Shadow Fall (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  “Copy that,” Wyl said.

  He didn’t need an explanation. He was glad for the excuse to soar—he hadn’t left Troithe since the mission in the debris field, spending the past few days skirting rooftops and eluding surface-to-air missiles and shooting walkers. He’d escorted Kairos’s transport through Cybersynth District foundries and drained his batteries obliterating fifteen stories of Glimmere Tower crawling with stormtroopers. Flying was a pure joy.

  As if she understood his thoughts, Quell asked, “You enjoying the break?”

  “More than anything,” he said, though he was surprised to hear her ask. She’d never been given to unnecessary conversation, in or out of the cockpit. “Thanks for bringing me out here.”

  They sped eighty-four kilometers above the surface through a cloudless sky. With a gentle dip of one wing, Wyl could bring the vast cityscape into view. It wasn’t as undifferentiated as it appeared from orbit, instead splotched with darkness where power grids had failed; banded in differing geometric patterns where architectural styles had shifted during the millennia of the city’s expansion; compressed where underlying mountain ranges or waterways or deserts had forced the colonizers to adapt; tinted with beryl or rose or jade, depending on peculiarities of the solar projectors and pollution emitted by local industries, baking color into the composite metals of the metropolis.

  “I meant the whole campaign,” Quell said.

  Wyl’s thoughts crumbled apart like a clod of dirt from a drought-parched plain.

  “Come again?”

  She spoke with obvious consideration. “I don’t mean to say things are easy. I know you’re working hard as ever, and this operation has its challenges with Vanguard Squadron out-of-system and the need to appear vulnerable without losing outright; add coordinating intelligence with Adan and…it’s a lot of moving parts.

  “But compared with everything in the run-up to Pandem Nai? Compared with the Oridol Cluster, or before Endor?”

  “It’s different,” Wyl admitted. He kept his tone gentle. He didn’t want her to feel challenged or disbelieved, but he was genuinely puzzled by this turn in the conversation.

  He glimpsed distant shimmering as they passed beyond the edge of the planetary deflector shields. The cityscape was severed by a dark ocean and replaced on the far side of the channel by a bleak expanse of rock. Lightning lit patchy clouds like gaseous obsidian. Here and there was the flash of something metallic, though whether he saw structures or merely stone polished to a sheen he was unsure.

  This was the Scar of Troithe: a continent torn apart by mining machines, carved and honeycombed and chiseled until what was left lacked even the harsh beauty of a lifeless planetoid. Wyl tamped down instinctive revulsion—such devastation was anathema to the ways of Home—and reminded himself: You find beauty in the city. This is the price these people paid—a graft of their world’s skin, lifted from one site to sculpt another.

  “We haven’t lost a ship in fifteen days,” Quell said. “Not us, not Meteor Squadron, not Hail. General Syndulla suggested we might set a record.”

  He leaned into his seat and pitched his ship so that he could no longer see the landscape. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. I’ll still be ready for all this to end.”

  He found himself wanting to talk to her—to confess that every night he found it harder to dream of Home, and that he’d intended to leave the New Republic before Shadow Wing had murdered his friends. That he wanted to leave now and couldn’t.

  She was talking, however, and he made himself listen. “I’ve been where you are now. I used to fly escort on bombing runs all the time. You watch what happens and there’s only so much you can do, but you fight to protect your comrades in the air.

  “I was at Mek’tradi, Wyl.”

  There was a long pause. The galaxy seemed upside down, with darkness below and the blazing starlight of the Deep Core above. Wyl felt irritable and guilty at his own confusion—he remembered the destruction of the rebel outpost on Mek’tradi from the Shadow Wing files, realized there was meaning in Quell’s words yet couldn’t discern what meaning that was.

  Ask her. If she’s coming to you for support, ask her.

  “What happened at Mek’tradi?” he asked.

  But he’d waited too long.

  “Nothing,” Quell said, and they flew on through the endless night.

