“Yes, General,” replied the officer.
“And engage seekers.”
The officer hesitated. “In an atmospheric skirmish, sir, seekers will have a hard time distinguishing between our fighters and those of the enemy.”
Hux didn’t bat an eye. “This is no time to worry about collateral damage.” His voice was steely. “Give the order.”
“Yes, sir.”
—
“Almost in range!”
As he sent his X-wing into a steep dive, Poe knew this was one attack where failure could not be an option. The entire Resistance was depending on him and those following him in. One way or another, this First Order weapon had to be not damaged, not temporarily disabled, but completely destroyed. Automatic weapons systems, trackers, and controls were all very well and good, but when it came down to it, this kind of all-or-nothing combat boiled down to ships, their pilots, and how good both were.
“Hit the target dead center as many times as possible with as many runs as we can get. Let’s light it up!”
As he let loose with the X-wing’s full complement of armament, he noted that similar bursts of destructive fire came from Snap’s vessel. Rebel Alliance veteran Nien Nunb was there, too, with him and blasting away with the full force of his ship’s weaponry.
When they finished with the building that housed the oscillator, Poe vowed silently to himself, there would be nothing left but a smear on the wintry landscape.
—
It was not necessary to utilize scopes within the control room to see what was happening on another, critical part of the base. Huge explosions erupted from the top of the distant oscillator. Further confirmation of the location and strength of the attack arrived in the form of blaring alarms and strobing warning lights.
A flood of activity enveloped the base as the installation’s entire complement was mobilized to respond to the assault from above. Black-suited pilots raced to their TIE fighters as in the distance Resistance X-wings swooped around in a tight arc preparatory to making another run. In the midst of the confusion, an officer shouted into the comm.
“Report to your ships. Report to your ships, now, now, now! All pilots and backup, get your ships off the ground!”
—
Walls of gray metal lit from within rose above the three intruders as they made their way down the corridor only to be stopped by blast doors that had been closed ahead of them—an unfortunate safety measure because of the battle that was taking place above the containment control center, but one that Finn had anticipated. As Chewie began removing some small but powerful explosives from the duffel he had been carrying, Finn explained what they could expect from that point on.
“We’ll use the charges to blow the blast door.” He gestured. “The holding cells for prisoners are down that corridor. I’ll go in and draw fire, but it’s often heavily guarded, depending on who’s being held. I’m gonna need cover.”
Han eyed him intently. “You sure you’re up for this?”
“No,” Finn told him. “But this whole gamble is my call, so taking care of it is my responsibility. I’ll find Rey.” He said it with so much confidence that Han was inclined to believe the ex-trooper just might pull it off. “There’s a footbridge that has to be crossed. Troopers’ll be on our tail, so we should plant charges on it, too, take it down after we cross. That won’t prevent a pursuit, but they’ll have to go around to another passage and it’ll buy us some time. There’s an access tunnel that’ll lead us to the main hangar—I think.” His expression tightened. “I just hope she’s alive.”
A movement caught Han’s attention. Squinting, he broke out into a smile and pointed. “Something tells me she is.”
And there she was, climbing up an interior shaft wall directly toward them. Finn gaped in astonishment, not quite able to accept what he was seeing. Chewbacca moaned his relief at not having to deal with detonating explosives in such tight quarters.
It took her a moment, long enough to bring to bear the rifle she was carrying, before she recognized the trio and lowered the weapon. Her amazement at seeing them was no less than theirs had been when they had spotted her. Running to Finn, she threw herself into his arms. Neither could hug the other hard enough or long enough. The embracing pair finally separated, if only to look into each other’s eyes.
“Are you all right?” a relieved Finn asked. “What happened?” His voice darkened. “Did he hurt you?”
“Never mind me,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
He smiled softly. “We came back for you.”
She tried to find something to say to that, something worthy of the sentiment and the risk they had undertaken. She failed miserably. Chewie, however, had something of his own to add. Whatever the Wookiee had uttered caused tears to well up in her eyes. Having never found himself in such a position before, Finn was unsure how to respond. Knowing well her inner toughness, he wondered what Chewbacca had said that could have inspired such a reaction.
“What’d he say?”
She sniffed and wiped at her face. “That it was your idea.”
If he had been unable to find the right words with which to respond before, her reply, combined with the look she gave him, reduced him to a state of temporary aphasia.
It was all very sweet and charming, Han mused as he observed the happy reunion. If only he could forget that they were stuck on a hostile world, in a First Order base, amid squads of roving stormtroopers who were inclined to shoot on sight.
“We’ll have a party later,” he finally told them. “I’ll bring the cake. Right now, let’s get outta here.”
XVII
RISING FROM THEIR base, a host of TIE fighters moved to engage the X-wing squadrons. What had been a precisely plotted sequence of attack runs dissolved into chaotic dogfights as one X-wing pilot after another was forced to break from formation to engage his or her own assailants. Where formerly the sky above Starkiller Base had been filled only with the scream of the invaders’ engines, the blueness in which they had been operating now gave way to a cyclone of streaking energy blasts and explosions.
