I.
As Winter stared down the barrel of the guard's rifle, a boot kicked the side of his head, knocking him off his crouch. He fired on reflex, and the bolt passed her face with a deafening sizzle that scalded her ear and singed her hair. From her low vantage point—hanging onto the bottom of the hatchway for dear life—she could only see the back of the second man's legs as he repeatedly kicked the ship's last surviving guard into unconsciousness. She could also see that his wrists were shackled at the base of his back.
She shouted over the whipping wind and the drone of the engines. "Try for the ramp release!"
He turned around and flung his shoulder into the edge of the hatchway, striking the appropriate panel and sending the ramp easing back downward. Then he slid down the door jamb to his knees, and Winter scrambled up the ramp, throwing herself onto the interior deck and its relative safety. When she rolled over to look at her rescuer, her eyes widened in complete shock.
Tycho Celchu, still panting from exertion, met her gaze with equal surprise. Then he shook his head and snorted a quick, breathless laugh. "Figures," he said.
A few minutes later the transport was back on the ground, or more precisely, it was on one of the many flat-topped mountain islands that made up the Alderaanian refugee camp. The two Imperial pilots Winter and Tycho had captured were being held at blaster point under a tree at the edge of the landing zone.
Rieekan released Tycho from the bear hug he'd enveloped him in upon seeing him. He patted Tycho's cheek, still grinning ear to ear with tears shining in his eyes. "Thank the stars, boy." His barrel chest shook with a deep chuckle. "Thank our lucky stars."
Winter was still trying to process. "You know each other."
Tycho gave her the odd, patient smile of a man undeniably vindicated, but with the good graces not to rub her nose in it. "The Rieekan and Celchu families have always been close. The General honored me by sponsoring my commission at the Academy."
"Best damned pilot Alderaan ever produced," Rieekan said. His smile disappeared and he became intensely earnest. "We'll need you, son. Join the Alliance with us."
He shifted his gaze to Winter. "It's all I've been wanting to do."
She swallowed. "Mr. Celchu, I just want to say I—
Tycho held up a hand. "Hold that thought." He turned back to Rieekan. "General, this ship is a KDY-22 light carrier."
Rieekan frowned. "No hyperdrive. It must have been brought here by a mother ship."
"Exactly." Tycho gestured towards the Imperial prisoners. "We put a little pressure on the pilots and found out this planet borders on the Wilderness Nebula. Its interference acts as a natural jamming agent, keeping the camp secret, but also blocks local sensors and ship-to-ship communication."
Rieekan crossed his arms. "So the pilots couldn't have sent word of our little insurrection. But there's a cruiser waiting in orbit, and we've got to get our bird back there before she's missed."
Winter nodded. "Crew compliment was six men. General, we'll need to get you out, of course, and Mr. Celchu will pilot. That leaves us needing three more volunteers."
Rieekan sighed and fixed her with a solemn gaze. "Four, I'm afraid."
Winter shook her head impatiently. "General, I know you must feel a sense of responsibility for the people here, but the intelligence you bring over will—
"I'll be on that ship, Winter," Rieekan said. "But you won't be."
Winter's stared back at him, speechless. Her thoughts went to an image of Tycho, lying stunned on the floor of their hotel room on Commenor, the smoking blaster held firm in her hand. Does Rieekan know that I left Tycho defenseless? At the time, she hadn't known that the Empire was rounding up all Alderaanians. But it didn't change the fact that her actions had almost certainly caused his arrest.
"General," Tycho started, "we can't just leave her to—
"Six men," Rieekan cut in. "With radio silence in effect, you know they'll scan us the moment we touch down inside their hangar."
Comprehension came to Tycho's eyes. "And when they pick up a female life sign, they'll know the ship's been compromised."
"Sithspawn," Winter breathed. There were no women in the Imperial Navy. After all these years, my life is finally impacted by good old fashioned Imperial sexism. At least my exclusion isn't a personal retaliation. I just don't have the right parts for the part.
