Victory's Price (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

It didn’t matter. He had to survive.

  He knew in his heart what she’d been doing—knew what the bundle of wires and switches meant. If he didn’t stop her, she would blow up the Deliverance and no one aboard would survive. His friends in their starfighters would be left without support. He had to act. He had to fight back.

  He threw himself into her and fate was with him—the Deliverance rocked again, redoubling his force. They smashed into the bulkhead, and though Palal shoved him away she left a bloody sunburst centered on a protruding metal bolt where the back of her scalp had struck the metal. Wyl wobbled and tried to find his footing; she stared at him then swept up the tool bag and dashed down the corridor faster than he could track.

  He chased her, bent forward and reliant on momentum to keep upright. Palal fumbled with the tool bag, sending hardware clattering onto the deck as she freed the wire bundle. Wyl tried to focus on her head, to guide himself by it, and saw her hair was badly askew—it was a wig, concealing a shaven scalp marred by a mess of red dripping down her neck into her work suit.

  She stumbled badly; he gained a step or two. He wondered how deep the bolt in the wall had penetrated—through bone or even into brain. When she stopped abruptly he didn’t think to halt and ran directly into a whirling kick that stole his breath and sent him flailing backward.

  They’d reached the end of the reactor tunnel. Behind Palal was a sealed emergency hatch; somewhere during the run they’d passed the ladder leading to the deck above. Palal held the bundle—the bomb—in both hands. “Kalvan Oliq,” she said. The vocabulator whined, as if it had been damaged at some point in the fighting. “Kharulu Neen. Perush-anon Seedia.”

  “I don’t—” He tasted blood in his mouth and swallowed. “I don’t know who they are.”

  “Victims of your Rebellion,” she said. “Who the hell else?”

  He almost laughed. Instead he shook his head very slowly. “Walk away from all this. There’s no point to it.”

  “The point is revenge,” she said. “The point is honor. You don’t—I’m not Blink. I’m Palal Seedia, my father’s heir, and you don’t know a thing about me. You never will.”

  You could tell me, Wyl thought. As he watched her, though, he believed she was right.

  He’d known nothing about Blink.

  “Put the bomb down,” he said, endeavoring to sound calm instead of afraid.

  Palal turned the bundle over, her fingers caressing the switches. “I was going to hook it up to the subgenerators. Steal a shuttle and go home. But I always knew how my mission might end.”

  He pictured leaping at her again. He’d only fall flat on the deck. But maybe the Deliverance would shake again; maybe she’d drop the bomb if he bought more time. “This isn’t how it ends—”

  “They likely assume I’m dead. I’ll be forgotten soon, with everything I’ve done. I can accept that.” The vocabulator spat static and Palal’s mouth kept moving; Wyl tried to read her lips but he couldn’t, and she began laughing silently, hysterically, at her own inability to communicate or at Wyl’s desperation to comprehend.

  She stopped at last. The Deliverance was steady, though Wyl could hear the distant pounding of cannon fire.

  “The Empire will never stop fighting,” Palal Seedia said, and this time the words were clear as rain.

  She flipped a switch on the bundle of wires. Wyl ran for the ladder as the world became noise, fire, and death.

  II

  “Not that easy, is it?” someone said, and Chass na Chadic swore at the comm as the bombers aborted their attack.

  Nath’s Y-wing was the first to turn, thrusters bright as he veered up and away from the Yadeez. The surviving Hail pilots (they were down to two) followed, and Chass lingered at the rear. If she pushed—if she armed all her warheads, opened her throttle, and unleashed everything at close range—she’d tear a hole through the bulk freighter and never have to hear Shadow Wing’s stupid voices again.

  But she’d never make it.

  “Next time ’round,” she muttered as a column of TIEs wove past Flare and Wild and spat fire toward her. Her thrusters failed to respond as she tried to swing away; she’d gotten too close to the freighter’s radioactive particle cloud. Three TIEs—one incongruously patched with black armor, another with a single cannon apparently salvaged from a larger craft—approached, and only an X-wing’s intervention kept her from dying.

