Leia stared at the comm speaker, a strange combination of surprise, hope, and disbelief flooding in on her. She glanced up at Karrde, caught his eye. He shrugged slightly, shook his head. "I'd heard he was dead," he murmured.
Leia swallowed. So had she : but it was Bel Iblis's voice, all right. Or else an excellent copy. "Garm, this is Leia Organa Solo," she said.
"Leia!" Bel Iblis said. "It's been a long time, hasn't it?
I didn't expect. you to be out here personally. Though perhaps I should have. Was all this your idea?"
Leia frowned out the viewport. "I don't understand what you mean by all this. What are you doing here, anyway?"
"Captain Solo sent my assistant the coordinates and asked us to come along as backup," Bel Iblis said, a note of caution creeping into his voice. "I assumed it was at your request."
Leia smiled tightly. She should have guessed. "Han's memory sort of slips sometimes," she said. "Though to be honest, we haven't had much time since we got back to compare notes."
"I see," Bel Iblis said slowly. "So it wasn't actually an official request from the New Republic?"
"It wasn't, but it is now," Leia assured him. "On behalf of the New Republic, I hereby ask for your assistance." She looked over at Virgilio. "Log that, please, Captain."
"Yes, Councilor," Virgilio acknowledged. "And speaking for myself, Senator Bel Iblis, I'm delighted to have you along."
"Thank you, Captain," Bel Iblis said, and in her mind's eye Leia could see the other's famous smile. "Let's do some damage, shall we? Peregrine out."
The six Dreadnaughts had moved into encirclement formation around the Star Destroyer now, smothering it with a flood of ion cannon fire and ignoring the increasingly sporadic turbolaser blasts raking them in return.
"Mara's right, though," Karrde said, stepping close to Leia. "As soon as we can get the tech team off that ship, we'd better get them and run."
Leia shook her head. "We can't just leave the Katana fleet to the Empire."
Karrde snorted. "I take it you haven't had a chance to count how many Dreadnaughts are left out there."
Leia frowned. "No. Why?"
"I did a scan," Karrde said grimly. "Earlier, when you were arguing with Fey'lya. Out of the original two hundred Katana ships : there are fifteen left."
Leia stared at him. "Fifteen?" she breathed.
Karrde nodded. "I'm afraid I underestimated the Grand Admiral, Councilor," he said, an edge of bitterness seeping in beneath the studied urbanity of his voice. "I knew that once he had the location of the fleet he would start moving the ships away from here. But I didn't expect him to get the location from Hoffner this quickly."
Leia shivered. She'd undergone an Imperial interrogation herself once. Years later, the memory was still vivid. "I wonder if there's anything left of him."
"Save your sympathy," Karrde advised. "In retrospect, it seems unlikely that Thnvn needed to bother with anything so uncivilized as coercion. For Hoffner to have talked so freely implies the Grand Admiral simply applied a large infusion of cash."
Leia gazed out at the battle, the dark feeling of failure setting over her. They'd lost. After all their efforts, they'd lost.
She took a deep breath, running through the Jedi relaxation exercises. Yes, they'd lost. But it vas just a battle, not the war. The Empire might ha'e taken the Dark Force, but recruiting and training crewers to man all those Dreadnaughts would take years. A lot could happen in that time. "You're right," she told Karrde. "We'd do best to cut our losses. Captain Virgilio, as soon as those TIE fighters have been neutralized I want a landing party sent to the Katana to assist our tech team there."
There was no reply. "Captain?"
Virgilio was staring out the bridge viewport, his face carved from stone. "Too late, Councilor," he said quietly.
Leia turned to look. There, moving toward the besieged Imperial ship, a second Star Destroyer had suddenly emerged from hyperspace.
The Imperials' backup had arrived.
"Pull out!" Aves shouted, his voice starting to sound ragged. "All ships, pull out! Second Star Destroyer in system."
The last word was half drowned out by the clang of the Z-95's proximity warning as something got entirely too close. Mara threw the little ship into a sideways skid, just in time to get out of a TIE fighter's line of fire. "Pull out where?" she demanded, turning her skid into a barely controlled spin that had the effect of killing her forward velocity. Her attacker, perhaps made overconfident by the appearance of the backup force, roared by too fast for more than a wild shot in her direction. Coolly, Mara blew him out of the sky. "In case you've forgotten, some of us don't have enough computing power aboard to calculate a safe hyperspace jump."
"I'll feed you the numbers," Aves said. "Karrde-"
"I agree," Karrde's voice came from the Escort Frigate. "Get out of here."
