by Claudia Gray
Maybe it would. Maybe they’d be sent limping away in defeat. Ciena didn’t know or care. She only understood that despite her disillusionment with the Empire, she had to fight. The alternative would be to surrender to the rebels, and she could imagine how they dealt with captured enemies. And if she deserted her post as captain of a Star Destroyer, the Force alone knew what would become of her family—especially her mother, still enduring her forced-labor sentence in prison. Ciena had hardly had a chance to think of escape during her recovery, and now it was too late. There was no way out for her, not anymore.
Everything Ciena had worked for her whole life was a sham. Now she would continue this war only because she had no choice.
Jakku, she thought, looking at the world and imagining the battle that lay ahead. Let it come.
THANE DIDN’T LIKE the idea of going into battle without his X-wing. However, General Rieekan had insisted.
“We need people like you and Lieutenant Idele who have served on Imperial ships in the past,” Rieekan said as Thane, Kendy, and other troops boarded a transport. “It’s this simple—we need more vessels, and we need them faster than they can be built, especially while the Empire still holds most of the main construction facilities. The only way we’re going to get those ships is by capturing them from the Empire.”
Thane managed to respond to this politely, instead of with the scorn it deserved. “Sir, with all due respect, nobody has ever captured a Star Destroyer. And don’t tell me it’s because no one has ever tried. Yeah, way back in the day, we managed to take out a governor’s destroyer over Mustafar, but since then, the Imperials have shored up their defenses against infiltrators. These days Star Destroyers are nearly invulnerable.”
“Those crews aren’t as die-hard as they used to be,” Rieekan insisted. “We’ve had ships as large as attack cruisers switch allegiance in other battles, haven’t we?”
“Those have thousands of crew members. Not tens of thousands.”
“We only need enough sympathizers to help us shut systems down. Only former Imperial officers such as you and Idele can lead us to the most vulnerable areas.”
Grudgingly, Thane took Rieekan’s point. If they could get one of the auxiliary bridges, the engine room, and a couple of the gunneries under New Republic control, they could effectively paralyze a Star Destroyer. Actually claiming the ship would require intense intravessel combat, lasting days if not weeks—but it was possible.
A long shot. An extremely long shot. Yet possible.
“I feel so cooped up in here,” Kendy grumbled as they took their places in the hold, harnessing themselves into slender seats that were more like those for a hoverbike than a space journey. “We can’t even see the battle.”
Thane found it incredibly strange, too—looking at the flat beige walls of the troop transport instead of the vastness of space, hearing not the hum of his engines or the screech of his guns but only the murmur of other nervous soldiers. “Maybe that’s for the best,” he said, though he didn’t believe it. “We can focus on our plans for boarding.”
Kendy leaned closer, glancing about her to make sure nobody overheard before she spoke. “Neither of us was ever posted to a Star Destroyer. I’ve only even been on one three times, and never for more than a day.”
“We studied the schematics at the academy,” he said as confidently as he could manage. “We both remember the most important information—especially about internal defenses. That’s enough.”
She sighed. “May the Force be with us.”
Always the Force. Thane’s year of meditation had not convinced him that there was any all-powerful Force at work behind galactic affairs. Still, let Kendy take her courage where she could find it.
Maybe he wouldn’t have felt so uneasy if any element of the mission was familiar, but none of it was. Being without his X-wing was by far the worst; he’d have felt safer shooting down TIE fighters than running into the heart of a Star Destroyer. Yet smaller details rankled, too. Instead of his sturdy, full-cover helmet, he wore only a small one that fastened under his chin with an uncomfortable black strap. Instead of his orange flight suit, he wore a simple uniform of trousers, shirt, and vest that he associated more with days off than with battle. And around one arm was tied his grayish-blue mourning band.
Technically he should have taken it off four days ago, on the anniversary of the Battle of Endor. By then, however, Thane had known the Battle of Jakku was coming, and it had felt right to take it with him into the fray.
