Victory's Price (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  “Tensent going in!” he called.

  “Hail Six, going in!”

  “Hail Twelve, making my run.”

  “Me, too,” Chass said.

  No one else paused their recitation of names. The drumbeat followed Nath as he skimmed above the Yadeez, almost close enough to touch metal. Without his navicomputer to course-correct or shields to pad him, he’d tear his Y-wing apart if he dropped more than a few centimeters; but he was also close enough that the freighter’s weapons couldn’t target him and the TIEs wouldn’t dare shoot. He gripped his control yoke until his hands ached, holding steady and watching the nacelle over the horizon of the freighter’s hull.

  Closer. Closer. Forget what Wyl would want, forget what Quell would want. Think about Trenchenovu and fire!

  The Y-wing bucked as he loosed a torpedo. He pulled up as hard as he could—too hard, he suspected, as his last functioning alarm wailed that his thrusters were overheating—and flew into a sky bright with explosions. Missiles detonated, fire rolled off the hull of the Yadeez, and someone screamed in agony over the comm. Nath twisted from side to side, trying to see what the scanner wouldn’t show him, and spotted a Y-wing and Chass’s B-wing tumbling through the night. The B-wing was blasting away with all its remaining cannons, but he couldn’t tell why either of them was off course.

  “What happened?” he shouted. He dipped a wing and glimpsed the freighter below. He’d ripped away much of the port nacelle, and flame and electricity mixed with scintillating particles leaked from every crack. “Got mine! What the hell happened?”

  “Hit us with a missile at the last second. Had to swerve, missed the shot,” a voice replied. “We lost Twelve.”

  Hail Six, last survivor of his squadron.

  “One more name for the list,” one of the Shadow Wing pilots said. There was nothing mocking about it; the statement was almost regretful.

  Tensent began laughing and found he couldn’t stop.

  II

  Chass didn’t understand what Nath found so hysterical, and she spat and cursed into the comm as her B-wing coasted through the particle cloud regurgitated by the burst nacelle. She had enough power for life support but otherwise the radiation left her impotent. Her weapons had rapidly gone dry. The comforting rattle of her console and the hurricane noise of her engine had ceased. When she wrenched herself around she could see the remnants of Flare and Wild, tattered starfighters with flickering shields and cracked cockpits attempting to drive off TIEs sweeping in for the kill.

  “So what?” she asked. “We doing this again or not?”

  “Why not?” Nath’s laughter was gone but Chass could hear his smirk. “We’ve still got a reputation to uphold.”

  The chanting went on:

  “Agias Rikton.”

  “Giginivek.”

  “It’s stupid,” Chass said. “We’re down a bomber and it’s not going to work—it didn’t work this time, it’s not going to work the next! We can’t stay close enough to the freighter to do any good.”

  She wasn’t afraid of dying, she told herself—or at least that wasn’t the problem. She didn’t want to die like Hail Twelve, or like Riot or Hound or Flare or Wild, or like Wyl. She didn’t want to die pointlessly, caught in a battle she did nothing to change.

  It wasn’t what she’d been promised. It wasn’t why she’d joined the Rebellion.

  “All right,” Nath said after a moment. “New plan. You all want to hear it? Shadow Wing, you boys want to hear what we’re up to?”

  The chant of the dead faded. “We’re listening,” someone said.

  Cannon fire licked the dark around Chass. She was still adrift and the TIEs were shooting from a distance, staying out of the particle cloud themselves. They’d hit her sooner or later, or the Yadeez would impale her on a missile.

  “We’re going to make another run at your freighter,” Nath said. “We’re going to ignore General Syndulla’s order to target the nacelles and hit the biggest, easiest target: the main thrusters. Maybe we’ll blow the whole ship, maybe not, but if it’s dead in space and immobile the particle field won’t do much good.”

  Chass’s indicator lights flickered. She toggled switches on and off, whole rows at a time, until her reactor came online and she was thrown backward as her thrusters reignited. She might still die uselessly but now she could die fighting. That was a start.

