Victory's Price (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  I

  There were too many voices.

  “We’ve lost contact with the Brightsaber, General. Last transmission indicated—”

  “Three battle groups converging on the Super Star Destroyer!”

  “—bombers incoming. Our squadrons are not in position, repeat—”

  “General? Admiral Ackbar still needs a path cleared for those infantry transports.”

  “Turn our flank, target the bombers with point defenses!”

  The bridge of the Deliverance was in a state of bedlam, yet Hera Syndulla knew the madness was nothing compared with what was happening outside. She wanted to silence the crew and demand they deliver their updates one at a time; instead she attempted to sort and triage the crises.

  Captain Arvad was coordinating the Deliverance’s defenses against the bombers, and Hera trusted Tensent to wrestle the squadrons into position. She checked the Super Star Destroyer’s situation—it was well defended but under siege by the New Republic Starhawks—and decided her priority was the infantry.

  Ackbar was correct about their vulnerability. The smaller U-wings could slip through Jakku’s defenses to land, but the larger troop carriers would be torn to pieces before they reached atmosphere. They needed starfighter support, and no squadrons were available.

  “The Canny Bargain is withdrawing—their shields are gone, they’re patching a hull breach.”

  “One bomber down, but another’s coming in—”

  “The Promise just reported in. No sightings of Shadow Wing’s bulk freighter.”

  The voices tugged at her, and she couldn’t prevent a part of her mind from analyzing the overall state of the battle. She couldn’t tell if they were winning or losing.

  That’s not your job. You’re not running the fleet—do your part!

  “Get me two corvettes on our flanks and tell the troop transports to stay close,” Hera said, sharp and distinct. “Plot a course for Jakku—we’ll swing in at an angle, the transports can descend, and we’ll come out—” She gestured at the tactical map. “—there. Sector five-beta-beta. We can do some good from that position.”

  She answered questions: The squadrons could regroup with the Deliverance on its way back from Jakku; she didn’t care which corvettes; no, she couldn’t provide cover while the transports landed.

  “General? We’ve lost contact with the Serenade—”

  Hera felt a stomach-churning weightlessness as her feet rose off the deck. The sounds of rending metal and igniting oxygen filled her ears, muffled by bulkheads but thunderous nonetheless. When she crashed onto hands and knees and the bridge stopped shaking she wasn’t sure whether they’d been hit that hard or if they’d momentarily lost artificial gravity.

  “Enemy bomber!” someone shouted over the alarms.

  Hera expected to hear Captain Arvad’s reply, but Arvad was silent. She looked around and saw no structural damage, yet the crew had been flung from their stations and, like Hera, were scrambling to their feet. One form propped against a viewport didn’t move, and Hera saw it was Arvad. Blood stained her scalp and streaked the transparent metal behind her.

  “Get a medic!” Hera shouted, and turned to the weapons station. She called perfunctory orders and discovered they were largely unneeded. The enemy bombers were already under control; one had simply slipped through.

  For a blessed instant the bridge chatter diminished. Hera caught her breath and felt the throbbing in her knees. She was ready to fear for Arvad—to take a fraction of a second to worry over the woman—when Dhina, the comscan officer, said, “No contact with the Hunting Hound.”

  “Don’t tell me there’s no contact,” Hera snapped. She instantly regretted her impatience and switched to a gentler tone. “Get sensor confirmation, get a visual, let me know what it means. Okay?”

  Dhina scrunched up the fur of her face. “Sorry, General. I tried—there’s a lot of confusion, General.”

  Can’t argue with that, Hera thought. She nodded and started to turn to the latest crisis—the Deliverance was en route with the troop transports now, and two Imperial gunships were moving to intercept—but she hesitated when she saw Dhina’s screen. The sector she was scanning flipped between empty and chaotic, ghostly images flickering in and out.

  She felt a chill and knew well enough to trust her instincts. “That’s the last known position of the Hunting Hound?”

  Dhina nodded as Hera continued: “What about the Serenade, and the—” Which ship was it? The first one you mentioned? There was too much happening, too many disasters to sort through.

