Luke wished he could spend all his time cobbling the old starfighters back to flying shape, but of course that wasn't to be. He'd yearned to leave his uncle's workshop and battle the Empire; now he had to deal with getting what he'd wanted.
The two bridges spanning the Benton had become no-go zones in the battle for Antea, with the Rebels and their foes marshaling vehicles and artillery on either end of both structures. No one attempted to cross; each side was hoping for offworld reinforcements that still hadn't arrived. After the stalemate dragged on for a week, the Imperials launched an attack on the seventh night.
Luke went with the troops rushed out to reinforce the western bridge. Berbar was still deemed out-of-commission for his injured leg, but Ferol and Drasca were among the familiar faces with whom he raced into the night. They piled into speeder skiffs that carried them above the ice- and snow-clogged streets, all the way to the place where massive suspending pillars lifted boulevard into bridge.
As he leaped off the skiff and onto the hard-packed ice, Luke shouted, "Where do we go now?"
"Hold on, I'll find a lieutenant," Drasca said. With her BlasTech Sharpshooter V strapped over her back, she hurried toward the nearest Freerunner.
Luke stood beside Ferol and a handful of other troops. He'd not ventured outside in days and the night wind was cutting, even with his layered thermal gear. The bridge was massive, with a thick durasteel-reinforced belt and fat support pillars, but it trembled beneath flashing explosions as opposing forces traded fire across a closing gap. When he squinted upward he could see Freerunners and PX-10 compact assault vehicles creeping from the north end of the bridge; the Imperial side was lost in smoke and glare.
When Drasca came trotting back to them she reported, "They want us under the bridge, in case the Imps try to send anybody across this way."
"Is that a good plan when they're fighting on top of the bridge?" asked a soldier named Drek as they trotted downhill toward the shoreline. They had to move carefully for the snow and ice covering the slope.
"It's probably the best," said Ferol. "Everybody's watching the top of the bridge, nobody's watching the river, or the undercarriage."
"Undercarriage?" Luke asked.
Ferol gestured to the bridge's underside, now thirty meters over their heads. "When there's not a war on they run maglev cars beneath both bridges. You can't see them now but there's support rails for trains running in either direction. If somebody's really determined that could probably get across that way."
"Was this your home city?"
"It is," Her expression set hard, "assuming there's any city left when this is through."
She said it with an ache, and Luke wanted to assure her a week's worth of fighting wouldn't ruin Antea forever, but like everything else, the city's fate was out of his hands.
When they were halfway down the slope, Drasca unslung her sniper rifle and clutched it with a firing grip. To Luke she said, "If your Jedi sensors pick up anybody in the dark, let me know and I'll blast them."
He was pretty sure that was a jest so he treated it like one. "You'll be the first to know, but I'd break out the macro-binoculars just to be sure."
"Fine by me. This thing has a thermal scope."
They stepped beneath the great span and into a swathe of shadow untouched by the spotlights or explosions on the bridge overhead. The wind felt even colder here and it took Luke's eyes almost a minute to adjust to the full black.
Ferol's eyes were apparently better; she scoured the slope under the bridge and said, "Drasca, take that spot up there. We'll signal if we see a crossing."
"Got it. Ever sniper needs a nest." She immediately started uphill, toward a ferrocrete ledge spanning two of the bridge's thick support pillars.
The rest of them moved closer to the Benton. Debris from the destroyed docks had washed downriver and clogged the waterline with ruin, while unrelenting cold meant the river's fringe had become coated with ice. During lulls in the explosions overhead, Luke could hear floes crack and scrape against charred metal.
The Rebel soldiers squatted in the dark and waited. Ferol and Drek took out macrobinoculars to scan the water and underside of the bridge for activity, but Luke decided to try as Drasca had suggested. He closed his eyes, tried to forget the biting cold, and reached out with the Force.
At least, he thought he did. Ben had told him that the Force came to you when you emptied your mind and allowed yourself to flow along with the natural course of the universe, whatever that meant. The Force seemed like the Benton tonight: cold, jagged, inscrutable, and tangled with the wreckage of ruined lives.
He kept his eyes closed but aggravation mounted. He had Ben's adages to guide him but nothing more. He'd come all this way stupidly thinking a dead Jedi clone would show him some revelation. For doing something so dumb, he'd gotten what he deserved. Now he was trapped in an ugly interminable battle, trying to extract secrets from a woman with severe emotional trauma. He didn't feel like a Jedi and he certainly didn't feel like a hero. No, he just felt tired, cold, guilty, and stupid.