  Nath kept talking. “Of course, you fine Imperial pilots will try to intercept. You’ll throw everything you’ve got at us—or everything you have to spare, what with the Deliverance bearing down on you, a Starhawk you need to prep for, and the best fighter pilots left in the New Republic picking you off. You kill the three of us bombers, congratulations—you win the whole pot. If not…”

  “Alphabet Leader?” a woman’s voice said. “This is Captain Wisp; Squadron Three, 204th Imperial Fighter Wing. Since you’ve killed Captain Phesh, that leaves me senior squadron commander, and I’ll say this—I can’t think of a better way to put you in the ground.”

  “Good enough for me,” Nath said.

  “Good enough for me,” Chass agreed.

  Hail Six said something, but Chass ignored him as she burned toward clear space. She glanced behind her and saw the two Y-wings following at a distance. The Deliverance, meanwhile, was continuing toward the Yadeez, but the Star Destroyer’s hull was wreathed in flames; Chass couldn’t tell if the Deliverance was operational or a fiery hulk riding inertia. The TIEs picking at its remains stopped and also headed for the Yadeez. Closer to Chass was the snarl of TIEs and New Republic starfighters. Her most direct course to the Yadeez would take her through the melee, where she’d have a spectacular view of the last X-wings blown to bits as they strived to keep her alive.

  So many of the TIEs were gone, too, though. She guessed there were no more than twenty or thirty left, between the ones tangling with Wild and Flare, the ones at the Deliverance, and a few flying out ahead of the Yadeez. Solar panels and viewport shards drifted past her; lonely ion engines sparked, the hearts of the fighters torn out and still beating after their pilots were long dead. The debris would’ve been gruesomely satisfying if it hadn’t posed a collision hazard.

  Maybe she’d add a few TIEs to the wreckage herself.

  Chass turned as tight as she could, listening to her reactor wheeze. She headed for the fray and the freighter beyond it, blasting at TIEs as they converged on individual Flare and Wild fighters. The naming of the dead went on, but it was breathless and panicked, mixed with urgent cries.

  “Samran Phesh.”

  “Vitale! Vitale!”

  “Darita?”

  Vitale’s name triggered something in Chass’s brain, and she suddenly understood the dead woman’s earlier chatter. Who? What? Where? She’d been playing the old pilots’ game with Shadow Wing.

  Who hears the news when you die? What did it? Where did it all go down?

  “Hey!” Chass shouted as the TIEs attempted to turn from Wild and Flare to spew death at the bombers. Her guns were pumping too slowly, like something mechanical was misaligned and the pulses were shearing metal. She rocked violently with each shot. “Hey!” She kept squeezing the trigger anyway—if her cannons failed, she still had torpedoes. That was all she needed for the Yadeez.

  “Who?” she cried, thinking through her candidates: Chancellor Mon Mothma, who’d sent them to Jakku. General Syndulla, who was probably dead. Let’ij, the con artist. Gruyver, the cultist who’d once saved her. Yrica Quell. “Pick your favorite host of one of those pirate news broadcasts. Anyone would be lucky to get the story—”

  She stopped talking as two TIEs raced her way. An X-wing attempted to cut them off but a second TIE pair intercepted it before it could close. Chass didn’t change course, tapping her thrusters and turning to track the first TIEs as momentum carried her along. With swea
t-soaked gloves, she rotated her airfoils and fired.

  The TIEs shot back simultaneously, and she would’ve died if something in one of her ion cannons hadn’t blown. She saw one side of her strike foil burst in light and metal, and the kick pushed her out of the way of the incoming volley. Something beneath her left arm sprayed sparks, and she screamed as she leaned away from the flames, felt her head bounce off the canopy, and kept holding down her firing trigger.

  From the howl on the open comm, she was pretty sure she hit one of her targets. She wrested the B-wing back in the right direction then sprayed down the cockpit and half her arm with an extinguisher canister.

