15: A Complete Circle
HIGH ABOVE HOTH
ABOARD THE IDT-7 DROPSHIP
PRESENTLY…
Ageless shook himself out of the reverie. Brooding on the betrayal at Hoth would serve him nothing at the present moment. He might spend years thinking about how he had managed to miss it, how he had managed to miss clues that in hindsight seemed glaringly obvious. And he might also plague himself eternally with the question of why. But none of that served a purpose, and could only be answered if and when he managed to escape this place.
As if reading his mind, Mordenta asked, “Back at the base, you said that the reason the Kingdom wanted you dead is because you found something you weren’t supposed to. What was it?”
Ageless looked at her for a moment. He looked over at Kevv. The Duros tried to look preoccupied with flying the ship but it was obvious he was curious, too.
Ageless looked at her. “When Her High—when Princess Leia Organa was captured aboard the Death Star, she told Grand Moff Tarkin about a Rebel base on Dantooine. But it was a lie, probably a stalling tactic to buy her some time, because I was the first agent on sight to sweep the area and we found it empty. But after I searched the site, I found information leading me to various shadow accounts connected to the Alliance.”
Mordenta’s eyes narrowed. “You found where the Alliance was squirreling away its funds?”
“Not all of it, but some—you’ve all been very careful about how and where you secure funding. And I also found where a lot of that money came from, and where it was going. My investigation implicated someone inside IIS.”
Mordenta’s lips parted in a silent gasp. “Someone in Imperial intelligence is helping us?”
“It was unclear. But whoever they are, they were stealing money on their own and using Alliance-aligned accounts to launder the money, or at least move it around so that no one saw where it went. I think whoever was in control of the Dantooine base thought that some helpful slicer was just a Rebel sympathizer, and was allowing these ‘donations’ into their accounts—but that is only a guess. This Imperial was helping them, but only so that he or she could move their money along with the Rebels’ own credits, so that if the Rebels were ever caught with it, they would be the ones caught holding the bag.” He smiled. “It was so clever. I’ve never seen anything like it before, a person hiding their dirty money with someone else’s dirty money without their knowledge, layering it through various accounts.”
“Was it Zumter?” she said. “Is that why you’re so eager to turn him over to us?”
Ageless nodded. “Good catch,” he said, and glanced at the sensor display, which had just chimed when it detected what appeared to be a group of TIE fighters moving in their direction. “We’ve got incoming.”
Kevv nodded. “Yes, I saw that. Their speed and trajectory suggest they’ll fly right over us. Prepare for evasive maneuvers just in case.”
Everyone strapped in as Kevv used the intercom to relay the warning to the droids in the back. The Duros pulled back on the yoke and brought them even with the thickening clouds, at about five thousand meters altitude.
From the bucket seat behind him, Mordenta said, “You think he tried to kill you on Hoth because you found him out?”
Ageless glanced back at her. He realized she was already probing him to gauge what level of commitment and honesty he would supply if brought to the Alliance. He shrugged. “I think it was an option he had in the back of his mind.”
“What were the other options?”
He thought about it. Watched the white clouds surround their ship. He looked at their sensors and saw the TIEs were decelerating. Had they detected the dropship, after all? He pointed it out to Kevv, who nodded silently and made a minor course correction.
“I think Zumter had hope that the war would end that day, and that somehow that would put an end to the Kingdom, and thus the problem of me. I saw something down there…something in his eyes. He was angry when he watched the Millennium Falcon escape. A complete loss of self-control on his part. He was shaking his fist and screaming like a madman.”
“When he saw the Falcon escape, you think that closed off the option of shutting down the Kingdom and sending you home?”
“Yes. I couldn’t see it at the time, because I didn’t have all the facts. But now I realize what he was doing, why he kept letting me take the lead.” Ageless snorted. “He wanted me in front of him so that if he needed to, he could shoot me in the back. Easy as that. Director Abaca…I think he’s in on it. Maybe others at HQ, as well.” He thought of Ida, and how she had flirted with him. And the last look she had given him, the look that suggested she knew something he didn’t. It pained him to think that she had betrayed him, too. “Abaca sent me in with a partner, an overseer, and their agreement was probably that if they could not end the war at Hoth then…” He shrugged again. “To shut me down, and hope that bought them more time to continue their scheme.”
“Now that he knows you’re alive, where would he be?” asked Mordenta.
“Impossible to say for sure…”
“If you had to guess.”
Ageless was becoming aggravated. “I’m going to tell you this once. Back off.”
“We came here to save you,” Mordenta said. “Need I remind you? Me and the crew of the Shadow. They’re all up there right now engaging in a battle because of you! And Kevv and I have brought you this far—”
“I was well on my way out before you two ever—”
“And about to unknowingly signal the Empire that you were alive, an Empire that would have sent someone to pick you up, and then kill you.” She leaned forward. “Now think. Where would Zumter be right now?”
“Why are you pushing this now?”
“Because, Ageless, just think about it. If he was so upset that the attempt to capture all the Rebel leadership failed—so upset that he decided he had to kill you—then that means whatever money scheme he and Abaca had cooked up is enough to force him to go on the run.” She leaned closer. “And now he must now you’re alive. He must, or else Sark would never have been sent. So, where would he go, once he had that information?”
At first, he almost snarled at her that she should stop pushing him. Then, he paused. All at once he saw her logic. “He’s on the run.”
“Right,” she said. “There you go, now you’re catching up. He’s running. He has to be. If he figured out a way to steal money and funnel it through unwitting Rebels, he has to be smart enough to have a contingency plan. An escape plan. You being alive means he needs to enact it.”
