Galaxies Apart

Sixteen

Phase One.

The Executor rejoined the sublight universe. Inside her crew sprang into action they'd rehearsed over the past few hours. The finest crew in the fleet. Piett would rather see a hundred Death Stars perish than lose this invaluable resource of young talent.

Thrawn had communicated that it would take the Palpatine, with her vastly improved superlaser ignition primers, around twenty seconds to charge the power required for one Main Stage beam – all that would be required to finish them off.

The Super Star Destroyer soared across the upper atmosphere at full sublight velocity, almost skating on the realms of hyperspace. The effect of this horrific speed on the ship's dampening field was severe; a high-pitched scream of protest sounded the ship fore and aft. She pressed on.

The first turbolaser fire zipped out. The Executor let loose with all batteries, pummelling as many of the Palpatine's superlaser nodes as she could, buying herself another few crucial seconds. The Death Star responded, turbolaser batteries seeing use for the first time, a barrage of fire arrowing to Vader's personal vessel.

Six seconds had passed.

The Executor skimmed and bounced off the stratosphere of Sluis Van. Her entire superstructure shuddered, buffeting her suffering crew. Her mighty engines roared with the strain of having to function under full drain from the weapons systems.

Inside Piett screamed course corrections to his crew, the countdown in his head occupying his entire universe. He tried not to look at the huge pseudo-satellite to his left filling every viewscreen

Ten seconds.

"All stop! Open a channel!" Piett hollered. The inertial dampers took a full second to compensate for the abrupt deceleration; his knuckles were white with the effort of affixing him where he sat. Shouts of pain told him others had not been so fortunate.

It didn't matter - as long as they got the message…

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"Commence primary ignition," the chief technician transmitted from the firing chamber. Madine listened to his steady tones and breathed thanks.

An imperceptible vibration built up in the hull around him; he could feel it growing. The Executor would be nothing more than a huge pile of rubble, floating forlornly above Sluis Van.

Above-

"Ackbar!"

The Mon Calamarian didn't turn. Madine tried again desperately. "Ackbar, we're directly above-"

A voice interrupted his desperate plea. "Attention Rebels," came the unmistakable plummy tones of an Imperial, "the Executor has taken up position directly above your Rebel base on the surface. A superlaser blast, even a Main Stage beam, will fry every one of your people down there. Are you prepared to sacrifice them?"

This was it, Madine realised. Ackbar had about two or three seconds to make the sort of decision that would have hard to reach in a lifetime. A choice between hurting the Empire and killing his own.

We are not the Empire, and we do not use their methods.

"Stand by," the technician warned; his final transmission before firing. Silence reigned on the bridge as all heads and all eyes turned to the aquatic alien currently calling the shots in the centre seat. The Rebellion had waited for this sort of power for years, had craved it. Madine knew that every Rebel on the surface would have sacrificed themselves gladly to see the Executor destroyed.

But the decision wasn't theirs. It was Ackbar's. Madine did not envy him.

"Chief Korth," the gravelly voice rumbled forth, each word an effort, "abort the ignition. Repeat, this is Admiral Ackbar. Abort the ignition. Do not fire. Do not fire."

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The last ten seconds had been the longest of Admiral Piett's life.

"They're not firing," he finally dared to say. The bridge crew relaxed as one. Across the ship his words carried and thousands of the Empire's finest breathed a huge sigh of relief. The Fleet Admiral had guessed correctly. The Alliance was spineless.

Piett called for order by not saying a thing, and got it without a word. Imperial discipline, he thought. "Well done, everyone," he complimented them, "but our job here is far from over."

It had only just begun…

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Phase Two.

The next signal was sent, and the remainder of the Imperial fleet currently stationed at Sluis Van rumbled into action. The Star Destroyers and the larger Cruisers moved into position, flanked on all sides by the smaller fighters and freighters.

The lead ship sent confirmation, and every large vessel activated their tractor beams. The focussed gravity wells lanced out and impacted upon their target.

Prathuus. Sluis Van's sole satellite, a ball of rock and ice only two thousand miles or so in diameter. Small, as moons went.

Slowly but surely, the tractor beams began to have an effect. The regular elliptical orbit of Prathuus was disrupted, incredibly slightly. And again. And again.

