Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Part 4

"Could be? No. It is."

Klick blinked even faster. "Shall I sound general quarters, my lord?"

"Of course not. We can't have our unexpected guests discover that we've been expecting them, can we? Are we so rude?"

"I, ah, well..." Klick hoped the question was only rhetorical.

"Order the Combat s.p.a.ce Patrol to stand down and return to their bases. But they are to stay with their craft and keep their engines hot. Also, order all the gravity crews to stand ready for initiation on my command."

"But if they strike while our forces are grounded, our losses-my lord, it could cost us the battle!"

"We will lose this battle," said the voice from the darkness. "We must. Losing this battle is how we will deliver the Empire to its rightful ruler: Emperor Skywalker!"

CHAPTER 4.

The lone pa.s.senger shuttle gleamed in Taspan's light as it left the atmosphere, slipping neatly through the hurtling asteroids that crowded Mindor's low planetary orbit. As it left LPO, the shuttle traced a long, gracefully curving path, swinging wide to avoid the clouds of radioactive debris that were all that remained of Shadowsp.a.w.n's sizable force of TIE Defenders.

On the battle bridge of the Justice, Lieutenant Tubrimi rolled the vast black orb of his left eye back from his console. "Unarmed shuttle, sir. A single lifesign-human, sir! It's hailing us under terms of the truce." The red-gold streaks in his iris brightened with excitement. "It's Shadowsp.a.w.n, sir!"

Admiral Kalback s.h.i.+fted forward in his command chair. Nict.i.tating membranes swept his eyes and retreated only halfway-the Mon Calamari version of a satisfied smile. "Accept the hail."

The lieutenant swept his webbed fingers through a complex curve in the air above his console, and the battle bridge's holoprojectors flickered to life.

The image they formed was of a tall human male, standing motionless in robes so long that they draped in folds around his feet. His hands were similarly hidden, folded before him within voluminous sleeves. His face was pale as a corpse's and as expressionless, and his eyes were rimmed in black. He wore some sort of curious headgear: an inverted crescent as broad as his substantial shoulders, which framed his head as though his face were a mountain, looming in silhouette before a cloud-blackened sun half below the horizon.

"Unidentified Rebel command cruiser," the image intoned in a voice black as a subterranean cavern, "I am Lord Shadowsp.a.w.n. You have defeated us. I respectfully request permission to board, that I may formally treat for the lives of my men."

Lieutenant Tubrimi said, "That's all of it," and the image flickered out.

The admiral had never been a particularly demonstrative being, but there was quiet joy in his voice as he turned to the young human who stood beside his chair. "It seems congratulations are in order, General."

The general stood exactly as he had throughout the operation: motionless on the Justice's battle bridge, hands folded behind him, a faint frown painting his brow. Beside him, maglocked to the deck, waiting with electronic patience, stood an R2-droid series model. The general seemed to be listening to some faint and distant sound, far beyond the confines of the s.h.i.+p, and it appeared that he didn't like what he was hearing.

Shadowsp.a.w.n's voice... he couldn't pin it down. There had been something weird about it, some strange resonance, that struck him as both too familiar and just plain wrong.

"General?" Admiral Kalback repeated. "My congratulations..."

Luke replied grimly, "Not yet."

The battle had gone like chronowork. The sudden appearance of the Twenty-third Combat Starfighter Wing coming out of hypers.p.a.ce at the very limit of Mindor's gravity well had apparently caught Shadowsp.a.w.n's forces entirely by surprise; the Twenty-third's Y-wings had managed two devastating torpedo runs on the warlord's base before the first TIE Defenders on combat patrol had been able to get back to engage the Twenty-third's X- and B-wings; the Ys managed several more runs during the ensuing dogfight. The battle at the edge of Mindor's atmosphere had drawn in the rest of the combat patrols from across the system, leaving clear s.p.a.ce for all twelve of the Rapid Response Task Force's capital s.h.i.+ps to jump in.

