Star Wars: Dark Force Rising

by Timothy Zahn

  Han let them get right up to the base of the walker. Then, swiveling the blaster cannon over their heads, he opened up on the main group.

  The answering fire came instantly; but it was no contest at all. Han systematically raked the walls and the floor, driving back the handful who’d been fortunate enough to have a nearby doorway to duck into and annihilating those who hadn’t. The two point men reacted instantly, one of them firing upward toward the viewport, the other scrambling up the leg toward the side door.

  He reached the top to find Luke waiting for him. His companion down below got three shots off—all deflected—before the lightsaber found him, too.

  Abruptly, the blaster cannon stopped firing. Luke glanced down the corridor, reaching out with the Force. “There are still three of them left,” he warned as Han opened the walker’s door and squeezed out.

  “Leave ’em,” Han said, climbing carefully down the back of the damaged leg and consulting his chrono. “We need to get back to Lando and Chewie.” He threw Luke a mirthless grin. “Besides, the actuator crystals just burned up. Let’s get going before they figure that out.”

  The first wave of TIE fighters had been destroyed, as had all but one of the drop ships. The Rebel Escort Frigate and its X-wings were now engaged with Squadrons One and Three, and appeared to be holding their own quite well.

  And Captain Brandei was no longer smiling.

  “Squadron Four launching now,” Starfighter Control announced. “Squadrons Five and Six are awaiting your orders.”

  “Order them to stand by,” Brandei instructed. Not that he had much choice in the matter. Five and Six were recon and bomber squadrons—useful enough in their particular areas of expertise, but not in straight battle against Rebel X-wings. “Anything further on the Peremptory?”

  “No, sir. The last report from the Chimaera—before our shields went up—had their ETA as approximately 1519.”

  Only about seven minutes away. But battles had been lost in less time than that; and from the look of things, this could very well become one of them.

  Which left Brandei only one real option. Much as he disliked the idea of moving into range of that Dreadnaught’s turbolasers, he was going to have to take the Judicator into combat. “All ahead,” he ordered the helm. “Shields at full strength; turbolaser batteries stand ready. And inform the leader of the boarding party that I want that Dreadnaught in Imperial hands now.”

  “Yes, sir.” There was a dull roar through the deck as the sublight drive came up to power—

  And, without warning, the roar was joined by the hooting of the ship’s alarms. “Bandits coming out of light-speed astern,” the sensor officer snapped. “Eighteen craft—freighter class and smaller. They’re attacking.”

  Brandei swore viciously as he punched for the appropriate display. They weren’t Rebel vessels, not this group, and he wondered who in the Empire they could be. But no matter. “Come around to two-seven-one,” he ordered the helm. “Bring aft turbolasers to bear on the bandits. And launch Squadron Six.”

  Whoever they were, he would soon teach them not to meddle in Imperial business. As to their identity … well, Intelligence would be able to ascertain that later from the wreckage.

  “Watch it, Mara,” Aves’s voice warned over the comm. “They’re trying to come about. And we’ve got TIE fighters on the way.”

  “Right,” Mara said, permitting herself a sardonic smile. For all the good that would do. The bulk of the Star Destroyer’s starfighters were already engaged with the New Republic forces, which meant that all Karrde’s people were likely to get would be recon ships and bombers. Nothing they couldn’t handle. “Dankin, Torve—swing down to intercept.”

  The two pilots acknowledged, and she returned her attention to the inconspicuous spot beneath the Star Destroyer’s central sublight drive nozzle where her Z-95’s lasers were currently blasting away. Beneath the shielding at that point was a critical part of the lower-aft sensor package. If she could take it out, she and the others would have free run of the relatively undefended underside of the huge ship.

  With a sudden puff of vaporized metal and plastic, the lasers punched through. “Got it,” she told Aves. “Lower-aft-central sector is now blind.”

  “Good job,” Aves said. “Everyone: move in.”

  Mara pulled the Z-95 away, glad to be leaving the heat and radiation of the drive emissions. The Wild Karrde and other freighters could handle the job of tearing into the Star Destroyer’s outer hull now; her small starfighter would be better utilized in keeping the TIE fighters away from them.

