Champions of the Force

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Yemm entered numbers into one of the computer stations and nodded his horned head at Tol Sivron. "Ready, Director."

  "Turn it on," he said. "Let me speak to the crew." His last words echoed through the speakers, startling him. He cleared his throat and leaned closer to the voice pickup on the pilot's chair.

  "Attention, everyone! Hurry with those repairs," he snapped into the intercom. His voice sounded like the commands of a deity as he spoke through all levels. "I want to destroy something as soon as possible." He switched off.

  The stormtrooper captain turned to him. "We will do our best, sir. I should have final repair estimates within a few hours."

  "Good, good." He stared across the open emptiness of space, looking at all the possible starpoint targets.

  Tol Sivron had in his possession one of the most devastating weapons in the galaxy. But it remained untested. For now.

  The second timed detonation occurred just as Wedge Antilles and his assault squad charged into the Maw Installation's power — reactor complex. Shaped charges planted by a sabotage crew exploded at the base of the reactor's cooling towers, shutting down the enormous generator that powered the facilities, the laboratories, the mainframe computers, and life — support systems.

  Wearing mottled brown — and — gray body armor, Wedge had led his assault team across the connector — tube cat — walks to the power asteroid. But just as the squad entered, gouts of gray smoke spurted through the tunnels, carrying dust and debris along with a hot wind.

  Wedge shook his head to clear his ringing ears. He climbed to his knees and then to his feet again. "I need an assessment of the damages," he shouted. "Quick!"

  Three of the leading soldiers raced down the hall only to encounter a group of Maw Installation personnel fleeing the wreckage. The saboteurs were led by a one — armed brute of a man with purplish — green skin and a sour expression.

  Wedge's team snapped up their weapons, training the barrels of their blaster rifles on the saboteurs, who halted with a clatter like machine components locking into place. The one — armed man skidded to a stop and looked around wildly. The rest of his crew glared at the New Republic soldiers.

  "Drop your weapons!" Wedge said.

  The large brute raised his single hand, palm outward, to show that he carried no weapons. Wedge was surprised to see that the others were also unarmed.

  "It's too late to stop anything," the one — armed man said. "I am Wermyn, Division Leader for Plant Operations. Accept my surrender. My team and I would appreciate it if you'd get us off this rock before the whole thing explodes."

  Wedge pointed to four of his soldiers. "Use binders, see that the prisoners are secured. We've got to get that power reactor functioning again, or we'll have to evacuate."

  The Maw saboteurs did not resist as the squad took them into custody, though Wedge's men looked confused about how to apply binders to Wermyn's single arm.

  Wedge and the technicians proceeded cautiously into the reactor housing. The heat struck him like a sandwhirl during the hot season on Tatooine. The air smelled thick with acrid lubricants, molten metal, and charred high — energy explosive.

  Red warning lights flooded the chamber, reflecting from whistling jets of steam like droplets of flying blood. Laboring pumps and engines thudded with a pounding beat that made Wedge's skull ache. A large reactor component had been slagged, left with ragged, dripping edges.

  He squinted as the techs ran forward, yanking handheld detectors from their belts to study radiation leaks. One trotted up to Wedge. "Both the primary and the backup cooling pumps have been destroyed. Our friend Wermyn was right. He has initiated a meltdown, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. We can't fix this equipment."

  "Can we shut down the reactor?" Wedge said.

  "It's been locked on, and the controls are destroyed," the tech answered. "I suppose there's a chance we could reroute and rig up temporary systems in an hour or two, but if we shut the reactor down, we also terminate power and life support to the Installation."

  Wedge looked around the wreckage as his stomach sank. With his boot he kicked a broken piece of plasteel shielding. It clattered hollowly across the floor until the throbbing engines swallowed the sound.

  "I didn't lead this strike force just to let all the scientists and the Death Star get away while the whole Installation is destroyed under my feet." He drew a deep breath and tapped his fingers together in an attempt to concentrate, as

  Qwi often did, though he wasn't sure it worked.

