Galaxies Apart
Fourteen
Thrawn reached out a hand. "Captain Pellaeon. I look forward to working with you."
Pellaeon shook the hand offered to him, taken aback slightly. "Isn't that supposed to be my line?"
The Fleet Admiral smiled. Pellaeon found himself staring at how the glowing red pupils in his eyes sparkled at such a moment, and realised then that this really was a member ofanother species he was dealing with here.
"Your reputation precedes you, Captain. I look forward to serving with you."
Pellaeon admired his calm. Thrawn was about to make a speech in front of the assembled Death Star construction workers - all two million of them - and various high-ranking Imperials. If what Pellaeon had read on him was true, Thrawn would hate every moment of it and produce a masterpiece nonetheless.
Thrawn paused on his way to the rostrum. He glanced back at Pellaeon, who snapped to attention.
"Aren't you coming along, Captain?"
"...of course." Pellaeon said, covering his surprise.
He hurried after Thrawn, gut churning. He didn't mind the odd public appearance, but the thought of standing in front of two million people...
At least he wouldn't have to speak to them.
"Keep it simple, Captain. Dawn of a new era...great challenges ahead...I'm sure you know the sort of thing."
"Yes, sir." Pellaeon said obediently.
They walked on. The regular thump…thump… of Pellaeon's footfalls on the metal walkway abruptly became extremely erratic.
"You want me…" Pellaeon kept his voice under control with difficulty, "to talk to the crowds?"
Thrawn's attention never wavered from the doorway in the distance, the portal that was approaching much too rapidly in Pellaeon's slightly panicked opinion. "It may be an idea for you to acclimatise yourself with this sort of duty, Captain. As executive officer of the Palpatine you'll have to deal with an extraordinarily large chain of command. It will be your job to filter down the daily reports from a crew complement of almost one million into those worthy of my limited time and attention."
He's testing me already, Pellaeon realised. Well, he wasn't going to be found wanting. Quaking a little perhaps, but not wanting.
"No problem, sir."
"Excellent, Captain."
The doors slid open.
Below the small and heavily shielded platform, guarded not only by deflector grids and forcefields but by half a legion of crack troopers to all sides, two million people stood in the Main Square of the Sluis Van Shipyard complex and cheered.
Surrounding the two tiny figures high into the morning sky of the planet were ships of all description, some in various stages of construction, some fully-fledged Imperial cruisers and even a few Star Destroyers. Their guard of honour for the stately ascent into Sluis Van orbit.
He could hear the high-pitched whine of the gigantic construction droids at their work on the Empire's future vessels of conquest.
He froze. He wasn't imagining things. There was a noise. A long scream which sounded for all the world like-
"Down!" he hollered, and pulled Thrawn to the cold surface of the fragile rostrum.
Eight X-Wings roared past, incredibly close. As Pellaeon hugged the duracrete for all he was worth he felt close enough almost to touch the Alliance ships. Laserfire strafed where they had stood mere moments previously, peppering the rostrum.
From below, he heard the unforgettable sound of two million people becoming one enormous, panicked animal. There would be quite a few trained Imperials down there, of course, but the overwhelming majority of the assembled crowd were technicians and engineers - civilians, not soliders.
And right now they were doing what civilians do best when confronted with danger - they were trampling the hell out of each other running in every direction to escape.
How did this happen? he thought, beside himself with rage. How did we get so careless as to allow the Rebel Alliance to gatecrash today, of all days?
Another high-pitched whine restored his faith somewhat; he watched TIE fighters fly past, a veritable swarm of them, all on intercept courses with the swiftly retreating X-Wings.
He got back on his feet. "Fleet Admiral, we should get you to cover right away," he said urgently.
Thrawn ignored him. He walked to the edge of the rostrum and looked down the two hundred feet or so to the carnage going on below. Pellaeon frowned. "Sir…I really think we ought to get back inside. If those X-Wings bank and turn we are-"
"They're not coming back, Captain," Thrawn replied, "we're quite safe."
He looked up, fixing his attention on the X-Wings, attempting desperately to navigate to safety through the huge shipyards, the swarm of TIEs in hot pursuit. "Ackbar..." he said softly.
With that, it was Thrawn himself who turned and grabbed Pellaeon by the shoulder, pulling him along as he set off at a run back into the command tower, back the way they had come.
"Make haste, Captain," Thrawn grunted. "We haven't much time."
"Sir...?"
"This wasn't a random assassination attempt. This was a diversion, and a perfectly executed one at that. Whatever the Rebels are up to has nothing to do with either me or you, I'm afraid, though I'm sure our deaths would have been a nice bonus. What matter a Fleet Admiral and his second-in-command when you have an entire shipyard to wreak havoc in…"
He turned his attention northward, to the dominating presence in this or in any other shipyard.