  Her thrusters flared at last and she chased after Nath and Hail. With her scanner blinded, she couldn’t see what happened to the Flare pilot who’d saved her.

  Vitale was laughing over the open channel. “Who?” she called. “Got a nephew on Corellia, but maybe I’ll settle for my sisters in the Sixty-First.”

  Chass ignored the woman’s babble and swiveled her head, trying to see if she was being pursued. If a TIE found her blind spot she was doomed.

  “Who?” one of the Shadow Wing pilots said. “The Arakein Monks. Word is they’ll put anyone’s name in their Book of the Dead, and they remember forever.”

  The Y-wings continued turning, beginning a wide loop that would take them up and around for another pass at the Yadeez. Chass could see the dull green of Nath’s astromech in its socket as his ship pitched back. She kept following. No one shot her.

  “Shut up, both of you,” another voice said. New Republic or Imperial, Chass wasn’t sure.

  The bombers reached the apex of their loop. Chass could see the globe of Jakku and the bands of chaos around it. A cluster of warships spilled molten guts from their wounds and from among them emerged the wedge of a Star Destroyer—the Deliverance, Chass realized, as the New Republic markings on its flanks came into view. It was headed their way at good speed; maybe even in time to be useful.

  “What?” Vitale said. “Pry bar upside the head, twelve years from now when some politico—”

  Chass muted the open channel as the Y-wings dipped back toward the melee between Flare, Wild, and Shadow Wing. She tried to count the New Republic fighters and failed, but they sure didn’t seem as many as they’d been a few minutes earlier. Shadow Wing didn’t seem to have the same problem; she’d seen TIEs go down but it made no difference to the swarm.

  She was hoping for a clear shot when a light caught her attention. She looked above her toward the Deliverance and saw a burning pit on the underside of its hull—an ugly wound but not a fatal one if the engineers could contain the fire.

  Then a hundred meters toward the engines flame erupted from a second crater; a third and fourth explosion followed, as if a fuse were burning down to the main reactor.

  Chass stared until particle bolts ripped off half her primary airfoil. She snarled and squeezed her firing trigger and let her weapons (the ones that still worked) run as hot as they could function, then hotter until they sputtered out. She kept glancing back to the Deliverance as if something might change—as if its hull would restore itself or the fire would die.

  The trail of eruptions had become an uninterrupted line of flame. The Star Destroyer wasn’t gone, but it would be, just like the Hellion’s Dare and the Lodestar. Wyl Lark would go with it, and General Syndulla, and the ground crews and everyone she’d barely tolerated.

  Something stung her eyes and she shook her head hard. Her horns snagged on her helmet’s padding and tore the foam, sending little flakes bouncing off her chest and shoulders. She switched back to the open comm and heard a voice saying, “—How?”

  “Shut up!” she snarled. “Which of you is Char?”

  The New Republic pilots began shouting about the Deliverance as others spotted the damage. Chass yelled louder, “Give me Char! Give me Blink. Give me Spitsy. Come at me—I’m in the B-wing, and you’re going to come at me. Me against all of you, and we’ll see who’s better, okay?”

  Someone was firing in her direction, and she smiled viciously and spu
n to duel her adversary. Maybe it was one of the fighters she knew; maybe not.

  She recognized the terrifying rhythm of the battle. One by one, her comrades would die, and she’d be left alone again. Just like the Cavern Angels. Just like Riot Squadron.

  This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, she thought. Wyl Lark was supposed to be safe.

  III

  Hera Syndulla had never loved the Deliverance as she’d loved other ships. Her relationship with the Lodestar had been a professional one, yet she’d developed a fondness for the ornery battle cruiser. Training cadets aboard the Lucrehulk Prime had taught her that weapons of oppression could become symbols of hope. Then there was her ship, with which she’d shared a decades-long marriage; no matter how long they were parted, nothing could match her bond with the Ghost.

  The Deliverance had never had time to redeem itself. It had never stopped being a Star Destroyer in her eyes. She felt a pang of guilt when she realized it was dying—as if she’d failed someone under her care, someone she’d promised to give a second chance.

