Galaxies Apart
Twenty-Six
The Imperial fleet around Endor lay dormant.
Or so it seemed.
Capital ships, apparently strewn randomly across the once-tranquil Endorian system, waited for one signal that would have them in a prime counter-attacking posture within seconds.
The immense wedge of the Super Star Destroyer Executor had adopted a highly elliptical orbit, putting it at a distance from the forest moon and from the fleet surrounding it. Why it did this was best known to its commander.
No-one felt like asking him.
The entire fleet was rigged to take care of one ship, and one ship alone. Tarkin had made sure to filter his orders with care; he didn't want his foreknowledge of events to reach the ears of Rebel spies - or, and he felt his stomach twist to think of it, the Emperor's spies inside the Navy.
On the bridge of his beloved Death Star, he smiled thinly. This battle was not going to pan out the way Palpatine expected it to.
As he had made clear to Thrawn, Tarkin was no fool. The prime objective of the Emperor in this little scheme was, surely, to have Tarkin's own Death Star destroyed, martyred for the Imperial cause.
Could it be...? Tarkin frowned as a troubling new thought surfaced. Perhaps the Emperor's desire to have his own Empire suffer a major defeat was the reason that the Death Star's exhaust port weakness, which had been detected long before the Death Star finished completion, had mysteriously never been addressed.
Could it be that Palpatine had always intended to sacrifice the Death Star?
That he had deliberately placed a single fatal weakness in her design specifications for the Rebel Alliance to exploit?
Tarkin felt a chill of rage race through his entire body. The plans for the Death Star which revealed the fault had been stolen by the Alliance from right under Imperial noses-had Palpatine set that up, too? Had he placed the schematics with Intelligence for Princess Leia to find, then caused the malfunction in the tracking systems which had almost caused her ship's signal to be lost?
It was brilliant, in a twisted way.
Order the construction of the ultimate weapon, a ship which would seem to the outside galaxy like the Empire in essence; a ball of brute force crushing worlds with a weapon of terrifying power. A ship which would act as a catalyst for the embryonic Alliance, a symbol to rally against, a recruiting boon to its ranks.
And what of Kenobi?
Was it coincidence that Leia's ship had made it as far as Tatooine before being caught, or was the old Jedi Master intended to be the one to lead the Rebellion to glory at Yavin IV?
He was interrupted in this train of thought, mercifully perhaps.
It had begun.
"Sir," a technician called out, "ships are dropping out of hyperspace all over the system."
"By the Force," swore his co-worker, leaning over his shoulder.
"All coming this way," the original technician hesitated, checking, "none of them ours."
"How many ships, Lieutenant?"
"Over one hundred. More are coming in. Sir, it's an entire Fleet-"
A ripple of shock passed through the bridge. Tarkin knew the same ripple must be passing throughout the entire Imperial fleet.
No. It couldn't be. The Rebellion had one ship. One ship. His entire preparations had been based around at most twenty ships, but primarily at the second Death Star itself.
Where had they found so many vessels? Had someone discovered the resting place of the Katana Fleet?
He forced himself to be calm. There was nothing to be done about it now except deal with it. "How long before they're in range, Lieutenant?" he inquired.
"Less than thirty seconds."
"Open a channel to the Executor."
Bare seconds later he was staring into that helmeted visage. "You've seen them?"
"Inform the fleet to begin preparations for battle, Grand Moff," and with that, Vader signed off, the viewscreen flaring black.
"Lieutenant Myrkr," he turned to the newly appointed bridge officer-an alien who, were it not for his pale skin tone and pale blue eye pigment, could be said to have been a dead ringer for a certain ex-Fleet Admiral Thrawn.
Myrkr had been Thrawn's own choice for a pseudonym; as far as Tarkin could tell the word seemed to hold some mysterious significance for him.
Having Thrawn here on the bridge, in some capacity, served to assuage any sudden upsurge of fear he was experiencing at this abrupt revision of the odds. Thrawn was the one factor the Rebellion would not be counting upon and, should the necessary time arrive, Tarkin would not hesitate to ask the former Admiral for tactical advice.
"Activate the Interdictor Cruisers," Tarkin ordered.