The five Slash-Es had come out of jump in a precise formation-a regular tetrahedral dipyramid, to be exact-with the planet of Mindor at its geometric center. Once their gravity-well generators activated, they bracketed the planet with a ma.s.s-shadow more than seven light-minutes across. But before the generators were triggered, the other seven s.h.i.+ps had jumped in. Six of these remaining seven were a motley collection of various styles and makes, from a pair of refitted Acclamator II a.s.sault cruisers to a battered old Techno Union Bulwark-cla.s.s battles.h.i.+p, dating from before the Clone Wars; all they had in common were retrofitted Cla.s.s 0.6 hyperdrives, multiple-redundancy deflector and particle s.h.i.+elds, and the ability to transport a minimum of three full squadrons of starfighters apiece. Adding to the ungainly, cobbled-together appearance of these s.h.i.+ps were the vast number of pre-Clone Wars Jadthu landers maglocked to their hulls, which not only added their own very substantial armor as additional protection for the cruisers, but also gave the four non-atmosphere-capable s.h.i.+ps the capacity to hot-ground a fairly large chunk of their marine complements in exceedingly short order.

The final s.h.i.+p was the Justice, flags.h.i.+p of the task force: a sleek, graceful Mon Cal cruiser, sister s.h.i.+p to the legendary Liberty. This twelve-hundred-meter work of art was almost literally the Liberty's sister; constructed simultaneously, she resembled her famous sibling more than almost any two s.h.i.+ps ever to come out of the fantastical imaginations of Mon Calamari designers. The Justice had been intended to complement the Liberty's speed and sheer destructive potential with more powerful s.h.i.+elding, additional docking bays, and vastly expanded troop capacity, because the Mon Calamari designers worked hand-in-glove with their equally imaginative strategists, who knew that while blowing things up was all well and good, wars were actually won by boots on the ground. Lots of them.

Of the eighteen thousand Republic marines deployed with the RRTF, nearly eight thousand were on the Justice alone, and the additional hangar bays that made her look, as Luke Skywalker had remarked when he first saw her, "a little bit pregnant," could carry ten full starfighter squadrons as well as a repair-and-refit shop deck more capable than most Republic stardocks.

The cruisers had taken up station in the centers of each face of the dipyramid marked off by the Slash-Es, and deployed two each of their starfighter squadrons. The Slash-Es were able to deploy a squadron apiece. With complete hypers.p.a.ce interdiction and the sheer volume of firepower available to the cruisers and the twenty squadrons of starfighters, the marauders had been swiftly overwhelmed, and not a single Imperial craft had escaped the perimeter. By the time the Justice had cruised majestically into a geostationary orbit above what clearly seemed to be the marauder base-it being the only installation on the planet defended by ma.s.sive ground-based turbolaser batteries and eight planetary-defense ion cannons-the marauders' surviving starfighters had retreated to underground hangars.

It was over.

The lone frown among the jubilant bridge crew of the Justice belonged to Luke Skywalker. "It's not over."

Admiral Kalback blinked. "It was a brilliant plan..."

"It was an obvious plan."

"Yet it went precisely as you devised."

"That's the problem."

"General?"

"When was the last time you heard of a battle that went exactly as planned?"

Kalback's right eye swiveled independently to join his left, and the stately old officer leaned gently toward him. "When was the last time a battle was planned by a Jedi?"

"I couldn't say," Luke murmured. "But I bet it wasn't this smooth. And since when does a Lord of the Empire worry about the lives of his men?"

The Admiral flicked his left eye toward his rear and back again: a shrug. "We've cleared local s.p.a.ce; his force is confined to the planet, which qualifies this as dirtside operations. That makes it your call, General."

"Then we make the best of bad choices, tell him to hold station and present his conditions. We can negotiate from here."

"Prepare to transmit," Kalback said.

When Tubrimi signaled his readiness, the admiral rose. "Lord Shadowsp.a.w.n, I am Admiral Kalback." The depth and dignity of his voice was more than equal to Shadowsp.a.w.n's. "This is not a Rebel cruiser, sir; there is no Rebellion any longer. This s.h.i.+p is the Justice, flags.h.i.+p of the New Republic's Rapid Response Task Force. On behalf of the Joint Command, we are prepared to consider your offer of surrender. Hold your position, and transmit when ready."

He signaled to Tubrimi to cut transmission. "Let's give him time to think that over."

"I'm the one who's thinking it over." Luke paced the deck, frowning at the various sensor readouts on the battle bridge. "I think it's a trap."

