The monitors in the throne room all went dark. The ceiling lights followed seconds later, slowly fading until the room was entirely black, with only a faint column of light illuminating the throne. Irek was barely visible sitting up at the top of the central platform, still and immobilized.
There was no way for Nichos to climb up to him. He increasingly had trouble walking even in a well-lit space. Stumbling, he found himself caught by the comforting arm of Luke Skywalker.
"What is happening?" the Jedi asked.
Cray caught Nichos' other arm. He could barely see her in the blackness, a faint outline of a person that he would believe absent if he could not hear her breathing or feel her touch on his arm.
"H-he…" Nichos rasped, catching his breath as pain curled up his forearms from where the two were helping him stand. "He's trying to take control of the AI."
"Is he stupid?" Cray gasped. "Can he even do that? And once he's fully integrated there's no guarantee we'll be able to get him out again!"
"I think he knows that," Nichos said softly.
"What should we do?" asked Luke. "Should I go get him out?"
Even as Nichos was trying to come up with a good answer to that question, the flatscreens that walled the room flickered back to life. Blocky text scrolled across them, white against a black background.
CORONATION PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.
CORONATION IN PROGRESS.
The large, blocky letters vanished in a sudden rush of line after line of indecipherable letters and numbers. Text blurred as it scrolled across the flatscreens in tightly-packed rows of tiny numerals.
In the throne at the center of the room, Irek gasped and arched backwards. His hands were secured flat on the armrests of the throne, which had captured him in a maze of wires that inserted directly into his skin. His expression was pained, a frozen grimace.
On the monitors, scrolling across every wall, the flood of text was abruptly replaced—
I AM THE WILL I AM THE WILL I AM THE WILL
—and then the screens went black.
"What is happening?" Luke asked again. Beside him, the warrior woman—and the array of New Republic commandos—looked uniformly confused, staring around them trying to figure out what was happening and what they could do.
Nichos wished he had a clear answer for them.
SYSTEMS ALERT:
The words blinked there, unfinished. Then, slowly, as if the computer was struggling, a sentence crawled across the screen.
ERROR DURING CORONATION PROCESS.
. . .
SYSTEMS ALERT: ERROR DURING THE WILL I AM THE WILL INCOMPLETE. PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: DESTRUCTION OF [CORELLIA/SILENCER-7].
SYSTEMS ALERT: MALFUNCTION DETECTED IN THE WILL I AM THE WILL. CORONATION PROTOCOL [COMPLETE/INCOMPLETE].
[DISABLE/DESTROY] [ALL DEFENSES/CORELLIA].
[THIS/I] [IS/AM] THE WILL.
The entire floor rocked, nearly sending Nichos toppling to the ground. Luke and Cray caught him before he fell.
[SHIELDS DISABLED/INTENSIFYING ASSAULT].
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: DESTRUCTION OF [CORELLIA/SILENCER-7]. [THIS/I] [IS/AM] THE WILL.
The station rocked again, and again. Half the screens stopped displaying text, abruptly becoming depictions of Silencer Station, suddenly encased in the red of new battle damage.
Wedge's abrupt disappearance, clinically reported by a stunned Commander Needa, had rattled Han's skull like a solid punch thrown by a Jubilar gladiator. Lusankya's bridge crew hadn't taken it much better.
There had been no beacon, and Han's gut had somehow developed its own ingot of heavy, red-hot rage. Momentary anger at Wedge for pulling the kind of flyboy-hero antics Han was sure he was too mature for, then fury at the Imperial fanatics who just didn't know when to quit.
He had never expected to be in command of a Super Star Destroyer—the idea was laughable—but then again, he had never expected to command a Mon Calamari Star Cruiser, or a fleet, or anything larger than the Millennium Falcon. Even when he'd been at the Imperial Academy, he hadn't really had aspirations of high command. He had just wanted to fly.
But he was here now. Lusankya stretched out in front of him, an enormous cityscape against a background of blackness, commanded from a humming bridge that Wedge had trained into a city block of seasoned professionals. The dagger-shape of the enormous Star Destroyer was flanked by Mon Calamari Star Cruisers and smaller Star Destroyers, each clustered in close, hugging together to use their tractor beams to deflect the World Devastator's missiles.
