Punch back out of system and go home with their tails between their legs? Unacceptable. That would make this operation a failure. That would make him a failure.
Attacking the Corellian fleet seemed to be the best alternative of the ones presented to him. But he had insufficient information about the composition of the enemy fleet. The Corellians probably wouldn't be a match for his force, but they had the home advantage, might have some tricks standing by, and could seriously deplete his group before they were defeated.
He resented the fact that his alternatives were so few in number. He needed a new idea, a better idea. He wished he could return to his cabin for a while, lie down, and talk to . . . to .. .
“Edela,” he whispered.
He should have remembered not to whisper near a Sullustan. Their big ears weren't just for show.
“Edela?” Fiav said. “Your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Sir, she's been dead for four years.”
“Yes, I know.”
Then the answer came. Yes, a rest, some downtime—a planetside station for some rest and recreation. That's what they needed.
He felt energy course within him again. “Which is the fifth inhabited planet here? Talus or Tralus?”
The Sullustan's big eyes blinked in surprise, perhaps at the admiral's sudden strength of tone. “Um, they both are. They orbit a common point in space. So one is fourth sometimes, and then the fifth the rest of the time.”
“Which one is fifth now?”
Fiav raised a comlink to her lips, spoke, listened. “Tralus, sir.”
“Set a course for Tralus. Communicate it to our entire force, but it's not to be implemented yet. Stand by to recall all non-hyperdrive-equipped starfighters and support vessels and to issue an optional recall to those with hyperdrives. Who's our best officer for planning city- and planetary-scale assaults on short notice—very short notice?”
Fiav blinked again. “I'll find out, sir.”
“When you find out, put him or her in charge of planning an assault for the occupation of Tralus. I want the best plan we can get in fifteen minutes.” Klauskin clamped down on a laugh that was trying to well up within him.
Suddenly he felt alive again, in charge of his destiny.
This operation would not fail. It would not be his fault.
A disc-shaped transport of Corellian design popped into existence ahead of Dodonna. “And blow that hunk of junk out of the sky,” Klauskin said.
A sensor officer at a station on the lower level shouted, “That's a friendly, sir. Millennium Falcon.”
Klauskin glowered over the edge of the walkway at the sensor officer. “So we can't destroy him?”
“That's, uh, right, sir.”
“Well, tell him to get that deathtrap out of the sky. It's dangerous here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What's not dangerous?” Han put as much put-upon aggravation into his tone as he could. “You're here, I'm reading Corellian forces ahead on this orbit and out from your formation, I'm getting reports of dogfights over Coronet—where do I go? I've got my wife here—how do I keep her safe?”
In the Falcon's copilot's seat, Leia shot her husband an unamused look. Keep me safe? she mouthed silently.
Han shot her an apologetic glance.
“Solo, you've dropped your civilian vehicle into the middle of a military conflict,” the anonymous voice from Dodonna said. “We just recommend you get to safety. Now. We don't have time to figure out where it is for you.”
Leia tapped the sensor board, which showed a starfighter squadron, too far away for the sensors to analyze, break from the Corellian fleet and vector in toward the Falcon's position.
“Hey, there's a whole squadron coming in at me,” Han said. “You've sent me an escort?”
“They're not ours,” Dodonna said. “Meaning they're probably coming in to blow you up.”
“Oh. Look, I'm plotting an exit course back along your orbital track. I'll use your ships for protection. Tell 'em not to shoot at me. Falcon out.”
“Wait—”
Han cut his comm board. “Strap in, sweetheart,” he said.
Leia did so, grudgingly. “Han, you're playing a dangerous game.”
“I'm sorry about the whole protect-my-wife thing, that was just to confuse them—”
“I don't mean that. I mean joyriding around in the middle of a battle.”
“I want to see the composition of their forces. I want to see how they conduct themselves when they're assaulting my homeworld. Hold on.”
