Shadow Fall (Star Wars)

by Alexander Freed

  “You hid from the New Republic?” Soran asked. He directed his question to a bejowled captain who fingered a blaster pistol. He did not raise his voice.

  “If you’re asking why we didn’t fight—” the captain began irritably.

  “No. Given your circumstances, you might have breached protocol—but adaptability is no flaw in a soldier. Did you hide?”

  “We did.” The captain nodded to someone behind Soran, perhaps indicating to one of the cadets to back away. Or come closer. Soran didn’t turn his head. “But I don’t appreciate being questioned by a TIE pilot.”

  “I don’t fly much nowadays.” Soran waited for a laugh, or at least a raised brow, but none came. He continued: “I’m Major Soran Keize, special adviser to the 204th Imperial Fighter Wing. We are diminished, as you have been, but we came here to bolster our unit.”

  He paused, watching the survivors of the Edict and grateful that his helmet hid his expression. He’d hoped that the ship would be abandoned—or better yet, crewed by naval officers hardened after months of fighting and already evolving to fight a war in dire straits. Instead, he’d found children and their nursemaids. They would tax his resources instead of contributing. All he really needed was their ship.

  “If you wish to join us,” he said, “you would be welcome.”

  * * *

  —

  It turned out the Edict was drifting through the Pormthulis system rather than being disassembled in a New Republic salvage yard because its hyperdrive had been offline for weeks. The Edict’s crew had been unable to mend it without a replacement generator, reactant agitator injector, coaxium suspension element, and twenty-eight Imperial-standard sealing bolts. The New Republic, upon capturing the Star Destroyer, had also been unwilling or unable to effect repairs.

  Thus, it fell to Soran Keize to sacrifice the cruiser-carrier Allegiance so that the Edict might live. The Allegiance had served the 204th well but no one questioned the wisdom of the decision. The carrier’s engine was disabled and disassembled, its parts gingerly guided down zero-gravity corridors into the hangar, out the magnetic field, and directly into the maw of the Edict. Under Soran’s supervision, the cadets and their superiors proved that they possessed a measure of competence after all, restoring main power and lightspeed capability to the Star Destroyer within six hours.

  The entire process reminded Soran of Devon’s life aboard the Whitedrift Exchange, where Devon had partnered with young Rikton under the Harch to repair drive systems and malfunctioning thrusters and a hundred other problems with a thousand classes of starship. He was surprised by the ferocity of his desire to shove his hands into the Star Destroyer’s guts. He was surprised he hadn’t wondered where Rikton was before now, and wondered if he’d made a mistake sending the boy away.

  But perhaps Rikton had a future ahead of him yet. He had been Imperial, but hadn’t done the deeds Shadow Wing had.

  After the disabled Allegiance had been stripped and obliterated by Squadron Three (the carrier’s captain, Rogart Styll, objected, but sentiment was a burden the 204th could not carry forever), and Aerie and Edict had escaped from danger into the cerulean storm of hyperspace, Soran suggested a celebration to welcome the 204th’s newest members and the addition of the Star Destroyer to the growing battle group.

  It did not go as he planned.

  * * *

  —

  “Andara has fallen!” Kandende declared, tipping the bottle of wine and letting the liquid spill from his lips onto the collar of his uniform and down to the tabletop on which he stood. “The New Republic declares victory once again, and we—”

  Gablerone grabbed the young pilot by the ankles and tossed him from table to floor with impressive speed, but the damage had been done before the drunken toast. Soran could finish the sentiment himself: —and we celebrate, having recovered a training vessel crewed by children.

  The news had spread before the celebration in the Aerie’s hangar bay. Rather than a crowd of festive soldiers sharing a precious supply of wine and “enhanced meal rations,” Soran was faced with a grim-faced gang of squadron commanders and those pilots and crew who’d failed to find busywork elsewhere.

  “Is that true? About Andara?” the bejowled instructor from the Edict—Soran had learned the man’s name was Oratio Nenvez—asked.

