“Niathal?”
“Teppler.”
“Put it on.”
Vibro adjusted controls. A hologram of Teppler appeared in front of Koyan. He looked worried.
Teppler glanced around. “Sir, you need to confine the audio on this.”
“Directional audio, right now!”
Vibro nodded, not looking back, then raised a hand, thumb up, to indicate it had been done.
Teppler’s next words had the faint, tinny quality of an audio stream that was being confined to the hearing of one listener. “Sir, we’ve been analyzing the enemy attack. We don’t think it’s just directed at capturing the station. Where are you now?”
“Fire control, of course.”
“We’re seeing a pattern of enemy movement through the station’s passageways. They’re ignoring routes that would allow them to sabotage or capture the station more efficiently. They’re headed straight for you.”
Koyan felt a flutter in his chest. “For me?”
“I suspect that they have war trials in mind, sir.”
“Uh…”
“I have a shuttle standing by. Air Lock Epsilon Thirty-four G, well away from the intruders. It’ll get you back here, safe, in minutes.”
Koyan shook his head. “I have to monitor the situation from here. Decide if and when to fire.”
“Admiral Delpin and I can monitor from the command bunker until you arrive. Transmit us joint firing and command authorization and we’ll stay on top of things until you arrive and resume command.”
Options and consequences clicked through Koyan’s mind. Actually, that was an ideal solution, especially if the need to fire came while he was in transit. Teppler and Delpin would press the button. History would credit Koyan for effective leadership if all went well, and would blame Teppler and Delpin if there was any significant outrage.
He nodded, decisive. “Done. Make sure that shuttle is there when I arrive.”
“It will be.” Teppler’s image faded.
Koyan turned toward the tech. “Until you hear from me again, you’re taking orders from the Minister of Information and Admiral Delpin.”
Vibro looked back, hopeful. “But we will be able to fire?”
Koyan nodded, projecting confidence. “I’m sure of it.”
“Rake Six to squad.” Twool’s voice was as musical as any Rodian’s, but Syal could hear strain in his tone. “Incoming starfighters dead ahead, coming over the curve of the station.”
Syal glanced between the heads-up display on the canopy before her and the more informative sensor monitor beneath. They didn’t show the incoming units, but Twool’s X-wing had better sensors.
“Squad, Leader. Loosen up, by flights.” Wedge’s starfighter suddenly rose, relative to the shuttle they pretended to pursue, and Sanola and Syal followed. Corran’s two wing pairs rolled to starboard and descended; Jaina’s drifted to port.
And then the enemy were there, cresting Centerpoint Station, lined up so their angle of approach was directly between the Rakehells and the star Corell. Syal gave the enemy points for effectiveness and tradition—though they weren’t attacking in atmosphere, they were still diving on their foes out of the sun.
They were X-wings, and their sensor designation was Rogue.
Wedge and Sanola were juking and jinking just as Syal recognized the designation. She followed suit instantly, just in time for a long-distance salvo of quad-linked lasers to flash through the space her starfighter had just vacated.
The enemy, a full-strength squadron, broke into three flights of four, each turning toward a corresponding unit of Rakehells. Laserfire crisscrossed between the two forces, passing harmlessly as the starfighters danced out from under one another’s aim. Then the opposed squadrons came together, wing pairs whirling away as if, in their flight, they were trying to replicate the intricate spiral patterns of complex proteins.
Two X-wings came after Wedge; one each angled toward Sanola and Syal. Syal dropped back, putting all her X-wing’s discretionary power toward her rear shields.
She hadn’t yet fired, still didn’t fire. She couldn’t fire on an ally.
She saw her father riddle one enemy with laserfire, damaging the starfighter but not putting it out of combat. His other enemy chewed at his tail, just as Syal’s opponent was hammering away at hers.
She couldn’t fire on an ally.
Nor could she do anything less than give her whole effort for her father.
The two absolutes were mutually exclusive. They swelled up inside her like a bomb going off.