He also felt threatened. That realization came on Luke as sure as a knife to the gut.
His eyes popped open. "They're coming," he said.
Drek responded first. "Where? I don't see anything."
"Me neither," Ferol added.
Damn the Force for being so obscure. "They're somewhere, I'm sure of it," Luke said. "Somewhere close."
A week ago they'd have scoffed like he was crazy, but they treated the Hero of Yavin seriously. Ferol took out her comm and whispered, "Drasca, you see anything? Drasca?"
No response. Luke opened his mouth to suggest they move, and then the trap came down.
Stun nets were simple devices. Weighted at the edges, meshed from the poorest metal, they relied on a central charger to electrify their strands and render anyone beneath them unconscious. Even as the first electric bolts jerked through his system, Luke pulled his lightsaber from his belt and turned it on. He hacked wildly, first tearing through several strands before he found the central charger and cleaved it apart.
The other Rebels hurried to extract themselves from the inert net. Luke kept his saber raised and stared into the night, but he failed to see the first figures moving on them through the shadows. Last bolts flashed out of nothing from at least four different places and converged on Luke and his comrades. Without his eyes to guide him, he fell back on reflexes and the Force. He caught one bolt after another with his lightsaber. Some were lethal red, others stun-blue, but he treated them all as vital threats. Time seemed to slow, allowing him to bend, pivot and twist his body to deflect bolt after bolt.
Good against remotes, good against the living. At least he was making some progress.
At the same time, his companions dropped low and fired wildly at the attackers. Returning every shot that was delivered, they dropped one assailant, then another.
Luke felt, rather than saw, the last of them try to flee. The assailant turned and tried to run uphill but Drek ran after him, pumping deadly laser blasts until he speared three into the man's back and dropped him on the ferocrete slope.
"Take that! Bastards!" Drek shouted hoarsely.
"You shouldn't have done that," Luke said. "We should have captured one! That wasn't a random attack, they were trying to take me."
In the glow of his lightsaber, he could see realization on Drek's face. "I'm… I'm sorry. I was angry… They..."
He gestured down. Luke tilted his lightsaber so he could see Ferol on the ground with a blaster burn still smoking in her chest. Her face neither smiled nor scowled; it merely stared at him empty-eyed as it started to go cold.
-{}-
"So let me get this straight," Juno said. "The Imperials weren't really trying to cross the bridge?"
"I didn't say that," Trake replied as he faced her across the command room's central console. "What I meant is that it's not their primary avenue of attack."
"It certainly seemed like one" Consantius stood beside Juno with his arms crossed. "How much did we lose? How many soldiers?"
Nevetts checked his datapad. "Thirty-eight confirmed casualties. Fourteen of those dead. Also two Freerunners, three CAVs, four E-web turrets-"
"That's enough," Juno raised a hand. "Since the enemy fell back we can assume they suffered at least as many losses."
"Right," Nevetts nodded. "Though it looked like most of the equipment they were using was comparable to ours. Which means PPM, not Imperial."
"That's my point," said Trake "They're saving their high-grade stuff for something else."
Tiredly Consantius asked, "What may that be?"
"I'm pretty sure it's this." Trake took out a datacard and slid it into the console. The holo that appeared was a topographic map of Antea, including both sides of the Benton and the dual bridges. On Trake's command the image zoomed in on the hills rimming the south end of the city. Yellow X-marks denoted two neighboring ridges.
"Recon teams on the observation towers picked up these images today," Trake said. He summoned four two-dimensional pictures above the X-marks. Each depicted, from slightly different angles, two skeletal objects in mid-construction. They looked like towers for a comm trans-mission, but the bodies were thicker and cross-beams were being laid near the top, as though preparing to carry a load.
Consantius frowned. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm looking at."
"Missile launchers," Juno said, mouth dry. "Arakyd Vd-17 surface-to-surface."
"That was my thought," Trake nodded. "Once these things go up, they'll be able to lob missiles all the way to the spaceport while staying beneath the shield dome."
"But they can't afford to bomb this location," the ex-senator said. "This is too valuable a site."
"The Vd-17 is as accurate as can be," said Juno. "My guess is, they'll aim to take down the shield generator and the defensive turrets. Maybe knock out the command tower too. Those are Imperial weapons out there, and if the Imps are calling the shots it means they'll be willing to stomach some collateral damage."
Consantius took a deep breath. "All right. How long until those things are complete?"
