“Then let’s hurry it up. Answer my questions and we’ll be done.”
He walked slowly around the perimeter of the room, making sure he hadn’t missed any obvious threats and giving himself a clear view of the entrance. He’d taken hostages before. He preferred doing it with a crew, but Colonel Nuress had taken his crew away from him.
As he passed the ensign—the woman’s back to Nath, and Nath’s back to the wall—he saw her hand slide toward her hip. It might not have been an attempt to pull a weapon, but he thought it better not to take the risk. Pistol still aimed at Nuress, he brought his fist down on the ensign’s head, slamming her face into the console. She slumped in her chair.
Could be unconscious, could be faking, Nath thought. He was ready to shoot when the ensign slid from the chair and hit the floor. Not faking, he decided.
That left the Grandmother of Shadow Wing and the droid.
“What do you want?” Nuress asked. She didn’t protest, didn’t cry out to protect her officer. Nath appreciated that.
“About seven months back,” he said, “you sent fighters to the Trenchenovu shipyards to repel a rebel attack. You remember?”
Her eyes held on Nath. He saw no flicker of hesitation, no moment in which she searched her memory. “I remember the operation,” she said, “but none of the details. One squadron, I think. A minor altercation.”
“You got it logged?”
This time she did hesitate, if only for an instant. “Yes.”
“Pull it up.” He gestured to the nearest console with his blaster. “Slowly.”
She bent gingerly over the console—he wondered if she had spinal problems—and tapped at the controls. Reluctantly, he put his back to the red-cloaked droid in order to supervise. He didn’t see her trigger any alarms or attempt to signal for help. She was sensible, he thought—she knew the station was a mess anyway, so her odds of getting reinforcements were slim.
Or maybe she genuinely wanted to keep her people at their current tasks. Her alarm about the planet had sounded sincere.
“I have it,” she said. “Trenchenovu shipyards. The 204th loaned out a squadron to the Star Destroyer Sanction to defend against an anticipated terrorist raid. As I recall, the Pursuer had been meant to participate as well; but a crisis arose elsewhere, forcing our squadron to remain at Trenchenovu while awaiting the Pursuer’s return.”
“Two Star Destroyers against one rebel bomber squadron?”
Nuress shrugged. “Our intelligence about the attack might have been wrong. Better to be overprepared.”
She could have been lying. Nath had no way to be sure. It didn’t matter in the slightest, yet an unexpected rage welled up inside him. He’d come here for certainty. He’d come for an ending. If he walked away without knowing the truth—
It doesn’t matter, he told himself. Ask what does.
“Who was on the flight roster? Give me the TIE pilots.”
Nuress tapped another key, and a list of names appeared on the display. She read the names as he did. “Captain Alyord Smythe. First Lieutenant Denn Maskar. Second Lieutenant Samnell Peers. Second Lieutenant—”
He heard the hitch in her voice and ignored the rest of the names. “What?” he asked. “What is it?”
She looked at him blankly. Irritated, he waved the blaster. “You paused for a second,” he said. “What did you see?”
Nuress straightened gradually and turned to face Nath. “They’re all dead,” she said. “I’d forgotten, is all.”
Nath stalked to the console—too close to Nuress, he knew, despite her age—and held the barrel of his blaster centimeters from her throat as he tapped the controls, opening the pilot records.
She hadn’t had time to alter the data. The records supported her claim. His guts clenched as he opened each file in turn. Captain Alyord Smythe: Deceased. First Lieutenant Denn Maskar: Deceased. Twelve pilots, and every one of them gone.
This wasn’t what he’d come for. He heard his breathing coming fast, hot and tasting of bile. “How can they all be dead?” he snapped.
“Seven months is a long time for a TIE pilot.”
Nath remembered. Most fliers didn’t make it a year.
“But your guys were good,” he said.
He caught a flash of a smile and resisted the urge to club her face. “They were. These weren’t our best. But it’s been a difficult period, and once you start replacing pilots the whole squadron’s survivability goes down.” She eyed the records on display. “Maskar went almost a month after Trenchenovu, victim to an explosion on the flight deck. Sabotaged fuel piping purchased from Separatist sympathizers.”
“Separatist?” Nath asked. Was she senile?
“Separatist, rebel. It’s all the same.”
He grunted, and she went on. “After Maskar, we lost three more across five months. It was only after the Emperor’s assassination that the massacres began. We lost good people at Nacronis, at Indu San, in the Oridol Cluster—” She suddenly laughed, a crisp barking sound that suggested as much disdain as mirth. “Look around: Why do you think there’s nobody here? Why do you think you won?”
Nath forced himself to slow his breathing and quash the trembling in his blaster hand. The pilots who had slaughtered his crew were dead. He had no proof of this beyond Shadow Wing’s own records and the word of their commander, but it was as much evidence as he could ever hope to obtain.
They were dead. They were dead already.
He’d come for vengeance and they were dead.
“Who authorized the mission?” he asked.
“It’s the Empire,” she said. “Who didn’t sign off, at one level or another?”
He growled. “Who approved the plan? Who said yes to the ambush?”
“I did,” Colonel Nuress said.
