Invincible (20 page)

Which side of an Ewok has the most fur?
The
out
side!

—Jacen Solo, age 14

I
T LOOKED LIKE THE STARS JUST KEPT EXPLODING
. T
HERE WOULD BE
a few moments of tranquillity when the blue-flecked curtain of space hung outside the blastboat canopy, as still and stunning as the first time Han had sat in a pilot’s seat. His chest would go hollow with awe at the vast beauty before him, and he would be struck by what a gift his life had been, by how much his famous Solo luck had brought him—the freedom to wander an entire galaxy at will, a real live Princess for a wife, and children who had made him proud…
almost
all the time.

Then the swirling ion trail of a starfighter would come corkscrewing out of the dark, or the luminous halo of an approaching frigate would drift into view. Boiling balls of fire would erupt ahead, like stars going nova. The blastboat would chug when Leia and Saba returned fire, and a bright, shrinking disk might flare away as Luke launched a concussion missile. R2-D2 would scroll a tactical update across the pilot’s display, C-3PO would declare their imminent doom, and Han would slam the yoke to one side, diving away into the shelter of the star-dappled void.

But this time, the proximity alarm broke out squawking, and crooked snakes of color began to jump across space in front of the cockpit canopy. Blue rings of ion glow formed in the dancing iridescence ahead and swelled into the backlit forms of an arriving war fleet. Almost instantly, columns of turbolaser fire began to streak back and forth between the newcomers and the disorganized Remnant flotilla that had been trying for hours to chase off the Jedi raiding force.

Han pointed their nose straight at the heart of the arriving fleet, trying to run parallel to the fiery torrent rather than ducking out before he had some sense of the newcomers’ gunnery patterns. Despite his efforts, one bolt flashed past close enough to rock the blastboat sideways and darken the canopy blast-tinting. The shield generator sizzled with strain, and the cabin filled with the caustic scent of melting circuitry.

Han cursed, then checked his tactical display and saw that not just one, but
two
fleets were arriving: a mixed bag of Galactic Alliance defectors clustered around Cha Niathal’s
Ocean,
and a flotilla of old Empire-era Star Destroyers and
Scimitar
-class frigates led by Daala’s renowned
Chimaera.

“The Conniver Sisters One and Two,” Han commented. “Who invited
them
?”

“I wasn’t aware that battles
required
invitations,” C-3PO said, reaching for the blastboat’s comm controls. “But we should certainly extend a gracious welcome.”

“You’re asking me to lie?” Han asked. “No way.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Captain Solo,” C-3PO replied. “We are in desperate need of relief, and they clearly appear to be taking our side.”

“The only side those two take is their
own,
” Han said. “They’re just here because they smell blood and want to see what they can pick off for themselves.”

“Nevertheless, they are shooting at our enemies instead of us, which is the very definition of
ally
in nearly six thousand galactic cultures,” C-3PO noted. “Might I suggest that now would be an excellent time to broaden your horizons?”

“No.”

The intensifying brilliance of an oncoming turbolaser strike flared before Han’s eyes. He pushed the yoke forward, then slammed into his shoulder restraints as the bolt skipped off their shields and bounced the blastboat downward. The generators failed with an earsplitting
thraaawkk,
and acrid yellow fumes began to pour out of the recirculation vents.

R2-D2 let out a long stream of beeps and tweedles, and damage reports began to scroll across the pilot’s display. Their shields were only down until Luke could bring the backups online, but a coolant line had sprung a leak—that explained the acrid fumes—and their fusion core was about to start overheating.

“You see?” C-3PO asked. “Even Artoo is frightened, and that never happens. We should definitely request an escape vector and let them take over the fight.”

“Not going to happen, Goldenrod.” Han spotted a flight of XJs and antique TIEs streaming away from the two fleets and dropped into their transit lane, then swung back toward Nickel One. “Not while my daughter is still down there in that rock.”

The frigate that had been pursuing them most recently hung in the distance, a little above their plane of orientation, a knobby-ended cylinder trailing a long, curving tail of ions as it turned away from the oncoming fleets. Beyond it floated Nickel One itself, an inky-black nugget visible only in the sense that its dark mass blotted out the stars beyond. Swarming around the asteroid were the flickering pinpoints of perhaps a hundred vessels: the Remnant’s scattered flotilla rushing to regroup and defend their conquest.

Two-thirds of those flickering pinpoints were probably Starhunters or other small combat craft, which meant that the Remnant would be slightly outnumbered—at least until the Alliance’s Fourth Fleet returned from its escort duty to support them. Unlike the Third Fleet, which had lost nearly a quarter of its strength to Niathal’s call for desertion at Fondor, the Fighting Fourth remained at nearly full strength. It would be more than a match for Niathal and Daala—especially under the capable command of Gavin Darklighter.

Not being privy to Alliance military plans—or to the level of Darklighter’s commitment to his Darth-in-chief—Han had no idea how long it would take the Fourth to arrive. But he knew that once it did, getting through to extract Jaina would be impossible, even for him.

And he wasn’t about to let that happen. He was already so frightened for her that he could feel his heart shaking—and so sad about her mission that he hadn’t eaten anything but nutripills in a week. The thought of letting her be trapped down there after she finished her mission was more than he could bear…and he didn’t need the Force to know he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

Han opened a channel to the squadron’s number two blastboat. “Jag, you there?”

“This is Dry Ice, receiving you crisp and clean,” came Jagged Fel’s always proper reply. “Proceed.”

“We’re going in,” Han said. “You coming?”

Before Jag could reply, Leia’s voice came over the cockpit speaker. “Going in
where,
Han?”

“You know where,” Han replied.

