Star by Star (82 page)

Jacen recalled the tortures he and the others had endured aboard the
Exquisite Death
. His stomach grew queasy. His hands trembled. He opened himself to the Force and smiled at
his body’s fear. The Jedi were safe. Compared to that, his pain meant nothing.

“It will, Jacen,” Vergere said, surprising him. He did not recall speaking his thoughts aloud. “That I promise you—it will.”

A warm drop struck his face, then another and another. Jacen craned his neck and found Vergere wiping tears from her cheeks. Her face was turned so Nom Anor and the others could not see.

“Vergere, were you—”

“Yes, Jacen.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “I was crying for you.”

The drop fleets hit like an Nkllonian meteor storm, slanting across the sky in fiery armadas a hundred kilometers across, crackling and hissing like S-thread static and trailing anvil-shaped towers of night-black smoke. Standing in the open cannon turret atop Fey’lya’s office, Leia allowed herself two seconds to be awed by the spectacle of it all and let the thunder reverberate through her body. There was something primal and beautiful in the power of the drop, something that stirred in her a passion of purpose that, until Anakin’s death, she had thought lost with her youth.

Han came to her side and handed her a comlinked artillery helmet. “The end of the world,” he said. “Who’d’ve thought we’d live to see it?”

“There’ll be other worlds, Han.” She put the helmet on and buckled the chin strap. “There was after Alderaan.”

The smile Han gave her was as crooked as usual, but now more wistful than cocky. “Then let’s hope this one lasts until they finish charging our containment fluid.”

Shafts of color rose from distant rooftops to stab at the descending drop fleets, and vessels almost invisible to the naked eye showed damage in the form of white starbursts and flickering disks of orange. The turbolaser fire was answered by a torrent of plasma balls. Towers melted into liquid pillars of durasteel slag. In some cases, building shields endured the first strike, only to fall to the second, or the third. Dark swarms of coralskippers and airskiffs boiled down ahead of the drop fleets, taking advantage of the steady barrage to locate and attack the turbolasers. These attack craft were met by a far smaller number of
New Republic atmospheric fighters, and a steady drizzle of smaller craft began to rain down on Coruscant.

General Rieekan’s voice came over the helmet comlink. “Light artillery, take your stations. Hold fire.”

Han slipped into the gunner’s seat on one side of the laser cannon, and Leia took the spotter’s station on the other. She would actually have the more difficult of the two jobs, finding and prioritizing threats on the weapon’s display. All Han would have to do was shoot them down. Leia activated the sensor feed and began to plot trajectories, assigning precedence based on which drop ships would be approaching nearest to their position.

Over the next ten seconds, the number of turbolasers firing decreased steadily, but they punched so many holes in the drop fleets that Leia had to update her targeting priorities twice. By the time the ships themselves began swelling from fingertip-sized circles of friction flame into glossy black wedge-wings, the turbolasers had opened holes the size of lakes in the great armadas.

“Open fire,” Rieekan commanded.

Han squeezed the trigger, and the air filled with the deafening screech of discharging actuators. Their attack took the first drop ship by surprise, burning away a wing and sending the wedge-shaped vessel tumbling in two different directions. Subsequent targets proved more difficult. Han had to pulse the trigger and stitch bolts across the hull to defeat the shielding crews, but it was easier to fire from a stationary turret than to defend aboard a wildly gyrating craft, and he and Leia sent two more drop ships crashing into the towers. They paid no attention to the skips and airskiffs diving on their position from all sides. Those were the responsibility of even lighter blaster cannons firing from adjacent towers, and their expert crews never let an attacker get close.

Finally, Leia could find no more targets on the tacscreen. She looked up into a dark miasma of smoke, fed by flaming ruins and fuming wrecks all across Coruscant. For a moment, all was quiet, then Rieekan’s voice came over the comlink again.

“Look sharp out there. They’re sending in the hunter-killers.”

Leia studied the tactical display and saw a line of blastboat analogs—she and Han called them blast boulders—streaking
toward their position. Large enough to take a hit or two from a light blaster cannon, yet nimble enough to dodge the slower laser cannons, these craft posed a more serious threat than anything that had come before. Leia began to designate priorities and feed Han targets.

