28: The Battle Between Light and Dark
Namyr prepped herself by adding ankle holsters to her body, hiding a pair of holdout pistols, as well as a couple of stun grenades, all of which she found inside one of the lockers in the crew’s quarters. She ran a hand over her recently shaved head, trying to think if she had missed anything. They had their commlinks back and she kept calling up to the Midra’hara, but so far had received no reply.
Ageless had his WESTAR-34 back, the same one he had taken from one of the bounty hunters the day before. They hadn’t had time to get all their clothes back, so they were still wearing the white shirts, gray pants, and black boots that were standard-issue for prisoners at the holding tower.
“You ready?” he said. “This is the final push.”
“I’m ready,” she said, checking her pistols one last time.
Calrissian joined them in the crew’s quarters, and looked around curiously at all the damage done by Ageless and Zumter’s battle. But he made no comment on it. “I’ve got to rendezvous with Boba Fett. He’s got Han in carbonite and he’s taking him to his ship, the Slave I, which is on the East Platform. Now, here’s where it gets tricky, we can’t just ambush them all at once, not with Fett there. But once Fett splits away from us at the Main Concourse Hall and heads towards his ship, there is a place we can hit them. It’s where all the main corridors intersect.”
Namyr nodded. “I saw how they ambushed Solo and the others,” she said. “Some of the stormtroopers were hiding inside small doorways, looked like many were custodial rooms. Are there any like that in the Main Concourse Hall?”
Calrissian nodded. “There is. Is that how you want to do it?”
“Just direct us where to go,” she said. “We’ll do the rest.”
“I will guide them,” Lobot told his boss, stepping into the room with them. “And I should have gathered more security guards by then, and have them meet us there to converge on the stormtroopers.”
Ageless nodded. “Excellent. And from there we get to the Falcon.”
“You get to the Falcon,” Calrissian said. “I have a friend to save. I owe Han that much for getting him into this mess.”
“You’re going after Fett?”
“I am. But you get Zumter to the Falcon. Its hyperdrive has been on the fritz but my engineers were told to fix it. I have their word it was done. But here’s the thing: there may be Imperials on that platform when you get there, so I suggest you hide if you can get on board. There are smuggling compartments in the floor of the Falcon, you can hide in there.”
“Got it,” Namyr said.
“But shouldn’t one of us go with you?” Ageless said. “You may need it. Boba Fett is one dangerous grig. And if either the princess or the Wookiee don’t make it back, we may not be going anywhere.”
Lobot said, “I have calculated the odds of every possible combination of teams and threat vectors—I suggested this one to Lando. Your team of three has unit cohesion—that is, you are all familiar with one another, and have coordinated to get this far, and know how to work together. You also have similar skill sets, being spies. Lando and myself have long worked together. You three secure the Falcon on Platform three-two-seven, eliminate any resistance you find there, and then hide inside the ship and wait for us. After we ambush the stormtroopers and Imperial officers, I will take them either to the holding tower or lock them inside the carbon-freezing chamber, whichever is most accessible at that time. Then, you all will escape in the Millennium Falcon and I will use the Hard Leaf to escape.”
“The Hard Leaf?” Namyr said.
“Yes. Its life-support can only support one lifeform while in space. All its other systems are nearly optimal. If I am the only one on board, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Kevv’s voice came over the intercom. “Coming up on the Concourse Building, guys! Starting the landing cycle now! Get ready to move!”
Calrissian looked at Namyr. “Any word from your friends in orbit?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve been checking. So far no response.”
Calrissian’s face clouded over. She didn’t think he suspected another double-cross, not yet, but it was probably cooking at the back of his mind. I would be suspicious of us, too, if I were him. But Namyr really had tried, several times, to contact the Midra’hara, but no one was answering. She was worried it did not bode well.
“Landing in ten seconds!” Kevv called back.
Namyr nodded. “Let’s do it.”
As they walked out of the room, she had a moment of introspect where she looked at Ageless Void and saw his stern, all-business look and everything hit her at once. It had nearly escaped her that just days ago she had been sent to capture him, and he had tried to kill her. She was struck by a strong sense of unreality when she thought that just moments ago, they had been planning to fight and die together inside the holding tower. Commander Fera had sent her and the other Rebel agents to look after Ageless, but he really did seem committed to their cause.
He could have killed Zumter a dozen times by now. But he hasn’t. He’s keeping up his end of the deal.
She felt like saying something to him before they landed, some way of saying thank you, but before she could, the Hard Leaf was already setting down and the ramp was dropping and they were filing out. Lando went left, through a door that would take him to rendezvous with Boba Fett and the Imperials, all of whom were getting ready to escort their prisoners somewhere. Lobot led Namyr, Ageless, and Kevv through a door on the right, down a corridor, then up a turbolift, then straight to the Main Concourse Hall, and they took up positions.
Namyr hid inside a closet that held a droid power station, and directly across the hall from her, Ageless and Kevv squeezed into an empty storage room.
Namyr shut the door and listened. Lobot had told them he would signal them on their commlinks when it was time. She checked her commlink to make sure it was on—nothing worse than forgetting to do something so simple, that’s how many missions were blundered—and just as soon as she checked it, a voice came through, slightly scrambled. “—walker inbound! Help him if you can, but do not risk losing the asset! Skywalker is likely walking into some kind of trap, but he will have to take care of himself if you can’t get to him! Also, be advised, Horizon Lost may be in play! I repeat, Horizon Lost may have come down in Vader’s ship, and he may be in Cloud City!” It was Fera, finally coming through clear.
Horizon Lost? That’s not possible. He’s dead. Has to be.