  * * *

  —

  If there was a history of the Thannerhouse District worth knowing, it wasn’t in the droid-generated tactical summaries sent to Wyl and the rest of the squadron. The district was old, at least—its borders were defined by the shores of the Thanner Lake, a massive reservoir so buried by towers, bridges, and platforms that it was invisible from orbit. From afar, the only evidence the lake existed were the massive pipes climbing housing blocks and the saucerlike balconies shaped like antique Mon Cala sea skimmers. These last, Wyl supposed, were affectations of the wealthy.

  The residents had been warned for three days that New Republic forces would be moving through the district. Broadcasting the plan entailed little risk—by now Governor Hastemoor and his army had surely realized that General Syndulla and her forces were coming for him, and the direct path led through Thannerhouse—and the notice was delivered hourly via radio broadcast and orbital flare. Civilians were advised to evacuate or, as the time of the attack approached, to locate blast shelters and stockpile supplies.

  In most of the previously targeted districts, evacuation warnings had resulted in kilometer-long trails of refugees making for New Republic territory. In Thannerhouse, for whatever reason, the residents remained put. Maybe it was out of loyalty to Governor Hastemoor’s rule. Maybe it was out of fear of the same.

  Either way, Alphabet Squadron was expected to escort the infantry caravan and provide air support in the event of a ground skirmish. Meteor Squadron was twenty minutes away in case of emergency, but recon suggested the district would fall without serious opposition and Alphabet’s mixture of fighters and bombers—along with the U-wing transport—made it a surprisingly effective complement to midsized ground detachments. “We’ve found your calling,” General Syndulla had joked before takeoff.

  So they flew among the spires of the Thannerhouse District, observing the lambent sunset of tower lights while speeder bikes scouted paths far below. They listened to Chass’s collection of Verpine pipeglass (“My droid has better range and melody,” Nath declared) as hovertanks and stolen Juggernauts rumbled after the speeders, packed with infantry squads spilling out onto their roofs and leaving trails of fluttering ration pack wrappers like spoor.

  When the first blast came, the thunder of Wyl’s engine and the barrier of his canopy rendered it nearly inaudible. But he knew it for what it was by the screams over his comm.

  It was a panicked minute before anyone located the attackers. The energy blast that had melted a Juggernaut and incinerated fifty-nine passengers had come from below—not from a bomber or a gargantuan AT-AT walker but from something below the surface of the water. A second beam erupted seconds later, then a third and fourth. The particle streams caused boiling geysers to erupt, scattered defenseless New Republic soldiers, and cut through buildings a kilometer aboveground. Whatever was below didn’t aim for the starfighters, but that made their beams no less deadly.

  “Astromech calculating beam trajectories. Attempting to locate their points of origin,” Quell called. “Can’t get a sensor reading but it looks like we’ve got six aquatic combat vehicles down there.”

  “Kraken-class deep lurkers,” Chass muttered. “Seen them before.”

  Wyl’s screens flashed as data from Quell’s X-wing streamed to his console. He checked his weapons loadout and tried to do the math. “They’re too far underwater. Concussion missiles won’t penetrate that far—”

  “Take Kairos and go,” Qu
ell snapped. “Get out of range, above the solar projectors. Neither of you is useful here.”

  Wyl growled and jerked his control yoke, pulling the A-wing away from a beam that left a molten streak across the façade of a corporate tower.

  For an instant he thought it was raining. As Quell called orders and Wyl danced among the beams, his mind processed the droplets beating against his canopy and he realized that the enemy had punctured the massive water tanks drawing off the lake water. He was flying through a windless storm, navigating by instruments alone, attempting to escape the spray and find a purpose for his ship, a purpose for the death machine that could do nothing for the troops on the ground or his squadron in the sky.

  * * *

  —

  “The battle didn’t last ten minutes,” Wyl said. He stood in the Lodestar’s observation deck, staring out at the peeling red paint of the maintenance bay and clutching the recorder in one hand. His voice was low, though that was a needless precaution—no one was up and about in that part of the battleship so late. “The lurkers were heavily armed but their plating wasn’t any thicker than a walker’s. We owe the win to Chass and Nath, mostly.”