  “The Brightsaber,” Dhina replied. She keyed her console and expanded the map. Three marks indicated last known locations of the Brightsaber, Serenade, and Hunting Hound. They weren’t tightly clustered, instead arcing around the fringes of the battle.

  The chill hadn’t left her. “Were you talking to any of them?” Hera asked. “When they got cut off? Do you have audio?”

  “The Brightsaber,” Dhina repeated. “I can pull it up?”

  A series of thunderclaps and another jolt to the bridge implied the pounding of a turbolaser barrage. The gunships were hitting them hard. She couldn’t linger with Dhina much longer.

  “Got it!” Dhina declared. She fumbled with a headset, nearly dropping it as she passed it to Hera. “Playing back now.”

  Hera listened to the exchange of coordinates and vectors between Deliverance and Brightsaber. There was no alarm in the Brightsaber officer’s voice as the recording was flooded by static.

  She wasn’t sure whether her ears were more sensitive than those of humans—she’d suspected so, from time to time—let alone those of Cathars. She didn’t blame Dhina for not recognizing the rainfall patter mixed into the static roar.

  “It’s them,” Hera said, and threw down the headset. “Get me Captain Tensent. Relay what I tell him to Admiral Ackbar.” She looked to Arvad’s executive officer, who’d stepped into the captain’s position and was visibly sweating as he maneuvered the battleship past the gunships and sheltered the troop transports. Hera would relieve him in a moment.

  “What’ve you got, General?” Nath’s voice called, as terse and strained as anyone’s.

  “I’ve got Shadow Wing,” she answered. She signaled to Stornvein who signaled other officers present, ensuring they paid attention. “I don’t know how, but they’re reproducing the particle effects we saw at Chadawa. They’re using the radiation to hide from scanners and sever our ships’ communications. After they blind and deafen a target, we can assume they hit hard and fast; we’ve already lost three heavy cruisers.”

  “Carrying the fog of war with them,” Nath replied. “Smart. Sounds like Shadow Wing. Where are they?”

  “Transmitting last suspected coordinates. My guess is if you continue around that arc you’ll find them. Be ready to enter a dead zone, and the second you lose comms—”

  “—switch to the open channel and boost comm power, like at Chadawa. Going without encryption in a fight like this, though…”

  “It’ll make things interesting,” Hera agreed. “But if you get close, you’ll hear them, too. Head their way, and we’ll follow shortly.”

  Nath signed off. The bridge rocked again, and Hera grabbed Dhina’s shoulder while Dhina grabbed her arm. They kept their balance together as sparks rained and alarms sounded, and Hera mentally amended her last message: We’ll follow as soon as we can.

  Shadow Wing would be happy to wait for one last shot at her and her people. She only worried what they would do in the meantime.

  II

  “All fighters, follow me and slow for nothing. The 204th wants to play assassin? We’ll see how they handle a straight-up fight.”

  It was a stupid thing to say, Nath knew. The answer to “How does the 204th handle a straight-up fight?” was “Extremel
y well, thank you.” But his pilots were scared and scattered and more than a few were dead. Some bluster might not be the worst play.

  The route to Shadow Wing wouldn’t take the squadrons through the worst of the fighting, but they’d need more than a minute to traverse the inferno Jakku had become. The remains of Flare, Wild, and Hail spread behind Nath’s Y-wing, and the faster fighters gradually overtook him as they crossed the battlefield. The gleaming hulls of warships formed an undulating ground and sky, and bursts of particle fire burned through space like geysers of death. Nath attempted to give a wide berth to the other fighter melees they encountered but still had to dodge the occasional burning X-wing or spew cannon bolts to clear a path.

  His pilots kept talking but he tuned them out. His muscles hurt. He was too blasted tense and it meant every time he swerved away from disaster he was exerting himself needlessly. He could taste sweat dripping from his brow onto his lips, and his jaw ached from clenching.

  “We’ll get there soon,” he muttered, only half to T5. “We’re going to find the 204th and it’ll be just like old times.”

