Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy III: Champions of the Force

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Qwi looked through a window into her own journals, her personal notes. Her heart pounded as she scanned words she herself had typed—but it was not herself. It was another Qwi Xux, a Qwi from the past who had been brainwashed by Imperials, a Qwi who had been twisted as a child and forced to perform to the utter limits of her mental abilities.

  Taking shallow breaths, she read her daily accounts with growing uneasiness: the experiments she had performed, simulations she had run on the computer, meetings she had attended, endless progress reports she had filed for Director Sivron. Though she remembered none of it, it appalled her to realize that she had done nothing but work. Her only joy had come from completed experiments—her only moments of excitement, when tests proved her designs to be reliable.

  “Was this all my life was?” Qwi asked. She scrolled down, scanning day after identical clay. “How … empty!” she muttered.

  “Excuse me?” Threepio said. “Did you ask for assistance?”

  “Oh, Threepio.” She shook her head and found tears stinging her eyes.

  She heard footsteps in the outer corridor and turned as Wedge entered the lab. His face was smudged with grime, his uniform rumpled. He looked sweaty and exhausted, but she rushed to him and hugged him. He squeezed her shoulders, then ran his fingers through her feathery pearlescent hair.

  “Is it bad?” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t be here when you first entered the lab. I had an emergency.”

  Qwi shook her head. “No, I had to face this myself anyway.”

  “Find anything useful?” He stepped away from her, becoming the general again. “We need to know how many scientists were at the Installation. Most got away on the Death Star, but any information you have …”

  Qwi stiffened and looked back at her computer terminal. “I’m not sure I can help you.” Her voice carried a desolate, lost quality. “I’ve been looking over my daily life. It doesn’t look like I knew any of the other scientists. I … I had no friends here.” She looked at him, widening her depthless eyes.

  “More than ten years of my life, and I knew no one. I worked. I thought I was dedicated. Defeating universal challenges meant a great deal to me—but I didn’t even know what it was for. All I cared about was finding the next solution. How could I have been so naive?”

  Wedge gave her an encouraging hug. He felt so warm and comforting against her. “That’s all over, Qwi. It’ll never happen to you again. You’ve been let out of a cage, and I’m here to help show you the rest of the universe—if you’ll come along with me.”

  “Yes, Wedge.” She looked up at him with a faint smile. “Of course I’ll come with you.”

  Wedge’s comm link beeped at him from his waist, and he pulled it out with a sigh. “Yes, what is it?” he said.

  “General Antilles, we’ve brought down some temporary equipment to the reactor facility. We modified the critical components taken from one of the corvettes, as you suggested. We’ve managed to emplace them, and the systems are marginally functional. The core temperature levels of the reactor have begun dropping, and we expect them to go below the red lines within the next several hours.”

  “Good. Do we have a time limit here, then?” Wedge said.

  “Well…,” the technician’s voice answered, “the reactors are still shaky, but they’re stable for now.”

  “Good work,” Wedge said. “Pass along my commendations to your people.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wedge switched off and smiled at Qwi. “See, everything’s working out after all,” he said. She nodded, raising her face to look through the long, narrow window at the top of the wall. Pools of hot gas drifted around the Maw’s black holes.

  They seemed safe here, walled off from the conflicts of the galaxy. Qwi had fought her greatest personal battles, and now she could allow herself to relax just a little.

  But before she could turn away, she saw a shadow appear in the multicolored nebula—a huge triangular shape, like a spear point plunging through the gases and emerging into the safe gravitational island.

  Qwi stiffened, biting back an outcry of panic.

  Wedge let go of her and whirled, looking up.

  “Oh, dear!” Threepio said.

  Battered and blackened, an Imperial Star Destroyer came through the Maw with its weapons already powering up. Its once-white hull was blistered and streaked with burn marks; its shielding plates damaged by an inferno of destruction.

  Admiral Daala’s flagship, the Gorgon, had returned to Maw Installation.

  19

  The Imperial Spider Walkers ascended the steep, pitted stone pinnacle. Their long metal legs bent at odd angles as their claws hauled them toward the heavy blast doors protecting Winter and baby Anakin.