Ageless pondered it a moment. At first, he thought there was just no way to predict where Zumter would be going. Then…a small detail returned to him. The smallest memory. He might not even have considered it if it weren’t for Mordenta.
“Cloud City,” he said.
“What’s on Cloud City?”
There it was. The answer to his Cloud City Mystery.
“A node. One of the nodes through which the money was funneled. There was a shadow account there with close to a million credits, all stolen from some nobleman on Serenno, distant family of Count Dooku’s.” He leaned back in his seat. “It was the final account I tracked from whoever the traitor was, and the account had money still sitting in it. No one had claimed it yet. I was watching it, seeing if the money would ever transfer. It didn’t. Because that bank has a policy that an account-owner must show up in person to withdraw it all, and close the account. It’s part of the reason criminals and crooked bankers use it, because the credits stored there are as secure as they can be, protected from the Empire, the Alliance, and the Hutts.”
He nodded.
“Commander Zumter is going to Cloud City. Maybe he’s already there.”
“Can the money be taken out quickly?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. No, it would take some time for the bank to authorize the closing of an account that large. There are forms, they have to be notarized…”
“So there’s still time,” Mordenta said, smiling wolfishly. Ageless thought it made her look rather attractive. “And the best part is, he’s alone.”
Ageless nodded. She was right. Because he was on the run, Zumter would not have more than a few guards escorting him, if any. Because he was going to have to disappear. Whatever his true crime, whatever his motives were, he was going to have to leave and never come back, and he could not risk anyone knowing where he was going.
“Bespin is close to here,” Kevv chimed in. “A very short jump with even a Class Ten hyperdrive.”
Ageless started to say something, but just then, there came the blaring of proximity alarms. After he dismissed them, Ageless looked at the scopes and felt a knot tie itself around his gut. “Sithspit. Here they come.”
The TIEs were moving in on them.
* * *
ABOARD THE STAR DESTROYER UNRELENTING
ON THE BRIDGE…
Captain Vald stood rigidly looking out into the asteroid cluster and its accompanying dust cloud. Their TIE fighter squadrons had circled in behind the giant planetesimal that Home One was hiding behind, and had begun opening fire. It appeared Admiral Ackbar had been prepared for that, because the defensive XX-9 turbolasers erupted and sent lances of blue and red laser bolts slashing into the black void. The turbolaser fire stood out starkly against the nightside of Hoth below.
“Alert Asserter,” he called to comms. “Let them know we have engaged the enemy.”
“Sir, alerting Asserter would mean we have to drop our own sensor-scrambling transmissions to get through. That means if we can communicate, Home One can, as well.”
“Just do it. I doubt easing up on jamming protocols is going to help Home One now.” Vald smiled. “Ackbar has no allies to call on at the moment.”
“Yes, sir.”
After a few seconds, it was done, and Captain Vald received the terse approval from Admiral Onovan on a chase and prosecution well executed. Vald was basking in that approval when the lights went out on the bridge. Main power remained on, and backup generators kept the computer systems from going down, but for a few moments the only light in the room was the glow of the computer monitors against his bridge crew’s faces.
“What’s going on?” Vald demanded. “What happened?”
The lights came back on. Then they went off again. Then they came back on and stayed on, but were slightly dimmed.
“What’s happening?! Report!”
“Sir, we have a power surge in the starboard reactor—” one officer started saying before he was interrupted.
A security officer shouted, “Captain, there is a problem with our security cameras on Decks One and Four.”
“Security cameras?”
“Yes, sir. It—”
“Sir!” a navigations officers called. “I’ve got a forced cooldown on primary engines! We had a short, controlled burst that altered our course, but now we’re drifting—”
“I’m seeing that, too, sir!” the helmsman called. “Steering doesn’t answer! We’re dead in the water! We can’t maneuver! We’re adrift!”
“What the blazes is going on?!” Captain Vald screamed. “Someone tell me just what is going—” He cut himself off, and turned suddenly to the security officer. “Decks One and Four you say? All cameras on those decks?”
“Yes, sir.”
Vald’s upper lip curled in a moue of distaste. “They’re inside,” he hissed.
“Sir?”
“Those impacts we felt on our hull. They weren’t asteroidlets, they were a delivery system. Stealth pods.”
Everyone looked at him, puzzled. They did not know that he had been briefed by Imperial intelligence officials on a new piece of tech just like this, which had been used by one group in the Outer Rim, and one group only.
“They’re inside,” he said again. He looked over at the security officer and shouted, “Take a team of your best men and get down to those decks! We need to find them and destroy them! Now!”
“Find who, sir?”
“The Bothan saboteurs.”
* * *
ABOARD THE STAR DESTROYER UNRELENTING
SOMEWHERE ON DECK FOUR…
They moved as one. They performed leapfrog maneuvers, switching who was on point and who brought up the rear. They did not have to speak, only flicked their furry ears to communicate with those coming up behind them, as they moved as silently as death from one corridor to the next: Clear. Move up. Two openings on the left. Room secured, moving up.
The Bothan Saboteur Commando Unit poured themselves through open doorways, crept down darkened corridors, slithered behind wall panels. They connected their slicer rigs to any and every access panel they could find, mass-dumping strings of mal-code into every system—the water-recyclers, the air-recyclers, the droid control bays, the droid recharge stations, the doors to the freshers, the doors to the medical bay and rec room and turbolift access. They had darkened the first set of hallways with an EMP grenade and taken out the unsuspecting stormtroopers guarding the corridors of circuitry bays and maintenance bays.