  The inanimate hunk of metal will be the least of your failures if you don’t get moving.

  “Status of the escape pods?” she called across the bridge. She could barely hear herself over the noise of alarms, popping metal, and—from somewhere too near—violent flames. The air was hot, and sweat ran down her nose and chin.

  “Hard to say,” Stornvein yelled back. Her aide rotated among stations as the bridge crew evacuated one by one. “Between the damage and the particle field I can’t get a read on half our systems. Looks like at least two decks made it off safely.”

  She’d given the order to abandon ship three minutes prior; if the crew hadn’t heard the message, she suspected they’d figured it out themselves. “Good enough for now. We still on course?”

  “Yes, General!” The nav officer didn’t look at her, fixated on his screen. She couldn’t recall his name, but the round-faced man had the steadiness of someone who’d been with the Rebellion a decade or more. Maybe she’d even fought with him before. “We’ve got minimal power but several maneuvering thrusters are responding and we’re already at target speed. We’ll make it to the squadrons.”

  “Assuming they don’t move,” Hera said. She staggered across the unstable deck to the viewport, leaning against it and trying to see what they were headed into. She ignored the flashes of the starfighters, focusing on the particle trail of the Yadeez: The bulk freighter was moving away from Flare, Wild, and Alphabet but angling back to the main fight around Jakku.

  Scanners were useless this near the bulk freighter; even if the Star Destroyer had been undamaged, she doubted she’d have been able to get an accurate read on the Yadeez’s course. But she eyeballed the cloud of radiation behind it and raced to the nav station, guessing at the bulk cruiser’s vector and checking against last known fleet positions. She sketched a few alternative paths in case her guesses were off, but only her first attempt gave a result that made any sense.

  “They’re heading for one of the Starhawks,” she said. “The Concord, I think.”

  “Even with the TIEs, you really think the Yadeez can kill a Starhawk?” Stornvein asked.

  Under ordinary circumstances the answer would’ve been no. “Shadow Wing knows what they’re doing. They’ll go in fast and invisible, hitting critical systems before moving to a new target. They can’t keep up these assassinations forever, but they can disable half our key ships before someone gets lucky and takes them down.”

  “I can try to get a message out.” The comscan officer—Dhina—sounded determined, despite the doubt on her face. “Warn the Concord. Sometimes a signal slips through the particle field.”

  A violent tremor ran through the deck. Several of the consoles dimmed and the alarms went dead. Stornvein spoke into the quiet: “I can’t get readings from the reactor.”

  “No messages,” Hera said. “All of you get to the escape pods. If the pods aren’t working, get to the hangars—vehicle hangar, too, there’s a ship stowed there—and climb onto anything that moves. If nothing will launch, hole up with the ordnance stockpiles. Counterintuitive, I know, but the walls there are thick and if any compartment can survive a crash, that’s the one.”

  Several of the crew obeyed immediately. The remainder hesitated, then took off when she delivered the perfect scowl. A few seconds later only Stornvein remained. “You’re staying?” he asked.

  “I’m staying until I can’t. Ten minutes, tops.”

  Stornvein gave her the same scowl she’d given the crew. She nearly laughed. “I’m not planning on dying,” she said. “Go.”

  “May the Force be with you.”

  “And you.” She turned to the bridge controls before Stornvein could even reach the doorway.

  A Star Destroyer wasn’t meant to be operated with a crew of one, but Hera had always enjoyed a challenge. The vessel’s injuries made the work easier, in some ways—there were fewer tools available, fewer subsystems to worry about, and no time to repair anything. She moved from station to station, attempting to turn the behemoth to intercept the Yadeez and glancing frequently at the viewport to judge her position. She recalled the tactical reports from Cerberon—from Shadow Wing’s strike, when they’d rigged up a nearly empty Star Destroyer as a decoy—and set the functioning turbolasers to fire randomly.

  She couldn’t get any response from the ship’s shields. She wouldn’t need them anyway.

  When she’d finished her initial preparations, she opened an unencrypted comm channel. She was surprised to see traffic on other frequencies—some half-melted transmitter was doggedly trying to receive and relay signals despite the particle field—but she left the program running and pulled on a headset.

