He could do better this time. He had to, for Chass, Nath, Quell, and Kairos along with all those he’d left behind and all those the Empire threatened.
One last mission, he told himself. Home can wait.
IV
Yrica Quell felt the lurch of the X-wing as it tore out of the pocket atmosphere of the Lodestar and into space. Her body bounced against her seat and she winced—not out of pain, but out of the memory of pain, the instinctive certainty that agony would rip through her shoulder and radiate from her temple.
Those injuries were healed. There was no pain. She stared into the void and listened to the rumble of her engines.
“Dee-six El?” she said. “Run an in-flight systems check. Weapons, power, hyperdrive, everything.”
Quell watched the results scroll down her display. The droid, thorough as always, provided more than she could possibly make sense of and summarized it neatly at the bottom. She saw nothing to be concerned about, but it was always better to be certain. “You ready?” she asked, and D6-L replied with a straightforward chime of acknowledgment.
She’d never expected to find herself conversing unnecessarily with an astromech droid. But times had changed.
She tapped her comm controls. “Quell to squadron. All ships, report in.”
The calls came back, sharp and swift:
“Lark standing by.”
“Chadic standing by.”
“Tensent standing by.”
The computerized tone of Kairos’s acknowledgment followed.
Quell could have assigned them numbers. They were, after all, no longer an unnamed intelligence working group. They were Alphabet Squadron, and they could follow military protocols. But with only five pilots, and with so much effort spent bringing them together—getting them to know one another—it seemed counterproductive to reduce them to designations.
The method she’d chosen, like so many of the methods she’d adopted lately, was the way of rebels. The Empire had done its best to treat its pilots as disposable so that when one died—and someone always died—a replacement could be inserted without a loss of efficiency. The Rebellion—and the New Republic, now—was messy. Mixed pilots flew mixed starfighters.
Quell wondered if the detachment the Empire had inculcated in her would make it easier for her to shoot her comrades in the 204th. If learning to treat pilots as disposable made it easier to defect. If she could fire her cannons and not think of the names and faces she’d learned over the course of years.
She suspected so.
And when it was over, and Shadow Wing was neutralized, she would be free. She would be a soldier in the New Republic. She would finally have done what she’d set out to do when she’d run off to train in the Imperial Starfighter Corps.
She’d wanted to be a hero, once. This was her chance.
“All pilots,” she said, “form up. Set course for Pandem Nai and prepare to jump to hyperspace.”
V
Colonel Shakara Nuress stood in the command center of Orbital One and listened to the murmur of her subordinates as she paced the perimeter. She took satisfaction in the overlapping voices; the calm professionalism of com-scan officers as they guided freighters and light cruisers in and out of the system, and the succinct acknowledgments of her lieutenants receiving reports from fighter patrols.
Not even the fact that the voices were too few—that a command center designed for two dozen officers had barely half that number on duty—nullified her satisfaction altogether.
“Colonel?” a voice said.
Shakara turned to the speaker. Narston, an engineer half Shakara’s age who had taken on the burden of liaising with the orbital gas mining crews, clutched a datapad in both hands as if she were a schoolgirl completing a craft project.
“What do you have?” Shakara asked—not unkindly, she thought.
“Latest set of progress reports, ma’am. Automated production is up by twenty-three percent and the gas storage pods are at eighty-five percent capacity. That puts us on track to—”
“It’s all in there?” Shakara asked, nodding toward the datapad.
Narston paused, then seemed to comprehend. “It is,” she said, and passed over the device.
Shakara waved Narston to one side and resumed pacing as she skimmed the report. She continued to loathe this part of her routine, but she’d gotten distressingly capable at it. Gas production was increasing, even without the staff and expertise she would have preferred—the computerized procedures and droid workers had managed to boost Pandem Nai’s Tibanna gas extraction rates nearly to a point of strategic relevance in the galactic war. More Imperial vessels were coming to restock and refuel at Pandem Nai daily.
The price, of course, was that the Separatists (the rebels, the New Republic—she heard the correcting voice of an aide even in her own mind) were taking an active interest in Pandem Nai’s status. She’d noticed the enemy battle group stalking Imperial cruisers that had passed through her docks; seen the pattern of worlds falling to give the foe access to the Skangravi-Mestun Regional Hyperlane. There was an attack coming, and coming soon.
She wasn’t worried. But she was alert.
“Narston,” she called, and the woman was immediately at her side. “The civilian extractor crews—how’s morale holding up? Any indications of disloyalty?”
“None that I’m aware of.”
Shakara finished her scan of the report, then set the datapad on the nearest chair. “Let’s shift a third of military personnel off supervisory duty and back to combat readiness, then. Just a temporary measure—don’t let anyone get excited—but the civilians can manage themselves for a few days.”
At least, she finished to herself, until we see what the Separatists are up to.
She wondered if she was engaging in wishful thinking—if her desire to be a soldier instead of an administrator was causing her to overestimate the odds of an attack and overprepare for a siege. If that was the case, the only harm would be in quotas unmet and ships left unsupplied.