Once this battle is over, I’ll take it off, he promised himself. I’ll burn it as the ritual commands, and I’ll save the ashes until the day I return to Jelucan.
In his mind’s eye, he could already see himself entering the Fortress for the very last time. He would put the ashes there, with the old toys and the cast-off boots, and the pallet of blankets and furs where he and Ciena had made love. Then, at last, he could begin again.
“Which Destroyer is this?” Thane asked, wondering if it would be one he’d ever seen.
“The Inflictor,” someone answered. He’d never heard of that one.
“At least they issued us blasters,” Kendy muttered. “I’m even better with a blaster than I am with laser cannons.”
“Then I’ll stick by you,” he said, and was rewarded with her smile.
“All hands,” came the voice over the intercom, unnaturally calm. “Brace for impact.”
Thane grabbed the straps of his harness. Here we go.
Whatever else Ciena Ree was, she was not a traitor. During the few short weeks she had served as captain of the Inflictor, she had done her duty to the very best of her ability. If she felt no loyalty to the Empire any longer, she understood her responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of lives under her command. So she had not given anything less than her best during the Battle of Jakku.
If other Imperial officers could have said the same, maybe they wouldn’t be on the verge of annihilation.
“Status report!” Ciena called out as she walked closer to the data pits.
“Engine three is only at sixty-six percent capacity, Captain.” The young ensign’s face looked up at hers, his ruddy skin flushed with panic. “Engines one and five are still completely down. We only have full power on engines three and seven. Two, four, and six are each under thirty percent power.”
Damn. If her repair crews could get engine two back up above 85 percent, they would still be able to jump into hyperspace and escape the battle. If they couldn’t fix it—or if engine three took damage, too—the Inflictor was trapped. No option but retreat offered any chance of survival.
The main viewscreen displayed a disastrous panorama. Against the brownish-gold surface of Jakku were silhouetted hundreds of ships, both Imperial and rebel, from frigates and other Star Destroyers down to countless starfighters. Meanwhile, smaller screens on either side showed scenes of the ground battle, which was proving to be even more of a rout. Even as she watched, a walker took one hit too many, wobbled on its slender legs, then fell sideways so hard that sand exploded from the impact like a tidal wave. Everywhere Ciena looked, the rebels were attacking while the Empire tried in vain to defend itself. The advantage had been theirs from the beginning, to a point that made her wonder bitterly if the whole battle had been a trap. Maybe their plans for making a stand at Jakku had been betrayed by some admiral or Grand Moff whose power play had been thwarted.
“We need a change in strategy,” she said, mostly to herself. Imperial battle tactics nearly always called for concerted, simultaneous effort by all ships engaged in combat, rigidly controlled by a central command. When the Empire had possessed the advantage in strength and numbers, those tactics had made sense. Now Ciena thought they were clinging to the rules of a game that had ended more than a year ago.
The rebels had proved that smaller strike forces could be effective, even deadly. They often attacked on multiple fronts at once, segmenting their forces. That approach was riskier, but there above Jakku, it was
getting results.
The Inflictor shuddered. Although the sensation was no more than a faint vibration beneath her chair, Ciena knew the damage was significant even before control screens lit up red.
“Explosive decompression aft starboard!” cried an ensign. “Losing atmosphere—”
“Seal off all affected decks!” With those words, Ciena knew, she had saved her ship—but condemned hundreds if not thousands to death by suffocation.
We can’t keep fighting by the old rules. It’s futile.
Ciena went to a viewscreen and pulled up a three-dimensional view of the battle, in miniature. If she could convince Grand Moff Randd to split up the fleet, to attack the rebel star cruisers from multiple directions, maybe even to send one of the twenty-gun raiders into the atmosphere to support the TIE fighters battling near the planet’s surface—at the very least they’d shake the rebels up. They desperately needed any advantage they could claim.