Rieekan took hold of Winter's shoulders. "You were right when you said I feel responsible for our people. That's why I'm entrusting you with command once we're gone. You'll need to get these people organized—so that they can be evacuated on a moment's notice."
Winter was desperate to argue—to find a way to be on that ship and get back to the rebellion—but she knew circumstances made it impossible. "I understand," she said. "And I'll give you the protocols and clearance codes you'll need to contact the Alliance."
"That's risky," Tycho said. "Are you sure we can take the chance?"
Winter gave him a small smile. "I think our people's freedom demands that we do." She reached out and squeezed his hand. "I'm done leaving good people behind."
II.
When Luke and his squadron had been briefed about severe tundra conditions on Praaja II last month—only to find the planet just mildly cold—it had caused Luke to wonder if the similar description of Alzoc III would likewise prove to be an exaggeration. But as his X-Wing was buffeted about by sub-arctic gales, and ice crept in from the corners of his canopy, he realized that, if anything, marketing Alzoc as a frozen hell would be underselling it. The dense cloud cover they flew beneath dumped kilotons of snow, blocking out the sun and casting the skies in a dark purple shot through with grey.
Luke took a deep breath. This was the first mission being flown under Operation Liberate. He would not have been surprised if it had been given to a more seasoned squadron—or to just any other squadron for that matter—considering the very mixed results of their last two missions at Praaja and Lakaron. But Mon Mothma and General Econa had been in his corner, and pushed hard for Red Squadron to spearhead the campaign. So here they were.
There's a lot of eyes on this one. That's what General Econa had said to him when she wished him luck the day before they headed out. Alone in his cockpit, Luke shook his head. As if I could ever forget.
On the plus side, however, was the simple fact that this was the first stab at the Imperial enslavement program, and therefore the enemy had no reason to be on heightened alert. Intel had also shown that the so-called 'labor academies' had only low-to-moderate sized defensive capabilities, and most of those were aimed inward—designed to quell prisoner insurrections as opposed to holding off external attacks.
Luke put out the order for roll call. "All wings report in." The eight veteran members of his squadron—including Trask, who had been unusually quiet of late—checked in, along with the four replacement pilots he'd been assigned to cover their recent losses at Lakaron.
Luke dropped his fighter down to glide along the snow-packed surface of the planet. The rest of the squadron held formation right behind him. "Okay, boys," he said. "We're ten klicks out from target. Lock s-foils in attack position." He reached up and flipped the lever, parting his wings into their signature X.
Directly ahead, a massive granite bluff half hidden by snow drifts rose two-hundred meters out of the ground. The Alzoc labor center stood at the summit—a high-walled fortress with a turbolaser tower at each of the four corner positions. Centered within the walls were slave barracks for the Talz—the native aliens they were holding—as well as the command bunker for the Imperial contingent guarding them.
"Lead—Three," Wedge said over the comm. "I'm picking up additional contacts around the perimeter of the base."
Luke eased back on his flight stick, bringing his nose up to rise above the icy cliff face and past the fortress. Then a heavy pair of ruby cannon bolts lanced up at him, rending the frozen air and roaring past him on either side. He bit back a startled curse and rolled to evade the line of fire. He then got a visual on Wedge's sensor contact.
"Walkers!" Hobbie called. "We have a pair of AT-AT walkers—one east and one west of the base."
Luke brought his X-Wing around in a tight arc that looped around the back wall of the fortress, taking care to remain below the firing radius of the turbolaser towers churning out dense layers of fire. When he swung out on the other side, he saw the rear of the second lumbering walker. Its aft cannon spat a trio of bolts at him and Dack as they rolled left and streaked past it, disappearing into the swirling blizzard beyond.
"Three flight," Luke ordered, "take out the base's gun turrets. Two flight takes the east walker. One flight, on me—we're hitting the west."
"Lead—Eleven," Wes Janson said. "I just hit ours with a full quad shot to the face. No effect."
