Darksaber

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Ackbar's image nodded deeply. "I must bring the remainder of the fleet up to full combat status. This is just the beginning."

  "Don't worry--we'll get Madine and his team out of there," Wedge said. "And we'll try to wreck that Hutt superweapon while we're at it."

  All personnel were summoned from their sleep periods. Lights increased on every deck of the Yavaris. Troops ran up and down the corridors, mustering. All during the war-gaming exercises, the fleet had remained coy, hiding their real purpose and readiness. Now, though, the ships dropped all pretense and ignored the Hutts who were undoubtedly watching from the greenish planet below.

  The New Republic war-gaming fleet split into two separate prongs and established their course vectors, drifting away. Ackbar and his ships funneled down to starpoints, plunging into hyperspace, while Wedge ordered the Yavaris to proceed at full speed toward the Hoth Asteroid Belt and Madine's distress signal--hoping they would get there in time.

  YAVIN 4

  CHAPTER 45

  The seventeen Star Destroyers under the command of Vice Admiral Pellaeon sliced out of hyperspace in a well-ordered fleet. Their perfect formation demonstrated the precision and unrelenting dedication of the new Imperial forces Daala had forged.

  Standing on the bridge of the Firestorm--the Star Destroyer that Admiral Daala herself had commanded during her double cross of the war criminal Harrsk--Pellaeon watched the green jewel of the jungle moon approaching, a living emerald sphere dwarfed by the enormous gas giant Yavin, whose gravity tugged at his attacking fleet of ships.

  He stared with narrowed eyes out the viewports of the bridge tower. He had trimmed his gray mustache, made certain that his hair lay neatly beneath his vice admiral's cap. He brushed down his uniform to present a more imposing image, a leader for his fleet on their victorious mission.

  It invigorated him to be in command of a worthy ship again, not the small Victory'-class Star Destroyer ... though even now Colonel Cronus would be using the fleet of crimson ships to cause significant destruction throughout the Rebel-aligned worlds.

  Pellaeon thought of his days in command of the Chimaera serving Grand Admiral Thrawn and how close they had come to defeating the Rebellion once and for all. Now, with Admiral Daala they had that chance again--and Pellaeon would not waste it.

  "Orbital insertion successful, sir," the navigator said from her station.

  Pellaeon continued to marvel at the new women officers in Daala's fleet; they seemed to serve with even more dedication than the other soldiers. "Any sign of defenses?" he asked. The jungle moon seemed too quiet, too vulnerable. He was astounded that such an important site to the Rebellion would have no apparent defenses whatsoever.

  "None detected, Vice Admiral," the tactical chief said dubiously. Apparently the man felt the same concerns.

  "All right," Pellaeon said, moving to the next phase. "Deploy the jamming net. We need to get in place and be operational before the Jedi sorcerers can send a detailed signal to their military."

  The seventeen Star Destroyers shot out clusters of small satellite transmitters that jockeyed into position around the green moon, forming an interlinked electromagnetic web that disrupted any messages the Jedi trainees might send. The jamming satellites took only moments to lock themselves into position, transmitting an all-clear signal back to the Firestorm.

  Pellaeon spoke into the ship-to-ship comm unit, and his voice rang through his fleet. "Strike teams prepare," he said. "We launch in five minutes. All Terrain Scout Transports and jungle assault vehicles will be the first wave. TIE fighters will provide air cover.”

  "This is a relatively unpopulated world, and it shouldn't take us long to finish here. Our victory on Yavin 4 today will be the first large step in the rebirth of a new and even stronger Empire."

  Pellaeon signed off and stood against the bridge railing. He was pleased to be in command of an operation sure to succeed, rather than another doomed last-gasp attempt at Imperial supremacy. Outwardly calm but thrumming with energy inside, Pellaeon pondered the immense Imperial strength Admiral Daala had placed under his control. He didn't expect much resistance from a few untested Jedi trainees.

  Back at the nexus mustering station in deep space, the Super Star Destroyer Night Hammer prepared for launch. Admiral Daala spent the last frantic moments ensuring that everything had been placed in perfect order for her own decisive assault.

