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

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “Are you crazy, Lando?” Han asked, his voice rising. “This is my ship, remember.”

  “I’m not contesting that,” Lando said, holding his hands up, “but I’ve flown her into a Death Star before. Remember?”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Han mumbled, and he shot a sidelong glance at Mara Jade. “But you’re right. We can’t just run away. If the prototype falls into the hands of the Imperial navy, it could cause a lot more misery than I want to be responsible for. Let’s go in.”

  He punched his accelerators. Mara sent orders to her fleet. “All ships back off. We’re going in. Alone.”

  The Falcon cruised through the nightmarish maze of overhanging girders, coolant and ventilation systems, power conduits and substations that formed the inner structure of the Death Star prototype. Catwalks laced the open spaces like so many spiderwebs.

  The Falcon shot inward, tunneling deeper and deeper into the construction as the framework grew denser, more complex. Han spun the ship left and right to squeeze through narrow passages.

  Just ahead, in the middle of a huge open corridor, a mammoth-sized construction crane toppled from its moorings, dislodged by the smuggler attack and the sudden lurching movement of the prototype. The crane fell, tumbling in silence through the vacuum of space, directly into the path of the Falcon.

  “Look out!” Lando cried.

  Han punched the firing buttons and sent out a converging blast from his laser cannons, disintegrating the falling machine into an expanding plume of incandescent gas and metal steam. Lando leaned back and closed his eyes with a shuddering sigh.

  As the Falcon careened through, the passengers were bumped and jostled. Large debris struck the deflector shields. Sparks flew out of the control panels, and smoke poured from the engine panels beneath the floor plates.

  “We’ve got damage!” Lando yelled.

  Han fought for control. “She’ll hold together,” he said, as if praying.

  Suddenly the Death Star jerked and slammed forward as its heavy-duty sublight engines fired up. Han tried to match the speed, spiraling closer to the power core. The Falcon lurched, barely responding to Han’s attempts to maneuver.

  They passed gargantuan girders ringing the outer core, tumbling into a vast enclosed space, a spherical chamber that contained the two gleaming conical sections of the power core. Green-and-blue fire crackled between the contacts as reactors pumped up the energy level, recharging the weapon to fire again.

  “Talk about recurring nightmares,” Lando said. “I never wanted to see anything like this again in my life.”

  “I guess we’re just lucky,” Han said, scanning his damage reports. “We need repairs bad,” he said through gritted teeth. “Lousy time for the engines to act up.”

  The Death Star rotated again, changing course and accelerating once more with equatorial propulsion units. Han narrowly avoided an arc-shaped girder that swung across to slam at them; he maneuvered the Falcon around it in a tight loop and limped toward the superstructure that held the reactor core in place.

  “I need to check on those engines.” Han said, “but I can’t do anything while the Death Star is moving and rocking like this. We’re going to have to settle in for the ride.”

  “Settle in?” Mara asked in astonishment.

  “Don’t get all bent out of shape. I did this once before to elude Imperial pursuit,” he said, flashing a lopsided grin. “A nice little trick built into the Falcon. Added it myself.” Han brought the ship up parallel to one of the thick girders. “It’s my landing claw. I used it to hang on to the back of a Star Destroyer, then drifted off with the garbage as the fleet entered hyperspace.”

  The Falcon attached itself with a clang. Directly below them the towering cylinder of the power core blazed into the emptiness, shining its deadly light.

  “We’re secure here for now,” Han said. “But if they plan to go back inside the black hole cluster, we could be in for one wild ride.”

  33

  Riding together in the close confines of the Sun Crusher, Luke felt young Kyp Durron draw mentally closer to him as they journeyed toward the black hole cluster.

  Kyp was gradually overcoming his fear and preoccupation with Jedi powers and the potential for abusing them. After his epiphany inside the temple of Exar Kun, Kyp had emerged stronger, able to accept the challenge. If he could face this final test, Luke would know that Kyp had passed through the fire of his testing—tempered by forces as dire and powerful as those Luke himself had endured.…

  Luke smiled as he recalled how Leia had argued for Kyp in the Council meeting, fighting for the chance that Luke offered. During her very first session as leader of the New Republic, Leia had presented her brother’s demand; in the uproar that followed she had reasoned, cajoled, or shamed every one of them into giving Luke a chance.

