Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars (27 page)

Right now, he had to be displeased in the extreme.

How could so many rebel transports
have gotten away? Even coming out of hyperspace too early shouldn’t have undermined their entire attack. The Imperial Starfleet had sent down a strike
force that should have been able to paralyze the enemy’s defenses. But instead of victory, they had three demolished AT-ATs, one badly damaged one, several dozen destroyed TIE fighters, and
several hundred dead snowtroopers. The high number
of rebel casualties they’d inflicted was small consolation.

Later, Ciena resolved, she would watch the recordings of the Battle of Hoth and study the rebels’ tactics in detail. The Empire possessed every advantage in terms of manpower and
firepower. Today ought to have been the day they dealt the Rebellion a final, fatal blow. Instead, their victory was incomplete. If the rebels could avoid
being completely crushed by an Imperial
strike force led by six Star Destroyers, then superior or at least surprising tactical moves had to be the reason. Analyzing those in greater depth might give the Imperials the information they
needed to finally end this gruesome war.

For now, though, Ciena and everyone else on the
Executor
had another, far more vital priority: capture the
Millennium
Falcon
.

If anyone on the bridge understood why it was so important to catch that antique piece of junk, nobody said so. Lord Vader wanted the ship towed aboard and its passengers taken alive. So instead
of simply blowing up the
Millennium Falcon
—something they could have done in an instant—they had to try to pluck it from the sky.

Unfortunately, whoever was steering the
Falcon
was one
hell of a pilot. He’d gone into an asteroid field, apparently choosing suicide over capture. No small ship could hope to
emerge from an asteroid field intact. The rebel ship at least had shields; TIE fighters didn’t even have that much protection.

Yet four of them had been sent in. While Ciena sat there trying to fathom the purpose of that suicide mission, Captain Piett said, “Ree, provide
auxiliary navigational
assistance.”

Her heart sank even as she said, “Yes, sir.”

She went to the aux-nav post in the data pit and looked down at the four screens that showed her the TIE fighters’ designations and coordinates. Any assistance she could provide would be
minimal—but if she could give those pilots a chance, she would. Her fingers flew as she set the triangulations between
their ships and the
Millennium Falcon
, and then she yanked on the
headset that would let her talk to the pilots directly. “O-L-Seven-Zero-One, adjust thirty-seven degrees starboard and down—N-A-Eight-One-One, follow but go up—”

NA811 was a guy called Penrie, whom she talked to once in a while, a graduate of the academy on Lothal. When he laughed, no one could help laughing with him, and
since he seemed to find
everybody’s jokes hilarious, the laughter was constant. Although Penrie was a couple of years her senior, he sounded younger as he said,
“Affirmative.”

“C-R-Nine-Seven-Eight, pull up—pull up!” But Ciena’s order had come too late; one of the TIE fighters vanished from the grid.

That was one dead man on her watch.
Please, no more.

“O-L-Seven-Zero-One, new trajectory
linking to your nav computer now—”

“Got it.”

“J-A-One-Eight-Nine, your computer isn’t linking up—”

“I can’t—”
Then a burst of static accompanied the wild spinning of another TIE on her screen grid.
“Clipped one of my engines! Can’t
steer—need a tractor—”

Louder static was followed by silence as the image of JA189’s TIE fighter faded away for good.

Sweat made Ciena’s gray
jumpsuit stick to her skin. She kept her eyes locked on the grid and her voice as even as she could manage. “O-L-Seven-Zero-One, N-A-Eight-One-One,
you’re getting in really close to one of the larger asteroids—”

“Target seems to be looking for cover. We’re on him.”
That was OL701. Through the NA811 uplink, Ciena heard only breathing that was too shallow, too quick. Penrie had
just seen
two other pilots explode in front of his eyes.

To Captain Piett, she said, “Sir, if the
Millennium Falcon
lands on a larger asteroid, we could focus our laser cannons on that and blow it away. We’d take the
Falcon
out in the process. Can I order the TIE fighters back?”

Piett stood very still, obviously waiting for Lord Vader to countermand the order. Vader said nothing. He didn’t even
turn around. Finally, Piett said, “Very well, Ree.”

Hope rushed through her. At least she could save two of the pilots. “N-A-Eight-One-One, O-L-Seven-Zero-One, abort pursuit. Chart your safest course back and—”

“He’s in one of the canyons,”
OL701 replied.
“We’ve almost got him—”

Ciena waited to hear from Penrie. Instead he screamed—a terrible short sound cut off too soon. In that instant,
both of the remaining TIE fighters disappeared from her viewscreen, leaving
it dark.

Four pilots dead, and it was partly her responsibility. Would Piett reprimand her? Worse, would Vader?

What if those rumors were true, about how Vader treated those who displeased him?

But nobody paid any attention to her. Piett and Vader acted as if she hadn’t let anyone down, as if four loyal officers
hadn’t just died for no reason. There was nothing for Ciena to
do but return to her usual station and go back to monitoring the situation.

To the commander who sat beside her in the data pit, she whispered, “Why aren’t we at least firing on the asteroid?”

“No clear shot. The target could just as easily have changed course. We no longer have it on visuals or sensors.”

A wave of nausea
swept through her. Those four TIE fighter pilots had died for nothing. No one would ever hear Penrie’s laugh again. In command-track courses at the academy, the teachers
had counseled them that they couldn’t think of their troops as individuals; to do so would lead only to hesitation and thus defeat. They protected their people by forgetting they
were
people, instead viewing them as pieces
in a vast, elaborate game. It was the only element of command-track training that had ever given Ciena pause. She knew now that she would never be able to do
that, not the way Piett and Vader did.