Namyr whispered, “Mother? This is Mordenta. Do you read? Over.”
“Mordenta, thank the Force! I read you loud and clear. We’re speaking to you through a rerouted satellite signal, trying to keep ourselves hidden from that Super Star Destroyer. So if comms go out, it means they figured out what we’re doing. Where are you? Give me a sit-rep.”
Namyr rushed through everything that had happened, in as abbreviated form as she could, using military code and slang as shortcuts whenever possible. And when she was finished, Commander Fera said, “Understood. We will help with the evac process any way we can. In fact, we may already have something under way. I would tell you what it is, but just in case this channel is already compromised, I probably shouldn’t. Just tell Calrissian that we are doing everything we can.”
“I will,” Namyr said. And I hope that will be enough.
She was just about to ask Commander Fera what she had been talking about before, when she mentioned Skywalker, but before the words came out, she heard blasterfire. It was muffled, probably far away, down some other corridor or other.
Calrissian.
Namyr suddenly feared Kevv had been right about their bad luck, and that the Baron Administrator had already been killed in some exchange. If that were the case, this whole thing could be blown already. She closed her eyes, and tried to channel the Force, the way her grandmother once spoke about it, like it permeated all things, bound all living beings, and that there was a Light Side that fought back against the Dark.
Namyr pretended she believed that, and once more prepared herself to die.
* * *
THE CLOUD CITY MINING OPERATIONS ANNEX, GAMMA WING [LOGISTICS]
Eight security guards contacted. Chances of success increased to 73.181%. Lobot sat at the center of his data display room, collating. His eyes were shut, and he was running through all the communiqués being transmitted directly to his cybernetic implant. That same implant was being pushed to its limit as he fought to erase all of his boss’s records, leaving no trace of the ships Calrissian owned, or the places where he had hidden away stashes of credits. Once they left here, there could be no trail of crumbs leading the Empire to either Lobot or his boss.
18,047,911,091,866 lines of code erased so far. Ought to be sufficient. I can now leave the false records in a data-dump.
Lobot inserted fragmented files into the systems, false data that would lead the Empire’s intelligence units on wild bantha chases across the galaxy, thinking they had figured out where Lando Calrissian had run to.
In the middle of all this collating, Lobot suddenly received a call from Lando on their private channel. It came directly from Lando’s administrator’s wrist-link. Lobot opened his eyes. He had received the greenlight.
He sent a silent message to the datapads of all eight of the security guards that had agreed to help them ambush the Imperials. The message said only: CONVERGE ON THE MAIN CONCOURSE HALL.
Lobot turned and left the room. In his right hand, he held a SE-14r light repeating blaster, similar to Lando’s, only with modifications that linked the sights to his brain. Lobot left the Annex for the last time, already planning nine hundred steps ahead, thinking of what ventures he and his boss would get into next.
PREDICTION: Ties to the Rebellion will be essential in the near future. Better start making the Alliance happy now. This rescue is likely to go over well with cooler heads such as Mon Mothma.
* * *
THE MAIN CONCOURSE HALL
Ageless heard the buzz from his commlink, and prepped himself. The hallway outside was quiet, as though everyone had been evacuated. Then, he heard footsteps. And the precise, clipped pace of stormtoopers and Imperial officers.
A second buzz. Ageless put the commlink to his ear, and heard Lobot’s calm voice: “Execute.”
Ageless smirked. He still uses military vernacular.
He slid the door open and rushed out, blaster drawn and aimed at the nearest stormtrooper. Kevv slid out from behind him and put his blaster to an officer’s head. Across the hall, Namyr rushed out and aimed her weapon at the stormtrooper commander. Lobot and eight security guards had them utterly surrounded. Calrissian was at the center of the stormtrooper squad, along with Princess Leia and Chewbacca, with a golden protocol droid strapped to his back.
The troopers froze.
Calrissian started taking blasters out of the troopers’ hands, and handed a pair to Princess Leia. To Lobot, he muttered, “Put them in the holding tower. And keep it quiet. Move.”
Lobot nodded wordlessly and led the prisoners away. He gestured to Ageless, Kevv, and Namyr to follow. They were halfway down the next corridor when Ageless thought he heard an argument sparking between Chewbacca, Princess Leia, and Calrissian, but they were already out of sight and he had no intention of getting between their dispute. Let them work it out.
Lobot did not seem to want to deal with it, either. He called over his shoulder, “We have to hurry. There is a blaster fight going on somewhere behind us, a Rebel operative is loose in the station and he exchanged fire with Boba Fett.”
“A Rebel operative?” Namyr said. “You mean Skywalker?”
“I’m not sure. I wasn’t there. But it doesn’t matter, keep moving. Fast!”
Ageless thought that was strange. Why was Namyr asking about Skywalker? He shook his head and pushed it aside.
Lobot led them back out to the platform where the Hard Leaf was parked, and said to the security guards, “Take them aboard.” Lobot watched the stormtroopers be led onto the YT-2400, then turned to Ageless. “We’re going to put them somewhere they cannot give us trouble. It will only buy us a few more minutes, but every minute counts. Get Zumter, and take him to the Falcon.”
Ageless nodded. He and Namyr went aboard the Hard Leaf and grabbed up Zumter, who was just now waking up from Kevv’s stun beam. Ageless dragged him out in a fireman’s carry. As they passed Lobot, who was about to close the ramp, he said, “Good luck.”
“Luck never has anything to do with anything,” said the cyborg, just as the ramp sealed shut.
