Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Part 5

"That's an order, Lieutenant." Luke turned crisply to Kalback. "I should say, that's an order, Admiral. Excuse me for giving orders to your men on your bridge. Direct your men to follow my command."

"But-but at least we must warn him!"

"He'll get the message when his sensors pick up our targeting lock."

"Are we the Empire? Would you destroy an unarmed craft? That's murder!"

"Admiral?" The ensign's voice had gone tight as a full dragline. "Countersensor measures and evasive action from the shuttle. Acceleration still increasing."

"No simple shuttle comes with CSM," Luke said. "Admiral, give the order to fire."

"But without weapons..."

"It is a weapon." Luke could feel it now. "It's a flying bomb."

"But-but Shadowsp.a.w.n himself..."

"Isn't in there," Luke finished for him. "Look at the evasion pattern-that's an Imperial fighter pilot. A good one, too."

"Admiral..." The ensign's voice was barely more than a strained hiss. "Vector change. Intercept course at twenty-five standard gravities. Five seconds."

"Admiral," Luke said, calm as a stone. "Now." Kalback's nict.i.tating membranes swept across his huge eyes, and this time they did not retreat. "May my pod and all its ancestors forgive me," he said. "Fire."

Turbolaser blasts clawed through s.p.a.ce. In the bare eyeblink before they would strike the shuttle and obliterate it, the shuttle vanished in a flare of actinic white.

This flare did not expand in a spherical shock front, like an explosion, but instead shaped itself into a single plane, like a planetary ring or a black hole's accretion disk. This plane of white flashed outward at lightspeed and whipped through the Justice's s.h.i.+elds without resistance. It also whipped through the Justice's armor, hull, and internal structure.

And the s.h.i.+p just... fell apart.

Chask Fragan had barely begun to relax after the battle; he had just canceled the B-wing's HUD and was settling back in his pilot's couch, allowing a long whistling sigh to escape through the gill slits above his eyes, when Kort Habel fluted an unprintable expletive from the gunner's couch behind him.

"What now?" Chask half rolled toward his ventral side, twisting so that he could see Kort's screens . .. but Kort wasn't looking at his screens. He was looking at a brilliant white star that had suddenly bloomed entirely too close to the coordinates of the Justice, five light-seconds away. "Hot staggering glurd! What was that?"

"Dunno," Kort answered through clenched masticators. "Nothing on scan-wait, nothing on comm either! Subs.p.a.ce gives back only fuzz." He went grim. "They're jamming us."

"Who is?"

"The comm fairies, chitin-brain. How should I know?"

"Try reals.p.a.ce EM."

"Radio? We're five light-seconds out..."

"Which means that explosion happened what, twelve seconds ago now?"

"Nothing on EM. I mean nothing. Just fuzz. Wait, here it comes."

In scattered spits and static-fogged gasps, the reals.p.a.ce comm gave up the news: Justice had been hit by an unidentified weapon, and hit hard. s.h.i.+p damage was so severe that the ma.s.sive battle cruiser was breaking up in orbit. No estimate of casualties, though its fighter escort reported sighting landing craft and escape pods ejecting from the wreckage; only seconds later, the fighter escort reported engaging a superior enemy force as it swept in to fire on the pods. "They're pounding the wheezing garp out of us!"

"Who is?"

"At a guess?" Kort flicked a mandible up and out, toward the tumbling storm of asteroids outside the c.o.c.kpit-a storm of asteroids that now flared with the plasma signature of dozens-no, hundreds-of ion drives firing on full throttle. "Them."

Chask produced a string of expletives even more foul than Kort's as he stabbed at the B-wing's controls, powering up all s.h.i.+elds and blasting full power to the engine-and that string of expletives turned out to be his last words. Some invisible force reached through the fighter's s.h.i.+elds like they weren't even there, and wrenched his s.h.i.+p in half.

"We've lost the feed, sir." Second Lieutenant Horst Devalo, ComOps officer for the Lancer, frowned at his console. "Justice has gone dark."

