“Confirmed sighting of a cruiser-carrier.” Hound Leader’s voice was almost steady. Chass had flown with Stanislok on twenty-four missions now and knew that steady meant “worried.” “Enemy is dispatching multiple TIE squadrons. Riot will run interference; Hound to remain within one hundred kilometers of the Dare. This is a delaying action—the Dare is calculating jump coordinates and will transmit presently.”
“You want to explain how they found us?” Hound Six’s voice. Fadime’s.
“Unknown,” Stanislok said. “Prepare to launch.”
Chass listened to the chatter—Fadime and Yeprexi arguing about tracking devices and particle trails and hyperspace wakes—and retracted her landing gear. The cockpit wobbled almost imperceptibly. The ship was balanced for zero-gravity, and its narrow, linear body was prone to oscillation. The cockpit’s asymmetric location opposite its primary airfoil only exaggerated the effect, no matter how precisely tuned the gyrostabilizers were. It was, as Chass’s flight instructor had said, like standing on the far end of a springboard balanced across the shoulders of a charging bantha.
But outside an atmosphere? In the dark of empty space, with S-foils extended to reshape the fighter into a cross, and the cockpit rotating as the body swung into one killing orientation after another? It wasn’t as fast as an A-wing interceptor or as versatile as an X-wing, but there was no ship like the B-wing.
“Hound Three. You may launch.” The voice of the flight controller.
“Come on out and play,” said Merish—Hound Nine—chuckling behind his jowls.
Chass gently opened her throttle and felt her thrusters ignite. The engine rumble turned the outside world to static. She brought the body of the vessel around, careful to watch the primary airfoil as it swept through the hangar, then made for the distant stars beyond the runway. The first reports of enemy engagement came through on the comm, but from the hangar she could only see darkness.
She increased her thrust. The hangar became a blur. Then the darkness enveloped her and the Hellion’s Dare became another dot on her scanner. She noted other blips—Hound Six and Hound Seven—and turned her ship to arc after them.
“Incoming fighters.” Stanislok again. “Jump to lightspeed in one minute.”
One minute. She’d barely have time to pick out her music.
She saw flashes of light in the distance. The A-wings had engaged the TIEs. By the time the enemy came within a hundred kilometers of the Dare, the frigate would be ready to jump. Chass would have seconds—agonizing, beautiful seconds—to let loose with weapons capable of reducing a TIE fighter to a molten stew.
Then she would have to run.
She and her comrades would get away. She didn’t doubt that. But this wasn’t the mission she wanted.
IV
Colonel Shakara Nuress had forgotten what it was to lose a war.
There had been battles, of course—unwinnable campaigns on the fringes of known space, or desperate, ill-conceived assaults her superiors had never expected to succeed. There had been more personal losses, too—her dear, beautiful Senache had waged as skilled and intricately planned a war as any against the disease that had rotted his heart, and she’d stood by his side until death had swallowed him up.
But a proper, military, strategic series of losses that resulted in retreat after retreat? That seemed ceaseless, and demoralized commanders and foot soldiers alike? That demanded appalling compromises simply to stanch the bleeding? She hadn’t encountered loss like that since the Clone Wars.
She hadn’t liked it any more then than now. In the end, however, they’d won the Clone Wars, too.
“The target’s shield dome is at half strength,” a man’s voice declared, “and they are unable to signal through our jamming field.”
Shakara extricated herself from her reverie, leaving her thoughts orderly and primed for her return. She acknowledged Major Rassus with a nod and turned her attention to the turbolaser fusillade pouring from the Pursuer toward an ashen planet. The emerald brilliance of the display forced her eyes to the edges of the bridge viewport; she blinked away red afterimages.
“Power levels?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t want to stress our deflectors, but we can keep the bombardment up long enough,” Rassus said.
“Good. Maintain current position. Show no sign of weakness.”
The Star Destroyer wasn’t short on weaknesses to show. The weeks after Endor had left the great vessel nearly crippled. Its reactor output was prone to plummeting, and its targeting array barely functioned. Massive sections of the ship had been damaged to the point of uninhabitability. Besides Shakara and Rassus, only six others served on the bridge, rotating from station to station. For now, the Pursuer was suitable only for short jaunts and summary executions.
For now, that was all Shakara needed.
Her enemy today was not the foe that had assassinated the Emperor. Her enemy was a spice-mining outpost of no more than a few thousand colonists, with crude weapons that couldn’t destroy the Pursuer—even decrepit as it was—without both fortune and persistence.
The threat the outpost represented was not tactical but strategic: It was too close to Shakara’s newfound domain at the edge of civilized space. If it had sensors, it would see things. If it regained communications, it would send word before Shakara was ready. Because of both the outpost’s threat and its impotence, Shakara had chosen the Pursuer for this mission rather than more lethal units she had assigned elsewhere; and she had chosen to oversee the operation herself, despite its crude nature.
She couldn’t spot the colony itself from so high above the planet surface, but she watched dust plumes bloom and expand. They were pallid and sickly compared with the siltstorms of Nacronis, but the effect reminded her of that world nonetheless.
