Aim off. He couldn’t hurt this thing by shooting it where a human would be hurt. But at a distance of three meters, he could hit anything he could see, including any symbol on a sabacc card.
He traversed his fire, letting muscle memory and reflex do the work. His blaster shots stitched a line acoss the droid’s chest, down its arm, to the blaster embedded in its arm—
To the barrel—
Han’s shot entered the barrel aperture and the lower portion of the right arm exploded. The laminanium armor of the forearm mostly contained the detonation. Han saw the composite skin split in places, the rents filling with fire, and felt a tear along his cheek as something grazed him.
The droid wasn’t down, though. It raised its other arm—
Relieved of the burden of deflecting blaster shots, Leia stepped in and brought her lightsaber blade down on the arm, just above the elbow, where the armatures were thinnest. Her blow didn’t cut through the arm, not immediately, but the force of her blow was enough to knock it sideways, and the arc of electricity emerging from it missed her by centimeters, plowing into the passageway wall above Han’s head.
Then the left arm did come off at the elbow.
Han continued firing, spraying bolts at the droid’s photoreceptors. The droid swung the remains of its right arm at Leia, a potentially deadly attack—it was strong enough to crush her skull, break her back. But she bent at the waist, allowing the blow to sweep harmlessly over her, and straightened, driving her blade up under the droid’s riblike chest armor.
The attack sheared through systems, causing sparks to emerge at both the top and bottom of the ribs, and her blade point entered the skull from below. The droid jittered in place for a moment, raised its arm for a second blow—and collapsed. Rather than have her lightsaber be yanked down by its weight, Leia deactivated the weapon, then reactivated it when the droid was clear.
Iella, pale, emerged partway from their access hole. “That was interesting.”
Han nodded. “Want to do it again?”
“Noooooo.”
They found Allana two compartments down, a frightened little girl in a party frock, hiding in the closet of an armory. When Leia opened the closet door she lunged at them, an injector pen in her hand, but Leia caught her wrist, stopping the blow, and as quickly released the girl.
Such a pretty girl. And so familiar-looking.
Leia raised her hand, palm-out, a gesture of peace to forestall another attack. “I bring a message from your mother.”
Suspicious, scowling, Allana backed away from her. “Tell me.”
“I’ll show you instead.” She reached into her robe pouch and brought out a device, a hand-sized holoprojector. She set it on a table and activated it.
A hologram of Tenel Ka, doll-sized, swam into resolution. Tenel Ka smiled, her expression hopeful, and spoke. “Allana, time is short. First: bantha excess glow rod.”
Allana lowered her injector pen and smiled. Her gaze was fixed on the image of her mother, and her thoughts were so transparent that Leia could hear them as speech carried through the Force: The words. The real words.
“These people are going to bring you to me. Go with them, and trust them as you do me. And know that I love you, and I’ve missed you more than I can say.” Tenel Ka raised a finger to her lips and blew a kiss, then faded away.
Allana looked up at her rescuers. “We can go now?”
Leia nodded. “We can go right now.”
“Can I leave a note for, for Jacen?”
“I’m afraid not, sweetie. You can comm him once we get to Hapes. You don’t have time to pack.”
“That’s all right. Everything that’s mine is still at home.”
Impossibly, Saba stood, even got her lightsaber up to deflect the next wave of blaster bolts aimed at her. Smoke rose from her back and legs, and stretches of her skin were charred, bleeding…but she was upright, standing on shaky legs.
Luke didn’t turn toward Ben, but pitched his voice to make it easier for the boy to hear. “Get her out of here.”
“Remember why I’m here, Grand Master.”
Vexed, Luke tightened his jaw and nodded. He raised his voice. “Master Sebatyne: extract.”
“This one iz still—”
“Leaving.” Luke’s tone was unyielding. “Remember what we’re here for.”
Beyond Jacen, the metal shutters were coming down across the viewports. It wasn’t surprisng; the explosions had to have weakened the viewport housings, and the ship’s diagnostics were sealing everything up before the atmosphere could explosively escape. Besides, all of a sudden there were more ships to see out there, and some of them were approaching the Anakin Solo, laser batteries flashing.