"…and the biggest target in the galaxy to aim at."
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Wedge threw his X-Wing into a steep dive, flicking the autopilot switch as he did so. The automatic systems would gradually and safely right the ship, giving him a few vital seconds to operate the second set of controls in his cockpit.
Nine months of planning…and this tactic was the best they'd been able to come up with. He was trying to do this with a mechanical detachment, trying to tell himself that it was their only hope, the Alliance's only hope. It wasn't entirely working. Wedge felt sick to his stomach. No matter how you squared it, he and Rogue Squadron were going to be responsible for this.
Eight X-Wings had lifted off from the launchpad back in the forest. Yet only seven of them had been piloted. For all intents and purposes, however, and certainly in the eyes of any pursuers, all eight X-Wings did indeed have someone guiding the flightstick.
The Alliance had gone to amazing lengths on this one; a scan of the robot X-Wing would reveal not only a real Artoo unit, but a humanoid controller radiating body heat and taking in oxygen. The phantom even transmitted radio messages.
As Wedge activated the remote, the other X-Wing, until now on full autopilot, began to accept his course corrections. He had a copy of every cockpit readout, and a holocam signal broadcast from the cockpit of the second craft. As such he was able to fly the ship as if he were sitting in the chair himself.
Wedge closed the other ship's S-Foils. The remote X-Wing leaped and surged forward with the added acceleration, leaving behind its TIE pursuers. Wedge's own Artoo unit bleeped a warning that he had gained a tail.
In the seconds of control he had remaining Wedge sent the necessary course corrections, locked the X-Wing down then returned his attention to saving his own life.
After a few gut-churning turns and spins he spared a glance down to see how the X-Wing was doing.
It was, as he'd suspected, right on target.
Gods forgive me, he thought.
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"Sir…?"
The helmsman's tenuous tones carried somehow over the chaos that currently passed for bridge operations on the Star Destroyer Jurisdiction. Hanging low in Sluis Van's thick atmosphere was something the mile-long starship had never been designed for.
Though he would never admit it, Captain Alari Binyameen had rather enjoyed seeing the Alliance show up. Until that point he had been having one of his headaches. Speeches and ceremonies did not agree with his solider's constitution.
"Yes?" Binyameen replied.
"An X-Wing has broken off from the rest and is heading this way, sir," the helmsman informed him.
Binyameen turned in his command chair to face his communications officer. "Notify the 91st TIE squadron to lock in an intercept course and engage the Rebel with all speed."
"Aye, sir," the controller confirmed, already transmitting the necessary codes.
"Squadron contacted, sir. They're changing course to intercept, as you requested."
"Excellent," Binyameen said, pleased. He settled back into his chair to watch the remaining Rebels. Like every other Imperial commander he was trying to figure out exactly what was going on. This whole operation screamed diversion, but surely it was directed in the wrong place.
It was an open secret that there thousands upon thousands of crack stormtroopers here today, and even several commando battalions. Not to mention the abundance of capital ships in low orbit. What did the Rebels seriously hope to gain from this, apart from a swift death?
"Sir…" the helmsman piped up again, his voice having risen an octave.
"Yes?"
"The TIEs aren't going to get there in time, sir. From his velocity, I'd guess that the pilot has closed his S-Foils."
Binyameen felt an instinctual chill. "Projected course?" he demanded, a horrible suspicion forming.
"Directly for us, sir. He's going to impact the bridge in thirty seconds."
The bridge crew stirred a little. Anxiety shot through each station as every man pretended not to hear. A Star Destroyer in zero-G was a sluggish ship. In low planetary atmosphere it would be impossible to move in that time.
"All turbolasers. Fire," he instructed.
The forward batteries opened up. Star Destroyers, however, weren't meant to be accurate to snubfighter level. They were designed to repel attacks from cruisers. They would be lucky to score a hit in time, and everyone knew it.
"How close are the nearest capital ships?" Binyameen asked.
"Within shield range, sir. If we raise shields now we'll cripple four Star Destroyers and three smaller cruisers," the helmsman was grave, "they'll all most likely impact on the surface."
Right on top of the Death Star's repulsorlift generators.
An impact of that magnitude would destabilise the entire system, and bring an object with the mass of a large moon crashing down on the surface. There would be devastation right across the planet.
He'd underestimated the Alliance. This was a good plan. It might even have worked, had the Empire staffed their ships with cowards. They didn't, however, and Binyameen felt a surge of pride at how his crew was performing.
"Continue firing," he said, "Reroute all available power to the turbolaser batteries. Use as many firing patterns as you see fit."
