steady in his sights for as long as it'd take to implode a full-size TIE
fighter. The thing finally blew.
The Falcon rocked as another droid fired. Han relaxed into the gunner's
power chair. This was just the old game. Another droid swooped along the
freighter's rim, right at the edge of his sighting capability. "Smart droids,"
he muttered. "They learn fast."
Abruptly the starfield tilted, lining up the droid for a long, clean
burst. "Better?" asked Leia's voice in his ears.
"Much." The thing finally exploded. Two more came in, still aiming for
the engines, not the gunners' stations or the cockpit. They want prisoners,
all right. So where was Big Mama, the boss ship? Or were these babies
programmed to attack on their own?
As if she'd read his thoughts, Leia murmured, "What do you bet they're
left over from the alien attack on this outpost?" Han finally overloaded the
upper one's shields. A wave of debris sent its buddy spinning out of sight.
"Safe bet," he said tightly.
Silence.
"That everybody, Chewie?"
Affirmative roar.
Breathing heavily, he scrambled back down to the cockpit. "Where are we
headed?" he asked Leia.
She stroked a control rod. "In system. There may be more of those out
here. I don't know about you, but I'd feel safer with the rest of our battle
group." As she stepped out of the captain's chair, the engine pitch fell off
with a groan. Cabin lights darkened. "Now what?" Leia demanded. "I never know
what to expect from this overmodified bucket."
Or its overconfident captain? Go ahead, Princess, say it. Han whacked a
console. Ready lights blinked and the engines came back up. He swung into his
seat with a flourish. "We're gone."
Leia crossed her arms and looked defiant. "For all the protection I've
gotten, we might as well be doing Luke some good."
"Well, strap down, sweetheart. We're going to hustle."
Motionless but for his eyes, Luke glanced from viewscreen to BAC unit.
Commander Thanas's Imperial ships were falling back.
Not because Luke was coming in. Evidently his battle group had dropped
back out of hyperspace at the moment when the Ssi-ruuk meant to press their
advantage to Bakura's surface. That meant the aliens had thinned their outer
arc to push forward. One light cruiser was practically undefended, creating an
area Luke's small force ought to be able to take easily.
"Delckis, give me squadron leaders."
His headset hissed. He adjusted it, pressing small hard components into
his ears. "Okay, let's get their attention." He touched a BAC panel to
transmit its evaluation into their targeting computers and highlight the
solitary cruiser. "Gold Leader, Rogue One, that's yours."
"Got it, Flurry." Wedge Antilles sounded confident and experienced.
"Rogue Group, lock S-foils in attack position."
Luke felt vulnerable, riding a target as obvious as this carrier. "Red
Leader, split your squadron. Red One through Four, hold an escape cone open
behind Rogue and Gold groups. We'll draw them away from the planet." Every
byte of data his ships' sensors could feed into the BAC would help it analyze
alien ships' capabilities.
He shook his head. The yellow-gold pips on his screen were Imperial
fighters--and he was defending them.
"Red Five and the rest, stay with the Flurry," Luke finished.
Sitting beside him on the elevated captain's chair, Captain Manchisco
swiveled away from the master computer. Three black braids swung on each side
of her head. "Why, thank you, Commander." Her sense in the Force teased him.
Eager for battle, she felt confident of her ship, her crew, an d herself.
Gold and Rogue squadrons soared in, confounding the aliens' rearguard
with a full-speed sweep. Luke stretched out with his feelings, barely aware of
his body. Sensed through the Force, pilots swarmed like hive-minded insects.
He tried reaching for alien presences, but couldn't find any. Unfamiliar minds
were always difficult to touch.
As Wedge closed on a tiny enemy fighter--the BAC showed it a bare two
meters across--he braced himself. Something that small might be just a remote,
a drone. Or the aliens could be elfin-size....
Wedge scored. Something weak and inexplicably putrid shrieked in
momentary anguish, then fizzled away and died. Luke choked down his gag
reflex. Had he felt two presences cry out? He drummed his fingers. The enemy
fighters weren't true drone ships then, but piloted. Sort of. Something had
died.
Almost before he finished that thought, another string of alien fighters
winked out behind Gold Leader. This time, he deliberately opened himself. The
cascading spiral of twisted misery was as faint as a whimper... but human.
Luke couldn't imagine human pilots on alien fighter ships of that size.
Particularly not in pairs.
The BAC bleeped. Blinking away disquiet, Luke stared at the alien
cruiser's red circle. It flashed vulnerable.
"Flurry to Rogue One. Go for that cruiser. Now."
"I'm on it," Wedge crowed, barely audible over a weird two-tone whistle.
X-wings soared past Luke's viewscreen.
Abruptly several more squadrons of tiny sparkling pyramids swarmed out of
one end of the alien cruiser. "Abort, Wedge," Luke cried. "They've launched
another wave."
"Yeah, I noticed." The whistle grew louder jamming. Wedge didn't sound
concerned. "BAC can't make up its mind, huh?" X-wings scattered in pairs,
drawing out pyramidal ships to engage them.