  “What?” she asked, and her voice was shaky and hoarse. “Not you, you bastards. None of you! Maybe this garbage fighter burns when I shoot your freighter to pieces, maybe I’m caught in the torpedo blast, maybe I ram this thing up your engines and choke your flagship to death—but it’s going to be spectacular, and it’s going to win this whole battle.”

  Nath was yelling something she couldn’t really hear—something about getting back into formation. The chant of the dead was being kept up by two, maybe three pilots. She looked behind her and saw Nath and Hail Six each escorted by an X-wing through a cloud of TIEs.

  She might’ve turned around to join them but she wasn’t sure the B-wing could handle it. Then she spotted the Yadeez up ahead and five TIEs skimming its hull on their way toward her. Probably heading back from the Starhawk.

  “Where?” she screamed. “Right here! I’m winning the war today—I’m winning it, Chass na Chadic—” Maya Hallik. “—Theelin Queen of Starfighters and fizzy drinks! Chass na Chadic! You remember that! You remember me!”

  If they didn’t remember no one else would. The Deliverance was gone and the rest of the fleet still didn’t know what was happening. It hurt her chest to think about.

  To hell with it all.

  She reminded herself she wasn’t Nath Tensent, looking to come out ahead. She was following in the footsteps of Jyn Erso, martyr of Scarif, who’d saved who-knew-how-many planets from being blown apart by Death Stars.

  The TIEs swept toward her, not yet firing—they were waiting for the perfect shot, knowing they had time to line one up. Chass loosed a volley in their direction but half her cannons were gone. She didn’t come close to landing a hit, and they didn’t flinch.

  The Yadeez grew large, and its massive thrusters glowed and flickered in the fog of the particle cloud. She was coming at it from above, at a gentle angle. She pitched abruptly downward, knowing she wouldn’t shake the TIEs if she curved up from below but hoping it would buy her a few seconds.

  Maybe this was how Jyn Erso had felt. Maybe she’d been scared when she stared down the battle station.

  Chass thought again of the false hope of the Children of the Empty Sun. She thought of where she would inevitably end up if she survived the war, useless and bound to suffer a fate so much worse than martyrdom. She remembered her confession of her nightmare at the cult’s disquisition: Living on Coruscant off a New Republic stipend in a cruddy apartment. Garbage food and old furniture. No work for a professional killer, no other skills, no one she knew still alive.

  I do some stupid stuff just to pass the time. Not robbery, but enough to catch the eye of local security. They go easy on me, because I’m a vet. They go easy on me the first time.

  After that, I lose the apartment. Keep my gun. It all goes downhill from there.

  This was the last battle. She could be Jyn Erso today, or she could let the nightmare come true.

  The TIEs broke formation, mirroring her dive and orbiting the B-wing like planets around a sun. Her cockpit turned emerald in the fiery light and she veered as hard as she could into the densest section of the particle cloud—she wasn’t sure if her weapons would still work there but at least she’d slow the TIEs. Her burnt arm began to pain her and she felt something moist on her temple—sweat if she was lucky, blood if she’d hit her head too hard when her ion cannon had blown.

  Scintillating particle motes enveloped her, and her reactor rang like a bell. Though her console was dark one of her alarms somehow managed to shriek, warning her that something vital in the ship was broken and she couldn’t do anything about it.

  The TIEs kept shooting. She could barely see the Yadeez’s thrusters through the particle fog, and cannon blasts wavered and refracted in the mist. She fumbled with manual releases, bypassing the computer to load and arm a torpedo. If the Y-wings were anywhere nearby, she couldn’t see them.

  The ringing engine and alarm harmonized, providing a backbeat to the chant of the dead. Chass tasted her dry lips and realized she was mumbling over the slow-tempo dirge, reciting lyrics to a warbat trance single that had spread through the galaxy’s clubs a dozen years earlier. It fit the timing too well; it slipped out, and she didn’t know when she’d begun.

  The words were in some obscure Huttese dialect, haunting and indecipherable. She hesitated when she realized she might be heard on the open channel; but someone had joined her, a woman she didn’t recognize. There was a man’s voice, too, and she found herself continuing.