Luke gestured toward Jacen. Jacen raised his lightsaber and his left hand, ready to ward off any attack, but Luke’s gesture was a diversion. His exertion in the Force picked up one of the YVH droids and hurtled it backward, against the faltering viewport.
The transparisteel buckled and the droid was lost to space. Air, rushing past the Jedi, tugged them forward, and Jacen staggered back toward the viewports, but then the shutters came down, sealing the bridge.
Meanwhile Luke felt a pained exertion in the Force as Saba leapt up to the walkway and walked—limped—off the bridge.
Three YVH droids were left. And Jacen. Against Luke and Ben. Jacen was Luke’s match, which meant Ben had to cope with three combat droids. The odds weren’t good.
Then the odds changed.
As he batted blasterfire with his lightsaber, Luke felt a surge of emotion in the Force: innocent joy, a little girl’s delight at going home.
Jacen visibly paled. “Allana…” Suddenly he charged, crossing his own combat droids’ streams of blasterfire, forcing them to cease fire for brief moments.
He came at Luke but leapt laterally, flying across empty air to one of the doorways leading aft, utterly ignoring the Jedi.
Luke snapped a command to his son: “Extract! Warn Leia, Jacen’s coming!” He got his lightsaber up and deflected new streams of blasterfire, then began backing toward the bridge’s blast doors, toward his son.
Keeping his father and the nearly impenetrable blaster shield Luke represented between himself and the YVH combat droids, Ben backflipped through the blast doors and darted to the right, getting behind the cover the door frame represented. He slammed a palm across the SHUT button and thumbed his comlink. “Aunt Leia, extract! Jacen’s coming.”
Her voice came back clear and calm: “Already extracting.”
“Go fast.” Ben glanced over his shoulder and saw that the corridor was clear of personnel—the only living thing to be seen was Saba, limping along in the distance. Blaster bolts from the combat droids, bolts Luke did not even bother to deflect, poured out into the corridor like rain blown sideways, but none ventured near Saba.
Luke backed through the blast doors when there was just enough of a gap to accommodate him. They slammed shut, cutting off the torrent of blasterfire.
Ben drove his lightsaber into the control panel and kept shoving, burning a hole clear through to the corresponding panel on the far side.
Luke glanced over at him. “Time to go.”
chapter thirty-seven
Jacen ran through the doors leading to the Command Salon, flashed past nervous, startled officers there, and hurtled to the doors leading into his private office.
His office, with its secret access to the secret quarters—
Allana.
In his office, he slammed open the panel leading to his hidden corridor and slid to a halt in the midst of debris and the wreckage that had once been YVH-908.
Mechanically, he raised his comlink to his lips. “Bridge, report on all vehicles proximate to the Anakin Solo.”
There was no answer but the hiss of static.
He could feel Allana astern, moving away from him, but precise distances and speeds were impossible for him to measure. There was a hole in the floor of his little workshop—that had to be t
he means by which Allana’s kidnappers had entered. But had they left by the same way, or out his office door? He had to follow, but the wrong choice could cost him precious seconds.
Suddenly gasping for air, he raced back toward his office, toward the access to the corridor there.
ABOARD THE MILLENNIUM FALCON
Jag saw the button light up on the comm board. Instantly he banked the Falcon toward the Anakin Solo, which was at the heart of renewed conflict, its screen of capital ships now beset by Commenori frigates and cruisers.
In the seat behind him, C-3PO made sliding noises as his restraints failed to keep him in place. “I say, sir, I might suggest a more gradual approach.”
Jag nodded. “Good idea. I’ll pass it along to Han.”
“Why, thank you, sir. Though he’s always been reluctant to implement my suggestions.”
Kyle Katarn unstrapped himself from the copilot’s seat. Not inconvenienced by the Falcon’s side-to-side maneuvers, he stood easily. “I’ll be ready at the docking ring.”