If she was right, however—if the threat was real and she failed to meet it? Well, the Empire might be collapsing. But she was still a colonel. The Emperor had chosen her for a purpose.
She would defend her people until the end.
CHAPTER 16
TACTICAL ENGAGEMENT
I
Alphabet Squadron dropped out of hyperspace at the edge of the Pandem Nai system in a tight wedge formation. Quell’s vision still swam with glimmers of cosmic ribbons as she confirmed her comrades’ arrival and slapped urgently at the comm. “Kairos,” she snapped. “Now! Do it now!”
The channel filled with static. Her scanner registered the rest of the squadron for barely a second before the U-wing’s jammers flooded empty space with electromagnetic signals on ten thousand frequencies. As her sight returned, Quell craned her neck and peered out her canopy, catching a glimpse of Wyl Lark’s A-wing off her port side—the only indication that she wasn’t alone.
She tried not to feel unnerved by the closeness of Lark’s fighter, or the knowledge that Chadic, Tensent, and Kairos were equally near, less than fifty meters above, below, and beside her—close enough that a sudden turn or unexpected deceleration could easily result in collision. Their navicomputers and astromech droids were incapable of synchronizing the ships’ flight: The jammers that hid their presence from the foe would also block all communications.
But this was the mission they had planned, and they were prepared.
“Give me visual confirmation, Dee-six. They’re all in position?”
A readout of ships, their relative distances, and their current speeds scrolled across her display. They were, indeed, in proper position.
The enemy would notice the jamming signal in moments, if an alarm hadn’t been triggered already. Quell was confid
ent in that much—she knew the protocols the 204th would have in place. But so long as the squadron stayed clustered around the U-wing their numbers would be concealed. Their location, too, would be untraceable. Unless Shadow Wing sent a scout close enough to see the five ships invading Pandem Nai, Alphabet Squadron could slip through whatever web of perimeter sensors the Empire had erected.
They just had to do it blind.
Adan, I hope your information is right.
The inside of Quell’s cockpit glowed with the ember light of the star system’s distant sun. Pandem Nai was the second planet from its star, and between that world and the system’s outer reaches were a dozen lifeless satellites—crumbling, uninhabitable lumps of rock—along with a great belt of frozen methane, ammonia, and water. Quell could make the belt out already, a glittering stroke of cold against the warm radiance.
She adjusted her vector ever so slightly, letting her maneuvering guide the others behind her as she dipped below the densest section of the belt. Ahead, the first real challenge of the mission waited.
“How much longer?” she asked the droid.
An estimate appeared on her console: twenty seconds.
She leaned forward in her harness. The great frozen field filled the sky above her, but that wasn’t what she needed to see. Instead she tried to pick out silhouettes against the black—perfectly symmetrical objects hidden away in the dark.
D6-L let out a shriek of alarm, and visual overlays filled her display. Quell saw it: the first smart mine, far ahead and a hundred meters beneath her. She resisted the urge to pull up hard so as not to alarm the ships behind her. Instead she veered gently, clearing the mine’s trigger radius and passing by unharmed.
One down, she thought as they entered the minefield. Three hundred to go.
The mines would be inhibited by the jamming, but only to a point—they wouldn’t pursue, but they were calibrated to detect the smallest gravitational fluctuations and detonate if a vessel got too close. The margin of error was thin. Quell and her people knew it and all of them were at risk—with their ships clustered so close, one mine might destroy them all.
Quell could see a dozen of the smart mines now, tiny spots that seemed to exist only in her peripheral vision. She looked for gaps, steering by degrees but never slowing. Every moment gave Shadow Wing more time to notice the jamming signal. More time to ready a defense and locate the intruders. Hesitation would kill them as surely as speed.
D6-L trilled again, but this time the droid’s alarm was almost musical. Quell saw the mine, aimed for a gap between three others, and flew on. Her squadron followed, swinging out behind her like the tail of a kite.
She was sweating, but soon she forgot the danger. Conscious thought dimmed until all that remained was the sensation of flight—the glorious sense of a vessel at her command, weaving through the vastness of space. She banked and climbed and felt the nonexistent drag of her trailing allies. She saw a mine pass so close above that she could make out the seams between its metal panels. She swept beneath it and up again with a joyful laugh.
Had she forgotten what flying could be like? This was why she had become a pilot like her father, like her mother. This was flight, pure and undiluted, without the electric sizzle of a laser cannon to break the spell.
She flew on. Ten kilometers, a hundred, through the minefield. The planet Pandem Nai came into view: an orb shrouded in scarlet mist, shadowed by a single black moon. She could imagine the orbital stations floating in the upper atmosphere, the gas extractors and colonies—along with the TIE patrols and Imperial cruisers. She could imagine these things, but they were too far away to see.
Five hundred kilometers through the minefield.
How long had it been? How many minutes since they’d activated their jammers and warned Shadow Wing that they’d arrived?
Quell saw the final gap in the minefield—a ring of devices no more than two hundred meters wide—and, for the first time since arriving in the system, accelerated. She went no faster than what the slowest ship in her squadron could match, but they had delayed too long. The orb of Pandem Nai grew larger. The ring of mines drew closer.
