Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (26 page)

Howl had no obvious combat wounds. The untreated head trauma he’d suffered in the command center collapse had apparently proven fatal.

Namir laughed at that thought and raised a hand to gingerly touch his own head. The hood of his jacket was damp. His glove was spotted with red when he lowered it.

Howl always wanted you to be more like him. Maybe you’ll get to die the same way.

He knew he should have felt other emotions—
any
emotions—at the captain’s death. And Beak’s, and Roja’s. But numbness and shock were his allies. His priority was survival. Escape. Warmth.

Find Twilight Company.

But Twilight Company wasn’t on Hoth. He remembered that now.

He’d been close to the hangar when the stormtroopers had attacked. He tried to recall which direction he needed to take down the passage and found the effort made him dizzy. The solution came to him when a snowflake touched his chin and melted there.

The hangar doors were open. Follow the breeze.

He trudged slowly down the corridor, his steps becoming more assured the longer he stayed upright. He hefted his rifle, examined it for damage. There were no warning lights. He thought of disassembling it, checking it over more thoroughly, but he couldn’t risk the time when more stormtroopers might find him at any moment.

When he looked up again, Everi Chalis was standing in his way three meters down the passage.

She, too, was following the breeze upwind, swaying slightly as she walked. She moved even slower than Namir and kept one hand held to her chest. Namir tried to say her name, got it out the second time.

Chalis turned and swung a fist at him. He caught the blow easily and she seemed to lean into it, crumpling as she lost her balance. He started to reach out, but she pulled back and stumbled upright.

Her eyes were glassy and bloodshot. Her jacket was covered in snow and dirt and specks of blood. Beneath her chin, across her neck and down her throat, her skin had turned the intense red of a fresh bruise. She looked like she’d been hanged and freed from the noose too late.

“We need to go,” Namir said.

Chalis’s lips curled into something like a snarl. She said nothing.

Namir stared at her, waited. Chalis, too, seemed like something out of a nightmare, and he wondered whether he was unconscious after all. There was frustration and urgency in his voice as he asked, “Can you walk? We need to
go.
”

He reached out to grip her shoulder. This time Chalis caught him by the wrist. When she spoke, it was in a hoarse, pained creak. “Yes,” she said, the word drawn into two syllables.

That was enough for Namir. He strode past her and continued on his way. He didn’t hear Chalis’s footsteps at first, but soon they echoed a short distance behind him.

He followed the breeze. The farther they walked, the more attuned he became to the sounds of the base. The ice and stone were still settling, cracking, collapsing. He heard the popping of fires and electric wiring. Twice, he heard faint blaster shots. The battle was over, perhaps, but it hadn’t been finished for long.

He heard Chalis, too. Mostly she was breathing through her nose with a soft whistle, but now and then she took a rasping, racking gasp of air. She said nothing as they passed through the darkness, climbed over rubble, and squeezed through doors frozen ajar.

The hangar, when they arrived, was dazzlingly bright. Beyond the great doors to the cavern, Namir could see a lush blue sky, and the rays of a low-hanging sun swept paths of intense illumination between patches of shade. Most of the ships were gone. Two X-wing starfighters were burning. Twilight’s shuttle sat apparently untouched to one side.

“It’s our lucky day,” Namir said. He didn’t smile, and Chalis didn’t laugh.

The shuttle rattled and shook as it skimmed the runway toward the hangar doors. Namir had skipped the usual preflight checks—not because he feared to lose precious seconds, but because he’d never launched a starship on his own. He’d asked Chalis for instructions, but she had only sat in the copilot’s seat and stared blankly out the viewport.

So warning lights blinked and sparks and fire trailed the vessel. But when it exited the hangar bay, it lifted into an endless expanse of blue above and white below, leaving the ruin of the battlefield and its war machines behind.

Namir wanted to stare into the sky, let himself be hypnotized by emptiness and return to the numbness of the dark passageway. He couldn’t, he knew. Not yet.

“They’ll be watching for ships,” he said. “They’ll have a blockade around the planet. We don’t have the firepower to punch through.”

His fingers were tingling as warmth crept into the ship. He watched Chalis, waiting for an answer. She didn’t so much as turn.

“They’ll shoot us down,” he said, voice a little louder, a little harsher. “You need to talk us past, send a clearance code like you did when we boarded the freighter.”

Chalis stiffened in her seat and seemed to suppress a wince, as if she’d just aggravated an injury. Still she did not speak.

Namir glanced at the control panels, tried to guess how long they had before exiting Hoth’s upper atmosphere and finding themselves faced with a fleet of Star Destroyers. Outside, wisps of fog and cloud splashed against the viewport.

“
Chalis
,” he snapped, and reached out to grasp her shoulder.

Now she did look at him, her expression full of loathing and bitterness. Still, the silence.

“I don’t care if it hurts to talk,” Namir said. “I don’t care what happened back there. You’re going to try this.”

He kept one hand on her shoulder. The other fumbled with his rifle, still slung across his chest, and raised it toward Chalis. They were so close that the muzzle scraped the cloth of her jacket.

“You’re going to
try
,” he said.

Chalis kept staring her hateful stare. Then she turned to the console and with swift, jerky movements began tapping buttons and entering codes.

Next she opened a comm frequency. “This,” she said in a voice so rough and full of breath that Namir worried no one would hear, “is Blizzard Force unit two-two-eight-seven. Requesting—” She stopped, and her mouth opened and closed like that of a gasping fish before she resumed. “—berth for captive shuttle.”

She closed the frequency and leaned forward, her shoulders and chest heaving. She looked like she was trying to cough, but she made no sound.