Jag nodded absently. “Watch out for lightsabers.”
“Watch out for durasteel rails.” Kyle left.
Ignoring further protests from the protocol droid, Jag angled in toward the Star Destroyer, picking a route that would bring him near the smallest number of starfighter conflicts or capital ship laser battery exchanges. He knew his target zone by diagram and by sight—an air lock on the forward port side, not far from Jacen Solo’s private hangar.
Now all he had to do was navigate through a bewildering field of turbolaser and ion cannon beams to get there alive.
Syal heard the two-tone musical signal over her comm board, followed by her father’s words: “Extraction has begun. All free Rakehells, maneuver to the Anakin Solo’s port side, amidships to bow, and draw off its fire.”
Most of the Rakehells were free. When the Commenori task force had jumped into the conflict, the Rogues and other Alliance starfighter units had largely lost interest in the mystery squadron that seemed to want to fight but had no other evident objective; they broke off and attacked the Commenori capital ships, leaving the Rakehells unencumbered.
Wedge led the remaining starfighters of his squadron into the proximity of the Anakin Solo, skirting just within its firing range, drawing turbolaser fire, responding with quad-linked lasers and the occasional proton torpedo aimed at weapons batteries. Mostly they distracted the Star Destroyer’s gunners and worked to keep themselves alive.
In the midst of all this, the Millennium Falcon flashed by, weaving through a reduced screen of incoming fire, and managed to arrive just above the Destroyer’s hull, too close for its guns to target.
“That boy can fly,” Syal admitted.
There was a trace of pride in Wedge’s reply. “Yes, he can. He should have kept his mother’s family name. It’d be good to have another Jagged Antilles in the galaxy.”
“Stop being smug, Leader.”
“Yes, Four.”
Allana in Leia’s arms, the rescue party skidded around a corner. Han slowed, leaning back around the corner, firing with his blaster pistol, keeping the pursuers pinned down.
Iella reached the air lock hatch first—or would have, if R2-D2 hadn’t already been there. As she approached, the droid tweetled at her and the hatch slid open.
Beyond, the far hatch opened simultaneously, revealing the starboard docking ring of the Falcon, Master Katarn waiting there. Iella didn’t even have to slow her running pace.
Leia swept aboard. “Master Katarn. Good to see you.”
He bowed. “Two-Injured-Men-and-a-Droid Shuttle Service, as requested.”
The sound of Han’s blasterfire picked up; then his weapon fell silent. Leia’s heart seemed to skip a beat until she realized there were more distant weapon sounds now—lightsabers.
R2-D2 rolled aboard, offering Kyle a musical note of greeting, and Han was mere steps behind. “Luke, Ben, and Saba are coming fast.”
Leia nodded and carried Allana into the crew quarters, setting her down on one of the bunks. “You need to strap in, sweetie. We may need to do some violent maneuvers.”
Allana’s bright eyes made a plea of her next question: “Can I be in the cockpit instead?”
“Not this time. But soon.”
With the Force lending him speed, Caedus hurtled down the side passage, his leaps carrying him over the bodies—some injured and moaning, some dead—of ship’s security personnel and, here and there, their severed arms.
Far ahead, just past a group of at least a dozen injured personnel, he saw Luke turn rightward at a cross-corridor. But by the time Caedus rounded that corridor, the air lock hatch at the far end was closed and he could see a gray-white hull speeding by.
Gasping for breath, he raised his comlink. “This is Solo. Do not fire on the Millennium Falcon. Anyone who fires on her dies. Use tractor beams only.”
He heard, but paid no attention to, the acknowledgment from the bridge. He took no mind of the confusion in the officer’s voice as the man reported progress with the tractor beams—which turned into no progress, as the weapons officers’ switchover to the tractor system gave the Falcon precious moments in which to pull away from the Anakin Solo. Yes, I once fired on the Falcon from this very ship. But my daughter was not aboard her then. He could feel her, Allana’s shining presence, growing ever more distant, and each moment of separation felt like another needle being hammered into his heart.