They were not alone. He was not alone. Leia was out there, aboard Chimaera, amid hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of other warships as they held a massive, hemispheric formation. They were all sliding in closer to the World Devastator, surrounded by snubfighters fighting a constant, never-ending battle against new TIE droids. Small bursts of energy fire were punctuated by explosions, but they were all near-invisible against the solid sheets of turbolaser fire. It was near impossible for anything to get close to Silencer Station, because virtually every avenue of approach was filled with plasma. As Han watched, still more ships filled in virtually all the space around Silencer Station, only careful to make sure that their fire did not hit Corellia below—an effort at which they were not wholly successful, as Han could see multiple turbolaser blasts streak errantly through the planet's atmosphere and impact below.
"What's the report on the planetary shields!"
"Latest update was Civil Defense is working on it! They're not sure how the Devastator overloaded them in the first place!"
"Tell them to work faster!"
"General Solo!" gasped someone at one of the sensor stations. "The enemy's shields are flickering!"
A cheer echoed down the long walk of Lusankya's bridge at the call, sudden excited chatter, filled with a great deal of relief.
Kre'fey put his hand to his earpiece. "Gunnery control, this is the Captain. Remove all safety interlocks! I don't care if your guns never fire again after this battle! Kill that thing!"
Han tried not to think about the fact that Luke was on 'that thing.' All he could do was hope the kid and Mara were taking care of themselves. If they did not destroy the monstrosity here, whatever the cost, it would eat Corellia.
This he knew though: If he could communicate with them, Luke would tell them to fire too, even if he and Mara were still on board.
"That's not a flicker. Its shields are dropping!" said Dreyf, his eyes wide as he watched the plot with Han. "Look!"
As Han watched, the shields came down. Not in the incremental waves of defenses weakened by incoming fire, but all at once. Like someone had turned them off.
Had Luke's mission succeeded? Was he still on that thing? But even if he was, Han was not about to take chances with Corellia—or the galaxy. Trying very, very hard not to think of his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law's pregnant probably-future-wife, Han Solo watched as every ship in weapons range turned their guns on the suddenly shieldless World Devastator.
Turoblaser fire slammed suddenly into the World Devastator's outer layer of armor. Odd, intricate shapes—seemingly decorative—on the hull, which had stuck upwards at seemingly erratic intervals, vanished instantly as the sheer energy from the assembled fleet vaporized them. The World Devastator's armor underneath the decorative outer layer was hardier, many meters thick in some places. Even as Han watched it seemed to try to reconstruct itself, reforming to resist the incoming fire. It looked like nothing other than a series of dark, interconnected spikes, reaching out to grasp at its surroundings.
Debris erupted from the World Devastator, chunks of molten, obsidian metal flung in all directions. It scattered over Corellia's atmosphere, turning to flaming meteorites on its way down.
"Comms," Han said, "get me some fast-movers to flank and start hitting their engines. Burn them out. Tractor control, get me any kind of lock you can. If Corellia can't get its shields back, we've gotta pull that thing away from the planet!"
Acknowledgements raced around the bridge, and Lusankya's nose pivoted around for a better tractor vantage point.
As if furious at the sudden vulnerability, their enemy launched an enormous wave of anti-ship missiles. They streaked out, aimed at vulnerable capital ships. Three came straight at Lusankya, but Han's ship had two Nebula-class Star Destroyers flanking her. Areta Bell and Garven Dreis had massive tractor beams and lots of ion cannons. Their tractors lashed out, catching the missiles and forcing them into more predictable trajectories so that the fleet's weapons could destroy them prior to impact.
Other ships were not so lucky. One of the Mon Calamari cruisers in Ackbar's formation vanished in a sudden, massive eruption as the incoming missile forced its way through a tractor gauntlet and directly into the cruiser's prow. Multiple Bothan ships broke apart as the World Devastator's drone frigates fired through their breached shields. TIE droids continued to swarm, tearing through the assembly of civilian freighters even as the collected weight of those freighters' light cannons blasted them apart.
The Star Destroyer Nemesis, flanking Daala's flagship Stormhawk in their mad charge to point blank range with the World Devastator, vanished off the plot. Han couldn't even tell what had hit it. The crippled Stormhawk remained, its remaining guns blasting away, other Imperial forces sliding into position to take Nemesis' place.