She heard the cry of outrage and confusion before she knew it was hers and acted before she fully understood what she’d decided. She decelerated hard—far more sharply than was normal for X-wing pilots, but she was used to being tossed around by the violent maneuvering thrusters of her Aleph—and threw discretionary power into her lasers. Her opponent overshot her, beginning a sudden roll to starboard, but her lasers caught him, stitching away at his thrusters—
He disappeared in a flash. Debris ignited as it hit and bounced off her forward shields. She turned after her father, tracking his second opponent, firing at him.
She didn’t try to hit him, not at first. Her salvo missed deliberately to his starboard, causing him to flinch instinctively to port—away from Wedge. She restored her shields to normal fore-and-aft balance and followed, herding her target away from her father.
She saw a tiny flash to starboard—her father’s target was still flying, but his R5 unit had just exploded under persistent laserfire.
Her own target wobbled, beginning a climb—then suddenly decelerated. Syal yanked her yoke back, assuming his climb was a fake, and hit her thrusters. Her enemy seemed to fly in reverse, passing beneath her, nose now pointed downward. Her reflex had been correct, and he was oriented away from her, unable to bring his lasers to bear. She continued her climb, looping around in a tight 360-degree curve, and saw her target doing the same, coming back toward her for a face-to-face pass.
chapter thirty-four
The Broadside’s captain shouted, “Clear away, clear away! We’re coming in hot, half our systems shot out!”
The crew of the shuttle currently docked at the air lock dead ahead apparently believed him. Through the cockpit door and the viewport beyond, Seyah saw the shuttle thrust free of the air lock.
The Broadside’s pilot did bring her in hot, beginning deceleration at the last possible moment. The shuttle did not so much dock as slam into the air lock and stick. Seyah was thrown forward, held in his seat by the webbing, and a moment later fake GAG troopers all around him were unbuckling, rising, readying their rifles.
He managed to get unstrapped and rose, snapping his visor down. He fell into line behind Kyp.
The side door slid open. Troopers poured into the air lock. The door closed, and the air lock cycled.
The far door opened. Blasterfire poured in through it, hitting two fake troopers, throwing them back and down, smoke rising from their burns. Seyah slammed himself to one side, crushing someone against the air lock wall, and suddenly his entire universe was made up of black uniforms, blaster bolts, screams, and oaths.
A shove pushed him through the air lock doorway. He sprawled on the deck plates beyond and looked up. His comrades were advancing by twos along the passageway wall, sustaining ferocious fire, responding with ferocious fire. Someone stepped on his back in passing.
A hand on his arm yanked him to his feet and Kyp Durron hauled him against the wall to the left. The Jedi grinned at him, white teeth barely visible through his visor. “I suggest you fire your weapon. Don’t hit us.”
Seyah glared and did as he was told.
Firing was good. It was something to concentrate on. Something other than throwing up.
Ben finished cutting the circle out of the durasteel blast doors and, sweating, stepped back. The plug of metal stayed in place, its edges glowing. Ben reached toward it and, with an exertion in the Force, pulled it toward him. It swung open l
ike a hatch, then clattered to the deck plates.
A small object, round and metallic, sailed through the hole. When it hit the deck, instead of rolling, it froze in place.
Ben began to turn, crouching to leap, knowing he might not get far enough in time. He’d seen high-yield grenades before, and many had a blast radius sufficient to reach him in midleap.
He was fast, but not as fast as Saba Sebatyne. The Jedi Master simply reached out and the plug Ben had cut from the blast doors flipped over, coming down atop the detonator. Saba’s hand flattened as though she were holding something down.
As Ben leapt, the detonator blew, most of its force now directed downward, punching a charred hole in the deck. The deck was still vibrating and Ben’s ears had only just begun to ring when he came down again, a dozen meters away.
The three Jedi turned toward the hole in the blast doors.
Blasterfire began to pour through, its density and angle suggesting three or four different sources. These weren’t the narrow bolts of hand weapons, either. To Ben they looked like they had to originate with heavy, squad-level weapons.