Luke came out of a long turn and popped out of the fog bank from the side, framing the profile of the west walker in his heads-up-display. The HUD immediately went red and he squeezed down hard on his trigger, peppering its massive flank with scarlet energy bolts as he closed to point blank range. When he finally yanked back on the flight stick and whipped over its back, the only evidence of his blistering attack was the faintest carbon scoring on its armor.
A sharp burst of static cut through Luke's earpiece and clenched his heart. He knew what it meant. "Red Eight is hit!" Zev Senesca cried. Luke turned to his right and saw the black plume of smoke streak down and plow into the snow. Orange fire bloomed and the blackened husk of the fuselage cut a swath through the bleak white landscape.
"Lead—Twelve," Trask said. "Permission to fire torpedoes at the walkers."
The torpedoes were supposed to be held back and then used to breach the fortress outer walls. But I doubt we'll need a full compliment from every fighter, Luke thought. And it won't matter if we all get killed before we have a chance to even try it. But Trask was in Three flight and they were charged with taking out the laser turrets.
"Good call, Trask," Luke replied, "but I need you hitting those towers."
"Aye, sir," he said.
"One and Two flights," Luke called, "fire one torpedo each at the walker—then check in."
Luke heard a round of acknowledgements as he hauled his stick into his chest and put his fighter into a full vertical climb. Dack stayed right with him. "Okay, Ten," he told Dack, "on my signal we come around and dive straight down at him. Put your torp right into his spine."
"Copy, boss," Dack said.
Luke felt his stomach flip as he dove back towards the surface. A second later, they broke through the cloud cover, and the slate grey back of the walker rushed in at them.
"Now!" Luke triggered his shot and Dack's glowing blue torpedo joined his a heartbeat after. "Evasive," he cried, pulling out of the dive and swooping away from the blast radius.
The torpedoes exploded against its back. The mechanical beast's knees buckled under the monumental impact of the blasts, driving it several meters downward as its massive feet were compressed down into the snow.
But it did not fall. It swung its heavy head to the left and sent a flurry of shots after Luke's and Dack's tails as they sped away.
Wedge's voice came over the comm. "Lead, we're negative on torpedo effect. We hit it with a broadside of four warheads and it barely tipped off balance."
Another voice—one of the replacements Luke didn't recognize. "I'm hit! Ejection system not func—
Another burst of static, and then the empty silence.
"What are your orders, Lead?" Wedge asked.
Torpedoes can't penetrate their armor, Luke thought. But maybe they don't have to.
"Three flight—have you neutralized the turrets?"
"Affirmative," Hobbie answered. "We're still taking fire from some stormies using tripod E-Webs, but our shields can handle that."
"Good work," Luke said. "Bring your guys around to the north side and stay there until you punch a hole in their wall."
"Lead," Hobbie said, "those walkers will step out around the corner and wipe us out in five seconds. We can make multiple runs at it and keep moving until—
"Negative, Four. We'll give you cover, but you are ordered to hold that position." He had a plan, but he didn't want to let on in case the Imps could tap into their comm signal. "Get moving."
Luke could almost hear Hobbie swallow through the comm. "Aye, sir. Three flight, on me."
Luke banked through the snow saturated fog and came around to hang a full kilometer out from the fortress, the front of which stood near the edge of the white-capped cliff face. He pointed his fighter's nose straight at the northern wall, having to make constant corrections to compensate for the buffeting wind. "Flights one and two—come about to my position and slave your targeting computer to mine. Set torpedoes to dual fire mode." He received acknowledgments and the rest of the squadron swooped in from various trajectories to come alongside him.
Luke watched as Hobbie's quartet of fighters regrouped to hover a few hundred meters out from the wall and opened fire. Their torpedoes exploded brilliantly against the armored wall, lighting up the snow-choked sky between them and Luke.
"First volley cracked the armor," Hobbie reported. "We can see fissures in the durasteel, but no breaches large enough for—
"Here they come!" Trask called. "Walker coming around the northeast corner—Lead, get the hell in here!"
