Caedus nodded. He returned his attention to his flying. A moment’s distraction now would kill him, but the end of this engagement was in sight. The Anakin Solo would arrive, its turbolasers and ion cannons would chase the Jedi away, and he could return to safety.
Luke stayed on Jacen’s tail, but the situation was worsening. Sanola Ti had dropped back to engage the enemy X-wings and Aleph, but if their pilots were good, she couldn’t hold them. And without the other two Masters to help herd him, Jacen would be able to turn back to the Anakin Solo. Luke had to finish this fight now.
He opened himself further to the Force, hoping that it would give him insight not just into where Jacen was but also where he intended to be in the next second. Jacen was not concealing himself in the Force now. He was…he was…
He was with a little girl.
Luke started. He took his thumb off the laser trigger and probed again.
There was, in fact, a little girl in the cockpit with Jacen. Her presence had been washed out by the hatred Jacen was pouring into the Force, but now Jacen was calming, and the little girl’s distress made her a brighter presence.
Luke’s StealthX shook. A quad laser blast from the pursuing Aleph had grazed him during his moment of surprise.
Kill Jacen…kill an innocent.
Luke veered away from his target and sent a nonverbal command for the other Jedi to form up on him. He felt their surprise and distress, but he made his intent stronger, insistent.
The StealthXs veered away, toward empty space.
The starfighters they had been dueling continued to chase them, but gave up after perhaps half a minute. They returned to surround Jacen’s TIE prototype, acting as his escort.
Caedus sagged as he gave way to exhaustion. He kept one hand on his control yoke, guiding the Blur back toward the Anakin Solo, and used the other to hold Allana to him. She looked up at him, red-eyed, her tears unabated, hiccuping in her distress.
“Colonel Solo to starfighter escort. Who’s piloting the Twee?”
A woman’s voice came back immediately. “Dancer One, sir.”
“I mean your name.”
“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Syal Antilles, sir. Off Blue Diver.”
Caedus grimaced. He’d been helped by the oldest daughter of an enemy, yet another traitor to the Alliance.
Still, he had always promised to reward loyalty and merit, and moments ago he had decided to do just that for the Aleph pilot. “It’s Captain Antilles now.”
“Uh.” It wasn’t so much a word as an exhalation. Caedus couldn’t tell whether she sounded more pleased or pained. Through the Force, she felt only shocked, though the other presence in the cockpit with her, doubtless her gunner, felt elated. Syal’s voice was cool, professional: “Thank you, sir.”
“And be advised that the StealthX pilot you chased off was a pretty good pilot himself. Antilles, you just sent Luke Skywalker into retreat.”
Ahead of him, space far in the distance behind the Anakin Solo, back in the vicinity of the capital ships, was suddenly transfixed by a column of light, kilometers wide, that twisted and writhed like something alive.
Space curled and wrenched, as though a vengeful child were playing with the controls of a monitor, stretching and distorting everything in the middle third of the screen. Caedus saw ships, silhouetted within the beam, elongate as though they were being drawn into wire. Turbolaser fire curved impossibly; one blast bent back on itself, slamming into the shields of the cruiser that had fired it. Ships contracted to tiny dots and disappeared entirely.
With the brightness and distortion came a blow in the Force. It hammered at Caedus, a vast, instantaneous loss of life.
Allana’s sobs cut off. She slumped in Caedus’s lap, mercifully relieved of the burden of consciousness.
Then space darkened and twisted back to its normal shape. Where once scores of ships had floated and fought, now there was only nothingness—or perhaps twisted wreckage, with no destructive beams or running lights to illuminate it.
On the verge of distributing hyperspace coordinates for their first jump, Luke bent over as the wave of pain and dread hit him. It was far from enough to incapacitate him, but he could feel a resonating shock from the others in his battle-meld.
He put up a rear holocam view on his cockpit monitor. It showed the Anakin Solo and tiny flashes of the ever-more-distant main starfighter engagement…and emptiness where all the capital ships should be.