Borsk Fey’lya chose that moment to appear on the access lift, flanked by a pair of tall Orbital Defense soldiers with sandy hair and square chins. Their other features were also so similar they had to be brothers. In Leia’s time, relatives would never have been permitted to serve in the same unit, but those rules had changed under Fey’lya. Bothans had a different view of family.

“Leia, you have a comm message in my office,” Fey’lya said. His brisk tone suggested he had lifted himself out of the torpor into which he had sunk when her speech failed to bring the deserting senators and their pilfered flotillas back to Coruscant. “You can take it at my desk.”

“We’re kind of busy right now,” Han growled, pouring fire into the first blast boulder. “You might have noticed?”

“It’s Luke Skywalker,” Fey’lya said. “He seems to be trapped.”

Han stopped firing. “On the planet?”

“Over at the Western Sea, if I heard him correctly,” Fey’lya said. “The channel was scratchy.”

Han looked over the cannon at Leia, and she knew he was thinking the same thing. If Luke was on Coruscant, there was no telling where Ben was.

“These guards will take your station,” Fey’lya said, motioning to the brothers.

Leia slipped out of her seat and moved toward the lift. Instead of stepping out of her way as most soldiers would for a former chief of state, this pair stared down at her blank-faced. She knew instantly something was wrong, and confirmed it when she reached out with the Force and felt nothing from them.

“Forgive me, soldier.”

Turning to hide her lightsaber from view, Leia stepped aside to let the infiltrator by, then caught her husband’s eye as he did the same thing. Han furrowed his brow. She glanced pointedly at his blaster and snapped the lightsaber off her belt. An alarmed light came to his eye, and he reached for his blaster pistol.

His Yuuzhan Vong spun on him, knocking him into the back wall. Han slumped to the floor and, never taking his weapon from its swing-free holster, blasted the infiltrator.

Leia was already pressing her lightsaber against her own foe’s ribs.

“Surren—”

He whirled, elbow driving at her head. She ducked, thumbed the activation switch, then stepped away as the impostor collapsed at her feet.

Fey’lya stared at the corpses, jaw snapping as the ooglith masquers peeled away from their faces. “In my own office!”

“Perhaps the time has come to destroy the data towers, Chief,” Leia suggested mildly.

Fey’lya’s eyes flashed, but any reply was cut off by a blaring attack alarm. One glance at the display told Leia the infiltrators had succeeded at least in part; with three blast boulders lining up for approach, they had no chance of saving their weapon.

“Go!”

She pushed Han and Fey’lya onto the service lift, then followed. They commed a report to General Tomas’s aide, then emerged ten meters below in the chief of state’s office. An instant later, a series of explosions shook the blast-hardened ceiling, and the cannon turret was gone. Leia saw Garv Tomas coming through the far door, but she removed her artillery helmet and went straight to Fey’lya’s comm center.

“Luke … Luke, this is your sister … Luke?”

There might have been an answer; it was difficult to tell over the battle roar in the background. She stretched out and sensed her brother’s presence somewhere beyond the horizon. Though she was not sensitive enough to guess his condition or situation, Leia could feel that he was alive.

“Luke, if you hear me, we’ll be there as soon as the
Falcon
’s containment fluid is recharged.”

“Actually, it’s recharged now.”

Leia glanced over her shoulder to find Garv Tomas glowering at Fey’lya.

“I asked Chief Fey’lya to relay that news some time ago.”

Fey’lya shrugged. “They were needed in the cannon turret.”

“Check that, Luke.” Leia was not even angry. Being upset at the Bothan’s selfishness would have been like being angry at a Wookiee’s shedding—and they
had
been needed in the turret. “The
Falcon
is ready now. We’ll be coming soon, Luke.”

Again, there was no answer—only a small surge in her sense of her brother. Though Leia hoped it meant Luke had heard her, there was no way to be sure. It could have meant he was trying to find her, thinking about her, going to miss her—anything. Leia stood and turned to find Han already describing the infiltrators to Garv. The general was shaking his head angrily.

“The door guards have epidermal scanners and orders to use them, but disordered troops are pouring in by the tens of thousands, and no one wants to turn away a fellow soldier.” Garv ran his fingers through his hair. “For all I know, they’re
all
infiltrators.”

