Star Wars: Choices of One

by Timothy Zahn

  Mara grimaced. Of course Stelikag hadn’t simply stashed Ferrouz’s wife and daughter in some random building, a place that would require binders or else a circle of guards to keep his prizes from making a run for it at an opportune moment. He’d put them twenty meters above the ground, with a single stairway exit that would have them in plain sight of the entire guard force for a solid minute if they tried to leave.

  And would put any prospective rescuer in the same indefensible position.

  Unless that prospective rescuer got clever.

  Mara had already considered using the crane rail stretching the length of the cavern as a way to get across to the other stairway. Now the idea sounded even better.

  The trick was still going to be how to get across the three-meter gap and up onto the rail without being seen. Even with the enemy’s numbers decreased, there were enough random glances coming in her direction to make that risky.

  For a moment her thoughts flicked to Skywalker, presumably still lurking out there somewhere in the vehicle tunnel. But she quickly dismissed them. Whoever he was, he was clearly an amateur, and this was a job for professionals.

  Maybe with a little extra help from the kidnappers themselves.

  It took her a minute of slow crawling to make her way down the catwalk to the beginning of the stairway. Being careful not to set off the motion triggers, she worked a length of syntherope from her dispenser and slipped the end through part of the metal mesh of the upper stair riser, then threaded it around one of the guardrail supports. With both ends of the syntherope in hand, she backed down the catwalk again and returned to the tunnel mouth. Leaving the cord there, she slipped into the tunnel and headed back to Ferrouz’s safe room sanctuary.

  Three minutes later she was back, one of the dead alien bodies from the guard foyer draped over her shoulder. At the tunnel mouth she laid it out flat and tied one end of her syntherope loop around its chest beneath its arms. She eased it out onto the catwalk, maneuvering it around so that it was pointed toward the stairs.

  Picking up the free end of the syntherope, she began to pull.

  Slowly, awkwardly, the body moved down the catwalk. Mara continued to pull, keeping the body moving, the bulk of her attention on the kidnappers wandering the floor below. Unlike the stairs, the catwalk itself was made of solid metal, but it was just possible the top of the body would be visible from below.

  But so far no one seemed to have noticed it. The body was nearly to the stairs now, and Mara eased herself a little farther into the cover of the tunnel mouth. When the rigged stairs went off, she didn’t want to be anywhere within range of the explosion.

  The body reached the end of the catwalk and teetered for a moment on the edge. Mara gave the syntherope a final jerk, and the body went flopping forward onto the stairs.

  And with the multiple thunderclap of a midsummer electrical storm, the stairway explosives went off.

  Mara pressed herself against the tunnel wall, wincing as the sonic shock wave hammered across her head, wincing a little more as pieces of the stairs and the shredded end of the catwalk ricocheted off the tunnel wall and bounced more or less harmlessly off her back and legs. The hail of metal stopped, and she eased back to the tunnel mouth.

  Below her, the whole cavern was on the move, the kidnappers running toward the demolished stairs, their blasters aimed and ready. A couple of them looked up at the tunnel mouth, but those glances were even more perfunctory than before. Those who’d looked quickly enough had surely seen a body falling toward the floor, and there was logically no one that could have been except the Imperial agent they’d been expecting.

  And with all eyes focused on the pile of shattered debris, and the dust and smoke of the multiple explosions billowing upward and obscuring everything in its path, Mara stepped onto the catwalk and slipped over to the control cabin. A two-handed grip on the edge, a pull and leg-swing upward onto the roof, a roll and another grab on the nearest of the crane rail’s support struts—

  And as the dust began to clear, she slid up onto her belly on the rail.

  It wouldn’t be long, she knew, before the searchers down there picked their way through the debris and discovered to their consternation that the body was one of their own. When that happened, the search for her would be on.

  By then, if she was lucky, it would already be too late.

  Hunching up her shoulders to get her elbows beneath her, she started to crawl.

  “Eleven minutes to impact, sir,” the kid at the Golan’s sensor board said, his voice tight, his eyes wide. “Commandant? What do we do?”

