The Rise of the Empire

by John Jackson Miller

  “Order the local authorities to put up roadblocks at every intersection—keep them penned into Highground!” she called on the comlink. “Contact ground and satellite surveillance—make sure we know where the vehicle is at all times!”

  And across the tarmac, far from the blast site, she saw something she did have direct control over: two TIE fighters, parked and waiting. “Get those in the sky,” she called out to the spaceport chief.

  “Right away, Captain!”

  “There were others with the saboteur,” Vidian said, looking back at officers heading for the TIEs. “That makes this a conspiracy. I want Skelly shot on sight, but bring the others to me!”

  Sloane hadn’t gotten a good look at the two who’d been facing the hoverbus, and she doubted anyone else had. One of the traitors had shot out the one surveillance cam covering the area; that someone had known what he or she was doing. But Skelly should stand out—and they wouldn’t get far in that monstrosity they were driving.

  “I want those renegades,” she called out to the troopers. “Now!”

  THE WAY TO CONTROL your fear of being on a ledge, Master Billaba had said, is not to think about it until you are off the ledge. Even at the time, Kanan had thought that advice could go two different ways. Off the ledge could mean you were safely inside—or it could mean you were plummeting. A lot of Jedi adages seemed to have that problem: They always assumed everything would work out.

  Kanan wasn’t assuming that at the moment. The underside of a landspeeder normally wouldn’t have offered any clearance for a hanger-on—and the Smoothride, while designed for flight, had been little more than a landspeeder for years. Taking it more than a meter off the ground sent the thing wobbling crazily off axis to the left and right. Okadiah’s drivers all knew that.

  But Skelly wasn’t one of Okadiah’s drivers. “Look out!” Kanan called forward to Hera as the machine lost altitude. Hera kicked her legs up before they brushed the mud-covered street below. Kanan, taller, felt the front of his boots smack the surface.

  Kanan strained, pulling himself upward so he could get a second handhold. Ahead, he saw Hera nimbly swinging her leg upward to catch a hanging support strut. That wasn’t an option for him—not with the whirling blades of the turbofan directly ahead. He had to shift his weight and reverse his handholds, turning himself around.

  Doing so, he saw the pursuers. Two—no, three Imperial troop transports hurtled up the dark lane in the hoverbus’s wake, occasionally slowed by oncoming traffic. Skelly wasn’t bothered by the traffic at all, Kanan realized: Every few seconds, the vehicle slammed off something to the left or right—or pitched upward, having simply climbed over its obstacle. Kanan had to heave his body upward each time the machine came back down to keep from being scraped off. But there wasn’t any choice except to hang on—not with Imperials behind and Hera in danger up ahead.

  When the first blaster shot from the twin-cannon turret on the lead transport struck a few meters shy of the hoverbus, Kanan had had enough. Seeing a slight recess just inside the rear of the underchassis, he pitched his legs upward and caught his boots beneath the lower flange. That allowed him to reach off to a more secure handhold on the left, leaving the turbofan housing behind.

  With as much care as was possible in the whipping wind, Kanan felt around in the darkness, then began working his way backward across the Smoothride’s bottom, feeling a bit like a mynock who’d lost suction. Groaning against the strain, he heaved his body across the opening of the recess to a place he could cling to just the inside of the rear of the undercarriage.

  He waited there, breathing hard, as the hoverbus pitched and rolled. Waiting was excruciating—but he had to, for the right moment. Finally it came. The hoverbus struck something hard on the left, causing it to tip almost onto its right side. Seeing air opening up between him and the ground racing beneath, Kanan rolled his body around and onto the rear bumper.

  This time, the Smoothride did slam against the ground when it righted itself—and Kanan began to fall backward, off the bumper.

  “I’ve got you, Kanan!”

  Kanan looked up, astonished. Someone did have him. Skelly was hanging out the shattered back window, his bionic right hand clasped around Kanan’s belt. Skelly screamed in agony as Kanan scrambled over his shoulders and through the open pane.