Captain Tirossk leaned over Devalo's shoulder to peer curiously at the lieutenant's console. "Their problem or ours?" This was a legitimate question, as the Lancer a retrofitted freightliner over a century old, and was known affectionately by all who served on her as "Old Cuss'n'Whack," this being descriptive of the first two repair actions traditionally undertaken to address any of her endless minor malfunctions. "Raise the Paleo and the Unsung; see if they're having the same problem."

The Taspan system was so deep in the Inner Rim that s.p.a.ce itself was crowded; there was no safe direct route. The last few legs had to follow a jagged path of short jumps, only a few light-years each, before a s.h.i.+p would have to drop out of hypers.p.a.ce and change vector. The final chokepoint was here, in interstellar s.p.a.ce, less than two light-years out. The reserve force could jump into any of several sets of preprogrammed coordinates at various distances from Taspan and Mindor itself as fast as they could make the run up to lightspeed, the better to apply an extra punch where it would do the most good, whether to press an a.s.sault or cover a retreat. They had been monitoring the battle, the victory, and the subsequent abortive negotiation by subs.p.a.ce feed.

"It's our problem," Lieutenant Devalo said. "I can't get comm even with the others."

"This useless scow of an excuse for a frigate..." the captain began, but Devalo cut him off.

"It's not the s.h.i.+p, sir." The lieutenant's voice had gone tight. "Subs.p.a.ce interference-they're jamming us, sir!"

"Out here? Can you pinpoint the source?"

"Sensor accuracy degrading... fifty percent. Forty. Has to be local, sir: they're blanketing our whole sensor and comm spectrum."

"Battle stations. All engines full," Captain Tirossk ordered, his voice grinding like rusty gears. "Get on reals.p.a.ce to Paleo and Unsung and tell them to prepare for jump."

"Sir?"

"You heard me. We don't know what's happening and there's only one way to find out."

"Gravity wave!" the NavOps officer sang out. "Multiple point sources-in motion!"

Tirossk had been an officer too long to use an obscenity, but he thought several. "Vectors?"

NavOps read out a string of numbers; the gravitic energy was spread in a hemisphere eclipsing the outbound hypers.p.a.ce lanes-a hemisphere that continued to expand toward englobement. "Gravity mines," Tirossk rasped. "They're trying to pin us here."

"Imperial starfighters inbound!" the TacOps officer said crisply. "Fourth Squadron reports visual confirmation-TIE Defenders-engaging multiple bogies..."

"Reporting how?" Tirossk snapped.

"Reals.p.a.ce EM, sir."

Now Tirossk did swear. Very quietly-not even another Bothan could have heard him. Reals.p.a.ce communications crept along at lightspeed; that meant inbound bogies could be here as soon as, roughly-Now.

The forward viewports whited out, and the Lancer bucked like an angry dewback. The convulsion was violent enough to jar the bridge despite the frigate's anti-acceleration field. Tirossk clutched the back of his command chair and almost dislocated a shoulder keeping himself upright. The forward viewports cleared.

Local s.p.a.ce was lousy with TIEs-and b.l.o.o.d.y well full of intersecting lines of cannon fire and the hurtling stars of proton torpedoes.

"Damage reports!" he snarled. "And get us moving. Burn out the engines if you have to. We need hypers.p.a.ce now!"

"But-jump where, sir?"

"Those Defenders came from somewhere," Tirossk said. "They'll have left open a route back."

"Sir?"

"Mindor," Tirossk said grimly. "We're going in."

Half blind, eyes streaming from the thickening fog of acrid black smoke that filled the Justice's battle bridge, half retching, half deafened by the impact Klaxon and the screech of the overloading atmosphere processors, Luke reached into the Force. Ten meters away, a plexilite retaining box flipped back and the manual trigger for the battle bridge's fire suppression system flicked over to ACTIVATE.

Jets of icy gas surged up from deck grates and curled themselves around the consoles that still spat sparks and gushed smoke. Luke moved toward the comm console, stumbled on something yielding, and dropped to one knee.