Han set the Falcon into a tight, stomach-turning loop, sending her back toward the prow of Dodonna—but lower, a couple of kilometers below the carrier in orbit.
The sensor board showed the oncoming starfighters closing on the Falcon. Now it popped up a diagram of their pursuers: fuselage shaped like a beetle's body, two downslanted wings stretching out to support lengthy thruster pods, a laser cannon turret under the fuselage main body.
“A-Nine Vigilance Interceptors,” Leia said. “Speedy little things.”
“Weak hulls,” Han said. “I used to crack 'em with my teeth and suck out the meat inside.”
“I'll grant that you have a mouth big enough to do it.”
Dodonna flashed by to their port side. Her turbolaser batteries did not track the Falcon as they passed.
“Besides,” Han said, “they won't fire on me. I'm a Corellian celebrity.”
Leia snorted. “Make sure your transponder is sending out your real identity. Otherwise they have no reason not to blow you out of the sky.”
“Good point.” Han checked his comm board and nodded, satisfied. “Turn on the bow holocam, would you? I want to record what we're about to see.”
Leia sighed and did as she was asked.
CENTERPOINT STATION
Ben lay atop a square-sided conduit a meter wide and tall. It was suspended five meters above the passageway floor, just a meter below the ceiling, and immediately below him CorSec agents were talking.
One said, “Any word?”
Another: “They've got him boxed in at one of the empty theater chambers.”
“They've got him, then.”
“I don't know. He's a Jedi. They're sneaky.”
Ben grinned. Sneaky. He liked that.
Footsteps approached, and the first CorSec agent shouted, “Halt! Show your identicard.”
A new voice, female: “Ables, Transportation.”
“You need to evacuate this area. It's under lockdown.”
“No, I'm excluded. Emergency personnel.”
“So you are. All right, get to your station. And fast.”
The footsteps left. The first CorSec agent said, “Back to the patrol.”
“Don't get lightsabered.”
“Very funny.”
The CorSec agents moved away in opposite directions, leaving Ben alone.
His face fell as a realization hit him. He was sneaky, and he was really good at being sneaky, but being sneaky wasn't enough. Sneaky was slow. Skulking, crouching, hiding, crawling—it took forever. He was in the corridor that would take him to the station's repulsor control chamber. By his calculation, it was just a few hundred meters away. But moving stealthily along every centimeter of that distance might take hours.
And all because the enemy knew they were facing Jedi.
Ben sat up so fast he banged his head on the ceiling above. He rubbed at the point of impact and considered. He didn't have to be a Jedi right now. Clumsy in his haste, he began pulling his boots off, pulling his Jedi robe and all its accoutrements free, and in a minute was left wearing just a black undershirt and black shorts. His lightsaber and all the electronic toys intended to make this mission a success went into his pouch.
Pouch in hand, he dropped over the edge to the floor beneath, rolling up to his feet, and began running in the direction of his destination.
ABOVE CORELLIA
Lysa ended her run along the length of the VibroSword/attack
fighter engagement. She would let her thrusters put her some distance away from the conflict before turning around for another run. She was certain that she'd scored some hits on Correllian attack fighters, but had flashed by so fast that she had no idea if any were debilitating, if any were kills.
Killing Corellians.
Eight was still on her tail, but sparks were shooting out and up from his port-side thruster. “Seven, I'm hit.”
“How's it look?”
“Not good. It's overheating. Venting it to space isn't doing any good.”
“Shut it down and get back to Dodonna.”
“Will do.” Eight sounded regretful. “You'd better hook back up with the V-Swords and see if you can pick up a temporary wingmate.”
“You're right.” Then Lysa's eye was caught by something on her sensor board—a lone enemy blip, its course taking it near her position and down toward the planet. “After this,” she said.
“Lysa, don't do it alone.”
“See you back at Dodonna.” She peeled off and looped around to follow in the new starfighter's wake.