That was the answer he’d been looking for. He tightened his grip on the blaster and let the rage boil inside his mind. Time to balance the scales as best he could.
Then he remembered his other mission, and he almost laughed.
“I have another question,” he said. “You know a pilot called Yrica Quell?”
Her brow tightened. “I know the name.”
“You got any opinion on her? Anything you want to share?”
“She was capable. As I recall, her record was undistinguished but not without merit. One of my majors quite liked her. I don’t recall ever speaking to her directly.”
“Let’s see her file,” Nath said.
Colonel Nuress shrugged and turned back to the console. “No use protecting the dead,” she said, and the screen flickered and displayed a new record. Nath watched Nuress out of the corner of his eye as he read the contents, skimming over mission details and performance evaluations until he reached the end.
Well, he thought. That’s interesting.
“Transfer it to datachip,” he said. Nuress eyed him with a sort of revolted pride and he laughed, entering the commands himself. When the transfer was complete, he stepped across the room to the transfer unit and pocketed the chip.
“Are we done, then?” Colonel Nuress asked.
He looked at her. She stood straight as any junior cadet on the receiving end of an inspection, full of Imperial pomposity. She knew what was coming—Nath was sure of that—and she was ready to meet it without fear.
“Yeah,” he said.
He wanted to see if she would reach for her sidearm. He’d noticed the pistol on her belt the moment he’d entered the command center, but he’d allowed her to keep it in order to narrow her options—it gave Nath one thing to worry about instead of many. Ultimately, though, she was too slow. Age or indecision kept her from taking up the weapon in the half a second Nath permitted himself to wait.
He pulled the trigger and felt his pistol tug at his hand, flare w
ith heat. The bolt struck Colonel Nuress square in the chest and filled the room with the odor of ozone, melted fabric, and burnt flesh.
There was no chorus of spirits. No approving nods from the ghosts of Nath’s crew at the death of their destroyer. Just a dull, numbed satisfaction in his rib cage.
He’d done what he had set out to do.
As the deck shuddered beneath him, he ran out of the command center and hoped his droid was still waiting.
IV
Colonel Shakara Nuress lay on the cool metal floor of the command center and knew that she was dying. Every tremor through the deck plating sent quivers through her chest. There was little pain—the blaster bolt had cauterized the wound instantly, leaving only a radiant halo of heat around the burnt hole—but the numbness was disquieting in its own right.
She considered her options and obligations in a flash and found little to do of any use. There were no final orders to be issued. Nothing she could do to stop the Separatists or save Pandem Nai or wake Ensign Nagry or even avenge herself on the grandstanding bastard who’d shot her.
She twisted her body and felt a hot spike jab at her abdomen. She looked across the command center, and her eyes found the red-cloaked wraith.
The Emperor’s Messenger.
It observed her with its eyeless glass faceplate and did not move.
She dragged herself forward, clutching at the seams in the deck plating. The tremors—her own along with the station’s—nearly dislodged her fingertips from the cracks, but she tightened her grip and pulled. The journey took her one meter, two, three across the command center before her strength was gone.
“Tell me,” she said in a desiccated voice.
The Emperor’s Messenger bowed its head, tracking to her new position. It did not speak.
“Tell me why,” she said. “Why observe us? Why say nothing? Why Operation Cinder?”
The Emperor’s Messenger only stared.
“I can’t tell anyone now. Look at me!” She tried to roll over to reveal her wound to the machine, but she lacked the vigor. “I served him for decades. I just want to know what he intended.”
She had trusted that the destruction of Nacronis was necessary. Cinder had failed on other worlds—on Naboo and Abednedo—but not on Nacronis. Her unit had done its duty.
“Tell me it was worth it. Tell me why.”
Her vision began to leave her, obscured by a fog that crept inside her eyes. She shook her head to clear it, not knowing how much time had passed yet aware that her death was imminent. She parted her lips to make demands of the Messenger one final time but the words failed to come.
Her gaze fell to the floor. She saw red leather whirling and retreating as the Messenger turned to leave.
There, in the command center of Orbital One, Shakara Nuress—loyal servant of the Emperor and grand strategist of the 204th Imperial Fighter Wing—died in despair, wondering if she had made a mistake long before and far away.
V
Induchron.
Quell remembered now. The city’s name was Induchron.
She caught glimpses of it as she accelerated toward the surface and penetrated the lowest layer of ocher clouds: an expansive, flat settlement of squat factories, prefab housing, and metal silos, sweeping across the rocky plains of Pandem Nai like moss. It was an ugly thing compared with the glittering skyscrapers of Coruscant or the citadels of Nacronis or even the carved mountain metropolises of Abednedo.
It was barely worth saving. Barely worth dying for.
But she would if she had to.
She dived in her X-wing, chasing burning clusters of debris plummeting from the orbital station. Over and over, she targeted blackened metal sheeting and tumbling pylons with quick bursts of cannon fire, then reversed course—ascending skyward to intercept the next shower of industrial flotsam. The stress on her body was terrible—her muscles ached as if she’d been running for hours, and every motion released pain and lactic acid—but the stress on her ship was worse. She’d pushed her thrusters to their maximum for minutes on end in a planetary environment, subjected every bolt and computer system to immense pressures. Her astromech droid no longer seemed to be repairing her systems as they broke down one by one.