He belonged out there. His best skills were useless on a bridge deck.
The BAC bleeped again, calling Luke's attention to a string of symbols.
It had counted and plotted ships' positions, evaluating known and observed
firepower, shield strength, speed, and other factors. The Imperials' retreat
was transforming into a counterattack on the far underflank of the aliens'
front. Pter Thanas was evidently a first-class strategist. Luke turned to his
communications officer. A vaguely ominous stirring in the Force raised
prickles at the back of his neck.
He bent closer to the BAC. Wedge was leading a sweep out and back toward
that light cruiser. That looked good. The Imperials' position had just
strengthened by fifteen percentage points. That looked excellent.
No, wait.
An alien gunship, far smaller than the cruiser but no doubt heavily
armed, had left the main battle. It was closing on Wedge's squadron from six
o'clock low, behind the light cruiser's cover, an angle and a proximity Wedge
couldn't hope to see and evade. He guessed the gunship's captain had been
waiting for Wedge and his boys to turn their backs. "Rogue One," snapped Luke,
"Wedge, watch behind you. Big guns below." As an afterthought, he added, "Red
Five and your group. Get out there and shoot those fighters off Wedge's tail."
"What was that?" He could barely hear Wedge for the jamming. X-wings
scattered. Two vectored right into the picket ship's range. Luke's viewscreen
flashed.
Two blasts of painfully familiar human anguish wrenched Luke's spine and
stomach as Alliance pilots
died. Not Wedge, he confirmed hastily, but they'd
been people. Someone else's friends. They'll be missed. Mourned.
He regathered his wits and tried to shield himself better. He couldn't
grieve yet. Flashing red on the BAC screen, the picket ship was still tailing
Wedge's X-wing tightly.
Behind Luke, Captain Manchisco cleared her throat. his'Scuse me,
Commander, but you're leaving the Flurry wide open to--"
He was turning his head when the BAC board framed a crimson full alert
The Flurry itself was about to come under attack. Alien fighters whizzed past
the viewscreen, reflecting crazy flashes of light. "Sure enough," Luke said.
"They saw it too. Crew's yours."
Manchisco's black eyes brightened. She spun away and barked out a string
of orders to her shipmates. The Duro gargled a question, waving long, knobby
hands over his nav controls. Manchisco gargled back. The Flurry carried
everything from gunners to shield operators. Luke concentrated on Wedge's
danger and closed out his own.
Miniature alien fighters had almost surrounded Wedge and his squadron,
trapping them inside an escape-proof globe of energy shields and firepower.
Luke fought down panic and funneled his emotional energy into the Force around
and inside him.
He stretched out his own point of presence toward the tiny alien ship
dead ahead of Wedge's X-wing. Touching it, he clearly sensed two alm-human
presences on board the small fighter. Shutting out the nauseating sense of
twistedness, Luke brushed each presence. One controlled shields; the other,
all remaining shipboard functions. Luke focused on the second, driving Force
energy into its center. Though weak and faint, it resisted with tortured
strength. Its misery goaded him toward despair No one deserved to live free,
its whole being declared. By its reckoning, Luke could do nothing for Wedge--
and nothing to save himself--and nothing to save either human aboard the alien
fighter. All were doomed.
Luke struggled to see through the stranger's vision. The entire sphere of
space opened around him. It overloaded his senses. He had to narrow his field
of view to find Wedge's X-wing. On either side of his projected presence,
another pyramid hovered apparently motionless, flying in formation. From the
center of each triangular face, a scannerstsensor cluster peered back like a
compound eye. Laser cannon bristled at each corner.
Fear, anger, aggression the dark side are they. Yoda had taught him that
his methods were as critical as his motives. If he used dark power, even in
self-defense, the cost to his soul might be disastrous.
He relaxed into the Force. Clinging to control for the sake of his soul
and his sanity, he amplified the pitiful will. Its sense of humanity peaked,
hopeless victory for a tortured spirit. It had lived, once--free. With all the
intensity of the doomed, it longed to go on living.
Luke planted a suggestion in reply. But a good death is better than life
enslaved to hatred, and peace is better than anguish.
With suddenness that startled him, the alien ship altered course directly
for one of its squadron mates. It accelerated to ram. Luke wrenched free of
the other human's will and sat gasping and swallowing. He wiped drenched hair
off his face.
A whoop in Luke's headphones pierced his brain. It took him a second to
refocus his mind on the carrier's battle bridge, another second to refocus his
eyes and steady his stomach.
Wedge's X-wing shot out of danger through the gap created by two alien
ships' destruction.
"Sir," clipped Captain Manchisco. Luke shook himself back to a localized
awareness. "Are you all right?"
"I will be. Give me a minute."
"We may not have a minute, sir." The BAC still blinked red. The Flurry
rocked under heavy bombardment. Manchisco's gunners had picked off a swarm of
tiny fighters, but behind them came more--and three more alien picket ships.