The corridors were eerily silent. It was as though the Empire had purposely closed off certain hallways and intersections. They came to various doors that were locked, and had to be sliced through. Namyr made short work of those doors with her rig. But other doors were left suspiciously open, doors that led all the way from the carbon-freezing chamber to the main landing platforms.
Namyr seemed to read his mind. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is a honey pot.”
“Yeah,” Ageless said. “Same.”
“Sorry?” Kevv said, running alongside him. “Honey pot?”
“A lure. Certain doors were locked, and others were left open, as if to lure someone in a certain direction.”
“Mother said Luke Skywalker was here, and she thought he was being led into a trap.”
“Skywalker?” Ageless said, astonished.
“Yes. Didn’t you hear when Mother called us from the Midra’hara?”
“No,” he said. “When did that happen?
“While we were waiting for Lobot’s signal to ambush the stormtroopers.”
Ageless shrugged. “Somehow I didn’t receive that transmission. Bespin’s radiation spikes, probably.”
Thinking about all the doors they had passed, and how the only unlocked ones naturally led to the carbon-freezing chamber, it had him uneasy. Now Ageless was bothered by this strange feeling, which was fast becoming a certainty. And when they came to Platform 327 and the door opened and they were looking out at the Millennium Falcon, with the sun setting behind it, he paused. He looked back down the corridor whence they came.
“Come on!” Kevv said. “We made it! We’re here! Let’s go!”
“Ageless?” Namyr said, as if sensing his change in demeanor.
“Get Zumter out,” he said, handing the spymaster over to her. Zumter was still half unconscious.
She took Zumter and threw him over her shoulder, but looked puzzled. “What are you going to do?”
“Those unlocked doors. Did you see the signs above them? They lead all the way back to the carbon-freezing chamber.”
“So?”
“So, I think we were right about that honey pot. Skywalker is in trouble. Calrissian said they froze Han Solo as a test for someone else. Their plan is going off without a hitch.”
Namyr shrugged. “Well, we can’t help him now. I wish we could, but our orders are to get Zumter clear, especially now that Vader and Horizon Lost are here, we can’t be—”
“What?!”
Namyr looked at him strangely. “Oh, right, I guess if you didn’t hear the message about Skywalker, you didn’t hear that part, either.”
“Sark is here?”
“Fera believes Horizon Lost was on the same shuttle that Vader came down on.”
Ageless felt his gut tighten. “I have to find him.”
“What? Why—”
“If he’s looking for me or Zumter, I need to stall him. He’s a Kingdom operative, he’ll have a plan to locate us, or sabotage us somehow, and he won’t stop chasing me. Not ever. But if he’s here to help Vader capture Skywalker, then it’s a done deal for your Rebel pal. Unless he gets some backup.”
“Then let me come with you.”
“No. You said you had orders to get Zumter out. But those are your orders, not mine.” He held out his hand. Namyr hesitated a moment before shaking it.
“Good luck,” she said. And it looked like she wanted to say more.
“You too. Get Zumter to the Rebellion.”
“I will. I promise. And hey!” she called just as he turned to run back inside. “May the Force be with you.”
Ageless nodded, and bolted for the carbon-freezing chamber.
Back into the empty corridors. A single black protocol droid trotted by, in search of its master. Ageless ran up a set of steps. Heard approaching armored footsteps. Paused at a corner and peeked around. Waited for a dozen stormtroopers to go racing past them. One of them shouted into his radio, “Calrissian and the princess are on their way to level—” Ageless never heard the rest. He watched them go and wished Calrissian the best of luck and hoped he got to Solo in time.
He bolted down another corridor, his pistol up and at the ready.
And as he ran, he heard the Baron Administrator’s voice announce loudly over every intercom in the hallway, “Attention! This is Lando Calrissian! Attention! The Empire has taken control of the city! I advise everyone to leave before more Imperial troops arrive!”
* * *
ABOARD THE MIDRA’HARA
ORBITING BESPIN’S DAY SIDE
Mynyra’s fur rippled like Fera had never seen before. “I’m up!” she called as her holoscreen started superimposing one menu after the other. “I’ve placed mal-code into Executor’s system—I found an unsecured node somewhere in the sensor pit of the bridge! Looks like someone left a station-to-station messenger program up.”
“The Imperials are getting sloppy,” Fera said, leaning over her station. “Denzen? You up?”
“Following Mynyra’s lead, and…yes! I’m up! All right, I’m seeing menu screens for lots of random systems: orbital dynamics, thrust-output monitors, command dials for waste disposal, and twenty or thirty others—”
“Can you get access to tractor beam controls?”
“Think I can,” Denzen said. The Rodian scratched his head, thinking. “But there are a series of firewalls along that node-path. If I do it, I’ll likely be detected in a few seconds.”
“Then save it for when our people are getting out.”
“Message from Mordenta!” Kajjak called.
“Put it on speaker,” Fera said. “Mordenta?”
“Mother, we are secure inside another ride. We are in the Millennium Falcon and waiting for Calrissian to return with Princess Leia and Chewbacca. They’ve gone to find Captain Solo. If they don’t return soon, I will attempt to slice into the controls and lift off myself. That could take some time, though.”
“Hang tight, Mordenta. We’re gonna get you out of there.”
“Commander?” Denzen said. “I’m seeing messages from Imperial High Command going straight to Admiral Piett, who was apparently recently promoted and is now in control of Executor. The messages say they have full authorization to fire on anyone attempting to flee Cloud City.”
The cockpit went silent.
Fera said, “Let’s pray our people are out before then.”
