by James Luceno
“Yes, Admiral?”
There was a tight smile on Thrawn’s face. “Remind them, too,” he added softly, “that our final victory over the Rebellion begins here.”
C H A P T E R 31
Captain Afyon of the Escort Frigate Larkhess shook his head with thinly disguised contempt, glaring at Wedge from the depths of his pilot’s seat. “You X-wing hot-shots,” he growled. “You’ve really got it made—you know that?”
Wedge shrugged, trying hard not to take offense. It wasn’t easy; but then, he’d had lots of practice in the past few days. Afyon had started out from Coruscant with a planetary-mass chip on his shoulder, and he’d been nursing it the whole way.
And looking out the viewport at the confused mass of ships crowding the Sluis Van orbit-dock area, it wasn’t hard to figure out why. “Yeah, well, we’re stuck out here, too,” he reminded the captain.
The other snorted. “Yeah. Big sacrifice. You lounge around my ship like overpriced trampers for a couple of days, then flit around for two hours while I try to dodge bulk freighters and get this thing into a docking station designed for scavenger pickers. And then you pull your snubbies back inside and go back to lounging again. Doesn’t exactly qualify as earning your pay, in my book.”
Wedge clamped his teeth firmly around his tongue and stirred his tea a little harder. It was considered bad form to mouth back at senior officers, after all—even senior officers who’d long since passed their prime. For probably the first time since he had been given command of Rogue Squadron, he regretted having passed up all the rest of the promotions he’d been offered. A higher rank would at least have entitled him to snarl back a little.
Lifting his cup for a cautious sip, he gazed out the viewport at the scene around them. No, he amended—he wasn’t sorry at all that he’d stayed with his X-wing. If he hadn’t, he’d probably be in exactly the same position as Afyon was right now: trying to run a 920-crew ship with just fifteen men, hauling cargo in a ship meant for war.
And, like as not, having to put up with hotshot X-wing pilots who sat around his bridge drinking tea and claiming with perfect justification that they were doing exactly what they’d been ordered to do.
He hid a smile behind his mug. Yes, in Afyon’s place, he’d probably be ready to spit bulkhead shavings, too. Maybe he ought to go ahead and let the other drag him into an argument, in fact, let him drain off some of that excess nervous energy of his. Eventually—within the hour, even, if Sluis Control’s latest departure estimate was anywhere close—it would finally be the Larkhess’s turn to get out of here and head for Bpfassh. It would be nice, when that time came, for Afyon to be calm enough to handle the ship.
Taking another sip of his tea, Wedge looked out the viewport. A couple of refitted passenger liners were making their own break for freedom now, he saw, accompanied by four Corellian Corvettes. Beyond them, just visible in the faint light of the space-lane marker buoys, was what looked like one of the slightly ovoid transports he used to escort during the height of the war, with a pair of B-wings following.
And off to the side, moving parallel to their departure vector, an A-class bulk freighter was coming into the docking pattern.
Without any escort at all.
Wedge watched it creep toward them, his smile fading as old combat senses began to tingle. Swiveling around in his seat, he reached over to the console beside him and punched for a sensor scan.
It looked innocent enough. An older freighter, probably a knockoff of the original Corellian Action IV design, with the kind of exterior that came from either a lifetime of honest work or else a short and spectacularly unsuccessful career of piracy. Its cargo bay registered completely empty, and there were no weapons emplacements that the Larkhess’s sensors could pick up.
A totally empty freighter. How long had it been, he wondered uneasily, since he’d run across a totally empty freighter?
“Trouble?”
Wedge focused on the captain in mild surprise. The other’s frustrated anger of a minute ago was gone, replaced by something calm, alert, and battle-ready. Perhaps, the thought strayed through Wedge’s mind, Afyon wasn’t past his prime after all. “That incoming freighter,” he told the other, setting his cup down on the edge of the console and keying for a comm channel. “There’s something about it that doesn’t feel right.”
The captain peered out the viewport, then at the sensor scan data Wedge had pulled up. “I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Me, either,” Wedge had to admit. “There’s just something … Blast.”