"It's hard to tell," said Trake, "but at the rate they seem to be building, I'd say… four days or five. If we're lucky. Maybe as short as three."
It hung over them all like a death sentence. Trake swallowed and asked, "Any chance we'll get reinforcements?"
"We're still pumping out the signal," Nevetts replied. "But with all that jamming we can't hear any reply."
"We have to plan like we're on or own," Juno said coldly, then glanced at Consantius. "Unless you have anything up your sleeve."
The ex-senator shook his head. "I wish I did. I made arrangements with some Mandalorians who have their own ax to grind against the Empire. That's what's been keeping the Imperials busy in this sector, and why they haven't sent more backup to Antea."
"Political arrangements, or financial ones?"
"Both. But they made clear from the start that riding to our aid here wasn't an option." Consantius lowered his head. "I'm sorry. I've done all I could."
"We'd have never gotten this far without you," Nevetts consoled.
No, Juno thought sourly, they'd have never over-extended themselves in the stupid hope of forcing Alliance command to ride to their rescue. But she bit her tongue.
Consantius sighed. "Come on, we need ideas, people. Those missile turrets are under construction and that means they're vulnerable, yes?"
"Of course," said Trake. "Major Calomar still has people in the hills south of the city but getting to those emplacements is going to be tricky. The Imps have finally gotten all the roads locked down."
"What if we try to hit them ourselves?"
Nevetts frowned. "You mean crossing the river? Do you think that's possible?"
"You're the soldiers," Consantius said. "I'm asking you."
He was asking Juno; he was looking right at her. In a low growl she said, "It's possible. In theory."
"It may be our best option."
Their best option was to withdraw from their doomed fight, fall back to the mountain hideaways, and go back to fighting guerrilla war. That fighting had been hopeless but at least it wasn't suicidal. At least it wasn't wasting lives and resources for nothing.
She was on verge of saying it all when the communications station buzzed with a high-priority message. Nevetts, frowning, went over to the console and opened the channel.
Juno didn't hear the tinny voice from the comm, but she watched Nevetts's face go slack. Grimly, she prepared herself for yet more bad news.
When he finally returned to their console, Nevetts said, "That was Luke Skywalker. He went down to help reinforce the bridge. He said he was attacked."
"On our side of the river?" asked Consantius. "How is that possible?"
"I don't know. He said they threw a stun net on him first, but he fought them off."
"Then they were trying to capture him." The ex-senator snorted. "Well, if they can sneak commandos onto our side we can damned well get some on theirs, can't we?"
"I'm more worried about how the hell they found him," Trake said. "They shouldn't have even known he was here. We must have some kind of intelligence leak."
Consantius asked, "Who were the attackers? PPM or Imperial?"
Nevetts shrugged. "Skywalker didn't know. He says they had no uniforms or Imperial equipment, but an infiltration team wouldn't have those anyway. And they're all dead, so we can't ask them."
"However they found out," Trake added, "it means you're going to need extra security, Senator. We'll have to keep bodyguards on you at all times."
Consantius nodded, grimly accepting. A thoughtful silence filled the room.
Juno asked, "Did we lose anyone?"
"Only one," said Nevetts. She raised a questioning brow. He added, "Not Drasca. She was knocked out, but she's okay."
They really had to dig for good news tonight. Juno couldn't muster an affirming smile for him. Their security was compromised, but since everybody had heard about the Hero of Yavin it was impossible to tell where. It might have even been a civilian who'd picked up the news and passed it to the PPM. What they knew for certain was that any attempt to deal with those missile launchers in the south hills would have to be extremely classified. The only ones who could know were those in this room and those who executed the mission.
And even those people couldn't be trusted. None of the people around Juno were her friends, only comrades. One of them was a traitor. And even friends—even lovers—could turn on you.
She broke the room's thoughtful silence. "We'll have to go after the missile launchers ourselves. I'll put together a team myself."
Consantius's brows knit together. "General Eclipse, are you saying you'll lead the mission? You can't risk yourself on something so dangerous. It's absurd."
This whole situation was absurd. With icy calm she said, "I'm experienced with infiltration and I know Imperial equipment. I'm better use out there, fighting, than I am in here."
"But General-"
"Senator, I can do this and I will." Her glare met his across the table, and she felt small satisfaction as he wilted beneath it.
"If you're determined, I can't stop you," he said. "Though I strongly counsel against it."
"Your counsel is noted. But I'm going to destroy those towers."
Or die trying, Juno thought. Either option was okay with her.