The crew of the Anakin Solo had already heard him make a complete fool of himself. He’d have to work on restoring his infallible image.
Luke. After Niathal, before order being restored—he had to do something about Luke. Perhaps Luke would have the common sense of the last remaining Jedi after Palpatine’s Purge, and go into exile.
Ahead of Caedus, an auxiliary vessel was hooking up to a cruiser to replenish supplies via a long tube-like tunnel, proof of how rapidly some of the Third Fleet had slipped their berths. They were catching up on routine tasks that would have normally been completed alongside. The Imperials would have brought forward their embarkation, too: as soon as they showed up, they could get this over with.
Occupying Fondor wasn’t an option.
No … it would turn into Corellia, but worse. Worlds looked at Corellia, bruised but still Confederate, and might even be emboldened enough by the cocky defiance to try to emulate it. Fondor might do that while tying up hundreds of thousands of troops and their vessels. Caedus intended to make an example of Fondor, the sort that said Don’t try this again.
Torching Kashyyyk should have announced that, but the human majority on many planets probably took more notice of what happened to their own related species in nice clean cities.
He was among the scattered ships now. The light level in his cockpit—the light from the distant sun at his back—dipped slightly.
He couldn’t see anything on his instruments.
He couldn’t feel anything near him beyond the general oppressive weight of warships preparing for battle.
Remember what happened last time. Caedus wouldn’t be caught twice. If he leaned slightly to one side, the reflection at his six often appeared on the viewscreen in front of him. He shifted in his seat, but there was nothing.
If I jump at every shadow now, he’s got me. Ludicrous.
The next moment, the sherrnkkk of tearing fiberplast vibrated through the airframe and his chest, and he was flung to port, spinning out of control. Something had hit him. He hadn’t clipped anything through careless flying. He was too experienced, too good. He punched the StealthX into a short burn to stop the roll and peeled away under the ships to put some distance between him and whatever had rammed him.
Obviously—he couldn’t see it. No point sending a distress signal; this wasn’t something to share with the fleet again. He accelerated, trying to get some edge, looking for what wasn’t there: stars.
He was straining to find a dark area of obscured stars, the only way he could spot a fighter that was as camouflaged and undetectable as his own.
I’ve been hunted by a StealthX before, Luke. You think I’m stupid?
If he couldn’t see Luke, he would maneuver where Luke couldn’t detect him.
He wasn’t going to get in the same position of not being able to use his cannon as he had with Mara. He’d risk being hit by fragments. He didn’t have far to run for help if he got a slow decompression. This time, he’d use what he’d learned.
For the first time, though, he began to wonder if it was Luke out there.
Ben?
Caedus hadn’t felt anyone. Luke—he could always sense Luke. But Ben had taken to Force hiding instantly. Mara had managed it for critical moments and nearly killed him, but this smacked of Ben.
Bang.
Something clipped him from underneath the fuselage this time, shaking his teeth. He corrected course. He didn’t need instruments to tell him he had a breach somewhere. When he looped again, he caught sight of a thin trail of escaping vapor or fluid, probably coolant. StealthXs had traded shielding for sensor negation; they still had pretty tough skins in collisions, but hitting another vessel at these speeds normally tore off parts and ended unhappily.
This was incredibly precise wingtip ramming, or staggering luck twice in a row. And he was no longer undetectable. He had a vapor trail.
He opened a comm channel. There was no point trying for a meld, after all. The StealthX’s comm system had seen more use today than it had in its entire service history.
“Face me, and let’s finish it,” he said.
Ben, or Luke? If it’s Luke, then he’s got new tricks. It could even be Jaina, if Ben’s teaching everyone to shut down in the Force.
I don’t care.
“Come about and head for the orbitals,” said Luke’s voice. “You’ll make it. Then land, and we’ll talk.”
Caedus headed for the Anakin, wondering just how far Luke would go to force him to land. The odds were different now. This wasn’t like Kavan. Caedus had a fleet right next door.
“Aren’t you going to open fire?”
