One problem at a time, he told himself.
He glanced back at Char and Blink. He squinted at the burning clouds, readying himself to plunge through. He didn’t know whether the Y-wing was still out there, didn’t know where it might be, but he couldn’t leave Nath unprotected.
Then the comm crackled, and a garbled voice said: “I’m all right. Forget about me right now and take care of yourself.”
“Nath?”
But the voice disappeared, buried in distortion.
Wyl fled the fire and Shadow Wing, unsure what to do next.
IV
The orbital station trembled steadily, the deck jittering and rattling beneath Nath’s feet. Lights flickered but the artificial gravity remained stable. Officers and stormtroopers rushed past him in the corridors, ignoring the burly man in a New Republic flight suit in favor of reaching their posts—or the escape pods.
Nath wasn’t sure what was happening. He assumed the New Republic strike team had eliminated the main reactor, but automated announcements had mentioned containment pods until the alert system had gone offline. Wyl’s message was even more concerning, and the last transmission he’d received from T5 had mentioned seeking shelter “out of the blast zone.”
He suspected he’d made a mistake in coming aboard. But he was here now.
Might as well finish the job.
He strode through the chaos as if he belonged there. No one halted him as he worked his way against the tide of fleeing bodies; he wondered if he had tripped an alarm in the air lock and the crew had simply ignored it. He kept his hand near the blaster on his hip but never touched the weapon—better not to draw attention—and increased his pace to a jog when he saw others doing the same. Twice, he was forced to alter his route when he reached a sealed blast door. Both doors radiated intense heat, as if they held back miniature suns.
At last he arrived at the command center. Peering around the doorframe, he saw that the broad chamber was nearly deserted—only a middle-aged major, an ensign hammering at her console one-handed while gripping a comlink, a red-cloaked figure that might have been a droid, and a crisply dressed colonel remained.
Nath’s gaze held on the colonel. She was keen-eyed, with a face of dark and crumpled parchment and thin hair leached of all color. Shakara Nuress, he thought. Grandmother.
“We lost another gas pod,” the major said. He visibly struggled not to stammer. “The firestorm’s diameter is expanding—”
“Give me a tactical map,” Nuress snapped. The only sign Nath saw of nervousness was her hands, as she stiffly wove and unwove her fingers. “Show me all ships and orbital stations—gas extractors and colonies—within five thousand kilometers.”
The major glanced toward the ensign—still consumed by her own task—then dashed to another console. One of the displays blinked and showed a sea of bewildering symbols Nath couldn’t decipher from afar. Nuress grimaced as she studied it.
“Should we have the colonies evacuate?” the major asked.
Nuress paced in front of the display, apparently deaf to the major’s question. “You see them?” she asked. “Seven supply ships and three gas tankers in addition to the extractors.”
“Major?”
“Tell them to withdraw. Top speed. If the firestorm reaches them—” She cut herself off and tapped quickly at her own console. “The storm is burning fast and bright, and there’s a chance it will exhaust itself. If it finds a damn tanker, though—or three—it could have enough fuel to spread over this entire planet.”
Nath saw her glance toward the red-cloaked figure—a tall, utterly still presence with a plate of black glass in place of a face.
“I don’t need that on my conscience,” she said.
There’s a story there, Nath thought. But it wasn’t what he’d come for.
The major bent over another control panel, checked something, and looked back to the colonel. “We’re having trouble broadcasting. I can—”
Nuress waved him off. “Go. Do it manually.”
The major left the command center at a run, streaking past Nath without a glance. Nath assessed his options—looked from the sweat-soaked ensign to the droid to Nuress—and decided he wouldn’t get a better opportunity.
He stepped through the doorway and raised his blaster.
“Grandmother? Nath Tensent.” He grinned his broadest, meanest grin and waited for her to turn. “You’re a little busy, but you killed my friends. I thought we should chat.”
He was pleased to see that for all her poise, Colonel Nuress was still capable of looking surprised.
V
Buffeted by the storm, Quell’s X-wing spun and burned. Wind and flame swirled around the orbital station, streaking outward in ribbons of annihilation. Quell’s legs still worked her rudder pedals and her gloved hands played along the control panels, but her mind was transfixed by the hell that surrounded her. The holocaust of her own making.
Images of Nacronis—of the colorful siltstorm, wet and flaying and catastrophic, battering structures and flooding city streets with mud—mixed freely with nightmares of the present. She envisioned firestorms consuming the stations housing thousands upon thousands of civilian colonists. She pictured citizens on the planet surface looking up and knowing that they were doomed.
Her mind flashed to planetary bombardments—operations she’d dutifully joined at Mek’tradi and Mennar-Daye—where she’d watched ordnance fall and atomize settlements. She recalled those missions’ preflight briefings and the professionalism with which she’d carried out the slaughter. She remembered cheering with a crowd on the observation deck of the Pursuer as she beheld the mighty Star Destroyer annihilating its targets. She recalled the face of Major Soran Keize and every mistake she’d ever made.
