Star Wars: Before the Awakening

by Greg Rucka

  “First Order!” Poe shouted into his comm. “Jump! Iolo, Karé, get out of here!”

  TIEs were already launching from the belly of the two Star Destroyers that had appeared, one of them a new model Resurgent class. Another flight dropped from its moorings alongside the Nebulon-K that had come with them. Smaller vessels, assault ships, popped into view. Proximity alarms on the Hevurion Grace began screaming, and Poe twisted around, slapping switches back into silence.

  “Commander, what’s your time to jump?” Karé asked.

  “I gave you an order, Captain Kun.”

  “Sorry, can’t hear you because of all these TIE fighters coming at me.”

  Poe glanced at the charging monitor for the hyperdrive. The ion blast to the yacht had forced almost every system aboard into reset, and while the navicomputer now had coordinates for his jump locked, it was the drive itself that needed to restart. Unfamiliar though he was with the flight controls of a Pinnacle-class yacht, Poe could see it would be another ninety seconds on the outside before the ship’s twin SoroSuub Hawke engines reached full power. Any attempt to jump prior to that would be pointless; the Hevurion Grace’s hyperdrive motivator simply would refuse to engage the engines.

  “It’s gonna be about forty, forty-five seconds,” Poe said. “I can evade these slugs for that long.”

  “So about a minute and a half,” Iolo said. His tone was resigned. “You’re a bad liar, Commander.”

  “I am not.” Poe was indignant.

  “We’ll keep them off your back, Commander.” This was Karé again. “You make your back hard for them to climb onto to begin with.”

  “You’re both disobeying my orders.” Even as he was saying it, Poe was kicking up the thrust on the yacht’s ion engines. At least those were fully functional. “Don’t think I’ll forget this.”

  “You can court-martial us later, sir,” Karé said.

  It didn’t take long for Poe to realize how serious the First Order was about stopping the Hevurion Grace. The first flight of TIEs, eighteen of them, blew straight past Iolo and Karé in their Z-95s without pause or deviation, racing directly for Poe and the yacht. The two leading TIEs had opened fire even before they were in range. Poe concluded three things from this: first, that whoever was flying those TIEs had more enthusiasm than sense; second, that whatever information the Resistance might discover in the yacht’s computers was likely to be worth its weight in gold; and third, as a result of the second fact, the First Order was very serious about keeping him from escaping.

  But that single-mindedness cost them.

  For all its reputation as a pure luxury craft, Poe found the yacht surprisingly nimble in his hands, the ship leaping forward with a burst of speed as he opened the thrusters and banked hard, making for the nearest of the Uvoss gas giants. His goal was to put as much space as possible between himself and the capital ships; and the capital ships, he’d noted at once, were closing on him, albeit much more slowly than the TIEs. The TIEs he felt he could handle; the yacht’s deflectors were fully charged, and Poe was confident enough in his piloting and, more, in Iolo and Karé that he believed he could survive long enough to make the jump. But those capital ships were another matter, their firepower truly terrifying; a direct hit from any of their turbolaser batteries would turn Hevurion Grace into vapor, and Poe Dameron with it.

  So the gas giant was really his only choice, and if he could get close enough, there might even be a tactical advantage to be found in the planet’s intense gravity. That was the plan, but flying in a straight line would let the TIEs cut him to pieces, and that meant he was jinking, dodging, twisting the yacht in ways he was certain its owner would’ve wept to witness.

  The TIEs were on him as soon as he completed the turn, beginning his run for the gas giant, and that was their mistake. Iolo and Karé brought their Z-95s into tight, combat-Corellian turns, coming into line on the tails of the First Order fighters. In the space of twenty seconds, Poe’s comrades had cut the initial force of eighteen down to nine before the remaining TIEs broke off their pursuit, for the moment more concerned with staying alive. Karé bagged another two on the breakaway, and Iolo took out one more.

  “Leave some for the rest of us,” Poe said.

