Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars (39 page)

Berisse, meanwhile, had already moved on. “What are we waiting for? The Emperor’s shuttle will be
here soon. Let’s get it together!”

During the next couple of hours of instructions and formations, Ciena stood separately from her friends; commanders had a marginally better position, though hundreds of captains, admirals, and
top gunners still stood in front of her. Numbly, she did whatever was asked of her, shifting position as the organizers thought better of it. At least it was something
to do. She tried to occupy
her mind by observing the power play among the various members of the top brass, but even that didn’t help. Seeing how petty their concerns were, and how often they betrayed fear of Lord
Vader’s anger, only reminded Ciena that the Imperial Starfleet she’d served was not the one she’d believed in all this time.

Finally, the hour came. Lord Vader strode out, black
cape billowing behind him; from a distance, the white shuttlecraft looked like a star. As it came closer, Ciena could see the distinctive
gray stripe on its nose, the marking that informed everyone this was truly the Emperor arriving.

To Ciena’s surprise, Lord Vader bowed as figures began to descend from the shuttle. None of the other officers were required to bow. What could that mean?
But the question was wiped from
her mind as Emperor Palpatine came into view.

Palpatine’s face appeared on countless holos every single day. Like anyone else in the Empire, she could have described him as well as she could members of her own family. Hair almost
entirely gray but still thick, face betraying only the slightest lines of care and time, his posture straight, his eyes sharp.
In other words, the face shown to the world had nothing to do with the
reality. Ciena’s eyes widened as she took in the face his heavy hood did not entirely conceal—the unnatural paleness of his skin, the inhuman folds and wrinkles. He walked through the
bay with his back hunched and without so much as a word or glance toward the hundreds of loyal officers assembled to greet him.

Don’t
be petty. So he’s grown older. That’s only natural! And surely the Emperor has other things on his mind than some silly ceremony—

The rationalizations didn’t work. What shook Ciena wasn’t merely the Emperor’s appearance; it was the sense of almost depthless malice that radiated from him, so strongly she
could have reeled. Even from a distance, Palpatine awakened in her a physical dread—primitive
instincts telling her to escape or fight.

Only one other person had ever made her feel that way: Darth Vader. Ciena had always told herself that Vader was an aberration, unique in the Empire. So far as it went, that was true. But the
most terrifying thing about him, the constant sense of malevolence and danger he inspired—that was shared by the most powerful person in the galaxy.

Is
this who I’ve been serving all along?

This is a bad dream.

Didn’t work. Thane could feel the iron bench beneath him, smell the grease-and-ozone scent of the repair bay. Every mundane detail made it clear he was wide awake.

This is a test. A drill. The Alliance leaders want to find out what we’d do when confronted with the worst-case scenario.

No way. They wouldn’t risk pulling
together the entire rebel armada for a mere drill.

But if it wasn’t a nightmare and it wasn’t a drill, it was the undeniable, horrible truth: the Empire had built a second Death Star.

Thane could think of words from three dozen worlds to describe how he felt, each epithet more obscene than the last. But he lacked the breath to speak any of them. He could only stare at the
rotating holo
in front of the X-wing squadrons as they received their briefing from General Madine.

“Exactly how are they going to take care of the shield generator?” Kendy asked. “They’ll have dozens of troopers down on the forest moon of Endor, if not
hundreds—”

“General Solo will take over from Major Lokmarcha, who was killed in action. Solo’s team on the moon of Endor will handle the shield generator.
Each person involved in this assault
has enough to do on their own without worrying about someone else’s job, Corona Five,” Madine said sternly.

Thane whispered to Yendor, “Who the hell is General Solo?”

“You know. Han Solo! Captain of the
Millennium Falcon
?”

The ship name sounded vaguely familiar, but Thane couldn’t quite place it.

Yendor’s eyes widened with disbelief. “Come
on! He’s one of the guys who rescued Princess Leia from the first Death Star. You remember
that
, right?”

“I wasn’t with the Rebellion then. I didn’t join until right before Hoth.”

