by Claudia Gray
But when he thought of they, he wasn’t imagining the Emperor and his admirals needing him. He imagined protecting his fellow troops, the people around him he’d already begun to think of as friends. And Nash.
And Ciena.
Although the Devastator had left the Death Star behind, the Star Destroyer’s crew had been instructed to remain linked to the station’s data feeds. The designated viewscreens were slightly to the left of Ciena’s station, so from the corner of her eye she could see the febrile surface of Yavin, an immense red gas giant. Other screens showed one of the world’s moons, Yavin 4, apparently the real location of the rebel base.
So they sent Thane away to Dantooine based on bad intel. For nothing. She longed to talk with him about the terrible events of the past couple of days. Talking with Jude had helped steady Ciena, but she still couldn’t sleep. Over and over again, in her mind’s eye, she saw Alderaan exploding.
Now she might be about to watch the death of a second world.
But this is a military target, she assured herself. No civilians will be hurt.
That explanation would make sense to her eventually. At the moment, her gut ached at the thought of seeing another planet’s destruction. It was too soon after Alderaan; her nerves were raw.
The rebels realized their doom, and they fought back—but in the most absurd way possible.
“Unbelievable,” muttered a commander standing near her duty station. “The rebels sent a handful of starfighters to target the Death Star? That little uprising must be on its last legs, if that’s all the power they can muster.”
It’s uninhabited, she reminded herself. The only people there are members of the Rebellion, the ones who are trying to start a war. They chose their path willingly. This is what war means.
Yet she thought of the animals that lived there, small innocent creatures, and even the trees—
One monitor showed X-wing fighters racing through a trench, with TIE fighters in pursuit. She wondered why they had even sent the TIEs out against such a pitiful attack. Then again, even minor damage to the station would have to be repaired. The ships zoomed past at such speed that the firefight was out of sight again in moments. Maybe another camera would pick it up.
Instead, a short time later, she saw an X-wing and a clunky old freighter headed back toward Yavin 4 at top sublight speed. Ciena reported, “Sir, the rebel ships are flying away from the Death Star.”
“Track them,” her commander said. “We will want to provide the most complete report possible for Grand Moff Tarkin.”
She continued logging every data packet that arrived from the Death Star, important or incidental. The auxiliary bridge continued its buzz of activity, but voices dropped and tasks slowed. Ciena knew everyone was waiting for the moment Yavin 4 would explode. Nausea welling inside, she attempted to brace herself for the sudden blazing light—when instead every screen connected to the Death Star went black.
Instantly. Simultaneously. Ciena realized the stream of data flowing from the station had stopped, too.
“Did the circuits fail?” someone said, checking out those monitors. He thought the screens themselves were at fault. She knew better.
“The Death Star has gone silent, sir,” she reported. “No incoming data.”
Her commander’s face took on a strange expression, both confused and angry. “That’s impossible, Lieutenant. The rebels have created some form of interference, or those fighters were sent to knock out the station’s communications.”
X-wing fighters couldn’t do that to a space station the size of the Death Star. Could they?
But the only alternative was—unthinkable.
“THAT’S IT? They don’t know anything else?”
“Try again to get through to Coruscant.”
“Every communication network is completely jammed—”
Voices echoed throughout the abandoned rebel base on Dantooine, which had become for the time being a makeshift Imperial station. Groups of officers huddled around—some still in full landing armor but most by then wearing only pieces of the plating. Although their troop commander remained in charge, for hours no orders had been given to anyone but communications officers. There was nothing for them to do but wait and be afraid.
Thane paced the length of the hall, which seemed to have been blasted from solid rock, making it feel a bit as if they were huddling in a cave. The pieces of information they’d been able to gather so far were contradictory, confusing, and ominous. Some said the Death Star had been destroyed; others claimed it was damaged and unable to communicate; still others said the news had to be false—a ploy meant to coax the rebels out of hiding so they could be more efficiently slaughtered.
Most of the soldiers in the room seemed to believe the last scenario, which had led to a lot of cursing and big talk about how when they were in charge, they’d never initiate an action like that without properly informing and preparing everyone down the chain of command. A few others protested, saying that spies could be anywhere. If even a member of the Imperial Senate as illustrious as Princess Leia Organa could turn traitor, anyone could. So this big diversion had to be kept secret until the last possible moment.
Not everyone was convinced, though. Thane had exchanged glances with a handful of others who remained tense and silent.
The Death Star can’t have been lost. It would take a dozen Star Destroyers and attack cruisers to make any impact on a station that size. The Rebel Alliance is clearly more powerful than our superior officers let us know, but if they had a fleet that large, they would’ve provoked direct action before now. That part of his analysis felt rock solid to Thane; however, the rest was less certain. If the Death Star has been damaged, how badly? It’s the size of an entire moon, so how can all the communications systems be down? And why wouldn’t the ships docked there be able to respond, either?
If the rebels had attacked the Death Star with a fleet capable of causing real damage, the big Imperial ships would have been launched. They would have gone into battle.