  “You snooze, you lose,” Karé said. “Time until jump? For real, please, Commander.”

  Poe checked the charge meter, did the math quickly in his head. “Another forty seconds.”

  A turbolaser blast seared space in front of him, the shot so close and so bright that Poe actually flinched. An instant later the yacht bucked, rocking as blasts from two strafing TIEs cut across the top of the hull. Lights lit up across the console, warning him about everything from diminishing deflector shield charge to fastening his safety harness.

  “Little help,” Poe said.

  “On ’em,” Iolo said, and an instant later he saw the edge of a Z-95’s wing flash over the cockpit, and the bright glow of a TIE’s destruction.

  “That Resurgent class is closing fast,” Karé said.

  “You guys need to go, now,” Poe said.

  “Right after you do.”

  Poe bit back a curse. The Star Destroyer in question was a beast, capable of delivering a withering assault with its heavy cannons and anti-starship batteries. In a straight line, running at full speed, it could be faster even than the TIEs it seemed to spit out in endless waves, powered as it was by multiple and massive ion drives designed to propel its bulk through space. It was a staggering amount of thrust. The trade was, of course, that running in a straight line and at full speed meant an equally staggering amount of counterthrust was required to execute even the slightest maneuver, the barest change of direction. The Star Destroyers were big, and they were powerful, but only the most reckless of commanders would employ their speed and sacrifice their maneuverability.

  He had to make a choice, Poe realized. He could continue racing for the gas giant in the hope that the massive planet’s gravity would scare the capital ships off, or…

  “Head for that Resurgent class,” Poe said.

  “Say what now?” Karé asked.

  “One hit from those turbolasers and we’re done,” Iolo said.

  “And one hit from those turbolasers, those TIEs are done, too.”

  “That close, you’re vulnerable to their tractor beams—”

  “Resurgent beam emitters are to the prow.” Poe was already rebalancing the yacht’s thrusters, wheeling the ship into yet another corkscrew turn and reversing direction. “Don’t come at it from the front.”

  “Oh, well, that settles that,” Karé said. “Sure, let’s charge the Star Destroyer. Why not? Coming, Iolo?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No,” Poe said.

  The two Z-95s came in on his starboard wing, then staggered back. The second wave of TIEs was still a fair distance out, but that wouldn’t last for long. Poe glanced out the canopy and saw white mist wafting from the middle of one of the Z-95’s wings, along with an occasional spark of electricity.

  “Iolo, check your port side.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Iolo said. “Not really much I can do about it right now, though.”

  “You could leave,” Poe said.

  “What, and miss this? Karé would never let me hear the end of it.”

  “That is true,” Karé said.

  “Break,” Poe said.

  They all knew the maneuver and executed it so quickly that the three ships were moving apart almost before Poe had finished speaking the word. In the lead, Poe took the yacht high, climbing and spinning, while Karé snapped her Z-95 to port beneath him and Iolo put his own fighter into a twisting dive. The TIEs opened up a fraction of a moment later, their shots lancing past harmlessly, then split their formation, and Poe guessed at least half of them were coming for Hevurion Grace.

  The Resurgent class was drawing closer. A turbolaser blast detonated perhaps only a half kilometer in front of Poe, and he felt the yacht shiver as he sped through the dissip
ating energy an instant later. He was, despite his own advice, approaching the prow, with TIEs closing in from his right and behind. The ship bucked and shuddered as one of the chasing fighters sent blaster bolts glancing off the yacht. The shields flickered, but held.

  The Hevurion Grace had never been built for combat, but that didn’t mean it was defenseless. It boasted a single dual-cannon turret, mounted on its dorsal side, near the tail.

  Poe noted that it was fully automated.

  He put the yacht into a sharp wingover and bled off some of his speed while reorienting away from the bow of the Resurgent class, now looming before him. The move brought two of the TIEs in close, and Poe could imagine those pilots in their flight suits, thumbs itching on their triggers, lining up their shots, and then he hit the actuator on the turret and felt more than heard the gun opening fire. The salvo cut the two nearest TIEs to pieces and clipped two more that had been following close behind. The pursuers banked away, trying to reacquire a new attack angle on Hevurion Grace.