They had detailed schematics of Imperial-class Star Destroyers memorized down to the last detail, and summoned all their courage and knowledge to move swiftly, taking out troopers in dark hallways, using plasma torches to open wall panels to access the kilometers upon kilometers of superconducting wires that ran through the Star Destroyer like arteries.
They injected mal-code everywhere, even if it didn’t do much but upset the sewage system or cause a minor hiccup in the room lights. They did this so that it would compound, the problems of a mass-dumping of mal-code would overload the system, cause a deluge of minor problems that would cascade into larger ones.
They also improvised. They had not known which decks would be more susceptible to systemic corruption, so when Decks One and Four showed a vulnerability to the secure camera network there, the Bothans switched those off.
There were thirty-six of them, and they split up into six groups of six, all attacking different compartments. They had caused total disruption of comms, as well as the ship’s intercom system, so that no one from the bridge could call down to the lower decks and warn them about anything. The Bothans moved like a deadly pathogen, infecting every porous space, tearing open panels and ripping out key circuits, slicing into door controls and sealing people off. Entire platoons were trapped in various bays, or in their bunks, or in the fresher, or in the galley. They banged on the doors, yelling to be let out.
And still the Bothans moved from one area to the next, wraiths both unseen and unheard until it was too late. Sometimes a vibroblade ended an officer’s life, and sometimes he felt only a single furry hand clamp around his mouth before his neck was broken, and sometimes a weapon’s stun setting set him unconscious.
Eventually they switched off artificial gravity across the entire ship, and went swimming through the air, bounding from one compartment to the next, sometimes igniting their jetpacks to arrest themselves in three-dimensional space before blasting a stormtrooper that had found himself floating helplessly away from the floor.
Soon, they had made it into the main reactor room, and there they assassinated a squad of stormtroopers and took the technicians hostage while they sliced into the reactor’s programmable logic circuits, cycled up the centrifuges to maximum, and prepared to overload them.
The Bothan commander, a one-and-a-half-meter-tall male with cream-colored fur, signaled with an ear-flap to one of his officers to switch the ship’s comm system back on, so that he could broadcast a full-body hologram of himself to the bridge.
* * *
ABOARD THE STAR DESTROYER UNRELENTING
ON THE BRIDGE…
Captain Vald was still shouting at his bridge crew when the hologram materialized on every holo-projector in the room. The short, furry creature appeared in full color, and was in full tactical body armor, and had the gaze of a predator. “I am Commander Pakkt Jen’vey,” he said. “We declare thuulm. Victory. You will now open your comms channels to the Alliance vessel Home One and declare that you will not participate in this battle, and that you will recall all your TIE squadrons. You do not have to formally surrender—we will spare you that indignity—and you may instead simply agree to remain out of the coming conflict. If you do not—”
“I will do no such thing!” Vald screamed. “I will have you skinned alive for this! And I’ll wear your fur pelt as a—”
“If you do not,” Jen’vey went on patiently, “then we will destroy this entire ship. We are prepared to die. We were selected for this.”
“You think your paltry few can destroy an Imperial—?”
“I direct your attention now to your reactor readings. I will give you time to review them and come to the only logical conclusion.”
Vald blinked. He stormed over to the nearest workstation and summoned up the readings for the ship’s reactor core.
And then his heart dropped into his stomach. The reactor was near to overheating. It was approaching critical and it was obvious the Bothans had somehow pushed it that far, slicing into its controls and now fully manipulating the system’s programmable logic circuits to send the centrifuges into a frenzy.
All he has to do is let it keep cycling up, and we will have total meltdown.
Vald swallowed the stone in his throat. Then he gazed balefully at Commander Jen’vey. “If I ever get my hands around your throat, Bothan…”
“Will you transmit your concession in this battle to Admiral Ackbar of Home One? Will you recall all of your TIE squadrons? You have ten seconds to comply.”
Vald had never been so outraged, never so humiliated. But he did the only thing he could do. With the disappointed eyes of his crew on him, he turned to a comms officer. Through grinding teeth he said, “Give me a channel to Home One. Tell them…we are standing down. We will not come to Asserter’s aid if he engages them.”
In all his nightmares, in all the years of wargames and simulations, Captain Vald had never fathomed those words would come from his lips.
But never mind, he thought viciously. Even with us out of the game, there is no way Ackbar stands a chance against the other two Star Destroyers.
* * *
ABOARD THE ALLIANCE FLAGSHIP HOME ONE
“Message received, Commander Vald,” Ackbar said. “And my thanks for your understanding of the situation.” With a webbed hand, he tapped the button on his armrest and the hologram fizzled out and was replaced by another one of the Bothan commander. “Excellent work, Commander Jen’vey. Maintain guard over the reactor until such time I call for your exfiltration from the Unrelenting.”
“Of course, Admiral,” said the Bothan. “Thuulm.”
“Thuulm, indeed.” The same webbed hand switched off the hologram. Ackbar looked at the sensor screens that showed the TIE fighters pulling away. He turned to his XO, who stood staring at him in utter shock. “Now, Captain,” he told her. “Let us begin.”
* * *
ABOARD THE STAR DESTROYER ASSERTER
Admiral Onovan looked at the comms officer seated in the comms pit below him. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What are you saying?”
The comms officer swallowed. “A-as I said, sir. We received only a single short transmission from Unrelenting. Captain Vald stated simply he and his crew have been ‘neutralized’ and that we should not count on him further in this engagement.”