Nearly colliding with an oncoming TIE fighter, Poe let fly at another with the full force of his ship’s weapons systems.
“Cover for each other! There’s a lot of ’em, but that just means more targets. Don’t let these thugs scare you!”
“Blue Three,” Snap called out, “got one on your tail! Pull up and give us a view!”
“Copy that!” Blue Three’s pilot replied. Yanking back on her controls, Jess Pava took her ship up sharply—exposing the area in her wake to Poe’s fire, which immediately reduced her attacker to flaming fragments.
“I owe you one!” she called out as she sent her vessel diving back into the fray.
“Yeah, you owe me another attack run! Try to stick close, all teams! Follow me in!”
Despite being harassed by the swerving, diving TIE fighters that now seemed to be all around them, a clutch of X-wings managed to get low enough to carry out another strike on the containment structure. A series of hits sent flame and smoke billowing in all directions, but as they pulled up and away, Poe saw that the building was still intact. Worse than intact, he noted: It scarcely appeared to have suffered any damage at all.
“We’re not making a dent!” he yelled, confident his cockpit pickup would relay his observations to the rest of the squadrons. “What’s that thing made of, anyway?”
A telltale on his console began demanding attention. Flicking his attention to the attendant monitor, his eyes widened.
Seekers. Hundreds of seekers, rising from launch batteries concealed beneath the soil and snow. Rising toward him and his fellow pilots, giving them little room to maneuver—or escape.
“We got a lot of company!” It was all he had time to shout before being forced to take evasive action himself. Between blasting out of the
sky everything in front of him and avoiding those seekers coming up behind him, he stayed in one piece—barely.
Other members of the attacking squadrons were not so fortunate.
One after another they found themselves hemmed in by multiple seekers. One after another the X-wings went down, along with any TIE fighter unlucky enough to find itself in the immediate spatial vicinity.
Able to follow the battle via hyperspace relay thanks to the two reconnaissance droids still operating above the surface of the planet, those in the Resistance base command center on D’Qar could only exchange looks of dismay.
“We weren’t prepared for anything like this,” Admiral Statura muttered. “Our pilots will be annihilated.”
—
An exterior access door opened and four figures came racing out into the snow. Their attention immediately drawn skyward, they slowed to a halt. None of them was an expert in aerial warfare. They didn’t have to be. The presence of multiple TIE fighters backed by a seemingly endless barrage of seekers allowed anyone to predict the outcome of the battle. Even the most die-hard optimist would have conceded the inevitable.
Han turned to Finn, his expression solemn. But his tone was the same as always: ready for anything. He gestured toward Chewbacca.
“My friend here has a bag full of explosives that we didn’t use inside. Be a shame to make him haul them all the way back to the Falcon.” The Wookiee added a curt grunt of agreement. “What’s the best place we could put ’em to use?”
“The oscillator is the only sensible target,” Finn told him. “But there’s no way to get inside.”
“There is a way.”
Everyone turned toward Rey. It was Chewie who ventured the question that had to be asked.
“I’ve seen inside these kinds of walls,” she told them as the sky overhead continued to rain destruction. “The mechanics and instrumentation are the same as the Star Destroyers I’ve spent years inside salvaging. Get me to a conventional junction station, I can get us in.”
Han nodded and smiled at her. “Get us in. If you can do that, we’ll be ready.”
A hasty search took them to a parking area filled with a smattering of vehicles. From the varied assortment, they settled on an isolated snow speeder. Between Finn’s training and Rey’s knowledge of machines, they managed to get it fired up. As Han and Chewie headed for the nearest structure, Finn and Rey took off on the snow speeder. Just in time, it developed, as a trooper monitoring the area saw them take off. When his single shot missed the accelerating vehicle by a wide margin, he followed up with a quick report.
“Speeder stolen from Precinct Twenty-eight.”
The reply contained more than a hint of disbelief. “Stolen?”
“Yes, sir. Unauthorized departure.”
A pause, then, “We’re tracking it. Sending a backup unit immediately.”
Careening over a snowdrift as Rey struggled to maintain control of the unfamiliar machine, they scattered small local creatures in front of them as they sped toward the containment center. From the ground, the hexagon loomed ahead of them. Occasional bursts of fiery energy flowered against its roof and sides as the X-wings continued their attack. Finn could see that the number of strikes had decreased markedly.
And the sky continued to darken as the curtain of increasingly opaque dark energy was drawn into the collectors that dominated the other side of the planet, blocking more and more sunlight as the containment unit situated at the planetary core continued to fill.
“Snow is cold!” Rey squeezed the speeder between a phalanx of willowy alien trees. “It’s the complete opposite of Jakku!”
“Try living here,” Finn told her. “There are only two seasons: winter, and dead of winter!”
A sudden boom and the speeder’s course wobbled. They’d been hit! Switching systems around like a card sharp dealing on a busy night, Rey succeeded in maintaining speed. A second shot barely missed them.
A glance back showed a second snow speeder in pursuit and closing. Finn realized that the way its driver was shooting, if he got any closer, he could take them out with his next burst. They had to do something, and fast. Rey was skilled at driving, and he was skilled at…
“Switch!” he yelled.