Her sensor board had it classified now—an X-wing. She was surprised; she didn't think any of the Corellian units here were X-wing squadrons. But then, they hadn't seen everything the Corellians had to offer them. She smiled, the competitive expression her trainers had sometimes described as feral, and roared up after her new prey.
Yes, the X-wing's course was putting it into a lower and lower orbit, away from the GA fleet. Perhaps its pilot intended to join the battle against Skywalker's squadron. Perhaps it had been on a reconnaissance run and was now taking important sensor data back to the Corellians. She shook her head. Either way, it wouldn't get where its pilot intended to go.
She didn't bother trying for a targeting lock yet. X-wings were tough, and her sensor board indicated that this pilot had already put his shield strength to double rear.
As her range finder indicated that she was at maximum effective range for her interceptor's laser cannons, she swung her targeting brackets toward the X-wing. But the snubfighter suddenly jerked upward, sideways, to port and starboard, always in a direction opposed to her targeting bracket's approach to it. She had the eerie sensation that the pilot knew exactly when she was going to begin aiming.
She didn't know whether to curse or smile more broadly. This pilot was good. He jittered in her targeting brackets once, twice, three times, on each occasion long enough for her to pull the laser cannon trigger, but never long enough for the laser blasts to find a home in his fuselage. She missed with each shot, sometimes by only a few meters.
And suddenly he was going in reverse.
She overshot him, adrenaline jolting through her. It was a classic X-wing flying technique used against a faster pursuer, and it had been executed at exactly the moment she least expected it.
She pushed down on her control yoke, just long enough for her opponent to believe that she was going to dive and loop around, then she yanked back, coming up and into a port-side roll.
An inexperienced pilot would bite on that first, false-maneuver and dive to pursue. She'd be able to correct and dive after him. A more alert or experienced pilot would manage to stay on her tail, would have a few seconds of pursuit in which to obtain a target lock and fire lasers or even launch a proton torpedo at her starfighter, so much more fragile than the X-wing.
She heard no screech of a targeting lock alarm. She checked her sensor board. Her opponent hadn't dived, hadn't pursued. Apparently from the moment she made her evasive maneuver, he'd resumed his original course.
Lysa sat there in momentary shock. He hadn't even taken a shot at her.
Her comm board crackled and its scanner indicated that the broadcast was coming in across a general GA military frequency—but very low-powered, so faint that only she was likely to pick it up.
“Nice interceptor roll-out,” her opponent said. “I'd swear you learned that from Tycho Celchu.”
Again, Lysa froze. She had learned that maneuver from General Celchu, the celebrated officer who had flown an A-wing into and out of the second Death Star more than thirty years ago.
And she knew the voice of her opponent, even as altered as it was by the low-powered transmission and standard comm distortion. “Daddy?” she said.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
She rolled again, sending her in a steep descent toward the X-wing. But her course wouldn't bring her up behind it in proper dogfighting fashion; instead, eyeballing it, she chose an intercept course . . . and switched her targeting computer completely off.
Her vector brought her in toward the X-wing's top side. She adjusted her course so they were parallel, her Eta-5 interceptor immediately above the X-wing. Then she rolled her starfighter over so they cruised canopy-to-canopy, a mere four meters separating them.
And she looked up into the face of her father, Wedge Antilles.
Corellia's second most famous pilot flashed her a toothy smile and he offered her a thumbs-up. He was wearing a standard X-wing pilot's helmet—not his own battered helmet with the distinctive wedges on it, but another, this one decorated with an arc of triangles along the rim.
“Daddy, you're retired. Get out of the skies.” Lysa was suddenly aware of, and embarrassed by, the adolescent wail in her voice. But the realization that she'd fired on her own father made her feel drained, light-headed.
“I'll do that, sweetheart.” Wedge waved an admonishing finger at her. “Don't get hurt.”
“I won't, Daddy.”
Wedge adjusted his course and was suddenly dropping more steeply away from her.