One of the spokes of the orbital station’s wheel began to buckle as the fires melted scaffolding and support struts. Metal plating tore loose and fell in hundred-meter sheets. From a vague, analytical distance, Quell remembered that there was a city somewhere below—a settlement on Pandem Nai eking out its existence in the station’s shadow.
Quell had an extremely good memory, yet she couldn’t recall the city’s name.
She pictured molten slag and jagged wreckage falling from the pyre and impacting houses and factories. Crushing. Burning. Whatever the Pursuer’s bombardments had done, this would be worse—just as destructive, but more callous and imprecise.
She was flying over a graveyard.
Her X-wing was diving. She wondered momentarily if D6-L was responsible, but the movements were her own—she hadn’t heard from the droid since her ship had first been engulfed by the flames, and though she should have been concerned for the astromech she didn’t have the space left in her consciousness. She sucked a thin, hot breath between her teeth and saw spots as she dipped below the horizon line of the station. She ignored the dots of TIE fighters on her scanner and angled under the station’s center while maintaining her near-vertical descent.
Gravity pulled her down. Thrusters pushed her. She felt a wad of saliva catch in her throat and nearly choked. The atmosphere around her changed from deep scarlet to tawny orange. Finally, she spotted her target: an enormous girder as wide as her starship, shed from the orbital station and speeding toward the planet’s surface.
She squeezed her firing trigger and loosed a flurry of particle bolts that sheared and shattered the metal. She kept firing, kept plummeting, reducing shards to shrapnel and shrapnel to ash.
“Lark to—Lark to anyone.” The comm buzzed and popped. If Lark hadn’t identified himself, Quell wouldn’t have recognized his voice. “What happened?” he asked.
She tried to pull out of her dive. Her engines groaned and rebelled. Repulsors were useless, more apt to tear the X-wing to pieces than steady it. She leveled the ship and continued to fall. For three s
econds she was certain she would crash; then she angled herself upward again and flew.
The comm crackled a second time. Lark’s voice came more clearly now: “What have we done?” he asked.
The question tore her out of her dream and back to reality. It demanded an answer.
“I did it,” she said.
The responsibility was hers. The mistakes were hers.
She wasn’t sure whether anyone but Wyl Lark could hear her, but as she shot skyward and saw another black mass above—another scarred chunk of debris from the decomposing orbital station—she knew that her responsibility demanded action.
Alphabet Squadron was hers. She gave her final orders.
“We failed to take Pandem Nai,” she said. “This is now a rescue mission.”
The debris hurtled toward her, and she fired.
CHAPTER 19
EMERGENCY READJUSTMENT
I
This is now a rescue mission.
“What does that mean?” Wyl called. “What are we supposed to do?”
Quell didn’t reply. The comm buzzed and hissed. Wyl called Nath’s name, and Chass’s, and heard nothing. When he called to Kairos, he heard a squeal—an electronic tone that might have been acknowledgment or might have been a burst of static.
He was, for all practical purposes, alone. Barring his Shadow Wing pursuers and the ghosts of Riot Squadron.
He heard the clacking of Sata Neek and the steady drone of Rununja giving orders, warning him to elude the weapons fire aimed in his direction. Yet over the voices of his old squadron mates came Quell, again and again: This is now a rescue mission.
In the Oridol Cluster he had been left without comrades, forced to choose the fate of himself and his mission. He had been tested by the Oridol god and haunted by Riot Squadron ever since. Now he was again forced to choose, pursued by the same enemy, and he felt suddenly calm as he spun his A-wing about and ascended away from the station.
This is now a rescue mission.
Not a mission of revenge against Shadow Wing. Not a mission of conquest to take worlds for the New Republic. For the first time since leaving the Lodestar, he felt sure of himself and his purpose.
He didn’t know if the dead of Riot Squadron would approve. But his ancestors on Home would.
There was nothing he could do to prevent the station’s collapse. There could have been thousands of Imperial crew aboard, and though he felt a pang he couldn’t usher them to the escape pods. (He suspected that the Imperials weren’t who Quell wanted them to rescue, but the decisions were his now.) Nor could he arrest the spread of the firestorm directly—and it was spreading, but shooting particle bolts into the burning clouds would do no good.
He glanced at his scanner—flickering and distorted by the storm—then looked through his canopy. This was a rescue mission, he thought, so who could he help?
He adjusted course and spotted the distant silhouettes of Imperial vessels racing away from the storm front. Supply carriers; a corvette; and among them a massive slab of a ship lined with spherical containment units: a gas tanker.
It crawled through the sky. Wyl dipped his port side and peered at the churning flames beneath him. At the rate the storm was expanding, it would surely catch the tanker. It would ignite the pods and—
Another cascade of emerald particle bolts tore past his ship. One struck home, tearing the targeting sensor off his starboard cannon and causing the ship to rock and howl. “Leave me alone!” he snapped, and accelerated toward the tanker.
He could outrace the firestorm with ease. The tanker could not. He glanced at the containment pods sprouting from the tanker’s hull like the legs of a crawling insect. There were at least two dozen.
He tapped his comm and opened a channel. “Imperial tanker ship!” he called. “How can I assist?”
There was no reply.
