caused the death of his brother Zeth.
Now he would do all he could to rescue his friends
— comn only to salve his conscience, but because they
deserved to live and continue the fight for freedom
in the galaxy.
Kyp stared at the oily metallic texture
of the Sun Crusher's faceted sides. The
quantum armor reflected light in strange
directions, distorting it, making the superweapon
appear to have been polished with slow light.
With trembling hands he gripped the rungs of the
ladder and ascended. Han Solo and Chewbacca
had climbed these same rungs to get into the Sun
Crusher during their escape from the Installation.
Kyp's brother had attempted to pull himself
aboard before Carida's star exploded — but Zeth
had not succeeded.
Kyp swung shut the hatch as if he were sealing
himself off from the rest of the galaxy for all time. He
didn't know if he would ever see the outside again,
if he would ever return to Coruscant, or if
he would ever speak to Han Solo or Master
Skywalker again.
He slumped into the pilot's seat and stilled
those thoughts with a Jedi technique. Only a few
hours earlier he and Luke had been riding in the
Sun Crusher, peaceful companions talking about
their lives and their hopes. Now Kyp could not think
beyond working the simple controls of the Sun Crusher.
He raised the spike — shaped craft on its
repulsorlifts and guided himself through the long
launching tunnel into open space where the battle
raged.
He approached the giant framework sphere
of the Death Star. Kyp had seen the effectiveness
of the Sun Crusher's ultrastrong armor when
Han Solo had flown at full speed through the
bridge tower of the Hydra — but even the quantum
armor could not possibly withstand a blast from the Death
Star's superlaser.
Kyp had two remaining resonance torpedoes
that could trigger a supernova. He doubted he could
get a critical mass in the
prototype's skeletal structure, but a
direct hit would still cause a substantial chain
reaction.
He accelerated forward, a mere pinprick on
the vast canvas of garish — colored gases around the
Maw's black holes.
Then, without warning, a bright flower of orange and
white erupted from the power core at the center of the
Death Star, a small explosion. An instant
later, flying in the opposite direction, the
Millennium Falcon blasted out of the
superstructure, gaining speed.
With a warm melting sensation of relief and
triumph, he knew that Han Solo had
survived! Now Kyp could strike the crippled
Death Star with no second thoughts. And then he would
go after Daala.
He powered up his targeting and weapons
systems. With Jedi senses Kyp could feel the
power surging beneath him in the toroidal torpedo
generator — energy sufficient to crack open stars.
For one last time, he had to use it.
The explosion in the power core sent the entire
Death Star reeling off its axis. The lone
spacetrooper attempting to disarm the detonators
was hurled backward, already torn to shreds of
plasteel armor and incinerated bone.
The detonator had ripped open a gash in the
cylindrical core, splitting the armored plating
wide and spraying a jet of radioactive
fire.
Tol Sivron's head — tails stretched out
straight with outrage. "I ordered those two
spacetroopers to stop the sabotage!" He
whirled to the Devaronian Division Leader.
"Yemm, record their service numbers and make
a special disciplinary notation in their files!"
He tapped his claws on the chair arm and
finally remembered to say, "Oh, and give me a
damage assessment."
Doxin ran to the status console and pulled up
a visual. "From what I know of the blueprints,
Director, there appears to be a relatively
insignificant breach in the power core. We can
repair it before radiation levels get too high.
It's a good thing no more than one of those
detonators blew, though. Otherwise we
wouldn't be able to contain it."
The stormtrooper captain was on his
feet, chattering orders into his radio helmet.
"I've already sent a full squadron of
troopers down to suit up, sir. I have
instructed them that their personal safety is
forfeit."
"Good, good," Tol Sivron said absently.
"How soon will I be able to shoot again?"
The stormtrooper studied his panels. The
white plasteel helmet masked any hint of
expression. "The spacetroopers are suited up
and on their way. They are descending the catwalks
now." He pointed his featureless black goggles
at Sivron. "If the repair work goes as
planned, you could fire within twenty minutes."
"Well, tell them to hurry," Sivron said.
"If Daala destroys Maw Installation before
I do, I'll be very annoyed."
"Yes, Director," the captain said.
Tol Sivron watched with simmering frustration
as the Millennium Falcon disappeared toward
the other fighting ships inside the Maw. He
noticed the New Republic battleships that
had overrun his facility; he noticed the large
conglomeration of planetoids where he had spent so
many years of his career. And then he looked at
Admiral Daala's Star Destroyer.