  By now Vice Admiral Pellaeon's fleet should already be attacking the Jedi moon, and she longed to be there with him, taking personal satisfaction with each slaughtered Jedi, each destroyed Rebel building, each burning tree, but she would not alter her plans now. She knew this was the way to strike the greatest psychological blow to the Rebels. Her initial assault had to be an absolutely crushing defeat of the Rebel target.

  Right now, simultaneous with this major assault, Colonel Cronus was causing a wealth of damage with surgical hit-and-run strikes at various spots in the galaxy. His swarm of crimson Victory'-class ships would roar in with lightning speed, blow up the most convenient targets, then flee into hyperspace again ... leaving destruction, confusion, and panic in their wake.

  The jungle moon of Yavin with its Jedi training center would be the true symbolic victory, though. Daala smiled, and her green eyes took on a faraway look as she imagined the unskilled wizards under attack by Pellaeon's hopelessly overwhelming forces; she then imagined the despair they would feel on seeing her enormous ship arrive--like a second mortal blow. Not a rescue, not reinforcements, but a black Super Star Destroyer. Their hopelessness would increase tenfold.

  After today, when Daala departed in triumph, the jungle moon of Yavin 4 must be no more than a cinder. Every last Jedi student had to be killed, their bodies strewn about the burning jungle as an unmistakable message to those who would still dare resist the Empire.

  As her last order before launching, Daala took the time to rechristen her dark ship, adding a letter to call the Super Star Destroyer the Knight Hammer, just to prove that she did indeed have a sense of humor ... so long as it involved the ultimate defeat of the Rebel Alliance.

  CHAPTER 46

  Dorsk 81 and Kyp Durron arrived back at Yavin 4, broadcasting their constant alarm. They landed their Imperial shuttle near the Great Temple and called the remaining Jedi trainees to arms--barely an hour before Pellaeon's forces arrived.

  Dorsk 81's stomach had been a hard knot since their embattled escape from Admiral Daala's staging area; he had felt even worse upon seeing the apathetic refusal of his homeworld to accept the possibility of an impending threat. The censure of Dorsk 80 and Dorsk 82 had struck to his core, affecting him even more than his choice to become a Jedi. But he .was a Jedi. He could not change that, and he vowed to be the best his potential would allow, as Master Skywalker had taught him.

  Dorsk 81 and Kyp stepped out of the stolen Imperial shuttle to total silence. The humid jungles seemed smothered with a blanket of tension and anticipation.

  "Where is everyone?" Kyp said. "We've got to find Master Skywalker."

  Dorsk 81 looked up at the enormous stepped pyramid where the Jedi praxeum had been established. His face grew calm, and he closed his yellow eyes, reaching out with the Force until he sensed the group of Jedi trainees across a narrow tributary of the river at one of the other temple ruins.

  "Over there," he said. "At the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster."

  Kyp nodded, his dark eyes flashing. "We have to warn them and begin preparations."

  They rushed through narrow jungle paths, crossing the river to the tall Massassi ruin, a cylindrical tower made of crumbling stones, much in need of repair. Dorsk 81 saw the Jedi trainees working together, nearly thirty in all.

  He recognized Kirana Ti, the warrior woman from Dathomir and the older, somewhat-confused hermit from Bespin, Streen, working to haul fallen rocks from a collapsed portion of the temple. They used Jedi powers to lift broken slabs out of the way, and to keep themselves safe from the pebbles that continued to shower down as they removed
debris. Kam Solusar, the hard-bitten Jedi veteran, sternly watched the activities, directing the work of the lesser-trained Jedi students who had arrived at the praxeum in the last year.

  The silvery-haired Jedi scholar, Tionne, spotted them first. "Kyp," she called. "Dorsk 81. You're back! Good, we could use some help." Tionne smiled, and her mother-of-pearl eyes lit up. She explained breathlessly, gesturing with small, quick movements of her delicate hands. "With all the new students arriving, we had to find additional living quarters. This old temple is--” Then she finally registered the alarm and emotional turmoil emanating from them.

  "What is it?" Kam Solusar said, breaking through the conversation. Kirana Ti stepped beside him, tall and imposing in her reptilian armor.

  "Where's Master Skywalker?" Kyp said. His voice cracked, and the words came out in a cold, strained tone.

