Grand Admiral Miltin Takel figured he was past due for something to go right.
His Magic Dragon and the Rebels' Mon Calamari cruiser had been locked in ferocious battle near Shenandor Prime for almost two hours. He'd knocked out the Rebels' support ships and succeeding in delivering the Emperor's prize package to the Rebel base, but he'd received no communication from the planet since then and had no idea if the package or Lord Vader were even alive. The way his luck was going, they'd been killed by the Rebels or (in a darkly comic twist) gotten blown up by that damned stupid droid Mammut Toph had piloting his ship. Without them, Takel knew, he might as well die in battle here, because the Emperor would give him an even worse death.
And dying here was a real possibility. He'd requested help from multiple sources, none of which had yet arrived. That Mon Cal cruiser had knocked out nearly fifty percent of the Magic Dragon's shields and rendered almost a third of its weapon batteries out of commission. Large spreads of hull had become chewed-up, burnt-out scraps of metal. Debris spilled from multiple gouging wounds into space, taking equipment and crew with it. Casualties were uncounted but easily in the hundreds, perhaps thousands. Power failures cascaded through the ship and it was a struggle to keep engines online.
That the Rebel cruiser was in equally battered shape was no solace. The Rebels, at least, did not have a team of commandos, led by a Jedi of all things, literally cutting a burning swathe toward their bridge. All of Magic Dragon's stormtrooper units and security teams were throwing them-selves at the commandos, and while they slowed the advance they could not stop it.
Yes, Takel really needed some good news.
He certainly didn't get it from his security chief, Lieutenant Gorek, who reached him over the comm to inform him that the invasive commandos were nearing the main lift shaft that connected the ship's lower body with its command tower.
"Don't let them get to the bridge!" Takel snapped. "I don't care what you have to do, just stop them!"
"It's the Jedi, sir," Gorek pleaded. "We can't take him down. He can't even get close to him. He deflects all our attacks while his men go on the offensive."
"Use a grenade. Use an airlock and flush him out."
"He's too deep inside for that, and if we use explosives we might damage key systems-"
"Shut down the damn lifts if you have to! Cut power to the whole shaft! Just keep him from getting up here!"
"We'll try, sir." Gorek signed off.
"Incompetents!" Takel hissed as he spun away from the comm console. "I'm surrounded by incompetents!"
None of the nearby bridge crew ventured to comment. The lieutenant at the tactical station, however, reported, "Sir, the cruiser's changing position."
More bad news, probably. The Mon Cal vessel had been hovering over their port side, turning their flank turbolaser batteries to slag after the commandos had disabled them from within. In the process it had damaged its own starboard flank. Now it was swiveling on its long axis and pitching upward. With a sick feeling Takel saw that it was trying to turn its less-damaged port side toward the Magic Dragon and cut across the bow. Probably the Rebel commander thought he could collapse the destroyer's already-fragile forward shields and tear up the tip of its wedge. Probably he was right.
Takel was under attack from within and without. Shenandor Prime was silent. It seemed that all hope was truly lost.
Which was a good time for the cavalry to arrive.
His tactical officer had told him what kind of backup was on the way from Pentovar, but in the battle-frenzy he'd forgotten. He was, therefore, pleasantly surprised when the tactical holo lit up with markers for two Strike-class cruisers and one Vindicator-class light destroyer. All of them fell swiftly toward the Mon Cal cruiser, which tried to shift positions and show its strongest side to the newcomers.
But it was hard to turn a behemoth around. As the Rebel ship's shields lit up with energy scatter, Takel hollered, "Do it! Take it down! Forward batteries, fire!"
He watched in glee as a swathe of missiles punched through the cruiser's shuddering shields. Its smooth, graceful hull was violently ripped asunder. Debris and flame spilled into space and cascade failures rippled through its remaining shields. The three new Imperial ships pounded it relentlessly; the strike cruisers ravaged its engines, leaving it dead in space, while the Vindicator sprayed turbolaser fire across its blunted bow. All three ships belched TIEs into space, buffering Magic Dragon's depleted reserves and quickly overwhelming the Rebel snubfighters.
The explosions were beautiful bursts of violent light. Cheers went around the bridge. Takel was tempted to join them, but his comm chief called for him above the din, relaying another report from Lieutenant Gorek. Grimly, Takel went over to hear it.
Things had finally gone right, but the fight was a long way from over.
-{}-
Rahm Kota felt the death of Solidarity, and it nearly brought him to his knees. All those lives, all those good and brave soldiers, winked out in a cascade of fire and pain and empty cold, and when the cascade completed their deaths echoed in the void, echoed inside Kota's head.