Lieutenant Myrkr operated his station with commendable efficiency. "Aye, sir…" he said.
On the viewscreen, Tarkin watched the ring of Interdictor Cruisers advance as one, each attracting several larger ships to act as protective cover.
He was going to enjoy this.
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Right from the moment he was thrown viciously forward at his station, Crix Madine knew something had gone seriously wrong.
The Alderaan shouldn't have dropped out of hyperspace for another twenty seconds, at least. The Ssi-ruuk ships were meant to be the advance guard, there to catch the initial reflexive Imperial parry, to allow the Alderaan to drop to sublight behind them as they advanced.
Interdictor Cruisers was the first thought that screamed into his mind.
The second, just as terrifying, was trap…
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To Tarkin's left and right subordinates screamed new statistics at him. The Empire's advantage had been totally eradicated by the scale of the Ssi-ruuk intervention. Their capital ships looked to be a match for his own Star Destroyers.
If Imperial losses were going to continue at the rate they had already begun, he was looking at a full-scale bloodbath.
"Grand Moff!" someone cried, "we've lost all transmissions from the Inferno and the Wraith!"
He spared a few seconds to curse extravagantly. "Tell the Fleet to plug the gaps, damn them!" he snapped, flushing in fury, "I don't want those reptiles to breach our flanks again, do you hear?"
As that lieutenant busied himself communicating the instructions, another piped up.
"Sir…we've got the Palpat...uh, the Alderaan - on our scans. It's preparing to fire on the Star Destroyers closest to its current position."
Tarkin bared his teeth. It had worked.
It had been Thrawn's idea. Acting upon the common misconception for those glimpsing its scale for the first time to mistake the Death Star for a small moon, Thrawn had theorised that it should be possible to trick enemy scans into thinking the station was nothing more than a large asteroid composed of metallic alloy.
Tarkin had thrown his entire crew into making the necessary preparations. A few hours ago, they had moved the Death Star slowly and carefully into the asteroid field a few million miles beyond Endor's orbit of its parent planet.
They had cloaked the second-biggest ship in the galaxy.
"Chamber Master!" he bellowed, "Commence primary ignition!"
Tarkin sat forward in his command chair, as the deck beneath him began to throb with power.
Not long now.
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Madine whooped with joy. "There goes the Wraith!" he hollered to Ackbar, "The Ssi-ruuk just caught her with her shields down. She's dead in space."
"Excellent news, Commander," Ackbar murmured.
"Something wrong, Admiral?"
"We seem to be missing one rather large guest."
Madine frowned, and then realised Ackbar was right. Tarkin's Death Star was nowhere to be seen. How had he not noticed? Maybe he'd underestimated the Mon Calamarian's tactical savvy after all.
"Can't say we'll miss them!" he cried out joyously. Their one threat, not present? He could have punched the air. A cheer went up from the bridge crew, obviously thinking along similar lines.
Madine was a commando. He'd never been in a full-scale military engagement before; it was not exactly an undercover operative's field of expertise. All his life he'd broke bones and rules to prevent a situation like this from even arising…and now, thanks to the Alliance not being overburdened with command-level staff, he was frantically engaged in operating controls and straining lungs to bark updates and orders.
He watched no less than twelve Ssi-ruuk cruisers pound a Star Destroyer to rubble. The superstructure of the Imperial vessel snapped in two as he looked on; plasma fires and reactor cores spewed their wrath into the uncaring vacuum.
The Executor, attracted by the death of a Destroyer, swooped on the Ssi-ruuk ships. Madine's mouth dried as the Super Star Destroyer simply obliterated craft after craft, its turbolaser fire lancing through peppered and laboured shielding, ion cannons carving holes for the terrible light to sear into.
"Gunner!" Ackbar commanded, "Target the bridge of the Executor and fire!" that order received, Ackbar wheeled his chair around to face aft, "How's our superlaser coming along?" he demanded.
The Chamber Master spared a few seconds from his work to reply, "The unexpected jolt to sublight played hell with the ignition sequencers, Admiral. We'll need a few moments to reinitialise the system."
Ackbar's proboscis, a remnant of his species' aquatic prehistory, waggled in fury. "We may not have a 'few moments'. I need that superlaser now."