Would Randd even listen to her? She might be captain of a Star Destroyer, but he was a Grand Moff, and he’d subtly made it clear that she owed her rise in rank entirely to him.…
Once again it struck her how absurd it was—how foolish, how wasteful, how stupid—that rank mattered more than ideas in the Imperial fleet. It angered her. It disgusted her. She hated the Empire she served, hated the values it stood for, hated the way everyone talked about Palpatine as though he were some virtuous martyr. She hated herself for having ever believed in it. Mostly she hated that it was all she had left.
But then she saw the other officers scrambling around her, trying so hard to fulfill their duty and to survive. Ciena owed it to them, at least, to do her best. If she had no other task worth the doing, she could simply try to get them home.
She began, “Open a channel to Grand Moff Ra—”
The entire ship trembled, hard enough to knock officers’ caps from their heads and spill at least two analysts onto the floor. Ciena braced herself against the wall. “What was that?”
“Captain, we show another hull breach, port side, on decks RR through ZZ.” The young officer’s face betrayed her confusion. She looked up at Ciena, her skin tinted red by the light. “But sensors reveal no sign of vacuum.”
Then the Inflictor shook with another impact. Another. A fourth. Each resulted in the same bizarre readings: gaps in the ship that had not resulted in vacuum. There could be only one explanation.
Ciena’s gut dropped. Although she’d never been aboard a ship when this had happened, she had learned the signs in the academy and relived them sometimes in her nightmares. “We’ve been boarded.”
Boarded. In the pitch of battle, that meant only one thing:
Her ship had to die.
“Get to the control center for engine three,” Thane ordered through his comlink as he edged down a corridor already thick with smoke. “If we can take out their last fully functioning main engine, we have a chance.”
Thane’s job was simpler and far more critical. He had to disconnect the self-destruct systems as soon as possible. Not one Imperial officer would hesitate before ordering the mass suicide necessary to keep a Star Destroyer out of New Republic hands.
Ahead of him, along a perpendicular corridor, he saw blaster fire; the echoes of each shot ricocheted off his eardrums with painful intensity. Through the tinny ringing in his head, Thane could hear other reports coming in. Contrary to Rieekan’s prediction, the crew of the Inflictor was putting up stiff resistance. The Imperial troops aboard this ship seemed to be more dedicated than most of the others. Just Thane’s luck.
The blaster fire ahead cleared, and then Kendy’s head appeared around the corner. “Cleared the way for you guys. Come on, let’s go!”
Thane ran at the head of the platoon, hoping they could advance as far as the portside auxiliary bridge. If they could gain control of that, they’d be in a much better position to help the other New Republic soldiers throughout the ship.
But even as they charged into the next section, another wave of stormtroopers met them, blasters blazing. Thane flattened himself against the wall. The air smelled like ozone and smoke, and he saw no way out. What do I do?
They couldn’t get to the self-destruct systems—not like this.
Which meant that, within minutes, the Inflictor would explode and kill them all.
Get through this, he told himself. Go!
“Captain Ree, you can’t!” one of the junior ensigns protested. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. The Imperial fleet was stealing them from the remaining academies, even though they were still too young.
“I can and I must.” Ciena took her seat as she mentally prepared herself for what she was going to do. More gently she added, “Don’t be afraid, Ensign Perrin. We’ll have time to get to the escape pods, and each of those is equipped with a homing device that will take it straight to the nearest Imperial vessel.”
Perrin smiled shakily; around her, the other officers seemed to calm themselves, too. Why did regulations discourage speaking with any sense of moderation or compassion, when it sometimes did so much good?
At least the Empire’s ruthlessness would help her after the battle. Once this was over—assuming they weren’t all in a New Republic prison camp—Ciena would be called on to justify setting the self-destruct on a Star Destroyer, one of the most powerful and valuable ships in the Imperial Starfleet. She knew the game well enough to understand that any explanation she gave would be found inadequate. Before Endor, it would have resulted in a long, grueling prison sentence on Kessel; now, she would either be cashiered out of the service or executed on the spot. Ciena found she didn’t care which.