Finally it came, the report he dreaded, the one he could not forestall no matter how strongly, lovingly, hopelessly he reached out to his daughter through the Force. “Sir, I’m sorry to report that the Millennium Falcon has entered hyperspace.”
His legs failed him and he sank to the deck plates, kneeling in his pain and sudden grief.
CENTERPOINT STATION, FIRE-CONTROL CHAMBER
Vibro looked over the controls before him. Everything was ready. All it took was a finger on the button.
The shouts from outside were more annoying than ever. “We’ve got relief coming!” “They’re making another push. Hold tight, hold tight!” And as ever, there were screams, more numerous now, getting closer.
The Corellians were losing. This chamber would fall to the Coruscanti. The station would fall to them.
But it would be too late. They wouldn’t be able to call themselves Coruscanti anymore.
He hissed to get the other technician’s attention. She was looking behind them, toward the door, something like fear on her face, but now she glanced Vibro’s way.
He smiled at her. “Hey. Watch this.”
He hit the button.
The crew and passengers of the Millennium Falcon, outbound, with their escort of Rakehell X-wings, felt something hammer the freighter. It was like a laser shot getting through the shields, but no ship was pursuing them, and the Falcon’s rear surfaces lit up with light from behind. Proximity alarms in the cockpit howled.
Han, in the copilot’s seat, his expression suggesting he would never again in his life allow a situation in which he sat there, flicked the cockpit monitor over to show the rear holocam view.
Centerpoint Station was a glowing ball, a perfect sphere of light perhaps five hundred kilometers in diameter. As Han watched, the sphere contracted almost instantly.
Leaving nothing behind in the volume it had occupied.
Everything that had been there was gone—Corellian ships, Alliance ships, Commenori ships…and Centerpoint Station itself.
The Anakin Solo, safely beyond the boundary of that momentary sphere, seemed unharmed, as did every ship and starfighter in its vicinity.
Han gulped. “Was that…was that…”
Kyle, in the rear seat beside C-3PO, offered a pained grunt. “That was a massive loss of life. A cessation in the Force. Whatever was there no longer exists.”
“Jaina? Kyp?”
Jag checked his sensor board. “Jaina’s on our flank. And the Broadside was even farther away than we were. Their transceiver reports them intact.”
ABOARD THE ANAKIN SOLO
Caedus walked onto the bridge.
His cloak should have been swirling around him. It wasn’t. Why? Oh, yes. He’d given it away. It had betrayed him.
The bridge had changed. There was extensive damage. There were bodies everywhere, and medics working on them, carrying them out.
He nodded. He remembered that, too. There had been a fight.
The officers began shooting questions at him the moment he appeared. “Orders, sir.” “Sir, the Confederation forces outnumber us. They’re stronger than our forces.” “Sir, Admiral Niathal is standing by on holocomm. She wants to talk to you at once.”
Allana.
He marched forward to his viewports but couldn’t see through them. While he stood there wondering at their sudden opacity, he began answering questions. “Recall our squadrons. Set course for home. We’re leaving. Tell Admiral Niathal there’s been a problem.”
Minutes passed. A sound he had been hearing—distant booms that made the bridge shake—gradually became less frequent, finally dying out altogether.
Yet still he could not see the stars, and Allana did not return.
But a question formed in his mind, a question of his own. He turned to face what remained of his bridge crew. “How did they come aboard my ship? Luke Skywalker and those with him?”
The officers looked among themselves, then Lieutenant Tebut, at the security station, stood. The right sleeve of her tunic was scorched and she had a cut across her neck, not deep enough to be dangerous. “Sir, we were approached by General Celchu’s shuttle, which was being fired upon by several X-wings. We allowed the shuttle to land. As it turned out, this was a ruse. The Jedi were aboard the shuttle, and General Celchu was in one of the X-wings, trying to destroy the shuttle. General Celchu is in the medical ward, recovering from a stun bolt.”
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury Page 29
