Death Star (51 page)

“Rebel base is in range,” the voice from the comm said.

Elated, Tarkin turned to Motti. He kept his voice calm. “You may fire when ready.”

Slowly, Vader crept up on the last X-wing. The Force swirled about the mysterious pilot; eddies, clouds, a vortex of powerful energy. Who could this be? This was no Jedi, of that Vader was certain, but he was steeped in the Force like one.

The target danced back and forth across his screen. Then, finally, a lock!

“I have you now,” Vader murmured. He moved to thumb the firing buttons. Then, suddenly—

His starboard wingmate’s TIE exploded.

“What?”
Vader twisted about, trying to see through the cockpit’s transparisteel while simultaneously reaching out with the Force. Enemy fire was coming in from a totally unexpected direction. But how? There weren’t any more enemy fighters in the vicinity!

Then he felt the attacker—approaching from above, to the port side. Vader couldn’t see it, but his remaining wingmate could. He screamed,
“Look out—!”

The port wingmate’s TIE collided with Vader’s ship and was knocked spinning, out of control. The x1 ricocheted off the wingmate, sending the latter to a fiery doom against a trench wall. Vader’s ship was hurled out of the trench and sent, pitching and yawing, into an uncontrollable series of flips.

At one point, he caught a blurred glimpse of the unexpected attacker. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the battered old Corellian freighter he’d investigated earlier, which had escaped just after his duel with Obi-Wan.

No time to wonder about that now. Vader fought to stabilize his craft, but the control surfaces were damaged. He had to use his drive pulses.

His TIE continued to spin, however, and he realized he was an easy target. He managed to get the spin under control and then ready the little ship for the jump to light-speed. A second or two would be enough. A couple of light-seconds would put him more than half a million kilometers away and give him a chance to get the TIE under control.

But, he realized grimly, whatever that pilot who was one with the Force planned to shoot, he was now going to have a chance to hit it.

T
enn heard the order as if he were at the bottom of a deep mine shaft. It echoed over him:

“Commence primary ignition.”

His crew threw switches, adjusted rheostats, pushed buttons. The status reports came in one by one, like pronouncements of doom.

All too soon, it was down to him. Slowly, Tenn lifted the incredible tonnage of his right arm. His hand trembled on the lever. He saw his CO watching him through the smoked lens of the blast helmet. He could read the man’s mind:
Shoot, Chief! Shoot!

Tenn wasn’t a believer in anything more than he could see and hear and touch, never had been. But now he prayed for a miracle—for something, anything, to deliver him from the burden of so many more deaths. For something to stop it, somehow. With his free hand he activated the comm. “Stand by,” he said, hardly knowing why he was saying it, seeking only to delay the inevitable as long as possible.

“Stand by …”

Motti yelled in the background: “They’ve fired proton torpedoes down an auxiliary heat shaft! Incoming! Incoming! The reactor will blow!”

Tarkin blinked. No. No, it wouldn’t. He was calm. All would be well. This station was invulnerable. It was unbeatable. It was unthinkable that it could be beaten.

Unthinkable—

The shuttle suddenly leapt forward as if kicked by a giant’s boot. The inertial dampeners kept them from being whiplashed, but they could see the starfield shift crazily about them.

“What the—” Ratua began. He stopped as he, and the rest of them, stared.

The rear viewer was focused on the Death Star, which had exploded in a silent, horrendous flare of red and orange and yellow. A hyperspatial reflux ring expanded outward.

“What …?” Memah was shaking her head in disbelief.

“It blew up,” Uli said. He sounded stunned. “The Death Star just … blew up.”

“Everybody, hang on,” Vil said. “The edge of the shock wave will hit us pretty fast—”

The ship jumped, shook suddenly, then began to tumble, a leaf in a gale.

“Kark!” Vil said, fighting to regain control of the ambulance. “I hope she doesn’t break up!”

The tumble continued. There was a bad moment, another worse one—and then the battering stopped.

“What happened?” Teela asked.

“Shock wave passed us. We’re still in one piece.” Vil engaged
the sublights. “Now if we can just stay ahead of the shrapnel we should be okay.”

“Remind me to find out who made this ambulance,” Ratua said. “I want to send them a testimonial. And if they make flitters, I want to buy one.”

The others laughed—the relieved laughter of those narrowly delivered from death. All except Teela.

“Teela?” Vil said. “You okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just that—the Death Star was a monster, no question about that. It was conceived by monsters and controlled by them. But not everyone on board was a monster.”

Nobody said anything for a while.

“How did it happen?” Ratua asked. “Was it the Alliance, or did someone just push the wrong button?”

“We’ll never know,” Memah said.

“The superlaser must’ve misfired. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense,” Vil replied. “It couldn’t have been anything the Rebels threw at it. Those X-wings were like buzz-beetles trying to take down a ronto.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Teela said. She quickly explained about the unshielded vent.

Vil looked skeptical. “I’m not buying it. Even with the targeting computer, the chances of lobbing a proton torpedo down that shaft were a million to one.”

Teela smiled. “What was it you told me once? Sometimes long odds are the only ones worth playing?”

There was another short silence.

“So what now?” Uli asked. He was tired, and he could see that the others were, too. They were all in fairly heavy shock. Watching two planets—or one planet and one battle station the size of a moon—blow up within the span of a cycle was just too much for the mind to encompass.

