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

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The glare flooded outward, automatically causing the viewscreens to darken. Wedge flew blind, trusting the navigation computer’s controls and aiming toward the waiting New Republic flagships.

  When his vision finally cleared, he looked back to the stable point that had held the Empire’s most sophisticated weapons-research laboratory. He saw only a far-flung swarm of broken rocks and smoldering gases in an expanding backwash of energy. Eventually, the debris would drift far enough to be siphoned down to infinity through one of the black holes.

  As the glare faded and the fiery gases cleared, he saw no sign whatsoever of Admiral Daala or her last Star Destroyer.

  39

  Working like automatons, the team of doomed spacetroopers attached themselves to the breached wall of the Death Star’s power core. Intense radiation spewed out, darkening their faceplates so they could barely see, slowly frying their life-support systems.

  Moving sluggishly as they weakened under the invisible onslaught, they wrestled thick sheets of plating in the low gravity. They used rapid laser welders to slap patches over the breach, reinforcing it to withstand an energy buildup.

  One of the spacetroopers, his control pack sparking with blue lightning as the suit’s circuits all broke down, thrashed about in eerie silence; his arm movements gradually slowed until he drifted free. One of the others took his place, ignoring the lost companion. Every one of them had already received a lethal dose of radiation. They knew it, but their training had been thorough: they lived to serve the Empire.

  One of the troopers completed a last weld at the hottest point of the breach. His skin blistered. His nerves were deadened. His eyes and lungs hemorrhaged blood. But he forced himself to finish his task.

  The cold vacuum of space solidified the welds instantly. With a gurgling voice filled with fluid, the spacetrooper gasped into his helmet radio, “Mission accomplished.”

  Then the remaining troopers, with failing life-support systems and bodies already savaged by the fatal radiation, released their hold on the power core in unison. They drifted free, dropping toward the brilliant energy discharge like shooting stars.

  At the total destruction of Maw Installation and the loss of Admiral Daala’s Gorgon, Tol Sivron’s initial reaction was one of annoyance and disappointment.

  “The Installation was supposed to be my target,” he said. He glared at his other Division Leaders. “How could Daala do such a thing? I have the Death Star; she doesn’t.”

  As the shock waves and light echoes from the huge explosion drifted and faded, Sivron could see the Rebel fleet gathering itself to flee the cluster.

  Sivron sighed. “Perhaps we should hold another meeting to discuss options.”

  “Sir!” The stormtrooper captain got to his feet. “Our power reactor is now temporarily repaired. I lost nine good spacetroopers to bring the weapon back online. I think we should use it. The Rebel fleet is in retreat. We’ll lose them if we don’t act soon. I know this is nonstandard procedure, Director, but we have no time for a meeting.”

  Sivron looked from side to side, suddenly insecure. He didn’t like to be pushed into snap decisions. Too many things could go wrong if one did not consider the full consequences. But the captain had a good point.

  “All right, then, temporary emergency actions. Ad hoc committee decision—shall we use the superlaser to strike out at the Rebel forces? Doxin, your vote.”

  “I agree,” the squat Division Leader said.

  Tol Sivron turned to the hatchet-faced woman. “Golanda?”

  “Let’s cause some damage.”

  “Yemm?”

  The Devaronian nodded, his horns bobbing up and down. “It will look much better in the report if we have a unanimous vote.”

  Sivron considered. “Since Werrnyn is no longer with us, I will act as his proxy and cast my vote along with his. Therefore, the vote is unanimous. We will strike the Rebel forces.” He nodded to Yemm. “Please note that in the minutes.”

  “Director,” the stormtrooper captain interrupted, “the Rebel fleet is pulling out. One of the corvettes has already gone into the Maw.”

  “Captain, you are so impatient!” Sivron snapped. “Can’t you see we’ve already made the resolution? Now it’s time to implement it. Go ahead and establish your first target.”

