Shadow Fall (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  As she stood aboard the bridge of the Nebulon-B frigate Temperance, she was determined to save everyone she could.

  “Get the fighters ready to launch,” she said, “and power up the main batteries. Prepare to fire on the surface.”

  The Temperance was holding position in-atmosphere above the Scar of Troithe. Sensors had picked up the TIE swarm from afar, and Hera had decided that if Shadow Wing was attacking, her job was to intervene regardless of the situation on the ground. The frigate had successfully evaded the planetary defense network and bypassed Troithe’s shields—simple enough when approaching the unprotected ruined continent, though both might prove troublesome if the battle moved elsewhere. Shield coverage appeared spotty over the city, and the frigate hadn’t been able to determine whether the defense network was under enemy control.

  The bridge crew seemed fully aware of the gravity of the situation, despite the ease of the mission so far. The ship’s captain had graciously turned command over to Hera. Now she watched sentient beings from a dozen species pull up tactical screens and weapons readings and call out commands to the fighter bays as they tried to decipher what was happening planetside.

  “You’re certain about this?” Stornvein asked. Her favored aide had accompanied her through the hell of the mission with Vanguard. He stood ready despite enduring the destruction of worlds and the funerals of friends. “We fire on that mess down there, we could end up hitting our own people.”

  Hera eyed the tactical displays as details popped into existence: canyon charts, troop movements, some sort of heavy bunker under assault. “We can’t wait for target IDs but we won’t be careless, either. We’ll start the turbolaser bombardment at minimum power with a wide dispersal pattern—grab their attention and force the TIEs to break formation.”

  “And hope they don’t all come after us? Or are we taking on Shadow Wing directly?”

  She smiled grimly. It was an excellent question. On the one hand, there was every reason to think that Vanguard and the Temperance could put up a good show, even exhausted as they were.

  On the other hand, no one had yet beaten the 204th in a fair fight.

  “One problem at a time,” she said, and gave the order to fire.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE CHAOS OF VICTORY

  I

  Had Chass na Chadic flown anything but a B-wing, she’d have spearheaded the attack on Troithe. As it was, she was closer to the butt of the proverbial spear, chugging behind the Vanguard X-wings as they sped out of the frigate’s launch bay. The experience was disturbingly familiar, though she needed a moment to realize why: The last time she’d launched from a Nebulon-B frigate had been the final mission of Riot Squadron and the Hellion’s Dare.

  Not that it mattered. Not really. She was where she wanted to be.

  The B-wing fell as much as flew toward the surface, battered by wind and seared by the heat of atmospheric reentry. Thruster bursts kept the vessel from spinning but increased its speed until it dropped like a meteor. Its indicator lights flashed red, broiling the cockpit. The repairs put in place by the Temperance’s engineers had involved sealant spray and jury-rigged wiring, not the refit the assault ship needed after the battle over Catadra; Chass could smell paste melting as her harness cut into her chest.

  She adjusted her comm with a jerky hand—ignoring Vanguard Squadron’s chatter and switching to a general New Republic channel—then deployed her strike foils like a parachute. Servos whined with distress and the ship jolted and bounced as her retro-rockets and repulsors kicked in, slowing her fractionally.

  The canyons were visible now—the cracked expanse of the continent filling her view in all directions. Crimson energy bolts rained around her, outracing her to the ground. Chass aimed for a distant glimmering and the glimmer soon resolved into a mass of TIE fighters and X-wings and unidentified allies: Shadow Wing and Vanguard and the survivors of the Lodestar.

  She fired into the melee. Outnumbered as the New Republic was, she figured she was more likely to hit an enemy than a foe. (“When you’re about to lose,” Fadime had liked to say, “it never hurts to gamble.”) She considered firing off a missile or torpedo as well, guessing the atmospheric shock wave might scatter the enemy—it wasn’t a tactic she’d tried with Shadow Wing before, which meant they might not be prepared for it—but the odds of friendly casualties were too high even for her.

  Her screens flared, shucking off heat, as a voice declared: “General Syndulla to ground. How may we assist?”

  It was Wyl Lark who replied. Chass laughed as she dropped into the melee and was embarrassed by her own sense of relief.

  “General,” Lark said, “we have ground forces attempting to take the mining facility. We don’t—I don’t know what Shadow Wing is doing there. It’s possible they may be attempting to detonate some kind of weapon. Regardless—”

  “We’ll keep the TIEs busy, give your troops room to operate, and follow your lead,” Syndulla responded. “It’s good to hear from you, Alphabet.”

  Chass watched a pair of TIEs speed out of her way. She tried to level out and barely avoided slamming into the facility dome below her, arcing back up toward the fight with cannons pumping and her vision a blur. “You’re in charge now, huh?” she asked.

  Wyl cried out her name like Chass was the winning hand in a card game. Nath was on the comm next, declaring, “You and that ship are sturdier than you look.”

  “Mostly me,” Chass said. “The ship’s basically scrap. You know what it’s like—you’ve been flying a junk heap for years.”

  “Cute, sister,” Nath said. “Cute.”

  “We’re glad you’re alive,” Wyl said. Beneath the joy she heard the physical strain in his voice.