"On our way," Luke said. "Red squadron, on me—prepare to fire on my mark." Luke stomped on his thrusters and sliced through the blizzard toward the fortress. The structure raced into focus, just as the lumbering walker's head craned around the corner, its heavy front feet treading the edge of the cliff face.
Luke dropped his HUD's crosshairs to the cliff's edge—right below the walker's feet. "Fire!"
His pair of torpedoes streaked across the gap in fraction of a second and disappeared into the snow bank, only to detonate a heartbeat later. Huge gouts of ice and granite erupted into the air, coating the walker's legs and underside as it stumbled forward, its footing lost. Another heartbeat after that, a dozen more projectiles—six more X-Wings's worth of torpedoes—nailed the same spot, exploding enough rock and snow to throw the walker several meters up into the air.
And when it came back down, the ground beneath it was entirely gone. The walker dropped off the cliff like a stone, riding an avalanche of grey and white. It fell for nearly four seconds before hitting the ground on its side with a wet, seismic thump that rattled Luke's canopy. The impact was so terrific that two-thirds of it was instantly buried within the snow.
"Yahoo!" Dack howled. Jubilant cries filled Luke's ears, but there was no time.
"Cut the chatter," he shouted over them. "All fighters on me. We need to drive that second walker over the edge before he backs away from the cliff."
Luke led the line of X-Wings, ten strong, in a graceful, soaring train past the east wall and around the south. When they rounded the corner to come up along the west wall, the AT-AT commander had his walker reversing from the cliff's edge as fast as its enormous legs could manage. It's armored ass bounced up and down prodigiously as it attempted a panicked, backwards jog.
"Save a torp for the wall, guys," Wedge reminded everyone.
"Roger that," Luke agreed. "Hit 'em!"
Luke launched a pair straight into its backside, halting its backward momentum. As he pulled up to pass over its back, Dack's pair struck in nearly the same place, causing it to stumble forward.
"Okay everyone," Wedge called from the rear of the formation, "keep the heat on."
Luke looked at his rear display and began to wonder if they could pull it off. "Dack," he said, "let's you and me hedge our bets. Target the ground beneath its front feet."
Dack laughed. "Love the way you think, skipper."
They came about, dodging the walker's front-facing shots by weaving about wildly as they angled in from above. The torps from their squadron-mates continued to explode against the walker's rear, driving it towards the precipice a few meters at a time. Luke and Dack aimed their crosshairs right between its front feet and let fly.
The two torps struck the snow with a puff and then exploded violently beneath the surface, shattering the white blanket and the stone beneath it.
Wedge and Janson brought up the rear of the main assault and each slammed a pair home, driving the walker's rear end upward and its front feet downward into the disintegrating cliff edge. The walker tipped forward into the rockslide, careening into a full summersault as it tumbled downward along the snowy slopes. It's back bounced off the steep gradient and when its face came back around and struck the ground at the bottom, the entire vehicle exploded, sending its legs flipping away in flames.
When the cheers came over the comm this time, Luke smiled along and did nothing to silence them.
III.
Within the Detritus base central command hub, Leia sat in a conference room with the rest of the Alliance high command. On a large wall-mounted view screen, they watched as an X-Wing launched the final torpedo into the outer wall of the Alzoc labor fortress. When the explosion dissipated, a wide, jagged breach became visible. Within seconds, scores of the giant, fur-covered Talz began spilling out, running as fast as they could into the protective obscurity of the blizzard conditions of their home world.
As Leia looked around the table at her compatriots, and beyond them to the pristine, gleaming walls that could be found in every room of their new base, she couldn't help but be amazed. While past Alliance bases—such as the Massassi temples on Yavin IV—had always been established in existing structures, the rebels had been hampered by the fact that there were absolutely no structures on this barren world.
And so her cousin Varica, former baroness of the Royal House of Alderaan, had suggested that they simply buy a base. And here they now sat, in their brand new SoroSuub G-class planetary installation—available for sale on the open market to governments and corporations, or to anyone else who could cover its enormous price tag.