  They might still die, but being locked in combat with a foe he knew meant they’d die because they failed, die because they weren’t good enough—not be incinerated in the cross fire between a Starhawk and a Star Destroyer. Nath had always controlled his own destiny, and he didn’t plan to stop now.

  He was emerging from a whirling tunnel of gunships, crossing into a magnificently empty gap in space, when his comm began to hiss. “Think we’re getting close,” he called. “Get ready to switch to the open channel!”

  “See you after the war,” Yrica Quell replied.

  She sounded like a ghost, and he shook his head briskly to clear it. “The hell was that?” he asked, and T5 beeped and reassured him he hadn’t imagined the voice—that the transmission had been relayed from the Deliverance, faint and barely decipherable and sent who-knew-when. Nath laughed and thought of Quell fighting alongside Kairos against a planet full of Imperials. He wasn’t sure if he’d swap places, given the opportunity.

  “Tell her she’s getting soft,” he said. He almost added more but spotted fire in the dark and swung his Y-wing toward the light.

  An MC30c frigate was being consumed by a constricting serpent of blue flame. TIE fighters danced over its dying body. Nath didn’t know this particular frigate’s assignment, but he’d heard the vessels could hold their own against Star Destroyers. This one wouldn’t have a chance.

  He eyed his scanner and saw both solid marks and flickering afterimages. He guessed he was on the edge of the dead zone established by the 204th, and he leaned into his harness as he scanned the void for the Yadeez. If the TIEs were Shadow Wing fighters, the unit’s carrier ship couldn’t have gone far.

  Unless Shadow Wing had transferred to a real capital ship upon reuniting with the fleet. Found a new Star Destroyer, or—

  There you are.

  It was keeping its distance from the fighting but it was still visible, below the equatorial ring of the battle loosely encircling Jakku. Nath wouldn’t have spotted it except for the faint, glittering trail it left; he recalled the scintillations of the Chadawan rings and could only assume there was a connection.

  “Found our target!” he said. “Bombers, head for the Yadeez. Fighters, keep us safe! Don’t engage the TIEs unless you have to.”

  Taking out the Yadeez would leave Shadow Wing without leadership. It would, if Nath was right, disrupt their fog of war. Most important, it was safer than engaging the fighters directly.

  The static became overpowering. He wasn’t sure if his message had gotten through, and he flashed his thrusters as he took the Y-wing toward the bulk freighter. The fighters around him seemed to understand and adjusted formation as they turned toward the new foe.

  As acceleration pressed on his chest and the Y-wing shuddered, he switched to the open channel. Nath heard nothing other than hissing, but that wasn’t alarming; Shadow Wing had always been disciplined when it came to chatter.

  See you after the war. Quell’s voice echoed in his brain. He laughed bitterly and thought about Wyl back aboard the Deliverance—probably holding on for his life as the Star Destroyer was pummeled, dragging casualties to the medbay if Syndulla hadn’t tossed him in the brig. The kid had always wanted Alphabet to be heroes—had wanted Nath to be a hero, to the point where Nath almost martyring himself above Troithe hadn’t been good enough. When Nath had finally met the standard at Chadawa, Wyl had gone and changed the rules of the game.

  You wanted heroes, and now you’re stuck with them, he thought.

  The burning MC30c turned dazzlingly bright and burst like a nova—a reactor breach, Nath assumed. Waves of flaming gas roiled through space, and the TIEs rode the shock wave without damage. They headed toward Nath and the squadrons now, which meant time was running short; he’d hoped for a few more seconds before they’d noticed the attack.

  He thumbed the comm and spoke over the open channel. “No point hiding. Let’s make it a good fight, huh?” His thoughts danced from Quell to Wyl to Chass, and instinct kept him talking. “Hey, Chass! How many go-rounds has it been now?”

  There was a pause before she replied: “Enough they ought to be scared. They know what we can do.”

  He smiled at her voice—the sound of a smirk wrapped in fury. “Damn right.”

  Chass had always been a mess, and maybe she had almost gotten him killed abandoning Chadawa to chase Quell. Still, Alphabet was his squadron now—he hadn’t asked for it, but it was his—and she’d come willingly. He owed her more than anyone else flying.