“What?”
“Control won’t let me in,” Wedge told him as he keyed off. “Too much traffic on the circuits already, they say.”
“Allow me.” Afyon turned to his own console. The freighter was shifting course now, the kind of slow and careful maneuver that usually indicated a full load. But the cargo bay was still registering empty …
“There we go,” Afyon said, glancing at Wedge with grim satisfaction. “I’ve got a tap into their records computer. Little trick you never learn flitting around in an X-wing. Let’s see now … freighter Nartissteu, out of Nellac Kram.1 They were jumped by pirates, got their main drive damaged in the fight, and had to dump their cargo to get away. They’re hoping to get some repair work done; Sluis Control’s basically told them to get in line.”
“I thought all this relief shipping had more or less taken over the whole place.” Wedge frowned.
Afyon shrugged. “Theoretically. In practice … well, the Sluissi are easy enough to talk into bending that kind of rule. You just have to know how to phrase the request.”
Reluctantly, Wedge nodded. It did all seem reasonable enough, he supposed. And a damaged, empty ship would probably handle something like an intact full one. And the freighter was empty—the Larkhess’s sensors said so.
But the tingles refused to go away.
Abruptly, he dug his comlink from his belt. “Rogue Squadron, this is Rogue Leader,” he called. “Everyone to your ships.”
He got acknowledgments, looked up to find Afyon’s eyes steady on him. “You still think there’s trouble?” the other asked quietly.
Wedge grimaced, throwing one last look out the viewport at the freighter. “Probably not. But it won’t hurt to be ready. Anyway, I can’t have my pilots sitting around drinking tea all day.” He turned and left the bridge at a quick jog.
The other eleven members of Rogue Squadron were in their X-wings by the time he reached the Larkhess’s docking bay. Three minutes later, they launched.
The freighter hadn’t made much headway, Wedge saw as they swung up over the Larkhess’s hull and pulled together into a loose patrol formation. Oddly enough, though, it had moved a considerable distance laterally, drifting away from the Larkhess and toward a pair of Calamari Star Cruisers orbiting together a few kilometers away. “Spread out formation,” Wedge ordered his pilots, shifting to an asymptotic approach course. “Let’s swing by and take a nice, casual little look.”
The others acknowledged. Wedge glanced down at his nav scope, made a minor adjustment to his speed, looked back up again—
And in the space of a single heartbeat, the whole thing went straight to hell.
The freighter blew up. All at once, without any warning from sensors, without any hint from previous visual observation, it just came apart.
Reflexively, Wedge jabbed for his comm control. “Emergency!” he barked. “Ship explosion near orbit-dock V-475. Send rescue team.”
For an instant, as chunks of the cargo bay flew outward, he could see into the emptiness there … but even as his eyes and brain registered the odd fact that he could see into the disintegrating cargo bay but not beyond it—
The bay was suddenly no longer empty.
One of the X-wing pilots gasped. A tight-packed mass of something was in there, totally filling the space where the Larkhess’s sensors had read nothing. A mass that was even now exploding outward like a hornet’s nest behind the pieces of the bay.
A mass that in seconds had resolved itself into a boiling wave front of TIE fighters.
“Pull up!” Wedge snapped to his squadron, leaning his X-wing into a tight turn to get out of the path of that deadly surge. “Come around and re-form; S-foils in attack position.”
And as they swung around in response, he knew with a sinking feeling that Captain Afyon had been wrong. Rogue Squadron was indeed going to earn its pay today.
The battle for Sluis Van had begun.
They’d cleared the outer system defense network and the bureaucratic overload that passed for Control at Sluis Van these days, and Han was just getting a bearing on the slot they’d given him when the emergency call came through. “Luke!” he shouted back down the cockpit corridor. “Got a ship explosion. I’m going to go check it out.” He glanced at the orbit-dock map to locate V-475, gave the ship a fractional turn to put them on the right vector—
And jerked in his seat as a laser bolt slapped the Falcon hard from behind.