Thane leaned against the rough-hewn stone wall of the rebel base, canteen of nutritive milk in one hand. He thought of the Devastator in all its majesty and power, and he imagined its laser cannons blasting the rebel fleet to shreds. He pictured it over and over—the shards of metal, the spinning debris, the brief pulses of flame before they were snuffed out by the vacuum of space.
If he imagined the Devastator winning, he didn’t have to imagine what else might have happened during the battle he envisioned—to the ship, to Nash Windrider, or to Ciena.
After a few hours at her post, Ciena’s ears rang with the squeals of badly filtered transmissions. Her head swam with the endless amounts of data she had to process, fast. For now she had to give her ship and her Empire everything she had.
The Devastator’s senior officers were in conference, as they had been for what seemed like hours. If any of them knew the reason behind the Death Star’s sudden, terrifying silence, they had not yet shared it with the crew.
For the time being Ciena could do no more than continue to sort through the endless data packets sent from the Death Star before it went quiet. Many of these contained no useful information whatsoever, but until they had a full explanation, she could afford to ignore nothing.
When she recognized Jude’s number on one packet, she opened it immediately. She didn’t care whether this one was important or not; Ciena needed to know what Jude had been doing before the Death Star—became damaged, or infiltrated, or whatever had gone so horribly wrong.
But Jude’s data was important. Ciena read a report from Jude Edivon to her superior officer and all local commanders in which Jude explained that her analysis had shown the rebel attack with small starfighters did in fact pose a threat to the Death Star. She’d found a flaw nobody else had suspected—something to do with an exhaust port—and had sensed a weakness where everyone else saw invulnerability.
Although the likelihood of a direct hit is remote, Jude had written, th
e consequences could be highly destructive to the station, even fatal.
If anyone had sent a response to Jude’s warning, Ciena had not yet found it.
Fatal to the station? To the Death Star? No. Jude must have meant only that officers would be killed in some resulting small explosion. That made far more sense than the idea that an X-wing fighter could destroy something the size of a moon.
Yet the darkness and silence remained.
Shortly after Ciena had sent this information to command, she received a message to report to docking bay forty-seven. Nash shot her a look as she walked out, clearly as curious as she was about what could possibly be going on. She hoped to be able to fill him in soon.
Instead, she found she had a new assignment.
A stone-faced commander told her and the other pilot, “Lieutenant Ree, Lieutenant Sai, you’re to take a Gozanticlass freighter to the Yavin system to rendezvous with Lord Vader and bring him back to the Devastator.”
It was as though steel bands had been tightening around her, then were suddenly loosed. Ciena managed not to sigh out loud. Darth Vader is alive. He was able to contact our ship. So whatever happened on the Death Star wasn’t the worst-case scenario. She still hadn’t allowed herself to fully contemplate what the “worst-case scenario” might be.
The commander continued: “You are to disclose your mission to no one—not during your journey or at any time afterward. You will maintain communications silence unless otherwise ordered by Lord Vader, or if…the rendezvous does not take place as planned.”
What was that supposed to mean? Ciena glanced sideways at her fellow pilot, whose expression might as well have been carved in stone.
Once they were alone in the freighter’s cockpit, however, Lieutenant Sai proved to be anything but stoic. “What are we supposed to do?” she said just after their ship had gone into hyperspace. “Fly up to the totally silent Death Star without asking them any questions? Or even getting permission to dock?”
“It’s going to make more sense when we get there,” Ciena said.
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because it can’t make any less sense than it does now.”
That earned her a laugh. “True. By the way, I’m called Berisse.”
“Ciena.”
Berisse turned out to have graduated from the academy on Lothal the year before. Her brilliant smile shone brightly against her tan skin. She was as stout as regulations allowed, with dark, shining hair she kept even more tightly braided than Ciena’s. When she learned that Ciena had been on the Devastator only a few short weeks, she promised to show her around, and even offered some sympathy for Nash. “That’s rough,” she said. “Imagine finding out your entire planet turned traitor.”
Even that can’t be as bad as seeing it completely destroyed, Ciena nearly said—but that was when the sensors began to chime. “Yavin,” she said, swinging back into position at the controls. “Dropping out of hyperspace.”
“Dropping out of hyperspace,” Berisse confirmed. She, too, was back in official mode.
The dread Ciena had kept at bay by chatting with Berisse returned, stronger than before. She told herself that at least now she would know how bad the situation was. She wouldn’t have to worry about Jude any longer. Nothing could be worse than not knowing.
The freighter dropped out of hyperdrive and into hell.
Berisse gasped out loud. Ciena couldn’t even catch her breath. They were on the outskirts of a vast debris field, twisted metal floating in every direction. Some pieces were enormous—the size of a light cruiser—but others were fragments even smaller than a human head. Splinters connected with the freighter’s windows and stuck to the transparency in patterns like frost or cracks.
“I can’t believe it,” Berisse said, voice shaking. “It’s gone. It’s completely gone.”
The Death Star had been destroyed.
Jude’s warning echoed louder in Ciena’s head. Fatal. Now she knew Jude was dead.
