Galaxies Apart
Thirty Six
Days aboard the Alderaan were set to Galactic standard. At a preordained time, a soft series of alarms would sound, and across the huge vessel the 'day shift' slowly left their posts to be replaced by their 'night shift' counterparts.
Night on starships made Wedge Antilles uneasy. Any sort of notion of day or night in deep space was, after all, an artificial concept. Seventy percent of the active crew changed places for thirty percent, and with the Death Star running on what amounted to a skeleton crew as it was…
He knew that since the Alderaan was still locked in hyperspace. The safety provided by the faster-than-light tunnel they were currently traversing was impenetrable, and would remain so until they dropped to sublight at the edge of the Coruscant system. At that time, they'd have plenty of real, tangible threats to worry about.
Wedge knew all of this. He also knew the real reason why he couldn't relax, even if he hadn't admitted it to himself yet.
And so he'd taken to spending an hour or two of his precious off-duty time every night here. The only section of the ship which did not, could not, slow down. Ever.
The Death Star's reactor core.
Superlaser technology had been theoretically discussed for a long time previous to the establishment of the Empire. Under the Old Republic, however, such technological advances – particularly those with such grave military applications – had been carefully regulated by the myriad committees and sub-committees which perforated the Republic's legendary bureaucracy.
Once installed as Emperor, Palpatine showed no patience for such caution. Military technology had advanced at a frightening pace; more innovations had been unveiled in the last twenty years than in the last three hundred. He was standing in the nerve centre of the greatest example of them all.
Given its speed of development, though, the Death Star's reactor was not the most stable of constructs…which led to a rather stressful existence for the technicians charged with keeping it together.
The crewmembers in question pinged around the place like trapped molecules, bouncing from minor power fluctuation to possible containment loss with frightening regularity.
Perhaps it was just that knife-edge verve he found so thoroughly exhilarating about this place. Not to mention the view…
The cavernous interior of the Reactor Core was on a scale the human mind almost couldn't comprehend. Star Destroyers could have circled the central installation without difficulty. The entire Core was perfectly symmetrical; huge banks of capacitors grew into a central trunk which rose up from the floor below, just as directly above they descended from the ceiling above.
Main Stage superlaser beams arced around their captive circuits, grounding themselves here and there into massive capacitor arrays with a shriek of power.
At the exact centre of the Core, where the central capacitor rose from the floor and descended from the ceiling, there was a gap between the two of around a mile. This gap was the central power conduit, constantly in a state of flux, a huge stable beam of energy that bathed the Core in its glow.
Exotic matter reactions within this beam were what provided the Alderaan with its power requirements. Wedge didn't pretend to understand the exact science of it all, but you didn't need to do that to appreciate the splendour of the sight.
And yet…at the back of his mind, his fighter pilot instincts were mulling over the possibilities…bring a few X-Wings in through the access port – a few proton torpedos to the primary power regulators…another few to the central conduit and the entire top half of this Core would implode into the bottom half.
He grunted. Of course, you'd have to race the chain reaction out to the surface and there's no way out…unless you had a time machine and went back to when this thing was being constructed-
That had been the Alliance's original plan. To strike at the Death Star whilst still under construction, to try to take out the Reactor Core. It had potential – he had examined the schematics personally – but the one slight concern that had been pointed out was that, if successful, the entire planet of Sluis Van, population three million Imperials, two billion Sluissi, would have been completely destroyed…
"Wedge?"
He turned, surprised. "Winter? What are you doing down here?"
"I called to your quarters but you'd gone. So I asked further on down the corridor. Your squadron were veryhelpful."
"I'll bet they were," he muttered darkly.
Winter crossed the final few steps to join him at the edge. Placing her hands on the guardrail, she leant over. The floor of the reactor core, so far beneath them it hurt to even think of it, was alive with various currents and streams, each one a single turbolaser.
Wedge knew that these tiny tributaries were reflected along careful paths, gathered and coalesced in the twenty-one pooling chambers to the north until these new beams were redirected to the Main Stage chambers in the south.
When he had seen this astonishing sight for the first time, a grudging admiration had crept over him for the sort of genius who could visualise this sort of high science. He wondered who had designed the Death Stars. Did they know what they had caused? Did they have a choice?
"It's beautiful," Winter said, gazing downward intently.
He glanced over at her. "Yeah," he agreed, not restricting his comment to the laser nursery.
Seeming to catch the mood change, she straightened. "Wedge…" she began, "…the past few years haven't exactly been easy for any of us. You were almost killed on Fest. You spent a month inside a bacta tank."
Fest's wounds were still raw. They'd gone in to rescue an Alliance commando team who'd procured three All-Terrain Personnel Transports, the smaller, faster versions of the more familiar AT-STs. Gone in with Speeders, because of the risk that the Imperials would pull out their huge AT-AT walkers.
The mission had been a disaster. Wedge's Speeder had gone down under intense fire. He lost four pilots that day, and was lucky to escape with his own life – the drop ship had circled back and picked up his signal from the wilderness.