* * *
THE CLOUD CITY MINING OPERATIONS ANNEX, EPSILON WING [CARBONITE FREEZING]
Ageless moved in a crouch, blaster at low-ready, performing sneak-and-peeks around corners. The brightly-lit corridors were smooth, sterile, clean, just like most of Cloud City he’d seen, and the windows looked out across a darkening city with the sun turning into a molten ingot as it slowly descended behind ridges of clouds. Night was soon coming.
The corridors were mostly emptied out by now, but some people still fled, carrying precious items in their arms, armfuls of clothes, cases that were probably filled with family heirlooms or hard credits. A Rodian ran by with her daughter in her arms. A blue R2 unit raced past him in a panic, looking for someone. A pair of Ugnaughts came tearing around a corner, and they were the last people he saw. Now there was nothing but silence. Outside, he saw airspeeders racing across the sky, and shuttles ascending towards orbit.
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When he came to the carbon-freezing chamber, the door wouldn’t open. Ageless performed a slice on the panel, which took only a few seconds, and once it opened, he quickly pocketed the slicer’s rig and stepped inside the freezing chamber, his pistol looking for work. The chamber was filled with a white fog, and his own breath only added to it. At the center of the room was a small lift that took a person up one level. He started towards it. Slowly. He hit the switch and it came down for him. Then he went up one level and found the source of all the fog.
He stood on a black, metal platform. The room was dark, with a few red lights that underlit the stairs on all sides of the freezing pit. To his left was the pit itself, and it was wide open and belching up white, frigid gas. It looked like a geyser. But the gas was coming from above him, as well.
Looks like this is where they froze Solo.
Ageless shivered. But as bad as it was in here, it was nowhere near as bad as Hoth. Compared to that place, this chamber was practically a sauna. He moved through the fog, catching glimpses of the rest of the giant circular chamber all around him. Suddenly, something snaked down from above and he leapt backward, blaster raised, expecting an attack—
But it was nothing. Someone had severed a hose that was dangling from the ceiling, and it was spitting out more gas and spinning around and around wildly. Ageless walked over to a control panel and glanced over the switches. He found the deactivation lever and shut it all down, and the gas came to an abrupt halt, though some of it clung to the floor like the mist in a Gamorr jungle.
Silence fell over the chamber.
And distantly, he heard a strange humming, and grunting, as though people were fighting. He jumped down onto a lower platform and followed the sounds down a cylindrical corridor that lit up as soon as he entered. Motion-activated lights. He moved down the corridor. Suddenly, he heard a crash, and felt a strong gust of wind rush past him, as though pulling him towards the end of the corridor. It was like the time he and the other darktroopers made a combat run above Ryloth and their ship had taken a hit. A giant, gaping hole had been blasted through the trooper bay, and Ageless had almost been sucked out into space. This felt almost exactly like that.
Wind roared past his ears as he made his way to the end of the corridor, where a circular grid opened before him. A sign written in Aurebesh just above the door said it led to the city’s Main Processing Vane. He peeked around the side of the doorway, and immediately leapt back to cover.
Peeking slowly around again, he saw a black cape and a black helmet, and a very familiar silhouette holding a red, humming lightsaber. Now I know what that humming sound was. Lord Vader had his back to Ageless, thankfully, so he had not seen him when he looked around. Now Ageless watched him, as he heard the Dark Lord’s labored mechanical breathing fade. Vader was peering through a window that had been smashed open.
Skywalker. He must’ve flung Skywalker out the window.
That was it, then. He had gotten here too late, and the Rebel was already dead.
But perhaps that wasn’t true, for Vader turned quickly from the window and walked—He never runs anywhere—straight down a stairwell. The overall feeling Ageless got was that the Dark Lord was not finished with his prey. Or maybe he just needs to reclaim the body.
Ageless remained hidden. No need to pick a fight with Vader unless he knew for sure Skywalker was still alive and still in trouble.
After a few minutes, the air pressure inside the Annex finally found equilibrium with the air pressure outside of it, and the wind stopped pulling him. Ageless stepped out from cover and moved with light steps over to the smashed window and peeked out into a wide, expansive corridor that seemed to go down, down, down into an infinite hole. It was enough to be vertigo-inducing. Even for Ageless, who had performed too many airdrops to count, the view was intimidating. He felt a sense of nausea just looking at it. The air smelled metallic coming from out there, and he wondered if it was air that came up from the lower atmospheres of Bespin, processed through these great tunnels to create better air for those on top of the floating city.
Then he panned his head down and to the left, and saw a long, thin metal platform, and a lone Human walking around it, staggering a bit from his fall, with a switched-off lightsaber in his hand.
Skywalker. Ageless felt a sense of unreality, knowing that he was staring at the simple moisture farmer who reportedly destroyed the Death Star with the help of a small band of Rebels. The kid was a symbol, a target for the Empire, and if they could destroy him, they could melt the morale that the Rebel Alliance had gained since his victory at Yavin.
And for some reason, Ageless felt compelled to make sure that didn’t happen.
Ageless turned and headed for the same staircase he had seen Vader going for. He was halfway there, when a shadow moved out from behind a wall of computer towers, and he turned just in time to fire at Sark, who fired first!
Sark hit Ageless in his ribs with a blaster bolt and sent him flying backwards. The white-hot sting of the bolt sent jolts of pain from his ribs to his spine, and Sark dove for cover behind the same computer tower he had emerged from. And Ageless dumped a dozen or more blaster bolts into the tower as he crawled across the floor with one hand. Sparks shot out the tower and it caught on fire. He kept pouring it on, and he heard Sark scream like he’d been hit—one of the blaster bolts must have gone through the tower and struck him. Now Sark ran in a crouch, firing wildly behind his back at Ageless, who made it to the stairs and kept low, continuing to crawl, all the way down until he reached the bottom.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he stood in a new room that was black as pitch, and looked around for any sign of Vader. The Dark Lord was nowhere to be found. Ageless moved through the dark room, groping for the wall, for tables, for any means to navigate. Behind him were the footsteps of his assassin, but Sark sounded like he was having trouble.