He’d lost sight of his pursuers, and his scanner was useless. Another glance showed him that the tendrils of flame were rapidly closing. He crossed the distance to the enormous vessel and chose his first target.
His cannons blazed and sung. He turned and rolled as he flew closer to the tanker, bolts flying and sparking as they struck the moorings of the first containment pod. Metal blackened, crumpled, and finally buckled, sending the pod plummeting toward the planet surface.
It didn’t feel like a victory. Wyl hoped the pod would strike somewhere in the wilderness beyond the ground settlements, crumpling without detonating. If not, however—he had no other options. Better to burn on the ground than to fuel the conflagration in the skies, obliterating the tanker and engulfing the planet in an endless inferno.
Flame caressed the tanker now, rushing to fill the gaps between the pods. Wyl tried to match the vessel’s course and speed, steadying the A-wing as he aimed at the next set of moorings, but the storm winds bounced him ten meters into the air and his blast went wide. He lined up another shot and loosed a second volley; the pod creaked and swung from the moorings but didn’t detach as fire flowed around it.
Wyl grimaced and swallowed a curse. With the pod hanging precariously he no longer had a clean shot. He didn’t know how long the containment unit had before the gas inside ignited. This close, any blast would rip through his A-wing along with the tanker.
He angled for the battered moorings anyway. One last try, he decided, and laughed as he saw emerald bolts rip through the air around him. His pursuers had caught up, and there was nothing he could do but hope he survived long enough to complete his pass.
He was fifty meters from the pod when crimson streaked across his view. The half-broken moorings flared white and the containment pod dropped away.
Wyl traced the afterimage burnt into his vision and looked to the shooter: a New Republic U-wing racing toward him from the direction of the orbital station.
He couldn’t make out any details, but he was certain that the crest of Alphabet Squadron was painted on its nose.
“Good to see you, Kairos,” he said, “and glad you made it. Take the port-side pods. I’ll handle the starboard.”
The TIEs behind him poured streams of emerald destruction through the space Wyl’s A-wing had occupied seconds earlier. Blink and Char wanted him dead, rescue mission or not.
But he thought of his last encounter with Shadow Wing. He knew what he had to try.
II
The swarm had found her. A mournful song of bandfill tones and gasped vocals accompanied Chass as she rotated her ship, accelerated and dived, charged into squadrons and sprayed cannon fire across burning clouds. Shadow Wing’s TIEs englobed her, and her shields were long gone. Second by second her systems were failing as particle bolts seared her primary airfoil.
She was doomed, but she wasn’t defeated yet. One TIE strayed into her field of fire and she annihilated it with a cannon burst. Another mistimed its shots, and she dropped twenty meters and watched the charged beams strike another of her foes, sending it spinning away.
She sang along with the music, though she didn’t know the words.
She’d heard a staticky voice—Quell’s voice—declare something through her comm minutes earlier, but she hadn’t understood it and the voice hadn’t returned. She didn’t know where the rest of her squadron was, or what their mission had become. The whole planet seemed to be burning. She was pretty sure that hadn’t been the plan.
She no longer cared. She was frightened and satisfied as her mission came to its end. She intended to kill as many Imperials as she could.
The instruments under her right arm snapped and sparked and her cockpit lit up with electricity. The fabric of her sleeve blackened and she pulled her arm to her chest as the suppressors kicked in and the side panel fizzled and died. Another enemy shot pierced one of her S-foils, disabling its cannon and shaking her ship. She spun the B-wing around, saw the globe of
TIEs closing, and decided on a final plan: She would let her starfighter fall, cockpit and weapons aimed to the sky, and spin and shoot and spin and shoot until her enemies were gone or she was destroyed at last.
She was ready. It wasn’t the martyrdom of Jyn Erso, but it was good enough.
Yet as she lay in her seat and pitched her B-wing back, the rain of enemy fire ceased.
Above her, the TIE fighters rose into the air, turned, and retreated into the obscuring firestorm. She wanted to shout at them, to demand they return. She laughed in outrage and confusion.
Then she heard the voice through her comm, garbled and tinny. “I repeat, this is Wyl Lark of New Republic squadron ‘Alphabet’ to all ships on all frequencies. Please cease hostilities and provide immediate assistance.
“If we don’t—” The voice hesitated. “If we don’t, everything burns. If we don’t, we could lose the planet. Nothing else matters. Nothing else, if we can stop this. This is Wyl Lark—”
Wyl Lark, she thought. You’re doing it again. You’re taking it all away from me.
She reignited her thrusters and slammed her burnt arm against the console to reset the scanner. Somewhere in this storm of death she could find a fight worthy of her.
III
“Now? You’re choosing now to do this?” Colonel Nuress’s voice wasn’t so much outraged as astonished. Nath heard the subtext: How stupid can you be?
“Best chance I’ve got,” Nath said, and swept the blaster pistol from Nuress to the ensign. The former remained standing. The latter sat motionless at her console. Nath stepped to the side, well out of reach of the red-cloaked droid. “Anyone moves, I shoot.”
“This station is falling apart,” Nuress went on, as if lecturing. “The whole planet is in danger.”
Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars) Page 37
