Champions of the Force

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The Devaronian smiled pleasantly and nodded. The horns on his head bobbed up and down. "Yes, Director. Everyone has received a copy of the full three—hundred—sixty—five—page hard—copy document with instructions to read it diligently."

  "Good," Sivron said, checking off the first item on his agenda. "We'll leave time at the end of the meeting for new business, but I'd like to move right along. I still have a lot of reports to review. Wermyn, would you like to begin?"

  The one—armed plant operations division leader rumbled through a detailed report on their supplies, their power consumption rates, the expected duration of fuel cells in the power reactor. Wermyn's only concern was that they were running low on spare parts, and he doubted they would ever receive another shipment from the outside.

  Tol Sivron duly noted that fact in his log pad.

  Next, Doxin slurped his hot beverage and gave a report of a new weapon his scientists had been testing. "It's a metal—crystal phase shifter," Doxin said. "MCPS for short."

  "Hmmmm," Tol Sivron said, tapping his chin with a long claw. "We'll have to think of a catchier name before we present it to the Imperials."

  "It's just a working acronym," Doxin said, embarrassed. "We've constructed a functioning model, though our results have been inconsistent. The tests have given us reason to hope for a successful larger—scale implementation."

  "And what exactly does it do?" Tol Sivron asked.

  Doxin scowled at him. "Director, I've filed several reports over the past seven weeks. Haven't you read them?"

  Sivron flinched his head—tails instinctively. "I'm a busy man, and I can't recall everything I read," he said. "Especially about a project with such an uninspired name. Refresh my memory, please."

  Doxin grew animated as he spoke. "The MCPS field alters the crystalline structure of metals — e.g., those in starship hulls. The MCPS can penetrate conventional shielding and turn hull plates into powder. The actual physics is more complicated, of course; this is just an executive summary."

  "Yes, yes," Tol Sivron said. "That sounds very good. What were these problems you encountered?"

  "Well, the MCPS worked effectively over only about one percent of the surface area on our test plate."

  "So it might not be terribly useful?" Tol Sivron said.

  Doxin rubbed his fingers across the polished table surface, making a squeaking sound. "Not exactly true, Director. The one percent effectiveness was distributed over a wide area, leaving pinhole failures over the entire surface. Such a loss of integrity would be enough to destroy any ship."

  Sivron grinned. "Ah, very good! Continue your studies and continue filing those excellent reports."

  Golanda, the hatchet—faced woman in charge of artillery deployment and tactical innovations, talked about cluster—resonance shells based in part upon preliminary theoretical work for the Sun Crusher.

  Yemm interrupted Golanda's summary by standing up and crying out. Sivron frowned at him. "It's not time for new business, Yemm."

  "But, Director!" Yemm said, gesturing madly toward the viewport. The other division leaders stood in an uproar.

  Tol Sivron finally whirled to see silhouettes against the gaseous backdrop of the Maw. His Twi'lek head—tails uncurled and stood out straight behind him.

  A fleet of Rebel warships appeared inside the Maw. The invasion force he had dreaded for so long had finally arrived.

  With two Corellian corvettes at point and two at his flanks, General Wedge Antilles brought the escort frigate Yavaris toward the mismatched cluster of rocks that formed Maw Installation.

  Qwi Xux stood pale blue and beautiful at the observation station beside him, looking tense yet eager to ransack her old quarters for clues to her lost memories.

  "Maw Installation," Wedge said into the comm channel. "This is General Antilles, Commander of the New Republic occupation fleet. Please respond to discuss terms of your surrender."

  He felt arrogant as he said it, but he knew they had no way of fighting off his fleet. Hidden in the midst of the black holes, without Admiral Daala's Star Destroyers to defend it, the Installation depended on inaccessibility rather than firepower for protection.

  As his ships approached the cluster of rocks, Wedge received no response. But when the open metal framework of the Death Star prototype orbited up from behind the planetoids, he felt a stab of terror.

  "Shields up!" he said instinctively.

  But the Death Star did not fire, gracefully orbiting back out of view again.