Kalback's eyes twitched. "A trap? A trap for what? With what? We've crushed them."

"It's still a trap."

"Is this some Jedi insight? Do you feel it in the Force?"

Luke shook his head. "Artoo, bring up a tactical display."

R2-D2 whistled a cheerful a.s.sent and rolled away from Luke's side, extending his datalink toward the nearest port. Lieutenant Tubrimi swung around and waved his webbed hand. "I have it, sir."

"Leave it to Artoo," Luke said. "Mind your station."

"But-with all due respect, sir, even astromechs of substantially more advanced design than that old Artoo unit find our information technology almost imposs..." The lieutenant's voice trailed off as the battle bridge's holoprojector array flared to life, filling the room with a schematized holorepresentation of the Taspan.

Luke let himself smile, just a bit. "That old Artoo unit, Lieutenant, is not exactly an ordinary astromech. I trust him more than most people I know."

The lieutenant's nict.i.tating membranes slid halfway across his eyes and flittered there for a second or two as he turned back to his console: the Mon Cal equivalent of a sheepish blush. "Yes, ah .. . sorry, sir. It won't happen again, sir."

Luke reached out and laid a hand on the lieutenant's shoulder. "It should happen again, Lieutenant. Being a general doesn't make me infallible."

"But, sir the general is also a Jedi, sir."

Luke sighed. "Jedi aren't infallible, either. " He turned once more to Admiral Kalback. "If you were based in this system, how would you have set up your defenses?

Kalback's eyes rolled to take in the whole cloud-fogged system at a glance, and nodded slowly. "Without capital s.h.i.+ps, I suppose I would have based my starfighters in the asteroids."

"Me, too," Luke said. "If I were Shadowsp.a.w.n, I wouldn't even have a base. Hollow out a couple dozen of the bigger asteroids, and they become your carriers and base stations. It wouldn't take much to make them practically invisible. It's the perfect camouflage."

"Then we're lucky you're not Shadowsp.a.w.n."

"Ben Ken.o.bi used to tell me there's no such thing as luck. Think about it: I'm a brand-new general. A few weeks ago I was just a jumped-up fighter jock. If I could think of it in a couple seconds, how did Shadowsp.a.w.n miss it when he's had months?" Luke paced through the holodisplay and waved a hand at the pinpoints that represented the CC-7700/Es. "Look at those asteroid clouds. How many good places are there to station interdiction s.h.i.+ps?" Kalback responded only with a thoughtful blink. "So if you knew your enemy had to bring capital s.h.i.+ps, and you knew pretty much exactly where those capital s.h.i.+ps had to go, what would you have done?"

"I'd have filled those points with mines," Kalback said. "And concentrated my starfighters nearby."

"But he set up his base-and his forces-on the planet." Luke nodded at R2-D2. "Artoo, bring it up."

The tiny s.h.i.+ning disk of Mindor swelled to engulf and erase the rest of the system. It was an ugly place.

What had once been a lush and beautiful resort world was now mere rockball, battered clean of life by the endless rain of meteorites left over from the Big Crush; the only significant geographic features were the ubiquitous volcanoes that boiled from cracks in the planet's crust. Even the oceans had shriveled to widely scattered toxic sumps, churning at the very bottoms of what had once been the sea floor, and the atmosphere was so charged with vaporized metal and mineral salts that it formed a significant barrier to all forms of real s.p.a.ce communications; Lord Shadowsp.a.w.n's initial transmission requesting the truce, for example, had been voice-only, with significant static interference.

Even the Justice's powerful sensors could only scan through the murk with difficulty, and at very low resolution. The only way to locate Shadowsp.a.w.n's base had been visible-light optical sensors, and even now, the task force's best scans could not determine with any certainty how many troops, vehicles, and emplacements might he down there, aside from the major planetary-defense installations visible from orbit.

Luke shook his head, frowning. "He's tied himself down on a planet that has no drinkable water, no food supply, and where the atmosphere's caustic enough to cause long-term lung damage. With the interference from the atmosphere, he can barely even communicate with his fleet. All that base is really good for is something to shoot at."