The G-class base looked like a wheel, with the command center and hangar complex located at the center hub. Spoke-like habitat wings shot out from the center at regular intervals, and an outer ring wrapped around and enclosed the overall structure. The base had been installed on the planet by way of the rebels flying each major component down separately, after penetrating the orbiting debris field with their 'plow' ship—also purchased new. The components were then assembled by rebel engineers on the surface. The feat had required logistics and resources that Leia would never have believed could be attained by the rag-tag group of freedom fighters. And Varica had personally organized and overseen quite a bit of it.
Leia studied the newly-minted General Varica Econa, who was intently watching the flight recorder logs from Luke's X-Wing. Her chair was turned half away from Leia, who looked at the sculpted curve of Varica's jaw line, and the satisfied smile she wore at seeing the mission's success. As much as I don't care for her personally, her presence here has elevated our capabilities to a whole new level. It galled her that the money Varica had brought over with her was really Alderaan's money, but the simple truth was that no one else had been in a position to secure those funds within the narrow window of time between Alderaan's destruction and the Empire's subsequent freezing of all Alderaanian assets. Without her particular mindset and skill set, those funds would have vanished, and the rebels would have been limited to low-level harassment of Imperial targets—especially after the high cost of their victory against the Death Star. We'd probably be operating out of a cave somewhere.
The recording ended and all chairs turned back towards the center of the long, oval-shaped table, of which Mon Mothma sat at the head, with General Dodonna opposite her at the foot.
"Leia," Mon Mothma said, "this is a fantastic start to the campaign. Please pass along our congratulations to Captain Skywalker."
"Thank you, I will."
Mon Mothma turned to Varica. "Let's choose some highlights from this footage and make sure they find their way to our usual holonet outlets."
Varica nodded. "Alderaan Spirit already has it. In fact, I'd also like to—
She stopped talking as the conference room door abruptly slid open, and a young technician stepped inside. "Excuse me, Chief," he said, holding up a datacard. "We located the Zom file."
Mon Mothma gestured to the view screen. "Please load it into the viewer, Sergeant." He did so and then promptly excused himself from the room.
The dark haired man whose face had been shown on the Imperial News Net now appeared on one side of the screen, with his vital stats listed on the other.
"Corporal Quinnak Zom," Dodonna read off the monitor. "Assigned to Toprawa. That doesn't bode well." The rebels had maintained a safe house on Toprawa that served as a communications relay for Alliance cells scattered throughout the galaxy. Their most significant—and final—contribution to the rebellion was to transmit the Death Star plans to Leia's ship, Tantive IV. Leia's ship had jumped out of the system with Vader's star destroyer hot on their trail, but the Empire had wasted no time punishing the Toprawan population for their supposed collaboration. Between orbital bombardment and ground assaults, their cities were destroyed and the civilian population decimated.
Leia frowned as she scanned through the personnel profile, down to the all-important status section. She read aloud. "Killed in Action. The cell commander logged it—probably not long before she herself was killed."
"No one made it off Toprawa?" Varica asked.
Dodonna shook his head.
Mom Mothma said, "And yet the Empire claims Zom found his way to Commenor, where he opened fire into a crowd of Alderaanian refugees."
Leia gave a bitter smile. "Before some valiant stormtroopers came to their defense and killed him."
Varica tapped her datapad stylus against her lower lip. "So we assume they took Zom's body off Toprawa and are now holding it as proof that he took part in the Commenor massacre. We also know it's utter bantha crap." She looked around the table. "They want to make it seem like we're the ones attacking Alderaanian refugees."
Dodonna frowned. "That would seem to be a weak position to take."
"It's as ludicrous as it is disgusting," Leia shot back. "With one hand they destroy Alderaan for its ties to the rebellion, and with the other they claim the rebels are killing the few Alderaanians who survived. No one with a firing synapse will buy it."
Mon Mothma formed her next question as gently as she could. "Is there anything we're not already doing to find out where the Empire has brought them?"