  Kanan hit the back floor of the hoverbus, wheezing. But he couldn’t stay. The hoverbus had struck the street—anyone beneath would have been dislodged. “We’ve got to go back for Hera!” he called out. Then he blinked at Skelly. “Who’s driving?”

  Before he got an answer, the Smoothride again bounced over something, sending Kanan sliding on his back up the aisle as the vehicle tipped downward.

  Upside down next to the driver’s seat, he looked up. “Sorry,” Hera said, grinning. “Still getting the hang of it. But welcome aboard!”

  Kanan rolled over and scrambled to his feet. He saw Skelly had somehow made it forward, clearly in great pain but unable to rest. The shorter man was sitting in the stairwell of the open left doorway, his right arm wrapped around the support rail while his other hand fished around in his bag. A moment later, Skelly slung a small pipe bomb out the door.

  The landspeeders parked along the left side of the street went up in an inferno that lit the area, upending them. The shock wave caught the rear section of the Smoothride, tipping the hoverbus halfway onto its right side as it hurtled toward an intersection. Kanan grabbed for the support post as Hera ably got control, using the momentum to take the vehicle down a side street.

  Skelly just grinned, showing teeth broken and blackened. He reached into his bag again.

  “Can you make him stop that?” Hera called back.

  “Happily,” Kanan said. He stepped over and yanked Skelly’s satchel from him.

  “Hey!” Skelly said, reaching for it—and nearly tumbling out the open door.

  Kanan grabbed him—and immediately regretted it. “I should—”

  Before he could finish, blasterfire shattered the windows on the left side. Kanan ducked, trying to protect his head from the flying shards. Through the open door, he could see where the blasts were coming from: one of the Recon transports, ambushing from a side street. A second later the windows on the right exploded with fire coming from the opposite direction.

  “We’re in a shooting gallery!” Kanan yelled. They had to get out of here—but that meant finding out where they were. Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he pulled his blaster and scrambled atop one of the seats.

  It was almost impossible, watching the world whizzing by in darkness. Okadiah had never gotten the vehicle’s navigation system working: Who needed it, for runs back and forth to the bar? But Kanan searched in desperation for any landmark.

  “There!” The odd shape of Transcept’s World Window Plaza, lit from within and without as always, whisked past. “Go right,” Kanan yelled. “The old miners’ highway. Let’s make for The Pits!”

  The Smoothride lurched. Hera barely slowed the vehicle—and yet somehow it easily made the turn onto the entrance ramp. The old elevated thoroughfare had the benefit of limited access: Now, rather than passing side streets with Imperial gunners, they were passing buildings and rooftops on either side. They were hemmed in, true—but there was very little traffic to run into on the highway anymore, and Hera opened up the throttle. Kanan scrambled off the seat and ran toward the back.

  The Recon transports were racing along behind, he saw. He removed Skelly’s bag from his shoulder. There were still close to a dozen improvised explosive devices inside. Now that they were out of traffic, the odds of doing more than random property damage with them were better. He called back to Skelly, still in the middle of the hoverbus. “How do I activate these?”

  “Plug in the leads and let it rip!”

  Pulling out a cylinder not much larger than a shot glass, Kanan quickly snapped together the two loose wires attached to it. Looking back, he took aim. He hurled it out the rear window and watched as
the jetwash took it, whisking it toward the oncoming Imperials.

  Fire blossomed before the lead Recon transport. Beneath it, the highway structure, already stressed from years of quakes, shook violently. The first transport flipped trying to avoid the blast, sending the stormtroopers riding outside it hurtling away—but that was better for them, as one after another the rear vehicles slammed into it.

  “Three for one!” Kanan yelled, pumping his fist.

  “We’ve got bigger problems!” Skelly yelled.

  Kanan looked forward, startled. He hadn’t expected clear driving all the way ahead, but it was kilometers from another on-ramp. “There shouldn’t be anyone out in front of us yet!”

  But before he could run forward to look, light blazed outside the left and right windows, blinding him. Feeling a sudden rush of heat, he realized it wasn’t searchlights flooding the hoverbus, or small-arms fire from the Imperials. A high whine passed overhead. “Is that—”

  “TIE!” Hera yelled.