He took a short breath, as the X-Wing appeared on the bridge viewscreen for the first time, rocketing toward them at an unholy speed. The Jurisdiction shuddered beneath him as she let fly with as many shots as she could. He watched lance after lance of green fire stab at the suicide vessel.
Watched as they missed, one by one. It was a very small ship, wasn't it?
He'd actually been given a scenario like this in his last few weeks of training. Caught between a rock and a hard place, with his only chance of survival putting the lives of other Imperial ships and officers at risk. Now his thoughts were the same as they had been back then: The choice has been taken from them, but it remains with us. We choose them to live.
The X-Wing kept growing. Binyameen took a last look around his ship, at his bridge crew. "Well done," he said, loud enough for all to hear. "Well done, all of you."
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Pellaeon watched in horror as the X-Wing, travelling at several times the speed of sound, scythed through the Jurisdiction's nerve center. The ship spouted flame. A great shudder, visible even from this distance, thudded through the superstructure. The ship began to simply fall from the sky.
He and Thrawn had been shepherded to a makeshift control room, which until the attack had been the holocontrol room. It was through a holocam now that Pellaeon witnessed the fiery death of one of the Empire's most legendary ships, and one of her finest Captains.
He understood the Jurisdiction's sacrifice, of course, but that made the sheer cowardice of the Rebel tactic no easier to stomach. He knew the Alliance had been desperate, but suicide runs against defenceless ships...
The Star Destroyer ploughed into the Sluis Van surface, a plume of flame and debris arcing high. Thousands of people would be caught up in that blast.
"Repulsorlift banks are holding steady," a technician called.
Despite himself, Pellaeon couldn't help but feel some small measure of relief.
Thrawn, he noticed, had stopped watching the Jurisdiction and instead was staring intensely at a holocam feed showing the other X-Wings retreating back into the forest. When the Jurisdiction had been impacted, the remaining X-Wings had managed to pilot an escape course around the falling ship, one that the pursuing TIEs hadn't been able, or willing, to match.
"It's over," Pellaeon said, numbly. The other officers in the room shared his relief. The Rebel ships had gone. The entire yards would now be on high alert, flooded with stormtroopers, patrolled vigilantly by TIE squadrons. Most importantly perhaps, the Empire's best commando troops would by now have boarded the Death Star, ready to repel any attack.
So why did Thrawn stare still over the shipyard, his breathing no more than a whisper, his hands bunched into fists? Why were his shoulders hunched and his brow furrowed in deep concentration?
"Fleet Admiral…?"
The Admiral turned to face him, his face a mask of concentration. "Something is very wrong, Captain Pellaeon," Thrawn said slowly, as a squad of troopers crunched past outside. "Very seriously wrong."
"Shall I order that we be transferred to the Palpatine right away, sir? Once we're aboard, the Death Star will be ready to launch."
"It seems we'll have to forgo the speech."
"I can live with that, sir," Pellaeon assured him.
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"How're our tails looking, Rogue Five?" Wedge asked, his X-Wing barely escaping the foliage below.
The reply came hissing back, "No show yet, Rogue Leader. No-" there was a short pause, "-wait, I have them," a low whistle sounded across the frequency, "...looks like just eleven squadrons or so."
Eleven squadrons. Wedge felt honoured. He wished he could have stuck around for the fight, but sadly he had a pressing appointment with the rest of his life which he was loathe to break. "On my mark, Rogues…" he began, thumbing the necessary switches.
Only one of the X-Wings had been fully remote. However all of the ships possessed the same target identifier countermeasures, and all of them had highly advanced autopilot algorithms. Wedge ran a hand over the X-Wing's panels, glad it wasn't his own personal craft he was going to lose.
"Mark!"
As one the seven remaining pilots ejected from their ships. Wedge struggled for consciousness against the sudden shock of the searing wind and the five or six Gs this manoeuvre produced. His ejection couch was built for space deployment, and so was equipped with four tiny retrorockets on the back and one on the base. It was the base thruster which would fire now, arresting his fall way too close to those-
"Oooff!" he croaked, the air driven from his lungs.
-trees.
Wincing in pain, he spared a glance to see how his ship was doing without him, and grinned as the small fleet of TIEs screamed past in hot pursuit of five robot X-Wings. Would they bother to check the remains for biological matter? He hoped not.
The Jurisdiction hadn't raised her shields. Binyameen had refused to suffer a lapse in concentration. No capital ships had fallen on the Death Star. The yards were absolutely swarming with troopers. Commando troops would be pouring into the Death Star.
Wedge brushed the moist branches from his face as he ungracefully descended to the forest floor.
Somehow, they'd done it. The mission had been a complete success.