There was flash of blackness in the cockpit as the pursuing vessel blocked the sun for a moment. Luke’s presence faded back into the Force like a sunrise. “If I wanted to kill you, I could have done it several times over by now.”
“You think a stern talking-to, deprogramming, and the love of a good family will put me right again?”
“I’m prepared to try. You’d be amazed.”
Caedus was drawing Luke deeper into the fleet assembly area. Luke seemed to be simply hanging a wing-breadth off his tail, a suicidal tactic for anyone else.
“You’re going to have to shoot me down to stop me,” said Caedus.
“I always learn from history.”
“Try—ahh.” Caedus struggled to correct the StealthX as the damaged starboard wing cannon broke away. The escaping vapor was speckled with round droplets now. “Did you do that?”
Chunkk. The port cannon ripped free.
“You could retaliate,” said Luke, “and we’ll both end up dead. Come about and head back toward Fondor.”
Caedus was coming up on the fleet auxiliaries with their replenishment conduits strung between ships. If he could alert his anti-air batteries on the frigates, he could lead Luke’s StealthX between them and trust to the gunners’ timing.
“I’m not your father, Luke, and I don’t need to be redeemed,” said Caedus.
Luke reacted; it stung him, and Caedus actually hadn’t meant it to. He felt the flinch.
“Mara told me that about Lumiya.”
The name made Caedus flinch this time. “She was right, Luke.”
Pinpoints of light picked out maintenance pods moving over ships’ hulls. Caedus was preparing for a feint and a dash into the Anakin’s hangar bay now. Luke was too smart to mess around in the heart of the GA Fleet; Niathal must have done a deal. Caedus was being herded toward something here. He was being set up.
Luke hadn’t mentioned Mara’s death. Odd: he either had something worse planned for Caedus, or he didn’t think he was responsible. The ax waiting to fall kept getting bigger. Fett hadn’t come after him, either, and if one thing was certain, it was that he would find a way of getting at him.
But not this time.
Luke’s StealthX nudged him again from behind—how? Caedus couldn’t see. Force push? Something metallic inside the fuselage shrieked. He had a sense of someone rummaging furiously in the drives as if looking for a dropped hydrospanner, throwing fragments into the coils. He’s ripping the thing apart—
Caedus tried to block Luke in the Force and suddenly got an idea of just how much power Luke could muster. His seat shot forward, sheared off the runners, tipped to one side, and he hit the console at an angle before he could buffer the collision with the Force. Something cracked in his chest. Pain flared, stopping his breathing. Then he was aware of brilliant white light coming right at him. In the moments before he managed to veer off to starboard, almost blinded, he got a glimpse of a StealthX’s uneven outline with two grappling arms extended, and the sense of a Jedi other than Luke.
They’d tried to cripple the StealthX and grab him, airframe and all, right in the middle of the fleet. Brazen; incredible. He’d never allow anyone but his own apprentice to fly a StealthX again, not even an ordinary pilot. Luke was still close behind, feeling as if he were actually leaning on his shoulder; Caedus switched to raw instinct. He looped aro
und, weaving between cruisers spaced at regular intervals—someone must have picked him up on visual by now, surely?—and then maneuvered to line up the auxiliaries with the Anakin Solo, accelerating. He’d either hit it right or he’d crash, but if the other StealthX tried to take him at this velocity from a head-on intercept it’d rip them both apart.
Caedus aimed right at the fleet auxiliary replenishing a landing craft. It was crewed by civilians, merchant fleet, noncombatants; it had only a light cannon for self-defense. The long connection tunnel was actually an air lock extender, a quick and easy way to transfer supplies without docking shuttles, and there’d be crew working in it. Luke was right on his tail.
Smashing through it would damage the StealthX badly, but it would rip the tunnel apart, and there’d be deaths.
Let’s see who blinks first.
Caedus realized nobody could see any of the StealthXs. Whatever fluid he was losing had vented completely. The auxiliaries couldn’t even pick them up on collision alarms.
Do it.
The Anakin Solo loomed behind it.
“Don’t—” Luke could see what he was doing, all right.