  But first, she had enough time to check in. “Jade calling Karrde,” she said into the comm. “You there?”

  “Right here, Mara, thank you,” came a familiar voice; and Mara felt a little of her tension drain away. Right here, thank you, meant everything was fine aboard the New Republic ship.

  Or as fine as could be expected while facing an Imperial Star Destroyer. “What’s the situation?” she asked.

  “We’ve taken some damage, but we seem to be holding our own,” he said. “There’s a small tech team aboard the Katana and they have the turbolasers operational, which may account for the Star Destroyer’s reluctance to move any closer. No doubt they’ll overcome their shyness eventually.”

  “They’ve overcome it now,” Mara said. “The ship was under power when we arrived. And we’re not going to be able to distract them for long.”

  “Mara, this is Leia Organa Solo,” a new voice came on the comm. “We’ve got a Star Cruiser on its way.”

  “The Imperials will have backup coming, too,” Mara said flatly. “Let’s not be heroic to the point of stupidity, okay? Get your people off the Katana and get out of here.”

  “We can’t,” Organa Solo said. “The Imperials have boarded. Our people are cut off from the docking bay.”

  Mara looked across at the dark bulk of the Dreadnaught, lit only by its own running lights and the flickers of reflected light from the battle raging near and around it. “Then you’d better write them off,” she said. “The Imperials aren’t likely to be far away—their backup will get here long before yours does.”

  And as if cued by her words, there was a flicker of pseudomotion off to her left; and abruptly three Dreadnaughts in triangular formation appeared. “Mara!” Aves snapped.

  “I see them,” Mara said as a second triad flickered in behind and above the first. “That’s it, Karrde. Get out of there—”

  “Attention, New Republic forces,” a new voice boomed over the channel. “This is Senator Garm Bel Iblis aboard the warship Peregrine. May I offer our assistance?”

  Leia stared at the comm speaker, a strange combination of surprise, hope, and disbelief flooding in on her. She glanced up at Karrde, caught his eye. He shrugged slightly, shook his head. “I’d heard he was dead,” he murmured.

  Leia swallowed. So had she … but it was Bel Iblis’s voice, all right. Or else an excellent copy. “Garm, this is Leia Organa Solo,” she said.

  “Leia!” Bel Iblis said. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I didn’t expect you to be out here personally. Though perhaps I should have. Was all this your idea?”

  Leia frowned out the viewport. “I don’t understand what you mean by all this. What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Captain Solo sent my assistant the coordinates and asked us to come along as backup,” Bel Iblis said, a note of caution creeping into his voice. “I assumed it was at your request.”

  Leia smiled tightly. She should have guessed. “Han’s memory sort of slips sometimes,” she said. “Though to be honest, we haven’t had much time since we got back to compare notes.”

  “I see,” Bel Iblis said slowly. “So it wasn’t actually an official request from the New Republic?”

  “It wasn’t, but it is now,” Leia assured him. “On behalf of the New Republic, I hereby ask for your assistance.” She looked over at Virgilio. “Log that, please, Captain.”

  “Yes, Councilor,�
� Virgilio acknowledged. “And speaking for myself, Senator Bel Iblis, I’m delighted to have you along.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Bel Iblis said, and in her mind’s eye Leia could see the other’s famous smile. “Let’s do some damage, shall we? Peregrine out.”

  The six Dreadnaughts had moved into encirclement formation around the Star Destroyer now, smothering it with a flood of ion cannon fire and ignoring the increasingly sporadic turbolaser blasts raking them in return.

  “Mara’s right, though,” Karrde said, stepping close to Leia. “As soon as we can get the tech team off that ship, we’d better get them and run.”

  Leia shook her head. “We can’t just leave the Katana fleet to the Empire.”

  Karrde snorted. “I take it you haven’t had a chance to count how many Dreadnaughts are left out there.”

  Leia frowned. “No. Why?”

  “I did a scan,” Karrde said grimly. “Earlier, when you were arguing with Fey’lya. Out of the original two hundred Katana ships … there are fifteen left.”

  Leia stared at him. “Fifteen?” she breathed.