The fusillade stopped.
“The bombardment has penetrated their shields, Colonel. How shall we proceed?”
She heard the major’s unasked question: Do we demand their surrender? Do we send bombers to the surface?
Surrender was out of the question. She hadn’t the time or resources to tend to prisoners or vassals. The handful of TIE bombers aboard the Pursuer, however, were capable of striking the colony’s facilities with precision—eliminating all ground and space transport, all communications towers, while leaving much to salvage. While leaving the colonists alive.
She had brought the bombers aboard in case of complications with her mission. She had chosen their pilots herself, knew from their flight records that they could eliminate their targets nearly as swiftly as the Pursuer could turn the whole colony into a crater. But any deployment entailed risk. A TIE bomber was not a Star Destroyer, and a single cannon shot could tear through an engine or ignite ordnance in mid-drop. The risk was low, but it was a risk.
An unnecessary risk.
“Tell the bombers to remain on standby,” she said. “Continue targeting the colony. Scan for ships attempting to evacuate and prioritize their destruction.”
Major Rassus spoke an order into his comlink. There was a moment’s delay as officers elsewhere aboard the vast ship relayed the command to gunners and engineers. Then the viewport flared into brilliance again and the deck plating hummed as turbolaser blasts tore from the Pursuer, shearing through the planet’s atmosphere. Shakara noticed her com-scan officer flinch and hunch into his headset—she suspected the colonists were pleading for relief, for mercy, but mercy was the province and luxury of those who were winning a war.
Major Rassus reported the progress of the destruction over the course of several minutes. Shakara half listened and waited until no life remained on the surface before asking, “How many more?”
The question caught Rassus off guard, but he was a good officer. He figured it out. “Four more. Three planetside outposts and the solar station, across three separate system
s.”
“Good,” she said. “When the deadwood’s cleared, we’ll have room to grow.” Not that room was the issue. But Shakara’s unit couldn’t build so long as there were eyes present. So long as the potential to be seen was there.
Rassus walked toward the nav station, but Shakara gestured for him to halt. “What about our squadrons aboard the Aerie?” she asked. “Any word yet?”
“From the cruiser-carrier? Nothing to my knowledge. They’re late to check in but their last message said they were chasing a scout. Shall we arrange reinforcements?”
Shakara considered the notion. Two of the 204th’s TIE squadrons in pursuit of a scout craft? It shouldn’t have been a challenge requiring assistance—but then they’d have already returned if they hadn’t been challenged. The scout could have gone into hiding or returned to a larger battle group.
“No need,” she said. “They’ll alert us if required.”
She’d sent her people into far worse situations—and though there was risk to any deployment, here the risk was acceptable. The squadrons would find their quarry. The scout would be destroyed. And Shakara and Shadow Wing would have the time and space—the opportunity—they needed.
“Set course for the next outpost,” Shakara said. “Let’s be done with the slaughter.”
Victory was a long way off. But it had seemed that way once before.
In the end, they’d won the Clone Wars, too.
CHAPTER 3
INERTIAL VELOCITY
I
"Your people are dead, you know.”
Quell couldn’t see the speaker. She hoped that meant she was blindfolded. If she wasn’t blindfolded, she’d lost her sight to the drug burning through her veins. That meant the blindness might be permanent and that her captor didn’t care; or that he fully intended to kill her when her sight came back.
She couldn’t feel any blindfold.
She wasn’t sure when she’d regained consciousness. Awareness had come slowly despite the excruciating crawling under her skin, and it had taken her time to reconstruct what had happened. She’d been attacked, injected, dragged off somewhere. She was sure of that much.
She was terrified. The question of whether she was going to be tortured or enslaved or shot produced vivid, distracting images in her mind. Still, she focused past the pain and fear. Her captor wanted to talk; so did she.
“The trading council won’t be happy about this,” she said. Her lips were numb and she slurred the words. It wasn’t much of a retort, and even less of a threat; but it was the best opening she could think of.
“Trading council doesn’t know what I know,” the voice replied. It was low, gravelly, masculine.
She took a guess: “Tensent?”
No one answered.
Quell took stock of her body. She could curl her toes but her ankles were pinned together. Her left arm was bound to her side but her right was still in its sling, crushed to her chest. Something was compressing her ribs. She was standing upright, tied to something cold and hard—maybe a metal support strut?
Everything that wasn’t paralyzed hurt.
“Your Emperor is dead,” her captor said. “Your leaders are dead. Month or two from now, patriotism’s going to be worth as much as an Imperial credit.”
The words took too long to sink in. “You think I’m with the Empire?” she finally asked. She wanted to cringe at the sound of her own voice, childish and inarticulate. She couldn’t speak around the fire in her nerves, around her swollen tongue, and every word was a humiliation.
She didn’t want to die humiliated.
She tested her bad arm. Whatever rope or cord bound her body wrapped that arm as well, but not as tightly as the bindings on her left limb. She could move her right hand, though not far and not without sending a fresh jolt of pain through her body.