At one corner of the board, six red triangles flashed a shield erosion
warning. He had the aliens' attention, all right. Despair melted out of him.
"Engineering can't give us any more power," she said. "Got any more
tricks up your sleeve... sir?"
In other ^ws, could the famous Jedi help them out of this pickle? Her
sense was still cocky, but she, too, was peaking on adrenaline.
Her navigator gargled at her. "No," she ordered, sounding alarmed. "Stay
on your station." He ran a long hand over his leathery gray head.
"All squadrons," Luke called. "Flurry needs reinforcements."
The ship rocked again. Bridge lights blinked. "That's it," announced a
crewer from his sideboard. "Shields are gone. Now we'll see how strong the
hull is."
Two-meter pyramids swirled past the viewscreen. Luke clenched a fist. He
whirled with ideas, every one useless.
Something shimmered midbattle, the asymmetrical dish of a freighter
dropping out of hyperspace amid the swarm of alien fighters. A picket ship
strayed into its line of fire. No more picket ship.
"Figured you needed some help," said a familiar voice in his ears.
"Thanks, Han," he murmured. "Nice of you to drop by."
Fighter after enemy fighter fled past the Flurry for open space. Red
warning lights turned amber. "How many do'you owe me now, Junior?"
"Several," he answered. Maybe he owed Leia. She might be learning to
sense Force leadings too.
The swirl of battle gradually slowed. Numbers and figures shifted on the
BAC, but Luke ignored them. Later, he might use that information to brief his
pilots on alien ship capabilities. But for now, he stared out the light-
reflective but not mindless.
"Red Squadron," ordered Luke, "ease into position beneath that cruiser.
Come across its bow. Turn it insystem."
He rubbed a fingernail with his thumb and waited for the huge ship to
turn, caught himself, and gripped his thigh with that hand. Slowly, the red
enemy pip began to rotate on his board. It eased forward, as blind as he'd
guessed to Red Squadron's presence. Just a little farther, and Red Squadron
could...
"Red Leader?" Luke transmitted.
"Going in now," squeaked a young voice.
Luke had to clench his other hand against the edge of the board. Next
time he'd let Ackbar send someone else to command. This was ridiculous. He
hated command. First chance he got, he'd resign his commission.
Through the Force, he felt the cruiser's destruction. Milliseconds later
brilliance lit his viewscreen. "Yes!" crowed Wedge's voice. "Good job, Red
Leaderffwas
Luke imagined his youngest squadron leader grinning behind a blast-
darkened canopy. "Well done," Luke echoed. "But don't close your eyes yet.
There's still plenty out there."
"Right, Flurry." The cluster of blue X-wing pips did a four-way split
swing, gathering data through each ship's scanners to add to the fleet's
battle boards. Nice try, Dodonna, he thought at the BAC'S inventor. Its
sophisticated circuitry was as useful--and as limited--z the fighters
targeting computers.
"Sir," came Lieutenant Delckis's soft voice beside him. "Drink of water?"
"Thanks." Luke grasped a flat-bottomed drink bulb. A new pattern on the
BAC intrigued him. Somebody on the other side had just given an important
order, because red pips were disengaging all across the screen. "Squad
leaders, they're getting ready to jump. Stay out of their way, but pick off
any that attack you." He had grown in the Force Already his first choice was
to intimidate, not to kill, particularly a battle group that might be turned
against the crumbling Empire. He switched channels. "Do you see that,
Commander Thanas?"
No answer, but Imperial Commander Thanas was busy too. Luke watched with
relief as cluster after cluster vanished. "That's it," he said softly. "We're
done, for now. Get the outer-system scanners up, Delckis. It's my guess
they're not going far."
"Yes, sir."
Luke sipped bland, recycled water down his parched throat. He'd been
breathing hard. Better control next time, he promised himself.
"Sir," said Delckis, "you were right. They're already coming up, barely
outsystem."
"Mm-hmm." He liked being right, but he did wish they'd simply gone home.
He stretched. What next? He set the drink bulb on the BAC. It made a
better table than strategy counselor. "Code a message to Admiral Ackbar,
Delckis. We need more ships. Include BAC recordings for that battle. They'll
show him what we're up against. Can you have it off in half an hour?"
"Easily, sir."
Thank the Force for contraband Imperial transceivers. "Do it." Next
refuel and rest. "Squad Leaders, this is Flurry. Good work. Come on home."
Manchisco exhaled, shook her braids, and whacked the Duro's shoulder.
Blue Alliance glitter-dots converged on the Flurry. Luke's radio
crackled. "Alliance Commander, this is Commander Thanas. Do you have holonet
capability?"
"Yes, but it's slow. Give us five minutes."
Lieutenant Delckis was already twisting levers and diverting power into
recently patched-in components. Luke slid his chair into pick-up range. "Tell
me when you're ready."
"Ready," Delckis said at last. "Two-way."
Over an instrument panel appeared the image of a man who looked about
fifty, narrow faced with thinning brown hair cut almost short enough to hide
its curl. "Thanks," said Commander Thanas, "and congratulations."