  Soran deliberately turned away from Gablerone’s harsh discipline of Kandende. “That’s the claim being aired on the propaganda networks. We’ll need to confirm, but it does seem likely.”

  “Bastards,” Nenvez spat. “You intend to strike back?”

  “If Andara is lost, direct retaliation wins us nothing. We’ll continue rebuilding the wing, hitting targets as opportunity allows.”

  “Rebuilding for what purpose?” Nenvez scoffed. “While we grow stronger the rest of the Empire is crumbling.”

  We can’t save the rest of the Empire, Soran thought. We can save ourselves.

  “Rebuilding so that when an opportunity arises, we may take full advantage of it.”

  Nenvez stared at Soran a while and then, with a curt nod, stalked away.

  In the old days, aboard the Pursuer, Soran would have left the celebration. He would have sought out the pilots and crew who hadn’t joined in, squatted next to them as they stripped engine coils or tested cannon chargers, and silently assisted until they admitted what troubled them. That had always been his method, and he was tempted to leave the celebration now.

  But being second-in-command to Colonel Nuress had given him cover he no longer had. He had called this celebration, and if he walked out he would be abandoning those who’d come as well as lose what credibility he’d earned with the wing’s leadership.

  “See to your people,” he murmured in passing to the squadron commanders present. They understood the message, each quietly gathering their own soldiers before departing. Darita hissed “Fix this!” to him as she went. Soran was left with the crew of the Edict and those from the Aerie and Allegiance who had lacked the sense to stay out of sight.

  “Come,” he called, sitting on an empty battery crate. “Let’s tell our stories about Andara and about the Allegiance. If this is going to be a funeral, we’ll do it right.”

  * * *

  —

  They did tell stories. Not pilot stories, but stories about repairing a power conduit on the Allegiance as Pandem Nai burned or about taking leave on Andara after the death of a sister. Soran stayed silent—his place was to listen, not to dominate—but he remembered his own brief encounter with Andara’s security forces when he had been young and foolish. A month before his entrance into the Academy and he’d almost earned an arrest record that would’ve kept him out of the Imperial Navy forever.

  “We can’t let them keep winning,” Creet said. She was a veteran of the 204th but no older than twenty-one. She spoke with a thick Twi’lek accent that Soran imagined had earned considerable mockery during her training among the ground crews. “You’ve seen what is out there, Major. They think they’ve already won. Do they not?”

  “They do,” Soran admitted. Are they wrong?

  “We need to show them they haven’t. Even if we are to bide our time—” He could see Creet fumbling with the language. The others were watching her. “—we owe the people of Andara. We need to be showing them all that people are still fighting. Fighting for them. Fighting for the Empire.”

  “We will,” Soran said. “We are.”

  The answer satisfied none of them, but they nodded. “Tell us,” Creet said, “what it’s like under their rule.”

  He wasn’t keen to discuss his time as Devon. But it was better than promising vengeance and bloodshed, and he gave his audience the truth: that the New Republic was a government that did not know how to govern; and that while scattered worlds might revel in their newfound freedom, more were suffering from food short
ages and societal breakdown and criminal activity. He told them about Mrinzebon and Tinker-Town, where he had met an Imperial who’d fallen prey to the same corruption afflicting the rebels—a small, petty man who preyed on impoverished locals to enrich himself and his companions.

  Soran found himself weeping gently as he told the story, though he hadn’t wept at the news of Andara. He did not hide his emotion, and the others watched him with the gravity of youth as he described Gannory, the cantina owner who had befriended him; his students in Tinker-Town, who had learned to fight for their own survival when someone—the Empire, the New Republic—should have been protecting them.

  And when he was asked again, “When will we show them we still fight?” he said, “Tomorrow.”