  Karrde nodded. “I’m afraid I underestimated the Grand Admiral, Councilor,” he said, an edge of bitterness seeping in beneath the studied urbanity of his voice. “I knew that once he had the location of the fleet he would start moving the ships away from here. But I didn’t expect him to get the location from Hoffner this quickly.”

  Leia shivered. She’d undergone an Imperial interrogation herself once. Years later, the memory was still vivid. “I wonder if there’s anything left of him.”

  “Save your sympathy,” Karrde advised. “In retrospect, it seems unlikely that Thrawn needed to bother with anything so uncivilized as coercion. For Hoffner to have talked so freely implies the Grand Admiral simply applied a large infusion of cash.”

  Leia gazed out at the battle, the dark feeling of failure settling over her. They’d lost. After all their efforts, they’d lost.

  She took a deep breath, running through the Jedi relaxation exercises. Yes, they’d lost. But it was just a battle, not the war. The Empire might have taken the Dark Force, but recruiting and training crewers to man all those Dreadnaughts would take years. A lot could happen in that time. “You’re right,” she told Karrde. “We’d do best to cut our losses. Captain Virgilio, as soon as those TIE fighters have been neutralized I want a landing party sent to the Katana to assist our tech team there.”

  There was no reply. “Captain?”

  Virgilio was staring out the bridge viewport, his face carved from stone. “Too late, Councilor,” he said quietly.

  Leia turned to look. There, moving toward the besieged Imperial ship, a second Star Destroyer had suddenly emerged from hyperspace.

  The Imperials’ backup had arrived.

  “Pull out!” Aves shouted, his voice starting to sound ragged. “All ships, pull out! Second Star Destroyer in system.”

  The last word was half drowned out by the clang of the Z-95’s proximity warning as something got entirely too close. Mara threw the little ship into a sideways skid, just in time to get out of a TIE fighter’s line of fire. “Pull out where?” she demanded, turning her skid into a barely controlled spin that had the effect of killing her forward velocity. Her attacker, perhaps made overconfident by the appearance of the backup force, roared by too fast for more than a wild shot in her direction. Coolly, Mara blew him out of the sky. “In case you’ve forgotten, some of us don’t have enough computing power aboard to calculate a safe hyperspace jump.”

  “I’ll feed you the numbers,” Aves said. “Karrde—”

  “I agree,” Karrde’s voice came from the Escort Frigate. “Get out of here.”

  Mara clenched her teeth, glancing up at the second Star Destroyer. She hated to turn tail and run, but she knew they were right. Bel Iblis had shifted three of his ships to meet the new threat, but even equipped with ion cannon, three Dreadnaughts couldn’t hold down a Star Destroyer for long. If they didn’t disengage soon, they might not get another chance—

  Abruptly, her danger sense tingled. Again she threw the Z-95 into a skid; but this time she was too late. The ship lurched hard, and from behind her came the hissing scream of superheated metal vaporizing into space. “I’m hit!” she snapped, one hand automatically slapping cutoff switches as the other grabbed for her flight suit’s helmet seals and fastened them in place. Just in time; a second hiss, cut off almost before it began, announced the failure of cabin integrity. “Power lost, air lost. Ejecting now.”

  She reached for the eject loop … and paused. By chance—or perhaps last-second instinct—her crippled fighter was aimed almost directly at the first Star Destroyer’s hangar entry port. If she could coax a little more power out of the auxiliary maneuvering system …

  It took more than a little coaxing, but when she finally gripped the eject loop again she had the satisfaction of knowing that even in death the Z-95 would take a minor bit of revenge on the Empire’s war machine. Not much, but a little.

  She pulled down on the loop, and an instant later was slammed hard into her seat as explosive bolts blew the canopy clear and catapulted her out of the ship. She got a quick glimpse of the Star Destroyer’s portside edge, an even quicker glimpse of a TIE fighter whipping past—

  And suddenly there was an agonized squeal from the ejection seat’s electronics, and the violent crackle of arcing circuits … and with a horrible jolt Mara realized that she had made what might very well be the last mistake of her life. Intent on aiming her crippled Z-95 at the Star Destroyer’s hangar bay, she had drifted too close to the giant ship and ejected directly into the path of the Dreadnaughts’ ion beam bombardment.