Beyond them, Teneniel's Battle Dragons closed the distance, each one spouting terrible gouts of offensive firepower. Their steady streams of turbolaser fire, so bright and rapid that they appeared a single consistent beam, blasted deep through armor.
"Its shields are still down!" Kre'fey barked harshly. "Focus fire and launch everything we have! Destroy it now!"
Luke Skywalker was at the center of a maelstrom. Silencer Station thundered with pounding impacts, jerking him and the others in every direction. The flatscreens in the throne room gleamed with sudden, universal red, alert messages blaring on the ones that remained black. The messages were incoherent, gibberish that scrolled across them, with only occasional words comprehensible, like VENGEANCE and SHIELDS and WILL.
Irek Ismaren was on fire. Luke could feel him in the force, a poignant, gleaming agony. He had become vaguely aware of Irek as he and Kirana Ti had approached the throne room, and had known that he was with two other people who both had a degree of Force-sensitivity, but Irek had not stood out. Now his presence in the Force was staggering, a heady weight that pressed down upon him and the others.
"What do we do, sir?" asked Kapp. He and his commandos brought up their rifles, prepared.
The other strangers they had rescued—Luke hadn't had time to learn much about them, except for their names, Cray and Nichos, which had led to the realization that they were the people the brave Mouse droid had originally sent them to find—were both as lost as he was. Clearly they understood at least a little more about what was going on, but that seemed to offer little in the way of guidance for action.
"We have to get out of here somehow," Kapp added, holding his rifle close and watching the entrances for more hostile droids. "If the shields are down, the New Republic fleet is going to destroy this thing and it won't take that long. There are a lot of ships out there!"
"They can't destroy it!" Nichos objected. "Irek is merged with it, it'll kill him!"
"We can't take the chance!" Kapp argued. "And it doesn't matter—nothing we say is going to stop the fleet from destroying it now! It's still attacking them! He doesn't even have complete control!"
Irek shuddered, his mouth hanging open, expression contorted in pain. The young man—he was barely more than a boy—trembled, muscles clenching, hands clenched into tight fists.
I AM THE WILL I AM THE WILL I AM THE WILL
"We need to get him out," Cray said, her voice softly determined. "I don't know what it will do to him. It might kill him. But leaving him here will definitely kill him." She looked at Nichos, took his hand. "It's the only chance he has."
Nichos took a shuddering breath, then looked at Luke. "You need to sever the attachment between the throne and Irek. I have no idea what will happen when you do."
Luke jumped up to the top, central platform with a single leap, landing lightly on the platform next to Irek. With a snap-hiss his emerald lightsaber erupted to life, and trusting the Force to guide his hand, Luke twisted his wrists and carved through the throne. Metal split in its wake.
Irek screamed, the sound as shattering as the turbolasers pounded Silencer Station. The monitors all went instantly black, all the images of the battle beyond vanishing the instant the lightsaber sliced through the throne. Luke deactivated his saber, hooked it on his belt, and started to ease Irek out of the throne. Kirana Ti was there beside him and she—rather more roughly—lifted Irek up and tossed him over her shoulder in a carry, then they both leapt back down to the ground.
As they landed, the monitors flickered back to life, stuttering.
SYSTEMS ERROR. SYSTEMS ERROR. SYSTEMS ERROR.
. . .
ATTEMPTING TO RESTORE FROM BACKUP. ATTEMPTING TO RESTORE FROM BACKUP. ATTEMPTING TO RESTORE FROM BACKUP.
"What's happening?" asked Kapp, the Devaronian holding his blaster close.
"Irek broke it," said Cray. "It's trying to fix itself."
"Can it fix itself?"
"I barely understand what it is."
Silencer Station continued to shake, the thunder growing louder—closer. All the weapons fire was probably starting to chew through the World Devastator's armor.
"We have to go," Luke said.
"Do you have a way out?" Cray asked.
"First we need to reunite with the rest of our team," Luke said. He took a breath, reaching out to the Force, seeking an answer to the problem of escape.
Termagant bucked as the Star Destroyer Nemesis erupted in flame. The debris from the explosion cascaded over Termagant's shields, sending a sparkle of light cascading above her ship's hull, and making her alert board scream crimson.