  The next day he scanned star charts and tactical maps and chose a target. He persuaded the commanders one by one and they flew to Mon Gazza, where Soran knew from his travels that the New Republic was establishing a planetary outpost. They reduced it to dust with particle cannons and proton torpedoes; they walked among wreckage and corpses to make sure that nothing was left undone, nor any evidence left behind, and Soran allowed an anonymous pilot to scrawl in the ashes: FOR ANDARA.

  He doubted anyone would find it.

  * * *

  —

  After he had showered (two minutes only, as water was still in short supply), he swept dirt and ash into the drain and sat in his office to review the latest intelligence skimmed from open comm feeds. This was not his specialty—he lacked the expertise of a dedicated analyst—but who else was available?

  He browsed headers, satisfied that nothing regarding the capture of the Edict had made it into the public conversation, and paused when he reached a file of corrupted half messages sent on coded Imperial channels. There were the usual desperate cries for help from outposts under siege by entire New Republic fleets, but one—earmarked with an obsolete encryption code once used by the 204th—caught his attention.

  A message from the Cerberon system.

  He read the sections that had not decayed to gibberish with interest. He read it again and pulled up files on Cerberon, its worlds, and its military significance.

  If his people insisted on risking their lives for a war already lost, the least he could do was give them a battle worth winning.

  IV

  Chass na Chadic didn’t have her ship but she still had a mission. She tried to comfort herself with that fact as the U-wing’s deck bucked beneath her and wind blasted her through the open loading door. You could be back at base, she told herself. You could be dragging your butt through the refugee camp looking for a deck of cards. Or death sticks. You volunteered for this because this job didn’t need another bomber.

  But as the ship rocked and she wedged the toe of her left boot into a seam to keep from falling a kilometer onto pavement, she couldn’t bring herself to feel grateful. She shouted a curse at Kairos (one the pilot certainly wouldn’t hear over the buffeting air) and pressed her face to the turret scope.

  “Problems above?” The question came through her headset; sound vibrated through the ill-fitting earpieces raking her horns, worsening her temper. She couldn’t remember the name of the speaker—one of the infantry troops, name of Vitale.

  “Ignore our girl Chass,” Nath’s voice answered. “She’s not in a happy mood.”

  Don’t condescend to me, you surly bastard, Chass would’ve said, but she was wrestling the turret barrel into position, squinting to get a magnified glimpse of the street below. Parked speeders, uncollected garbage…occasional barricades that had to have been assembled by civilians. She hoped the computer-assisted aim would pick up anything she was missing; a walker could flash by and she might not notice.

  The job was recon: Fly into enemy territory a few klicks ahead of the ground troops and scout the sectors nearest the capital. Scan for the governor’s forces and identify a path to the shield generators. Chass risked a glance up at the faint shimmer in the sky, where the planetary deflector refracted the burning iris of the black hole. They’d entered below the energy field but so close to the ground that a single stormtrooper with a Plex rocket could take them down.

  For the real assault to begin, New Republic forces would need to bring bombers into play. That meant eliminating the shields before anything else.

  She spied the flash of a hovermine floating midway up the side of a tower, blocking a side street. She called it in.

  “Ground team,” Quell called, “you have enough to work with? They’ve likely spotted the U-wing by now, even with the baffles and jammers on.”

  “One more pass along the tram line and I’ll feel more comfortable,” the woman on the ground replied. “Sending a route to the pilot now.”

  Chass felt the U-wing’s thrusters transfer power a millisecond before her field of view shifted. The transport banked and turned. She captured images of the tram line and the barricades—real barricades this time, duracrete and energy fields—erected along its length; spotted stormtrooper patrols in the distance marching through the streets. She felt her cheeks and nose go numb from the wind and spun the turret around, making an obscene gesture into the recorder lens before returning to the work.

  “Charming,” Quell said.

  “You love it.”

  “Just make sure you get the images.”

  “Come on, Lieutenant, you know I’m good for it—”

  “If you two are done flirting?” Vitale interrupted.

  “Be grateful,” Chass snarled, suddenly self-conscious. She didn’t mind Alphabet listening, but strangers were another matter. “We’re doing this work so you don’t get killed.”