  It was, Han thought as he gazed out the viewport at the distant shape bearing down on them, a really good question.

  And so far, Commandant Barcelle didn’t seem to have the slightest idea how to answer it.

  Han looked around the command room. Eighty-three men, Barcelle had said, were aboard. Eighty-three men, and no escape pods. They were supposed to have them, but like everything else aboard the station the safety equipment had been allowed to slowly fall apart. There were no pods, no ships, no escape. Nothing but Han and the Falcon, and there was no way the Falcon could take on eighty-three passengers.

  “Can we move this thing?” he asked Barcelle. “At all?”

  “All we can do is rotate,” Barcelle said, his face and voice as tight as that of the sensor operator. “We’re an orbiting station. Once we’re in place we’re not supposed to have to go anywhere.”

  Han grimaced. That was, unfortunately, the answer he’d been expecting.

  But the Golan did have its weapons, or at least some of them. If they opened up on the Star Destroyer …

  Then the Star Destroyer would open up on them. And given the disparity in firepower, the Golan would definitely be the loser in the exchange.

  Not that it would make any difference either way. The Star Destroyer’s weapons were probably already powering up with exactly that plan in mind. The Golan’s comm system was in as bad a shape as the rest of the station, and with all the static Han hadn’t caught the name of the Imperial in charge. But enough of Nuso Esva’s challenge had gotten through to make it clear that this was some kind of personal issue.

  And no Imperial commander could afford to lose a Star Destroyer and a Golan I in the same day. Especially not in the same incident.

  “We could rotate to put our long axis toward them,” one of the other officers offered hesitantly. “We’d be a smaller target that way.”

  “You mean they might miss us?” someone else asked.

  “Not likely,” Barcelle said grimly. “But it would at least be doing something. Kater, fire up the flywheel. Let’s see what we can—”

  “No,” Han cut in suddenly. “You said you still had a torpedo launcher. Where is it?”

  “Sector One-One cluster,” Barcelle said, frowning at Han. “This end of the station. Are you suggesting we shoot at them?”

  “I’m suggesting we shoot torpedoes at right angles to the Chimaera’s vector,” Han said. “Full-power rail launch, minimal propellant, aimed so they don’t hit anything. If we can give the platform enough sideways momentum, maybe we can get out of the way.”

  “That’s impossible,” someone insisted. “The relative mass—”

  “You want to sit here and just watch them run us down?” Barcelle snarled. “Pastron, fire up the launchers. Nills, what’s the rack status?”

  “We just have the standard two torpedoes in place,” one of the men reported tensely. “That’s all we’re supposed to have racked in peacetime.”

  “This look like peacetime to you?” Han snapped, gesturing toward the distant alien ships and the not nearly distant enough Star Destroyer. “Get more of them to the racks. Now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nills said hastily, punching at his controls. “But that’ll take time. Number three crane’s the only one that’s functional—”

  “Oh, for—” Swallowing the curse, Han yanked out his comlink. “Chewie, get up here,” he ordered. “Bring the
other two with you. Commandant, get someone down to my ship to show them where the racks and storage cradles are.”

  “Opfo, make it happen,” Barcelle ordered. “You do realize, Major, that these are considerably bigger than your average starfighter-sized torpedoes.”

  “Trust me—Chewie’s considerably bigger than your average handler,” Han said. “I’ll put my Wookiee up against your crane any day of the month.”

  “You have a Wookiee?” someone asked incredulously.

  “What we have is ten minutes until that Star Destroyer gets here,” Han bit out. “Everyone who’s not on some other job, get over to the racks and give them a hand.”

  “You heard the man,” Barcelle confirmed. “Move it.”

  “There!” Car’das said, pointing at the display. “There he goes.”

  “Who?” Thrawn asked.

  “Nuso Esva,” Car’das said. “Or at least, a freighter that shouldn’t be out there. Backtrack says it came from the Chimaera. It has to be him.” He looked over at Thrawn. “I may still be able to hit him from here.”

  Thrawn shook his head. “Focus on the task at hand, Jorj,” he said. “Nuso Esva will keep for later.”