  As Wedge brought his fleet in closer, a tracery of laser fire shot toward them from small buildings and habitation modules on the misshapen asteroids. Only a few of the beams managed to strike, reflecting harmlessly off the ships' shields.

  "All right," Wedge said. "Two corvettes. Surgical strikes only. We want to remove those defenses, but don't damage the Installation itself." He shot a glance at Qwi. "That place holds too much important data to risk losing it."

  Wedge watched the enormous banks of engines behind the foremost two corvettes as they rained destructive blasts upon the asteroids. Bright—red spears lanced down to pulverize the rocks.

  "This is too easy," Wedge said.

  A desperate signal came from one of the corvette captains. His image flickered as he beamed a transmission on the emergency channel. "Something's happening to our hull! Shields aren't effective. Some new kind of weapon. Hull walls are weakening. Can't pinpoint where — "

  The transmission cut off as the corvette became a ball of fire and shrapnel.

  "Back off!" Wedge shouted into the open channel, but the second corvette plunged forward, choosing instead to use his full complement of dual turbolaser cannons as well as a pair of proton torpedoes that had been specially installed for the occupation mission. "Captain Ortola! Back off!"

  The captain of the second corvette blasted the nearest planetoid. Proton torpedoes sizzled with uncontained energy. Turbolaser blasts ignited volatile gases and flammables, reducing the small planetoid to incandescent dust.

  "That won't be a problem anymore, sir," Captain Ortola said. "You may deploy the strike forces at your leisure."

  Howling warnings shrieked through the Maw Installation's intercom so monotonously that Tol Sivron found it difficult to plan his speech.

  "Your attention, please," he said into the intercom. "Remember to follow your emergency procedures."

  Outside, stormtroopers hustled up and down the white—tiled corridors. The stormtrooper captain was yelling and directing his troops to set up defensive positions at vital intersections. No one bothered to refer to the carefully written and tested contingency scenarios Tol Sivron and his managers had spent so much time developing.

  Gritting his pointed teeth in annoyance, Sivron raised his voice into the intercom. "If you need another copy of your emergency procedures, or if you have difficulty finding one, contact your respective division leader immediately. We will see to it that you receive one."

  Hanging above Maw Installation, the Rebel ships looked like nightmarish constructions, brushing aside the Installation's defensive lasers as if they were mere insect bites.

  Doxin sat by an interlaboratory communication station and cheered as he saw one of the Rebel corvettes crumble, disintegrating into a cloud of pulverized metal plate and escaping fuel and coolant gases.

  "It worked!" Doxin said. "The MCPS worked!" He tapped the receiving jack in his ear, listened, and frowned with his enormous lips. When Doxin wrinkled the brow on his bald head, the ridges rippled all the way up to his crown like rugged—terrain treads.

  "Unfortunately, we won't get a second shot, Director. The MCPS seems to have malfunctioned," Doxin said. "But I do believe the original success against an actual target has proved the system worthy of additional development."

  "Indeed," Tol Sivron agreed, looking admiringly at the expanding cloud of debris from the corvette. "We must have a follow—up meeting."

  "The system is presently off—line," Doxin said.

  Th
e second Rebel corvette came in with all weapons blazing, and the asteroid housing the offices and labs of the high—energy concepts incinerated under the barrage.

  "It appears to be unquestionably out of commission," Sivron said.

  Doxin was deeply disappointed. "Now we'll never conduct a post—shot analysis," he said with a sigh. "It's going to be hard to compile a full report without actual data."

  A loud whump reverberated through the facility. Tol Sivron peered out into the hall as his division leaders crowded to get a view. White—and—gray smoke curled down the corridors, clogging the ventilation systems.

  The screens on the computer monitors inside the conference room went blank. As Sivron stood up to demand an explanation, the lights in all the offices winked out, replaced by a pale—green glow of emergency systems.

  The stormtrooper captain rushed up with a clatter of boots on the tiled floor.

  "Captain, what's going on?" Tol Sivron said. "Report."

  "We have just successfully destroyed the main computer core, sir," he said.

  "You did what?" Sivron asked.