He had them gunning into a full forward evasive maneuver before the second shot went sizzling past the cockpit. Over the roar of the engines he heard Luke’s startled-sounding yelp; and as the third bolt went past he finally had a chance to check the aft sensors to see just what was going on.
He almost wished he hadn’t. Directly behind them, batteries already engaging one of the Sluis Van perimeter battle stations, was an Imperial Star Destroyer.
He swore under his breath and kicked the engines a little harder. Beside him, Luke clawed his way forward against the not-quite-compensated acceleration and into the copilot’s seat. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“We just walked into an Imperial attack,” Han growled, eyes flying over the readouts. “Got a Star Destroyer behind us—there’s another one over to starboard—looks like some other ships with them.”
“They’ve got the system bottled up,” Luke said, his voice glacially calm. A far cry, Han thought, from the panicky kid he’d pulled off Tatooine out from under Star Destroyer fire all those years back. “I make it five Star Destroyers and something over twenty smaller ships.”
Han grunted. “At least we know now why they hit Bpfassh and the others. Wanted to pull enough ships here to make an attack worth their while.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the emergency comm channel suddenly came to life again. “Emergency! Imperial TIE fighters in orbit-dock area. All ships to battle stations.”
Luke started. “That sounded like Wedge,” he said, punching for transmission. “Wedge? That you?”
“Luke?” the other came back. “We got trouble here—at least forty TIE fighters and fifty truncated-cone-shaped things I’ve never seen before—”
He broke off as a screech from the X-wing’s etheric rudder came faintly over the speaker. “I hope you’ve brought a couple wings of fighters with you,” he said. “We’re going to be a little pressed here.”
Luke glanced at Han. “Afraid it’s just Han and me and the Falcon. But we’re on our way.”
“Make it fast.”
Luke keyed off the speaker. “Is there any way to get me into my X-wing?” he asked.
“Not fast enough,” Han shook his head. “We’re going to have to drop it here and go in alone.”
Luke nodded, getting out of his seat. “I’d better make sure Lando and the droids are strapped in and then get up into the gun well.”
“Take the top one,” Han called after him. The upper deflector shields were running stronger at the moment, and Luke would have more protection there.
If there was any protection to be had from forty TIE fighters and fifty truncated flying cones.
For a moment he frowned as a strange thought suddenly struck him. But no. They couldn’t possibly be Lando’s missing mole miners. Even a Grand Admiral wouldn’t be crazy enough to try to use something like that in battle.
Boosting power to the forward deflectors, he took a deep breath and headed in.
“All ships, commence attack,” Pellaeon2 called. “Full engagement; maintain position and status.”
He got confirmations, turned to Thrawn. “All ships report engaged, sir,” he said.
But the Grand Admiral didn’t seem to hear him. He just stood there at the viewport, gazing outward at the New Republic ships scrambling to meet them, his hands gripped tightly behind his back. “Admiral?” Pellaeon asked cautiously.
“That was them, Captain,” Thrawn said, his voice unreadable. “That ship straight ahead. That was the Millennium Falcon. And it was towing an X-wing starfighter behind it.”
Pellaeon frowned past the other. The glow of a drive was indeed barely visible past the flashing laser bolts of the battle, already pretty well out of combat range and trying hard to be even more so. But as to the design of the craft, much less its identity … “Yes, sir,” he said, keeping his tone neutral. “Cloak Leader reports a successful breakout, and that the command section of the freighter is making its escape to the periphery. They’re encountering some resistance from escort vehicles and a squadron of X-wings, but the general response has so far been weak and diffuse.”
Thrawn took a deep breath and turned away from the viewport. “That will change,” he told Pellaeon, back in control again. “Remind him not to push his envelope too far, or to waste excessive time in choosing his targets. Also that the spacetrooper mole miners should concentrate on Calamari Star Cruisers—they’re likely to have the largest number of defenders aboard.” The red eyes glittered. “And inform him that the Millennium Falcon is on its way in.”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said. He glanced out the viewport again, at the distant fleeing ship. Towing an X-wing …? “You don’t think … Skywalker?”