  She had emerged from the hours-long meeting in the middle of a bright Coruscant day. Kyp and Luke, waiting for her in one of the high mezzanine cafés within the enormous Imperial Palace, had sipped warm drinks and sampled delicacies from a hundred planets that had sworn allegiance to the New Republic. Leia had brushed aside her two bodyguards and hurried forward to meet them as other bureaucrats and minor functionaries stood up from their tables in recognition of their new Chief of State. Leia ignored the attention.

  Her face was haggard and exhausted, but she could not hide her satisfied smile and the twinkle in her large eyes. “The Sun Crusher is yours to dispose of,” she had said. “You’d better take it before someone on the Council decides my victory was too easy and moves to reopen the discussion.”

  Then Leia had turned a stern face toward Kyp. “I’m gambling my entire future administration on you, Kyp.”

  “I won’t let you down,” Kyp had promised, holding his head high. Luke did not need Jedi powers to sense the determination in the young man.

  They had flown away from Coruscant into hyperspace on a direct course for the Maw cluster near Kessel.

  The two of them ate rations and shared a warm silence. When they finished, Kyp fell into a deep rejuvenation trance, a form of deathlike hibernation that Luke taught all his students; the young Jedi awoke after only an hour, looking greatly refreshed.

  En route Kyp had shared fond memories of his home planet, Deyer. He spoke in a halting, wistful voice about his brother Zeth. As Luke listened with quiet understanding, Kyp let loose his sorrow and wept cleansing tears, finally allowing himself the freedom granted by the vision of his brother’s spirit in the obsidian temple.

  “Yoda made me take a test of my own,” Luke told him. “I had to go into a cave in the swamps of Dagobah, where I confronted a vision of Darth Vader. I attacked and defeated him, only to find that I was fighting myself. I failed my test, but you succeeded.”

  Luke looked into Kyp’s dark eyes. “I don’t promise it will be easy, Kyp, but the rewards of your efforts will be great, and the entire galaxy will benefit from them.”

  Kyp looked away as if embarrassed and studied the piloting controls of the Sun Crusher. “Ready to come out of hyperspace,” he said. “You strapped in?”

  Luke nodded with a slight smile. Around them hyperspace looked bruised and distorted from their proximity to all the black holes.

  Kyp stared at the chronometer and concentrated as the numbers spun by. “Three, two, one.” He released the levers, and suddenly the blur sprang away from their viewport, and real space snapped into crystal focus around them.

  Luke saw the distant gaseous knot of the Maw, but he instantly felt a wrenching inside as if something was terribly wrong.

  “What happened to Kessel?” Kyp said.

  Luke found the much closer, distorted shape of Kessel masked by an expanding debris cloud.

  “The garrison moon,” Kyp said. “It’s gone.”

  “We’ve been detected,” Luke said. “Ships coming in.” He sensed the anger and dismay from the pilots in the attack ships now gathering speed and converging on the Sun Crusher.

 
; The speaker buzzed with a forceful female voice. “This is Kithra of the Mistryl guard, representing the Smugglers’ Alliance. Identify yourself and state your business in the Kessel system.”

  “This is Luke Skywalker,” he said, restraining a confident smile. “We’re here on business for the New Republic. Our mission is to destroy the Sun Crusher, and we had hoped to hitch a ride back to Coruscant with one of your ships. Mara Jade cleared us by subspace transmission only yesterday.”

  “Commander Jade is not here now,” Kithra said. “But she did notify me you would be coming. As you can see, though, we have recently been under attack.”

  “Tell me your situation,” Luke said. “Where’s Mara? Is she okay? What about Han Solo?”

  Kyp let his eyes fall half-closed, reaching out with the Force, searching. He jerked his head to the left, toward the swirling mass of the Maw. “Han’s there—he’s over there.”