  Then he yanked the comm link from his hip and gripped it, toggling on the frequency for the flagship Yavaris. "Captain," he said, "get me some engineering experts right away. We need to rig up emergency cooling pumps for the main power reactor. "

  "I know we don't have much equipment, but our hyperdrive cooling systems shouldn't be too dissimilar to what this reactor uses. Take one of the corvettes off line and remove the engine pumps. We've got to get something working down here to hold us until we can remove everything of value."

  The two technicians looked up at Wedge and smiled. "That just might work, sir."

  Wedge ushered them back to where the prisoners were held, vowing not to let the Imperials win so easily.

  Qwi Xux felt like a stranger in her own house. She walked timidly into the room she had identified as her former laboratory, expecting something to jump out at her, memories to come flooding back.

  The illumination came on, shedding a cold white glow on the design apparatus, her computer terminals, her furniture. This place had been her home, the center of her life for more than a decade. But it looked like a foreign land to her now. She stared in amazement and sighed.

  See — Threepio whirred as he followed her into the room. "I still don't know why I'm here, Dr. Xux. I can assist you in assimilating the leftover data, but I'm a protocol droid, not a slicer. Perhaps you should have brought my counterpart Artoo — Detoo? He's much better at this sort of thing than I am. He is a fine model, but a bit too headstrong for a droid, if you catch my meaning."

  Qwi ignored him as she stepped farther into the room, walking on tiptoes. Her skin felt cold and clammy. The air smelled stale, empty. She trembled as she ran her fingers along the cool synthetic stone of the thick support pillars. She caught a flash of distant memory — a ragged Han Solo tied to this pillar, barely able to hold his head upright after the "deep interrogation" Admiral Daala had performed on him...

  Qwi went over to the lab table, picked up her spectral — analysis sensors, materials — properties analyzers, stress and strain simulators, and a holographic 3 — D design projector that glittered darkly under the bright lights.

  "My, this appears to be a completely adequate workspace, Dr. Xux," Threepio said. "Spacious and clean. I'm sure you accomplished a great deal here. Believe me, I've seen far more cluttered research areas in facilities on Coruscant."

  "Threepio, why don't you take an inventory of the equipment you see," Qwi told him, just to keep the droid quiet so she could think. "Pay particular attention to any demonstration models you find. Those could be significant."

  Qwi discovered a small musical keypad lying half — hidden in a pile of printouts and handwritten notes. Beside the keypad stood the milky eye of a powerless computer terminal.

  She switched the terminal on, but the screen demanded her password before it would allow her access to her own files. So much for that.

  Qwi picked up the musical keypad and cradled it. The instrument felt familiar and yet alien. She touched a few of the keys and listened to the soft, high notes that issued from it. She remembered standing in the shattered debris of the Cathedral of Winds, picking up a fragment of one of the windpipes and blowing a slow, mournful melody through it. The winged Vors had snatched the flute from her, insisting that there be no more music until the cathedral itself was rebuilt...

  But this keypad held her own music. Qwi vaguely recalled using it, but she couldn't quite picture for what. A flickering image came to mind, l
ike a slick, wet fruit that slipped from her fingers every time she tried to grasp it — setting the keypad down, suspecting she might never come back. ... She winced, drew a breath, and tapped her fingers together, trying to think.

  Han Solo! Yes, she had left everything untouched as she attempted to rescue Han and escape with the Sun Crusher.

  She let her long blue fingers dance across the musical keys. Her mind remembered no particular sequence, but her body knew. Her hands moved by habit, tapping out a quick loop of melody. She smiled — it seemed so familiar

  to her.

  When she finished the sequence of notes, her computer screen winked, PASSWORD ACCEPTED. She blinked her indigo eyes, astonished at what she had done.

  ERROR, the computer printed. MAIN DATABASE UNAVAILABLE ... SEARCHING FOR BACKUPS. FILES DAMAGED.

  Qwi suspected Tol Sivron might have destroyed the computer core before fleeing in the Death Star prototype. But she must have left something stored within the temporary memory of her own terminal.

  RECOVERED FILES FOLLOW, the screen said.

