The Corvettes laced into the Vic first, taking care to come in at high and low angles that forced the Hegemony gunners to crank their weapons to their highest attitude or lowest depression to get off a good shot. The Mantooine, Dantooine, and Ryloth slashed in over the top of Emperor’s Wisdom, pumping double turbolaser cannon fire into the dorsal shield. The shield glowed pink for a moment, then began to tear apart like an algae cloud ripped by fast currents.
The Frigates exploited the gap opened in the shield, hammering the Vic with fire from their turbolaser batteries and laser cannons. Red-gold energy bolts splashed over the larger ship’s hull, vaporizing armor and occasionally exploding a weapons platform. Despite the fury of their attack, and of the Chandrilla, Mrlsst, and Sullust in taking down the port shield, the real damage done to Emperor’s Wisdom was minimal, leaving the ship more than capable of inflicting serious damage on the New Republic taskforce.
Ackbar’s attention shifted as Reckoning and Decisive split and began to move forward, their daggerish prows jutting toward the retreating fleet. Decisive came in high and off to port, leaving Emancipator between it and Home One. Reckoning hung back ever so slightly, but sought to insert itself between the two New Republic ships. Binder remained behind the both of them, and clouds of fighters swirled and broke like schools of fish in the void around the larger ships.
“Weapons reporting positive weapon locks on Reckoning, Admiral.”
Ackbar nodded to his weapons officer. “Fire at will, Lieutenant Colton. Make them all count.”
Corran banked his Defender to starboard, then ruddered around to port to line up for his run on the prison. He unlinked lasers, letting them fire in sequence, then swooped low and leveled out barely five meters above the wall he’d been assigned. His finger tightened on the trigger, pulsing out verdant energy darts. He walked the fire straight down the wall, exploding E-webs, igniting storm-troopers, and sending faster men leaping fifteen meters to the ground.
He held his ship on target on the northeast tower and sent two bolts boiling into the guardpost on top of it. The square little building exploded into a ball of flame, scattering men and equipment. Tugging back on the yoke, he brought the trip up through the fireball, banked to starboard, and started a long loop around the prison’s south end.
“Nine here. North wall is clear, northeast tower is gone.”
“I copy, Nine. Wall defenses seem to be down.”
“Six here, I see a lot of activity on the ground. Stormies and guards.”
Corran glanced down at the prison. He saw a lot of armored individuals milling around in the open area on the western edge of the rectangular compound. The main building ran from north to south, but between it and the southern wall were three smaller buildings which seemed to house plenty of guards. All four corner towers leaked black smoke, and the ruins of heavy blaster emplacements and E-webs on the walls burned, but without troops on the ground, there was nothing to prevent the guards from entering the main building and slaughtering the prisoners.
I promised Jan Dodonna I’d see him and the others freed. I’ve already failed Urlor. I’m not failing them.
“Five, set up strafing runs on the guards. Scatter them. I’m going in.”
“Nine, you can’t.”
“Colonel, I have to. Isard’s people are late or aren’t coming. Someone’s got to go in.”
Tycho remained silent for a moment. “Okay, take Ooryl and Nrin with you.”
“I’ll take Ooryl. Nrin will be more useful up in the sky.”
“You haven’t seen him in a firefight, Nine. He’s with you. Go!”
“Thanks, Five.”
Pulling back on his fighter’s yoke, he brought the Defender back around to the north wall. Swooping down to two meters above the ground, he ruddered around until the trip faced the towering metal doors in the front wall and locked his tractor beam on them. He reversed thrust, then pulsed the throttle to full. The doors bent in the middle and metal screamed as the hinges ripped loose. The doors flew at his ship until he cut the tractor beam, then they rolled across the ground, knocking over streetlamps, pulverizing ferrocrete walkways and curbs, and finally coming to rest on top of a couple of landspeeders that promptly exploded as the great weight compressed their fuel tanks.
Corran set the Defender down and switched the ship into a passworded standby mode. Freeing himself from his restraining belts, he left his command chair, then pulled up the seat, exposing the small storage compartment. He pulled out a blaster carbine and a belt of powerpacks for it, which he looped over his chest from right shoulder to left hip. He also pulled out a fire extinguisher canister, which he flipped over. He unscrewed the bottom and tipped it upright so his grandfather’s lightsaber slid out. He clipped that to his blaster belt at the small of his back, then opened the fighter’s egress hatch. He poked the blaster carbine out first, then pulled himself out of the fighter’s cockpit.
He slid down the ship’s hull and landed in a crouch. Ooryl and Nrin had landed to his left and looked over at him. He scanned the line of the wall for signs of life, saw none, and sprinted forward. He crouched again in the shadow of one of the doors for another look, then darted forward again. He wove a zigzag course to the prison wall, then waited with his back against it, just to the western edge of the doorway.