Leia shook her head tiredly. "I don't see what else we can try—they can stash away the refugees anywhere in the galaxy. Our sources on the other side say the internment plans are locked down tight—that the whole thing is being run by Imperial intelligence."
"We'll have to hope Director Isard slips up sooner rather than later," Dodonna said. "Giving us something to go on."
"Assuming there's anything to find," Leia said. "Assuming they're not just…" She swallowed, looking ill. "…just blowing ship loads of our people out of airlocks, or—
"No," Mon Mothma said, reaching out to take Leia's hand. "No. They're out there. We just need to find them."
Leia cleared her throat and swiped away the one tear that had escaped her attempts at control.
"They're working an angle," Varica said. "There's another piece to this strategy still coming." She fixed her eyes to the table as she wracked her brain for the answer. "I just wish I could figure it out before they drop it on us."
IV.
It had been days. Maybe even weeks—they never changed the damned lighting in sickbay, so it was impossible to know. He had just floated in the bacta tank, as time marched by in seconds and minutes and hours, crowding together into a continuum marked only by the endless and gentle thrum of the liquid caressing his ear drums, and the infinite monologue of his own thoughts.
A dull electronic tone cut through the gel. He opened his eyes and could make out the distorted shape of a medical tech standing before him on the other side of the glass. The tech pumped his fist up and down, his thumb extended upward. He looked up through the bacta just as a deep clank resonated through the tank. The top lid above opened, illuminating his liquid environs with the brilliant light just beyond. He pushed off the bottom of the tank and thrust himself upward, breaking the surface with a splash. He felt the slap of cold air on his face and shoulders and relished it as freedom.
He had emerged on the second floor of the sickbay, the bacta tank itself being on the first floor below. Two techs took him under his muscular arms and hoisted him out of the tank, rolling him onto a smooth plastic stretcher that lay on the floor beside the open lid. One of them plucked the respirator from his mouth, immediately replacing it with a rubberized straw attached to a canteen. "Drink, Captain—but not too much."
After his fifth swallow he broke off and gasped for air. There was an overhead light that was making him squint, but a man in the stark white tunic of a doctor stepped into view, his head mercifully eclipsing the glare. His face was silhouetted, but his words sounded as though they came through an amused smile.
"Welcome back, Captain Fel."
One day later, lying on his bed in sickbay, Fel let the data pad he was reading drop to his chest in disgust. His executive officer had smuggled him copies of the last few issues of the Alderaan Spirit News Service, allowing him to read accounts of rebel activities that took place during the time he had spent recuperating. The fact that he got better detailed and more reliable news from enemy propaganda than from the Empire's own sanctioned news bulletins was an irony that had not escaped him.
And the news was not good. Not only had the rebels escaped from the Battle of Lakaron—the battle in which he had lost seven of his twelve pilots, and from which he himself was forced into a bacta tank for nineteen days—but they had broadened their offenses with a successful raid against the Alzoc III Labor Academy last week, and three more on other installations since then. In truth, he had difficulty taking offense to these latest attacks. He had always felt the business of slavery to be detestable, and hoped that he could one day achieve a high enough position in the Empire to affect changes to those practices.
But what really incensed him was that it was that same squadron coming at them again and again. The mysterious farm boy-turned-pilot who had destroyed the Death Star had formed a group of rebel pilots that was proving unbeatable. And as long as he is unbeatable, the 181st remains beaten.
The rise of the rebel snub fighters had been his own downfall. His flight cadets—Biggs Darklighter and Hobbie Klivian—had defected to the rebellion, bringing their experience and tactics with them to spread amongst the others. These were men he had personally trained and had vouched for as loyal. Their betrayal had made him an instant pariah.
Lord Vader's decision to involve him in the hunt for this farm boy pilot—supposedly a Jedi—had certainly been a boon to Fel's languishing career, but it did little to change how other officers regarded him. In order to regain the prestige he had lost, he had deliver a crushing blow to the rebellion.