“I’m past caring,” said Caedus, lying.
You’ll peel off rather than risk clipping that … killing workers … Caedus thought.
I’ll live with it.
The orange tunnel rushed up to meet him faster than he expected and he jerked the yoke back. Nothing snagged him; he didn’t feel it, anyway. He couldn’t look back. But he felt Luke’s moment of horror at a near hit, buying him seconds that he needed to shoot underneath the Star Destroyer and come back along its length toward one of the hangar decks.
“Anakin Solo, emergency landing, damaged StealthX One-One—open Five-Alpha Hangar—”
He could have sworn he snapped off the tip of a comm mast. He was holding the fighter steady as much by the Force as by its controls, and trying to slow it with the Force as well, because the braking burn wasn’t enough. He had to drop into that slot just right or he’d take the section out with him.
I could have activated the transponder, let them track me for the last few seconds, but I can’t pinpoint the Jedi—
Too late.
Caedus stopped thinking and felt. He was braking with everything he had. Coming out of the blackness of space, the hangar lights were sudden and blinding, and then he realized they were sparks. He was skidding across the hangar deck. The bulkhead filled his view; the arrester baffle caught him. He was flung against what felt like a permacrete wall. As the lights around dimmed and he couldn’t see through the canopy any longer, he had a foolish moment of thinking he was dying.
No, you’ve done that. Doesn’t feel like this.
It was the automatic flame-retardant foam coating the fighter. The airframe was completely still; he wasn’t lodged in a bulkhead. He inhaled sharply, cursed a broken rib, and set about trying to heal it, eyes closed, while he waited for the fire party to decide he wasn’t going to explode, and crack the canopy from the outside.
After a few moments, the light level increased. The foam was dispersing, and the canopy opened.
“Sir, I hope your insurance covers this …”
Say the right thing. The Jacen Solo thing. Show them you’re not a madman.
“I swerved to avoid a Jedi,” Caedus said. “I didn’t get his number. Give me a hand, will you?”
They were expecting him to rage at them for some imagined shortcoming, he could tell. He felt their relief as he climbed out of the cockpit and slipped on the remains of the foam. When he looked back, the StealthX was a mess. He was quite upset by that.
“Quick coat of paint, sir, and you’ll never know she had a prang,” the crash crew chief said. “Med droid’s on the way.”
“At least I know who generated the phantom fleet,” Caedus said. This counter-rumor could zip around the fleet, too. Sane, humble, even humorous in adversity. “Next time I try to chase Luke Skywalker’s pranks, confiscate my passcard, will you?”
They laughed; good old Colonel Solo, one of the team, not the one who killed junior officers at all. He controlled himself sufficiently to limp back to his day cabin via the bridge, where he found that the Jedi illusion story had preceded him, and closed the hatch before letting the pent-up rage escape like steam. He looked in the mirror; a few cuts, and the eyes of a stranger, yellow, but eyes he was getting used to.
He could channel anger now. He would save its focus and momentum to take out Fondor.
GA WARSHIP OCEAN, FLEET ASSEMBLY AREA, OFF FONDOR
Niathal listened to the chatter on the bridge, caf in hand.
“He said the Jedi created a Force illusion of a huge fleet, targeted solely at him,” one of the signals officers said.
“Oh, Jedi, of course …” The junior officer of the watch was glued to the sensor screen but still managed to roll his eyes in mock realization. “Don’t you just hate it when that happens?”
Niathal believed it, but she was still waiting to hear it from Jacen’s own lips. The absence of the Fondorian fleet was troubling her; the first wave of the Imperial Remnant had dropped out of hyperspace, and she was waiting for a comm from Pellaeon. She had made up her mind. She would seek a surrender, and if Fondor declined talks, she would disable the defenses on the orbitals to allow the ground troops to land and secure them, one at a time, and then move on to begin precision attacks on the planet’s fleet bases. There was no point creating a wasteland.
And if—when—the Fondorian fleet reappeared, they’d have to get past Pellaeon, too.