Mara clenched her teeth, glancing up at the second Star Destroyer. She hated to turn tail and run, but she knew they were right. Bel Iblis had shifted three of his ships to meet the new threat, but even equipped with ion cannon, three Dreadnaughts couldn't hold down a Star Destroyer for long. If they didn't disengage soon, they might not get another chance-
Abruptly, her danger sense tingled. Again she threw the Z-95 into a skid; but this time she was too late. The ship lurched hard, and from behind her came the hissing scream of superheated metal vaporizing into space. "I'm hit!" she snapped, one hand automatically slapping cutoff switches as the other grabbed for her flight suit's helJet seals and fastened them in place. Just in time; a second hiss, cut off almost before it began, announced the failure of cabin integrity. "Power lost, air lost. Ejecting now."
She reached for the eject loop : and paused. By chance-or perhaps last-second instinct her crippled fighter was aimed almost directly at the first Star Destroyer s hangar entry port. If she could coax a little more power out of the auxiliary maneuvering system :
It took more than a little coaxing, but when she finally gripped the eject loop again she had the satisfaction of knowing that even in death the Z-95 would take a minor bit of revenge on the Empire's war machine. Not much, but a little.
She pulled down on the loop, and an instant later was slammed hard into her seat as explosive bolts blew the canopy clear and catapulted her out of the ship. She got a quick glimpse of the Star Destroyer's portside edge, an even quicker glimpse of a TIE fighter whipping past-
And suddenly there was an agonized squeal from the ejection seat's electronics, and the violent crackle of arcing circuits : and with a horrible jolt Mara realized that she had made what might very well be the last mistake of her life. Intent on aiming her crippled Z-95 at the Star Destroyer's hangar bay, she had drifted too close to the giant ship and ejected directly into the path of the Dreadnaughts' ion beam bombardment.
And in that single crackle of tortured electronics she had lost everything. Her comm, her lights, her limited maneuvering jets, her life support regulator, her emergency beacons.
Everything.
For a second her thoughts flickered to Skywalker. He'd been lost in deep space, too, awhile back. But she'd had a reason to find him. No one had a similar reason to find her.
A flaming TIE fighter roared past her and exploded. A large piece of shrapnel glanced off the ceramic armor that wrapped partially around her shoulders, slamming her head hard against the side of the headrest.
And as she fell into the blackness, she saw the Emperor's face before her. And knew that she had again failed him.
They were approaching the monitor anteroom just behind the Katana's bridge when Luke abruptly jerked. "What?" Han snapped, looking quickly around down the corridor behind them.
"It's Mara," the other said, his face tight. "She's in trouble."
"Hit?" Han asked.
"Hit and:and lost," Luke said, forehead straining in concentration. "She must have run into one of the ion beams."
The kid was looking like he'd just lost his best friend, instead of someone who wanted to kill him. Han th
ought about pointing that out, decided at the last second they had more immediate things to worry about. Probably just one of those crazy Jedi things that never made sense anyway. "Well, we can't help her now," he said, starting forward again. "Come on.
Both the starboard and port main corridors fed into the monitor anteroom, from which a single set of blast doors led the rest of the way forward into the bridge proper. Lando and Chewbacca were at opposite sides of the port corridor entrance way as Han and Luke arrived, huddling back from a barrage of laser fire and occasionally risking a quick shot know. "What've you got, Lando?" Han asked as he and Luke joined them.
"Nothing good, buddy," Lando grunted back. "There are at least ten of then' left. Shen and Tomrus were both hit-Shen will probably die if we don't get him to a medic droid in the next hour or so. Anselm and Kline are taking care of them inside the bridge."
"We did a little better, but we've still got a couple of them coming up behind us," Han told him, doing a quick assesment of the rows of monitor consoles in the anteroom. They would provide reasonable cover, hilt given the layout, the defenders wouldn't be able to retreat farther without opening themselves to enemy fire. "I don't think four of us can hold this place," he decided. "We'd better pull back to the bridge."
"From which there's nowhere else to go, Lando pointed out. "I trust you considered that part?"
Beside him, Han felt Luke brace himself. "All right," Luke said. "Into the bridge, all of you. I'll handle this."
Lando threw him a look. "You'll what?"
"I'll handle it," Luke repeated. With a sharp snap-hiss he ignited his lightsaber. "Get going-I know what I'm doing."
"Come on," Han seconded. He didn't know what Luke had in mind, but something about the kid's face suggested it wouldn't be a good idea to argue. "We can backstop him from inside."
A minute later they were set: Han and Lando just inside the bridge blast doors, Chewbacca a few meters farther in under cover of an engineering console, Luke standing alone in the archway with lightsaber humming. It took another minute for the Imperials to realize that they had the corridors to themselves; but once they did they moved swiftly. Cover fire began ricocheting around the monitor consoles, and as it did so the Imperials began diving one by one through the two corridor archways into the anteroom, taking cover behind the long consoles and adding their contribution to the laser fire storm.