Onovan looked apoplectic. He looked at his XO, but Captain Dhosgrath had no answers for him. “What the blazes…get him on comms again!”
“Sir, I can’t. Home One is now coming around the planet and is jamming our transmissions. Even if we drop our own jamming—”
“Emergency Blackout Protocols, then! Signal the Judgment, tell her to continue the pursuit that the Unrelenting’s captain failed utterly at.” He muttered, “That ought to get Durric excited.”
* * *
ABOARD THE ALLIANCE STAR DESTROYER JUDGMENT
Indeed, it did excite Captain Durric. For although radio transmissions were being blocked, Asserter had gone to Blackout Protocols and was now sending across light signals in code. The message was clear: Move to engage against the Alliance star cruiser. Show no mercy. Prosecute the enemy to the ends of the galaxy if you must.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Durric grinned savagely and said to helm, “Prepare a microjump to these coordinates.” Durric was once a navigations officer and had worked his way up, and so he knew how to suss out calculations and form precision jumps and come up behind his enemy. He was renowned for it at Academy, and it had set him apart in wargames of this nature.
Judgment corrected her course and committed herself to three microjumps, first around the farthest moon of Hoth, then coming back towards the planet to come up behind where Home One’s course was estimated. Judgment’s sensor crew was well versed in tracking large moving targets. Only last month they had prosecuted a Rebel star cruiser called the Everlasting Hope across Cademimu Sector and torn it asunder. Durric had smiled when he saw the bodies being vented out into space, and he had left all of them in orbit as grim reminder to all the Rebels there.
After the last microjump, they came right up behind the tail end of Home One, about two kilometers away. Spitting distance in cosmic terms. “All guns online!” Durric cried. “Plot me a firing solution with compensation for drift—our target is hedging towards the planet.” He wondered at that. Home One was moving dangerously close to Hoth itself, practically skipping off its stratosphere.
If she maintains this velocity and trajectory, she’ll reach the point of no return, her mass will be pulled in by Hoth and she’ll go crashing into the planet, no matter her speed.
It was possible Ackbar was trying to borrow speed from the planet’s gravitational pull, going for a slingshot orbit to whip around the planet, but that would hardly matter at this point with Judgment right on her tail.
But it could work, he thought. In lieu of activating engines. The Mon Calamari could have a solid plan here. The orbit could bring her back around to the planet’s nightside again, where she could once again hide the way she did from Unrelenting, and whatever trick she pulled there could also ensnare us.
Captain Durric had a choice to make. Risk letting Home One escape to the dark side of the planet, or allow Judgment to dive towards the planet and skim the stratosphere in pursuit. He could try to microjump away again, then come back at the planet from another angle, but by that time Home One may have gotten away.
I will not let that happen.
“Forward,” he said. “All engines full. Helm, I’m sending you a new vector that should keep us in her tail, where her guns are weakest.”
“Yes, sir.”
Captain Durric smiled just as he had when he took down Everlasting Hope. He smiled because he saw the underbelly of Home One was heating up as it dragged across Hoth’s upper atmosphere. If she did not pull up soon, she would never be able to get clear enough to activate her hyperdrive safely, and yet if she pulled up, she would be heading directly into the gigantic asteroids that Durric now saw coming right at her. A huge planetesimal that would prove destructive to Hoth’s entire ecosystem if it were to plummet towards the planet had just come out of the darkness ahead like a leviathan from the deep. Durric had also included this in his course calculations.
And that was not all. Not only was the planetesimal going to skim right above Home One, preventing it from climbing for space anytime soon, but a cloud of asteroids was coming right at the Rebel ship. Ackbar was doomed.
“Put our forward deflectors up to maximum,” he said confidently. “Reroute all power from rear deflectors to forward, I want to make sure none of those asteroids gets through.”
In a matter of seconds, it was done. And that’s when the trap was set.
“Captain Durric!” a sensor specialist called out.
He turned to the officer, who was ashen-faced and wide-eyed. The hairs on Durric’s arms stood on end. “What is it?”
“Sir…there’s something coming up behind us. Something small. Fast. It’s…” He looked up at Durric. “It fits the profile of an A-1A warhead.”
Durric blinked. “Warhead?”
“Yes, sir. It’s coming up behind us! Its rockets were not flaring, so we didn’t sense it, it showed up as just another one of the asteroids. But its rockets have flared up now and it has altered course. If it wasn’t for its self-altered course, I never would have spotted it.”
Durric had to think. An A-1A warhead? Then he remembered, nearly an hour ago when Home One first appeared in the system, she fired a single warhead out to the middle of nowhere, somewhere close to the planet. Everyone had assumed it was some failed or aborted attempt at hitting an Imperial ship, a faulty targeting system, but Durric now saw the truth. Ackbar had fired it on a trajectory to borrow speed from Hoth, just as Home One was now doing, allowing it to shut off its engines, probably assuming some elliptical-type orbit and vanishing amid all the incoming asteroids.
That’s why he hid out at the edge of the system for so long before coming in. He probably had spy drones out here the whole time, tracking the asteroid clusters, waiting for a good time to close in on Hoth, waiting for the perfect asteroid cluster formation. And then…
Durric realized all of this in the last few seconds. Even as he screamed, “Revert power back to rear shields!” he knew it was going to be too late. Even before Ackbar had lured Unrelenting into his trap, he had fired off a single warhead to set a trap for another unsuspecting Star Destroyer later. He could not have known whom he would spring it on, but it was there, ready to go, ready to detonate on any Star Destroyer that tried to follow him.