  He described it as he remembered (and maybe, mostly, as it had occurred). Chass had broadcast a Snivvian rhythm-rhyme as she’d descended. Nath had struggled to pitch his Y-wing toward the ground without crashing. But they’d both launched guided bombs through gaps in the broken grating above the lake and annihilated the enemy below. Kairos had ignored Quell’s command to get clear, instead evacuating ground troops clinging to shattered streets or caught by waves of boiling water. “Kairos packed thirty soldiers aboard her ship,” he said, clasping the holorecorder between both hands. “People are scared of her—you don’t know much about her—but I’ve never met anyone who fought harder to keep her allies alive.

  “When it was over, and I got clear of the spray, and looked around”—his voice was soft and calm—“there was water everywhere. Spilling from the tanks and the pipes, running down the buildings. Kicked up from the bomb blasts. Someone had broken the dams, and I could hear the water rushing out. It takes a lot of water to hear over an A-wing’s engines.

  “We did a quick pass to check for other enemies, but we didn’t find any. We listened to the ground troops checking in, and Quell told us we’d done well—we’d kept casualties low, under the circumstances. Chass laughed and said: ‘If you sign up to be a ground-pounder you know what you’re in for. If you’re in the first wave something’s going to kill you.’ She didn’t mean it to be callous. We’ve all seen people get hurt.

  “After we finished with the aerial pass, I set down, just to see if we could lend a hand. Water had washed out whole floors of the big towers. One of them’s bound to collapse from the damage, and that’ll probably take down others. In a year the whole district will be ruins rising out of a lake.

  “Nath set down, too, and we looked for anyone to rescue. I asked him, ‘Why are we doing this?’ and he knew what I meant. We were wading through thigh-high water, searching for missing troops.

  “ ‘We get the capital, we get Shadow Wing,’ he said.”

  They would do it, too. Wyl didn’t know what would happen when Shadow Wing came, but he was confident they would take the capital. He’d seen enough of Troithe to realize that there was no defense Governor Hastemoor and the Imperial forces could erect that would stop the New Republic; all the enemy could do was delay the inevitable, to force the expenditure of lives for every meter gained.

  Long ago, Wyl had been part of Riot Squadron. He and his colleagues fighting for the Rebel Alliance had seen more losses than wins. They had wept together and danced after missions no one would ever remember. (Missions only Wyl was alive to remember.)

  “We’re fighting a different war now,” he told the holorecorder, “and I’m feeling a little sick.”

  In the early days after Wyl had left Home, he had often written to the elders of his birthplace, Cliff. He’d asked about the righteousness of killing and how to mourn his enemies without betraying his duty. He’d reaffirmed his commitment to fighting until the Emperor was defeated and Home was free. He’d been unable to receive answers, but it had been enough to quiet his mind.

  Now he envisioned the recipient of his message—not an elder of Home, but a more nebulous figure—replying. He heard a voice smooth and low, backed by static and neither evidently male nor female. The voice was exactly as he had heard it months earlier, and it showed no sympathy for Wyl’s plight.

  What do you think a soldier is for, Wyl Lark?

  He found nothing else to say. Nothing more he wanted to confess, even knowing that the message would never leave his recorder. He squeezed a button with his thumb and erased the data, as he had every time he’d prepared to contact Blink, his friend and enemy. Blink, the anonymous pilot of the 204th Fighter Wing; Blink, who had killed Riot Squadron in the Oridol Cluster and helped save a planet at Pandem Nai.

  Even in his imagination, the Shadow Wing pilot would offer no escape from the ocean of blood Wyl swam through. Blink wouldn’t listen; and the elders of Home would never understand.

  III

  Soran Keize dropped from the sphere of his TIE onto the hangar deck, listening to utter silence as his boots impacted the metal plating. He checked the seal on his helmet through the numbing thickness of his gloves and eyed the gauges on his chest plate in the dim emergency lighting. He wouldn’t have nearly enough oxygen to explore the entire vessel—but then he didn’t have much time anyway.