  Qwi looked through a window into her own journals, her personal notes. Her heart pounded as she scanned words she herself had typed — but it was not herself. It was another Qwi Xux, a Qwi from the past who had been brainwashed by Imperials, a Qwi who had been twisted as a child and forced to perform to the utter limits of her

  mental abilities.

  Taking shallow breaths, she read her daily accounts with growing uneasiness: the experiments she had performed, simulations she had run on the computer, meetings she had attended, endless progress reports she had filed for Director Sivron. Though she remembered none of it, it appalled her to realize that she had done nothing but work. Her only joy had come from completed experiments — her only moments of excitement, when tests proved her designs to be reliable.

  "Was this all my life was?" Qwi asked. She scrolled down, scanning day after identical day. "How ... empty!" she muttered.

  "Excuse me?" Threepio said. "Did you ask for assistance?"

  "Oh, Threepio." She shook her head and found tears stinging her eyes.

  She heard footsteps in the outer corridor and turned as Wedge entered the lab. His face was smudged with grime, his uniform rumpled. He looked sweaty and exhausted, but she rushed to him and hugged him. He squeezed her shoulders, then ran his fingers through her feathery pearlescent hair.

  "Is it bad?" he said. "Sorry I couldn't be here when you first entered the lab. I had an emergency."

  Qwi shook her head. "No, I had to face this myself anyway."

  "Find anything useful?" He stepped away from her, becoming the general again. "We need to know how many scientists were at the Installation. Most got away on the Death Star, but any information you have ..."

  Qwi stiffened and looked back at her computer terminal. "I'm not sure I can help you." Her voice carried a desolate, lost quality. "I've been looking over my daily life. It doesn't look like I knew any of the other scientists. I ... I had no friends here." She looked at him, widening her depthless eyes.

  "More than ten years of my life, and I knew no one. I worked. I thought I was dedicated. Defeating universal challenges meant a great deal to me — but I didn't even know what it was for. All I cared about was finding the next solution. How could I have been so naive?"

  Wedge gave her an encouraging hug. He felt so warm and comforting against her. "That's all over, Qwi. It'll never happen to you again. You've been let out of a cage, and I'm here to help show you the rest of the universe — if you'll come along with me."

  "Yes, Wedge." She looked up at him with a faint smile. "Of course I'll come with you."

  Wedge's comm link beeped at him from his waist, and he pulled it out with a sigh. "Yes, what is it?" he said.

  "General Antilles, we've brought down some temporary equipment to the reactor facility. We modified the critical components taken from one of the corvettes, as you suggested. We've managed to emplace them, and the systems are marginally functional. The core temperature levels of the reactor have begun dropping, and we expect them to go below the red lines within the next several hours."

  "Good. Do we have a time limit here, then?" Wedge said.

  "Well ...," the technician's voice answered, "the reactors are still shaky, but they're stable for now."

  "Good work," Wedge said. "Pass along my commendations to your people."

  "Yes, sir."

  Wedge switched off and smiled at Qwi. "See, everything's working out after all," he said. She nodded, raising her face to look through the long, narrow window at the top of the wall. Pools of hot gas drifted around the Maw's black holes.

  They seemed safe here, walled off from the conflicts of the galaxy. Qwi had fought her greatest personal battles, and now she could allow herself to relax just a little.

  But before she could turn away, she saw a shadow appear in the multicolored nebula — a huge triangular shape, like a spear point plunging through the gases and emerging into the safe gravitational island.

  Qwi stiffened, biting back an outcry of panic.

  Wedge let go of her and whirled, looking up.

  "Oh, dear!" Threepio said.

  Battered and blackened, an Imperial Star Destroyer came through the Maw with its weapons already powering up. Its once — white hull was blistered and streaked with burn marks; its shielding plates damaged by an inferno of destruction.

  Admiral Daala's flagship, the Gorgon, had returned to Maw Installation.

  The Imperial Spider Walkers ascended the steep, pitted stone pinnacle. Their long metal legs bent at odd angles as their claws hauled them toward the heavy blast doors protecting Winter and baby Anakin.