I definitely hit him. Lucky shot.
“Ageless!” Sark screamed.
His hands found a blast door. Fingers groped for the panel. He found it. When the door opened, he stepped into a corridor with fractionally more light, and, just at the end of it, he saw Darth Vader suddenly emerge from hiding and attack Luke Skywalker. Their blue and red lightsabers collided in sparks of yellow and white, and the Dark Lord rampaged towards the Rebel like a monster from some campsite horror tale Ageless’s mother would have told him. He tried to rear up his blaster to fire at Vader’s back—
That’s when he realized a blaster bolt had gone clean through his blaster pistol and the thing was totally inoperable.
Footsteps. Behind him.
Ageless turned and saw Horizon Lost—Sark—stepping out from the dark room behind, half-blind, looking around for a target. He threw his useless pistol into Sark’s fast, and then leapt at him.
* * *
PLATFORM 327
Namyr and Kevv had opened up the secret panels in the floor of the Millennium Falcon and dumped Zumter’s bound and unconscious body inside, then jumped down on top of him and slid the panels shut overhead. They waited with blasters in hand and each one sending up prayers that this plan worked.
They heard blasterfire just outside, at the base of the ramp.
“Sithspit,” she whispered. “Sounds like Calrissian brought company with him.”
“We may need to blast our own way out of here,” Kevv whispered back.
Namyr was about to come out of hiding and do just that, by rushing to the Falcon’s cockpit and slicing into the controls and getting the hell out of here. It will take some time. Probably not possible to slice the controls before this ship is crawling with stormtroopers—
But then she heard Calrissian scream, “Leia! Go!” And a few seconds later they heard footsteps racing over their heads, then a Wookiee growling somewhere in the Falcon’s corridors. And it sounded like the voice of a protocol droid shouting and complaining about how the Wookiee was clumsy.
“I thought that hairy beast would be the end of me,” the protocol droid said.
Then an astromech droid twittered something.
“Of course, I’ve looked better!”
Then, they heard the grumble of the Falcon’s engines as she came to life, and felt the shift as she lifted off.
“We made it,” Kevv exulted. “Stars above and below, we actually finally made it!”
Namyr did not want to count their krayt dragons before they had hatched, so she called up to Midra’hara. “Mother, this is Mordenta. We are in the air. Repeat, package is in the air and we are on our way to you!”
Static. She kept repeating the message.
“Mother?”
Static.
“Ageless…” Kevv said. “He didn’t make it back in time. Do you think he’s…?”
Namyr did not want to think about it, she just kept sending up messages to Midra’hara. But in the back of her mind, and in her heart, she kept thinking, Force, guide him. Guide us all.
* * *
ABOARD THE MIDRA’HARA
ORBITING BESPIN’S DAY SIDE
Fera was moving from station to station, coordinating with her intelligence team, when she heard the pilot call out, “We got Phantoms incoming!”
“You know the drill, Captain,” Fera said coolly, though, underneath her emotions were as tortuous as a Kaminoan sea. “The gunners are all sitting in their stations, I take it?”
“Yes, ma’am. Like you told ’em,” the captain said, flipping switches to cue up main drives.
“Good. Have them prepare targeting solutions.”
“Ma’am…they’re Phantoms. They’re going to be almost impossible to spot on scopes. They’re barely showing up now. The only reason I noticed them was the feed of their ion drives against Bespin’s—”
“I know that. Which is why our gunners are going to have to eyeball their targets, and we’re going to fly directly here,” Fera said, pulling up a three-dimensional map of Bespin and feeding him coordinates.
The pilot analyzed the course she had set for them, and then smiled. He knew exactly what she was thinking. “We’re on the dayside, so it could work. Fly up to those coordinates and then double-back towards their last known trajectory, so we’ll have the sun behind us. We’ll be harder for them to eyeball.”
“Right. Let’s just hope Bespin’s radiation spikes continue to hold—it could actually work to our advantage by scrambling some of their targeting computers.”
“May the Force be with us,” the copilot muttered skeptically, reaching forward to push the throttle stick up.
Midra’hara banked hard to the right and Bespin fell away as they flew directly towards the sun. The ship’s handling was not as great as a Phantom’s, but the armor would be superior, as Phantoms had next to none. Midra’hara also had eight retractable laser cannons, two concussion missile launchers with eight missiles each, a retractable ion cannon turret, and two retractable repeating blaster cannon turrets. It also was modified with Relec-4-a, a special spray-on polymer that warped certain electromagnetic signals and made the ship difficult to pick up on passive sensors, and hard for targeting computers unless they were up close.
And those Phantoms may just get that close.
Midra’hara suddenly canted hard as the thrusters went to maximum and the inertial dampers fought to catch up. They were now banking hard to port, coming back around towards the planet and putting the sun directly between them and the last known position of the Phantom squadron.
“They’re coming right at us,” the pilot said. “No subterfuge.”
“Hopefully having the sun behind us will blind them long enough to buy us some time,” Fera said. “How many are converging on us?”
“At least three…no, four!”
“Extend all forward laser cannons and get ready for splash-fire pattern. Tell the gunnery teams to get ready for crisscrossing patterns, chasing maneuvers.” Chasing maneuvers were used by ships whenever they faced faster enemies. Turrets rotated and chased the starfighters off, yet in a way that led them into the firing lane of another turret or cannon, who would try to deflect (or lead) the starfighter by just enough, so that the fighter ran directly into the line of fire.