With each tiny tug the moon came further out in its orbit and became easier for the beams to pull. The engines of the ships, at first unable to activate with the sheer strain placed upon them by the operation, kicked into sluggish life, grew stronger.

The moon picked up speed in its new orbit.

On the flotilla surged, pushing and straining at their engines. Now Prathuus, once a lethargic moon which took fully three hours to orbit its parent, now had a rotation duration of just fifty minutes.

And still the speed increased.

Fifty minutes went down to forty, and then to thirty, and then to twenty-five. This was the threshold; the tractor beams could do more. Remaining in perfect synchrony the fleet disengaged their beams and reversed their engines, bare moments before the edge of sensor range with the Palpatine.

They watched as Prathuus crossed the terminator and premature light bathed it. To their military minds the satellite took on the likeness of a huge proton torpedo, streaking home.

Memories of Captain Binyameen and the Jurisdiction flashed through every angry Imperial mind.

The Rebels had earned their fate.

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Wedge grunted in satisfaction as another stormtrooper went down. It seemed his commando training hadn't been a complete waste of time after all. He was something of a crack shot on the ground, too.

They'd burst out of the forest about fifteen minutes ago. Looked like about six squadrons. Wedge wished fervently that this tiny Rebel base deserved that sort of respect. Their automated defences were seconds away from collapsing, and once that happened…

"Winter!" he called. "Two coming in; point three five!"

She pivoted, squeezing off a couple of pinpoint blasts. The stormtroopers went down with holes where their chests had been. Wedge suppressed a shiver. He thought he was pretty accurate, but he'd rarely seen anyone quite as good as Winter.

Dressed from head to toe in combat fatigues and armed with two E-web repeating blasters, one slung around each shoulder, she was a sight to behold. For many Imperials, in fact, she was becoming the last sight they would ever behold.

Even with advanced weaponry Wedge knew they didn't have much past a few minutes left. The Rebel lines were deliberately backing off, moving slowly into the hangar bays and the escape craft contained there. His own X-Wing lay under camouflage; he itched to sit at its controls.

It wouldn't be easy escaping the Imperial network below orbit and reaching the safety of the Death Star (how strange that sounded to him!), but then you didn't get to be the leader of Rogue Squadron without being a fair pilot.

A shadow fell across the Rebels. Wedge blinked. The only thing big enough up there to cast a significant shadow on the surface was the Death Star, and that was nowhere near the base.

Rolling behind cover, he made the time to glance upward. The breath escaped from his throat. Every Rebel knew that shape.

Directly above, a huge dagger poised to strike from orbit, hung the Super Star Destroyer Executor.

Something was wrong up there. With the comm channels jammed, he had no way of finding out what. He resigned himself to contacting the Death Star once his X-Wing had cleared the communications blackout.

"Wedge!"

It was Winter. She crashed to the ground beside him, having just performed some eye-watering acrobatics to avoid Imperial fire. The stormtrooper lines were now only about thirty feet away, he saw.

"Hi," he said, concentrating fire on the left flank and causing the troopers there to scatter.

"Wedge," she gasped, in between blasts, "the Executor is maintaining a position directly between us and the Death Star. While it's there Ackbar can't fire the superlaser without frying us too."

Wedge nodded. So that was it. "Then the sooner we evacuate the better," he reasoned, pulling her back.

"You don't understand-" she began.

He heard it then. The whine of servos. The ebb and flow of huge motors, rhythmic, hypnotic, deadly.

Approaching them from all sides…

Six AT-AT walkers crashed into the clearing, with typical Imperial precision. Their turbolasers, huge and lethal, lanced across the foliage.

Screams followed each shot. To his left a Rebel lurched into the battlefield, aflame and hysterical with terror. The stormtroopers cut him down, almost an act of mercy.

Almost.

"Rebels," an Imperial voice sounded, "throw down your weapons and surrender. You will not be harmed if you pose no threat. I repeat, surrender now or we will obliterate your base entirely."

Wedge glanced down the Rebel lines. He saw no-one throw down their weapons, no-one surrender. Sometimes, though, at times like this heroism could only be taken so far before logic dictated that defeat should be accepted and the risk of further losses stopped.

Sometimes.

But not today.