"General, what is it?"
That was Arakon, one of his heavy weapons men. The broad-bodied commando was touching Kota's shoulder to keep him from falling.
Kota blinked furiously, wiped sweat off his forehead. "Solidarity. It's gone."
Arakon and the other soldiers gathered with him in this narrow access duct fell to silence. Through their shock, all were wondering what to do next. Without Solidarity to return to, their odds of escape became even less likely. They'd all known this could be a one-way trip, but the cruiser's loss made death not just possible but imminent.
"This mission isn't over," Kota told them. "We haven't lost. We still have people trying to get off Shenandor Prime and we will protect them. Understood?"
It was an order, not a question. Arakon, Molakis, and the others nodded. They didn't need to ask how he knew there were still Rebels on the planet, nor how he'd felt Solidarity's death. None of them understood the Force, but in their year of serving under him they'd come to revere their Jedi as commander as something not quite a god, but more than a man.
Kota would be lying if he said that didn't feel good sometimes, but right now he felt humble and very human.
He urged his commandos onward, deeper down the access duct. According to the Impstar schematics Molakis had brought along, this was supposed to lead them to the main lift shaft that ran straight upward into the destroyer's command tower. Kota had split his commandos into three groups in the hopes of confusing their Imperial pursuers and it seemed to have worked; his column hadn't taken fire from the rear for over five minutes, though one of his other groups was currently engaged in a firefight.
They only had to squeeze ahead a little more. When they reached the reinforced grate separating their cramped corridor from the lift shaft, Kota disposed of it with a few slashes of his lightsaber.
"Molakis, get that access panel," he said. "Try to summon the lift."
The technician immediately bent over the wall-mounted panel. His spirits immediately sank. "General, I'm not getting a power signal."
"Nothing at all?"
"No. It looks like they cut energy to the whole system." He raised his head. "What do you hear?"
The other soldiers went very still. Kota ventured, "I don't hear anything."
"Exactly." Molakis gestured to the shaft. "No air circulation, right? They killed power to the whole thing to keep us from calling lifts."
"If there's no air, does that mean we're gonna suffocate?" asked Arakon.
Molakis shook his head. "There's plenty inside the shaft. It'll take hours to use that up. The bigger problem is, we're stuck here."
Kota's men exchanged confused looks. Then, predictably, they all turned to him for guidance.
Before he could provide it, Kota was staggered by another blow in the Force. This one came from further away but he recognized it just as clearly.
Starkiller was in peril.
This wounded him as much as Solidarity's death, maybe more, because he knew in his heart that Starkiller was the real fulcrum. If he died the mission would be lost. Perhaps the war itself.
He was as sure of that as anything. The boy had a destiny; it was like a beacon in the Force. He'd felt it when they'd first met over Nar Shaddaa, recognized it again during their unceremonious reunion at the Vapor Room, and marked it a third time when they'd collided on Cato Neimoidia. Starkiller seemed to think he'd been two, maybe even three different men, leading different lives, with his current self some amalgamation of memories implanted into a clone.
Kota thought that was bunk. He couldn't see but he could feel Starkiller in the Force, and despite variations in the man's signature as he'd shifted from darkness to light, he was at his core the same one he'd first met in combat nearly two years ago. So either he'd been strong enough to endure those supposed deaths or the Emperor's uncannily advanced cloning methods were doing the Jedi an accidental favor.
Either way, Starkiller was moving toward something great. Rahm Kota was not a modest man, but he'd been forced to recognize the fact that all his power was meant to lift the boy to that final destiny.
He couldn't let Starkiller end now.
Ignoring his soldiers, the tight corridor, the hostile star destroyer all around him, Kota reached through space to touch Starkiller's mind. He found a man on the brink of final black and, worse, on the edge of surrender. Something on Shenandor Prime had nearly broken him, not just in body but in soul.
Get a hold of yourself, boy! Kota tried to send. We're all depending on you!
Did Starkiller listen, or was he past hearing? Kota didn't know, but it was all he could do.
Sending one last push, Kota urged, You have a destiny! Fulfill it!
Then he pulled himself back to the star destroyer. Once again his soldiers stared at him, silently begging for orders.
Kota took a deep breath, leaned his upper body into the lift shaft, and looked upward. Smooth metal walls curved around an ascending abyss.
"How up to far to the command deck?" he asked.
"Umm…" Molakis checked his datapad. "Four-hundred and fifty meters."
Kota pulled the fibercord reel off his belt. "Then we'd better get started."