And now he had led Judgment into a declining orbit, from which there was no return without her engines and thrusters. A declining orbit that had put them on course with incoming asteroids, guaranteeing that Judgment’s captain would reroute all power to forward deflectors, leaving his tail end exposed.
“ALL POWER TO REAR DEFLECTORS NOW!” he bellowed.
A second later the warhead detonated at their engines, just as the shields were coming up. Some of the blast was absorbed by the shields, but most of it got through before the shields could fully cohere, and Judgment rocked hard and the lights went out on the bridge for a moment. He hollered for a damage report and heard someone yell that all their engines had gone out.
And now they were on a declining orbit. With Hoth. They were dead without thrust and falling. Durric pushed past screaming and panicking sensor officers and looked at the main navigation screen. With mounting dread, he ran the calculations.
Stars above and below, help us.
Judgment was now in a decaying orbit. Home One was already pulling out of her dive, having taunted Durric into a doomed chase. The Star Destroyer was a rudderless pile of steel, now trapped by Hoth’s gravity. In his estimation, Durric felt that Judgment would collide with the surface of Hoth within half an hour. Not enough time to repair the damage to her engines and thrusters.
Staring agape at his sensor screens, fighting to stand against the multiple concussive shockwaves through the ship, he uttered two unbelievable words. “Abandon ship!”
* * *
ABOARD THE ALLIANCE FLAGSHIP HOME ONE
Captain Kayliss had never heard the bridge of Home One erupt into so much cheering. She even found herself smiling, despite trying to remain professional. They still had a job to do and there were likely still more fleets on the way, and their task was far from finished. Yet it was impossible not to be caught up in the pride of what their admiral had just done.
Remembering herself, she checked her sensors at her station. Sensors were no longer jammed and a communiqué had just come in belatedly from the Shadow of Alderaan. “Admiral, I believe we have incoming. From the Empire’s Second and Fifth Fleet.” She was suddenly crestfallen, all her joy from the two amazing back-to-back victories evaporating in an instant. “We’re going to be severely outnumbered.”
“That’s fine,” Ackbar said, his chair swiveling around to face the tactical display. He spoke as calmly as a professional sabacc player who knew the night was far from over and he could still lose it all, but he was used to these stakes. “We merely needed to give an opening for our people on Hoth to escape. Now they have it. The only thing we can do now is prolong that opening.” He turned to the helmsman and said, “Set a course to engage Asserter. We are going to have to retreat soon enough, that cannot be helped, but the Asserter will feel our sting before we go.”
He looked at Kayliss.
“Wouldn’t want the Asserter’s admiral to feel left out of today’s games.”
Kayliss couldn’t help it. She laughed. So did the rest of the bridge crew.
* * *
ABOARD THE STAR DESTROYER ASSERTER
“Sir, Judgment is showing critical damage to all main engines and she is now locked in a decaying orbit with Hoth,” the sensor officer called out, his voice brimming with disbelief. “They’re going to crash into the planet within the hour.”
But none could have looked more disbelieving, Captain Dhosgrath thought, than his admiral did in that very moment. “Prepare…” Admiral Onovan’s voice caught in his throat. He cleared it and started again. “Prepare to engage. Battle stations. Fire crews and damage crews on standby. Deploy all TIE fighter squadrons. Immediately.”
Dhosgrath watched both fear and rage fighting for supremacy on the admiral’s face. He swallowed. He had never had such doubt about their chances of victory.
* * *
The two ships came within kissing range. The battle was an intense shower of red and green turbolasers that melted energy shields and slashed whole chunks of hull off of both ships and sent them tumbling out into the void as superheated slag, which first burned in an incandescent glow, from white to red, and finally to black.
Home One slashed across Asserter, coming at her abeam and belching dozens of lines of turbolasers across the starboard hull. Asserter’s guns were no less cruel, shattering energy shields and ripping open a line across Home One’s belly that vented untold gases out into space. The TIE fighters found themselves going up against a well-organized stream of anti-squadron fire. The deluge decimated them, and from afar they looked like insects disintegrating against an invisible electrical field.
The X-wings joined in the fray, having hidden all this time behind asteroids and waiting to ambush.
It lasted several minutes, then Fifth Fleet arrived and gave pursuit of Home One, which was already moving out-system. The X-wings were called back into Home One’s hangar bay, none had been destroyed but almost all were damaged.
Meanwhile, almost forgotten, an empty Star Destroyer named Judgment went blistering into Hoth’s atmosphere, just as Ageless Void, Namyr and Kevv were beginning their ascent.
* * *
HIGH ABOVE HOTH
ABOARD THE IDT-7 DROPSHIP
“Here they come!” Namyr called. She had swiveled her bucket seat around to monitor one of the other sensor stations in the cockpit. When she saw the dots on radar representing incoming TIEs, she felt like this was it. The Shadow of Alderaan had failed to find a way to get them out.
It’s up to us.
“They’re coming in fast,” she said. “Three marks at two-one-seven.”
“I need two people on guns!” Kevv shouted.
“On it!” Ageless said, already unbuckling from his seat. Namyr joined him in the jog down the corridor, into the troop bay and passing the cluster of droids still watching the IDT-7’s bound pilot and copilot. “You’ve got starboard?”
“Yeah,” Namyr said, taking up the starboardside gun and opening up the bay door. The cold wind of Hoth came roaring into the bay, and a killing chill sliced into her cheeks. She glanced over her shoulder to see Ageless doing the same on the portside bay door, manning the mounted laser cannon.