  Wisp, “senior squadron commander” of Shadow Wing, joined in next. Chass laughed before returning to the song, adding her awful voice to the others as the chant of the dead pounded beneath what might’ve been (knowing the tastes of clubgoers) a love song.

  She would miss this when she was dead. She missed her music chips, lost in Cerberon.

  A haze of particles obscured her view; when it passed she was a hundred meters from the Yadeez. The freighter’s thrusters would’ve burned away her shields if she’d had anything left; she felt their heat through her canopy. The song went on as she scrambled to aim her shot, but she saw now she was too close to escape the blast from her torpedo. If she fired, there was a good chance she’d be obliterated along with one of the freighter’s thrusters.

  The thought made her bones ache, and she didn’t understand why. She didn’t want to understand why.

  It’s okay, she told herself in Let’ij’s voice. This is it, this is what you’ve been waiting for, what you’ve been working for, the best ending you could ever have—

  When had she ever needed to persuade herself before? When had she become so terrified?

  Are you better off coming home to the cult, knowing it’s all a lie? Your comrades are gone. Wyl and Quell and Kairos are doomed and Nath will go next, and they wouldn’t give you spit if you were dying in a desert anyway. They don’t want you clinging to them after the war.

  She didn’t have more than a second or three before it was too late to fire on the Yadeez. Maybe less before a TIE incinerated her.

  When did you become such a coward?

  When had she started wanting a future, even if she couldn’t imagine one?

  When had she decided she wanted to live?

  Had it been when she’d been embraced by the cult? When she’d shed their teachings the way Kairos had shed her shell, in the forests of that nameless world?

  Was it just the music?

  You’re afraid, Maya Hallik. But tomorrow you’ll still be alive, and alone, and you’ll never get this opportunity again.

  She knew it was true.

  Nath was shouting something to Flare Squadron, and as Chass straightened in her seat she remembered his words before they’d taken off, after he’d told her about Let’ij—words she’d forgotten earlier: You need someone to shoot you, you come to me after.

  She laughed loud and sudden, and thought: I’ll hold you to that, even as tears ran down her cheeks and she fired a torpedo.

  Her best chance—her only chance—was to accelerate, to fly beyond the thrusters and use the bulk freighter’s hull as cover from the explosion roiling at its stern. With her wreck of a ship, her reactor ready to fail, she sped toward the closest thing to safety she co
uld find as her torpedo hit home.

  The comm died in a crackle of static and she glimpsed her cannons rupturing and trailing lightning; saw fire rise around her like floodwaters. She hoped she would make it, but alive or dead, she knew her fight was over.

  III

  Nath watched the B-wing speed past the detonation, buffeted by a wave of bright energy and burning gas. The cockpit cleared the Yadeez but the B-wing’s blackened and shredded airfoil caught on the freighter’s hull and shattered in an instant. The battered remains of the assault fighter tumbled into the dark, streaking fire.

  Nath didn’t see the cockpit break apart or the canopy splinter. He didn’t see anyone eject, either. Whatever happened to Chass next, he told himself, he’d kept her alive as long as he could; but it was scanty reassurance.

  The Yadeez was still moving. He couldn’t be certain through the flames and the particle cloud but its path seemed to be curving—Chass had taken out half its thrusters but it was still capable of limping to the Starhawk. It didn’t even need to fight, just survive long enough to spread its fog of war and let the TIEs do the dirty work.

  He tried to count the pilots left. Hail Six (Genni Avremif, poor kid) in the Y-wing and five fighters between Flare and Wild. Not even a proper squadron with all of them combined. Two from Flare had gone out protecting Chass during her run; at that rate, there’d be only one survivor when Nath and Genni were finished.

  “Chass na Chadic,” he said, adding her to the roster of the dead while others sang. “She did good but we’re not done. All fighters stay close and let’s wrap this up!”

  He kept his tone defiant. He could give that to the pilots remaining, though it was more obligatory than heartfelt—with Chass gone, with Wyl gone, Kairos and Quell off to Coruscant, and Syndulla out of the fight, his sense of loyalty was fading fast.