  The captain continued in his staccato voice. "We need your personal codes to access the backup files, Director. We will irradiate them to erase the classified information."

  "Is that in the emergency procedures?" Tol Sivron looked from right to left for an answer from his division leaders. He picked up the hardcopy of the Emergency Procedures manual. "Captain, which page did you find that on?"

  "Sir, we cannot allow our vital data to fall into Rebel hands. The computer backups must be destroyed before the invaders take possession of this facility."

  "I'm not sure we addressed that contingency when we wrote the manual," Golanda said with a shrug, flipping pages as well.

  "Perhaps we'll have to put that in an addendum?" Yemm suggested.

  Standing, Wermyn shuffled through the papers with his one meaty hand. "Director, I see here in Section 5.4, "In the Event of Rebel Invasion," Paragraph (C). If such an invasion appears likely to succeed in gaining possession of the Installation, I am to lead my team in a mission to the power—reactor asteroid and destroy the cooling towers so that the system will go supercritical and wipe out both this base and the invaders as well."

  "Good, good!" Tol Sivron said, finding the right page and verifying the words for himself. "Get to it."

  Wermyn stood up. His swarthy greenish—purple skin flushed darker. "All these procedures have been approved, Director, but I don't quite follow our next step. How is my team going to get to safety? In fact, how are any of us going to get to safety once I've set up the chain reaction?"

  A stormtrooper's voice cut through the alarm chatter on the intercom. "Rebel troops have entered the base! Rebel troops have entered the —" The words ended in a squawk of dead static.

  "Sound the evacuation order," Sivron said, beleaguered. He stared out the sweeping viewing window with his close—set, beady eyes. Rebel battleships pummeled the Installation. Then a glinting metal framework rose into view, an armillary sphere the size of a small moon.

  "Just go and take care of the reactors, Wermyn," Tol Sivron said. "We'll fall back and evacuate to the Death Star prototype. We can swing by and pick you up, then make our escape. We'll abandon the Rebels to their deaths and take our precious knowledge back to the Empire."

  Three transports bearing New Republic strike teams landed on the Installation's central asteroid, blasting through the closed bay doors with their forward laser cannons. As the transports opened egress doors like mechanical wings, the teams flooded out of the passenger compartments and fanned into defensive phalanxes. Crouched low, heads ducked behind blaster—resistant armor, they held high—energy rifles in front of them.

  Chewbacca let out a Wookiee bellow as he thumped down the ramp, holding his bowcaster in front of him. He squeezed a hairy paw around the stock and pointed the crossbow—shaped weapon. His fur bristled. He smelled smoke, oil, and coolant fumes. Chewbacca scooped the air with his hairy paw, gesturing for the elite team of Page's Commandos to follow.

  Blaster shots rang out as four stormtroopers fired from ambush. A member of one of the other strike teams went down, then forty blaster bolts converged on the Imperial soldiers.

  Chewbacca remembered being a prisoner in the Maw Installation, when he had been forced to perform maintenance on Admiral Daala's ships. He had been tempted to sabotage one of their gamma—class assault shuttles, but knew that it would only get him killed while causing no irreparable harm to the Imperial forces.

  Now, though, Chewbacca kept thinking of the other Wookiee slaves. He remembered their bowed heads and patchy fur, their gaunt frames. The fire in their eyes had gone out after years of hard and hopeless labor.

  With a barely contained snarl he also remembered the sadistic lump of a man who served as the Wookiee "Keeper", watching over the slave detail no matter where they were assigned. His blazing eyes, broken—glass voice, and deadly force whip had kept the Wookiees in line through intimidation.

  Alarms shrieked through the intercoms, pumping Chewbacca's adrenaline and anger. He growled for the teams to hurry. He thought about See—Threepio still onboard the flagship Yavaris and was glad the protocol droid would not be in all the cross fire now. Chewbacca didn't want to have to put Threepio back together all over again.

  He approached a vast rock—walled workroom, where he remembered performing endless hours of heavy labor. The doors stood sealed by heavy blast shields with rivets the size of Chewbacca's knuckles.

