heavier ships were taking and survive, the Star Destroyers' ability to strike at them had been di­minished by combat. The smaller ships closed in, firing away at the destroyers. There were so many of them that the gunners who could target them could not target all of them.

  Other heavier ships—Corellian corvettes, gunships, and a variety of bulk cruisers and Mon Calamari cruisers—pushed up and out away from Coruscant. They used distance to let them see over Coruscant's horizon and spot other Imperial forces that could have been hid­den on the world's far side. They remained out of range of the Golan Space Defense platforms, yet close enough to respond quickly to any situation that demanded over­whelming firepower.

  Starfighters and troop carriers began their runs to the planet. The outcome of the battle in space was important, but without troops on the ground to take, hold, and se­cure facilities and impose order, Coruscant would remain unconquered. Ackbar suffered under no illusions about Coruscant and its defenselessness. That the shields were down he felt was nothing short of a miracle, but he couldn't count on how long they would stay down. He

  had, as nearly as he knew, a narrow window in which to insert his troops, so he pushed them forward as quickly as seemed prudent.

  Commander Sirlul reached over and tapped a com­mand into the keypad on the arm of Ackbar's command chair. A holographic schematic of Triumph appeared be­fore him. Multiple systems were outlined in red, including the bridge. "Triumph has lost power and is beginning to slide back into the atmosphere."

  Ackbar hit his comlink. "Ackbar to Onoma."

  "Onoma here, Admiral."

  "Cease firing on Triumph. Use your tractor beams to pull Triumph along and accelerate its orbit so it won't de­cay. We want to save the ship if we can." Ackbar looked at Monarch and could see it taking as much damage as Triumph had. Between it and Triumph, we might be able to salvage most of a Star Destroyer.

  "Order acknowledged, sir. Onoma out."

  Sirlul glanced over at Ackbar. "Captain Averen of Monarch has sent a truce-byte out to everyone."

  "He will surrender unconditionally?"

  "If there are conditions, they will be insignificant."

  Ackbar nodded. "Conduct the negotiations."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And when you're done with that, Commander, I have another job for you."

  "Yes, sir?"

  Ackbar pointed at Coruscant. "Find me someone down there who can surrender that world to me."

  Wedge had Winter bring back up the Palace district tacti­cal map. "Corran, we're getting nothing on this contact you report."

  "Contact is weak, Wedge. It oscillates back and forth, as if running between buildings. The computer can't make any sense of ... wait a minute!"

  "What's going on, Corran."

  "I've lost throttle control. I'm speeding up!" The

  green arrow representing Corran's Headhunter began a slow dip toward the planet. "Initiating emergency shut­down of fuel injectors one and two."

  That will cut fuel back to half, slowing him. Wedge looked down at Winter. "Can you help him?"

  "I can try."

  "Negative, Winter, cut the override code you're using. I need to shut those two injectors down."

  "I haven't used an override code, Corran."

  "Yes, you have. I'm locked up. No control."

  Wedge dropped down to stare at the data scrolling across the screen on Winter's datapad. "What's happen­ing?"

  Near panic flooded through the comlink from Cor­ran. "Manual override is not working."

  "Punch out, Corran! Eject!"

  "Can't. Inverting! Nothing I can ..."

  Static filled the comlink channel as the green arrow dropped from sight. Wedge heard an explosion and lis­tened to its echoes rumble as the holographic image of the building Corran's Headhunter had hit slowly col­lapsed. He saw the building implode, but he felt it in his stomach. A void formed deep in his guts, swallowing the elation he had felt moments before and having more than enough room to devour the pain and guilt trickling through him.

  Wedge bounced a fist off the holopad workstation, then tore off his gas mask and hurled it across the room. He didn't know if the gas in the room had fully dissipated yet, and part of him hoped it had not. He'd been fighting for more than seven years to oppose the Empire. Friends had come and gone—mostly gone—in that time. He'd grown cynical enough to keep his distance from new re­cruits because he knew they died earliest and if he didn't befriend th
em it wouldn't hurt him as much when they died.

  The truth was, though, that the distance didn't really insulate him, it just allowed him to think their deaths didn't hurt as much. But Corran, as much as the rest of

  the Rogues and a little bit more, had managed to close that gap. No, they didn't always get along, but disagree­ments didn't dull respect and admiration. Corran was a good pilot and a smart man who treated loyalty as the sa­cred foundation of friendship. Corran was like Tycho and Luke—all of them knew the horrors and pressures and anxiety of war, and all of them knew the sense of satisfac­tion at having completed a mission.

  Even though they fought against Imperial storm-troopers and pilots, it sounded somehow evil to take pride in killing other living creatures. And it wasn't really the killing of which they were proud, but of surviving. They took pride in the fact that they had stopped some­one from killing their friends and, in doing so, loosened the grip of an evil Empire on a fearful populace. Only those individuals who had gone through what they had could truly understand it all and only those who under­stood it could really, truly, understand why war and kill­ing should never be anything but the last resort.

  A hand landed on Wedge's shoulder and he spun, knocking Tycho's arm aside. "I lost another one."

  "Maybe." The outline of his gas mask had left red lines on Tycho's face. "But maybe, just maybe, Corran managed to punch out before the ship went down. Maybe he's lying on top of that pile of rubble just waiting for someone to help him."

  And maybe he's buried so deep we'll never find him. Wedge drew in a deep breath, then nodded. "You're right, that's probably what happened. He's probably waiting for us right now."

  "He's a Rogue, after all."

  "Right, come on." Wedge headed for the door. "He's a Rogue and we take care of our own. No matter the cir­cumstances, no matter the situation, we take care of our own."

  46

  Wedge Antilles found the duracrete and transparisteel barrow improbably neat. The off and on rain for the last four days had washed the dust away and granted the frac­tured pieces of pseudogranite sharp edges that looked al­most decorative. Nothing moved in the mound, nothing showed colors outside reflective silver, black, and grey. The hill of debris rose less than seven meters above the level upon which he stood because the falling stories had telescoped into the floors below.