  She couldn’t see his A-wing above her and didn’t have time to look. One of the Vanguard pilots was chasing a TIE her way; she tried to line up a shot, fired, and growled when her particle bolts slipped inside the enemy’s wings.

  “Where—” Wyl began, then began shouting commands at his comrades and the X-wings. She welcomed the break as she cut through the battle, trying to comprehend the hurricane of engine trails and particle bolts—to figure out whether there was a coherent plan or if she was better off just riding the wind.

  She locked onto a TIE and nearly shot it down before its wingmate tore apart her shields with a single volley. She cursed and tried to divert power back to the screens.

  “Casualties down here are pretty bad,” Nath said. “Lodestar’s gone and a lot of the crew with it. Most of the other pilots. No word about Kairos. No word from Adan or Quell, either, unless you—”

  “Nothing,” Chass said.

  “Yeah. I figured.”

  She was surprised to hear disappointment in his voice. She swallowed her own reaction, tried to channel it into the physical act of piloting.

  But Quell had lied to her, betrayed her. If she was dead—

  Focus on the damn fight!

  Wyl kept calling orders and updates. Vanguard Squadron moved in response, trapping TIEs before they could hit the troops on the ground and disrupting enemy maneuvers before they could be fully born. A Vanguard X-wing went down, splashing against a canyon wall and sending an avalanche tumbling down the cliffside. A TIE went wild when a bolt clipped its cockpit sphere, spinning and spraying shots as it hurtled into the distance.

  Somehow, Chass was surprised to realize, the New Republic forces were surviving.

  They weren’t winning, though. Winning would be costly.

  She felt an unfamiliar churn in her gut at the thought of dying. She had responsibilities now.

  The B-wing’s gyroscopes spun her foils around the cockpit. She swept the air with firepower as she attempted to regain altitude, and she was frantically trying to determine whether a TIE flight was headed her way when Nath said: “B-wing running quiet tod
ay?”

  “What?”

  “No music,” Nath said.

  She swore and laughed bitterly as she evaded a deadly volley. She wasn’t about to explain that her collection was gone. “You need me to sing?” she asked.

  “Twenty credits if you do.”

  She searched for an appropriate oath. He was baiting her. Of course he was baiting her. And she was an idiot.

  “Screw it. You’re on,” she said.

  Which is why, as Chass na Chadic rose into the sky and reduced a starfighter of the 204th to a ball of burning gas and metal, she began to wail into her comm. She sang about star charts and broken hearts and life as an outlaw—a ballad that had been pirated and altered and reassembled across the Outer Rim for twenty years and still had more than its share of fans. Nath laughed, the Vanguard pilots cursed or ignored her, and the oscillating sound of particle bolts joined her as her orchestra.

  II

  Colonel Soran Keize recognized that the course of battle had changed and knew precisely what was required to correct it. That certainty made acceptance no less difficult—no soldier watched a plan crumble and was eager to accept that truth—but the difference between an experienced commander and a novice was that the former did not pause or shirk.

  The command deck of the bulk freighter was crammed with stations devoted to cargo control and load shifting, and Soran was forced to duck beneath piping and conduits as he crossed from the viewscreen to the comm controls. His bridge crew largely comprised the survivors of the Edict—few escape pods from the Aerie had been recovered—and the cadets’ youth showed in every awkward fumble at a lever or dial. He doubted they’d flown anything larger than an airspeeder not designed to Imperial specifications.

  “Get me the governor,” he called, resting his hand on the headset, “and signal me when the engines are at full power.”

  None of what was occurring outside Core Nine was a surprise. He’d counted himself lucky every minute New Republic reinforcements had failed to arrive, starting from the moment the Edict and Aerie had jumped into Cerberon. In truth, the foe had come far too late: He had his ship—his means of escape—and he could depart having achieved all of the 204th’s objectives.

  The 204th’s objectives, if not his own.

  One of the cadets made a hand signal from the engineering station. “Open the doors,” Soran called, and a countdown appeared on one of the displays as the facility’s great dome ever-so-slowly parted.

  An indicator lit on the headset. He fixed it over his ears and heard the sound of blasterfire. “Yadeez,” he said. “Enemy naval forces have arrived at Troithe.”

  He imagined her voice: The 204th may be the finest Imperial fighter wing left in the galaxy, she might have said. Can you defeat them?

  “Go!” she said instead.

  The difference between an experienced commander and a novice was that the former did not pause or shirk. Soran did not pause or shirk now. He deactivated the comm and shouted rapid orders to the cadets as the freighter’s engines rumbled and its bulkheads rattled at a deafening volume. Low-resolution imagers assured him that, fifteen levels up the launch silo, the dome was nearly open wide enough for the freighter to pass through.

  He wiped the dust off a course projection display with his sleeve and jabbed at the controls, generating a path from the surface into the upper atmosphere and marking five points along the way. “Follow this trajectory until I tell you otherwise,” he said, sending the data to the helmsmate. “TIE squadrons to withdraw from the battle and come aboard at these locations.”

  He awaited the most obvious of questions. After what had become of Yadeez, he was braced to answer it.

  “What about the last squadron?” the helmsmate asked.