  Kithra’s voice came over the speaker again. “A Death Star prototype attacked us,” she explained as the smuggler ships swarmed around them in a protective contingent. “We suspect it was fleeing the New Republic occupation force that recently entered the cluster.”

  “Wedge and Chewie are inside the Maw, too,” Luke said to Kyp.

  “What happened to Han?” Kyp said into the comm with rising urgency.

  “Our ships struck at the prototype and caused some minor external damage, but Han Solo flew the Millennium Falcon into the superstructure. Commander Jade ordered us to fall back. The Falcon was carried along as the Death Star retreated toward the Maw. They were going to attempt to sabotage its power core, but we’ve heard no word from them since.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Only a couple of hours,” Kithra answered. “We’ve been considering our options.”

  Luke looked to Kyp, and their eyes met in shared concern. “We don’t have any options,” Luke said.

  Kyp nodded. “We’ve got to help Han.”

  “Yes,” Luke said, swallowing hard. “Into the Maw.”

  For two Jedi, finding a safe path through the labyrinth of gravity wells proved simple enough. Working together, Luke and Kyp reinforced each other’s perceptions, flying the Sun Crusher in tandem, like linked navicomputers.

  The Sun Crusher rattled and vibrated with the strain. Luke experienced a stretching of his mind as he let his senses extend outward, as if dragged downward into the bottomless black holes.

  Kyp flew with his eyes closed, his jaws clenched, his lips drawn back in a grimace. “Almost through the wall,” he said through his teeth.

  After passing through an eternity of superhot colors, they fell into the quiet bubble within the center of the cluster.

  Clearing his vision, Luke searched for the Death Star prototype, expecting to see it firing at Wedge’s assault fleet. But instead he saw quite a different space battle in progress: New Republic forces blasting, starfighters launched in frantic dogfights—arrayed not against the Death Star, but against the deadly spear-point shape of a battered and blaster-scarred Star Destroyer.

  “It’s Admiral Daala!” Kyp said, his voice thick with hatred.

  34

  The wire-frame prototype hid, powered down, on the far side of the Maw cluster as Tol Sivron, Golanda, Doxin, Yemm, and the stormtrooper captain held a meeting to discuss the implications of their changed situation.

  It had taken some time to find an empty storeroom that could be converted into an appropriate conference chamber, and they had to forgo their hot beverages and morning pastries. But these were emergency times, Sivron admitted, and they had to make sacrifices in the name of the Empire.

  “Thank you, Captain, for pointing out that loophole in our procedures,” he said, flashing a pointy-toothed smile.

  The stormtrooper had shown them in an appendix to the emergency procedures, under the subheading “Dissemination of Information,” a clause pertaining to the total secrecy of Maw Installation inventions—“Rebel access to Maw Installation research and development data must be denied at all costs.” This clause, he argued, could be interpreted as mandating the destruction of the facility, now that it had been overrun.

  “At all costs,” the captain repeated, “clearly means we should forfeit the Installation itself rather than let the Rebels have access to our work.”

  “Well,” Doxin said, “it would give us another opportunity to fire the superlaser for the good of the Empire.” He raised his wire-thin eyebrows so that his scalp furrowed like treadmarks across a sand dune.

  Yemm, the Devaronian, continued to flip through paragraph after paragraph of the procedures on his datapad, studying the terminology. “I see nothing to contradict the captain’s assessment, Director Sivron,” he said.

  “All right, the resolution has passed,” Sivron said. “We shall direct the prototype back into the Maw, using our previous flight path. Captain, take care of the details.”

  “Yes, sir,” the stormtrooper captain said.

  “So that’s all settled, then,” Tol Sivron said, clacking his long claws on the tabletop. “If we have no new business, the meeting is adjourned.”

  Everyone stood to leave, brushing their uniforms and stepping away from the table.

  Tol Sivron looked at the small chronometer; barely two hours had passed. He blinked his beady eyes in surprise. This had been one of his shortest meetings ever.

  35

  Threepio’s dizzying preoccupation with battle configurations and tactics and ships swarming around the five gamma assault shuttles absorbed all his concentration. He forgot entirely about his dread.

  The Gorgon cruised ominously overhead, firing down on the Installation or shooting across at the New Republic ships.