He'd tripped over Kalback. Over his body. Half the Mon Cal admiral's face was crushed; it looked like he had taken a square console corner to the head at some point during the series of impacts that had knocked everyone on the battle bridge off their feet and shaken them around like dice in a cup. Luke lowered his head, laid one gentle hand on the intact side of Kalback's face, and commended his departed spirit to the Force.

In the instant he touched the Force, it gave him back the profound certainty that if he didn't get moving, he'd soon be similarly commending the spirits of everyone on the s.h.i.+p. Including himself. In the Force, the truth was solid as the deck on which he knelt. The Justice was doomed.

He made it to the comm console. Lieutenant Tubrimi was still at his post, but he was clutching a b.l.o.o.d.y shoulder and looked unsteady and shocky. "What-what was that?" was all he could say, again and again.

"Lieutenant, put out an all-hands. Marines to the landers. Everybody else to escape pods. We're abandoning s.h.i.+p."

"The-the admiral-he won't-we can't..."

"He's dead, Tubrimi. Pull it together."

"But-but we don't even have damage reports yet..."

"Damage reports?" The battle bridge shuddered, and more Klaxons went off. "Feel that?" Luke said. "That was another piece of this s.h.i.+p exploding. Get that all-hands out. Then get yourself to a pod, too. That's an order."

"Sir, I-copy that, sir." Tubrimi turned back to his console with a grimly desperate look. "Thank you, sir."

Luke had already moved on. Farther down the deck, R2-D2 was down, whirring and whistling, leaking smoke as he rolled from side to side. Luke reached out through the Force and set the little droid upright. "It's okay, Artoo, I'm fine," he said, crouching beside him. "Let's have a look."

R2-D2 whistled plaintively and rolled in a tight circle; one of his locomotor arms was bent and spitting sparks at the joint; the rollerped on that side wasn't functioning at all, just skidding as Artoo dragged it across the deck. "Okay, I see it. Doesn't look serious-you can probably fix it yourself, once we're clear. Come on."

The little astromech tweetered in a more decisive tone.

"Forget it," Luke said. "I'm not leaving you. We'll get out of this together."

"Um, sir?" Tubrimi said with a shaky laugh. "We might not get out of this at all."

Luke rose, and cleared smoke from the air around Tubrimi's console with a gesture. "Show me."

The blurred, hazy readout that ghosted into existence above the console had no good news for them: the Justice had already broken up. The three major pieces tumbled helplessly through Mindor's asteroid-filled orbit, each surrounded by swarms of dogfighting X-wings and TIEs. The two larger pieces streamed pinwheel fountains of thruster signatures as marine landers and escape pods streaked away in random directions through the fight. The smaller piece streamed only billows of flash-frozen atmosphere. "That small piece-that's us, sir. The bridge section has taken multiple torpedo hits to the pod bays. There, uh, aren't any pods. Not anymore. There aren't any pod bays. There aren't any..."

Luke stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder. "How many hands trapped with us?"

Tubrimi swallowed hard. "Can't say, sir. Could be several hundred. But they won't be with us for long." His webbed fingers fluttered helplessly at the display. "In no more than five minutes this battle bridge will be the only place with any life support at all. The breakup has wiped out atmosphere processors and antibreach systems throughout the s.h.i.+p-I mean, this part of the s.h.i.+p." He started shaking. "What used to be the s.h.i.+p."

"Hold it together, Lieutenant. I've gotten people out of tighter spots than this." Luke stepped up on the command dais and raised his voice. "All bridge personnel-every one of you get back to your stations. Secure the wounded and the dead, then strap yourselves in. Except for you," he said to the pilot. "Strap in somewhere else. I'm taking your station."

"You?" The pilot blinked in astonishment. "But sir-Mon Calamari control systems are not designed for human operation..."

"That's my problem." Luke slid into the pilot's couch. "Yours is finding a place to secure yourself. This ride's about to get b.u.mpy."

"Sir?"

"We have crew aboard who are running out of air. So we'll go get them some." Luke pointed to the wide brick-colored curve of Mindor. "There's a whole planetful, right next door."

"Sir!" Tubrimi gasped. "We don't have engines-we don't even have repulsorlifts. You're not actually suggesting we take this-this fragment of a s.h.i.+p into atmosphere with nothing but att.i.tude thrusters..."