Namyr did a quick check of her gun’s controls. Both of the mounted laser cannons were meant for suppression fire against ground forces that were trying to hinder the troops that the dropship was dumping into hot zones. They were not really meant to take out TIE fighters, though she was willing to bet they could do it. But the cold was cutting into her eyes and the clouds all around them made it impossible to see. They could hear the whine of the approaching TIEs, and it was easy in that moment for Namyr to imagine that this was it. She would die here, and she would never see Ash again. Indeed, Ash would never even know what happened to her…
To blazes with that, Namyr thought. Get that thought out of your head, Namyr, and focus!
Namyr thought she heard someone shout at her. She turned and saw R-3PO stepping up beside her, having to put his face next to her ear so she could hear him above the roaring wind. “Master Agelezzzz Void told me to tell you to put on the headset!”
Namyr looked down. Hanging from one of the fire controls was indeed a headset, which she put on and could instantly hear the communication going on between Ageless and Kevv. They were coordinating their actions for an attack.
“Get us above the cloud line,” Ageless said. “At least then we can see them. They’ll have better targeting computers, so this cloud cover isn’t going to confuse them for long, not once they’re in range.”
“Uh, you sure about that?” Kevv said. “Once we’re above the clouds, there’s no cover left.”
“Trust me. At this range, the clouds are meaningless.”
“Mordenta?”
Namyr thought about it. Ageless was probably right, and he likely had better knowledge of TIE sensors. “Do it, Kevv.”
He sounded reluctant. “Okay. Doing it. Hang on.”
Suddenly, the dropship pulled up above the cloud line and they could see the sun clearly.
Namyr’s hands already felt frozen solid to the laser cannon’s controls. Her injured hand, the one Ageless had stabbed through only hours ago when they first met, was suddenly throbbing with intense pain. The water in her eyeballs felt like it was freezing. She kept having to blink and wipe her eyes to see.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Ageless said. His voice came in crisp over the headset, despite the wind. “Mordenta and I will harass them, we’ll try to chase them towards the front of the ship to you, Kevv. You have two forward-mounted guns. They’re not as powerful as an X-wing’s and they have even less range, but the controls should be familiar enough.”
“How do I zero them?” Kevv asked.
“Those controls are on your left, right beside the auto-fire controls.”
“Got it.”
Namyr knew a little about X-wings, and she knew that to “zero” any forward-mounted guns was to adjust their angle so that they both converged at a certain point ahead of the ship. A zero-point was the point at which the lasers converged on each other after they were fired. An X-wing’s zero-point convergence was typically a hundred to two hundred meters, but it was adjustable and different for every pilot.
Namyr stood there freezing, listening to the wind, to the engines, to Ageless and Kevv coordinating—
—when suddenly the trio of TIEs came rising up from the clouds a hundred and fifty meters out and came screaming right at her, their lasers firing. She yelled, “Contact!” and immediately opened fire on them. The laser cannon vibrated in her hands and sent hot red lances skimming across the tops of the clouds. She missed, but the TIEs respected her enough to disperse, one of them dipping under the dropship and back into the clouds, while one headed to stern and the other headed around to the cockpit.
“Got one coming your way, Ageless! The others went below and behind us—”
“I see him!” Ageless called, and she both heard and felt the juddering of his laser cannon as it opened fire. “Tagged one, but he’s not out. Trailing smoke. Should be easier to spot if he comes around to you Kevv.”
“Got him in my sights,” the Duros called. “He’s got a partner with him, they’re coming right at us. Prepare for evasive maneuvers! Banking to starboard!”
Namyr hung on to her weapon as the dropship banked sharply. As a rule, dropships weren’t highly maneuverable, but they had lots of armor and IDT-7s in particularly had shields, so when the green turbolaser shots came in from the TIEs, she watched as they dispersed just two meters away from the hull. But the turbolasers went out with a splash, disintegrating into a dazzling display that left her blind for a moment.
She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and heard the forward-mounted cannons erupt as Kevv chased a TIE away.
“Missed! One of them dipped below the clouds again! Watch out back there, keep your eyes on those targeting computers!”
Namyr opened her eyes. Dazed, Kevv’s words slowly soaked into her brain until she understood what she had missed. Targeting computers. The cannon she was firing was not a turret, but it nevertheless came with a special targeting computer that showed contacts on a small green screen. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? Probably because most mounted cannons did not have those kinds of targeting apparatuses, and she hadn’t even thought to look for it.
While the dropship went through another evasive maneuver and Ageless chased another TIE away, Namyr took a moment to familiarize herself with the computer and its specialized firing controls. There were stutter-fire settings, as well as a special link option—this allowed it to communicate with all other targeting systems from each weapon aboard the dropship.
“Mordenta, you awake?” Ageless shouted over her headset. “One just went around to your side and you didn’t fire!”
“Hang on a minute, I’m…” She fiddled with the controls a moment longer. “There.” She now had a linked weapon—this way, whenever any of their weapons locked onto a target, if the attack was successful, it would relay the exact speed and trajectory of the target to the other guns immediately, allowing their linked weapons to all fire at the place in the sky where the target was estimated to move to next.
Ageless must have noticed something change about his weapon, perhaps the computer chimed or something, because he said, “What did you just do?”
She explained it to him, and then Ageless said, “Nice. Quick thinking. All right, let’s see here…” After a few seconds she heard and felt the judder of his cannonfire, and immediately her computer fed her the information from Ageless’s cannon. He had grazed his target, but it was enough. She pointed her cannon down into the clouds, at the exact spot the computer estimated the TIE would be in five, four, three, two…
Now!