  The starfighter rocketed over them, a white bulb sandwiched between black hexagonal wings. Kanan looked back to see the twin lights of its ion engines receding in the distance—only to feel the world move again as a second fighter, its level flight path perpendicular to the highway, began strafing them from above.

  Hera banked the Smoothride violently, sending her riders tumbling. There was no protection from the TIE’s attack—except for the highway itself. The Smoothride’s engines objecting, Hera tilted the hoverbus ninety degrees, riding not on the road surface but rather the left retaining wall of the elevated highway. The TIE, which had been aiming low for its pass, found its cannon fire pummeling duracrete rather than its intended target.

  Hera twisted the Smoothride back to level again. The TIE shrieked overhead and began to loop—and now the first attacker was back, rocketing up the highway toward them. This time, Hera slammed on the brakes, sending the hoverbus into a spin—and began racing back in the other direction. The maneuver closed the distance with the TIE that had been tailing them such that its shots went harmlessly overhead.

  Kanan scrambled to his feet. Hera was the best driver he had ever seen, coaxing things he’d never imagined possible out of the Smoothride. But this couldn’t go on—especially not as they were now racing back toward the Recon transports, piled up and blazing. Something had to be done.

  Kanan ran forward to the front of the vehicle. Skidding to a stop, he dived to the floor right at Hera’s legs.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Hera asked, bewildered.

  Kanan reached past her feet for something beneath the driver’s seat. “This thing used to fly, remember?” He yanked loose a brown pack with straps on it—Okadiah’s ancient parachute.

  “You’re jumping out on us?”

  “Hardly!” Getting to his feet, Kanan looked to the ceiling, amidships. “Cut the throttle. When I give the signal, let loose!” He looked back. “Skelly! I’m going to need your help!”

  “Great!” Skelly looked at him tiredly. “I’m going to need medication.” But he got to his feet.

  In the ceiling at the exact center of the vehicle was the emergency exit to the roof: not a bad thing on a planet prone to quakes and mudslides. When Skelly reached him, Kanan was balanced on one of the seat backrests, trying to force open the rusty hatch. “I need you to get up here and hold me!”

  The second TIE fighter was making a run along the highway’s length when Kanan emerged on the roof. There was no good chance of simply throwing a bomb at it, he’d realized. The wind took him fully as he stood. Skelly had wedged himself in the opening behind Kanan and was holding on to the back of his belt. Kanan was facing down a TIE, which was racing toward him with its lasers ready to fire while he had no weapon at all.

  But he had a plan.

  “Hera, now!”

  Behind, Skelly yelled the call down to Hera. She hit the accelerator—just as Kanan activated the parachute. Attached to nothing, the drogue caught the wind fully and ballooned backward into the air—opening wide into the TIE fighter’s path. The fighter veered right, only to find ropes and canvas snagging across its starboard solar panel. Tangled, tumbling, and blinded, the distracted starfighter pilot missed seeing the microwave tower in his path.

  “Whoa!” Kanan said, nearly losing his footing as the ship exploded spectacularly. One down. But there was the other one to go, he saw as he turned to look forward. And between the hoverbus and the TIE fighter Kanan saw the smoking pileup that had been the Recon transports. His earlier dirty work lay before them, now, a barrier—and if Hera tried to do another 180-degree turn, he feared he’d go flying. Worse still, there were stormtroopers on the deck of the highway, having emerged from the wreckage. Small-arms fire was flashing—and they were racing straight toward it!

  “Pull me back!”

  Skelly wasn’t in any shape to move Kanan anywhere. But he did lose his hold on the roof opening, falling down into the hoverbus, causing Kanan to tumble backward toward the hole. Catching himself, he struggled to turn himself around and lower his legs inside the hatch.

  He heard something from below. “Hera says to hang on!”