  "He and Callista left more than a week ago," Tionne said. "It's only us here. I'm directing a few training sessions while he's gone but--”

  “The Jedi academy is in great danger!" Dorsk 81 blurted. "Admiral Daala has assembled a new Imperial fleet, and Yavin 4 is their target this time. The Star Destroyers could be here any moment."

  "No," Streen said, shaking his frizzy gray head and blinking red-rimmed eyes as he gazed up into the pale blue sky. "No. They're already here."

  As the old hermit said this, Dorsk 81 also felt a brooding oppressiveness far overhead, like a stain of starless darkness across the canvas of space.

  "Look," one of the new trainees said, extending a clawed finger as her bright bluish frill rose up in alarm. A snakelike hiss came from her wide, scaly mouth.

  A shower of bright streaks danced through the upper atmosphere toward the jungles--lines traced in fire by sharp fingernails made of lava.

  "Landers and ground assault vehicles,” Kam Solusar said.

  "We must prepare to fight them," Kirana Ti insisted.

  "But Master Skywalker isn't here!" cried one of the new trainees.

  Kyp Durron drew himself up, though he was smaller in stature than many of those gathered at the ruined temple. "Master Skywalker will not always be here to help whenever we are in trouble. Dorsk 81 and I have already sounded the alarm, and New Republic forces should be on their way. For now, though, we must defend the academy ourselves."

  "But there are so few of us," a birdlike trainee squawked, his hard beak gaping open, then clacking together.

  "Yes," Kyp said, "so they won't expect much resistance. We'll have to prove them wrong."

  Dorsk 81 stood beside his friend. "We are Jedi Knights. Remember what Master Skywalker has taught you: There is no try."

  The Imperial landers crunched into the jungle not far away, then deployed giant vehicles from drop shells.

  "Here comes the air strike," Kyp said, just as a flurry of black dots in the air screamed closer with a roar of twin ion engines, a fall wing of TIE fighters plus a strong complement of TIE bombers.

  "Take cover," Kirana Ti shouted. With a forceful motion she pushed Streen toward two mammoth blocks of stone that had toppled from the front of the ancient temple.

  The TIE fighters swooped overhead as the Jedi trainees scrambled for shelter. Laser cannons shot from the Imperial ships, setting tall trees alight and blasting rubble from the old temple. The TIE fighters fanned out, uncertain of their target as they searched for the Jedi Knights hiding in the jungle.

  TIE bombers cruised low, dropping concussion missiles that exploded into pillars of fire and smoke above the thick jungle canopy, splintering Massassi trees that had lived for a thousand years. But once the first wave of TIE fighters spotted the trainees at the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster, the forces concentrated their firepower on the far side of the river.

  "We don't have any weapons," Streen said as he covered his head.

  "We have the Force," Dorsk 81 replied.

  Three TIE fighters roared in, laser cannons shooting continuously as they approached in a triangular formation. The warrior woman Kirana Ti stood out in the open near the piles of rubble the Jedi trainees had so meticulously removed from the ruins. The TIE fighters saw her and fired. Ignoring her own danger, she gestured with her hand and, using the Force as a sling, she snatched one of the squarish boulders cut by Massassi slaves thousands of years before--and hurled it with all her Jedi strength.

  The stone flew through the air and smashed one of the TIE fighter's flat power arrays. It careened to one side, and the pilot could not regain control. The ship exploded in the trees on the far side of the temple.

  Kam Solusar stood on the other side of the clearing and, using the Force, he too began hurling rocks at the remaining two TIE fighters. The boulders battered the Imperial ships, smashing through the cockpits. All the Jedi trainees had the idea now, and a blast of sharp rock shards hammered the two fleeing ships out of the sky. Both exploded in midflight to the cheers of the embattled Jedi students.

  The second wave of four TIE fighters came immediately after. Streen, however, did not pick up rocks or other weapons with the Force. He used the air itself, moving molecules in the atmosphere to summon storm currents and scramble the air attack line with a wall of wind that achieved hurricane strength. The gusting currents buffeted the TIE fighters right and left, forcing the pilots to concentrate on simply flying and not allowing them to fire a single shot.