She squeezed the trigger, and her laser cannon gave a full-throated roar. A second later, she saw a bright bloom of light from inside the dense, dream-like fog all around them. The boom followed not even a second later, and she knew she had hit it.
“Got one!”
“Yeah, I just saw it disappear off scopes,” Ageless said. “Good job. Let’s do it again.”
And they did. The second TIE went down after it came right at them in an almost suicidal run, straight out of the clouds and hitting them across their starboard side. Kevv shouted that there was a problem with their shields, they were wavering, he wanted to reroute power from other systems but there was a problem with a power coupling in the engine room.
“Maybe something came loose when that grenade blew up, after all!” he called.
Namyr looked over her shoulder for an astromech. She saw the R4 and shouted, “Get to the engine room! Now! We’ve got a problem with a power coupling!”
The little droid twittered obediently and rolled off at top speed.
The TIE came back at them with another attempt, but this time Namyr was ready. She clenched her jaw and set her gaze on it, and fired a test shot to lead it, getting it to bank away to a more predictable direction. She led it some more, then opened fire again and stung its ion engine as it banked away. Kevv’s targeting computer linked to hers, was fed the data, and he immediately banked hard to port to line his forward-mounted guns where he needed and fired. They all hung on for dear life while the dropship’s engines screamed and they both heard and felt the percussive wave of the destroyed TIE. Close enough it was almost deafening. They flew through some of the debris field and a hot piece of metal went flying past Namyr’s head and embedded itself in one of the lockers.
“Pilot ejected!” Ageless shouted. “I see him going down. One more left.”
“Not anymore,” Kevv called into their headsets. It sounded like he was chuckling. “The last one’s had enough, he’s shooting up, climbing for orbit. Think we should do the same?”
“I’d say this is our only chance,” Ageless said. “He’s clearing out because he’s alone, but he knows about where we are now. He’ll come back with buddies.”
“Agreed,” Namyr said. “Close all bay doors, cycle up life-support and prepare for entry into vacuum. Arfour! How’s that power coupling coming?”
She heard a squeal from the back, and R-3PO peeked his head out from the engine room and said, “Arfour sayzzz he thinks the problem is more serious than anticipated. It wasn’t just a power coupling that wazzzz hit, it was also life-support. All air-recyclers are offline and are not likely to come back online without the appropriate replacement partzzzzzz.”
Namyr felt her heart sink. “How bad is it?”
“If we close all doors now, and we climb into vacuum, we’ll probably only have about twelve minutes of breathable air left before we suffocate. Or, that is, all organics aboard will suffocate.”
She bit out a curse. “Kevv, Ageless, we’ve got problems!”
In just a few minutes, Kevv had put the dropship on autopilot and begun their ascent. But now they all convened at the back of the ship to listen to R4’s damage assessment. Their faces were all dour. Ageless turned to the bound and gagged pilot and copilot, and asked them if there were any spare parts that could help with the repairs. He let them know of their dire situation, that if they went into space, they were all going to suffocate, and if they stayed on Hoth they were all going to freeze to death. Neither of the pilots had any ideas on how to fix the damaged life-support.
“That’s it, then,” Ageless said. “Even if we make it to space, we won’t have enough air to get us to a friendly Rebel ship. The flight time would be too great. We’re going to have to find someplace to hide, back on the ground.”
Kevv shook his head morosely. “But that last TIE got away and the pilot knows exactly where we are. His pals will be along, and it won’t just be three of them this time. It’ll be ten or twenty or thirty. They’ll zero in on us and that’ll be that.”
They all stood there feeling the ship vibrate as its engines continued pushing them towards orbit. Namyr massaged her injured hand. It had taken all her effort to pry it loose from the laser cannon’s controls, so tightly had she gripped them, and a tremendous amount of ice had, unbeknownst to her, collected around her fingers. “We have to think of some way.”
“There is no way,” Kevv said. “This is what they call the ‘savage math’ of combat. Sometimes things are just stacked against you too much, sometimes there is nothing left to do but call it a day and—”
“And do what? Kevv, there is no coming back from this. You were right when you said that TIE is bringing its buddies back. You can bet on it. So where can we go?”
“Maybe back to Echo Base?”
“And then what, wait for a bunch of bombers to drop their payload on us and collapse the ice on top of us.”
“She’s right,” Ageless said. “That way is certain death.”
“But so is going into space with only…” he checked his chronometer. “Eight minutes’ worth of atmo left.”
“We fight our way through the fighter screen,” Ageless said. “We get far enough away from the planet and we send out a signal to the Shadow of Alderaan. They’re stationed not too far away, you said?” Namyr nodded. “Then we go into orbit and we get far enough away from whatever jamming the Imperials are causing up there and we send out a signal to the Shadow.”
“What if they don’t come?” asked Kevv.
“They have to,” Namyr said. But even to her own ears it sounded more like wishful thinking than anything else.
She looked over at Ageless, and she saw that he understood the same thing.
“We have to make a decision,” Namyr said.
They both looked at Kevv. The Duros took a long minute to think about it. Finally, he sighed and shrugged. “All right. We’re on a course to hit orbit, anyway. I guess we just…continue.” The face of a Duros was usually unreadable to other beings, but in that moment Namyr thought she saw a haunted look. On Nar Shaddaa, she had seen men being led off to a firing squad for betraying a few high-ranking Hutt lords. Those condemned men had had the same look on their faces.