Numbed, he considered options. Turn back to help…help whom? With six StealthXs? Look for the cause…without a corps of scientists or adequate sensory gear?
Jacen was alive. Luke could feel him. He could feel Leia, too, not far away, and Jaina and Zekk. They were safe. Whatever had hit the region seemed to be an all-or-nothing attack, and it was done.
Dry-mouthed, he activated his comm board and transmitted the jump route. “Let’s go.”
Proximity alarms screamed all across the Love Commander’s bridge. Leia felt a yawning emptiness rise up to swallow her. She forced it back, saw Jaina turn toward her, pale-faced.
It was like that day, long ago, when she had seen Alderaan destroyed. She hadn’t known then that she was Force-sensitive, hadn’t realized that she was feeling the shock of those millions of deaths as well as her own sense of loss and horror.
This blow through the Force was much less severe, but her sensitivity to such things was much greater. She stood on shaky legs. “What just happened?”
Han glanced between her and Jaina, then returned his attention to his sensors. “Something just appeared in back of us, in back of the—behind Colonel Solo’s ship. Something huge, if its gravitic signature is any indication. Then it faded. The proximity alarms thought we were too near a planetary mass.” He looked again, gave a grunt of surprise. “The two task forces are gone.”
“Gone? Just gone?”
“Just gone. Most of the starfighters are still out there. Away from where the capital ships were.”
“Centerpoint.” Jaina’s voice was subdued. “That had to be Centerpoint Station firing.”
“Yeah.” Han banked sharply to port and accelerated. “Colonel Solo’s ship is behind us, starfighters are headed our way from ahead—it’s time to go.”
Leia cast out with her feelings and picked up a strong presentment of Luke, a fading presence that was Jacen.
They were alive. In Jacen’s case, she felt both relief and dread.
chapter twenty
CENTERPOINT STATION, FIRE-CONTROL CHAMBER
Smoke filled the air, pooling against the ceiling and being battered in various directions by breezes from air vents. Technicians, unused to immediate action, fumbled with fire suppressors. One leapt away from his station as his keyboard suddenly glowed red; flames licked up through it, consuming its keys.
Admiral Delpin moved from station to station, issuing orders, forcing technicians back into seats or shooing them out of chairs too near burning and sparking control boards, as the situation warranted.
And all the while, Prime Minister Koyan stood where he was, bellowing in ever-escalating volume, “What happened? What happened? WHAT HAPPENED?”
Denjax Teppler caught his arm. “They don’t know yet, sir. You’re not helping.”
“I don’t have to help! I’m the kriffing Five Worlds Prime Minister! I want answers!”
“Answers don’t exist yet.” Teppler’s voice was low, but there was a trace of durasteel in his words. “You’ll get your answers faster if you stop interfering.”
Koyan stared at him as if debating whether to bite off the top of his skull, but nodded and shut up.
A moment later Delpin directed one of the technicians over to the knot of politicians. The man—yellow-skinned, bearded, with long hair in a braid and a patch of soot discoloring the left side of his face—offered Koyan an awkward salute. “Sir, the weapon fired.”
“Are you sure?”
The man nodded. “But the system overloaded. Getting past the old security interlocks�
�the way the system imprinted on Anakin Solo all those years ago, so that only he could fire it—has been problematic. So we fired the system and it punished us.”
Koyan shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
The technician paused, struggling for a way to explain it to the politician. “Think of the station as a body. It has a brain. We’re a second brain trying to take over the body, and the first brain is resisting. We take over an area, and the brain retaliates by doing something to foul us up. In this case, we assumed control of the trigger finger…and when we fired, to retaliate, to mess us up, it stuck its thumb in our eye.”
“Oh.” Koyan nodded, clearly believing that he understood some of that. “So we fired it. What happened at the other end?”
“No way to know until we get some eyewitness reports. There’s a thumb in our eye, remember?”
Admiral Delpin moved toward them. “We’ve lost all contact with the decoy fleet. Their holocomms are not responding to our queries, not even automated pings. That suggests they were all wiped out. And if they were…”
“The Alliance vessels were, too.” Koyan nodded, and mopped his brow again. “Good. I hope you’re right. How soon before we can fire again?”