“Oh. I guess Captain Solo got captured by a bounty hunter right after Hoth.” Yendor’s lekku drooped. “So you wouldn’t know him—but, hey, he’s one of the
best.”

“Indeed he is,” interrupted General Madine,
who had apparently overheard their entire conversation. Both Thane and Yendor faced forward and sat up straight. “General Solo will
be joined on the forest moon strike team by Princess Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker. They’ll have that shield down.”

Luke Skywalker, again. Thane managed to keep from rolling his eyes. But Princess Leia he admired. If he could trust anyone, he could trust her.

General Madine continued, “Meanwhile, General Calrissian will be leading the starfighters diving into the core of the Death Star. The dispersal of the Imperial fleet gives us this
unprecedented chance to strike. Due to the unfinished construction, the station’s main reactor remains exposed and vulnerable. A strike team should be able to penetrate the Death Star and
fire into that reactor,
setting off a chain reaction that will destroy the station before it ever has a chance to become operational.”

And who is this General Calrissian?
Thane decided not to ask that question out loud. If the Rebel Alliance was happy turning over its two most critical missions
of all time
to a
bunch of brand-new generals, okay, fine—

“Corona Squadron, your mission is to cover General Calrissian
in the
Millennium Falcon
and the other starfighters in the Gold, Red, Green, and Gray Squadrons as they penetrate the
Death Star,” Madine continued. “The fewer TIE fighters they have to fight on their way in, the better their chances of a clean hit and a getaway for the entire fleet. This means
you’ll be dealing with TIE fire from both inside and outside the space station, as well as potential
long-range fire from any larger ships the Empire can deploy.”

At some point in the near future, Thane figured, he would completely freak out at the thought of going into battle against a Death Star. Right now, he could hardly comprehend the existence of
the damned thing.

He had believed Ciena naive for arguing that the Empire would never again try to destroy another world. Only now did
Thane realize that, on some level, he had believed it, too. The thought of
another Alderaan was too much to wrap his mind around. No matter how long the odds against them, the Rebellion had to attack. From now on, this was not only the most important battle they had to
fight—it was the only battle that would ever matter.

After the briefing he walked through the main hangar, which had become
a frenzy of activity. Although many pilots were checking out their ships, others were making a point of hugging friends,
shaking hands. Saying good-bye, just in case.

Thane stopped by the
Moa
first, where he shook Brill’s paw and Methwat’s long-fingered hand and for once hugged Lohgarra as tightly as she hugged him. But one member of the
Moa
’s crew turned out to be with Corona Squadron.

“I’ve needed a new astromech for a while,” Yendor said as JJH2 was lowered into position aboard the X-wing. “You said this guy is the best.”

JJH2 beeped inquisitively, and Thane smiled at the little droid despite himself. “Yeah, I said it and I meant it. Take care of each other out there, okay?”

As Yendor and JJH2 checked out systems together, Thane climbed into his ship. He’d already
given his X-wing a thorough going-over after the Hudalla dogfight; he had nothing to do but sit
in his cockpit and wait for the order to fly into combat against a Death Star—which sounded a lot like committing suicide.

The Rebel Alliance had managed to destroy the first Death Star, but they’d gotten lucky and they had to know it. A design flaw with an exhaust port? What were the odds? Thane
shook his
head as he imagined it. As a former Imperial officer, he knew very well how that kind of oversight would be punished. No engineer who had worked on the second Death Star would make a similar
mistake. This station would be even stronger than the first.

For a moment he remembered being a brand-new graduate of the Royal Academy on Coruscant, flying toward his posting on the Death
Star. When he had first seen the station, the sheer scale of it
had awed him like nothing before. He still found it difficult to believe that the first Death Star had fallen, or that the second one ever could.

The old, cynical voice in his head whispered,
You know, you could cut out of here. All-volunteer military, remember?

But Thane didn’t listen to that voice much anymore. The other
members of Corona Squadron and the crew of the
Moa
were as close as he had to a family now—maybe the closest
he’d ever had. He might not share his comrades’ wishful thinking, but he’d be damned if he’d abandon them on the eve of the most dangerous battle they’d ever
faced.