  And in that single crackle of tortured electronics she had lost everything. Her comm, her lights, her limited maneuvering jets, her life support regulator, her emergency beacons.

  Everything.

  For a second her thoughts flickered to Skywalker. He’d been lost in deep space, too, awhile back. But she’d had a reason to find him. No one had a similar reason to find her.

  A flaming TIE fighter roared past her and exploded. A large piece of shrapnel glanced off the ceramic armor that wrapped partially around her shoulders, slamming her head hard against the side of the headrest.

  And as she fell into the blackness, she saw the Emperor’s face before her. And knew that she had again failed him.

  They were approaching the monitor anteroom just behind the Katana’s bridge when Luke abruptly jerked. “What?” Han snapped, looking quickly around down the corridor behind them.

  “It’s Mara,” the other said, his face tight. “She’s in trouble.”

  “Hit?” Han asked.

  “Hit and … and lost,” Luke said, forehead straining in concentration. “She must have run into one of the ion beams.”

  The kid was looking like he’d just lost his best friend, instead of someone who wanted to kill him. Han thought about pointing that out, decided at the last second they had more immediate things to worry about. Probably just one of those crazy Jedi things that never made sense anyway. “Well, we can’t help her now,” he said, starting forward again. “Come on.”

  Both the starboard and port main corridors fed into the monitor anteroom, from which a single set of blast doors led the rest of the way forward into the bridge proper. Lando and Chewbacca were at opposite sides of the port corridor entranceway as Han and Luke arrived, huddling back from a barrage of laser fire and occasionally risking a quick shot back. “What’ve you got, Lando?” Han asked as he and Luke joined them.

  “Nothing good, buddy,” Lando grunted back. “There are at least ten of them left. Shen and Tomrus were both hit—Shen will probably die if we don’t get him to a medic droid in the next hour or so. Anselm and Kline are taking care of them inside the bridge.”

  “We did a little better, but we’ve still got a couple of them coming up behind us,” Han told him, doing a quick assessment of the rows of monitor consoles in the anteroom. They would pr
ovide reasonable cover, but given the layout, the defenders wouldn’t be able to retreat farther without opening themselves to enemy fire. “I don’t think four of us can hold this place,” he decided. “We’d better pull back to the bridge.”

  “From which there’s nowhere else to go,” Lando pointed out. “I trust you considered that part?”

  Beside him, Han felt Luke brace himself. “All right,” Luke said. “Into the bridge, all of you. I’ll handle this.”

  Lando threw him a look. “You’ll what?”

  “I’ll handle it,” Luke repeated. With a sharp snap-hiss he ignited his lightsaber. “Get going—I know what I’m doing.”

  “Come on,” Han seconded. He didn’t know what Luke had in mind, but something about the kid’s face suggested it wouldn’t be a good idea to argue. “We can backstop him from inside.”

  A minute later they were set: Han and Lando just inside the bridge blast doors, Chewbacca a few meters farther in under cover of an engineering console, Luke standing alone in the archway with lightsaber humming. It took another minute for the Imperials to realize that they had the corridors to themselves; but once they did they moved swiftly. Cover fire began ricocheting around the monitor consoles, and as it did so the Imperials began diving one by one through the two corridor archways into the anteroom, taking cover behind the long consoles and adding their contribution to the laser fire storm.

  Trying not to wince back from the attack, Han kept up his own fire, knowing full well that he wasn’t doing much more than making noise. Luke’s lightsaber flashed like something alive and hungry, deflecting the bolts that came too close. So far the kid didn’t seem to have been hit … but Han knew that it couldn’t last. As soon as the Imperials stopped laying down random cover fire and started concentrating on their aim, there would be too many shots for even a Jedi to stay clear of. Gritting his teeth, wishing he knew what Luke had in mind, he kept shooting.

  “Ready!” Luke shouted over the screaming of the bolts … and even as Han wondered what he was supposed to be ready for, the kid took a step back and threw his lightsaber to the side. It spiraled across the anteroom, spun into the wall—