The technician shrugged. “Unknown. Part of that thumb in our eye looks like power system overloads, and the targeting may have to be recalibrated, which means reentering a lot of star data. Days? A few weeks?”
“Get on it.” Koyan turned away and marched to the door, escaping through it into the fresher air of the hallway beyond. His retinue followed him.
All but Teppler. He raised his voice to be heard over the chaos. “Ladies, gentlemen, the Office of the Prime Minister thanks you for all your hard work. You’ve done extremely well.” He gave them a raised-fist gesture of support and enthusiasm, then turned to follow Koyan.
Admiral Delpin stood before him. She whispered so only he could hear, “You’re an accomplished liar. But I mean that in a good way.”
He gave her a half smile. “Thank you. Um, when Phennir finds out…”
“He’ll roast us with words alone.”
“Anything I can do to take some heat off you?”
“Just make it clear to him that I was following orders…and I take them from the Corellian government, not from the Confederation Supreme Military Commander.” She glanced in the direction Koyan had gone and was not completely able to keep an expression of distaste from crossing her face.
“I’ll do that.”
“And if we’ve killed Jacen Solo and crippled the Second Fleet, it was worth every bit of burn.”
Teppler nodded in agreement. “Good luck.”
“You, too.”
ABOARD THE ANAKIN SOLO
The Anakin Solo, its hangars stuffed with surviving starfighters from not only its complement but also those of several Second Fleet vessels, its hyperdrive damaged by the gravity-wrenching effect of the attack, limped back into Coruscant space.
Caedus paced the bridge, not having slept since the catastrophe. He wanted to spend every moment with Allana, to be there for her when she awakened from the deep sleep that had claimed her, but he could not. To be away from his duties for so long would alert his crew that he had other priorities. He could not have them asking questions—not even as loyal a crew as he commanded.
The enemy had made Centerpoint Station’s primary weapon operational, and had used it to try to kill him—him personally.
It was a tribute. They knew he was the most significant individual in the galaxy, the one person who could lead the Alliance to victory. They had panicked. And they had failed to kill him.
But without knowing it, they had tried to kill Allana. They would pay for that. Everyone who had supported Corellia during this action would die, or end up stamping out bits of Alliance trooper armor in a prison workshop, or be fed to rancors.
Captain Nevil approached. The Quarren was as upright and formidable looking as ever, but the skin of his face-and mouth-tentacles was paler than usual. “Sir, we’re in planetary orbit. I’d like to transmit a request for permission to take a berth at the orbital shipyards. Get repairs under way immediately.”
Caedus glanced at him. “Granted.”
“Admiral Niathal has sent a request that you meet with her immediately at the Senate Building.”
No. I’d be away when Allana wakes. “I can’t leave the Anakin Solo at a time like this. Reply that we can have a meeting here, or by holocomm.”
“Yes, sir.”
It occurred to Caedus that there was something he should have asked before now, something he had not. What was it? Oh, yes. “Kral, in the force we lost…did you have any family?”
“Yes, sir.” Nevil seemed to sag just a centimeter, then straightened. “My son Turl. An ensign. A weapons officer aboard the frigate Cheesmeer.”
“I’m sorry.” Caedus tried to feel sorry, tried to remember that Turl was to Nevil as Allana was to him, but that mathematical equation was as close as he could come. Turl Nevil was a nobody, and now he was a nobody twisted and compressed by unimaginable gravitational forces into a tiny spot in space. Still, Caedus managed to keep an expression of sympathy fixed on his face.
Nevil apparently accepted it as such. “Thank you, sir.” He turned away, walking stiffly, to return to his duties.
The meeting took place in Caedus’s private office. Again, Admiral Niathal stood and paced while Caedus, imperturbable, sat.
“The Second Fleet is a shambles.” Niathal’s voice was deeper than usual, its pitch lowered by emotion.
Caedus nodded.