  “And we’re going to get killed why, exactly? Why are we rushing into the capital instead of starving the governor out?”

  Chass knew better than to mention Shadow Wing on an insecure channel. But not mentioning the trap didn’t keep the thought from flashing through her head, and she shifted restlessly.

  “Leave the speculation for another day,” Quell said curtly. “Finish up and head home.”

  The U-wing adjusted course again and Chass moved on wobbling, wide-spread legs toward the loading door’s control panel. She slapped it hard and leaned against the bulkhead as the door began to slide shut. “Bastards,” she muttered, and her mind lingered on Shadow Wing—on Blink and Char and Puke flying through the clouds of the Oridol Cluster.

  The clouds of Oridol became the flames of Pandem Nai as something erupted and thunder shook the transport. Chass was launched across the cabin. She turned her head in time to avoid breaking her nose against the far bulkhead, but her cheek hit hard and the studs of her horns were driven back into her skull through her left temple. Heat surged at her back, and when she twisted around she saw shards of rocket casing burning on the deck and the crew seats afire. The loading door had finished closing but rattled worryingly.

  “We’re hit!” Chass called. She smelled melting plastoid and fabric as smoke rose from the seats. She felt a flash of pain as her nostrils flared. “In case you didn’t notice!”

  The U-wing accelerated, abandoning all pretense of stealth. Chass could only guess that they were running from their attackers. She swallowed a mouthful of smoke and stumbled away from the wall, kneeling and fumbling at floor panels in search of the emergency compartment. She jerked at a handle, yanked with frustration until a plate came loose and she was able to retrieve the fire extinguisher.

  Two minutes later the flames were out and Chass had kicked most of the rocket shrapnel into a corner. She stuck her head into the cockpit long enough to confirm that Kairos was alive and on course, but the masked woman acknowledged her with nothing more than a glance and a nod. “Nice that you were worried,” Chass said, and returned to the main cabin.

  When she went to return the extinguisher to the emergency compartment, she saw the trophies.
>
  In the chaos of the fire, she hadn’t noticed them. But they were lined neatly against the sides of the emergency compartment, tacked in place with adhesive. On one side were Imperial rank pins and comlinks and something it took Chass a moment to recognize as a cracked optical lens from a stormtrooper’s helmet. On the other side were scraps of cloth that, beneath a layer of grime, displayed rebel starbirds and stylized beasts and smiling skulls. New Republic infantry patches, Chass guessed.

  Most of the trophies were damaged, chipped at the edges or scorched by particle blasts. Some of them still had the rank odor of human sweat.

  Kairos…what have you been doing?

  She’d met a specforce grunt once who’d claimed he extracted the dead stormtroopers’ fingernails to ensure some post-Imperial government could genetically catalog families involved in atrocities. She’d seen it as a mix of sadism and politics but figured she might’ve done the same if she’d been a ground-pounder.

  Pilots didn’t collect trophies. They never got close enough. They just kept score.

  She peeled off one of the patches and rose from the floor. She caught a glimpse of Kairos’s battered bowcaster as she ducked into the cockpit.

  She dropped into the copilot’s seat, shrugging off the pain of her fresh bruises. Outside, the U-wing was ascending away from a hexagonal pattern of city blocks and entering a thin mist of clouds. They’d left the capital region and the bombardment shield behind. The unnaturally bright glow of stars was diffused by the fog but not hidden altogether.

  “You’re a freak, you know?” Chass said.

  Kairos increased thruster power and kept her visor oriented toward the viewport. Chass studied the woman’s wrappings and the dull metal of her helmet. She appeared more battered than Chass had noticed in the past—her garment as scorched and ashy as her trophies, her mask specked with rust. Chass had felt the change in Quell over the past weeks, grown almost comfortable with the straight-edged defector, but any change in Kairos came too subtly to notice. Like watching grass grow, Chass thought.