“It was bound to happen, Garv.” Leia turned to Fey’lya. “The time has come to destroy the data towers, Chief. To delay longer is to give the enemy his most precious advantage.”

Fey’lya’s eyes flashed angrily, almost madly, and Leia thought he would refuse. He spun away and went to stare at the carnage outside.

“You’re deserting me, aren’t you?” he asked. “Just like the senators.”

Han rolled his eyes, then hefted his blaster like a club and cocked his brow at the others.

Leia pushed his hand down, then went to stand behind Fey’lya. “Not like the senators. It’s time.”

Fey’lya stared over the smoking city for another moment and finally let his chin sink. “I suppose it is.” He took a moment to gather his strength, then turned to Garv. “General Tomas, give the order to destroy the data towers—if you haven’t already.”

“Very good, Chief Fey’lya.” The fact that Garv did not reach for his comlink suggested the order had indeed been issued. “I’ll have
First Citizen
prepared for departure.”

Fey’lya nodded wearily. “Evacuate as many as you can—and be sure you are aboard. That’s an order, General.”

“Yes, sir, as long as my duties here are completed.”

“They are,” Fey’lya said. “Don’t make me dismiss you.”

Garv reluctantly inclined his head. “Very well, then.”

“Good.” Fey’lya turned back to the transparisteel. “And tell Captain Durm not to wait. I won’t be joining you.”

“What?” Han asked. “If you think you can make some kind of deal—”

“Han, that’s not what the chief is thinking.” Leia held a finger to her lips, then said, “Chief Fey’lya, you can’t accomplish anything here.”

“And what could I accomplish anywhere else? Who would follow me after
this
?” He waved a hand outside. “History will blame me for what happened today. Don’t try to tell me otherwise.”

Leia did not. Even if she had wanted to lie, Fey’lya was too smart. “There are other ways of serving.”

Fey’lya snorted. “Perhaps for you, Princess.” He turned his back and walked to his desk. “But not for me. Not for Borsk Fey’lya.”

“Snap to, people!” The captain had to yell to make himself heard inside the turbolaser’s cavernous turret; the battery intercom had gone with the rest of the communications. “Here comes the second wave.”

Luke hardly needed the officer’s warning. He had only to crane his neck to look through a ten-meter hole in the ceiling and see a sheet of orange friction flames crackling down from above. If anything, this assault looked larger and faster than the first, and the first had reduced Coruscant’s turbolaser capacity by two-thirds.

“They’re coming through this time,” Mara said, not quite reading Luke’s thoughts. She was sitting on a bench in the observation bay, her bacta-casted ankle propped on a spare blast helmet. “That first wave was just to soften us up.”

Luke took her hand. “Han and Leia will get here,” he said. “I told Borsk where we were.”

“But did he tell
them
?”

Luke knew better than to offer hollow reassurance. The fear they had been sensing in Ben all morning had become a strange disconnectedness, and Mara—always more of a realist than an optimist—assumed the worst. Never one who liked counting on
others, she blamed herself for leaving the baby with Han and Leia after Anakin’s death—which only made her all the more determined not to count on anyone else for his rescue. Luke chose to place his trust in the Force, though he knew that an unhappy outcome would certainly lead to a profound crisis of belief.

The twin turbolasers began to hurl blue streaks skyward, each discharge shaking the huge turret so hard that Luke’s knees felt like they would buckle. This time, far fewer starbursts and orange flares appeared in the heart of the drop fleet. A steady stream of white pinpoints swelled into crackling orbs of white plasma and burst against the battery’s hastily repaired shields. Each time, the internal lighting dimmed a little more, and a few more pieces of equipment sparked out.

In the middle of it all, R2-D2 started to tweet and whistle so fiercely that he was audible even two bays away. Luke looked toward the number two targeting bay, where the little droid was filling in for a damaged R7 unit, and saw a scowling fire control officer waving him over.

“I’ll be right back,” Luke said to Mara.

A plasma ball finally crashed through the shield and burned a second hole through the armored ceiling. In the next instant, two more fiery balls roared into the turret itself and erupted against the back wall, filling the chamber with smoke and screams. One of the big turbolasers fell silent, and the evacuation alarms blared.