Daala, whom he loathed, who had deserted him
and her duty at the time of greatest need.
Tol Sivron muttered to himself as he
fidgeted in the command chair. "So many targets,"
he said, "and so little time."
The battle — scarred Star Destroyer cruised
so low over the Maw Installation's weakening
defensive shields that Luke's instinct was
to duck. The complex clutter of the Gorgon's
hull flowed like an unending river past the
skylights, showing just how immense the battleship
was.
"Shields just failed completely," one of the
technicians said. "We won't survive
another pass, and the reactor asteroid is going
critical!"
Wedge punched the facilitywide intercom and
shouted orders. His voice echoed through the labyrinth
of tunnels in the clustered asteroids of the
Installation. "Last call for evacuation. Everyone
to the transport ships. Now! We've
only got a few minutes to get out of here."
The alarms somehow grew even louder. Luke
turned to follow the troops running toward the
doors. Wedge grabbed the thin blue arm of Qwi
Xux, but she resisted, staring in horror at the
computer screens. "Look!" she said. "What is
she doing? She can't!"
Wedge stopped to glance at the streams of data
flying across the screens at high speed. He
&
nbsp; blinked and saw rapid — fire images of
blueprints, weapons designs, test data.
"Admiral Daala must have known Director
Sivron's password," Qwi cried. "She's
dumping the data backups we couldn't crack.
She's downloading all the weapons information!"
Wedge grabbed Qwi by the waist and yanked her
away from the terminal, rushing her toward the door.
"We can't do anything about that now. We've got
to get out of here."
They ran down the corridors with the assault
troops in the lead. Qwi's feathery hair
streamed behind her, glinting in the harsh white light from
the glowpanels.
Wedge felt overwhelmed, his tension rising, as
if his internal chronometer were ticking down the
seconds until the explosion of the fragile
reactor asteroid, until Admiral
Daala's next attack, until the whole
Installation bloomed into a white — hot cloud of
rubble.
Wedge had never wanted to be a general
anyway. He was a good wing man, a fighter
pilot. He had flown beside Luke down the trench
of the first Death Star, and next to Lando
Calrissian to destroy the second one.
By far the best assignment had been to escort the
lovely Qwi Xux. Even frightened and dismayed,
Qwi looked exotic and beautiful. He wanted
to hold her and comfort her — but he could do that on the
transport back to the Yavaris. If they
didn't get out of here immediately, they would all
die.
As the refugees scrambled across the takeoff
area, one of the transports declared itself fully
loaded. Wedge grabbed his comm link. "Go, go!
Don't wait for us!"
They charged up the ramp of another waiting
shuttle. The remaining troops scattered to their
seats. Wedge took a second to make sure
Qwi had a safe place to strap herself
in. Luke bolted for the cockpit and threw himself
into the copilot's chair, powering up the sublight
engines.
Wedge took one last glance back at the
personnel compartment to verify that everyone was at least
close to being seated. "Secure the door!" he
cried.
One of the lieutenants slammed a palm against
the hatch controls. With an impatient hiss the
ramp drew in like a retracting serpent's
tongue. The doors clamped shut.
Wedge wasted no time securing himself into his
seat before raising the transport off the landing pad.
With a scream of acceleration the troop ship launched
itself away from the dying Maw Installation.
The bootsteps of Commander Kratas sounded like
hammers on sheet metal as he ran up to the
bridge observation platform. Admiral Daala
turned, anxiously awaiting a favorable
report.
Kratas tried to regain his composure but did
not succeed in wiping the idiotic grin from his lips.
"Transfer successful, Admiral. Complete
core dump of all the Maw's backup computer
files." He lowered his voice. "You were
correct. Director Sivron never bothered
to change his password. He was still using the same one
you obtained ten years ago."
Daala snorted. "Sivron has been
incompetent in everything else. Why should he
change now?"
Most of her TIE fighters had been wiped
out. None of her starboard turbolasers were
functional. Engines operated at only 40
percent efficiency, and many systems were severely
overheating.
She had never anticipated the battle would
take this long. She had meant to obliterate the
Rebel forces and then finish mop — up operations at
her leisure. She didn't understand why Sivron
and his Death Star didn't do anything. But finally
something had gone right; she had retrieved the
precious data from the Maw Installation computers.
Daala watched as troop transports fled
the cluster of rocks below, but she deemed them
insignificant targets.
"Installation shields are completely down," the
tactical lieutenant said.