"This is Admiral Pellaeon!" Pellaeon's voice called over the com unit in her ear. "All ships, close the distance! The enemy's shields have been disabled. Close to point blank range and engage marked targets with all your weapons!"
"All ships!" The new voice was gravelly and familiar, but Asori could not immediately place it. Thankfully, she did not have long to wonder. "This is Councilor Ackbar! We have identified the enemy's shield generators and are forwarding their locations and design to all ships in the fleet! They are now priority targets! Destroy them while the enemy's shields are disabled!"
Asori nodded sharply. "All ahead! Stay in formation with Chimaera and Gonfalon. All guns on the identified targets! And keep an eye out for more of those shipkillers!" Her ship surged forwards, towards where—ahead of them—the stubborn Stormhawk had taken the point position. Stormhawk was barely able to hold its formation, two of its three engines flickering lifelessly and a huge chunk of its starboard side gone from where it had taken a shipkiller strike.
The UREF ships left Stormhawk behind them as they closed to point-blank range. The World Devastator's conventional weapons were more dangerous from this close, sending a flicker of fire over her ship, but without active shields its shield generators were all exposed. Each one became an immediate target, and blue bursts from Termagant's weapons hunted them down one by one.
Explosions erupted on the exterior of the World Devastator, and its armor seemed to start to glow. The sheer weight of the energy they were venting into it was very possibly on par with the Death Star's superlaser, and Asori idly wondered if the World Devastator could have absorbed a shot from the superlaser or not.
"You can't! Ma'am!"
Asori's attention had been locked on the battle and maximizing her ship's gunnery potential. The drama behind her only caught her attention when it was a meter away. Streen, the Jedi who had insisted he stay aboard Termagant was there, looking like he had the galaxy's worst headache. Her Chiss XO was trying to contain him, a pair of stormtroopers standing—prepared but not yet involved—back.
"We have to help them!" Streen insisted.
She knew immediately what he was saying. "The Jedi aboard the World Devastator?" she asked, holding up a hand to forestall the involvement of her stormtroopers.
"And your troopers!" Streen agreed. "We can still get them out, but we don't have much time! Please!"
In her ear, more orders came from Pellaeon, this relayed through the familiar voice of Tschel. "Hold formation here! Transfer all power to weapons! Forward shields and guns only! No holding back!"
"We have no idea where they are," she pointed out. "And we can't possibly get in close to rescue them, not with this much firepower—"
"Yes, we can!" Streen insisted desperately. "I can get us there! You have to let me!"
"How?"
"I'm a Jedi," Streen panted, as if that was enough of an explanation. "And I used to pilot very big barges full of Tibanna gas through lightning storms!" He shocked his head, his eyes wide and desperate. "Please, we don't have time!" He took a breath. "This is why I had to be here."
Asori Rogriss did not understand the Force. For all her life, she had been told that Jedi were not to be trusted. They were traitors, spoonbenders, liars and cheaters. She had been told that the Empire was Order, the Old Republic was chaos, the Rebellion was corrupt, and humans were superior. She had been told so many lies by so many people for so much of her life that even in her moments of doubt she had doubted her doubt. She had kept one touchstone, one truth: that she loved, wholeheartedly and without reservation, her family. It was all she had ever been able to really, really trust.
I just want you to make your own choices, her father had said.
Asori Rogriss suddenly felt acutely conscious of the slick metal and plasticine of the hard-won rank badge on her chest.
She decided she could live without it.
"Troopers, stand down. Lieutenant Cromaster, you're relieved. Streen take the helm," she ordered, to her XO's utter, disbelieving, glowing red-eyed astonishment. "Go, now!" She pointed at her helmsman. "Cromaster, help him navigate! Comms, get me the Admiral!"
"Captain Rogriss for you, sir," said Tschel from beside him.
Pellaeon, Grand Moff Ferrouz, and Councilor Organa Solo had watched, disbelieving, as Termagant had started a mad-dash towards the World Devastator. The triangular ship had shifted onto its side, cutting viciously through space at maximum speeds. It looked for all the galaxy like Captain Rogriss intended to ram Silencer Station.
He snatched the comlink. "Captain Rogriss, what in the nine hells are you doing?!"
"I need a path to the Devastator, sir," Rogriss said, her voice steady. She sounded nothing like a madwoman or someone with a deathwish, and in her natural accent and smooth cadences he heard only the voice of her father. "I'm going to pull our insertion team out."