  Winter stood in the operations room, her jaw clenched, her eyes narrowed, as she viewed the progress of the assault transports. They had reached her first line of defenses.

  When establishing the Anoth hiding place, Admiral Ackbar and Luke Skywalker had been unwilling to rely entirely on secrecy. They had tried to plan for every possible attack scenario. Winter had hoped she would never need to test those contingency plans, but now she had to fight for the child’s life—and her own.

  Winter looked down at her status panels: the Foreign Intruder Defense Organism was primed and ready for automatic strike. She anticipated that FIDO could take out at least two of the Spider Walkers. She watched, gripping the edge of the consoles to steady herself.

  Scuttling up the rock wall with insectile legs, the Spider Walkers reached a line of caves, small openings to a labyrinth of dead ends and grottoes within the stone.

  Winter tensed as the first two MT-ATs passed, unsuspecting, over the black openings. The uppermost assault walker paused and fired a preemptive strike against the blast doors above with two forward lasers. A muffled thump and clang reverberated through the sealed installation.

  As the second Spider Walker also prepared to fire, masses of whiplike tentacles lashed out of the hidden caves, long ropes each ending in a razor-sharp pincer claw. The tentacles took the Spider Walkers completely by surprise.

  Two of FIDO’s writhing arms locked around the first walker and ripped it from the cliff face. Before the machine could use its pneumatic claws to grasp the rock again, FIDO tossed the Spider Walker over the edge.

  The MT-AT tumbled in a long clatter of wildly gesticulating legs. On its way down the Walker clipped another of the assault transports; the two plummeted together and exploded in a fiery crash on the jagged ground below.

  The second Spider Walker fired with its laser cannon into the dark caves. One of FIDO’s tentacles, black and smoking, withdrew like a flicked whip, vanishing deep into the tunnels; but other tentacles emerged from different openings to wrap around the Walker in a stranglehold. In desperation the turbolaser fired again, dislodging chunks of rock. FIDO squeezed, bending the articulated legs until their hinges groaned and thick rivets popped out.

  Sensor-tipped tentacles comprehended what the cockpit of the MT-AT was for. FIDO’s heavy plasteel claws smashed through the armored canopy, tearing open the roof and plucking out two stormtroopers to toss them over the precipice like gnawed bones discarded after a feast. Unmanned, the walker skidded down the cliff face as the remaining five assault transports scuttled out of the way.

  Winter clenched her fist and slowed her shallow breathing. She tried to calm herself. The defending semiorganic droid had succeeded in removing three of the attacking machines, but the remaining five would almost certainly destroy FIDO.

  Ackbar had proposed modeling a guardian droid after the dreaded sea monster from Calamari, the krakana. Calamarian scientists had designed a resilient, partially sentient machine that mimicked many of the krakana’s most fearsome traits. Its tentacles were threaded with durasteel cables, its pincers plated with razor-edged alloys. FIDO’s existence centered on protecting the base. The droid tentacles writhed out from the cavern, searching for more prey.

  Three of the remaining assault walker
s hauled themselves up on either side of the catacomb openings to fire repeatedly into the caves. Unexpectedly, from an apparently empty side hole, another trio of tentacles grabbed one of the Spider Walkers, dragging it toward the central cluster of cave openings.

  Winter marveled at the tactic. Not only was FIDO destroying another one of the vehicles, it was also using the MT-AT as a shield. But the other Walkers did not stop shooting. Stormtroopers considered each other expendable for the sake of a mission.

  The occupants of the captured Spider Walker continued to fire. FIDO dragged the MT-AT closer, crushing it against the rock like a thick-skinned jewel fruit. At close range the stormtrooper pilot powered up his low-slung, high-power blaster cannons and fired a combined blast into the caves. The enormous explosion ripped out a vast chunk of the catacombed understructure. Flames and dust, broken rocks and volatile gases, sprayed in a plume that rose into the violet skies of Anoth. The backwash vaporized FIDO’s body core and, simultaneously, detonated the captured Spider Walker.