  Car’das grimaced. The task at hand: trying to keep the Chimaera and the Golan from destroying each other in a fiery collision that would send repercussions rippling all the way back to Imperial Center. Nuso Esva had called it, all right: Thrawn’s entire reputation and career were on the line here. “You really think this is going to work?”

  “The theory is perfectly sound,” Thrawn reminded him. “The only question is whether or not the Lost Reef will be able to handle the strain.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Car’das assured him, tapping the edge of his ship’s control panel in emphasis. “The Mon Cals build their ships to last, and I put in a lot of extra modifications after you gave her to me. She’ll hold together.” He jabbed a finger at the display. “My question is whether Commander Pellaeon and the Chimaera will be able to pull off their end.”

  “We’ll soon find out,” Thrawn said. “Position?”

  Resolutely, Car’das turned away from the oh-so-tempting target that was the fleeing Nuso Esva. Thrawn was right, of course—they needed their full attention and the Lost Reef’s full power on the Chimaera operation. But he still ached to take the shot. “Ten seconds.”

  “Captain Thrawn?” Nuso Esva’s mocking voice came from the Lost Reef’s cockpit speaker. “Your time is running out.”

  “Not at all,” Thrawn said calmly. “You ask me to choose between the death of the Chimaera or the death of the Golan. I’ve made my choice.”

  He looked at Car’das, and it seemed to Car’das that a small smile touched the other’s lips. “I choose neither.”

  “There it is,” Wedge called over his shoulder. “Here we go …” There was a hint of reflected light bouncing off the walls flying past the T-47’s wings.

  And suddenly they were there, and Leia was thrown against her straps as Wedge ran the airspeeder into a sharp up-and-right turn. For a second she was looking down at the missile ships, and then Wedge straightened them out again. Behind them, Leia saw the other Rebel airspeeders file into the cavern and break off into their own attack runs. Turning her attention to her weapons monitors, she got a grip on the firing controls—

  And with a sudden jolt the T-47 twitched sideways, tipped up on the starboard wing, and headed down.

  Leia had just enough time to get out a startled gasp before Wedge leveled them off again. “We’ve got trouble,” he called back to her.

  “What sort—?” She broke off as the T-47 gave another jolt, this time spinning a quarter turn before Wedge got it back under control.

  It was only then that Leia saw that, as the Rebel airspeeders buzzed around the cavern firing at the missile ships, the missile ships’ fin-mounted laser cannons were firing back.

  The ships weren’t just sitting around waiting for the Rebel transports to break the Poln Minor surface. They were prepped, energized, and ready to fly.

  Fifty warships. And she’d brought Wedge and ten lightly armed airspeeders in to face them.

  “Stay high!” Wedge called. “Their lasers are forward-firing. Stay above them and you’ll be out of range.”

  Leia grimaced. Or at least they would until the missile ship pilots got into the air.

  But there was nothing they could do about that. Nothing, except make sure that as many of those ships as possible were no longer fit to fly. Gripping her controls, peering into her targeting displays as Wedge swooped over the alien warships, she opened fire.

  The second attack began much as the first had, LaRone noted, with quiet footsteps moving across the tapcaf floor above their heads.

  But this time, there was no stealthy opening of the cellar door in an attempt to sneak up on the defenders. Instead, the door was flung violently open and a pair of grenades was hurled down onto the stairs. There was a crash as the impact shattered two of the stacked bottles and scattered several of the others.

  A second later there was a second, more violent crash as Marcross fired up the stairwell from his post to the left of the stairway’s base. A body hurled down the stairs, scattering another dozen bottles as it slid to a halt. Marcross kept firing, and LaRone heard a scream and another muffled thump from the floor above.

  With a deafening explosion that rattled LaRone’s ears all the way across the cellar and through his helmet’s audio protection, the grenades detonated.

  For probably three seconds the air was a swirling mosaic of flying bottle fragments. The hail ended, and LaRone looked cautiously up over the kegs of their redoubt.