Pellaeon pretended to ignore Councilor Organa Solo's sudden, hopeful expression. "You're what?" He stared at the Devastator. Its armor was holding—so far—but if it could not get its shields up, that would not last for much longer. The sheer number of ships—to his astonishment, the New Republic fleet had grown to a substantial fraction of the entire Imperial Starfleet at its pre-Alderaan height—was simply producing too much weapons fire to any armor, no matter how powerful, to resist it for long. "We don't even know if they're on board!"
There is no time to rescue anyone from the insertion team, if they are even alive at all!
"I'm going to get our troops. I know exactly where they are," Rogriss insisted. "They're making their way to a location for pickup, but I need a clean lane for approach. If I try to approach now, Termagant will be destroyed by friendly fire." As he watched, Termagant rolled onto her side, sliding precariously close to the stream of turbolaser fire being produced by Chimaera and her escorts. "Please, sir, clear us a lane!"
"You know exactly where they are?!" Pellaeon exploded. But there was no time to argue the point. If he didn't order his ships to alter their firing patterns, in less than ten seconds Termagant would be dust.
I don't have it in me to kill Teren's daughter today.
Resisting the urge to curse, he turned to Tschel. "Order all ships to clear Termagant's path! Direct all fire to other exposed sections of the enemy!" Even before Tschel could relay the orders, he was spitting rage back into the link with Rogriss.
"Captain Rogriss, you are violating direct orders!" Pellaeon was insisting over his private link to her. Asori ignored him. Her ship hurtled forwards.
She'd seen Skywalker fly an airspeeder. This was something altogether different.
Streen's hands flew over its controls—controls he had never even used before—with impossible precision. She knew he was a pilot, but the navigators on either side of him were experts who had trained for years with a layout just like the one Streen was now using, and neither of them could match his current performance!
"TIEs inbound!" her gunnery officer yipped. "It's more than a wing, sir!"
Asori studied the bridge readouts, and rapped out orders without a second thought., "Secondaries! Discourage them! All batteries, shift targets and intensify forward firepower!" The ship shook. "Streen, we have incoming!"
"Trust in the Force…" Streen said, cutting the throttle back a quarter, and bringing Termagant's prow down. Her ship cut downwards, shifting more towards the Devastator as it did. The TIEs pursuing in a mass behind them caught some of the World Devastator's fire, scattering lethal plasma through the formation.
"More contacts sir," called her XO.
The Devastator loomed larger in the viewscreen, but Asori moved to stand behind the Sensor station—
"Friendlies!"
Red lasers ripped through the droid formation from the rear, each one skimming out around Termagant's rear in a stunning display of precision shooting. A storm of E-wings followed the lasers, splitting into pairs and pursuing the droids with lethal intent.
"It's the New Republic!" announced her XO.
"This is Rook Leader. We'll keep the droids off you."
"Trust in the Force," Streen said again, with a smile, "and our friends."
A half-dozen Mareschals and a stream of snubfighters zipped past the ship, folding her into a protective umbrella of shields, turbolasers and quad-laser batteries as the space ahead of them exploded in a wall of fire.
"Rendili Vigil here," came the voice of Atril Tabanne, calm and collected. "Baron Fel said you might need some help. You're clear to move in, go get our people."
"You heard the Commodore," Asori said with a fierce grin. "Take us in."
Streen and Cromaster obeyed, skimming them through a barrage as the battle lines clashed. Behind them, the New Republic ships that had arrived to cover them took the brunt of the New Order's robotic fury. TIE droids hammered at Rendili Vigil, blasting away… and taking even more extreme measures when that didn't work. One of the droid starfighters rode headlong into Vigil's forward lounge, and the ship's nose erupted in flame. Her smile died as Rendli Vigil strayed into the path of one of the enemy's dwindling number of droid frigates, the two ships suddenly locked in a vicious close-range combat—a style of combat the frigate was far more prepared for than Vigil.
The two ships snarled at each other, the frigate's heavy, close-range weaponry—designed to eviscerate bigger ships like Termagant—ripped easily through Vigil's thin armor, tearing deep through compartments and leaving the escort carrier drifting and shedding debris. The communications link to Atril snapped and on her status monitor Vigil turned an alarming shade of crimson as it and the droid frigate continued to grapple.