Thrawn’s face hardened. “We’ll know soon,” he said quietly. “And if so, Talon Karrde will have a great deal to answer for. A great deal.”
“Watch it, Rogue Five,” Wedge warned as a flash of laser fire from somewhere behind him shot past and nicked the wing of one of the X-wings ahead. “We’ve picked up a tail.”
“I noticed,” the other came back. “Pincer?”
“On my mark,” Wedge confirmed as a second bolt shot past him. Directly ahead, a Calamari Star Cruiser was pulling sluggishly away, trying to get out of the battle zone. Perfect cover for this kind of maneuver. Together, he and Rogue Five dived underneath it—
“Now.” Leaning hard on his etheric rudder, he peeled off hard to the right. Rogue Five did the same thing to the left. The pursuing TIE fighter hesitated between his diverging targets a split second too long; and even as he swung around to follow Wedge, Rogue Five blew him out of the sky.
“Nice shooting,” Wedge said, giving the area a quick scan. The TIE fighters still seemed to be everywhere, but for the moment, at least, none of them was close enough to give them any trouble.
Five noticed that, too. “We seem to be out of it, Rogue Leader,” he commented.
“Easy enough to fix,” Wedge told him. His momentum was taking him farther under the Star Cruiser they’d used for cover. Curving up and around it, he started to spiral back toward the main battle area.
He was just swinging up along the Star Cruiser’s side when he noticed the small cone-shaped thing nestled up against the larger ship’s hull.
He craned his neck for a better look as he shot past. It was one of the little craft that had come out with the TIE fighters, all right. Sitting pressed up against the Star Cruiser’s bridge blister as if it were welded in place.
There was a battle going on nearby, a battle in which his people were fighting and very possibly dying. But something told Wedge that this was important. “Hang on a minute,” he told Five. “I want to check this out.”
His momentum had already taken him to the Star Cruiser’s bow. He curved around in front of the ship, leaning back into a spiral again—
And suddenly his canopy lit up with laser fire, and his X-wing jolted like a startled animal beneath him.
The Star Cruiser had fired
on him.
In his ear, he heard Five shout something. “Stay back,” Wedge snapped, fighting against a sudden drop in power and giving his scopes a quick scan. “I’m hit, but not bad.”
“They fired on you!”
“Yeah, I know,” Wedge said, trying to maintain some kind of evasive maneuvering with what little control he had left. Fortunately, the systems were starting to come back on line as his R2 unit did some fast rerouting. Even more fortunately, the Star Cruiser didn’t seem inclined to shoot at him again.
But why had it fired in the first place?
Unless …
His own R2 was too busy with rerouting chores to handle anything else at the moment. “Rogue Five, I need a fast sensor scan,” he called. “Where are the rest of those cone things?”
“Hang on, I’ll check,” the other replied. “Scope shows … I don’t find more than about fifteen of them. Nearest one’s ten kilometers away—bearing one-one-eight mark four.”
Wedge felt something hard settle into his stomach. Fifteen, out of the fifty that had been in that freighter with the TIE fighters. So where had the rest of them gone? “Let’s go take a look,” he said, turning into an intercept vector.
The cone thing was heading toward another Escort Frigate like the Larkhess, he saw, with four TIE fighters running interference for it. Not that there was much potential for interference—if the Frigate was manned anywhere near as sparsely as the Larkhess, it would have precious little chance of fighting back. “Let’s see if we can take them before they notice us,” he told Five as they closed the distance.
Abruptly, all four TIE fighters peeled off and came around. So much for surprise. “Take the two on the right, Rogue Five; I’ll take the others.”
“Copy.”
Wedge waited until the last second before firing on the first of his targets, swinging around instantly to avoid collision with the other. It swept past beneath him, his X-wing shuddering as it took another hit. He leaned hard into the turn, catching a glimpse of the TIE fighter dropping into a pursuit slot as he did so—
