Galaxies Apart
Thirty
Crix Madine couldn't call himself an expert on Mon Calamari body language, but a half-dead mynock could have ascertained that Admiral Ackbar was not happy.
The Imperial Fleet had vanished. Due to the damage suffered by the superlaser shockwave, damage that had dangerously destabilised the Alderaan's reactor cores, long-range scans had failed to detect any trace hyperspace signatures. They had lost them.
And so the Rebels were in an awkward position. Putting this Alliance & Ssi-ruuk force together hadn't been easy, and couldn't last forever. It would be quite some time before a fleet like this could be assembled again, and by then the Empire would assuredly have tightened up their defences to the extent that only the intervention of the Alderaan could reliably be employed to swing battles.
The problem with that was there was only one Death Star. Any idiot within the Empire would realise that employing a hit-and-fade strategy would ensure that any Alliance gains would be lost as soon as they were made.
The unmistakable noise of grumbling from behind him let Crix know that Lieutenant Jackson at the helm hadn't appreciated Ackbar's annoyance over the navigational data.
"He's tense," Madine reassured him, "we were hoping for a decisive blow at Endor, and we got a stalemate. Plus, we've lost the element of surprise."
"We need to take out their Death Star. That's their only advantage against us. One hit, even from that old bucket, and we're history."
"Easier said than done. We might be more powerful in theory, but they're running on a full crew with years of expertise. Next time we meet up it'll be another quick-draw contest. I don't see any other way of settling it."
Jackson grunted. "We came pretty close to destroying it with just a few snubfighters."
"You got your asses kicked. Close or not, the whole idea was crazy. You were lucky even to get within one shot, and you know it. The Death Star is too big a job for one tiny X-Wing, or a few Y-Wings. Especially with so much at stake."
"You're saying that Rogue Squadron couldn't pull it off?" Jackson asked, apparently incredulous.
"That's exactly what I'm saying."
"With a veteran of the Trench Run in their ranks?"
Madine stopped. "The Trench Run had survivors?"
"A few," Jackson nodded. He grinned. "Maybe Imperial propaganda said otherwise."
Crix pursed his lips. "Yeah, you've got a point."
"Wedge Antilles. Leader of Rogue Squadron, veteran of the Trench Run…and quite a few certain-death missions, from his reputation."
Madine considered it. He knew the legend of Rogue Squadron; the fact that the pilots were alreadyconsidered legends was a testament to their skill, since they'd only been thrown together a few years ago.
If anybody could try the Trench Run strategy and make it work, it was going to be Rogue Squadron. And if they had someone who'd actually been there, who knew what to expect there…
"Jackson, you may have something," Madine said, his mind racing.
"Remember that when my performance assessment comes up. If Ackbar has anything to do with it, I'll be cleaning out the reactor core by next week."
"I'm sure we can do better than that," Crix said supportively. "Droid maintenance section needs a new CO."
"You're a real pal, you know that?"
Ackbar had been in the private office for over an hour. He was communicating with the underground leaders of the Alliance, Crix knew. Mon Mothma had vanished some years ago and no-one, even Imperial intelligence's finest, had turned up her location.
The door to that office opened. Admiral Ackbar strode to his command chair at the centre of the bridge.
"Helm," he ordered, "set a course. Take us to Coruscant. Maximum speed."
A ripple went through the bridge even as the course was set. Madine felt a chill of excitement go through him.
The Rebel Alliance was taking a planet-killer to the most densely populated world in the galaxy...
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Luke had imagined that after two days aboard the wonders of Site Zero, after the revelations from Kyp and the shock of seeing a fully functional Threepio, little could surprise him. Walking into the control room proved him wrong.
Perfectly spherical, at least a mile in diameter, the control room was lined with computers, consoles, readouts and blinking lights. The room was equipped with a short-range gravity generator which meant that someone walking on its interior surface stayed planted to that surface, to the point where if they walked halfway around its circumference, relative to someone standing still they seemed to be suspended directly from the ceiling above.
At the centerpoint of the room, half a mile upward in every direction, a model of the galaxy hung in the air, glittering as if it were the jewel in the crown.
Thanks largely to Kyp, they'd made excellent progress in rebooting the computer systems that ringed the room. One by one, systems had started to flicker into life.
"This place is somethin' else, kid," Han commented, whistling softly. "And I don't impress all that easily."
Kyp paused in his work, navigating through the alien menu system as best he could. For those so advanced, the designers of this place had an irritating preference for graphical representations in their computer systems.
"We haven't started yet," he said. He glanced upward at the floating galaxy above them. "Watch this..."
And as Han - and everyone else - turned to watch, the galaxy grew and spun and the smear of stars and nebulae seemed to come to life. A small patch of space turned blue and the virtual galaxy honed in on that sector, magnifying it until the stars within ballooned to size, their planets visible.