A few other classmates had been stationed aboard the Death Star; at least a dozen people Ciena knew had been murdered that day. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers, most of them not even roused to battle stations—they would have been sleeping, eating, getting a drink in one of the cantinas, with no idea that moment was one of their last. But Jude had known the danger. Was she frightened? In her last terrible moments, had Jude known it was the end? The idea made Ciena’s throat tighten and her eyes fill with tears.
“Lord Vader’s signal.” Berisse snapped out of her shock to get back to work. “Let’s go.”
Numbly, Ciena steered the freighter around the edge of the debris field. She wanted to cry; she wanted to scream. The command officers had to have known what happened. Why hadn’t they told the fleet? The entire galaxy? But maybe they had believed this as impossible as she had. Ciena finally recognized that her mission was not only to retrieve Darth Vader but also to confirm that the worst had happened. They had sent her to bear witness to another massacre.
Her sorrow for Jude flooded her mind until she couldn’t feel anything. Ciena went through the motions as they approached Lord Vader’s damaged TIE fighter, grateful for the training that had taught her how to respond even when she was falling apart.
Vader’s ship slowly took form in the darkness. She first saw the strange rotation of several pieces of debris, as if they were being shoved back by repulsor beams. Then she saw the form of a TIE fighter with angled wings. Vader was flying just beyond the ever-expanding debris field.
“Initiating airlock sequence,” Ciena said. She was grateful Berisse didn’t know her very well yet, so she wouldn’t hear how strained and unnatural her voice had become. “Three—two—one.”
Berisse hit the controls that would release one of a quartet of docking umbilicals from the ship’s belly. Carefully, they extended the tube to the top of the TIE fighter’s spherical cockpit.
“Met Lord Vader yet?” Berisse said lightly.
“I—uh, no.” Ciena could hardly focus enough to speak.
“I’m going to let you go back there and greet him.”
Normally, Imperial officers strove to be the first to talk to anyone of higher rank. Those were opportunities to stand out from the pack. Ciena had never cared less about advancement. And yet she had the impression Berisse wasn’t doing her a favor.
They say he is a great man, she reminded herself as she stood at the airlock, waiting for the all clear to enter the bay. That he has the Emperor’s favor. And they say he can bend the Force itself to his will. Though Ciena believed in the Force, she was doubtful that anyone could control it so completely. She wondered if she would be proven wrong.
Ciena needed a superior officer she could respect. Someone who would take charge, someone in whom she could put her trust. She walked into the airlock corridor just as the pressure door hissed open. Reassured, she stepped forward—
—then stopped as she saw Vader for the first time.
Black armor sheathed him entirely. This was no TIE pilot’s gear, however; instead Ciena recognized a life-support suit, one more comprehensive than she’d ever seen or imagined before. Nothing of Vader’s human skin or face remained visible beneath his gleaming carapace, and a black cape shrouded him from shoulder to floor. As he stepped forward, she realized how tall he was—taller than any other human she had ever encountered. In the cramped corridor, his stature was even more intimidating. But worst of all was the sound of his breath. The harsh rasp of his respirator system echoed until it seemed to fill the space.
What is he? Ciena wondered. Her splintered mind refused to accept Lord Vader as human. He seemed more like a nightmare vision, or a creature from the scary stories Mumma used to tell around the kindred gathering fires. Evil seemed to ooze from him, to pool within the space until there was no more air. Ciena’s uniform collar felt too tight.
Only a few moments before, she’d been determined to greet her superior officer with dignity. Now she only hoped not to faint.
As Darth Vader stepped away from the airlock door, she heard his deep metallic voice for the first time. “Are you here by the Emperor’s command?”
“We received our orders from the command staff of the Devastator, sir,” Ciena managed to respond. She had to fight the instinctive need to draw away from Vader. “I have no information regarding their contact with the Emperor.”
Vader took this in for what seemed to be a very long time. Ciena’s nervousness continued to grow until he ordered, “You and your fellow pilot will remain in the hold for the remainder of the voyage. I will take command of this freighter until we have returned to the Devastator.”
“Yes, sir.”
She didn’t care about being hauled back to her Star Destroyer like so much cargo. Ciena was grateful to sink down to the floor, put her head on her knees, and take deep breaths. At least now she didn’t have to act. Even to think. She tried to forget she’d ever seen Darth Vader, and almost succeeded. Her battered mind could hold on to nothing but the scene of devastation she’d witnessed, and her grief for Jude.
A thousand memories of her friend shone in Ciena’s memory like candles: the times they’d laughed and talked in their bunks late at night, how Jude had rushed to defend Ciena when she’d been accused of sabotaging Thane’s laser cannon and then comforted her after the argument that followed, even how unexpectedly glamorous Jude had looked at the reception. One of the best friends she’d ever had, or would have, had been annihilated. Blasted to atoms.
Berisse was apologetic when she joined Ciena. “Lord Vader can be a little—overpowering when you first see him.”
“Yeah,” Ciena said faintly.
“I didn’t feel like I could take it. Doesn’t mean it was any easier for you. Sorry.” Berisse leaned back against the wall like a puppet freed from its strings. “I know he’s just wearing a life-support suit, and it’s stupid to be frightened of someone who has different needs, right? But that respirator—”
“He could be monitoring us right now,” Ciena pointed out. Berisse fell silent.