They never saw the Phantoms. Out the forward view, the space between them and Bespin lit up with Midra’hara’s own red beams of laser cannonfire and Fera watched on scopes as the four tiny dots representing the TIEs jinked and banked sharply. The walls of Midra’hara juddered and they could all hear the thumping of the cannons and turrets as their batteries strained themselves to the point of overheating. It was a real task chasing the fast-moving TIEs, most of which sacrificed armor for the sake of speed.
Fera watched the dance take place, and no matter how hard she prayed, she watched the Phantoms slew and slide out of the way of their fire. Missiles zipped towards the TIEs, but the starfighters evaded them like they were nothing. Then, suddenly, Midra’hara was slammed by a green laser from one of the Phantoms. It bounced off her shields, but the next one, likely timed to be right in behind the first, made it through, and smacked into Midra’hara’s hull and they heard a crash somewhere aft and momentarily the lights in the cockpit went out.
“Evasive action!” Fera cried, but the pilot was already moving to it. He and his copilot worked in a symphony of movements, and the gunners were redlining all their cannons and turrets, and yet not a single Phantom had gone down.
They got hit again. And again.
Life-support had been damaged, and two repair droids were dispatched in the back to deal with it. Fera watched as the Phantoms came around for another attack, moving in both organized and disorganized fashion, keeping it random, keeping it loose and almost playful.
“Kajjak!” Fera yelled upon inspiration. “Any chance you can use the weather satellite we sliced to send a signal scramble?”
Without saying a word, the Twi’lek’s fingers attacked his keyboard and in a few seconds he called out, “I’m in! I can blanket the whole area in radio saturation, that will interfere with their comms—”
“Do it! I don’t want them coordinating with each other!”
“Okay,” he said seconds later. “It’s done!”
Several more minutes passed by, and the TIEs continued to do more attack runs, but Fera noticed their unit cohesion was starting to be a little off. No longer able to communicate with each other, they were having to improvise alone. They were still terribly deadly, but a tad less so, and this began to give Midra’hara’s own gunners an edge, because her gunners could still coordinate by just shouting to one another. One of the Phantoms barely got singed, and then went spiraling away from the fight, lost in the darkness of space somewhere. Another one was completely obliterated. Two left. The third was nicked badly and went sputtering towards the planet, likely looking for an emergency landing on Cloud City before it exploded. They never saw what became of it.
The fourth and final TIE Phantom was determined, and came in on blatantly suicidal runs, and was rewarded for his fierce patriotism to the Empire by slicing the Midra’hara straight abeam, ripping through shields and smashing one of her thrusters. But the pilot had been too cocky, and as he tried to pull up and away from the next attacks against him, Midra’hara’s gunners sliced at his tail and he was chased into an arc that took him directly into the front laser cannons, where he got singed again, sending him directly into the path of a fast-moving missile. He was destroyed in a ball of superheated gases.
Cheers went up in the cockpit, but they were short-lived.
“Commander,” the pilot said, “we’ve got people evacuating from Cloud City! Refugees fleeing the Empire! They’re sending out ‘mercy calls,’ asking for any help. Some of them have been fired upon already!” He looked at her gravely. “Others are getting locked by tractor beams, and being pulled in.”
Fera said, “All right, people! That’s it, the Executor knows for certain we’re here and probably has an idea of where we are. You can bet those Phantoms gave away our position before we scrambled their radios, but we can still do something to help Mordenta and Calrissian and the rest of her team. Get back into those sliced systems of the Executor, and start deactivating as many tractor beams as you can. Remember how I told you to hold off on those systems until we had no other choice? Well, here it is, folks. Let’s neuter those tractor beams!”
“Yes, Commander,” called her intelligence team in near unison.
To the pilot, she said, “Think you can put us in another parabola, switch off our engines, and give us a slingshot around Bespin before the rest of the Empire is up our butts?”
“Ma’am,” he said, activating the Midra’hara’s retractable wings for greater maneuverability, “if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll do a run that makes the Rebels who hit the Death Star proud.”
* * *
THE CLOUD CITY MINING OPERATIONS ANNEX, [MAIN PROCESSING VANE]
Ageless head-butted Sark and heard the satisfying crack of his nose, then raked his horns down across the Human’s face, cutting his brow, cheeks, and lips. Sark growled as he tried to bring his pistol around to blast Ageless in the chest, but Ageless had both hands around his enemy’s wrist in a double control, manipulating his arm around and over his own shoulder to throw him to the ground. Sark stopped him with a shin-press and pushed him backward against the wall.
Ageless fought for control of the pistol, and in the scramble his fingers found the switch to set it for stun, so that at least it wouldn’t kill him if it shot him. And it was a good thing he did, because Sark fired towards his legs, mostly missing and hitting the floor, but a glancing shot of a stun beam still hit his right leg and almost completely numbed it.
Risking freeing up one hand, Ageless slammed Sark in the face with two quick back-fists before Sark dropped the pistol and they went into series of checks, strikes, and counters. Hissing with each strike, Ageless missed every time. His right leg was almost dragging at this point and Sark was fresh—no doubt a bath in a bacta tank had rejuvenated him since their last fight. Sark slipped one of Ageless’s jabs and delivered an elbow to his chest. The wind left him, and he staggered backward, but when Sark charged him and Ageless brought up his left knee and hit him in the solar plexus.