"Good," she snapped. "Wheel about.
We'll make a final attack run."
"Excuse me, Admiral," Kratas
interrupted. "We're getting anomalous readings
from the reactor asteroid. It appears to have suffered
severe damage and is highly unstable."
Daala brightened. "Ah, excellent. We'll
target that. Perhaps the reactor can do most of the
destructive work for us."
She looked out the bridge tower and saw the
ocean of screaming gases around the infinitely
black pinpoints. The Gorgon turned about and
headed toward Maw Installation.
"Full ahead," Daala said, standing rigid
at her station, gloved hands clasped behind her
back. Her coppery hair flowed behind her like
spraying lava. "Fire repeatedly, until the
Installation is destroyed — or until our
turbolaser banks are drained dry."
The lumbering ship picked up momentum as the
Gorgon accelerated forward on its final run.
Wedge flicked on the open communications unit
to contact the New Republic fleet. He
didn't care about encryption at the moment — if the
Imperial forces could decode his transmissions,
they wouldn't have time to take action anyway.
"All fighters, regroup and return to the
Yavaris. Prepare to retreat. We are leaving
the Maw. We have everything we came for."
The huge frigate hung like a jagged weapon
waiting to receive the fighter squadrons. X — wings
and ally — wings looped around, disengaging from space
dogfights and heading back to their primary ships.
Wedge accelerated toward the Yavaris. The
squarish opening of the frigate's lower bays glowed
with an atmosphere — containment field, like a
welcoming open door.
Without warning four square — winged TIE fighters
shot up from Wedge's blind spot, mercilessly
battering the front of the transport shuttle with
laser bolts.
Before Wedge could react, an assault
shuttle bearing Imperial markings flew in from the
left, firing multiple beams from its forward
heavy blaster cannons. The attack took the
TIE pilots by surprise. They scrambled and
scattered. Two careened into each other to get out
of the way. Two others succumbed to the focused
blasts, exploding into molten debris.
Wedge heard a loud Wookiee roar
of triumph over the open comm channel, echoed
by growls and shouts from the assault shuttle's
passenger compartment. The clipped metallic
voice of See — Threepio interrupted,
"Chewbacca, please do stop showing off! We need
to get back to the Yavaris."
Luke toggled the communications panel.
"Thanks, guys."
"Master Luke!" Threepio cried. "What
are you doing here? We need to get away!"
<
br /> "It's a long story, Threepio. We're
doing our best to do just that."
On the opposite side of the Maw, the
Gorgon spun about and accelerated toward the
unprotected Installation like a wild bantha, its
rear engines blazing with star fire. A flurry of
green turbolaser bolts blurred out from the Star
Destroyer's fore section, angling down to strike
the Installation's clustered asteroids. With the
facility's shields down, ionized rock dust
sprayed into space.
Daala fired and fired again, picking up speed
in what appeared to be a suicide run. Her
strafing beams pummeled the Installation, striking
asteroid after asteroid. Metal bridges
vaporized, transparisteel shattered and blew
outward.
The Gorgon came on, unstoppable until
— comj as she soared over at closest approach — the
attack breached the containment housing the unstable power
reactor.
Sitting in the cockpit of the personnel
transport, Wedge and Luke both flinched as the
entire Maw Installation suddenly became a
blaze of light, like a miniature exploding star.
The center of the Maw was filled with an incandescent
purifying fire.
The glare flooded outward, automatically
causing the viewscreens to darken. Wedge flew
blind, trusting the navigation computer's controls and
aiming toward the waiting New Republic
flagships.
When his vision finally cleared, he looked back
to the stable point that had held the Empire's most
sophisticated weapons — research laboratory.
He saw only a far — flung swarm of broken
rocks and smoldering gases in an expanding
backwash of energy. Eventually, the debris would
drift far enough to be siphoned down to infinity through
one of the black holes.
As the glare faded and the fiery gases cleared,
he saw no sign whatsoever of Admiral
Daala or her last Star Destroyer.
Working like automatons, the team of doomed
spacetroopers attached themselves to the breached wall
of the Death Star's power core. Intense radiation
spewed out, darkening their faceplates so they could
barely see, slowly frying their life — support
systems.
Moving sluggishly as they weakened under the
invisible onslaught, they wrestled thick sheets
of plating in the low gravity. They used rapid
laser welders to slap patches over the breach,
reinforcing it to withstand an energy buildup.
Champions of the Force Page 25