Trying not to wince back from the attack, Han kept up his own fire, knowing full well that he wasn't doing much more than making noise. Luke's lightsaber flashed like something alive and hungry, deflecting the bolts that came too close. So far the kid didn't seem to have been hit : but Han knew that it couldn't last. As soon as the Imperials stopped laying down random cover fire and started concentrating on their aim, there would be too many shots for even a Jedi to stay clear of. Gritting his teeth, wishing he knew what Luke had in mind, he kept shooting.
"Ready!" Luke shouted over the screaming of the bolts : and even as Han wondered what he was supposed to be ready for, the kid took a step back and threw his lightsaber to the side. It spiraled across the anteroom, spun into the wall-
And with a crack like thunder, sliced the anteroom open to space.
Luke leaped backwards, barely making it into the bridge before the blast doors slammed shut against the explosive decompression. Alarms whistled for a moment until Chewbacca shut them oft, and for another minute Han could hear the thudding of laser fire as the doomed Imperials fired uselessly at the blast doors.
And then the firing trailed off into silence : and it was all over.
Luke was already at the main viewport, gazing out at the battle taking place outside. "Take it easy, Luke," Han advised, holstering his blaster and coming up behind him. "We're out of the fight."
"We can't be," Luke insisted, his artificial right hand opening and closing restlessly. Maybe remembering Myrkr, and that long trek with Mara across the forest. "We've got to do something to help. The Imperials will kill everyone if we don't."
"We can't fire, and we can't maneuver," Han growled, fighting back his own feeling of helplessness. Leia was on that Escort Frigate out there : "What's left?"
Luke waved a hand helplessly. "I don't know," he conceded. "You're supposed to be the clever one. You think of something."
"Yeah," Han muttered, looking around the bridge. "Sure. I'm supposed to just wave my hands and-"
He stopped short:and felt a slow, lopsided smile spread across his face. "Chewie, Lando-get over there to those sensor displays," he ordered, looking down at the console in front of him. Not the right one. "Luke, help me find-never mind; here it is."
"Here what is?" Lando asked, stepping in front of the display Han had indicated.
"Think about it a minute," Han said, glancing over the controls. Good; everything still seemed to be engaged. He just hoped it all still worked. "Where are we, anyway?" he added, stepping over to the helm console and activating it.
"We're in the middle of nowhere," Lando said with strained patience. "And fiddling with that helm isn't going to get us anywhere."
"You're right," Han agreed, smiling tightly. "It's not going to get us anywhere."
Lando stared at him:and slowly, a smile of his own appeared. "Right," he said slyly. "Right. This is the Katana fleet. And we're aboard the Katana."
"You got it," Han told him. Taking a deep breath, mentally crossing his fingers, he eased power to the drive.
The Katana didn't move, of course. But the whole reason the entire Katana fleet had disappeared together in the first place-
"Got one," Lando called out, hunching over his sensor display. "Bearing forty-three mark twenty."
"Just one?" Han asked.
"Just one," Lando confirmed. "Count your blessings-after this much time we're lucky to have even one ship whose engines still work."
"Let's hope they stay working," Han grunted. "Give me an intercept course for that second Star Destroyer."
"Uh :" Lando frowned. "Come around fifteen degrees portside and down a hair."
"Right." Carefully, Han made the necessary course change. It was a strange feeling to be flying another ship by slave-rig remote control. "How's that?" he asked Lando.
"Looks good," Lando confirmed. "Give it a little more power."
"The fire control monitors aren't working," Luke warned, stepping to Han's side. "I don't know if you're going to be able to fire accurately without them."
"I'm not even going to try," Han told him grimly. "Lando?"
"Shift a little more to portside," Lando directed. "A little more : that's it." He looked up at Han. "You're lined up perfectly."
"Here goes," Han said; and threw the throttle control wide open.
There was no way the Star Destroyer could have missed seeing the Dreadnaught bearing down on it, of course. But with its electronic and control systems still being scrambled by Bel Iblis's ion attack, there was also no way for it to move out of the way in time.
Even from the Katana's distance, the impact and explosion were pretty spectacular. Han watched the expanding fireball fade slowly, and then turned to Luke. "Okay," he said. "Now we're out of the fight."
Through the Judicator's side viewport Captain Brandei watched in stunned disbelief as the Peremptory died its fiery death. No-it couldn't be. It simply couldn't. Not an Imperial Star Destroyer. Not the mightiest ship in the Empire's fleet.
The crack of a shot against the bridge deflector screen snapped him out of it. "Report," he snapped.
"One of the enemy Dreadnaughts seems to have been damaged in the Peremptory's explosion," the sensor officer reported. "The other two are on their way back here."