Heartsick, she forced herself to look somewhere, anywhere else, because there was no going back. Streen danced them through a storm of hard-light death and crackling ion blasts.
Her ship rolled, shifting to present its underside to the World Devastator. The armor directly underneath her ship was less damaged than most, but still appeared solid. "All weapons fire directly beneath us," Streen ordered, his voice throaty but clear as he brought the ship even closer.
Her XO was still staring at her, probably wondering if he should relieve her from duty, but Pellaeon had so far not demanded she stand down. "Guns, turbolaser fire straight down. Maintain fire for fifteen seconds then terminate."
"Now we'll need an energy cylinder," Streen said. "They don't have spacesuits and their ships are all destroyed. We need to get them in atmosphere to get across the vacuum!"
Asori sat in her command chair, tapping on its side console. "We'll need to be in exactly the right position for this to work," she pointed out. "We can only establish an energy cylinder with a small radius—"
"I know. We are," Streen insisted. "The main airlock. Now!"
Her ship's guns fell silent and she silently worked with the tractor team to initiate the energy cylinder, something usually only used to bring aboard cargo. A cylindrical forcefield shot out into space, between the Termagant and the World Devastator, rapidly filling with vented atmosphere. She and her bridge crew watched, uncertain what they were waiting for—"
"Look!" said one of her officers. On the vidscreen at her hand, a picture magnified of lightsabers cutting through armor from the inside, pushing out a large section of hull. A burst of force sent it spinning into the projected cylinder; it bounced off the inside, nearly destabilizing it, before settling, seemingly stuck, against its side.
Tiny, human figures, some wearing the distinctive white of Stormtroopers, and a single astromech flung themselves into the cylinder.
"As soon as they're aboard, disengage the cylinder and get us out of here!" Asori ordered.
"They're aboard!" announced her XO. "We have wounded, airlock secure."
"Full reverse! Tell the Admiral and the New Republic we're on our way back out!"
The Devastator seemed to leap backwards on the viewscreen and recede into the distance as the ship spun in a series of maneuvers that it had never been designed to do. Once nestled behind the main battle-line again, she stared at Streen, who was collapsed in the navigation chair, wrung out, before rising slowly to let an awestruck Cromaster reclaim his station. "How did you do that?"
He gave her an exhausted smile. "I told you earlier… I used to fly barges through lightning storms to catch Tibanna gas… and I always know where I need to be."
The energy cylinder had not had time to fully pressurize before they'd cut through the World Devastator's weakened outer armor to escape into it. On the way across, the stormtroopers—whose helmets offered them a limited air supply—hooked their arms around the Jedi and Iella's strike team, almost carrying many of them across. One of them—who was revealed, to Mara's astonishment, to be an alien from a species she did not recognize—had removed his helmet and put it on Mara, making sure that she did not suffer from oxygen deprivation on the way across.
Kirana Ti and Luke led the way, carrying the unconscious forms of Irek and Iella with help from TKR 330. The cylinder created an odd blue transparent shimmering effect that sustained the thin atmosphere. Beyond it, Mara could see the flashes of light that indicated an ongoing battle, and farther away the persisting shimmering glare that had to be far larger fields of massed turbolaser fire, pouring into Silencer Station.
The stormtrooper placed his helmet over Iella's head, letting her breathe deeply despite the thin atmosphere, but they were almost through the cylinder. Ahead of them, the leading stormtroopers were traveling through the Imperial-style airlock. They stumbled from their momentum, boots clanking on suddenly-arriving deckplates, then turned to help the others in. Kirana Ti handed Irek across. She caught herself on one of the guiding rails and helped the shaking, shock-faced Iella into the guiding arms of one of the commandos; Tyria needed no help, coming to a graceful fall. Mara would usually have been equally sure-footed, but she didn't fully trust herself at that moment, and accepted a guiding hand.
The remaining stormtroopers helped Cray and Nichos in after them. Once they were secure, Mara moved to Luke's side. He and Kirana Ti bore the limp, motionless body of Irek Ismaren. Irek too wore a helmet—one of the stormtroopers had given the young Emperor his helmet and never taken it back—so Mara could not see his face.
