Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars (40 page)

That’s why Piett ordered me to make sure one of the X-wings got away. He needed someone to report the Emperor’s movements to the Rebellion. We were setting a trap all
along.

She’d always understood that on some level—why
else let the rebels go free, if not to fill their heads with false intel? But she’d thought it no more than a feint to cover the
Emperor’s location. Yet the trap the Empire had laid must have been larger and more elaborate; she’d been only one tiny part of it. This wasn’t any ordinary military action. This
was the day the Empire planned to destroy the Rebellion for good.

Even as Ciena’s
hands tightened on the controls, her screen went crazy, spilling out so much data she could hardly take it all in. In the space surrounding the Death Star and Endor’s
moon, thousands of ships had materialized in an instant.

The Rebel Alliance had come, and the Empire was ready for them.

“M
AY THE FORCE BE WITH US.”

Admiral Ackbar’s voice crackled over the comm unit as the rebel armada headed toward the Death Star. Now that Thane saw it for
himself, he had to believe—but he also saw how
incomplete it still was. They weren’t going up against a Death Star, just the shell of one. Thinking of it that way helped.

Okay, it didn’t help that much. At the moment, however, Thane would take what he could get.

The shield generator should be down by now,
he told himself as he checked his sensors.
We’ll get the order to proceed any second
now.

The order didn’t come.

And he wasn’t getting any reading on the shield at all—up or down. Thane frowned as he tapped his controls. This would be a bad time to develop a systems failure.

Then General Calrissian’s voice cut through sharply. “Break off the attack! The shield is still up!”

Thane swore under his breath. What had happened to the Endor team?

“Pull up!” Calrissian
continued. “All craft pull up!”

As they curved away from the Death Star, Thane prepared to leap back into hyperspace for the humiliating but necessary escape. Then he heard Admiral Ackbar’s voice again. “Take
evasive action!”

Kendy spoke next. “Sector forty-seven—they’re here.”

Thane went cold as he saw what awaited them: it looked like half the Imperial fleet, including dozens of
Star Destroyers.

The Rebel Alliance had just arrived at its own execution.

Ciena thought,
At least it will be quick.

Her TIE fighter rushed forward with the rest to engage the rebel fleet. The incredible disparity in strength convinced her the Empire could win this battle within minutes. Even as she obeyed
orders to target the medical frigate, however, she noticed the Star Destroyers
were making no move to join the combat. Why amass this much firepower and hold back?

Then she saw the Death Star’s laser begin to glow green and had her answer.

She tensed, expecting Endor or its moon to explode. Instead, the laser hit one of the larger rebel cruisers. Instantly, the ship was obliterated.

If the station is fully operational, why bother sending us out to fight?

Once again, it was only theater. Only a show. TIE pilots would die by the dozens, if not hundreds, when not one of them was truly needed here. The Death Star could have eliminated the rebels on
its own. But Palpatine wanted every admiral and general to witness this moment and believe their Emperor unstoppable.

We die for his glory,
she thought bitterly.
Which means we die for nothing. Again.

Flying into a battle with no hope of survival turned out to be the secret to kicking ass.

Thane’s mind-set had kept him from losing his cool when they’d realized the shield generator was still operational, and when he’d seen how much of the Imperial Starfleet had
been brought together for the express purpose of blasting the Rebel Alliance to atoms. He’d even been able to hold steady when
the Death Star destroyed the
Liberty
—the ship
Corona Squadron had called home for months. Thane remembered the friendly Mon Calamari who had welcomed them; every single one had been killed in an instant.

Not that Thane’s chances of survival were much better. The way he saw it, the Empire was going to kill him today no matter what he did. His only goal was to make the Imperials pay for it,
with blood.

Over the speaker, General Calrissian ordered the smaller ships to get in close on the Star Destroyers—presumably because that would keep them safe from the Death Star. Thane could have
laughed. Like you were any safer next to a Star Destroyer. Still, he was glad for the chance to see the damage he had caused.

“I’m going in close on the engines,” the Contessa said over comms.
“Who’s with me?”

Thane braced himself. “Corona Four, right behind you.”

“Corona Five, too. Let’s do it!” That was Kendy, who sounded almost cheerful about the chance to wreak some mayhem.

Yendor didn’t even answer out loud, but sensors showed him accelerating so fast he was going to get to the Destroyer before Thane did. Or at least he would have if Thane hadn’t taken
the engines
all the way to maximum and dived straight toward the rear of the ship.

The mammoth shielding of a Star Destroyer could take intense levels of weapons fire without damage. The engines, however—you could get at those. They were too deeply encased within the
impregnable ship to be destroyed, but even slowing the ship down or denying the crew full power would help in a battle.

Let’s see
how they like being stranded in space for a while.
Thane grinned as he swooped around the back, the rest of Corona Squadron just behind him.

His old academy training returned; it was as if the schematics holos from Large Vessel Design glowed in front of him again, showing him the exact spots to hit. Thane zeroed in and fired, again
and again. At that rate, he’d run his power down too far
to jump into hyperspace for a retreat—but that didn’t matter any longer. It looked like the entire Rebellion would die
today; Thane only hoped to go out fighting.

He made his hits, but Kendy did even better.
She always was the best sharpshooter in the class,
he thought as he saw a small jet of sparks flare along the side of one Star Destroyer
engine for the instant it took the vacuum of
space to snuff it out.

A swarm of TIE fighters sliced through their formation, so close Thane glimpsed a flash of one through the cockpit. He didn’t flinch, just pressed his finger down on the firing button.