“On my mark,” Ciena said. “Prepare for self-destruct. Initiating in ten—nine—eight—”
The Inflictor shuddered again. Even loathing the Empire as she did, Ciena was too much a captain not to feel a pang at the wounds to her ship.
She finished, “Three—two—one. Initiate.”
Ensign Perrin shoved down the lever that would set the self-destruct in motion. Ciena waited for the red lights, the siren, the automated announcement sending all crew to escape pods—her signal to seal the doors—but they never came. After the silence had lasted a moment too long, she raised herself from her chair to pull up ship schematics. Damage lights flashed in all the wrong places, in particular one area not far from the portside auxiliary bridge.
“They targeted the self-destruct systems,” Ciena said, almost in disbelief. “They specifically took them offline.”
Only a former Imperial officer would have known how to do that. In her head, she heard her father saying the words he’d told her once when she was only a child: All traitors are damned.
“Awaiting your orders, Captain,” said a lieutenant standing in the data pits. She realized every person on the bridge—and probably throughout the ship—had no idea what to do next.
But she did.
The knowledge dawned inside her like the most beautiful day she’d ever seen. She could do her duty, fulfill her oath, and free herself from this madness forever.
Ciena returned to her chair and hit the switch that would project her voice to all stations and to every starfighter based aboard the Inflictor. “All hands, abandon ship. All starfighters, rendezvous with the next nearest Imperial vessel. All hands, abandon ship. You have ten minutes.”
Around her, the rest of the officers stared. For the only time in her command, Ciena shouted at them. “What are you waiting for? Get to the escape pods! Go!”
As all of them dashed out, the comms crackled and buzzed. Ciena knew who it would be even before she heard the voice; only one person assigned to her ship would dare to question her now.
Nash yelled, “Have you gone mad?”
“Not sure what you mean, Commander Windrider.”
“Don’t you ‘Commander Windrider’ me, not now. If the self-destruct were online, we’d have heard the automated signal. That tells me you’re planning on destroying the ship by—some other means—”
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Ciena sat back down in her black leather chair, as weary as if she hadn’t slept in years. “Just say it.”
“…you’re going to crash the Inflictor into the planet.”
She began punching in the coordinates that would drive her straight into Jakku’s surface. Already she could imagine the fire, the heat, the end.
Then she would have done her duty to the last and yet escaped all the ties that bound her to the Empire, forever.
“I have to keep the Inflictor out of rebel hands no matter what.” Ciena tried to imagine she was talking to the boy she’d known at the academy, the boy who kept his hair long and braided back in Alderaanian fashion and whose impish sense of humor made them all laugh. “This is the only way, Nash.”
“The hell it is. You can set the coordinates and get out of there.”
“And leave the ship to the rebels? They’d take the bridge, change course, and fly off with their new Star Destroyer.” She leaned her head back and stared up at the metal-tiled ceiling, so absurdly high overhead. Was the scale of the bridge meant to represent a kind of grandeur? Instead it only made the space feel empty and cold.
“Ciena, please.” She could hear Nash’s voice break, even over the distant roar of his TIE’s engines. “At least tell me you’ll try.”
That was the last thing she wanted to do. Now that Ciena had found her way out, she felt only relief. The pain of merely existing day to day had become wholly clear to her only now that it had lifted, and she didn’t have to bear it one hour more.
“I have to lock the doors now,” she said. “Good-bye.”
With that, she snapped off the comm connection to all TIE fighters. Never would she hear Nash’s voice again.
As she went through the procedure for the bridge doors’ security locks, Ciena thought of the other things she’d never again experience. Being with her parents. Flying a starfighter or, better yet, a V-171 she could take up above the clouds on Jelucan. Laughing at one of Berisse’s dirty jokes. Trying to wake Jude up in the morning and hearing her usually logical friend whine into her pillow. Riding her muunyak along the mountain ridges. Piloting a speeder bike through Reitgen Hoops. Eating Mr. Nierre’s snow-frosting cakes. Running on the Sky Loop while Coruscant glittered beneath her.