When they were all inside, the outer airlock door slid shut and clicked firmly into place. The electric humming sound of the force cylinder dissipated. They waited about ten seconds for the airlock to fully pressurize, providing all the wonderful oxygen their lungs needed without reservation, and then the inner airlock door opened.
On the other side of it, Streen was standing, his face glowing with excitement. It immediately fell when he saw their state, looking especially somber at Iella's condition. It didn't matter. He had saved them. His unique skills, the gas miner transport pilot with a talent for empathy, had been precisely what the moment had called for, and they stood here now, in relative safety, because of Streen.
"I'm so glad you're all alright…" Streen was saying, but his words were cut off as Tyria, battered and bruised and bandaged but still alive, enveloped the older man in a vice-grip of a hug.
"You pashtanka," Tyria exclaimed, slightly muffled, but brass-bold as the combat pilot she had once been. "That was one hell of a piece of flying."
They laughed and hugged, Kirana Ti watching awkwardly, and in the Force—though beyond, the emotion of the battle waged on, increasingly confident as the World Devastator's defenses faltered. "I asked Captain Rogriss to come and get you. She agreed."
"We need medical," said Mara, looking past Streen to the small company of officers who had joined him to greet them. "Agent Wessiri needs medical treatment, and so does—"
Nichos' voice was weak and breathy as he knelt beside Irek's unconscious form, but the conviction in it was undeniable. "And so does Irek," he said. "Right away."
Soontir Fel pushed his TIE Defender to the limit. Any TIE, a Defender included, was vulnerable in atmosphere, but his quarry were also TIEs, so at least the game was even. TIE droids continued their strafing runs on Corellia—on his HUD he could see the signs of the ongoing battle over Coronet, as Corellian defense forces desperately tried to protect the system's capital city from the forces of the World Devastator—but Fel was trying to intercept the TIE droids before they could get that close. Directly above him was the World Devastator, one massive AT-AT shaped foot seeming to be waiting with anticipation to stomp, and from it continued to appear fresh TIE droids, each equipped and prepared to commit suicide attacks on civilian targets.
Far above, he could see the lone TIE droid that flew just like him, dancing along in the shadow of the World Devastator, taking risks he would never take himself.
Not unless I had a death wish.
A fresh squadron of the enemy poured out of the World Devastator's every pore. One of the New Republic's Mareschals was hovering precariously close to the World Devastator, sustaining turbolaser fire even as it used its anti-fighter guns to spray the new arrivals with laser fire. Red blasts caught some of the TIEs, transforming them into streaks of dissipating flame. Fel and Phennir chased the others down towards the rolling green fields of Fel's distant past.
On his HUD, Fel could track the battle above. Dozens of warships had closed to point-blank range. One in particular, Asori Rogriss' Termagant, was protecting the splintered wreck of Rendili Vigil, using tractors to bring escape pods aboard, while Gilad Pellaeon's own Chimaera sailed in above to take shots and protect them both. Imperials and New Republicans alike were hazarding their ships to score devastating blows, even as the largest ships were lashing the World Devastator with tractor beams and trying to pull it back away from Corellia.
Occasionally a chunk of large debris cascaded down from above close enough to Fel to be dangerous. Shrapnel illuminated slammed into the ground below, causing minor eruptions of earth and leaving behind craters to mark their passing.
"All ships!" a new, unknown voice cut abruptly into Fel's communications net. "This is Corellia Civil Defense! We will be bringing the planetary shields back online in eight seconds! Seven! Six!"
Fel immediately dove hard for the ground, pushing the throttle as hard as he could. Only a few seconds later there was a sense of pressure and a sudden warning blinking across his HUD to tell him that a massive energy shield now existed dangerously close, cutting him off from space.
"Worst Flight, report!"
"One, Two. I'm above the shield. You?"
Fel sighed with relief. "Below. Where's Four?"
"With me. Orders?"
"I'll clean up down here. You and Four rejoin the fight."
"Good copy. Re-engaging!"
Fel caught up to the remaining TIE droids with ease. They did their best to evade him, but in atmosphere they didn't have a chance. Fel destroyed all four in less than a minute.
Then, not seeing any more immediate foes, he kicked his fighter around and started heading for where Wedge's X-wing had gone down.