  He’d half expected to find that entire third of the cellar blazing with the ignited alcohol. But to his surprise, there were only a few small isolated fires, most of them little more than smoldering pools. Even as he focused on the two that were actually showing flames one of Vaantaar’s people leapt up from his own defensive position to the right and ran across to hastily stomp them out.

  But fires notwithstanding, the grenades had definitely made a mess of that end of the cellar. “Marcross?” he called.

  “I’m okay,” Marcross called back, and LaRone saw him emerge cautiously from behind the kegs of his firing point. He seemed mostly intact, unlike the kegs themselves, which were currently spraying their contents over the blast debris and the permacrete anchoring stubs that was all that remained of the stairway. “The body helped smother the blast.”

  “The bottles probably helped, too,” Brightwater said from LaRone’s left. “It looked like the idea was to bounce the grenades off the stairs and give them more distance. Only the bottles absorbed the momentum and kept them at that end.”

  LaRone nodded. Not exactly the way he’d envisioned the bottle defense working, but in battle any positive result counted as a win.

  “What will they try next?” Vaantaar asked from LaRone’s right, fingering his borrowed blaster restlessly.

  The answer came in a sudden firestorm of blaster bolts down through the cellar door that hammered the permacrete floor where the stairs had once stood.

  Powerful blaster bolts, too, very hot, with the kind of cycle rate that even a T-21 couldn’t sustain. It had to be an E-Web heavy repeating blaster, or something similar.

  LaRone frowned, his combat instincts tingling a warning. It was a highly concerted, highly profligate attack, yet none of the shots were coming anywhere near either Marcross or the Troukree. In fact, the fire pattern wasn’t doing anything except tearing an arc of shattered permacrete and setting off a few more small fires in the pools of spilled alcohol.

  And then, suddenly, he got it. An arc pattern.

  The E-Web wasn’t just firing to make noise and create gravel. It was creating a fire shield. “Incoming!” he shouted, lifting his E-11 over the barrier and aiming for the center of the E-Web’s fire arc.

  Just as a figure dropped through the door from the tapcaf above, landing neatly behind the sheet of fire.


  Or rather, two figures. The one in front was human, its head sagging against its chest, while the one close behind him was one of Nuso Esva’s yellow-eyed aliens.

  They had barely hit the floor when LaRone opened fire.

  To his surprise, the shots seemed to have no effect. The human twitched a couple of times as the blaster bolts struck him, but he didn’t fall. Behind him, the alien stretched a hand over the man’s shoulder, and LaRone twitched reflexively as a pair of blaster bolts sizzled past his helmet.

  Marcross had already opened up with fire of his own, his shots having no more effect than LaRone’s. The alien swiveled to his right, both he and the human moving in unison, training his blasterfire now toward Marcross as he screamed a warbling, high-pitched wail.

  And then, the wailing abruptly cut off, and with a violent jerk both figures crumpled together to the ground. As they fell, LaRone caught a glimpse of a Troukree knife hilt protruding from the alien’s back.

  But the withering arc of blasterfire was still raining down from above. “Vaantaar?” LaRone called.

  “He was a scout,” the Troukree called back. “He carried the dead human as a shield while he called out our numbers and positions.”

  LaRone scowled. That had been his conclusion, too. “Any idea how far he got with his description?”

  “They now know that our main position is here,” Vaantaar said. “Marcross and the others by the stairway were not yet located when he died.”

  “Means they’ll probably be sending down a replacement to get the rest,” Brightwater said. “Grenades?”

  “Grenades,” LaRone agreed. “Stay here—I’ve got it.” Shoving his E-11 into its holster, he grabbed a grenade and leapt up onto the keg barrier, landing on his back as he flipped his legs into the air. The momentum carried him across and forward, and he rolled over the barrier to land on his feet on the far side. Regaining his balance, he sprinted across the cellar toward the arc of blasterfire still raining down the stairwell. The tricky part would be making it through the sheet of fire without collecting enough blaster bolts to get himself killed, while simultaneously making sure the grenade itself didn’t take a hit and explode right there in his hand. His best bet would be to cross the fire at a dead-on run, try to pop the grenade accurately through the door, then keep going the short distance to the back wall.