Star Wars The New Jedi Order - Vector Prime - Book 1

by R. A. Salvatore

  That was Kyp's hope.

  Of course, if the three Solos, or any one of them, particularly Jaina, decided to join, the equation would change dramatically. The offspring of Han and Leia would bring immediate recognition and attention to the Dozen-and-Two - a name, Kyp realized, he would have to alter. Would that be a good thing? Were the fourteen members of his squadron ready for the attention, ready for the spotlight? Such notoriety would aid them, no doubt, when battles were joined, for their enemies would likely be too afraid to properly coordinate their movements and attack, but also, with the glory would come greater enemies.

  Were they ready? Was Kyp ready?

  And what of the Avengers' leadership? Kyp had to wonder. Jaina had surpassed him running the belt, and despite his bravado, Kyp understood just how soundly he had been beaten. He could fly the belt a hundred more times and never come near Jaina's mark. The other pilots of the Dozen-and-Two knew that, too. So if Jaina and her brothers joined the group, who would lead? As it stood now, Kyp's only real rival was Miko, the only other Jedi and easily the second-best pilot of the bunch. And Miko, a quiet and unassuming type, who spent most of his time practicing with his lightsaber or just sitting alone under the starry canopy, held no apparent aspirations of leadership; he was, in fact, serving time as Kyp's apprentice, training under the more experienced Jedi.

  All of those thoughts accompanied Kyp into the darkness of space as he and his fellows departed Dubrillion. He wasn't unsettled by the possibilities, though, but rather, contemplative, and in the end he simply decided that the gain would outweigh any of the potential troubles. If the three Solos joined the Avengers - the Dozen-and-Five, he supposed - the squadron would soon be thought of in elite terms, and their missions would become more important, more dangerous, and more profitable in terms of the gain to the cause of law and the New Republic. The Dozen-and-Five - a dozen regulars and five Jedi - could well become the greatest squadron in the galaxy.

  Of course, Kyp didn't really believe that the Solos would join in, not all of them, at least. Luke Skywalker had been typically diplomatic and respectful when he had met with Kyp on Dubrillion, but he had also been somewhat stern and disapproving. Kyp wasn't sure if Luke thought this smuggler hunting a duty that was beneath Jedi Knights, or if he simply objected to it on personal grounds - hadn't Han Solo been among the most notorious of smugglers at one time? - but in either case, Kyp had come away from the meeting with the definite feeling that Luke was not in favor of his present activities.

  Yet neither had Luke demanded that those activities cease, and so Kyp led his squadron now to the Veragi sector, to a remote area bereft of star systems, an empty black space region except for an observation buoy Kyp and his friends had put in place at a hyperspace junction.

  Following the signal on a secret and little-used channel, Kyp guided the squadron to the buoy. Miko Reglia put the others in a defensive ring about Kyp's XJ X-wing as Kyp docked with the buoy. His astromech droid, R5-L4 - Kyp called him Elfour - quickly began downloading the information, passing it onto Kyp's viewscreen, fast-forwarding through days and days of emptiness.

  Kyp sighed and relaxed back in his seat. Smugglers weren't easy to find anywhere in the galaxy, and were particularly rare out here in this region of the Outer Rim - except, of course, for those who went to Lando's planets for a little business and a little training. And Kyp couldn't go after any group that was anywhere near Lando Calrissian's operations, he knew, for the pragmatic profiteer would quickly exert his influence with people like Han and Luke to shut Kyp down.

  The only movement showing on the viewscreen in front of him was that of the stars for a long, long while, and Kyp settled back for an uneventful hour. He perked up briefly as R5-L4 slowed the sequence to normal, recording the appearance of one suspicious freighter as it hypered into the region, but then sighed again as he watched that ship revector and hyper away, with R5-L4's computations showing that it was heading for Destrillion.

  And so it went, hour after hour, with the records of the buoy showing nothing remarkable other than a couple of asteroids in areas previously unknown and a few freighters and even a couple of smaller, personal ships, but so far out and moving too fast to even warrant an inspection. But then, nearing the end of the records, a ship did show up where one didn't seem to belong, an outdated shuttle - Spacecaster -class, according to R5-L4.

  "Backtrack its course, Elfour," Kyp instructed. Its angle of approach into the buoy's field of scan seemed out of place, certainly nothing coming from the inner Core.

  The word Belkadan flashed on the screen, along with its coordinates in the nearby Dalonbian sector.

  "Vitals?" Kyp asked, and even as the word left his mouth, the history and present disposition of Belkadan scrolled before him, including the details of ExGal-4.

  "Why would they be leaving?"

  A question mark appeared on the screen, R5-L4 apparently not understanding the rhetorical nature of the question.

  On Kyp's instruction, R5-L4 focused on the buoy records that followed the path of the departing Spacecaster, calculating its jump all the way to the borders of the Helska system, where it disappeared from scanners.

  Then the droid went at the audio recordings, pieces of subspace chatter, mostly from Lando's operation. On Kyp's orders, the droid calculated the approximate departure time from Belkadan for the Spacecaster, then focused its inspection on that period and on those signals coming from the general direction of Belkadan.

  Only one of the few clear words decipherable from the less-than-perfect detection jumped out at Kyp storm.

  Was Belkadan, and this station called ExGal-4, in trouble?

  Kyp felt the adrenaline beginning to course through his veins, that tingle of excitement that always so charged him before adventure. He had a choice to make, for Belkadan was a long way from the Helska system, but as soon as he gave it any real thought, the answer seemed obvious. Whatever might have happened on Belkadan, some of the scientists had apparently escaped, though why they would make their way to the remote Helska system and not back toward the Core, or even toward Lando's operations or toward the not-so-distant Moddell sector, escaped him.

  "Give me all the details of the Helska system," Kyp instructed his droid, and the scrolling began immediately and didn't last long.

  There were no listed settlements in Helska, and no apparently inhabitable planets.

  "Why?" Kyp asked quietly.

  "Because you requested it," scrolled the oblivious droid's answer.

  Kyp frowned and slid the screen away. "We're going to the Helska system," he called out to Miko and the others. "Plot it out."

  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 Tatooine. 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.