  Poe could hear Iolo and Karé’s chatter over the comms, rapid-fire give and take, the two of them working in concert. Another TIE down, and another, but for every one that Iolo or Karé managed to take down, there seemed another to take its place.

  “Iolo! Watch it!”

  “I’ve got no room!”

  “Cut port, cut port, I’ll pick him up!”

  Static burst across the comm and fizzled, followed by a fraction of a second’s silence that felt much, much longer.

  Then Iolo’s voice: “—hit, been hit, losing power—”

  “Iolo, jump,” Poe said. The Resurgent class was a blur outside his cockpit as he spiraled and pulled up, reversing again for the command tower. “Go!”

  “Not going to leave you!”

  The turbolasers from the Resurgent class were firing almost constantly. The yacht rocked again as the Hevurion Grace hit the wake of another detonation, this to the stern. One of the ion thrusters flickered, then dumped its charge, and at the same moment the hyperdrive motivator announced it was now prepared to initiate the jump to lightspeed. Another blast detonated so close to the cockpit Poe feared the canopy would shatter.

  “We’re leaving together,” Poe said. “Break off and jump to lightspeed!”

  He yanked back on the yoke hard enough that the yacht’s gravity emulators snapped his head against the seat. The Resurgent class went from beneath him and ahead to somehow below and behind, and he was climbing fast, spinning in the ascent, and he could see the Z-95s, if only for an instant, similarly trying to turn onto their jump vectors. Now that their target was away from the Star Destroyer, the TIEs were once again in pursuit, their incoming fire blurring with the resumption of turbolaser barrages.

  “Jump! Go!”

  Karé’s fighter went first, stretched and then vanished, and Iolo’s followed, and Poe reached for the jump initiator, pulled it smoothly back, and Hevurion Grace rumbled all around him. Then the TIEs and the frigate and the Star Destroyers and everything of Uvoss vanished, replaced by the hypnotizing swirl of the hyperspace tunnel.

  Iolo and Karé were in the hangar bay waiting for him when Poe landed aboard Echo of Hope. They watched as he dropped the main ramp and descended, and for a moment all three pilots just looked at each other. Then Karé burst into laughter and threw her arms around him and Iolo was clapping him on the back and all of them were talking at once about how that had been flying and Iolo had gotten lucky and Karé had saved him and he had saved her and they’d lost count of how many times they’d had each other’s backs. Laughing at the thought of the First Order trying to explain to General Hux or whoever exactly how they’d managed to be vexed by three pilots flying a luxury yacht and two archaic Z-95s and—

  “Muran would’ve loved to have seen that,” Iolo said.

  That brought them back into silence for a moment, all three of them remembering their absent friend.

  “He’d have been proud,” Karé said.

  “Yes,” Poe said. “Yes, he would’ve been.”

  Between Iolo and Karé, Poe could see General Organa at the entrance of the bay, the protocol droid that so often accompanied her at her side. She caught his eye and Poe nodded and put a hand on Iolo and Karé’s shoulders.

  “Go get cleaned up,” Poe said. “We’ll have a toast to Muran.”

  Leia waited until they were gone before approaching Poe. “Threepio, go aboard please and see what you can get from the flight computers.”

  “Of course, Princess Leia,” the droid said. He nodded to Poe in a stilted approximation of a human acknowledgement, then made his way up the ramp.

  Leia was looking up at Poe, smiling ever so slightly. “Flyboys. You’re all the same.”

  “Some of us are flygirls,” Poe said.

  “Captain Kun is an exceptional pilot, without question, as is Captain Arana, for that matter. But it’s a rare pilot who engages one frigate and two Star Destroyers and lives to tell the tale.”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “Yes,” Leia said. “It does.”

  “Princess Leia?” the protocol droid called from the top of the ramp. “I think perhaps you better see this.”