There's no better way to do that than to go head to head with the farm boy's squadron. He deleted the contraband articles from the pad and tossed it to the foot of the bed.
And then kill them all.
V.
Vader's forceful tone left no room for argument. "I will lead."
Standing next to Vader on the industrial rooftop, Ysanne pursed her lips and looked down, studying the intricacies of her boots. She tried to find the right way to express her concerns. "We do require survivors, My Lord."
Vader breathed ghastly iron breaths as his mask bored into her. "You will have them."
She glanced around at the team Vader had provided—a platoon from his prized 501st regiment, all wearing black-matte stormtrooper armor that was suitable for night ops. The warehouse complex they were in had few businesses running night shifts, so the exterior lighting was minimal in accordance with Chandrila's environmentally conscious anti-light pollution laws. Every few moments, a stormtrooper's eye guard would reflect a sliver of light from some distant light post. Other than that, they had all been virtually absorbed by the darkness, and the occasional metallic click of shifting armor or a weapons check was the only thing to speak for their presence.
Vader's own armor proved quite reflective, its sheen catching the light almost constantly. After the fiery attack by the late Agent Moss, she suspected the Dark Lord had been forced to replace the better part of his attire.
As for her wounds—both emotional and physical—they were improving slightly each day. Her hand went to her temple, where a slash from Moss' knife had caught her in the darkness of her apartment. She had finally been able to remove the bacta patch yesterday, and found that the deep black hair that had once grown there was now coming back in a tuft of white. The aesthetic ramifications of this were the least of her concerns.
The foremost, of course, was that her own father, Armand Isard, had tried to have her killed. She had endured him all these years—his haughty arrogance, his runaway narcissism, the overcompensation for his insecurities—most recently at her own expense as he forced her to lead pointless and embarrassing investigations against student activists and disturbed leftists, who had neither an audience nor access to mental health services. All because she had dared to challenge him by insisting that he allow her to do her duty.
But most importantly, she had maintained loyalty to him despite all these failings, out of a sense of paternal attachment that was the only emotional baggage she had allowed herself in her chosen life as an intelligence agent.
As of this moment, she decided, that baggage has been jettisoned. She would act for benefit of the state first, and for her own benefit as an extremely close second. There was no other concern or obligation that would register in her thinking.
She bowed at the neck to Vader. "Good hunting, My Lord."
Vader's ruby lightsaber blade cut through the night air with a deep hum. He bent at the knees and swept the blade down into the rooftop. In a fluid move, he spun in place on the soles of his boots until he had completed a circle. He then dropped from sight, like a silent stone, along with the disc he had cut free. The lead stormtrooper dropped a cable through the portal and repelled downward after him, with the rest of the platoon queuing up behind him to do the same.
Ysanne watched as the troopers dropped into the warehouse with quiet and deadly efficiency. Not only will I stop passing up opportunities to best you, Father, she thought, but now I will actively pursue them.
VI.
Using the force, Vader stopped the falling disc before it struck the floor below, easing it down slowly and silently. As he had sensed, the anteroom they were entering was deserted. A quick glance around at the unlit space and the small blinking indicators on the walls suggested they had entered the east utility room, as planned.
There was a soft zipping sound behind him as the first of his troopers descended into the room. He waited until a full squad had touched down before wagging a gauntleted finger at the room's sealed door, which slid aside. No other order was necessary—it had all been mapped out in advance.
Vader stepped out onto a high catwalk that ran all along the four walls of the large, open warehouse space below. Behind him, his black-clad troopers fanned out to the left and right, jogging stealthily in both directions to create a bird's-eye perimeter around the facility.
Two stories below them, men and women—some human, some not—milled about with purpose and enthusiasm. They handed pads to one another, and crowded around small vid displays at someone's desk. They sat and stood in conversational knots, and argued passionately—not out of anger, but in the way parents or teachers might argue over the best way to rear a child. Their passion was born from differing opinions on a common goal.