“But she hasn’t sent the extraction code,” Leia objected. “We don’t even know which rendezvous point.”

“And if we wait to find out, it won’t matter,” Han replied. “Unless you can think of some way to convince Niathal and Daala to stop spooking the Imperials until we’re finished here.”

Leia was silent for a moment, then said, “Okay, maybe you have a point.”

“It would seem so,” Jag said. “We’ll join you at Extraction Point Alpha and hope for the best.”

A string of cannon bolts appeared out of empty space and came straight for the canopy. Han did not even check the tactical display to see where the attack had come from; he simply jerked the yoke up to the left—then, as their belly armor pinged with hits, cringed and wondered what was taking Luke so long to bring the backup shield generators online.

A pair of laser beams flashed past from
behind
the blastboat, so close to the canopy that Han felt their heat on his face. Then Fett’s voice sounded over the comm speaker.

“
Right,
you crazy barve!” Another pair of beams flashed past from behind, this time not quite so close to the canopy. “Who goes left?”

Han jinked to the right, then saw two sets of twin circles flash past as Fett and his wingmate rushed ahead to engage the blastboat’s attacker.

“I never did like having that guy on my tail.” Han was juking and jinking so hard that he had not even noticed that the belly turrets had gone quiet. “Hey, Saba, you okay down there?”

“Okay? How can this one be
okay
?” She sounded more angry than hurt. “You are letting him steal our kill!”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Master Sebatyne,” Leia said. “This looks like a pack hunt to me.”

With Fett and his wingmate now taking the brunt of the attack, Han finally had a chance to glance down and see what had opened up on them. The tactical display showed a
Cutlass
-class corvette coming out to block their approach.

“Where’d
he
come from?” Han demanded.

“I believe he came under the frigate,” C-3PO said. “There may be more Remnant vessels lurking back there—it might be wise to wait for support from Admirals Daala and Niathal.”

“And let Buckethead beat us to the asteroid?” Han pushed the throttles to the overload stops, trying to keep up with the
Bes’uliike.
“No way.”

Boiling puffs of color began to flower ahead as the corvette opened up with its entire bank of bantam turbolasers. Han swung the yoke hard left, easy right, then slammed it forward—diving straight toward a cloud of red flame that had blossomed a few centiseconds before.

“Captain Solo,” C-3PO began, “have you forgotten that our shields—”

“No.”
Han was already rolling away from the fireball. “And don’t tell me the odds, either.”

“There really wouldn’t be a point,” C-3PO replied. “Without functional shields, our chances of reaching the asteroid’s surface are too small to calculate.”

A triangle of turbolaser strikes blossomed ahead, and Han finally recognized the firing pattern as a RandoCluster Three. While it was impossible to guess where the next volley would erupt, the pattern was actually one of the easiest to penetrate. All you had to do was be lucky.

Han took them through the center of the fiery triangle and saw the white frown of a
Cutlass
-class prow pumping streaks of blazing color in their direction. Two pairs of blue disks—all that was visible of the two
Bes’uliike
Fett and his wingmate were flying—were swinging back and forth along the upper edge of the cockpit canopy, pouring dashes of blue light back toward the corvette.

“Hey, Luke—how about those shields?” Han called back.

There was no answer, and the shield lights on Han’s status panel remained dead red.

“Luke?”

The only answer came from R2-D2, a confused whistle, followed by a long descending tweedle.

“Oh dear,” C-3PO said. “It seems Master Skywalker is no longer with us.”

“What?”
Han’s heart clenched so tight it seemed to stop beating, but he kept his gaze fixed on the rapidly growing corvette. “How? Our hull hasn’t even been breached!”

The upper cannon turret fell silent, and Leia called down, “Not
dead,
Han. He’s in a…” She paused, searching for the word, then finally explained, “I don’t know how to explain it. Luke’s just sort of…gone.”

“
Sort
of gone?” Han echoed. He couldn’t help himself—he had to look. “How can you be…”

Han let his sentence trail away, for Luke
was
sort of gone. His body remained strapped into his seat, with his hands resting on the systems console and his gaze fixed between the shield status display and the targeting screen. But it was like looking at one of those figures in the House of Plastex back on Coruscant. Luke wasn’t breathing, he wasn’t moving, he wasn’t even blinking; he just wasn’t
there.

“Great.” When Han looked forward again, it was to see that the corvette’s beam-spewing arch had grown as long as his arm. He transferred missile control to the pilot’s station and sent four concussion missiles streaming toward its bridge. “
Now
he decides to take some time for himself.”

Caedus deactivated his crimson blade, leaving a blackened hole where the red helmet’s eye plate had been just a moment before. The Strategic Planning Forum had fallen blissfully still. The Mandalorians were dead or close to it, the sniper had retreated into the projection booth to reload and regroup, and the Moffs were crouching in the seat rows, too shocked and confused to start bellowing orders that were sure to prove worse than useless.

Only the two Elite Guard stormtroopers who had survived the Mandalorian onslaught seemed to realize that the battle had not ended. The pair were kneeling opposite each other in the second row of seats, silently slipping thermal detonators into the grenade launchers they had affixed to their blaster muzzles.
This
sniper would not be killed so easily, but in the time it would take to tell them that, they would learn it for themselves.

Caedus started toward the Moffs, treading on armored bodies and ruined seating with equal disregard. He could see already that his plan had worked beautifully. Several of the Moffs who had been speaking against him—including those fools, young Voryam Bhao and flabby-necked Krom Rethway—lay sprawled across the battle-chewed seats with open eyes and smoking wounds. The rest were peering at Caedus with expressions ranging from awe to gratitude to shrewd comprehension.