  He blinked his tiny eyes and spotted one of the Corellian corvettes hanging dead in space. “What about that one?” Sivron said. “It appears to be either crippled or boobytrapped. I don’t like it—and besides, it’s a stationary target. We can use it to calibrate our aiming mechanisms … since you missed a whole planet last time.”

  “As you wish, Director.” The stormtrooper relayed the instructions to the team of gunners in the firing bay.

  “I suggest we fire at only half strength, Director,” Doxin said, scanning the technical readouts. His bald scalp furrowed again. “Even at reduced power the Death Star superlaser will be more than adequate to destroy a simple battleship. In that way we can manage multiple firings without depleting our reservoir so quickly. We won’t have to wait so long between shots.”

  “Good suggestion, Division Leader,” Sivron said with a smile of anticipation. “I’d very much like to shoot more than once.”

  Down in the firing bay the gunners hunched over sprawling control banks, fingers moving deftly over the arrays of brightly lit squares to call up the targeting cross and lock in on the doomed corvette.

  “Hurry up and fire,” Tol Sivron’s voice echoed through the speakers. “We want to get a second shot at those ships before they all leave.”

  Together the gunners focused the secondary laser beams and yanked back on the levers to release the pent-up energy within the power core.

  Along the focusing tubes a wide beam of incinerating power shot out. It funneled through the focusing eye and blazed into a deadly spear, striking precisely on target.

  The crippled Corellian corvette was so insignificant that it absorbed little of the destructive power. The beam went through the vaporized wreckage and continued into the curtains of the Maw.

  “Outstanding!” Sivron said. “See what happens when you follow the correct procedures? Now target the frigate. The big ship. I want to see that one explode.”

  “We have enough energy reserves for several more blasts,” the stormtrooper captain said.

  Then a tiny, angular blip of light streaked across their targeting viewport—as seemingly insignificant as a gnat—yet it kept coming. Its hull glistened brightly in reflected light. The small ship fired its ridiculously ineffective defensive lasers at the Death Star.

  “What’s that?” Sivron said. “Give me a close-up.”

  Golanda magnified the image on the screen and scowled. Her face looked unpleasant enough to shatter planets. “I believe it’s one of our own concepts, Director Sivron. You may recognize it yourself.”

  As he looked at the shard-shaped vessel, his head-tails twitched. Of course he remembered it—not only from the working model he had seen once, but from all the progress reports and computer simulations its creator, Qwi Xux, had delivered during her years of development.

  “The Sun Crusher,” he said. “But that’s ours!”

  The torus-shaped resonance field generator glowed with plasma fire at the bottom of its long spike.

  “Open a channel,” Tol Sivron said. “I want to talk to whoever is there. Hello, hello? You have appropriated property that belongs to Maw Installation. I demand that you return it to the proper Imperial authorities immediately.” He crossed his arms over his chest and waited for a reply.

  The pilot of the Sun Crusher answered by launching one of the supernova torpedoes into the Death Star.

  Kyp felt a rush of satisfaction as he pressed the firing button, ignoring the Twi’lek administrator’s pompous posturing. He watched the high-energy projectile shoot from the bottom of the Sun Crusher and burrow deep within the complicated framework of metal girders inside the prototype.

  The resonance torpedo vapori
zed girders as it tunneled deeper and deeper, until it finally struck heavier primary struts that foamed as they disintegrated.

  The torpedo dumped its energy in a shower that triggered a small chain reaction within the solid superstructure, splitting atomic nuclei and causing an arc of spreading dissolution. Girders vaporized in a widening hole that ate its way farther and farther through the heavy framework.

  But Kyp’s elation faded as the chain reaction slowed, and then stopped. The skeletal Death Star had insufficient mass to continue its own disintegration.

  He had ruined a good portion of the support framework in one sector of the prototype, but not enough.

  Kyp powered up the weapons panel again and prepared to fire. He could annihilate the Death Star piece by piece if necessary. But looking down at his panel, he noted with dismay that only one of his supernova torpedoes remained.

  Grim-faced, Kyp zoomed in closer to the prototype. He would have to make this last shot count.