Fel found himself coasting over fields all-too-like the ones he had flown cropdusters over when he'd been a teenager. Craters from impacts were scattered throughout them and there were a series of small crop fires which farmers were already fighting—but there were no more TIE droids. On his HUD it indicated that Corellia's planetary shields were still holding, despite whatever blows both the World Devastators and errant blasts from the allied fleet were striking it with.
In the distance, Fel saw a trail of smoke gently rising upwards and he steered towards it. In the center of a slightly-larger crater was the tumbled, shattered wreck of an X-wing, streaked with the red stripes of Rogue Squadron. He circled around it, his heart in his throat, hearing Syal's anguish and feeling his own… but, as he got closer, he could see that the fighter's ejection seat was not present. A flood of relief went through him and he flicked his sensors to wider-band, searching for a distress signal.
Not that far ahead of him a flare shot upwards through the sky, leaving behind a trail of smoke as it spiraled upwards. The whine of his fighter was probably cacophonous on the ground, but it was only a minute later when he saw the familiar shape of an X-wing's ejection seat, awkwardly wedged into the ground, a very-alive body stuck in it.
For the rest of his life, Soontir Fel could not recall what happened between seeing the flare, and popping his cockpit on the ground as he clawed off his helmet and grabbed his emergency gear before pelting over through the loamy soil his family would have sold their souls to till.
"Are you all right?" Fel asked as he fumbled with Wedge's harness.
Wedge's expression was more annoyed than pained. "Ribs. I think my right arm and left leg aren't doing what I want them to, I wrenched 'em when I hit the ground. The—" he gasped as Fel loosened the harness "—oof… the repulsors didn't quite prevent my fall the way they should have. My comms are out, did we win?"
"The planetary shields are back up, I got trapped under them," Fel responded. He shifted to be on Wedge's side, so that Wedge could use his good left arm to hold on as Fel helped them both down. "But we are winning. Someone sabotaged the shields on the Devastator and they dropped in the middle of the battle. Probably the infiltration team."
Fel could hear Wedge's sudden, fearful gasp. "Iella? Luke?"
He helped them both trudge through the heavy, almost muddy black soil even as it gripped at their feet. "I don't know for sure," he admitted. "But Captain Rogriss extracted some of the team right before I got trapped down here. I don't know who she rescued."
Fel improvised a sling from his flight jacket and hauled Wedge down next to his TIE, then fumbled with his emergency pack for the bacta patches. Then he and Wedge worked to loosen the New Republic pilot's orange flightsuit so they could be affixed in place.
"Wow," Wedge gasped. "Look at that."
Above them, the World Devastator was in flames on every side. Corellia's planetary shields gave the scene an odd, blue-tinged shimmer, one that made the battle ongoing beyond it seem almost unreal. Hundreds of warships had closed to absolute point blank range and were unleashing every erg of power they had into the boxy form of the World Devastator. Fel could see the familiar, massive triangular form of Lusankya as the Super Star Destroyer unleashed its fury, but he could also see smaller Imperial-class ships, a few of the New Republic's new Nebula-class ships, and many Mon Calamari and other alien designs.
The shield above them shimmered as it was struck by debris and errant energy fire. Streaks of light poured down from the heavens, impacting and sending waves of energy through the protective blue, which interacted with one another in dazzling criss-cross patterns that made it harder to see through the shield. But even with the constant rain of impacts, they could both see clearly as the World Devastator erupted with more and more explosions, more debris pouring from open wounds. Its furnace underside flickered and went dark, weapons emplacement sputtering and silent, armor melting away.
The ships assailing it did not stop. No starfighters dared to get close in the kill-zone, because space was full of energy fire. Blue and green and red intersected in the sky above, all tearing at the World Devastator that had threatened to destroy Corellia. Fel recognized Hapan Battle Dragons as they eased their way into the formation from the distinctive, vicious lines of continuous fire that issued from them, rays of light that stood out from all the others.
The sky shattered.
Fel and Wedge both shielded their eyes as the World Devastator ceased to be. It exploded as its inner core was pierced by all the weapons fire and pieces of it were flung in every direction.
Caught in Corellia's gravity, most of the scrap started to rain down towards the planet, and for many minutes Fel and Wedge just sat together and watched as the curtain of meteors vaporized on impact with the planet's shields, and a coruscating shower of debris lit up the broad daylight blue, streaking and sparkling over their heads.