The Chamber Master had already turned back to his readouts. Madine admired the man's nerve. "I'm working on it," was all the concession Ackbar was likely to get from the technician.
With a muttered curse the Admiral left him to it.
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"Stand by…"
Tarkin's hand had raised to his lips. He began to pull on them, staring fixedly ahead. The deck's vibration had built into a full-scale rumble.
This was no Main Stage beam they were firing-it was a Full Intensity blast, and one which would surely rip the Palpatine-no, the Alderaan (his lips would have curled at the sentimentality, were they not otherwise engaged) asunder.
"Sir…"
Instinctively he knew that sir bode nothing good. "Yes?"
"I think one of the Ssi-ruuk ships has spotted us, sir."
On the bridge all eyes turned to the main viewscreen, currently displaying the chaos of a space battle. Tarkin's gaze was attracted to a huge Ssi-ruuk vessel, only half the size of the Executor but immense in its own right nonetheless.
It was disengaging from the main conflict.
Heading their way.
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Aboard the Executor's bridge, a luckless lieutenant took a very deep and calming breath.
"Lord Vader...?"
Within an instant the Sith Master was at his side. He could hear the sound of that infamous respiration, feel that aura of danger the man projected as effortlessly as he could crush a larynx for bad news. The lieutenant tried not to dwell on that.
"What is it?" Vader asked.
"Sir…I think of the larger Ssi-ruuk ships is on an intercept course with our Death Star. If you-"
Vader brushed him aside, stared at his console readouts. The lieutenant could have sworn that Vader's breathing increased in rapidity as he absorbed what the readouts were telling him. He watched as Vader strode away from Navigation and back to his command chair.
"Bring us about and lock headings with that ship. Destroy it. Destroy it now."
"Aye, Lord Vader, sir," the helmsman gasped, sweat stinging his eyes.
Adeptly the man brought the massive vessel around and gunned the throttle open, taking them soaring past countless Imperial and Ssi-ruuvi ships, locked in deadly combat.
A few better organised Ssi-ruuk vessels managed to put together a sustained burst to the Executor's port shields as they passed by; she rocked and groaned in protest, but held steady.
The Ssi-ruuk ship H'Ruhg'Kt loomed ahead. They were indeed moving with all speed toward the asteroid field, a tactically worthless area...unless, say, one were interested in the pseudo-asteroid which lay within.
The Executor rattled, more alarmingly this time. Vader had to clasp the arm of his command chair to maintain his perfect balance.
"Another two of the large Ssi-ruuk ships on our tail, sir!" a young hotshot from Tactical hollered by way of explanation.
"Inform the nearest Imperial ships to break off their current assignment and rid us of the reptiles."
"Aye, sir! I have seven Star Destroyers coming this way!" the head of Communication affirmed.
Boom.
"Aft shields down to sixty-four percent!"
Vader shook with fury. "Increase speed. Release twelve proton torpedoes from the port and starboard launchers. Remove any guidance protocols from their onboard computers."
Removing guidance protocols from proton torpedos meant they would continue moving on their launch vector for all eternity. Thus, on any other ship, that command would have been met at the very least with a doubtful sir…?
Not this ship.
Vader's screens showed the torpedoes jettison from their launchers, innate and useless. The Ssi-ruuvi ships could easily elude them.
Vader called the Dark Side to him.
Saw the torpedoes.
Saw the Ssi-ruuk ships.
The power of the Sith had never failed him. It never would. One after the other, Vader caught the torpedoes in the Force, channeled his own hatred and aggression to propel them with more accuracy and more deadly speed than any circuitry could ever hope to match.
The twelve balls of destructive energy lined up one after the other, perfectly symmetrical in their flight.
He hurled the first torpedo against the shields surrounding the nearest Ssi-ruuk ship's bridge. The shields flickered for a moment, as shields of this configuration did in the case of a direct impact. In another instant the ship would compensate by rerouting power from the remaining shielded areas. The gap would close.
From half a million miles away, Darth Vader propelled six proton torpedoes through the split-second gap before that happened.