Hopelessness.
Namyr took a breath. Already the air seemed a little thick, like they were breathing unrecycled air.
“Then let’s get to the cockpit and get ready to send that signal,” Ageless said. He even clapped Kevv on the shoulder companionably. Kevv nodded and led the way.
But something happened when they arrived in the cockpit, all of them quiet and stoic and trying to put on a brave face. Something happened that took them all by surprise. A fireball. It was coming right at them. An enormous Star Destroyer was coming down from orbit, streaking down like the flaming arrowhead of some god’s giant bow. Kevv set a new course to go around it and they watched out the starboardside viewport as the thing came to pieces kilometers away, its mass fighting against itself, collapsing as Hoth’s gravity won the battle. It broke apart and they watched in stunned silence as it roared towards the planet’s surface.
“We should get well clear of that,” Ageless said. “Might want to kick some extra speed. The mushroom cloud from its reactor alone could—”
Then a scratchy noise came over a comms speaker. Kevv’s hand shot forward and hit the blinking red button, and Namyr thought she had to be dreaming when she heard a familiar voice speaking.
“—calling Mordenta! Answer, Mordenta! This is Mother, aboard a commandeered Sentinel-class shuttle from the Shadow of Alderaan! Please, if you are listening, respond at once! We have a window! Repeat, Ackbar has given us a window to get you out! Please respond!”
From the copilot’s seat, Ageless Void looked back at Namyr. He wore a smile.
Kevv said, “I don’t believe it.” Then he chuckled. “The Force…it smiled on us today.” Then he said something in his native language. Namyr couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like a thank you.
* * *
As Ageless stood at the door of the airlock, nearly gasping for breath as the dropship had reached the limits of its life-support, he figured he knew what was waiting for him on the other side of the door. He glanced to his left at Kevv, who still had his service pistol holstered at his side, and then he looked over at Mordenta, whose blaster pistol was in her hand. They were all sweating, nearly out of air. He imagined again what was waiting for him on the other side of the airlock door.
Ageless had a choice to make. Would he fight it, or allow it to happen? He had never been taken prisoner before and he had been conditioned to kill himself before allowing it to happen. The conditioning was deep, even now. Parts of his body and mind were forever altered by his experience in the Nest, some of those experiences he wasn’t able to recall, but they had had a lasting effect on him.
He looked again at the Duros on his left and the Human on his right. He sensed no enmity from them. Such enmity had been abundantly clear when they first met, but it had evaporated somewhere inside this dropship, at some point high above the surface of Hoth when they had depended on one another to survive.
Yet again, the conditioning told him he must fight or die.
For the Empire. For his family. For his honor as a soldier and a servant to the people of the galaxy. He could not side with rebels and terrorists. He could not.
Behind them, the droids all gathered eagerly to get off this dropship. R-3PO was chatting endlessly with 2-1B and R4. Ageless glanced back at them, figured he could use at least one of them for cover…
Beside him, Mordenta seemed to tense. She spoke softly without looking at him. “I won’t let them hurt you.”
He glanced sidelong at her.
She looked directly at him. “You pulled me back into the ship when you didn’t have to. You could’ve just told Kevv that Sark killed me. Or killed him and taken over the ship.”
Ageless said nothing. He prepared himself to kill her and Kevv and assault the crew of the Sentinel-class shuttle on the other side of the airlock. It was his mission. It was the way the Nest had forged him and the way the Kingdom had utilized him. For if the Rebel Alliance won, there would only be more chaos, more death, like what he had seen when his parents had been on their way back to Dathomir…
“My name is Namyr,” she said.
He looked at her.
“You don’t have to tell me yours, but that’s mine. Namyr Abjura. I have someone I’m trying to get back to. Someone I love. Her name is Ash. Do you have someone you’re trying to get back to?”
Ageless could think of only one person. “Yes.”
“Then let me help you. Do what they say, and I promise I will not let them hurt you.” She added, “And I will lend you the resources to get you Zumter.”
Zumter.
The airlock finished pressurizing. The door made a sharp click. It started to open. This was it.
Ageless Void turned and faced the armed Rebel officers on the other side of the door and looked at the blasters aimed at him. And raised his hands in surrender.
At the center of these officers was a Mirialan with dark-green skin and complex facial tattoos woven across her face in incomprehensible designs. In her hands she had a DL-44 blaster pistol. One of her officers stepped forward with binders. “Ageless Void, I am Commander Fera of the Alliance Intelligence Network. For the assassinations of multiple of our leaders, I am taking you into holding. You are hereby detained at our leisure, and will remain so until you give us your full cooperation—”
“We need to get to Cloud City,” he interrupted, holding his wrists out to be bound. “As soon as possible. Commander Zumter of the Kingdom is waiting there. If we’re lucky, he’s still there.”
* * *
HOTH
The pain was thorough. He barely remembered who he was. He was freezing, and numb. Every part of him throbbed and ached and screamed at him. Then, fire! Flames moved through his veins and he felt a dizzying rush, like falling, or rising too fast, or both. Kolto injections, he thought. Somewhere at the back of his mind he remembered what those felt like.
Someone slapped him. Gently.
Sark’s eyes fluttered opened. Then closed. When they opened again, he was somewhere familiar. The infirmary of an Imperial shuttle. He looked around at the medical droids as they slowly lowered him into a bacta tank. One of them slipped a breathing mask over his face.
He slipped into sleep, and dreamt of failure. And a reckoning.