  Inside the operations room FIDO’s diagnostic panel went blank. Winter rubbed her fingertips along the smooth surface of the screen. The first line of defense had taken out half the assault transports. “Good job, FIDO,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  The multilegged assault transports began pounding against the blast doors. The thumps of turbolaser impacts and the screeching resistance of heavy metal filled the air.

  Winter knew what she had to do. She toggled on the other automatic defense systems before fleeing the operations room. With silent footsteps she hurried down to the grotto, where Admiral Ackbar had recently come to visit her in his personal B-wing. Winter wished the Calamarian admiral could be at her side right now. She knew she could always count on him, but right now she had to act for herself and young Anakin.

  She ruthlessly clamped down on her personal fears and forced herself to do what had to be done. No time for panic. She ran along the tunnels, leaving the metal hatches open for escape once the stormtroopers saw her. When she emerged into the landing grotto, the repeated thudding explosions from outside nearly deafened her.

  The blast doors buckled inward, dented and glowing cherry-red as continued laser fire melted away the outer armor, chewing into the super-dense metal core. The doors bent as she watched; a split appeared in the middle.

  Articulated claws pushed through the opening. Laser strikes continued around the attachment bolts until the left-side door twisted. The other door hung askew in its track.

  Whistling wind shrieked into the landing grotto as Winter stood ready to face the assault.

  With a whir of straining engines, the Spider Walkers clambered into the chamber, bristling with weapons and manned by crack stormtroopers.

  • • •

  The Dreadnaught Vendetta maintained its position in orbit. Colonel Ardax touched his fingertips to the voice pickup in his ear, listening to the report from the assault team on the planetoid below.

  “We have succeeded in breaching the blast doors, Colonel,” the stormtrooper commander said into the radio. “Losses have been heavy. Rebel defenses are stronger than anticipated. We are proceeding with caution, but we expect to have the Jedi child in hand shortly.”

  “Keep me updated,” Ardax said. “Report to me when the mission is completed, and we will arrange for pickup.” He paused. “Was Ambassador Furgan one of the casualties?”

  “No, sir,” the stormtrooper said. “He was in the rearmost assault transport and faced no direct danger.”

  Colonel Ardax signed off. “A pity.”

  Ardax was looking out at the three locked planetoids when sudden alarms rang through the Vendetta’s control deck. “What’s that?”

  A lieutenant looked up from his sensor station, his face ashen. “Sir, a Rebel battleship has just come out of hyperspace! It outguns us by a substantial margin.”

  “Prepare to take evasive action,” Colonel Ardax said. “It appears that we’ve been betrayed.” He drew a cold breath through gritted teeth. Furgan must have somehow given away their plans to Rebel spies.

  The wide communications screen sizzled with gray static that resolved into the image of a fish-headed Calamarian. “This is Ackbar, in command of the star cruiser Galactic Voyager. Surrender and prepare to be boarded. Any New Republic hostages you have taken must be returned unharmed.”

  “Reply, Colonel?” the communications officer said.

  “Our silence is enough of an answer,” Ardax said. “Right now our primary objective is to survive. The surface team is forfeit. Set course to fly between the two close components of Anoth. The electrical discharges will mask us from their sensors, and from that point we can escape into hyperspace. Shields at maximum.”

  “Yes, sir,” the tactical officer said. The navigator set a course.

  “Full speed ahead when ready,” Colonel Ardax said. He paced on the control deck.

  With a lurch the Vendetta accelerated toward the broken planet. The Rebel battleship fired at them. The Dreadnaught rattled and shook as heavy explosions struck its shields.

  “They outgun us, sir, but they are aiming to disable, not to destroy.”

  Colonel Ardax raised his eyebrows. “Ah, of course—they think we’ve got the child already! Let’s not convince them otherwise.”

  The Vendetta sped into the grinding jaws of the broken world.

  Leia squeezed until her nails bit into the smooth fabric of Ackbar’s command chair on the Galactic Voyager. The battered old Dreadnaught wheeled in its orbit and set a new course. “They’re calling your bluff, Admiral,” she said.

  “They are not responding,” Ackbar agreed.