  Chewbacca growled, squinting his fur-rimmed eyes to study the Star Destroyer’s firing pattern. He chuffed and grunted an idea to Threepio and, without waiting for a response, opened the tight-beam ship-to-ship communications systems.

  Chewbacca spoke rapidly in the Wookiee language, which Threepio decided was a tactically wise thing to do. Although he himself was a protocol droid and understood more than six million forms of communication, he doubted that anyone on the Gorgon would know what Chewbacca was saying.

  Even as acknowledgment came from the Wookiee pilots in the other assault shuttles, Threepio broke away from his full concentration to speak to the Wookiee. “I simply don’t see how we can possibly take out all of the starboard turbolaser banks on the Star Destroyer. It’s suicide. Why don’t we wait for more fighters from the New Republic ships? I think that would be by far the safest strategy.”

  Chewbacca snarled, and Threepio decided it was unwise to press the point any further.

  A combat wing of TIE fighters soared past them, firing bursts from their laser cannons. One of the assault shuttles passed into the crossfire, and as Threepio reconstructed the images an instant later, he determined that it received eight direct hits within two seconds. Its shields failed. Hull plates buckled, and the shuttle exploded as the TIE fighters roared past to face the X-wings and Y-wings pouring from the New Republic battleships.

  Chewbacca let out a grief-stricken roar at seeing some of his newly rescued friends die. The cry was echoed across the comm system by the other Wookiees.

  With the explosion Threepio experienced a sudden disorientation; he had been partially linked to the destroyed ship. It felt as if a part of him had been disconnected.

  “Oh, dear!” he said, then shifted his concentration to managing the other shuttles. “Chewbacca, you have my complete support. We simply cannot allow them to do this sort of thing.”

  Chewbacca roared agreement and gave Threepio a comradely slap on the back that practically sent the droid through the control panels.

  A tiny streak of light shot past them, and Threepio was able to freeze the image in his optical sensors: it was the angular crystalline shape of a tiny two-man ship. He recognized it instantly.

  “Oh, my, isn’t that the Sun Crusher?” Threepio asked.

  Pr
eoccupied, Chewbacca roared a challenge as the four remaining assault shuttles cruised low over the Gorgon’s starboard side. They soared above the complex topography of the hull, a blur of indecipherable outcroppings, piping, fuel shafts, portholes, and life-support equipment. Daala’s heavy turbolasers shot alternately at the Maw Installation and at the New Republic starfighters.

  Seven TIE fighters broke away from the main attack and circled back to head off Chewbacca’s squadron. But the Wookiees unleashed a smoking volley from the assault shuttle’s heavy blaster cannons. Stunted old Nawruun and several other Wookiees sat in the gunner seats and fired relentlessly.

  A web of blaster bolts spewed from the shuttles, clipping four of the attacking TIE fighters. Two others veered wildly away from the sudden firepower and careened into the side of the Gorgon. The lone survivor of the attack group peeled off and fled to get reinforcements.

  Chewbacca grunted in satisfaction.

  The assault shuttles hammered the Star Destroyer’s turbolaser batteries as they streaked back and forth, launching their store of concussion missiles. With the smoldering eruptions of hull plates and exploding weapons systems, the Gorgon was defenseless on one side.

  “Oh, well done, Chewbacca!” Threepio cried. “You did it.”

  Chewbacca purred in satisfaction. Loud, triumphant roars came from the back of the assault shuttle and the gunner bay. But as TIE reinforcements arrowed toward them, Threepio decided it was time to cease the frivolity.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but hadn’t we better retreat now?”

  Like a master pilot Kyp Durron brought the Sun Crusher into a berth on one of the planetoids. He maneuvered the thorn-shaped ship through the blast doors and into the bay.

  Luke let the young man pilot as he himself worked the communications systems, transmitting to the escort frigate and then to the Installation operations center.

  “Wedge, are you there? Are you all right? Tell me what’s going on. This is Luke.”

  A response came over the comm, accompanied by a cacophony of alarms and shouted orders, status reports, and the background rumble of direct hits from the Star Destroyer.