In the center of the warehouse, a holo-emitter cast up an enormous glowing orb that filled the empty space above the sea of desks and conference tables. It was a three-dimensional map of the galaxy, but superimposed over the relevant systems were live holonet feeds of current events. The entire display turned slowly on its axis, as though it were a rotating moon. The warehouse itself was dimly lit, and most of the ambient light came from the projection.
Vader looked around the catwalk perimeter, and saw that all of his men were in position. He lifted his arm straight up in the air, his unlit lightsaber clenched in his hand. With a deep tearing sound, his blade burst into existence.
All heads below turned upwards. Eyes quickly widened.
Vader's voice resonated through the warehouse. "No fatalities."
The stormtroopers lobbed hand-sized canisters off the catwalk. Screams blossomed up from the people below, but Vader could still hear the chimes of twenty metal-sleeved Vertigon-9 stun grenades striking the hard floor below. When the grenades bounced and hit the surface for a second time, yellow fog propelled out of both ends of the cylinder, causing it to spin in place on the floor.
As the people below were consumed in the fog, they stumbled and fell. Some who had worked up to a run before the gas caught up with them reeled in a dizzied tilt before their bodies collapsed and skidded along the floor, where all flailed about uselessly.
Vertigon-9 was not a common stun agent, because it left the victim fully conscious. Most often, one would choose to use traditional stun grenades that fully incapacitated the victim, who could then be secured and questioned in an optimized setting for interrogation.
Vader, however, was not noted for his patience. He wanted to start asking questions immediately. The Vertigon gas gave the victim a sensation of dizziness so acute that they could not even sit upright. Through the heavy yellow fog that had settled against the floor below, he could see the writers and editors and staffers of the Alderaan Spirit News Service writhing about on the floor—legs pumping, arms flailing—but no forward motion being achieved.
"Move in," Vader called. His men hooked up cables to the catwalk guardrail and repelled to the warehouse floor. Vader himself planted a black boot on the rail and then vaulted over it. His cape spread out behind him and flapped against the air has he dropped towards the ground like a bird of prey. He landed solidly and was instantly on the move, striding through the bright fog to where an older human male lay across the largest single desk in the room. His knees jerked about in disorientation as he absently kicked various items off his desk to clatter against the floor. He was certainly in no position to resist the iron hand that grabbed him around his throat.
Vader wrested him from the desk and thrust him up into the air, gripping him around the neck and carrying him that way. He surged across the room until he slammed the man's back into the warehouse wall. His eyes bulged with terror, but with the gas, he could not focus on Vader's mask.
"What is the rebellion's holonet carrier frequency?" Vader demanded. "Where is their base of operations?"
The man, who was editor-in-chief of the news service, gurgled uselessly. Vader relaxed his grip enough to allow air flow. "Where are the rebels?"
"They don't give us anything like that," he rasped. "They use an encrypted net mask to—
"You know something," Vader cut him off. "You know what their next target is."
"No," he said, his hands now clutching Vader's wrist feebly. "They send details after the operation is complete and—
Vader brought his arm back and then slammed the editor into the wall again, his head striking it with jarring force. "Give me something I can use or I will peel you layer by layer." He then noticed for the first time that the man's head was smacking into a brightly colored poster. It was an orange-clad pilot climbing into a rebel X-Wing. In bold, block lettering, a title blazed across the top of the image:
CAPTAIN SKYWALKER: THE HERO OF YAVIN.
Skywalker?
At Yavin?
The Jedi at Yavin?
His entire body began to shake.
How?
Behind him, the enormous holographic globe that filled the center cavity of the warehouse flickered sporadically. The industrial lamps that hung from the ceiling three stories above swayed with soft creaks. One of the bulbs popped in a burst of sparks.
Vader stared at the poster, the editor held in his grasp utterly forgotten. His fist shook with exertion, and the editor hung completely limp, his spine and windpipe long since crushed. Blood poured from his mouth, ears and nostrils.
Vader remained lost in the poster, his mind reeling amidst what were once impossibilities. He asked himself the question over and over.
How?
To be continued…