  “Keize in position,” he announced. “Minimal life support. Atmosphere twelve percent expected density. No alarms. Status outside?”

  “Squadron Five is chasing the last of the rebel escorts.” Major Rassus’s answer was crisp and curt. “They’re no threat but escape is a possibility. Broosh is ready to trap the bantha if we need to pursue through hyperspace—”

  “No,” Soran said. He thought of the Aerie’s journey through the Oridol Cluster, pursuing a rebel frigate into the depths of oblivion. He’d spoken to the pilots involved—heard stories of the enemy picking off hardened warriors as they’d raced through hellish, alien landscapes. “I want to be done as swiftly as possible. Gone by the time rebel reinforcements arrive.”

  He strode through the hangar, testing the tug of artificial gravity and passing a dozen other TIEs as Rassus spoke to someone aboard the cruiser-carrier. Soran studied the vessels in the gloom, noting the red-painted cockpit hatches and the bulky machinery half visible through their viewports. Drone fighters, every one.

  “What about Squadrons Two and Four?” Soran asked when the murmuring on the comm ceased.

  “Still performing flybys, per your recommendation.” Not “your instructions,” Soran noticed. “No activity spotted, though Lieutenant Seedia says she saw a light go dark in section fourteen. Could be a glitch, even if it were real.”

  “Seedia doesn’t strike me as a woman prone to imagining things,” Soran said. “Don’t you agree?”

  There was a short pause. “I wouldn’t know. We’ve never spoken.”

  Then leave the judgment to me, Soran thought.

  “Patch me in to Squadron Five,” he said. “I’d like to listen while I look around.”

  The ensuing chatter was crisp and professional: targeting assignments and missile lock warnings and gruff words of approval from a commander to his pilots. Soran found it soothing as he moved out of the hangar and into the arteries of the Star Destroyer Edict.

  They’d come searching for the ship guided by little more than hope. The Edict had been a wreck even before the Battle of Endor—a vessel past its prime, assigned to training missions and war games and stripped to its core components. It was, Soran had known, one of relatively few Destroyers that could’ve escaped engagement during the weeks after the Emperor’s death. If anyone had remembered its existence (he hadn’
t, at the time), they certainly wouldn’t have considered its retrieval a priority.

  Through guesswork and the careful exchange of intelligence with less-than-trustworthy sources, he’d managed to locate the Edict under New Republic guard in the desolate expanse of the Pormthulis system. Whether these efforts would prove profitable he wasn’t yet certain.

  The corridors were dark, but no dust swam in the rays of his glow rod. Soran unsealed blast doors and rerouted emergency power to turbolifts, navigating the labyrinth as he wended toward section fourteen. He permitted himself a smile when Squadron Five’s Commander Broosh declared the last of the rebel forces destroyed, but he said nothing.

  Section fourteen was primarily devoted to crew habitation—bunk rooms and messes and supply stations, with a scattered few turbolasers and point-defense cannons set into exterior bulkheads. Soran saw no indication that the area was in use—no unexpected power distribution, no sealed-off atmosphere, not even a tray out of place in the galley. He adjusted his comm as he walked.

  “Keize to Seedia? Can you pinpoint the exact location of the activity you saw in section fourteen?”

  “Negative.” Static cut through the reply, but with Soran’s helmet set to amplify and broadcast, it echoed even in the thin corridor air. “Would you like me to make another pass?”

  “No need. If we have allies aboard, I have no wish to frighten them. If we have enemies, I will die with few regrets. Should I abruptly cut contact, open fire.”

  “Understood,” Seedia said. But Soran was no longer listening to her.

  The crew emerged slowly, like feral animals approaching a potential source of food and warmth. They crawled out of maintenance shafts and supply closets, wearing scuffed and grease-stained uniforms along with rebreathers and oxygen packs. Most wore cadet insignia and had an air of youthful uncertainty; three were noticeably older, white-haired or entirely bald. Twenty in total surrounded Soran, blocking the corridor in both directions.