  “It’s never anything good when he says that,” Leia told Poe.

  It was the next morning, before Poe had even managed to make it to breakfast when he learned how right she was.

  He’d had difficulty sleeping, the elation of the mission’s success fading as the hours had lengthened into night, his mind turning to dark and, frankly, depressing thoughts. When he finally did manage to sleep, it was restless and unsatisfying, and when he awoke it was with the sense that he’d had no rest at all.

  As soon as Poe switched the lights on in his quarters BB-8 rolled forward, chirping softly and directing Poe’s attention to the blinking message light on his console. It was from the general, asking that he come and see her right away. He took her literally, dressed without bothering to run through the refresher and made his way through the corridor to her office.

  General Organa met him at the door and shut it behind him. Her movements were deliberate and slow, as if she was lost in thought, her manner markedly subdued compared to the day before, as if she was wrestling with some dilemma deep within herself. She pointed Poe to one of the chairs but didn’t sit herself, instead pacing the length of the room for several seconds, her chin against her chest, her brow furrowed.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked abruptly. She was staring at him.

  “I’m…I’m fine, General.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “I’ll rephrase. What are you feeling?”

  He wondered if it was on his face, the thoughts that had kept him up half the night. He wondered, for a moment, if her night hadn’t been similarly rough.

  “I’m angry,” Poe admitted. “And I’m worried, General. A member of the Republic Senate was in so deep with the First Order that when he put out a distress call they came to try and rescue him, and when they did it, they pulled out all the stops. Two Star Destroyers and I couldn’t count how many TIEs, and maybe they knew he was no longer aboard but maybe they didn’t, but they wanted Hevurion Grace destroyed. They were willing to kill their man to keep us from taking that vessel.”

  He paused, cautious that he’d said too much, perhaps, but Leia was listening to him exactly as she had back on Mirrin Prime, and after a second he continued.

  “I keep thinking, this man, Ro-Kiintor, he’s a senator. He’s in the heart of the Republic, our Republic. And he was a traitor. And I’m wondering how many more are just like him, how many more are working for the First Order, how many more have sold us out.”

  “Yet you still believe in the Republic, Poe.”

  “Absolutely, yes.” Poe spoke without hesitation. “I remember how my parents spoke about life under the Empire, General. The fear, they said it was like a cloud everywhere you went, that it was so thick you could…you could breathe it. They used to say, until the Rebellion…they said you could see hopeless
ness in the eyes of everyone you met.”

  “That’s the word,” Leia said, as much to herself as to Poe. “Without hope.”

  “Where did it go?” he asked, and the question seemed so much more important than he meant it to be, but as he asked he was thinking of his father, and his mother, of everything they had sacrificed and fought for. Thinking of Leia Organa, one of the last survivors of Alderaan standing before him—of everything she had lost, both what Poe knew and what was rumored.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I know we have to find it again.”

  She drew herself up, her shoulders squaring, her jaw setting, the determination she was known for once again fully apparent. Whatever her internal debate, she had reached a conclusion. Poe watched her turn to her desk and key a sequence into the small safe built in its side. A drawer popped open, and her hand went in, then emerged with a data chip, slender and blue tinted.

  “We obtained a lot of information from the computers aboard Hevurion Grace,” Leia said, looking at the chip. “A wealth of information. But there was something else, something that…others may have missed. A piece of a puzzle I’ve been working for…for a long time to solve.”

  She set the data chip in Poe’s palm.

  “I think the First Order is trying to solve it, too, Poe. We have to solve it first. We have to find him first.”

  “Who?”

  “His name is Lor San Tekka.”

  “Lor San Tekka,” Poe repeated. “Why’s the First Order so desperate to find him?”

  “They think he knows something. I’m hoping he does, too.” Leia took his hand and folded his fingers closed over the data chip. She met his eyes. “I’m hoping Lor San Tekka knows where to find my brother, Poe. And Luke Skywalker may be the only hope we have left.”