Yet Vader could not have been totally devoid of emotion, because he then—unbelievably—ordered the
Executor
into the asteroid field, too.

Impacts began to send shudders throughout the ship.
Ciena winced as if the damages were actual injuries to her body. What Star Destroyers had in sheer power, they lacked in maneuverability; they
would take countless hits today. What registered as minor damage on a Super Star Destroyer could mean the demolition of two entire decks down for a few thousand meters—and all the people
stationed on those decks. More officers and stormtroopers would die
needlessly, all because Lord Vader couldn’t let one ratty old ship go—

No,
Ciena reminded herself sternly. The deaths she’d seen that day, the useless risk and damage—that was all because the Rebel Alliance had started a war.

When her shift ended, Ciena stood to go and winced. Every muscle in her body had tensed so badly during the TIE fighter flights through the asteroid field that she
felt as sore
as if she’d run thirty kilometers. The doors slid open to let her walk out—or, as it turned out, to let Piett return. Immediately, she stood at attention, awaiting the reprimand she no
doubt deserved.

Piett said only, “Well done today, Lieutenant Commander.”

“But—” Was he thinking of someone else? “I lost all four pilots, sir.”

“They had no chance, really. You kept
them alive longer than they could have made it on their own.”

He was telling her she’d done a good job. On one level she understood why he said so, but it didn’t change how wretched she felt. There was nothing else for her to say, though,
except—“Thank you, Captain.”

“Oh. Yes. You weren’t on the bridge yet for—when—” Piett drew himself up. “I have been promoted to admiral, effective
immediately, assuming Admiral
Ozzel’s command.”

What happened to Admiral Ozzel?
The question died on her lips. In the Imperial Starfleet, sometimes it was better to be able to believe you didn’t know the answer. “Yes,
Admiral. Congratulations.”

Piett’s expression looked bleak. “That will be all, Ree.” With that he returned to the bridge, the black doors sliding shut behind him.

Ciena felt too exhausted to move, much less put in extra hours. Yet instead of returning to her bunk, she went to a spare analysis booth and pulled up all the footage from the Battle of Hoth
available to someone at her clearance level. She intended to go over every single second of it, until she figured out how a bunch of poorly armed, ragtag rebels were outwitting the greatest
military force
the galaxy had ever seen.

Was it arrogance to think she could come up with an answer that had eluded the admiralty’s finest tactical minds? No, she realized. It was desperation. She wanted this war to
end—
needed
it to end—so that the bloody, merciless methods of war would end, too. Strong as she was, determined as she was to see this through, Ciena knew she couldn’t
endure years more of
sending people to futile, meaningless deaths.

It’s not like Penrie and I were friends, but he was more than a call number. I remember his laugh, his birthmark. So I can’t forget that he was human, that somewhere out there he
has a mother and father who want him home. When they hear the truth, it will destroy them, as surely as it will destroy Mumma and Pappa if I die during my service. That’s
just one little
tragedy. Multiply that anguish and loss by the billions of people already dead in this war and it’s unbearable.

Whenever Ciena spoke in her head like that, she always envisioned the same listener. If only she could talk to Thane for real—he would know how to advise her, how to comfort her. Even if
he could do nothing else, he would’ve taken her in his arms and let her hold
on tightly until the worst of the pain had ebbed away. Sometimes she couldn’t fall asleep without imagining
the one night she and Thane had spent together—not the sex (well, not
only
the sex) but the afterglow, the way he had tenderly kissed her hair and curled his body against hers. She
couldn’t remember any other time she had felt so safe and warm.

Ciena bit her lower lip; the pain brought
her back to the here and now. Every few months she resolved not to think about Thane ever again. He had chosen his path. Wherever he was in the galaxy,
she hoped he was well, and happy. She would never know for sure, and she needed to make her peace with that.

So concentrate on what you’re doing,
she told herself. Ciena began playing back the Hoth footage, taking notes on her datapad the
whole time.
Abandoned snowspeeders—means
they lost ships and valuable material when we ran them off—possible to simply chase them until resources run out? War of attrition?
And the next footage showed the rebel laser cannons.
The armaments themselves were a match for Imperial standard, or very nearly, but—
Inadequate body armor for soldiers appears to be standard throughout the rebel forces.
Look at weapons that
expel shrapnel, possibly razor-edged microdroids?

Next was footage of the destruction of the Imperial walkers. Ciena could’ve groaned when she saw how easily the harpoons and towlines took the first AT-AT down. Surely there had to be some
kind of defense they could install for that. The second one seemed to explode from inside, so that was probably the Imperials’ fault
rather than the rebels’.
Mechanical malfunction?
A possible saboteur?
she jotted. And then another walker fell prey to a rebel pilot who somehow knew one of the only vulnerable spots in the armor—

Her mind went blank. The beeping and buzzing of the computers around her turned into so much white noise. Astonishment and betrayal rippled through her like an earthquake and its aftershocks.
But Ciena shook her head.
I imagined it. Must have. Because there’s no way.

Quickly, she put the footage back in and watched again. She hadn’t imagined it. The rebel snowspeeder kept firing at the ideal targets on the lowest joints of the walker’s legs as it
zoomed forward at suicidal speed—then, at the very last moment, it spun sideways through the narrow gap that led to safety.

Just
like flying through the stalactites back home.

Any number of pilots in the galaxy must have learned that move. Ciena knew that. But it didn’t change what she was absolutely sure she’d just seen:

Thane Kyrell had joined the Rebellion.

T
HANE WENT THROUGH the motions as blankly and automatically as his astromech droid: reach rendezvous point, input codes to receive location of the
next rendezvous
point, leap into hyperspace again, and finally connect with their new base ship, the Mon Calamari cruiser
Liberty.