Luke, lightsaber lit and up, charged to the hole, batted away a flurry of bolts, and dived through. The barrage became less ferocious.
Saba was next, squeezing through the gap with surprising grace. The noise made by the barrage of fire continued—but no more bolts came through.
Ben gulped, then ran forward and somersaulted through the gap.
He landed on his feet on the far side, warmed but not singed as he passed by the superheated metal of the hole he’d cut.
Beyond, several meters away, four YVH combat droids poured fire at the two Jedi from the blaster cannons in their right arms.
Ben focused on the droids’ weapon arms, not their appearance. Tall, gray-black with glowing red eyes, built to look like armored human skeletons, their appearance had been carefully designed by Lando Calrissian to anger Yuuzhan Vong warriors and frighten everyone else. Their deathlike ugliness was distracting. Ben elected not to be distracted.
Saba, her sword work brilliant, was parrying full-auto-fire streams of blaster cannon fire. Luke, more mobile, was avoiding the fire aimed at him—like a dancer, he kept ahead of every stream, but was making no headway, and in fact was being herded back toward the blast doors. A few moments more and the droids might pin him against the doors, denying him maneuverability, and finish him.
But one of Luke’s opponents switched targets—it aimed at Ben, sending its stream of blasterfire at him.
He got his lightsaber up, caught the first several bolts—and was staggered, forced back by their power, which was so much greater than any bolt from a blaster pistol or rifle he had ever encountered. He might be able to intercept every bolt, but stopping them all would exhaust him within seconds.
Don’t stop them. Just get rid of them. It was his own voice, not his father’s, not his mother’s, not Jacen’s.
He angled his blade and let the incoming fire ricochet off it. The bolts angled up and to the right, pouring into the ceiling and walls—and hammering much less at his arms.
Good. Now he could survive the attack for perhaps half a minute. Yippee.
He shook his head. He could be someone his father and Saba needed to protect, in which case he might get them killed. He could take care of himself, just barely, as he was now, in which case he made a lie of his assertion that he would be useful on this mission.
Or he could contribute. But how?
Let the enemy do the work. The operation’s catchphrase flashed into his mind and he knew what to do.
He reached out with his free hand, grabbing and wrenching through the Force at the blaster cannon arm of his enemy. Knowing how heavy the YVH droids were with their layers of laminanium armor, he exerted himself—and spun the droid around, aiming its cannon at one of Saba’s foes.
The cannon fire took the YVH droid in the side, riddling it. It jerked in place, the glows fading from its eyes, then went down sideways, cut in half at the pelvis.
Ben kept up the pressure on his opponent, maneuvering its blaster cannon to aim at Saba’s second enemy. The droid ceased fire before hitting its other ally. A vent opened on its chest—
Luke gestured, and smoke emerged from the vent…but the minirocket designed to fire from that port did not. A moment later it exploded, blowing the top half of the droid off, leaving the legs still standing.
Now there were two, each facing a Master.
Saba pressed forward, able to push her way up the stream of fire from her droid. Her target raised its other arm, an arc of what looked like lightning flashing toward her, but she caught that on her lightsaber as well—then ducked and rolled under both energy attacks, rising just beyond the droid, her lightsaber blade extended backward and up—into the droid’s neck and head. The laminanium armor there did not yield easily, but the precision of her blow and the greater-than-human strength she could put behind it drove the point of her blade through what would, in a human, have been thoracic vertebrae, severing its head.
Nor did she stop there, but spun, driving her point down from a high stance into the newly created gap in the droid’s neck.
Luke, meanwhile, gestured. His enemy toppled backward and down, rolled by a telekinetic exertion in the Force to lie facedown. It struggled to rise, but Luke pounced, putting the point of his blade against its back. He drove it home, slow going through the armor, and twisted it around until the droid ceased struggling.
Saba pushed her dead foe over, sending it crashing to the deck plates, and eyed Ben. “Good tacticz,” she said. “But warn this one next time. The stream of boltz crossed this one when the droid turned.”