The shuttle broke through gray clouds and the viewport turned black, stars glittering in the darkness like frost. The massive wedges of Star Destroyers stretched out to either side. Namir’s instinct was to pour power into the engines, to speed away from Hoth and through the blockade.

Instead he waited. If he gave away the bluff too soon, the shuttle would be annihilated.
Get through the blockade first
, he told himself.
Get far enough from the planet to hit lightspeed. They’ll be suspicious, but by then it will be too late.

He tapped at the navicomputer, let it plot the first jump to hyperspace. He’d figure out where the flotilla’s coordinates had been stored later—the ship must have logged them—but for now, anywhere away from Hoth was good enough.

A light on the console flashed. One of the Star Destroyers was attempting to contact them. Namir glanced at Chalis. She was staring straight ahead.

They were nearly through the blockade, nearly out of Hoth’s gravity well, when sensors showed a handful of ships moving swiftly toward them.

TIE fighters, Namir imagined. But their opportunity to catch the shuttle had passed.

The navicomputer signaled that a course was plotted. Namir reached out and gingerly pulled on the hyperdrive accelerator. Stars became streaks of light and Namir felt himself crushed against his seat. Then the viewpoint became a whirl of azure energy and the ship settled again.

He checked the readouts as if expecting to see the TIE fighters still in pursuit, glanced around the cockpit as if a stormtrooper had stowed aboard. It took long moments for his body to accept that he was safe—for the instincts of a hundred battles to subside and give way to true, deliberate thought for the first time since he’d woken.

He was alive.

Roja and Beak were dead.

The captain of Twilight Company was dead.

The rebel fleet was scattered.

He leaned back in his seat, shivering in the heat of the shuttle and clinging to the shreds of his numbness.

ELOCHAR SECTOR

Zero Days After Plan Kay One Zero

“This is Prelate Verge of the Imperial Ruling Council. I come with an offer in the name of Emperor Palpatine, glorious ruler of our galaxy and our guide into this modern age.”

The broadcast had started shortly after Brand boarded the
Thunderstrike.
It must have originated from the Star Destroyer, she thought, and been patched through
Thunderstrike
’s address system by the infiltrators on the bridge.

Prelate Verge. Brand had heard the name in passing, linked it with casual cruelty, but she couldn’t recall the details and didn’t have time to dredge her memory for more.

He had the voice of a child.

“All of you are traitors, in a sense—our Emperor welcomed each of you into the New Order, and each of you instead chose to rebel.”

The maintenance hatch had led almost directly to the command deck, barring a short climb through a turbolift shaft offline and half dismantled for repairs. Now Brand squatted before the blast doors sealing off the bridge, pieces of the door panel scattered around her knees as she attempted to hot-wire the controls. Even if she’d been able to cut through, she would’ve rejected the option—if there were hostages on the other side, she needed the element of surprise.

She heard the sound of a blaster cannon muffled by steel barricades. The deck barely trembled. It might have been Gadren, carving his way from the armory. Based on the vibrations, he wasn’t anywhere close.

“But one betrayal stings more than the others. I know you were joined by Governor Everi Chalis on Haidoral Prime. I know she is with you still.

“I cannot promise to spare you, but you have no chance against my vessel. If you do not turn Governor Chalis over to me, I will make a public example of all of you. Your executions will be slow, witnessed by your families and your homeworlds.”

Brand couldn’t laugh, given the circumstances. But she smiled bitterly. Governor Chalis had been gone for weeks, and she was
still
going to be the death of Twilight Company.

There was no time to wait for Gadren. Part of Brand was glad. She finished stripping a wire with her knife and touched it to the suit control unit on her wrist. Something inside the panel popped. The blast doors stuttered and slid open.

Brand fired at the first of the infiltrators before she’d even taken stock of the situation. It made her feel clumsy, reckless—if she’d been able to scope out the bridge before entering, she could have executed her foes in moments—but it was necessary. The disruptor burned bright, turned a woman standing at the comm station to rags and dust as Brand rolled through the doorway.

To one side, she heard the sound of flesh striking flesh. That was good. That would be the bridge crew, still alive and fighting back.

Her disruptor vibrated in her hand, nearly throwing off her aim as she fired a shot toward a man seated in the captain’s chair on the central platform. She swept her gaze across the bridge, made a quick count. Eight infiltrators. Five
Thunderstrike
crew members still alive, already wrestling with their captors. Acceptable odds in tight quarters.

Prelate Verge was speaking again. Brand tuned him out to focus on the broad-shouldered Imperial coming at her from the left. She stepped back, drew her knife, and wrapped an arm around him, holding the edge of her blade to his throat. With her other hand she retargeted her disruptor at an infiltrator dashing for cover. Taking her own hostage wouldn’t buy her more than a few moments, she knew, but that was all she really needed.

She heard five blaster shots. Only two were aimed at her. She didn’t have time to check on the crew. Her captive tried to escape and paid the price.

The rest of the fight was swift and bloody. Brand sprinted from one target to the next, knowing she’d be shot down in an instant if she stayed at range and in the open. Her knife disabled two opponents—she didn’t bother to check whether they lived—while the disruptor disintegrated another. When she caught her breath and wrinkled her nose to displace a drop of sweat, she saw the bridge crew had handled the remaining infiltrators.

What was left of the bridge crew. Two ensigns, neither of whom she knew. Commander Paonu was dead on the floor. She had no idea who was rightfully in charge of ship operations now.

“Get to your stations,” she snapped. The ensigns moved.

She glanced at the tactical holodisplay, saw
Apailana’s Promise
moving to interpose itself between the Star Destroyer and
Thunderstrike.
The gunship couldn’t possibly know what was going on, but it was preparing to sacrifice itself anyway.
Stupid and faithful beyond reason
, Brand thought.