And if the Empire won, condemning the galaxy to an eternity of its harsh, corrupt rule?

Thane decided he’d rather
go down fighting.

It had been two days since Ciena had first seen the Death Star and the Emperor, and those two days had all but destroyed her.

Each horrifying realization struck her at a different moment, and no sooner had she thought she could bear one than another would undermine her completely. The Emperor’s horrifying
presence—the unjust conviction of her mother—Nash and Berisse’s
unquestioning acceptance of genocide as a military tactic—the many pilots who had died for no reason, their
lives wasted by a command that didn’t care—and Thane, even now at risk from the Empire every day of his life.

He was right about so many things,
she thought dully as she went through the motions of her monthly physical. The medical droid’s cold sensors allowed her to excuse her shuddering
as a shiver.
I wish I could tell him that.

Ciena still had not forgiven the Rebellion for Jude’s death. Nor did she believe it offered any hope of effective government. However, while she would never contemplate joining the rebels
herself, she now understood how Thane could have done so.

“This isn’t about whether or not we’ve kept faith with the Empire,” Thane had said to her as he
held her close in the Fortress. “It’s about whether the
Empire has kept faith with us.”

An oath of loyalty remained binding even when the subject proved unworthy. It simply became more bitter.

Just as Ciena slipped back into her uniform, an alert began to echo through the ship. “All pilots to TIE fighters, immediately.”

What was that about? Ciena didn’t think the rebels could possibly
know about the station yet, if the secret had been kept so effectively that even high-ranking officers on the
Executor
had not known. Probably it was a drill or some other display of firepower to show off for Palpatine. It made no difference; she wanted to be a part of it. More than anything else,
she needed to fly.

By now Ciena’s duties rarely required her to pilot anything smaller than
a transport shuttle, and those only rarely. But she’d always kept her skills sharp, and she could volunteer
for TIE duty at any point.

Immediately, she went to the ship’s flight commander, who seemed strangely…smug. “I see, Commander,” he said, his thin smile snaking across his face. “Of course
you want to be a part of this. Something to tell the grandchildren, hm?”

Yeah, one time
I showed off for the loathsome, repellent Emperor who blew up entire planets.
Ciena said only, “My next duty shift is six hours away, sir. I’m ready to serve
now.”

“Your courage will not go unrecognized, Commander Ree. Report to launching bay nine immediately.”

As Ciena strapped on the black armor of a TIE pilot, she told herself it would all be okay soon, because she’d be flying. Flight
remained her greatest joy and her only escape. Once she was
aloft, soaring through space, she’d be free of all her crushing doubts. If only for those few minutes, she would be herself again.

In the melee of preparation, she caught a glimpse of Nash, who gave her a roguish smile. He still believed in her. But the pang of guilt had faded before Ciena had even climbed into her cockpit.
Whatever
else happened in the future, she intended to keep her distance from anyone she’d known before. Perhaps she could put in for some isolated backwater posting—the kind of job
nobody wanted, something easy for her to get—and maybe a place where she could actually do some good.

Helmet: locked. Engines: full power. Ciena waited for her squadron’s signal, then flew up and out of the docking bay.
Hundreds of other fighters surrounded her, making precision flying
necessary. Yet she found it soothing, even the vibration and roar within the cockpit. Takeoff always felt like casting off shackles and breaking free.

For a moment she thought of soaring over the Jelucani mountains in the old V-171, Thane behind her, the two of them flying as one….

Then she shifted to wider sensors and
gasped.

Ciena had known hundreds of TIE fighters were taking flight. What she had not guessed was that countless other Imperial craft were massed nearby, as well, including several Star Destroyers. It
was beyond anything she’d expected, even greater than the attack force sent to Hoth.

Then the pieces came together.

We’re expecting major action, and soon. That means the rebels are
coming.

If the rebels are coming, they know about the Death Star and the Emperor. And if we have this tremendous a force waiting for them, we
wanted
them to know.