Both winded, they scrambled and ducked each other’s punches. Ageless adopted a strategy of evasion, ducking and shoulder-rolling backward to avoid Sark’s powerful and long-reaching crosses. But then Sark switched up his game and went for the body with several low hooks, impacting Ageless’s ribs and once more robbing him of air. Ageless tried to duck the next hook meant for his head, but Sark turned the hook into a downward grapple for Ageless’s horned head, and put him in a headlock.
Sark tightened it.
Ageless felt both air and blood being cut off from his brain. He punched Sark in the groin, which got a reaction, and the headlock loosened for a moment before Sark suppressed the pain and re-squeezed. Sound became distant—the reverberating echoes of those distant lightsabers faded, and Ageless could hear his own heartbeat in his ears.
No matter how much he tried, he could not get air down his windpipe.
Then, in a desperate last move, Ageless wrapped one leg around one of Sark’s, tilted his whole body that way, and they both went down. They had landed hard on the floor. Now Sark’s grip was truly lost and Ageless gasped for breath as he came free and scrambled across the floor, striking down at Sark, who defended even as he crawled backwards, then they both climbed back to their feet and swung. They swung hard, and fast, and repeatedly, with almost no thought to technique, only savagery.
Ageless timed one of Sark’s attacks just right, dropping his chin and aiming the top of his horned head to the Human’s fist, and rammed it. He heard the loud snap of several fingers breaking at once. Sark’s crossing hand now useless, Ageless advanced, throwing a front-kick to his midsection that connected. When Sark staggered backward, Ageless advanced again, but his half-stunned leg made him too slow to catch up and take advantage of the moment, and Sark recovered—
But Ageless’s right hand reached out to the wall to steady himself, and when it did, he felt something. A pipe of some kind, left over from spare parts, probably left here by some maintenance team. Now in his hand, the metal pipe was a club, and it gave him range and power, and he struck hard and fast, first at Sark’s knees, then at his face. Beating his enemy backwards, Ageless advanced, until at last Sark, bloodied and broken, tried tackling him.
When Sark’s arms wrapped around Ageless’s waist, Ageless brought the pipe down hard on the back of his enemy’s head, stunning him and sending him to the ground. Sark lay there, unconscious and bleeding.
Panting, Ageless stumbled back against the wall, massaging his right leg and trying to get it to wake up. Stun beams were no joke, however, and even a glancing blow was enough to almost completely immobilize it.
Suddenly, he heard the crack of a lightsaber, and the unmistakable scream that could only have come from Skywalker out on the platform. Pipe still in hand, Ageless pushed himself away from the wall and limped that way. As he made his way down the dark corridor, he heard Vader’s echoing voice, “—no escape. Don’t make me destroy you.”
Ageless suddenly felt lightheaded. He had been choked harder than he thought, and the impacts to his side had likely caused damage to his ribs, maybe even his lungs. He lacked oxygen. Dizzily, he stumbled side to side, climbed back to his feet, and felt along the wall as he walked forward.
“Luke, you do not yet realize your importance,” the Dark Lord went on. Wind howled through the open doorway. Nice, cool wind, which bathed Ageless’s face. “You have only begun to discover your power! Join me, and I will complete your training! With our combined strength, we can end this destruct conflict! And bring order to the galaxy!”
“I’ll never join you!” came an emphatic, defiant, even heroic reply.
The rest was coming and going. Ageless suddenly remembered he had been shot earlier, and felt stupid for forgetting, but the pain had been forgotten in the moment. And now that the adrenaline had died down and he touched the wound and saw the blood leaking, he knew he didn’t have long.
“—you only knew the power—Dark Side. Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.”
Voices. Coming and going. Echoes all around him.
“—told me enough—you killed him!”
“No,” Vader said. “I am your father.”
Ageless looked through the doorway. What? He dropped to his knees, vision going blurry, and saw Skywalker clinging at the end of the catwalk that extended from the processing vane. He was holding his right hand against his chest. No, not his hand. His hand is gone. Vader must’ve lopped it off!
Skywalker’s defiant voice traveled on the wind rushing in from the outside. “—not true—impossible!”
“Search your feelings,” Vader said confidently. “You know it to be true.”
Suddenly Skywalker gave vent to an ear-piercing scream. “Noooooo! Nooooo!”
Ageless tried crawling. He was on the ground now and moving like a feeble old Hutt. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to kill Darth Vader, to get vengeance not just against Zumter and the Kingdom and the Imperial Intelligence Service and Director Abaca and even traitorous Ida—Ida who had smiled at him, flirted with him, all the while knowing—but to destroy everything the ungrateful Empire represented.
“Luke, you can destroy the Emperor,” Vader said. “He has foreseen this.”
What in the blazes? Ageless thought he must have misheard. He pushed himself up to his knees and looked through the doorway at Vader, standing victorious over the Rebel. Is he lying? Like they all do? Is he trying to manipulate Skywalker by claiming to be his father?
“—is your destiny,” Vader went on. “Join me, and together—rule the galaxy as father and son!” He held out his hand plaintively.
Through fog-covered eyes, Ageless pushed himself to his feet, and nearly collapsed again. He looked at Skywalker twenty meters away, and saw his posture, saw him looking down into the pit below.
No.
“Come with me,” Vader said. “It is the only way.”
No, it’s not, Ageless thought, seeing it perhaps before Vader did.
The Rebel simply let go, and fell into the pit.
There was far too much wind for Ageless to tell if Skywalker screamed or went silently to his fate. He watched, crestfallen, not knowing why he was suddenly so adamant that Vader should die. Ageless watched the Dark Lord stare motionlessly down into the pit, his cape billowing around him as the air continued to be turbulent.