"That's right. I'm not suggesting. I'm ordering. And I'm not just taking us into the atmosphere."

Luke stretched his hands out into the electrostatic control fields above the pilot console and let himself smile, just a bit; for the first time in weeks, he felt like a Jedi again. "I'm going to land this thing."

None of the New Republic forces saw the fragment of the Justice dip into the atmosphere; even the kilometers-long stream of flame and smoke trailing off its burning hull attracted no attention at all. The Republic forces were wholly engaged with the more immediate problem of staying alive; Gravity wells had erupted throughout the system, their ma.s.s-shadow thresholds spreading in a 3-D version of the ripples from a handful of pebbles tossed into a still pool. With their subs.p.a.ce comm and sensors jammed, the New Republic s.h.i.+ps couldn't even guess how many gravity mines or projectors might be hidden among the trillions of asteroids; the overlapping layers of the interdiction field not only wiped out any hope of hypers.p.a.ce travel, they also suddenly-and in many cases catastrophically-altered the already-unstable orbits of every object in the system smaller than a medium-sized moon, turning what had been a dangerously crowded system into a nightmare of intersecting storms of rock.

And the hail that streamed from these storms was squadron after squadron of TIE Interceptors.

The Interceptor was not so dominating a weapon as its successor, the Defender. With less armor, less weaponry, no s.h.i.+elds or hyperdrive, they were nonetheless incredibly swift and maneuverable, and could be exceedingly difficult opponents, especially when appearing en ma.s.se. Here at Mindor-as the desperately scrambling Republic X- and B-wing pilots discovered, to their dismay-en ma.s.se translated to (in the words of one flight leader) "thousands of the beggars, comin' from everywhere all at frappin' once!"

In the swirling chaos of randomly hurtling asteroids, the Interceptors' lack of s.h.i.+elds was actually an advantage, as deflectors don't affect material objects; the deflectorless Interceptors had proportionally more engine power for acceleration and to recharge the capacitors for their laser cannons, and there were so many of them that they could swarm the Republic fighters like Pervian blood crows mobbing a wonderhawk and still have plenty left over to strafe the capital s.h.i.+ps, which was why n.o.body was keeping an eye on the optical sensors or monitoring the Justice's EM channel, on which was playing a loop of Luke Skywalker's low, preternaturally calm voice broadcast by an emergency signal buoy orbiting the planet.

"This is New Republic cruiser Justice, Luke Skywalker commanding. Admiral Kalback is dead. The s.h.i.+p has broken up, and there are no escape pods remaining. I have taken the helm and will attempt to set down behind the dawn terminator above the north tropic. Begin the search for survivors at the coordinates on the encoded supplementary frequency. Good luck, and may the Force be with you. Skywalker out."

Only the Lancer, yanked unexpectedly from hypers.p.a.ce by the Imperial gravity mines half a light-hour out from Mindor, had the chance to catch the actual landing, such as it was.

Lieutenant Devalo, at ComOps, went ashen as he picked up the broadcast from the signal buoy; when he reported it to Captain Tirossk, the captain's response was to instantly aim the Lancer's most powerful optical scope at the day-night terminator of the distant planet. The aged s.h.i.+p's sensor suite had just barely managed to focus on an image of a long, long smoke trail, and was tracking it down through the atmosphere when it picked up the fringes of a brilliant white flash, followed by a vast expanding ball of smoke-laced flame.

"Oh," Tirossk said numbly. There was no thought of obscenity now; how he felt could not be expressed in words.

"Was that..." Devalo had to swallow before he could go on. "Was that the Justice?"

"I'm afraid it must have been." Tirossk sank into his command chair. "I'm afraid..."

"General Skywalker's s.h.i.+p?"

"No one could have survived that," Tirossk said. "We're half a light-hour out. What we just saw, it happened thirty minutes ago."

Devalo couldn't even ask the question, but he didn't have to.

"He died half an hour ago." Tirossk shook his head, blankly astonished at the bleak weight that settled onto him. "Luke Skywalker is dead."