  He hammered on the metal door with his flat palm. Behind him Page's Commandos rummaged in their packs. Two members rushed forward with thermal detonators in each hand. They placed the detonators at critical junctures on the blast door and flicked the timer switches. Amber lights winked on and off, counting down.

  "Back away!" one yelled.

  Chewbacca loped after the team as they ran around the corner just in time to hear a muffled explosion. An instant later a much louder sound reverberated as the heavy blast door clanged to the floor.

  "Move out," the strike—team leader said.

  Chewbacca charged forward through the smoke as he pushed into the sealed bay. He heard thin hissing sounds, like lightning strikes mixed with outraged bellows of pain. The captive Wookiees were in such a frenzied state that they had forgotten their own language.

  As the smoke cleared, Chewbacca was disappointed to find the battle already over — but he was elated that the Wookiees had finally taken a stand upon hearing the alarms and sensing that the tide of their misery had turned.

  Nine Wookiees had converged on the Keeper, who now stood backed against a half—disassembled Lambda—class Imperial shuttle. The Keeper was barrel—shaped with oily skin enhanced by a sheen of terrified sweat. His lips pulled back in a snarl of defiance, and he kept lashing out with serpent strikes of his force whip. The Wookiees growled, trying to come close enough to rip him apart with their claws.

  Chewbacca let out his own roar of challenge. Some of the Wookiees glanced up at the rescue force, but other hairy giants were so transfixed by their chance to get the Keeper that they paid no heed.

  "Drop your weapon," the commando—team leader said to the Keeper. All of the blaster rifles were directed toward him. It amused Chewbacca to see the cruel man glance at the New Republic force with an expression of relief.

  The Wookiees continued to snarl. They looked worse now than they had appeared only months earlier. No doubt without the protection of Admiral Daala's fleet, the Keeper had forced the slaves to work even harder to arrange other defenses for Maw Installation.

  "Drop your weapon, I said!" the strike—team commander insisted.

  The Keeper flicked his force whip once more, driving the Wookiee mob back. Chewbacca saw the three largest males in front, their fur streaked and patchy, burned from lashes of the whip and shiny with waxlike welts from old scars. The oldest gray—furred Wookiee, whom Chewbacca remembered as Nawruun, crouched by the edge of the shuttle, hiding under th
e sharp panels of the ship's upfolded wings. The old Wookiee's bones seemed twisted and crushed from years of labor, but the anger in his eyes was brighter than a star.

  The Keeper raised his force whip, stared at the Wookiees, then at Page's Commandos. The human team leader fired a warning shot, which spanged off the chamber walls. The Keeper raised his other hand in surrender, then let the handle of his force whip fall to the ground. It clinked on the smooth deck plates.

  "All right, now, back away," the team leader said.

  Chewbacca offered his own words in the Wookiee language. The astonished prisoners stood tense for a moment. The Keeper looked ready to collapse in terror, when suddenly old Nawruun dived to the floor, lunging with a hairy paw to snatch the handle of the whip. He fumbled the activation switches.

  The Keeper shrieked and backed against the wall, looking for someplace to hide. Chewbacca yowled for the Wookiees to stop, but they didn't hear him as they all surged forward, claws extended, ready to shred the Keeper into bloody pieces.

  Nawruun sprang upon the man's barrellike form. Though he was misshapen and old, the hunched Wookiee gripped the force whip like a club and tackled the Keeper to the floor. The burly man screamed and flailed.

  The other Wookiees fell upon him. Nawruun jammed the handle of the force whip into the Keeper's face and switched on the weapon at full power.

  The lance of lashing energy drilled into the Keeper's head, skirling fireworks inside his brainpan. Sparks came out of his eye sockets, until the Keeper's skull shattered, showering the hysterical Wookiee prisoners with gore.

  Silence thundered down upon the chamber.

  Chewbacca walked carefully forward as the surviving Wookiees withered. Without any stamina or fury, they backed away from the corpse of their tormentor. Old Nawruun stood again and stared blankly down at the force whip in his hand. He let it drop.