  Streen looked up into the sky, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his hair wafting about his head. He held his trembling fingers outstretched and then brought his hands together symbolically, slamming his hands of wind so that the heavy crosscurrents smashed the four TIE fighters together. They crashed into a single knot of molten wreckage that tumbled out of the air.

  A pair of TIE bombers came in low from behind, barely visible over the treetops but moving at full speed. Kyp shouted a warning. The first TIE bomber cruised over the temple and let three concussion missiles fall out of its bombing bay--but Kyp reached out, staring at the ship, and holding his palm flat and upright. He pushed upward with the Force, visualizing the three dropped concussion missiles, and nudged the explosives back up into the bomber's bay ... where they detonated.

  The second TIE bomber dropped a single missile and then, seeing the fate of his partner, shot off at top speed. Dorsk 81 used the Force to pick up a boulder, which he hurled with all his might. The flying rock closed the distance to the bomber, striking the second cockpit and damaging its attitude control. The TIE bomber spun through the air and landed roughly in the jungle underbrush on the far side of the river.

  Its lone concussion missile struck the ground nearby and detonated, sending a rumble through the jungle that shook the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster. Loose stone blocks slid down the walls in a shower of dust, crashing around the Jedi trainees.

  "This old structure won't last much longer,” Kyp shouted. "We've got to get back to the Great Temple . That's more defensible."

  Another wave of TIE fighters soared in with twice the numbers of the previous strike, and the Jedi trainees gave no argument as they sprinted away from the smaller temple and headed into the underbrush. Overhead, more lines of fire appeared as Pellaeon's seventeen Star Destroyers launched another wave of ground assault machinery to finish mopping up.

  As they reached the giant pyramid that had once been fortified as a Rebel base, Dorsk 81 saw that the trainees' desperate defense at the crumbling temple had served a secondary purpose he had not expected--a diversion, a decoy for the Imperial forces who now thought the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster was the Jedi stronghold. The TIE fighters and bombers concentrated their forces there.

  Despite the fear that rattled through him, Dorsk 81 felt an exhilaration and a camaraderie with the other Jedi. He was fighting for something meaningful. All his life, as yet another duplicate on a world of clones, he had never felt he had a choice in his destiny. Everything had been preset for him until he climbed out of the rut that had been dug in the Dorsk bloodline. Now he was a Jedi Knight--his own choice. And he had just proved he could be good at it.r />
  The long horizontal door in front of the hangar levels of the Great Temple hung halfway open, a dark mouth with thin cool air breathing out from the shaded interior. The Jedi trainees ducked down and rushed inside, hoping that the millennia-old walls would shelter them from the brunt of the Imperial attack.

  Tionne rushed past Kyp Durron, who grabbed her arm and shouted, "Go to the communications center! Contact the New Republic and let them know we're already under attack. The Imperials struck faster than we expected." Tionne nodded, her pale porcelain face so brittle that it looked as if it might shatter.

  Across the river TIE fighters circled over the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster, firing repeatedly with laser cannons. Black smoke etched the air.

  Kyp looked toward their stolen Imperial shuttle still on the grassy landing grid. He gestured toward it as Dorsk 81 headed for the relative safety of the deep hangar levels.

  "I'm going back to the ship," he said. "We've got some weapons there. It's all we have."

  Dorsk 81 hesitated, then followed as Kyp sprinted across the clearing without looking behind him. Dorsk 81 paused when a clanking noise crashed through the outer rim of trees, and the trapezoidal head of an Imperial AT-ST scout walker shoved its way out of the forest. It thundered twice with its mechanical legs, finding support on the rough ground. The head swiveled, its laser cannons targeted, aiming at Kyp as he ran.

  Dorsk 81 froze for just an instant. He saw what was going to happen--but he couldn't allow it. In an instinctive gesture, he released the Force; he did not restrain himself, did not channel or direct the flow, merely releasing his fear and his wish to get the scout walker away from his friend.

  A wall of invisible force slammed into the AT-ST, flattening its cockpit and crushing the walker backward into a tree.

  Kyp whirled to gawk at the smashed scout walker. Everything had happened in only a second. "Thanks," he said.

  Dorsk 81 found himself trembling. "It just came automatically," he said. "I didn't even think about it."