  Winter stood in the operations room, her jaw clenched, her eyes narrowed, as she viewed the progress of the assault transports. They had reached her first line of defenses.

  When establishing the Anoth hiding place, Admiral Ackbar and Luke Skywalker had been unwilling to rely entirely on secrecy. They had tried to plan for every possible attack scenario. Winter had hoped she would never need to test those contingency plans, but now she had to fight for the child's life — and her own.

  Winter looked down at her status panels: the Foreign Intruder Defense Organism was primed and ready for automatic strike. She anticipated that FIDO could take out at least two of the Spider Walkers. She watched, gripping the edge of the consoles to steady herself.

  Scuttling up the rock wall with insectile legs, the Spider Walkers reached a line of caves, small openings to a labyrinth of dead ends and grottoes within the stone.

  Winter tensed as the first two MT — AT'S passed, unsuspecting, over the black openings. The uppermost assault walker paused and fired a preemptive strike against the blast doors above with two forward lasers. A muffled thump and clang reverberated through the sealed installation.

  As the second Spider Walker also prepared to fire, masses of whiplike tentacles lashed out of the hidden caves, long ropes each ending in a razor — sharp pincer claw. The tentacles took the Spider Walkers completely by surprise.

  Two of FIDO'S writhing arms locked around the first walker and ripped it from the cliff face. Before the machine could use its pneumatic claws to grasp the rock again, FIDO tossed the Spider Walker over the edge.

  The MT — AT tumbled in a long clatter of wildly gesticulating legs. On its way down the Walker clipped another of the assault transports; the two plummeted together and exploded in a fiery crash on the jagged ground below.

  The second Spider Walker fired with its laser cannon into the dark caves. One of FIDO'S tentacles, black and smoking, withdrew like a flicked whip, vanishing deep into the tunnels; but other tentacles emerged from different openings to wrap around the Walker in a stranglehold. In desperation the turbolaser fired again, dislodging chunks of rock. FIDO squeezed, bending the articulated legs until their hinges groaned and thick rivets popped out.

  Sensor — tipped tentacles comprehended what the cockpit of the MT — AT was for. FIDO'S heavy plasteel c
laws smashed through the armored canopy, tearing open the roof and plucking out two stormtroopers to toss them over the precipice like gnawed bones discarded after a feast. Unmanned, the walker skidded down the cliff face as the remaining five assault transports scuttled out of the way.

  Winter clenched her fist and slowed her shallow breathing. She tried to calm herself. The defending semiorganic droid had succeeded in removing three of the attacking machines, but the remaining five would almost certainly destroy FIDO.

  Ackbar had proposed modeling a guardian droid after the dreaded sea monster from Calamari, the krakana. Calamarian scientists had designed a resilient, partially sentient machine that mimicked many of the krakana's most fearsome traits. Its tentacles were threaded with durasteel cables, its pincers plated with razor — edged alloys. FIDO'S existence centered on protecting the base. The droid tentacles writhed out from the cavern, searching for more prey.

  Three of the remaining assault walkers hauled themselves up on either side of the catacomb openings to fire repeatedly into the caves. Unexpectedly, from an apparently empty side hole, another trio of tentacles grabbed one of the Spider Walkers, dragging it toward the central cluster of cave openings.

  Winter marveled at the tactic. Not only was FIDO destroying another one of the vehicles, it was also using the MT — AT as a shield. But the other Walkers did not stop shooting. Stormtroopers considered each other expendable for the sake of a mission.

  The occupants of the captured Spider Walker continued to fire. FIDO dragged the MT — AT closer, crushing it against the rock like a thick — skinned jewel fruit. At close range the stormtrooper pilot powered up his low — slung, high — power blaster cannons and fired a combined blast into the caves. The enormous explosion ripped out a vast chunk of the catacombed understructure. Flames and dust, broken rocks and volatile gases, sprayed in a plume that rose into the violet skies of Anoth. The backwash vaporized FIDO'S body core and, simultaneously, detonated the captured Spider Walker.