Ben winced. “Sorry, Master.”
“Do not be sorry. Learn.” She turned forward and resumed her advance toward the bridge.
Luke grinned at him. “What did she say first?”
“Good tacticz.”
“Don’t lose track of the praise even in a stream of constructive criticism. Or vice versa.” Luke turned to follow the Barabel Jedi.
His feet ringing on the metal deck plates, Koyan sprinted through what seemed like endless corridors of Centerpoint Station, racing toward an air lock that his datapad map said was less than a kilometer away.
Which, he realized as he was forced to jump over the bodies of a GAG trooper and two dead CorSec security guards, meant that the enemy was within a kilometer of the fire-control chamber. Things were bad.
Though the corridors were narrow and unfamiliar here, the glow rods dim and the metal beams and panels of every passageway resembling those of every other, he found his way to Air Lock Epsilon Thirty-four G. He entered it, noted that there was a shuttle interior visible through the opposite viewport, and cycled it.
Moments later he stepped through into safety. But here, in the main cabin of the troop carrier shuttle, there was no one to be seen. “Hello?”
“Yes?” The voice carried back from the cockpit.
“Get me to Coronet immediately.”
The pilot rose from her seat and stepped out to stare at him. White-haired and almost as pale as an albino human, with a prominent supraorbital ridge and eyes as black as space, she was a Chev…and dressed in the blues of a Galactic Alliance officer.
Koyan grunted and reached for his hideaway blaster.
The Chev was faster. She drew from her holster and fired. Her bolt caught Koyan at the sternum, throwing him back and down.
All of a sudden, sounds reaching his ears were oddly watery and distant, and his vision began to close in. All he could see was the ceiling of the shuttle cabin. He couldn’t do anything anyway—the pain in his chest was excruciating.
He heard the pilot speak. “Kork. Forgot to set it to stun.” His vision closed in more. “Chinnith to Anakin Solo. You’ll never guess who I just shot.”
Koyan’s vision failed entirely and he drifted through painless void.
Syal’s starfighter rocked. Everything outside the canopy glowed in eye-hurting red,
and then she was past her opponent, curving around for another exchange.
Wait—her enemy, designated ROGUE 6 on the sensor board, was breaking away. And Rakes One and Two were headed in toward her position.
She continued her maneuver anyway, clear sign to her opponent that she was still in the hunt, that she was not relying on her squadmates to end this fight for her. But her opponent chose not to face three Rakes all at once. It turned back toward a cluster of Rogues, doubtless to return when it had a wingmate.
Wedge and Sanola drew alongside her. Her father’s voice came across her helmet speakers. “Four, this is Leader. Report status.”
“I’m intact. Minor damage to my thrusters and starboard topside laser.” As she continued, pain crept into her voice. “A minute ago, I just vaped a Rogue.”
“I did, too. Rogue Leader. A Duros named Lensi. A good man. They’ve made kills against us: Six is dead, Eight is dead or extravehicular, and Two here is so shot up I’m sending her out of the combat zone.”
Sanola’s voice came across, a protest laced with pain. “I’m still fit to fly—”
“Then you’re fit to obey orders. Get back to our staging vessel.”
“Yes, sir.” Rakehell Two banked away, and Syal could see a continuous stream of sparks emerging from her starfighter’s underside.
“Four, you’re my wing.”
“Yes, D—sir.”
chapter thirty-five
CENTERPOINT STATION
Seyah slid to a stop, looking intently at the surrounding walls and doorways, at the letters and numbers painted by Corellian mappers, at the symbols incised in the walls by ancient builders or scholars. He nodded. “Here.”
Kyp, alert for more attackers, came alongside. “Here, what?”
“Here I implement my master plan to destroy Centerpoint Station.”
Kyp scowled. “Excuse me, but that’s what you said half a kilometer back. When you made me fight all those CorSec personnel in what you said was the spin thrust control chamber.”
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury Page 27