  Kanan, halfway in the hatch with both hands on the roof, blinked. “Hera, what are you—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, the hoverbus barreled through the stormtroopers on the elevated pavement before them, sending several tumbling over the side. Sure that the hoverbus would collide with the smoking wreckage, Kanan put his arm before his face—

  —and felt a tremendous surge beneath him as the hoverbus struck the impediment. Struck it, and overtopped it, its repulsorlift jets using the debris as a makeshift ramp. The Smoothride launched into the air—and came fully to life, its ancient engines remembering what they once had been able to do.

  Hera had made the vehicle fly! To the stunned surprise of Kanan—and certainly to the shock of the surviving TIE pilot, who veered to avoid a collision, only to crash catastrophically into a smokestack.

  The Smoothride stayed aloft, leaving the elevated highway and buffeting over rooftops. Kanan couldn’t believe his eyes. Slipping inside the roof opening, he landed roughly and rushed forward to Hera. “This thing hasn’t flown in years!”

  “You’ve got to talk to it right,” she said, smiling.

  “I thought I was a good pilot. But you—you’re amazing.”

  “Thank you. But we should probably go somewhere.”

  Kanan blinked. “Oh, yeah.” He pointed. “Back south. The Pits, out near the cantina.”

  She glanced at him with concern. “We can’t just drive up anywhere. They’ve got satellites. They’ll find this thing. We’ll have to find a place to ditch it.”

  “That,” Kanan reassured her, “won’t be a problem.”

  WORDS COULD change things. Kanan had been taught that by the Jedi, and it was certainly true when it came to a short document generated by Minerax Consulting, which had changed the face of Gorse four years before the fall of the Republic.

  Thorilide mining in the system, before then, had taken place entirely on the surface of Gorse in the wide, drenched plains south of the megalopolis. Then came Minerax’s survey, projecting that no more thorilide deposits of any scale remained on either side of the planet. By the time the mines started seeing proof of it, the smart credits had already moved, with producers establishing operations on Cynda. In the space of a year, the strip mines that came right up to the edge of town went from work zones under the big lights to dumping grounds in the dark. The last mine on Gorse closed the day the Clone Wars ended.

  So many of the places existed—Okadiah called them “Gorse’s clogged pores”—that Kanan couldn’t imagine a better place to hide the hoverbus. The endless junkyard was home to many abandoned craft, large and small, including several Smoothrides; it was where Okadiah had found the thing to begin with. Kanan had realized it was the only place they could go, after this long and difficult day, to have any chance of following one of Obi-Wan’s directives.


  “Avoid detection,” Kanan mumbled.

  Sliding out from under the left side of the dashboard, Hera looked up at him. “What?”

  He leaned against the driver’s seat. “Nothing.” He shrugged. “I was just thinking—so much for keeping a low profile.”

  “Well, I may have killed your bus,” Hera said, dousing her light. “Forget flying—I don’t think it’ll run again.”

  Kanan watched her close the equipment panel. The hoverbus had so many dents and blaster scores, he was amazed the thing hadn’t spontaneously combusted.

  Hera walked past the driver’s seat, her arms sagging a little. She looked tired. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a day like this.”

  “Stick around Gorse,” Kanan said, following her down the aisle. “Every day’s a trip to the zoo.”

  Hera confronted Skelly, who was two rows back, nursing his wounds. Her tone was chilly. “What could you possibly have been thinking?”

  Skelly stared off in a medicinal haze. “My escape route was all planned. Your hoverbus was in the way.”

  “In the way of what?” Kanan asked. “Careening into the wall, instead?”

  “That’s not it,” Hera said. “I mean taking us down a main avenue—and then throwing bombs willy-nilly. You were almost a bigger menace than the Empire.”

  Skelly looked hurt. “I’m trying to save people here. I tried to minimize casualties.”

  “You sound like you’re in a war,” Kanan said.

  “I am,” Skelly said. “It’s never ended.” He waved his prosthetic hand around.

  Hera shook her head, and then she turned away. “Vidian killed Gord. I saw it.”

  Kanan nodded. “I guess he couldn’t live without Lal.”

  “He wanted justice,” Hera said in a soft voice, staring at the wall. “But expecting the Empire to prosecute one of its own is—”

  “Dumb?” Skelly said, looking abruptly at her.