Kalback's eyes widened even further: a Mon Cal frown. "General, we don't necessarily have to honor the truce; after all, this Shadow-sp.a.w.n has not conducted his operations like a soldier, but like a pirate." He swiveled his right eye toward the ground base. "It seems a pity to let such a tempting target go to waste."

"No. If word gets out that that's how we treat surrendering Imperials, no one will surrender. This business will get a whole lot bloodier."

"Then how should we proceed?"

"I don't know," Luke said, more grimly than before. "I just don't know."

A chime that sounded like the splash of icy water over river stones caught Lieutenant Tubrimi's attention, and he swung back to his console. "Incoming message from the shuttle, sirs."

Kalback nodded. "Bring it up."

"Urn," Luke said, "with your permission, Admiral?"

The admiral gave his a.s.sent with a roll of his left eye.

"Lieutenant, set the playback for audio only," Luke ordered. "Artoo, keep the tactical going. Plot the Justice, the shuttle, and the shuttle's vector."

"General?" Kalback leaned toward him, chin palps flaring in concern. "Is there a problem?"

"I'm pretty sure there is," Luke said, nodding. "Lieutenant?"

Tubrimi waved a hand. The darker-than-black purr of Shadow-sp.a.w.n's voice seemed to come from everywhere at once while the tactical holodisplay highlighted the relative positions of the Justice and the warlord's shuttle.

"How am I to offer surrender, when our eyes have not met? Am I to cast the lives of my men into wind and wave before I have judged the angles of your gaze?" Shadowsp.a.w.n sounded honestly puzzled, almost plaintive. Luke's frown deepened to a scowl. The warlord was playing on Kalback's cultural inclinations: to his people, the truth of a being's character was expressed through its eyes. "Pray indulge this one humble request from a defeated foe; do not force me to deliver the lives of my men unto some figment of my hopes for mercy."

The flare of Kalback's chin palps widened. "General?"

Luke barely heard him. That voice...

He recognized the quality now: it was electronically synthesized, modulated deeper, darker, with subtle harmonics that worked on primitive parts of the human brain, commanding instant attention. Demanding respect. Requiring obedience. Inspiring dread.

That was it: Shadowsp.a.w.n sounded like Vader.

The only other time he'd come across a voice that dark, that unsettling, that downright chilling had been another synthesized voice, speaking from a holoprojected silhouette filled with stars-Could it be?

Luke's jaw clenched. "Blackhole."

Kalback swiveled one vast eye toward him. "You say that like a curse."

"It is for me," Luke said grimly. "We've had dealings before. He's an Emperor's Hand. I should say, was an Emperor's Hand. I've seen some reports that suggest he might have been director of Imperial Intelligence back around the time of Yavin. I should have pegged him right away-that strange headgear, for one thing-but these raids really aren't his style."

"No?"

"He was more, I don't know, kind of theatrical. He would always appear as a holoprojection of empty s.p.a.ce-you know, just an out-line filled with distant stars, and... " Luke's eyes went wide. "...and he never did his dirty work in person!"

He lurched toward the s.h.i.+fting star that was the tactical display's representation of the shuttle: that s.h.i.+fting star was s.h.i.+fting entirely too fast. "Is this accurate?"

The ensign at the tactical console angled his eyes in a shrug. "Yes, sir. In fact, he's accelerating."

"Project his course."

A cone of blue haze spread forward along the shuttle's vector. "That's a.s.suming constant acceleration-no, wait, he's increasing acceleration. Eight gravities... eleven..." The cone kept spreading until it enveloped the holodisplayed Justice.

"Order marines to the landers, and all hands to environment suits."

Kalback blinked. "General?"

"You, too, Admiral." Luke strode across the deck to a suit locker and starting pulling out flight suits. "Come on," he told a nearby yeoman. "Pa.s.s these out. Get going."

Kalback still looked doubtful. "You're expecting a direct attack?"

"Or something like it. Get me firing solutions for fifteen to twenty-five gravities throughout that cone," Luke told the fire control officer. "Lock targeting with all nearside batteries and prepare for torpedo launch."

"General?" The lieutenant twisted toward Luke, blinking in astonishment.

"Belay that!" Kalback sputtered. "That's-that shuttle's unarmed!"