  Wheeling the Millennium Falcon in a backward arc, Han Solo tried to check how much damage the detonators had done to the Death Star’s power core.

  He was disappointed. He had expected to see the skeletal prototype bloom into a fantastic flower of fire, but instead the detonators seemed to have fizzled, leaving only a dimming blaze at the center.

  The ship drifted in space for a few moments as Mara and Lando shucked their environment suits. Lando rubbed sweat from his forehead and wiped his hands as if disgusted with the griminess of the suit.

  “Now what are we going to do?” Han asked when they had finally joined him back in the cockpit.

  Lando looked at the Death Star shrinking in the black distance behind them. “Maybe we’d better go see if Wedge—”

  Suddenly the Maw Installation and the Gorgon were swallowed in a brilliant flare as everything detonated at once.

  “Too late,” Mara said.

  “Now why couldn’t the Death Star have exploded like that?” Lando said miserably.

  “Maybe we at least caused some permanent harm,” Han said hopefully. But moments later they all groaned as a green beam lanced out from the Death Star to destroy one of the corvettes in the retreating New Republic fleet.

  “So much for permanent harm,” Mara Jade said.

  “That Death Star’s causing some harm, big time!” Lando said.

  “Wait,” Han said as he glanced back at the Death Star, squinting. “Move in closer.”

  “Closer?” Lando said. “You out of your mind?”

  “That’s Kyp,” Han said as the Sun Crusher streaked across the face of the Death Star and launched one of its static-filled torpedoes into the superstructure.

  “If he’s taking on the Death Star, we’ve got to go help.” Han said.

  The Sun Crusher fled toward the gravitational walls of the Maw cluster, and Tol Sivron ordered the Death Star to track the small but deadly ship.

  “Get a lock on it,” he said. “We’ll blast it out of space the same way we did with that Rebel ship.”

  “Sir,” the stormtrooper captain said, “to lock on to a target so tiny and moving so quickly—”

  “Then get close enough so you can’t miss,” Sivron snapped. “One of his torpedoes ate up eleven percent of our superstructure! We can’t afford more losses like that. How are we going to explain it when we get back to the Empire?”

  “Perhaps that would be a good reason to stay away from the Sun Crusher, sir,” the stormtrooper pointed out.

  “Nonsense! How would that look on the report?” Sivron said, leaning forward. “You have your orders, Captain.”

  The equatorial propulsion units powered up and nudged the massive skeletal craft to greater speed as it pursued the flitting superweapon.

  “Fire whenever you have a target,” Sivron said.

  The Death Star picked up speed, and the tiny Sun Crusher slowed down, as if taunting them.

  The gases grew hot in the outer shell of the Maw as they approached one of the bottomless singularities. The Sun Crusher danced back and forth, shooting its tiny lasers, destroying minor struts here and there, causing insignificant damage. The Death Star had to fight against the gravity of the nearby black hole.

  “What’s the matter?” Tol Sivron said to the gunners over the intercom. “Are you waiting to read the serial numbers on his engine parts?”

  The Death Star shot again. Its green beam tore through the outer wisps of the cluster, firing point-blank at the Sun Crusher—but the laser curved to the left, tugged by the mighty force of the black hole. The green beam spiraled like a ball bearing falling into a drain.

  “You missed! How could you miss?” Tol Sivron ranted. “Captain, give me those flight controls. I’m going to pilot the Death Star myself. I’m tired of your incompetence.”

  All of the Division Leaders suddenly looked at Tol Sivron, aghast. The stormtrooper captain turned slowly in his chair. “Are you sure that’s wise, Director? You don’t have the experience—”

  Sivron crossed his arms over his chest. “I have read the procedure and I’ve watched what you’re doing. I know everything I need to know. Give me the controls right now. That’s a managerial directive!”

  Sivron grinned with anticipation as he began to issue commands directing the Death Star. “Now we’ll finish this properly,” he said.

  Just like a pet floozam on a leash, thought Kyp as he flew toward the black hole. The Death Star followed his every move.