The massive Ssi-ruuk vessel, its bridge a ruin, began to spiral hopelessly out of control, Explosions peppered its surface before finally it blossomed into flame, catching its sister vessel amidships and weakening their shields...
Vader made sure the six remaining torpedos couldn't miss.
Two soundless explosions lit the expanse of space around the Executor. Vader felt the Force ripple out from the deaths, the anger and hatred and betrayal of the people who had perished pouring into him, renewing him, nourishing him.
And he felt something else.
Relief...
So. The rumours of entechment were true...
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"We're clear to fire, sir. The superlaser is fully charged," the Chamber Master informed him.
Beneath his feet the deck rumbled; the superlaser's energy was being forced to circle the Death Star's cores. If he didn't fire the superlaser within sixty seconds or so, the containment fields would collapse under the strain. The Death Star would be destroyed by its own weapon.
The Ssi-ruuk ship bore down on them still, drawing nearer to firing range with every moment.
That wasn't the problem, however, for behind the Ssi-ruuk ship, in a direct line between the Death Star and the Alliance Star Alderaan, was the Super Star Destroyer Executor.
If Tarkin fired now, he would completely obliterate the Empire's flagship…and take Vader with it. Fate had decreed it so.
Had any other Imperial vessel been in that position Tarkin felt sure he'd have been vindicated in deciding to fire regardless.
But not the Executor. Not with its crew comprised of the finest the Empire had to offer. Not with Vader a potentially vital player in the coup. Bringing down a Sith Lord like the Emperor would be no easy prospect. Doing it with Vader's help might be the only way.
There were other options. Tarkin could have given up on targeting the Alderaan now, and used the superlaser to cut a huge swathe through the Alliance fleet. But as soon as that happened, he would blow cover. The Rebels would know where his Death Star lurked, and the Alderaan had a much faster charging rate than did his own ship.
His hands were completely tied until the Executor managed to disable that damned Ssi-ruuk scrapheap.
The Death Star shuddered. Only a little, and barely perceptible over its own internal rumblings, but it shuddered nonetheless.
"The Ssi-ruuk ship H'Ruhg'Kt is in range, sir. It's firing."
They had been detected.
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Wedge Antilles let out a long, relieved string of curses as his X-Wing escaped unscathed from a short and intense duel with two TIE Interceptors. He swung the snubfighter around and surveyed the area for any sign of Imperial reinforcements.
Unable to help himself, he spared a fraction of a second to simply gape at the sight.
As far as the eye could see, laser fire lit up space. Whether it spewed from the huge, distinctive shape of the Imperial Star Destroyers or the equally massive, more irregular Ssi-ruuk craft, turbolaser batteries and ion launchers spewed forth thousands, millions of lances of their deadly payload, illuminating the Endor system from within, sprinkled here and there with the fire-red trail marking the wake of a proton torpedo.
It was a battle he'd never imagined he would see. Making that daring raid on the shipyards at Sluis Van, he and Winter had considered it a suicide mission. When they'd accomplished their goal, they and Rogue Squadron had awaited the wrath of the Empire to come down upon them.
By some miracle, they had avoided capture, and ditched their craft in the forests around the perimeter of the yards. In the Imperial panic that had been rife, somehow they'd slipped back through the net and managed to get passage on a transport offworld, meeting up with one of the few Alliance cruisers making its way to Endor.
He came back to the present. No doubt. This battle was one for the history books.
Let's hope I don't join it there, Wedge thought grimly, as his R2 unit screamed a danger warning. Three TIE Interceptors had just locked in a pursuit course.
The vacation was over.
Three Interceptors...Wedge felt his heartbeat speed up. He was a good pilot, there was no doubt about that. But he didn't know if he was that good.
As the first vectored in from the left he sacrificed his two proton torpedoes, while pulling his X-Wing into a rolling corkscrew dive. An explosion and a bleep of satisfaction from his astromech told him that he could scratch one TIE.
That left two, and he was down to lasers only. One, coming at him from below, strafed his ventral shields to extinction. He was thrown against his restraints; a prolonged wail from his Artoo unit and the briefest of glances at his readouts confirmed his suspicions that his hyperdrive was history.