“We have pretty good star charts,” Vil said. “And a decent cruising range. We can get to any of half a dozen systems. But there’s a Rebel base on that moon right over
there, and I’d guess they’re pretty happy right now. Might be room for a few people willing to sign up.”

“You’d do that?” Memah asked. “Join the Rebellion?”

Vil shrugged. “I’m a fighter pilot. It’s what I do, and I’m good at it. More to the point, I’m a fighter pilot who’s extremely disillusioned with the side I’ve been on. In addition to my piloting skills, I can take a TIE apart blindfolded and put it back together. I know a few secrets our new friends might be interested in.”

“Not to mention,” Memah said, “you’re the man who outflew Darth Vader.”

Vil grinned, then looked at Teela. “Of course, it depends on your plans.”

“It does? Why might that be?”

Vil looked like he’d just swallowed a cup of too-hot caf. “Well,” he said, “if you’re agreeable, I thought we might get married.”

“Interesting way to propose, flyboy,” she said. “I’ll think about it.” But she grinned. Then her expression turned serious. “They’ll need planners and designers, too,” she said. “And I wouldn’t be a prisoner, but a free woman. There are a lot of political prisoners still under the Empire’s hand. I’d like to help them.”

Memah said, “Not a bad idea. Maybe I’ll tag along, try to find another cantina to run. Girl’s got to eat, after all, and I’m guessing the Rebels don’t mind lifting a glass now and then.”

“I wouldn’t worry about having to work if I were you,” Ratua said to her.

“No offense, Green-Eyes, but as much fun as you are, I don’t want to be a smuggler’s woman. I’m done with the adventurous life for a while.”

“Well, I was thinking of getting out of the smuggling business,” he said. “Into legal ventures.”

“Uh-huh.”

Ratua grinned. “Probably should have mentioned that
my family is, um, well fixed. I think they’d like to meet you. They always hoped I’d find a good woman and settle down, get into the family business.”

“Which is?”

“They manage real estate. Own a few properties, here and there. Places like the Netaluma Tower on Imperial Center.”

“Coruscant,” Uli corrected him. He realized it was a measure of just how tired he was that Ratua’s admission of wealth was hardly even surprising.

“My mistake. Anyway, my share of that alone would mean you wouldn’t have to work if you didn’t want to.”

“Your share? And how much would that be?”

“Well …” He hesitated.

“Speak, or I’ll twist your head off.”

“Half a billion credits, give or take a couple of million.”

She stared at him. “What? You’re
rich
? Why’d you become a smuggler?”

Ratua shrugged. “I thought property management was boring. I was young and rebellious, and I wanted to do something more interesting. But I’m thinking maybe I’ve had enough excitement for one lifetime.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Memah said. “No, maybe I’ll wait until after I meet your family. They’ll probably want to help.”

Teela looked at Uli. “What about you, Doc?”

What, indeed? Uli opened his mouth, fully intending to tell them that he planned to head for the farthest stars, to find a world somewhere way out in the Reach and open up a practice there. Someplace where neither the Empire nor the Alliance was known. He’d been working in unwilling servitude for just about all of his adult life, after all. Freedom—the ability to choose where he wanted to work, for how long, and for whom, if anyone, was a powerful lure.

But what he heard himself say was, “I’m with Vil. If the Rebellion will have me, I’ll throw in my lot with theirs. I’m
a pretty good battle surgeon—at least, I’ve had a lot of practice. And the Empire has to be stopped.”

“Somebody made a pretty good start on that today,” Memah said.

“So,” Vil said, “since we’re all in agreement, let’s go see how the other half lives, shall we?”

D
arth Vader had been safely out of danger when the Death Star had blown up. His ship was damaged, but still spaceworthy enough that, with a couple of careful jumps, he could reach a hidden Imperial naval base a few light-years away.

Despite the direness of the situation, he couldn’t help another painful smile. The Death Star, with all its troops and weapons, the superlaser that could by itself destroy entire planets, trillions of credits’ worth of labor and material—all of it was gone to incandescent dust in an instant.

He didn’t know exactly how it had happened, but he knew it had something to do with the pilot of that tiny, insignificant X-wing. Somehow, he alone had taken out the battle station. Vader didn’t need the dark side to tell him that, or that the pilot had survived the explosion.

One man had done what a fleet could not have managed.

The Force was indeed strong in this one.

Who was he? Not a Jedi—Vader was certain. He had felt no sense of the control that a Jedi would possess. In the final analysis, however, it really didn’t matter. Be the mysterious stranger a Jedi or not, Vader knew that he and this other who was so permeated with the Force would meet again.

It was inevitable.

He checked his position and readied his small ship for
the next insertion into hyperspace. He knew he would have to make his report to the Emperor immediately, even though he was certain that the Dark Lord of the Sith was already aware of what had happened to his pet project. He was not looking forward to the meeting. As he made the jump to lightspeed and beyond, Darth Vader was certain of one thing:

His Master would not be pleased.

Michael Reaves is the New York Times bestselling author of the
Star Wars: Coruscant Nights
novels. Reaves received an Emmy Award for his work on
Batman: The Animated Series
. He has worked for DreamWorks, among other studios, and has written fantasy novels and supernatural thrillers. Reaves lives in the Los Angeles area.