The voice shifted position. “The way you talk? The way you swagger? You’re an Imp, no doubt.” She could hear it change intensity, hear the echo off stone walls.
That was good. That was perfect. She needed him to keep talking. She needed him engaged.
“I’m with New Republic Intelligence.” She second-guessed herself as soon as she said the words, but went on. “I only used to be Imp scum.”
“Uh-huh.” The voice was closer now. “There someone I can contact to confirm that story? You got a friend in the chancellor’s office?”
She felt warm breath on her face. She forced herself not to groan, not to scream as she strained her right arm against the bonds and the sling, reaching toward her left pocket.
Keep his attention.
“I don’t have a friend,” she slurred. “And rebel spies don’t carry a lot of identification.”
She found the metal casing of her comlink. She felt dizzy as she pressed her thumb against the switch. Her head lolled forward. Moisture trickled down her chin. She was drooling from exertion.
“Funny thing, I know loads of rebel codes. Secret identification protocols, safe house coordinates, all that garbage. Something you need when you’re worried about security, right?” Callused fingers grasped her chin and raised her head back up. “Now, you just here to finish the job your people started? Or is there something specific I should know before I kill you?”
She needed to stall him.
She let her head droop, feigning a return to unconsciousness. It was close enough to the truth.
He slapped her twice on each cheek. He cursed and snarled and stalked away. This time she saw movement—a blur of shadows within shadows—and she wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disturbed to confirm she hadn’t been blindfolded after all. She thought she heard a clink of metal and glass, as if her captor were sorting a case full of dishware.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll pump you full of this concoction, see how you feel. Slythmonger gave me the whole batch free, so don’t get your hopes—”
He stopped talking. The shadows turned darker; something popped high above, and Quell suspected the lights had gone out. Then came a familiar sound: the pulse of servos and repulsors and whirring manipulators.
Another voice spoke, cold and mechanical: “I made an oath to do no harm in my new profession. However, my integrated chemical torture turret can incapacitate without permanent damage.”
Footsteps backed toward her. She felt her captor’s body heat, and even in the dark she saw him move his arm. The man was raising a blaster. Aiming it away from her and toward the second voice. She was close enough to smell the gel in his hair.
She pulled against her bonds and snapped her head forward as hard as she could. Her forehead struck between her captor’s shoulders and her skull blazed with fresh pain. The man stumbled and a crimson blaster bolt reverberated through the room, filling her vision with a translucent red haze.
Before she fell unconscious again, Quell saw a spherical form hovering over her captor’s kneeling body. She felt no pity for the torture droid’s latest target.
* * *
—
Nath Tensent was barely a decade older than Quell, but a receding hairline and a deeply lined brow magnified the difference. She might have called him ruggedly handsome—his features were sharp, with skin like smooth leather over brass—if his sheer mass hadn’t given him a thuggish quality. He could have tossed her across a room one-handed; given the ache in her bones, she wondered if he already had.
He was unconscious on the floor. She sat on a flimsy metal stool in his apartment, too shaky and nauseated to stand. The burning in her nerves had abated. The numbness was gone and her vision had returned, but it felt like slamming her head into the man’s spine had fractured her skull.
“You should visit a medic,” the IT-O droid said.
“I’ll be fine,” Quell replied. She had no interest in visiting the Hive’s state-of-the-art m
edical facilities.
Tensent groaned on the floor.
“Go,” Quell told the droid. Softer, she repeated: “I’ll be fine.”
Better that Tensent didn’t see a torture device when he woke up. The man was a roach, but Quell had been sent to recruit him. She planned to do just that.
“Leave your comm channel open,” the droid said, floating past the living area’s built-in cooler on the way out the door.
It took another hour before Tensent arose from the floor like a man accustomed to waking there. He was halfway to the medicine cabinet before he spotted Quell, spun toward her, then froze in confusion. He patted his belt and found his holstered blaster but didn’t draw it.
He touched his shoulder where the droid’s needle had penetrated his shirt. He slicked back midnight hair going gray at the temples.
“Your move,” he said.
“Can we talk?” Quell asked.
He grinned so readily that she almost smiled back. Then she remembered who he was. “Let’s do that,” he said. “What do you drink?”
* * *
—
Quell drank brandy diluted to mostly water. Brandy was her father’s drink, and one her brothers had taught her to appreciate, but for the sake of her mission she’d drowned her glass. Tensent sipped aromatic spicewine across the table, more delicately than she would have expected.
She’d reiterated that she was, in fact, with New Republic Intelligence as they’d walked to the cantina. She didn’t know if he believed her; but since she hadn’t murdered him while he slept or disarmed and bound him, he seemed inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. Yet he’d laughed when she uttered the words “come back,” and now he gestured expansively to the dimly lit space occupied by castoffs and day drinkers. “I’m doing fine for myself. Rebels are fine without me. Entropian Hive’s not much to look at, but the trading council appreciates me and the work is plenty simple.”
Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars) Page 6