And then there was Jacen Solo. Luke would have to learn to shoot to kill, he really would. She wondered if she would have fired if she’d had a lock on Jacen; she imagined her fingers curled around the yoke of an X-wing, and her thumb depressing the button, and wasn’t sure that she would.
But what do you do with a Sith? What do you do to restrain a man who has powers like Luke Skywalker, but no rules, no moral limits? It was hard to see him as simply someone who believed in benign dictatorship but whose law-and-order policy sometimes got out of hand. His otherness disturbed her. She could barely remember Palpatine’s reign, just his image everywhere, and Vader at parades on the holonews—occasionally. But she hadn’t known they were Sith. She didn’t even know then that Jedi existed. When she studied history at school, she learned about the Sith—Jedi wars by rote, but now that she could actually put it in a personal context of individuals she worked with, it had taken on a whole new meaning. She was a little alarmed by both sides. The mind influence was the most corrosive realization she’d had; how much of what she’d done was purely of her own volition? Luke could even deceive Jacen into fighting a fleet that wasn’t there.
No excuses. You knew what that leak to Luke would do. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t examine every urge you get to see if it’s really your own.
“Ma’am, Admiral Pellaeon for you.” The signals officer patched through the comm. “Visual, too.”
“Gil, you missed the warm-up act,” she said.
Pellaeon filled the holoscreen, all immaculately trimmed white mustache and charcoal-gray tunic. She saw the positive reaction of the crew; he exuded reliability. “So I hear, Cha. It’s all rather quiet down there, isn’t it?”
“I won’t say it …”
“If they have a surprise for us, we might have to find one for them.”
“Have you had a chance to peruse my new battle plan?”
“I have,” Pellaeon said. “Will it survive contact with Colonel Solo?”
Pellaeon could always lighten the mood if he put his mind to it. “Shall we see if he’s recovered sufficiently to meet us?” Niathal asked.
“Your flagship, or mine? Or even his?”
“I’ll tell him Bloodfin. He wants to keep you happy.”
“Half an hour. I’m very conscious of the lack of even a Fondorian patrol.”
A great deal was said in front of the more junior ranks, and in most cases it wasn’t politic to hint at dis
agreement with other commanders, but Niathal was putting distance between herself and Jacen, and she needed them to know it. If Luke had warned her that he was going to attempt a snatch, she might even have been able to help him, but he seemed reluctant to involve her. She wondered when he might next reappear. If he didn’t, she would have to go ahead with a hasty plan that had crystallized on the inbound jump. She would relieve Jacen of command, and order the Anakin back to base; the exact timing would depend on the progress of the operation, but it would be before the withdrawal to Coruscant. With Pellaeon, she had enough firepower to enforce it if she had to. A third of the ship’s commanders in her task force were likely to support her, and few of the others would actively oppose her.
It was still a major risk in the middle of a war, but waiting until the war was over wasn’t an option.
Tahiri Veila now appeared to be the gatekeeper for comms to Jacen, at least when he was off the bridge. “Lieutenant, is Colonel Solo well enough to transfer to Bloodfin for a senior staff session at twenty-two hundred?”
“He’s well, Admiral.” Tahiri paused and the link went quiet as if she was consulting him. “We’ll be there.”
We. She’d fallen into a flag lieutenant role, then. The more scurrilous members of the crew assumed she was a new romantic interest, but Niathal had watched the dynamics of how Jacen behaved with Ben Skywalker, and it was much more a relationship of gang boss and junior henchman. Tahiri would be his fixer, messenger, and possibly even spy. Possibly? Definitely. Jacen knew how to lead troops instinctively, but his true calling was political gamesmaster.
“What’s the estimate on the StealthX?” Niathal asked. “We’re a little short of them until Incom deliver. You might have to slum it with X-wings.”
“Operational in forty-eight hours. The workshop’s remounting cannons now.”
“Cannibalizing, no doubt. Are you going to be flying combat?”
“No, I have orders to liaise with the Imperial Remnant.”
Ah, spy. I was right. “Later, then, Lieutenant.”
Revelation Page 25