  “You hear that call earlier?” Chass asked. “Real cocky, thinking she can advise us half a galaxy away.”

  “Woman always had her blind spots—” Nath began, but another voice broke in.

  “Chass na Chadic. You’re in the B-wing, aren’t you?”

  The speaker’s accent was working-class, from somewhere in the Core Worlds. “We were having a conversation,” Nath said.

  “You knew what you were doing,” the man answered. “Which one are you? Denish wouldn’t mention names at Chadawa, but I—”

  “Mervais Gandor, my good friend!” Denish Wraive cut in. Nath wondered what the ancient Wild Squadron leader was up to. “Pity we didn’t finish our song before. Pity we won’t have the chance now.”

  Another unfamiliar voice broke in; another Shadow Wing pilot. “You all should’ve stayed home, like your buddy Wyl.”

  “How’d you hear about that?” Nath shouldn’t have taken the bait, but it raised too many questions to ignore. He suddenly remembered General Syndulla’s concerns about a spy aboard the Deliverance.

  “Sent us a message before the fighting started,” the second pilot said. “The colonel already beat him once, but honestly I’ll kind of miss the guy. Won’t be the same without him chiming in.”

  “Maybe he was holding us back,” Chass said, and other voices—New Republic and Shadow Wing—joined the chatter. Nath was surprised to realize that beneath the enemies’ mockery was strain and giddiness—the same he heard in his people.

  They’d been wanting this fight. Not just because they wanted Alphabet and everyone associated dead (though Nath didn’t doubt that remained true) but because they also needed something familiar in the chaos of Jakku.

  “You missed us, didn’t you?” he asked, and grinned as he sped for the Yadeez.

  III

  She killed her first Shadow Wing pilot as he spoke over the comm, saying something about escape pods and Cerberon and some buddy of his who’d fried in-atmosphere. Chass hadn’t known it was the man yammering on when she’d taken the shot, but the TIE had come careening into her field of fire—probably damaged from some earlier fight, given how it tilted—and she’d squeezed her trigger and shredded his port wing, heard his transmission cut off; watched hi
m try to regain control and then explode bright enough to light her cockpit.

  She didn’t feel pity. This was a day for endings, and the comfort of the familiar—familiar friends, familiar enemies—wasn’t a comfort worth clinging to.

  “See you after the war.” Really, Quell? You had to get in the last word?

  Shadow Wing understood this was an ending as well as she did. The TIEs fought with the same tactics as always, surrounding the Yadeez in a spiral formation that swept aside the waves of New Republic attackers. But there was an aggressiveness and desperation to their maneuvers—they killed Denish Wraive and one of the Flare pilots (she wasn’t sure who) in short order, but they were also bleeding worse than she’d seen since Pandem Nai. She thought she saw the Twins, who’d plagued them since the Oridol Cluster, shot down together by a Wild pilot who was dead seconds later.

  Or maybe it was the Chadawan radiation as much as desperation that was killing them. Chass’s B-wing hadn’t shut down but her gyroscopics were sluggish and her console didn’t bother showing her shield status. (She thought her deflectors were up but she wouldn’t know for sure until it really mattered.)

  “See you after the war.” You should’ve just let us focus.

  She could see the bulk freighter clearly now. The vessel had always been ugly, bristling with weapons and sensors glued on by the 204th, but now two massive nacelles spewed shimmering fog like smokestacks: the radiation that blinded sensors and muted comms.

  She started to load a torpedo, then hesitated. She vaguely recalled someone talking about warheads exploding aboard Y-wings in the worst of the Chadawan particle tides; she was ready to go but not that way. She flung her ship to one side as a TIE rocketed around her and she keyed in a sequence, readying the torpedo for launch but not yet arming the warhead.

  Someone was screaming about all the worlds destroyed by Cinder. Chass shut the voice out but found herself thinking of Wyl and Kairos and Quell, and that wasn’t helpful at all.

  “We’re going to mess you up,” she called into the comm. “You’re going to die, and everyone here is going to be gone, and I guarantee in a few years? They’re not going to remember what the Empire did at this battle.”