"Corellia," Han breathed. Looking at his homeworld never failed to tug at him a little. He remembered seeing it from orbit for the first time, a lifetime ago.
"Let's go closer..."
Corellia rushed at them, through them, and as they plunged through the atmosphere as the planet inflated in size to fill the spherical void of the control room, they found themselves straddling continents. The desert farmboy in Luke compelled him to stoop and ran his hand through an ocean.
"Some map," Han said weakly.
"It's not a map," Kyp, Yoda, Mara and Luke replied, perfectly in unison. Han walked over the minor landmasses, the rolling hills and endless vistas of his homeworld until he stood with the others and drank in the sight of his planet's capital, Coronet City, spread out beneath him, its tallest buildings merely inches high...
...and yet alive.
He crouched down, not quite believing what he was seeing. Miniscule transport ships passed through him. People as small as microbes milled around Coronet's busy avenues.
This was the targeting mechanism. This was how the portal had been opened into the past. This was how they were going to open their own portal, to try and repair the damage done, to get the galaxy back to the way it was.
Unknown to any of them, a tiny beacon attached to the underside of a console had just begun to transmit. Its activation signal, routed through the systems within Site Zero, were broadcast across the galaxy, seeking out and finding the one other person in the galaxy who knew Site Zero's exact location.
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"Are you going to tell him?"
Yoda's placid eyes regarded him. The little Jedi Master was meditating cross-legged atop a miniature Kashyyykian continent. Chewie had requested the targeting holo be re-directed and no-one had felt like disagreeing.
Kyp glanced furtively behind him. Han, Luke, Mara, Chewie and the droids were all out of earshot.
"You know what I'm talking about."
"About this, speak again, we should not," Yoda murmured.
"Listen to me," Kyp carried on, not caring if his respectful tone was slipping a little. "It took Luke a long time to recover from the news that the two Jedi Masters he held so dear had withheld the truth from him…he had to hear it from Vader. It almost destroyed him. I don't know why we can't-"
"Unprepared he is," Yoda replied. "Unwilling to listen. Tell him now, we could, but understand it, he would not. Trust in the will of the Force, we must."
"That's not a reason!" Kyp burst out. "How do we know what the will of the Force is anymore? Don't you feel it, Master? Since the timeline changed, that will has been thrown off. The Force isn't guiding events here. We are."
Yoda made no reply.
"I could understand," Kyp said quietly, "if we kept the truth about Leia from him. It might destroy him. But we must tell him who he is, Master. He barely survived the encounter with Vader in my timeline. Here, he may not be so lucky."
"For nine hundred years, I have instructed the Jedi. Fit to instruct me on matters of the Force, are you?"
"Judge me by my age, do you?" Kyp retorted.
Yoda smiled. "You are wise," he admitted. "To trust me, I ask you. Please. On this, everything depends."
Frustrated beyond words, Kyp gave up and stalked back to the others, leaving Yoda to go back to the task of appearing serene. Truthfully, he felt anything but. The young Jedi had been correct – too correct. The Force had guided the galaxy for countless millennia, but no longer. Destiny had been cut loose. What Luke Skywalker had been born to do no longer mattered.
Yoda kept his eyes on the young man as he rejoined the larger group. Those placid eyes hid a great sadness also. He alone knew why 'Kyp' was so adamant regarding issues of hiding true identity.
It was bound to be a subject close to his heart.
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Skeleton crew or not, Crix Madine could have no complaints about the galley onboard the Alderaan.
From the evidence of the dishes in front of him, he judged that chefs and those in the food production industry must have founded the Rebel Alliance. From under a rock, it seemed, Ackbar had found culinary geniuses to prepare the meals.
"That's great," he grinned at the Tarboodian behind the counter. "In fact," he felt compelled to add, sniffing the air above his plate, "that's amazing. I don't know how you guys do it."
"We recycle the dead," the left head said cheerfully.
Crix froze. So did the twenty other Rebels in the canteen line beside him.
"Ignore this comedian," the right head said, exasperated, thumbing at its companion. "The Empire isn't interested in quality food."
"Yeah," the left head agreed, "all it wanted were standardised meals."
The expression both heads said those last two words made it clear that they were equated with 'racial genocide' in its mind.
It seemed that fighting on the side of truth and justice wasn't the only benefit to joining the Rebel Alliance.
The mess halls on the Alderaan - all four hundred of them - had been built to deal with the kind of crew capacity the massive vessel had been designed for. For that reason the Rebel crew only needed one.
If the room had been turned ninety degrees Madine suspected clouds might have formed at the top; one thing Imperials seemingly hadn't learned was 'size doesn't matter'.