If she was off by half a degree, she might plunge directly into a mine herself.
Then she was through. She glanced behind her and saw no bright explosion, no chain of mines detonating, but only Kairos’s U-wing at her back. She resisted the urge to open her throttle further and instead rolled gently toward the planet. Now she could spot the shapes of other vessels: Gozanti cruisers and gas tankers, the specks of cargo shuttles and a TIE Reaper drop ship. She didn’t see the cruiser-carrier Lark and Chadic had encountered, nor whatever remained of the Star Destroyer Pursuer; if she was lucky, both were disabled or away on missions. More likely, they were docked somewhere close.
She plotted a route in her head and swung out to avoid the busiest traffic. Someone would spot the squadron anyway, but she needed as much breathing room as she could muster. The visiting ships—the ones not affiliated with the 204th—were one element she’d been unable to predict in detail.
They raced forward, and the scarlet mist of the planet’s outer atmosphere filled Quell’s view. The orbital stations were murky shapes beneath the uppermost layers. She tried to determine whether any of the Imperial ships were moving to intercept her (she saw none) and warned D6-L, “Brace for impact.”
She hit atmosphere with a metallic shriek and a jolt that felt like it would snap her neck. The gas wasn’t dense at higher altitudes—if it had been, the X-wing would have burst apart on impact—but it was thick as steel in comparison with the emptiness of space. Automated stabilizers and cooling devices hummed and rattled as the ship shook and red enveloped her. In a haze of terror, Quell pitched hard to one side, trying to create maneuvering room for her squadron. She saw Lark’s A-wing tear past her—sleek and aerodynamic enough to cut through the mist—while Chadic’s B-wing tumbled behind.
But there were no collisions.
Her scanner blinked online. A dozen, two dozen marks appeared alongside her allies. Kairos had deactivated her jammers.
“Go!” Quell shouted. “Fighters incoming! Start your passes now!”
Her teeth cut her tongue as she bounced and slowed. She watched Lark decelerate and reposition himself alongside Tensent. Together the two broke off, maintaining their altitude as the first TIE squadrons approached. Chadic drew up behind Quell and they veered away on a separate course. The sensor blip that represented the U-wing plummeted and disappeared.
Over the comm came a cacophonous noise: an electric buzz like a thousand wasps combined with a rhythmic, warbling voice in a foreign tongue. The noise vanished almost as soon as it began, replaced by Chass na Chadic: “Forgot to filter the music. Systems online and ready to go.”
Quell didn’t reprimand her. There would be time for that if they survived.
Alphabet Squadron had arrived on Pandem Nai. The battle was joined.
II
Colonel Shakara Nuress wasn’t easily impressed and she wasn’t impressed now. The enemy had passed through the minefield with jammers active, and that had cost Shakara a handful of seconds—a brief period of confusion during which her com-scan officers had frantically checked for glitches and the minefield monitoring station had checked its own systems for fault.
There were no glitches. The fault was not in the monitors. Now the enemy had dropped the mask and begun its assault.
The enemy was clever, studied, even daring. But Shakara saw no need to be impressed.
“We have visual confirmation of two fighter elements,” Major Rassus called from the tactical station. “An interceptor and assault ship in each. They’re heading straight for Orbital One.”
“Only four ships?” Shakara asked.
“Still assessing. If there’s another squadron, it’s hiding somewhere. Could be in t
he dark of the moon—”
“But no capital ships? Nothing outside the minefield?”
“Not that we detect, Colonel.”
A precision raid, then—barring surprises, easily neutralized. Shakara doubted it was a suicide mission, which meant it was likely a prelude to a larger-scale attack.
“Have the patrol squadrons intercept and destroy the enemy craft,” she said. “Meanwhile, scramble the fighters in Orbital One—I want everything we have in the air and ready to act.”
Rassus snapped an acknowledgment, which Shakara didn’t hear. She considered the timing. It would take five minutes, perhaps, to launch the rest of the 204th. That was enough for a Separatist fleet to arrive in-system but not enough for such a fleet to penetrate the minefield. She considered recalling the squadrons outside Pandem Nai, but that, she decided, was premature.
She had all she needed to solve the problem at hand.
She was interested to see what the enemy had in store.
III
The cockpit rolled and bounced despite its gyrostabilizers, but it was the music that Chass felt in her body: the swift synthesized beats and the knife-smooth notes from the singer’s throat, telling Chass’s heart when to pump and her hand when to squeeze the trigger. She rode the rhythm as she rode the scarlet winds of Pandem Nai.
She laughed. She sounded like a maniac and she laughed anyway.
She skimmed the port side of Shadow Wing’s orbital command center—an enormous wheel of black metal scaffolding and compartments, festooned with mining equipment and Tibanna gas containment pods. It wasn’t built to be a battle station but laser cannons sprouted from hull plating every few dozen meters, targeting Chass with rapid bursts. The weapons weren’t powerful enough to backfire in the volatile atmosphere, but they could punch a hole through a B-wing starfighter.
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