Ageless looked down at the pipe in his hand. He decided he was ready to die. Why not here? Why not now? And why not try and take out the monster himself?
He started forward.
Then, he stopped. And turned. Down the hallway was Sark. Horizon Lost. Yet another asset to the Kingdom. The man would be his own wealth of intel for the Alliance Intelligence Network, just as Zumter was. He would have details about many operations, contacts on a dozen or more worlds, weapons caches kept hidden across the galaxy. Even if Ageless killed Vader, which wasn’t likely, it would not deal nearly as devastating a blow to the Empire as the capture of two Kigndom assets. And my own surrender to them, he thought.
Ageless hobbled as quickly as he could, back down the corridor, and used what strength he had left to grab the unconscious assassin up in a fireman’s carry and ran up the stairs whence they came. If he was lucky, the Millennium Falcon would still be on Platform 327.
Perhaps Calrissian hasn’t left yet.
He never looked back. What Darth Vader did next, after this Rebel had denied him his victory, Ageless never knew. But he did log the information into his mind for later study. Is Darth Vader the father of Luke Skywalker? If so, does that make the Dark Lord himself a Skywalker? Is it possible to know who is behind the mask?
It had been a mystery for more than two decades now. Vader was an officer that materialized out of nowhere, and some said the moniker Darth had once been used by the ancient Sith a millennia ago. Was it a coincidence, a true name that just happened to sound similar, or was there a connection? He uses a lightsaber. People have always thought that was just the eccentricities of an overly eccentric Imperial officer, granted too much power and clout by the Emperor.
But what if it’s more than that?
Bounding up the stairs, he nearly fainted twice. He came to a first-aid station, dropped Sark for a moment to take out the stimpaks, and gave himself two injections before applying the bacta patches, and, riding the high of those medicines, yanked Sark back into a fireman’s carry and ran on, lungs and muscles all straining with the sustained effort. Legs feeling like they had been filled with lead and acid, Ageless nevertheless put one foot in front of the other, just like the Nest had taught him to do, just as he had done throughout countless missions for his Imperial masters.
Push the pain out of your mind. Forget the discomfort. Survive till tomorrow, and heal up then.
His mind drifted back to the tableau he had seen—Vader victorious over Skywalker, hand reaching out, asking for his partnership to destroy the Emperor…
Destroy Emperor Palpatine? Did he actually mean it, or was it a ploy?
When he reached the carbon-freezing chamber, Ageless stopped. It suddenly occurred to him that he might still be able to help Skywalker.
It’s a long shot, he thought, gazing at the signs written in Aurebesh. Signs leading him to the deep-level ventilation shafts. While on the Midra’hara, and also while planning this raid with Namyr and Lando Calrissian, Ageless had seen schematics of Cloud City. He knew where that long, hollow shaft that Skywalker had jumped into led.
The ventilation shafts. They curve downward. Vacuums that send purified air throughout the city, some of them rerouting captured tibanna gas. One of them could have sucked him in.
Back down the lift, then across the freezing chamber. Through the empty corridors of Cloud City’s processing center. Up a set of stairs and into a turbolift. He dropped Sark onto the floor of the lift and pressed the button for the lowermost floor. It took almost three minutes to reach, but when he stepped out, Ageless carried Sark into a room that looked out into the same giant shaft that Skywalker had fallen into, only this room was filled with transparisteel windows. Computer screens lined one wall, showing intake values for the tibanna that had been gathered that day. Examining them, Ageless found an interactive map that showed trouble spots in the shafts, so that maintenance crews could access them more easily. They also had motion sensors, in case any creature somehow got lodged in them.
He saw no sign of Skywalker in any of the ventilation shafts. No motion sensors had been tripped.
Maybe he got vented outside. If that were the case, then he was gone, already plummeting towards the center of the gas giant, soon to be dead if not already. What a bad way to go.
But Ageless did see something else of interest. A single biological sign. That was strange, as these ventilation shafts were kept spotless, as least as far as Ageless had seen. It was a small bio-sign, but it was better than nothing. Maybe it was Skywalker…maybe…
Ageless did not have time to go into that shaft, but he quickly found a menu that allowed the user to send out a MSE-6 droid to check for trouble signs. He had to slice into it, but thankfully the system was old and full of holes. Moments later, the mouse droid reported that it had found the object in question, lodged into a smaller ventilation shaft. It sent a video of what it was seeing, and Ageless was shocked.
A severed hand, clutching what appeared to be the hilt of an old lightsaber.
The mouse droid sent an interrogative: DO YOU WISH TO RETRIEVE OR CLEAN THE DEBRIS? OR SEND TO THE INCINERATOR?
Ageless simply typed in a retrieve command, and he watched through the camera footage as the mouse droid extended small pincers to lift up the severed hand and lightsaber, and sent a message saying it would deliver it to wherever the user wanted. He gave the droid the command to bring it directly to the command center itself. Five minutes later, the mouse droid had ascended through a series of small corridors meant only for it, then came up through another turbolift, and soon wheeled into the room. It delivered the severed hand to Ageless, who knelt to examine it. The lightsaber hilt was still clutched in the fist.
The hand was probably too damaged to be reattached. Ageless pried the lightsaber loose, clipped it to his belt, and said to the mouse droid, “Carry the hand back to where you found it.”
The droid tweeted an affirmative, and trundled off with its curious find.
Once more he hefted the body of Horizon Lost, and got back into the turbolift and headed topside. Ageless bolted down one hallway after the next, the silence of Cloud City’s corridors allowing his thoughts to wander. He kept replaying all that he had seen. Vader? Skywalker’s father? It would definitely need revisiting.