For almost a day he had lain there, buried in freezing snow for warmth, too injured to stop the blood slowly seeping from his wounds.
"And," Winter continued, "there was Sluis Van…"
She could see the expression flicker across his face, and she knew she'd been right all along. "Perils of war," Wedge replied stiffly, returning his full attention to staring into nothing.
"They shouldn't have asked you to do what you did."
His mind flashed back to the shipyards. To sending that remote-piloted X-Wing off, its torpedo bays stuffed with highly explosive corrosite ore, on a collision course with a Star Destroyer he knew wouldn't be able to raise shields in time.
"We had to create enough panic to get Crix's commandos aboard the Death Star. If we hadn't scored one big hit, if we'd just seemed like a bunch of X-Wings taking a potshot, we never would have gained control of the Alderaan like we did."
She nodded as he talked. Didn't agree or disagree, frown or smile, just nodded, her eyes full of compassion.
And then, she waited.
They stared out together for some time. Wedge felt the words, the feelings, work themselves up from somewhere deep within him. He gripped the guardrail tightly until he couldn't contain them any longer.
"It wasn't right," he whispered. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he felt Winter's hand on his shoulder.
"I know," she whispered back.
"I've destroyed ships before…I've pounded TIEs until they explode and sometimes you can see the pilot's body in the fireball. But this…" he sighed and exhaled, steadying his emotions, "…this was like something…you know, we're meant to be fighting the Empire because of the things they do. Alderaan. Order 66. And I always believed that we were right. But if we're…" he trailed off, unable to continue.
"If we're no better, what right do we have?" Winter supplied.
"Not we, Winter. Me. Yeah, I was given those orders to destroy that ship, but we've all wondered how Imperials have carried out orders that make us sick to the stomach. We've all asked how the hell Tarkin's technicians go through with charging the superlaser on their Death Star, when they know they're about to cause the deaths of billions of innocent people? And now I find out that hey, what d'you know…" he stared into her eyes for the first time since the topic had changed, "…I can do it, too."
"Wedge…what's going to happen when we get to Coruscant?"
"I don't know. We've got allies who make the Empire seem warm and cuddly, a weapon capable of destroying the most populated planet in the galaxy, and the worst of it is, Winter…I'm not sure if we're bluffing any more."
A minor containment leak must have occurred below, for at that moment there was a slight buzz of current and, in perfect synchronicity, Wedge and Winter both let go of the guardrail, exclaiming in shock and pain as an electric charge grounded itself through them.
Sparks earthed themselves around them. Wordlessly, Wedge took Winter's hands in his, absorbing some of the current. He couldn't distinguish between the active current and the natural shiver of excitement which passed through him at her touch.
"Thank you," she said, more taken by surprise than in actual pain – the charge hadn't been that strong.
He made no move to pull his hands away from holding hers. Her eyes fell downward to take in the gesture. They had been through a lot in the last few years. He had gone from admiring her tenacity and her courage to simply adoring her some time ago, but as ever with Wedge, he didn't have the first clue how she felt about him.
"The Empire destroyed my homeworld, Wedge," she told him. "Everyone I cared about…my friends, my family…they died at a whim. They died to send a message."
His heart sank. Winter had suffered more than most because of the abuse of power, and he had just confessed to doubting his own ethics. No doubt in her eyes he was as bad as those who had ordered the obliteration of Alderaan; weak-willed, unable to see beyond orders into doing what was right.
He tried to pull his hands away. She stopped him. He looked at her in surprise, and his heart leapt to see how she looked at him.
"You are," she said softly, "one of the gentlest, most moral men I have ever met, Wedge Antilles. You destroyed a ship of soldiers, not a planet of innocents, and you did it so we could have a chance to make this galaxy right again…and yet even that cost you enough for you to come down here and suffer. War has made you a warrior. Not a monster."
It was astonishing how much those words managed to wash away the guilt that had plagued him since Sluis Van. He felt stronger, stood straighter, a load lifted from his shoulders he hadn't wanted to admit was there in the first place.
"I don't know what to say," he said, not altogether truthfully, for he knew exactlywhat he wanted to say to her.
She kissed him then, hungrily and forcefully. Caught unawares, his arms pinwheeled for purchase in thin air to no avail. With a long, rather enjoyable ooommphhh… both fell to the deck.
The kiss ended. Winter's face hovered inches above his, wearing a satisfied grin. A noise from behind them quite unlike the usual buzzings and cracklings of the Core made them both look.
Wedge took in the sight of a contingent of Reactor Core technicians standing on a nearby gangway, giving them a resounding round of applause.
He reddened. Winter waved cheerfully.
"Don't you guys have breaches to contain?" he called. The technicians laughed, and resumed their perpetual waltz from station to station.
He looked up to Winter. "Um…" he said, not knowing how to broach a potentially sensitive question that suddenly clamoured for attention in his mind, amongst other places.
She flipped backward, grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet, all in one smooth acrobatic motion.
"Yes," she said. "Now."
Wedge shrugged in a mock resigned, world-weary kinda way, and started to run after her.