  “They won’t respond,” Terpfen said, sullen at an auxiliary station. “They will run. If they already have the baby, there is nothing to keep them here. They won’t risk a fight against a superior battleship.”

  Leia swallowed, knowing Terpfen was right. She wished Han could be beside her right now.

  “Then we must not let them get away,” Ackbar said. He had stuck close to Terpfen’s side throughout the journey. During the mustering of the rescue force, Ackbar had snatched the most loyal members of his salvage crew on Reef Home City; he had gathered others from the starship construction yards in orbit. In all that time he had not once mentioned Terpfen’s treachery.

  Ackbar and Terpfen were having some kind of silent conflict, a wrestling of wills. Ackbar claimed he understood how the other had been manipulated. He himself had been a prisoner of the Empire, but instead of being programmed as a spy and saboteur, he had served as an unwilling liaison to Moff Tarkin. Though those times had been oppressive, Ackbar had managed to turn his close association with the cruel strategist into an advantage during Admiral Daala’s attack on Calamari. Now, he claimed, it was time for Terpfen to use his misery against the Imperials as well.

  As Leia watched from the bridge of the Galactic Voyager, the blunt-ended Dreadnaught ignited its sublight engines. She closed her eyes, gripped the back of Ackbar’s chair, and sent out a tendril of thought with her mind to seek the presence of baby Anakin, hoping to find him or comfort him.

  She sensed her baby across the vast distance of space, but could not pinpoint his location, feeling only his presence in the Force. She could make no direct contact, could not see him. Anakin could still be on Anoth, or he could be a prisoner aboard the Dreadnaught.

  “Crippling strikes only. Fire all forward weapons,” Ackbar said in a maddeningly calm voice. “Cause only enough damage to prevent them from entering hyperspace.”

  High-powered energy beams splashed against the Vendetta’s heavy shields. Residual radiation glowed from the hits, showing minor damage to the Imperial ship’s hull. But the Dreadnaught continued to accelerate.

  “He’s going between two of the planetoids,” Leia said.

  Terpfen leaned forward with interest, swiveling his round eyes as he concentrated. “He’s trying to use the static discharges as camouflage,” he said. “With so much ionization scramble we’ll lo
se him on our sensors. Then he can escape on any heading before we find him again.”

  Leia breathed deeply to subdue her anxiety. They were so close—why else would the Dreadnaught run, unless they already had Anakin on board? Again she tried to sense where the baby was.

  The two atmosphere-swathed fragments of Anoth’s primary body loomed ahead of the Dreadnaught, with only a tight channel between the lumps. Fingernails of lightning skittered from one atmosphere to the other as the orbiting shards built up an incredible electrostatic charge.

  “Increase speed,” Ackbar said. “Stop them before we lose them in the static.”

  The Dreadnaught captain still refused to respond.

  “Fire again,” Ackbar said. “Increase power.”

  Turbolasers struck the starboard side of the Vendetta, shoving it visibly to one side with the momentum of the blasts. Its shields buckled; parts of the Dreadnaught’s sublight engines were crippled. But the captain continued his flight. The blue-white exhaust glow increased as the engines powered up, readying for a jump into hyperspace.

  “No!” Leia cried. “Don’t let them take Anakin away!” Before she could finish her sentence, the Dreadnaught passed into the narrow passage between the split planet.

  A blinding blue tracery of static blanketed the outer shields of the Vendetta, like a half-formed cocoon. The glow of an ionization cone spread out in front of it as it plowed through the thickening atmosphere into spectacular storms.

  Leia squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating, concentrating. If she could establish a link between Anakin’s mind and hers, she had some minuscule chance of tracking him once the Dreadnaught vanished into hyperspace.

  She sensed the people onboard the Imperial battleships—but she felt no glimmer of her own son, nor of her longtime companion Winter. Leia reached out wider with her searching thoughts as the Vendetta plowed through the thin bottleneck of atmosphere.

  The giant armored ship was like a metal probe between a pair of fully charged batteries. The Dreadnaught became a short circuit across the two supercharged atmospheres.