Holding his tray tightly, almost reverentially, he began to snake his way across the empty tables to where the rest of his commando unit were already eating; Madine had escaped yet another tactical meeting barely five minutes ago.
Swerving nimbly around chairs and happily munching Rebels, Crix discovered to his surprise that his mind was itching. His brain was trying to tell him something. A spy learned to trust his instincts. Crix glanced casually to his left and right even as he continued on his erratic path.
Yes. There. That was person his subconscious mind had processed in less than a second. Wasn't that-?
"Wedge? Wedge Antilles?"
The pilot in question paused with a forkful of steaming meat three-quarters of the way to his mouth. Madine met Wedge's curious gaze steadily.
Resting his cutlery on the table, Wedge ignored the stony silence from the rest of Rogue Squadron, seated around him in an arrangement which was half-respectful, half-protective of their leader. Crix's own unit did the same for him. He wondered if they even realised it.
"That's me," he agreed easily. "I don't believe we've met."
Crix placed his own food opposite Wedge and stuck his hand out. "Captain Crix Madine."
His gesture was accepted. Now he did have Wedge's attention. "Leader of the Imperial squad that defected at Sluis Van?"
Still standing, Madine nodded. Well, this was it. Despite the fact that the Death Star would never have been able to fall into Alliance hands without the actions of his squad, he'd encountered his fair share of suspicion bordering on hostility since. More than a few Rebels smelt a trap about their sudden rise in fortunes.
It was with some sense of relief, then, that he saw Wedge's face split into a huge smile. "Great to meet you. You did an amazing job at Sluis Van."
Madine made a throwaway gesture. "It wasn't too hard, truth be told. What stopped me in my tracks was you guys pulling off a victory against six AT-AT walkers using your tow cables. I realised then that all the horror stories the Empire whispered about Rogue Squadron weren't exaggerations."
A distinct murmur of approval ran the length of the table. When Wedge waved a hand at the empty spot, Madine felt accepted enough to sit down. The normal ebb and flow of conversation restarted around him; the rest of Rogue Squadron had guessed - correctly - that he was here to talk to Wedge.
Never one to waste time, Crix began. "Squadron Leader-"
"Wedge."
"-Wedge," Madine amended, sitting forward and feeling that buzz of excitement he always got at moments like this, "what do you remember about Yavin...?"
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Mara?
Mara resisted the urge to stop what she was doing. She glanced at her companions. None seemed to notice the change in the air. She almost marvelled at that; when he contacted her, she felt so much more alive.
I hear you, My Lord.
Report.
We are still at the installation. Prior to docking we were hailed by a Corellian smuggler named Han Solo. He has joined our party.
He is of no consequence.
No, she agreed, but he has a young Jedi with him. From the future. He has the knowledge to reactivate this station's potential. They plan to return to the past, to undo the changes made and return the Empire to defeat.
She felt his surprise, his excitement at the news. You are sure?
See for yourself.
And she allowed her Master to take control. Usually his touch extended to her mind only; however, with her permission, Palpatine could assume control over her senses, see through her eyes...and through the Force, he could sense her surroundings. To Mara, it felt like a power surge beyond her imagination.
Unseen by Mara, Yoda's eyes snapped open.
I see him. You are correct. Excellent work, Mara, and his pleasure was like a physical thing, even as he began to withdraw from her, leaving her entire body tingling-
"A long time, it has been."
Mara felt her body spun around. Yoda was there, no more than a few feet away, all traces of placidity and gentleness gone from his expression. Mara felt Palpatine's hatred throb through her. She gasped with the delicious strength of it.
"Master Yoda," she drawled, in a voice not her own, loud enough to attract the attention of everyone else. They became the centre of attention in an instant. "It seems like only yesterday you fled in defeat from me. Beaten. Humiliated."
"Leave this girl," Yoda said softly. "Require your evil, she does not. Realise this in time, she will."
This time the laughter that escaped Mara was, at least in part, her own. She could not imagine - did not want to imagine - life without her connection to the Emperor. He needed her. He relied on her. He had given her purpose, meaning, power...she owed him everything.
And you will repay me, he told her comfortingly.
And with that, he brushed her aside, thrust himself fully into her mind, filling her head.
Her lips began to scream before the soul piloting them was shunted to a dark corner of her own mind.
She screamed with the violation, with anger and terror as her body pulsed with the Dark Side. Blue lightning crackled along her body, earthing itself around her feet. Her eyes clouded with yellow.
The others watched on in horror as Mara Jade seemed to grow, expand in the Dark Side, her face paling and her teeth bared. The holo of Kashyyyk died around them. The lights dimmed. A thrummmmm of power began to pulse from somewhere deep within the station.
"This time," Palpatine hissed through her at the tiny Jedi Master facing them, "there will be nowhere to run."
Lightning flashed, and battle was joined.