“The flagship, Blue Diver, was lost, and Fleet Admiral Limpan with her.”
Well, she wasn’t all that spectacular an admiral anyway, was she? “I know. It’s a disaster. I told you it was a trap. We just had no conception of the scope of the trap. Lure me out into open space, send up some derelict warships with skeleton crews to hold me in place for a few moments, and then fire the biggest gun in the universe at us. It had the elegance of simplicity.”
“How did you survive?”
Caedus sighed, then mentally trotted out the story he’d spent some time working up. “During my discussions with Captain Hoclaw, I felt a presentiment in the Force. A realization that part of the plan, a sideline to it, was that an elite unit was coming to retrieve the Hapan princess Allana. That’s what the Jedi Solo was there for. Once she escaped my security team, I retrieved the girl from her holding area and took her out in a starfighter to lure the retrieval team to me. The team consisted of Jedi in StealthXs. To my surprise, they were willing to kill me and let the little girl die, too, so I admit I underestimated their priorities a bit. Still, I had no problem eluding them until the primary wave of relief arrived, a squadron of starfighters, and drove them off. I’d ordered the Anakin Solo to follow the starfighters, which is why it was away from the engagement zone when the Centerpoint weapon fired.”
“Ah.” Niathal gave him a that-makes-sense nod. “You’re lucky.”
“Yes.”
“We need all our leaders to be lucky.”
“I agree.”
“We just lost a lot of unlucky commanders and ships we cannot replace. The Corellians traded us a flying junkyard for modern ships of the line. Confederation military strength may exceed ours now. With Centerpoint Station active, it certainly does.”
Caedus smiled. “Admiral, we’ve just won this war.”
That soft-spoken assertion stopped Niathal in the midst of her pacing. “Say that again?”
“The Corellians just handed us the trillion-credit game prize. The solution to our problems. We’ve won.”
“How?”
“We go to the Corellian system and take Centerpoint Station from them. And then we point it at anyone we choose.”
Niathal’s skin darkened—a color change Caedus suspected was similar to a blush or a flush of anger. “Ah. I had not realized that it was so simple. Shall I pack a lunch?”
Caedus waved her sarcasm away. “After
Ben and I disabled Centerpoint, it wasn’t worth the loss we’d sustain if we devoted all our forces to take it, and at the time we wouldn’t have been willing to use it immediately.
“But now…if we mount a major naval offensive at the moment they think our navy is at its weakest…we can take it. And now we have the will to use it. You and I, we are that will.”
The admiral stood there for long moments, once again studying him, her own face inscrutable. “Do you have a plan?”
“I will by tomorrow.”
Niathal nodded. She turned and left.
chapter twenty-one
ABOARD THE ANAKIN SOLO, MAIN HANGAR BAY
Syal Antilles threaded her way through the Anakin Solo’s main hangar bay. Ordinarily this would have been no special task, but currently the space was overcrowded with starfighters—not just the vessel’s usual complement, but most of the vehicles that had survived the Centerpoint Station attack. Now starfighters were packed in far more tightly than the floor markings indicated was normal, and mechanics had been working twenty-hour days to repair and maintain them.
A diminutive woman with short brown hair and bangs that went awry whenever the faintest breeze crossed her face, Syal searched among the alphanumeric designations painted on walls, ceilings, and floor sections. V17 was her destination, and only after she squeezed between two armored troop carrier shuttles did she spot it—an ordinary Lambda-class shuttle, its atmospheric wings locked into the up position, marked with Alliance symbols on bow, sides, and stern.
She approached it from the front and waved at the uniformed pilot, dimly seen through the forward viewport. He waved back, and moments later the vehicle’s boarding ramp descended.
She climbed the ramp with quick, nervous steps and pitched her voice to carry throughout the vehicle. “Lieut—uh, Captain Antilles reporting as requested.” At the top of the ramp, she turned forward, facing the shuttle’s main compartment, which was laid out in a standard VIP profile—only a few seats, all plush and able to swivel, with a small table beside each one.
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury Page 16