Lysa rolled back up to a more natural orientation, putting the planet beneath her keel, and pulled back on her control yoke, sending her higher. Slowly, she looped around back toward her squadron's last known position.
She'd really never before run up against the mythological depths of her father's reputation. Oh, yes, she'd grown up knowing of his fame, and it was a desire to have a career well out of the shadow of Wedge Antilles that had caused her to take academy training under the name of Lysa Dunter rather than that of Syal Antilles. She'd even chosen to train most in the high-speed, low-armor fighters such as the Eta-5 interceptor rather than the sturdy old X-wings her father loved, all in order to avoid invidious comparisons with him.
She'd never been aware of his reputation as a thing of legend rather than historical fact. Yet now, meeting him under the most unlikely of circumstances, in a place and time where history was being made, unable to do him harm though she'd tried with all her skill and will to do so, she felt it.
She had fired on her father. She had killed fellow Corellians . . . her duty, laid down on her the moment she'd sworn an officer's oath and not suddenly removed because her homeworld was now the enemy.
In just a few minutes, the universe had become an insane place.
She forced herself out of her reverie. She had enemies ahead, and daydreaming as she approached them would get her killed. “Focus,” her father said, out of her memory, not out of the comet board. “Focus, and your odds of survival are improved.”
She'd focus. She had promised him she would not be hurt.
Syal Antilles spotted enemy blips ahead, and her sensor board identified them as a pair of A-9 Vigilances. One was apparently shepherding the other, whose thrusters were spitting sparks. They swelled to occupy her whole mind, all other considerations forgotten, and she roared toward them.
Chapter Thirteen
CENTERPOINT STATION
JACEN SLICED THROUGH THE MIDSECTION OF HIS LAST OPPONENT'S blaster rifle and followed through with a spinning kick that catapulted the man over the walkway rail. With a wail of fright, the man dropped two stories' distance to the metal floor—an impact that, Jacen calculated, would injure but probably not kill him.
Jacen turned to look back the few meters he'd just come. Eight of the CorSec agents lay on the walkway, unconscious, some bleeding, two of them missing their right forearms. Two sonic projectors install
ed on the lower bodies of R5 astromechs sat smoking and motionless.
The other four CorSec agents and Thrackan Sal-Solo had retreated through a heavy metal door—about four meters high, it looked like original Centerpoint Station equipment, though the security pad next to it was of more recent manufacture. Jacen could sense danger—and malice—on the other side of that door.
He reached for the OPEN button, not expecting it to work; doubtless Thrackan had locked it down. But a vision of the future, of one possible future, crossed Jacen's thoughts and he jerked his hand back. In his mind's eye, he saw himself depressing the button, an electronic signal passing along the security device's pathways to an odd device on the other side of the door, an explosion powerful enough to blow the door and a large section of wall around it to nothingness .. .
Jacen trotted down the walkway, putting a good distance between him and the door, then turned back to focus on the security pad. Barely visible at this distance was the tiny green glow of the OPEN button.
He put his hands over his ears and exerted himself against that button, the merest push with the Force
With a brilliant flash and a punishing wave of sound, the door blew in, bending and crumpling as it flew through the space Jacen would have occupied. Smoke and shrapnel that had once been surrounding wall sections accompanied it. The walkway beneath Jacen's feet rocked, then quickly steadied itself. He ran back the way he'd come, putting on a Force-based burst of running speed, and leapt through the new opening in the wall.
Corridor, broad, dark. Left, away from the areas of the station he wanted to reach, open. Right, in the distance, a line of CorSec agents, twenty or more in a well-dressed pair of lines, the front line kneeling, curved transparisteel crowd control shields at the ready, while the rear line stood with blasters aimed. Behind the two lines stood Thrackan Sal-Solo.
Closer, ten meters away but floating toward him, scarred and still smoking from where explosion debris had hit them, were two probots.
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