  He reversed course and arrowed back toward the prototype, increasing speed and calling up his weapons controls. The maze of metal girders and cross braces spun below him—and he launched his last resonance torpedo. The blazing cloud of plasma chewed through the outer layers of the prototype as it plowed ever-widening circles of destruction.

  The last shot would make them panic. It wouldn’t cripple the Death Star entirely, but merely crippling the prototype would never be enough. He had to go for the full victory.

  As the chain reaction initiated by his last torpedo petered out, Kyp sped over the metallic horizon of the Death Star and raced for the Maw’s nearest black hole.

  Kyp used his onboard tactical systems to estimate the exact position of the event horizon, the point from which no ship, however powerful, could ever escape. He came closer and closer—and the Death Star howled after him.

  Han shouted into the comm systems, “Kyp, Kyp Durron! Answer me. Don’t go so close. Watch out!”

  But he received no reply.

  Death Star and Sun Crusher were locked in mortal combat, paying no heed to outside distractions. The Death Star prototype orbited close to the black hole. The Sun Crusher danced from side to side, hammering with tiny laser blasts.

  “I think I know what he’s doing,” Han said with deep uneasiness. “The prototype has greater mass and a much larger volume. If Kyp can lure it near the point of no return …”

  “Without getting sucked down himself,” Lando said.

  “That’s the catch, isn’t it?” Han answered.

  The Death Star fired again, and the superlaser beam curved around, bent even more severely in the deep gravity well; but this time the gunner had compensated. The blurred fringes of the beam actually struck the Sun Crusher and knocked it spinning out of control.

  Any other ship would have been vaporized instantly, but the quantum armor plating protected the superweapon—just barely.

  Kyp’s propulsion systems were obviously damaged. The Sun Crusher struggled along on a tangential course, attempting to pull away from the event horizon. But it was too close, and gravity was too strong. It spiraled in a tight orbit, sinking deeper and deeper.

  The Death Star pilot couldn’t resist making the final kill, and the prototype loomed closer. The Sun Crusher and the giant skeletal sphere orbited the black hole like the ends of a baton, speeding up.

  Only then did the Death Star pilot seem to realize his peril, and all equatorial thrusters kicked on at once, attempting to pull the prototype away. But the giant vessel had already cross
ed the edge of the black hole.

  The Sun Crusher could not achieve sufficient velocity to escape its tightening orbit either. It spiraled in the wake of the Death Star, with no hope of getting away.

  Han felt as if his chest were being torn apart by the tidal forces. “Kyp!” he cried.

  A final streak of light shot away from the Sun Crusher, and then it was too late for the tiny superweapon.

  The Death Star prototype plunged into the thickening cascades of superhot gases that shrieked down into nothingness. The spherical prototype elongated like a great egg under the uneven gravitational stresses. The curved girders ripped apart, then were crushed into a cone that stretched into the black hole’s funnel.

  With a wink of brilliance the tiny Sun Crusher followed its nemesis down into the black hole.

  Lando and Mara remained utterly silent. Han hung his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “Goodbye, Kyp.”

  “It’s a message cylinder,” Mara said, identifying the small streak shot out by the Sun Crusher. “We’d better get it quick, because it’s falling toward the black hole, too.”

  “Message cylinder?” Han sat up, trying to find his enthusiasm. “Okay, let’s snag it before it’s too late.”

  The Falcon raced toward the event horizon. Lando and Mara worked together, wrestling to navigate the ship in the buckling jaws of gravity. They detected the metallic container, and Lando swooped in, latching on to it with the tractor beam moments before the small message pod could fall over the brink of the gravitational pit.

  “Got it,” Lando said.

  “All right, pull it inside, and let’s get out of here,” Han said in a bleak voice. “At least I can hear the last words Kyp had to say.”

  40

  Han and Lando both pulled on stiff gloves before they wrestled the Sun Crusher’s message canister into the Falcon’s common area. Deep cold had penetrated the canister, and as they brought it into the enclosed atmosphere, tendrils of frost grew like lacy ferns across its surface.