The third TIE came at him all guns blazing. He yanked the X-Wing up, dropping his tail and routing all power to the forward screens. The loop complete, he opened up with all batteries on the second Interceptor, caught square in the middle of trying to catch him broadside.
Another fireball bloomed in space.
Two down, one to-
His X-Wing began to fall apart around him. The remaining Interceptor hadn't exactly rested on its laurels while he'd dealt with his wing-mate. A sustained burst of turbolaser fire had crippled his X-Wing beyond all repair.
Wedge saw with a strange, detached interest that the Interceptor had disabled his port and starboard engines. Drifting in space, he was a sitting duck for the next volley of laser fire from the TIE.
So this was it. Idly Wedge wondered what Winter was doing now. Probably back on one of the cruisers, no-one around her suspecting the depth of her talents. Weird...he'd been working up the courage to ask her out for the last eighteen months. Now he'd never get the chance. She was too good for him, anyway. A woman like her, and a snubfighter pilot like him…
He'd led a fairly charmed life, he had to admit; that it had lasted this far was little short of a miracle in itself. After all, he was one of only a handful of pilots to escape the trench run with his life-
I can't stay with you.
The words rose up, regular as always. He suspected they'd have haunted him for the rest of his days. They could use them as his epitaph. For a snubfighter pilot, he could think of none better. He smiled wanly.
In the sluggish reality he was about to leave, he watched as the TIE fired.
No…
Watched as it was fired upon.
The TIE Interceptor blew apart, laser fire tearing it to shreds before his dazed gaze. His first notion - that one of his wingmates in Rogue Squadron had managed to get there in time - was dashed as he saw what his saviour had been.
A Ssi-ruuk robotic snubfighter had saved his life.
Powered, if the rumours were true, by the forcibly removed soul of an intelligent being. Had a life form been forced to die so that he could live?
Right at this minute, the rest of his life unfurling before him once again, he didn't care.
"Captain Antilles…" his transmitter squawked. Wedge saw one of the few Cruisers controlled by the Alliance bank to his position.
Winter's cruiser.
"We're going to tractor you to a shuttle bay. Stand by."
Try as he might, Wedge couldn't find the strength to reply.
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Admiral Ackbar was not happy.
The Alderaan, though surrounded by Star Destroyers, wasn't in any real danger…yet. She had possibly the largest single shield ever constructed around a spacegoing vessel, and it could sustain phenomenal amounts of punishment.
Nonetheless, that wasn't stopping the Empire from trying. Turbolaser fire skated across that shimmering curtain of energy that comprised their shield in frightening quantities. Madine he doubted if any ship in history had been expected to soak up this much.
Thank God for Imperial ingenuity. Most of the Empire's designers and scientists were still onboard, and were being...if not exactly forced to co-operate, merely informed that their new home was the biggest and most appealing target in the known universe for the might of the Galactic Empire.
Most of them had seemed quite keen to keep the Alderaan in good working order, when it was put in those terms.
"Where is the Executor?" Ackbar snapped.
"Bearing one-seven-six mark three."
"Where is my superlaser?" Ackbar demanded.
"Almost there, Admiral," the Chamber Master announced, ignoring the fact that Ackbar was practically dissecting him with the force of his glare.
Madine's attention went back to his tactical displays. The battle was going about as well as could be expected, maybe even a little better than he'd dared hope. The Ssi-ruuk were holding their own and more against their Imperial foes. Madine wished he could feel better about that.
A soft be-beep alerted him to another display. Maybe I spoke too soon, he thought, as the computer told him the Executor had just taken out two of the larger Ssi-ruuk ships. According to Crix's tactical readouts Vader's personal killer was heading toward another of the large Ssi-ruuk cruisers. Both were headed into the asteroid field at the outskirts of the forest moon's gravitational influence, toward a large asteroid in particular.
Missing Death Star...
Large asteroid...
He felt his stomach drop.
Madine looked up from his displays. Somehow, perhaps through some buried command instinct, Ackbar had sensed his alarm. He was looking right at him.
"We have a problem," Madine told him.
"How big a problem?" Ackbar replied, not turning from his battle scans.
"Death Star sized," Madine replied. "Admiral, we're all going to die."