As she tore through the ocher clouds on another ascent, a horrifying bang exploded on her port side. She recognized the sound: Some falling shard of metal had struck one of her S-foils. It wasn’t the first time. She hoped she hadn’t lost the cannon, but if so? She had three left.
She tried to pull up a damage report but the display had gone black. Heat was becoming a problem, too—the hull of her ship was practically glowing from her maneuvers, and she would melt her own cannons if she didn’t adjust.
She licked her parched lips and strained to see the next target. Things were only going to get worse. It was only pieces of the station falling now, but there were enormous modules that hadn’t yet lost their repulsors. All of it would come down.
If she couldn’t save Pandem Nai, maybe she could save Induchron. She wouldn’t make the same mistake a second time.
VI
The transmission came in seventeen fragments that the Lodestar’s computer strained to patch together. The firestorm above Pandem Nai was to blame—it had disrupted communications, degrading signal strength and necessitating the use of data recovery programs to process the simplest messages.
That was fine with Caern Adan. He smiled grimly to himself as software tried to make sense of the communiqué sent to his station. No point hurrying when you’ve already lost the race.
Outside his isolated corner, the rest of the tactical operations center was in a panic. General Syndulla was shouting orders, demanding that the New Republic fleet breach the minefield and approach Pandem Nai. “We have to get in there,” she called. “We have to help them. Tell our ships to divert all power to forward shields and ram straight through if they have to!”
“General—” A white-bearded old human was protesting. “—if we do that, our entire fleet will be vulnerable as it emerges from the minefield. The Imperial warships are ready to battle. They’ll cut us to pieces.”
“They won’t,” Syndulla said. “Look at the tactical display—they’re not maneuvering for an attack.”
Caern looked to the transparent plate overlaid with ship markers and course vectors. The general was right—the Imperial vessels were scattering, too busy trying to escape the firestorm to pay attention to the New Republic fleet.
He stood from his chair, suddenly alarmed. He couldn’t be the only one to see it, could he?
“They’ll try to flee,” he said. “If we break formation, we’ll lose the blockade. The Imperial ships will jump to lightspeed. All of them will get away—”
“I’m aware of that, Officer Adan,” Syndulla said. “My biggest concern right now isn’t a dozen Imperial supply ships and cruisers escaping the system.”
“What about the 204th?” he asked. It was, despite the sharpness of his tone, a genuine question; he could barely read the displays, he was no military strategist, and as much as he disliked looking foolish he needed to know.
But Syndulla retorted without patience: “Pandem Nai is burning. What happens to the 204th? I don’t really care.”
Caern started to snap back, but she had already turned away. He tuned out his inner ranting and forced himself to examine what he knew. Most—maybe all—of Shadow Wing’s squadrons were present in the firestorm. The TIEs lacked hyperdrives, which meant they were stuck in system unless they docked with a carrier. That would take time, but given the catastrophe they might have the time they needed; clearly Syndulla wasn’t about to intervene.
If Shadow Wing wanted to escape, it had a chance. That was the stark truth of it.
But Pandem Nai would no longer be a threat. Whatever became of it, its days as an Imper
ial stronghold were over.
Somewhere in his head, he heard IT-O’s voice ask in a low, unthreatening tone: “Does that bring you comfort? Given the fact you can’t change the situation or quench the fires?” Caern almost snarled as he shook the thought away. The last thing he needed was the droid playing conscience in his imagination.
He felt the Lodestar rumble softly as its thrusters pushed the battleship forward. Then a jolt shook the vessel with a metallic ring like a bulkhead buckling, nearly tossing Caern off his feet. That must be the first mine. He hoped Syndulla and the captain knew what the ship could endure.
His hands were trembling. He wanted a drink. The console in front of him chimed and gave him something better.
The transmission, reassembled, had come from Nath Tensent. It contained Yrica Quell’s personnel record from the 204th Imperial Fighter Wing.
CHAPTER 20
REDEFINITION OF VICTORY CONDITIONS
I
The TIEs were no longer trying to kill him. Not most of them, anyway. Instead Wyl flew alongside the pilots of the 204th, through the battering storm and toward the last of the gas tankers. He’d seen a second TIE squadron head for one of the surviving extraction stations, and a third set course for a supply ship. With his newfound comrades, he’d cut dozens of volatile containment units loose from their moorings.
He prayed that it would be enough to stop the firestorm—that all their efforts wouldn’t result in a charred ember of a planet and a blaze too hot to burn out even without the fuel they denied it.
Kairos led the way to the tanker in her U-wing. Her vessel had endured the inferno’s wrath well—its shields and hull were sturdy, built for punishment that would obliterate an A-wing or a TIE fighter. Its additional weight meant the winds were less likely to hurl it into the tanker’s side or cause a midair collision with an ally. Meanwhile Wyl’s ship had lost one cannon entirely and he’d burned his hand through the glove of his flight suit trying to touch the canopy.
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