The Empire doesn’t even give those pilots any shields. One hit and they blow.
He fired twice and was rewarded with the spray of sparks and the blur of a TIE fighter spinning wildly
out of control.

What next? Maybe he should dive for the main bridge, just smash his X-wing through it and take an Imperial admiral into death with him—

“The shield generator is down! Repeat, the shield generator is down!”

Thane had figured the Endor team for dead.
Damn
,
he thought.
Those guys pulled it off!
He found himself imagining Princess Leia as the lone victor. Probably she’d
blown that shield generator away with a grin on her face.

General Calrissian said to the fleet, “All fighters, follow me!”

“Let’s go!” the Contessa shouted over the comms. Nothing frosty about her now—she was ready for blood. “Corona Squadron, let’s head in.”

“Corona Four, ready.” He grinned as they regrouped into formation and headed straight for the enormous space station ahead.
It looked and felt as if he was diving into a sea of black
metal tiles. “Remember, everybody—this thing’s so big you’ll have to compensate for its gravitational pull!”

Thane banked sharply along the side of the Death Star, just under the gaping maw targeted by the
Millennium Falcon
’s attack. Beneath him he saw endless black metal, solid surface
still broken by areas of construction; above,
explosions flared and burst like fireworks on feast days back home.

Three TIE fighters appeared over the Death Star’s horizon, and Thane didn’t even bother with evasive action. He accelerated, targeted, and fired—and flew straight through the
three fireballs left behind.

He didn’t have to wonder whether Ciena was in any of those ships. She would’ve been smarter, fired first. She wouldn’t
have let them get away with going after a Star
Destroyer’s engines, either. No doubt she was safely on the bridge of one of those Destroyers, but Thane halfway wished she’d be the one to finish him off. Then at least they’d be
bound together in some way at the end.

The Contessa reported, “We have entry! The
Millennium
Falcon
strike team has entered the Death Star!”

It hit Thane then—they
might actually win this thing.

“Why aren’t you covering the engines?” Ciena shouted at the idiot TIE pilots who had let some idiot rebel damage the
Subjugator
. “Get back there!
Move!
”

The rebels were trapped and they knew it, but obviously they intended to kill as many Imperials as possible before they fell. Already space was littered with the debris of the enemy star
cruisers targeted
by the Death Star’s laser. Ciena felt the same rush of futile anger at the waste of pilots’ lives by callous commanders, but now her fury was directed at whatever
rebel leader had dragged Thane back into this war.

But she was angriest with herself. Thane was only one of the rebels who would die because of a trap she had unwittingly helped set. Both she and Thane had been victims of the Emperor’s
malignant scheming and the terrible slaughter it had begun.

Ciena took her TIE Interceptor up over the main bridge area of the
Annihilator
, just in case some rebel pilot decided to fly directly into it and go out in a blaze of glory. The other
TIEs stuck rigidly to established attack patterns, but her rank gave her the freedom and responsibility to judge the battle for herself and go wherever
she was needed most. As she cleared the top
of the Star Destroyer, she wheeled her ship around, checking sensors to establish which targets would come next—then stopped cold.

Their garrison on Endor’s moon had failed. The shield generator had come down.

Her sensors showed the rebel fleet becoming aware of their change in luck. Flight vectors instantly shifted, and the cloud of starfighters
around her turned into darts headed straight for the
most vulnerable part of the gaping, unfinished Death Star—the large shaft that led straight to the main reactor.

But what did they expect to accomplish? Yes, they could do some damage on their way in, but the maze of beams and cables would surely wreck any invading ships; even now Ciena saw TIE fighters
closer to the space station zooming
toward the same area to follow behind and finish the rebels off. It was all such a useless, meaningless waste.

She turned her attention to the next nearest Star Destroyer, her own
Executor
. It was only now beginning to engage the rebel ships directly; all the admirals had waited for the Death Star
to strike first, another display of Palpatine’s favoring theater over sound tactics.

Then
she saw a damaged rebel starfighter spinning out of control, straight for the bridge deflector shields of the
Executor
. Cursing, she tried to get it in her target sights, but the
starfighter was too distant and moving too fast—

An orange flare marked its impact, and in horror Ciena realized the extent of the damage. Neither that hit nor the earlier damage to the ship’s engines could’ve crippled
a Star
Destroyer on its own, but the combination proved fatal. Jaw agape, she watched the
Executor
lose main power and begin to drift toward the nearest object with major gravitational
pull—namely, the Death Star.

Even a Star Destroyer can’t wreck the Death Star on its own,
she reminded herself.
Stay on target.

But the
Executor
’s destruction meant Berisse’s death….

Stay on target!

Ciena’s breaths were coming so quick and hard that the inner visor of her black helmet had begun to fog slightly. She attempted to calm herself by focusing on the flight. If she thought of
her attacks as piloting challenges—as an escape into the air—she could do this.

She set coordinates for a massive Mon Calamari star cruiser. If she could take out its bridge deflectors, she could even
the score.

And I could fly into it just like that rebel starfighter did—but on purpose—to end this battle. Maybe I could even end the war.

That thought was…tempting.

Yet even as Ciena input her coordinates, the order came over comms. “All vessels, regroup at pre-battle coordinates. Regroup immediately.”

“What the hell?” She couldn’t understand why anyone would give such an order.
The pre-battle coordinates stood too far away from the rebels and the Death Star to be effective.
Her fingers flew over the sensors, widening her view so she could get an idea of what was going on.