They made the difficult change only because they had to, with Rey still in control of their vehicle but Finn now in position to accurately return fire. Multiple blasts hit nothing, as Rey slalomed around and between trees while Finn fought to take out their pursuer. Damn driver knew what he was doing, Finn thought with grudging admiration. The man might even have been a former squadron mate. He tried not to think of that as he aimed and got off another burst.
This time his shot struck home, sending the trooper flying. Whether he’d killed him or not Finn didn’t know, but the pursuer’s speeder slammed into the trees and burst into flame.
“Got him!” As he turned forward once more, Finn’s gaze was again drawn skyward. Not, this time, to the space above the hexagon, but distant, toward the horizon. Shafts of an intense deep purple light were flowing there, a curtain of energy being drawn down by the weapon’s collectors. He leaned toward Rey.
“They’re charging the weapon! We’re running out of time!”
“We’ll get there!” she yelled back at him, but she realized that they had only the slimmest of chances to prevent the destruction of the Resistance base and the entire D’Qar system.
—
Watching from cover, Han and Chewie waited until a trio of stormtroopers could be seen approaching a wide, heavy-duty service hatch. It was smaller than any of the major portals they had seen thus far. Which meant, Han hoped, that it was likely to be lightly guarded. As the doorway opened, Chewbacca immediately took out the middle trooper with his bowcaster. Startled, the surviving troopers returned fire, only to be cut down by Han’s unerring aim. Alarms began to blare, rising even above the cacophony of the nearby aerial contest. Within the open passageway, another stormtrooper darted back out of sight and hurriedly activated his comlink.
“Enemy sighted and engaged at Oscillator Bay Six! Three men down; send reinforcements!”
—
Rey brought the snow speeder to a stop beside a small black structure. To Finn it looked unimpressive. But then, he reminded himself, remove a trigger from a gun and while the trigger itself would look decidedly unimportant, its absence would render the gun useless.
After opening a maintenance panel, Rey scrutinized the interior briefly before setting to work. One part after another was disconnected by her deft fingers.
“Been doing this all my life. Never thought about it much until now. It was just something I did every day, to survive. A routine, like breathing.” As if to demonstrate to herself that she was more than a little familiar with the components in question, she closed her eyes while continuing to disassemble the interior of the box. When she opened them again, she was gratified to see that she hadn’t missed a single connection.
“Nice piece of instrumentation,” she commented absently. “I would have got at least three portions for this.”
“What?” Absorbed in the spectacle of the ongoing battle overhead, the enormous streams of dark energy pouring down upon distant, unseen collectors, and a sky that continued to darken around them, Finn hadn’t been following her reminiscence.
“Never mind.” She continued with the work. “I was just pointing out how one small piece can be important. Like this, for example.” With her left hand she pulled hard, and a small length of brightly colored flow fiber came away in her fingers.
—
Now inside the complex, an increasingly anxious Han allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief as the service hatch they had been monitoring finally parted to reveal a deserted corridor beyond. There was no sign of the single remaining trooper who had reported their presence. Outnumbered, that individual had sensibly retired to wa
it for the requested reinforcements. As the two intruders rushed forward and stepped inside, Chewbacca let out an agitated moan.
“Yeah,” Han agreed. “No kidding.”
A quick check of the vicinity indicated that no one, organic or droid, was waiting in ambush. While grateful, Han knew that their surroundings were unlikely to remain peaceful for long. Hurriedly, he and Chewie divided the duffel’s explosive contents.
“Let’s plant ’em at every other support column we can find,” Han suggested. When Chewie responded with a series of emphatic moans, Han reconsidered.
“You’re right. Better idea.” He indicated the nearest of the building’s massive support structures. “We don’t have the kind of munitions necessary to bring down more than one. I only hope we brought enough to do that much.” He gestured. “We’ll put everything we’ve got on that one column. You take the top. I’ll go below. We’ll meet back here.”
Unintentionally, their eyes met—and the stare held. Man and Wookiee realized it might be for the last time. Nothing more was said. Nothing more needed to be. There never had been, over the years, an excess of superficial chatter between the two whenever there was work to be done. Each knew his job and did it.
That did not keep Han from pausing a moment to look back. When he did, he discovered Chewbacca gazing in his direction. Same ethic, different species, same thought, Han mused.
He pointed stiffly. “Go! Before things get messy.”
Chewie complied, this time without looking back. Han watched him for a long moment. Then he, too, turned and raced off.
There was a lot on his mind, but when one is emplacing explosives it’s usually a good idea to concentrate on the task at hand. Everything else would have to wait until they were done. He checked an install, then moved down to another level.
—
In contrast to Han’s single-minded efforts to place the explosive charges, Kylo Ren’s thoughts were focused wholly on locating the as-yet-unknown intruders. Approaching the main entrance to the hexagon, he ignored the squad of backup troopers waiting there even as they snapped to attention in response to his arrival. Without waiting for an order, one enterprising trooper hit the controls that activated the main portal. At a gesture from Ren, he and his companions followed their leader inside.