"Rogue Squadron?" he called. Seven heads separated from the rest. Wedge jerked his thumb back, toward the hangar bay. The heads nodded, comprehending instantly.

"What are you going to do?" Winter asked, as he moved to join his Squadron.

"Whatever we can."

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Phase Three.

There were many ships lying dormant in Sluis Van. Such is the nature of shipyards, after all. Another commander may never even have considered the possibility of using these sleeping vessels in battle.

Not Thrawn. On his arrival he'd requested an inventory of every ship currently stationed here. Partly out of curiosity and partly out of security concerns, but no less deliberately.

None of the ships, either those under construction or those awaiting refit, could take part in the actual battle itself, of course. They were vulnerable and would have lasted only a few seconds against a Star Cruiser, not to mention a Death Star.

However, Thrawn's tactical mind saw a way in which one particular designation of ship could have an influence without even leaving the shipyard dry-dock.

"Activate," Jurstt commanded. He'd been quickly won over by Thrawn's masterplan, and now was doing everything he could to make sure that what would surely be Sluis Van's finest hour came off.

The technician nodded. "All mechanisms are active, sir."

"How's the interaction? Are they complementing each other as anticipated?"

The technician paused, before nodding again. "I read an eighty-four percent rate of multiplication, sir."

Jurstt hissed his approval. He turned to another subordinate, a grin plastered across his pasty features.

"Inform the Fleet Admiral that his plan is working perfectly."

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Madine could not believe what he was seeing. "Sir, we have another problem," he informed an exasperated Ackbar, unable to erase the incredulity from his tone.

When the Admiral wanted clarification, he shrugged. "It's the moon, sir. It seems to have abandoned its former orbit altogether. I'm reading massive seismic distortion across the surface, probably caused by a concerted pull from tractor beams. It's heading right for us, sir."

"Size?" Ackbar demanded.

"Two thousand miles of pure rock, Admiral, travelling at forty-six thousand miles per hour. If it hits us, even with the shields up…we're dead."

"Time to impact – one minute," the helmsman said.

Ackbar nodded. "Charge the superlaser for Main Stage fire. Prepare to target the moon."

"Aye, sir," the superlaser technician confirmed, "charging laser."

Madine shook his head. "That's not going to do it. A Main Stage beam will break it open, yes, but the bulk of the mass will stay on the same vector. We'll have twenty large fragments impacting instead of one huge piece. Either way you're still looking at complete mutual destruction."

"Helm - back us off. Full sublight," Ackbar ordered.

Now it was the helmsman's turn to sweat. "Sir, we're running on a skeleton crew. The sublight engines take time to fire. We won't-"

"Lightspeed, then!" Ackbar thundered.

"Aye, sir," the helmsman replied. He laid in the co-ordinates with a practised ease. The navigational computer accepted the new course immediately. He pulled the lever for hyperspace.

Nothing.

The young human began to sweat. He performed the routine again, closed his eyes and pulled the lever.

A faint shudder spread across the bridge, a groan from the ship itself. The panicked man tried again.

"Lightspeed now!" Ackbar ordered. They could all see Praathus bearing down on them.

"I…don't understand it, sir," the young man gasped, "it's like we're too close to the planet. But I read us as well outside the maximum extension of the gravity well for hyperspace."

Madine ran frantic scans, found the helmsman was correct. Over the increasing anxiety of the bridge crew he forced himself to think clearly.

Why couldn't they jump to lightspeed? The most common reason was veering too close the gravity well of the planet. But we're clear of Sluis Van. That's not it.

The only other possible source for a gravity well was Interdictor Cruiser, a ship generated an artificial gravity well, used by the Empire in combat to prevent enemy ships from going to hyperspace, to hold them in sublight so they could be destroyed or captured. No Interdictor Cruisers in obit, Madine thought, but there will be-

That was what Thrawn had done. He'd activated the Interdictors being constructed in the yards below, and targeted their gravity wells into space. With enough of them overlapping, they had projected a gravity well strong enough to prevent the Death Star going to hyperspace in time to escape Praathus' impact.

"Twenty-five seconds."

It was ingenious. It was typical of the man. It was also, unless a miracle occurred, going to mean the final, absolute destruction of Rebel Alliance.