  There were six squadrons in a TIE wing. All of them could fit aboard the freighter.

  “Captain Darita will guard our retreat. She and her squadron will rejoin us when we leave orbit.”

  The cadet did not question him again. Soran turned his attention to the sensor map and wondered what his next sacrifice would be—and how long before he became numb to the burdens of leadership.

  III

  Vanguard Squadron didn’t hesitate to follow Wyl’s orders, despite never having served under him. General Syndulla never countermanded Wyl, despite being a better strategist. The New Republic forces seemed to accept that this was his fight—that his experiences on Troithe and his history with Shadow Wing qualified him to lead and required that he do so.

  Wyl felt pride at the faith of his comrades and he felt shame at his own pride. Mostly he was focused on the battle.

  Moments earlier a bulk freighter had ascended from the mining megafacility and begun a course skyward. The TIEs were rapidly enveloping it in a defensive formation while continuing to launch aggressive sorties at the New Republic starfighters. Two Vanguard craft were down, and others were showing severe damage. Nath Tensent’s Y-wing was, to all appearances, being held together by spit and T5’s arc welder. Denish Wraive’s airspeeder had withdrawn, its engine overheated. Vitale’s V-wing had a single cannon remaining. Wyl’s own craft had somehow escaped fresh harm, but he felt the strain on his body as he swooped and glided and fired and spun; he was trembling with fatigue, and he could only maintain the display for so long before he made an error. One would be enough.

  The ground forces had reported no sign of a planet-ravaging bomb. The freighter, although apparently jury-rigged with heavy weapons, was not moving toward any obvious target. As the TIE swarm thinned, Wyl wondered if he had been right: if Shadow Wing’s primary goal was simply to escape the planet.

  “Enemy squadron approaching the freighter—looks like they’re docking in the cargo bay,” one of the Vanguard pilots called.

  Wyl jerked his fighter to one side as cannon bolts streamed from below and a trio of TIEs passed him by.

  He had been right.

  “Alphabet Leader?” Another of the Vanguard pilots—Wyl recognized Tssat’s reptilian sibilants. “Where do you want us?”

  He hesitated, unused to thinking—of having the luxury to think—more than a few seconds into the future mid-battle. Somewhere in the background he heard Chass singing, her voice tinny and small.

  “The other TIEs—are they going aboard, too?” he asked.

  He could see the answer on his scanner. Vitale replied, “Negative,” and it gave Wyl another moment to consider.

  Shadow Wing was fleeing. He couldn’t prove it, but he was certain. If he pursued, more New Republic pilots would die. More Imperial pilots would die. If he pursued, the chaos would continue at least a little longer.

  And if he didn’t?

  Nath’s words came to his mind, unbidden: If you want to walk away without firing a shot, you be prepared to live with it. If Operation Cinder comes around again, if Shadow Wing picks up where they left off, you don’t get to have regrets.

  “I can live with it,” Wyl whispered to himself and to his ship. And he could.

  “We’re ready to support you.” It was General Syndulla’s voice, calm and encouraging. “The Temperance is prepared to engage.”

  He suspected she would back whatever decision he made. She trusted Wyl would serve the needs of the New Republic.

  He adjusted his comm, opening a general channel. The words that emerged from his mouth tasted swollen and bitter—he’d spoken openly to the 204th twice before, and he knew he was now betraying something, someone, that he couldn’t entirely place.

  “This is Wyl Lark to the opposing force. Power down your weapons and surrender. Repeat, power down and surrender. All airborne forces should ground themselves immediately.” His lips were dry and tasted like blood, but the hardest part was done. The last words came out like breathing: “No one else has to die today.”

  There was no reply. The TIEs continued to fir
e. The bulk freighter continued its ascent.

  “Alphabet Leader—”

  Wyl cut off the Vanguard pilot. “All fighters pursue. If you can hit the freighter, do it, but don’t take your eyes off the TIEs.”

  Rununja, Riot Squadron’s commander, had told him once that it was no crime to fire on a retreating opponent. “There’s nothing dishonorable or treacherous about attacking the enemy from behind—or about the enemy doing the same to us,” she’d said. “This is not a parlor game, where the next round is something to be anticipated eagerly. This is a war, won in part by disabling military forces.”

  He understood that. Still, as he fired toward the freighter as it sped toward the bright stars, he was sure he had forgotten something vital.

  IV

  Three of the TIE squadrons were now aboard. The bulk freighter roared through the upper atmosphere, veering sharply away from the New Republic frigate above and the Scar of Troithe below and toward the planet’s more populous regions. With grim satisfaction, Colonel Soran Keize observed through aging instruments as the first concentrated particle beams from the planetary defense network ignited the sky; the ensuing flashes could have heralded the birth of a new star.

  The beams were concentrated toward the Nebulon-B frigate as it attempted to intercept, though a handful raked clouds near the New Republic starfighters. Soran wondered what it had taken Governor Yadeez and her troops to recapture the defense satellite control centers—what heroics had been performed on the surface that he had been blissfully unaware of. He imagined Imperial guerrillas storming outposts fortified by local defenders, urged to retake Troithe and obey their new governor.