  “This is—” She cut herself off as she listened to the overlapping voices of New Republic and Shadow Wing pilots. She wasn’t only about to announce her plan to everyone; the moment she said her name, she’d make herself a target.

  “This is General Hera Syndulla aboard the Deliverance,” she said, and the other voices stopped. “The bulk freighter Yadeez cannot be allowed to target our Starhawks. If destruction is not possible, eliminate its nacelles—that should stop it from cloaking its surroundings in the particle field, and its opportunities for damage will be limited. Repeat, this is General Hera Syndulla aboard the Deliverance—stop that thing from blinding our fleet!”

  She slipped off the headset and hoped Nath Tensent and the others would carry out her orders, and that Shadow Wing would take the bait. She’d distract the TIEs as well as she could from the Star Destroyer. Maybe buy her pilots some breathing room.

  They’d have to work fast, though. She’d told Stornvein ten minutes, and she wasn’t sure the Deliverance had that long.

  IV

  Nath Tensent watched the Deliverance burn and thought: Wyl Lark is probably dead.

  That idea drowned out T5’s wails and the chatter on the open channel. Yet Nath had lost comrades before—he’d lost a whole blasted squadron—and his relationship with Wyl had carried a tax Nath had been paying since Cerberon. “Forget about the kid,” he snapped at the droid. “Focus on surviving!”

  That was when his shields flashed—miraculously, they were working—and the Y-wing vibrated inside the deflectors’ sphere. A cannon volley had skimmed his nose; a few centimeters closer and he’d have been dead. He watched the attacking fighter and its wingmate whip past and leaned into his rudder pedal.

  He thought of his final words to Wyl and how they’d parted. Nath had been right to figure that if Wyl was going to desert (Nath had feelings about that, too, but he understood necessity) then Wyl should’ve never come to Jakku in the first place.

  You got yourself killed sticking around. It’s your own damn fault!

  He stopped thinking about Wyl. He had to, or else he was dead, too.

 
“Where are we?” he asked, and the droid flashed a response on his console. They’d exited the densest area of the particle field as they’d looped around for another attack on the Yadeez. The TIEs were largely sticking to their mother ship, picking off the Flare and Wild pilots remaining.

  Nath couldn’t do much to help the two fighter squadrons; even if he’d had a clever plan, there was no way to communicate it without being overheard. The surviving bombers—Hail and Chass—were following his lead, but he wasn’t sure they’d last long enough to do any good.

  He glanced behind him and spotted one of the Y-wings and Chass’s B-wing swinging around. “All right,” he began, before T5’s squeal interrupted and he heard the voice of General Syndulla:

  “—destruction is not possible, eliminate its nacelles—that should stop it from cloaking its surroundings in the particle field—”

  “Right,” he muttered. “ ‘If you can’t blow the thing up, at least die to save the rest of the fleet.’ Wonderful.”

  He counted his advantages. He saw a squadron of TIEs break away and head for the Deliverance; Shadow Wing still outnumbered the New Republic fighters, but that would give the bombers half a chance to get close to the Yadeez. Vitale was still playing Who? What? Where? with the enemy pilots; irritating, but maybe a distraction they could use.

  T5 pinged. Nath tried to spot the problem and noticed Chass tangling with a TIE interceptor far behind him. He cut thruster power, groaning as he was thrown forward and the other Y-wings skated past. Next he gave his repulsors a push, turning around to line up a shot. It was a trick he’d always enjoyed, holding position and using his bomber as a sniper rifle—he’d last indulged the habit in the canyons of Troithe—but it worked better when he had a chance to hide.

  Chass was spraying fire wildly while the TIE leapt and circled her. She was forcing it to be cautious, but she couldn’t outmaneuver it and the TIE’s pilot wasn’t stupid.

  He waited. T5 warned him that the other Y-wings were confused and slowing down, but he ignored the droid. He ignored everything until he saw his chance and fired his cannons, sending a pulse of crimson energy through the darkness and into the TIE’s cockpit.