Ooryl and Nrin joined him. Ooryl carried the standard issue blaster and carbine, but Nrin hefted a blaster rifle and a spare belt of powerpacks.
“You didn’t have that in your ship, did you?”
The Quarren shook his head and then pointed the gun’s long barrel at a smoldering corpse on the greensward between them and their ships. “You got him on your strafing run. I just appropriated things he no longer needs.”
Corran nodded, then took a peek around the corner. He drew his head back just in time as a flurry of blaster bolts chewed into the wall near him. Opening his mouth, he activated the comlink built into his helmet. “Five, you can come in at any time.”
“Copy that, Nine. Keep your heads down.”
Ooryl pointed to the north. “There.”
Corran crouched as the Defender came screaming in. He saw blaster bolts streak up into the sky and spark off the fighter’s forward shields, but they were mere droplets in comparison with the torrent of energy coming back toward the ground. Through the thick fabric of his flight suit Corran could feel the heat pouring off the Defender’s shots. The roar of the fighter’s passing thundered through his chest.
As Tycho’s ship flew over the wall, the trio rose to their feet. They ducked again, quickly, as Inyri’s fighter shot past and came up in a high loop to finish her south-to-north run. Keeping low, Corran looked around the corner, then waved the others on with him.
The main gateway had a fence-enclosed walkway that led to the main building. Looking to the right, Corran saw the western yard where stormtroopers and guards had been gathering. Thick smoke drifted over it, but not so thick that he couldn’t see burning bodies and figures crawling across the ground toward fallen comrades or parts of themselves that they’d lost. Screams of pain echoed within the yard, but a rising chorus of angry shouts started to eclipse them.
With the shouts came a scattering of blaster bolts. Corran swept his carbine over the yard, firing from the hip. Red bolts pierced the fog, pitching men over backward. Sprinting forward, he dropped an empty powerpack and slapped in a new one, then resumed firing. Hegemony troopers tracked their fire after him, spattering him with hot metal from the deteriorating fence.
Ooryl came running after him, keeping his blaster covering the eastern flank. Nrin advanced ten meters into the walkway—a third of the way to the main building—then scythed fire back and forth over the yard. His bolts spun men around, twirling them to the dirt. Their weapons flew as they went down. Other men snapped forward as bolts burned tunnels from stomach to spine. With the blaster’s backlight burnishing red highlights onto his black helmet and flight suit, the Quarren seemed the antithesis of the stormtroopers in their whit
e armor. Remorselessly and deliberately Nrin fired until the enemy resistance dribbled to a few sporadic shots, then he jogged forward and took up a sheltered position at the base of the steps to the main building.
Corran dashed up the steps and pulled his lightsaber from his belt with his left hand. He thumbed it to life, letting its silver glow banish the shadows, then stroked it down either side of the front door. Hot metal glowing red on each side, the door fell forward, then surfed down the steps to strike sparks on the ferrocrete walkway.
Corran darted into the smoky foyer, dropping to one knee. He tracked the blaster across the opening, then raised it as Ooryl came in and took up a similar position on the left side of the door. Corran glanced quickly behind him to make sure there was no office at his back.
Nrin entered the building, doffed his helmet, and clipped the comlink from it to the throat of his flight suit. “Where to from here?”
Ooryl pointed at a large painted diagram of the building on the wall. “Blue level is supposed to be the isolation block. The Lusankya prisoners would be there, I would think. There seems to be only one stairwell allowing access up there.”
“Makes sense for security reasons—prisoners get loose, only one way out of their hole. Besides, I like to start at the top anyway.” Corran snapped off his lightsaber, clipped it to his belt again, and led the way off to the right, to the stairwell that occupied the northwest corner of the building. “Eight flights up and we’re there.”
The stairwell had been built tightly, with each flight covering half the distance to the next floor. At the top of one an immediate right-angle turn would lead to the next flight. The metal underside of more steps formed the roof of each flight and a wall ran down between flights, preventing someone on one course from seeing what was on the next.
The steps themselves had been floored with cheap brown duraplast tiles that were already worn, chipped, and cracking from constant use. The walls themselves were covered with a glossy beige tile with a matching tan mortar. Corran had visited many prisons during his time with CorSec, and he recognized the decor and knew the materials had not been chosen for their aesthetic effect. The fact was that they could simply be hosed down to remove blood stains. And I’d bet that more than one prisoner has slipped and fallen down a flight or two here.
Because they didn’t know if they were walking into trouble or not, they crept up the stairs slowly. At each floor landing they paused and checked the doorway, but found no one waiting for them. Finally, after five agonizing minutes, they reached the top floor and entered a small containment area.
The isolation cells themselves ran in two long blocks down the center of the fourth floor, oriented north to south. On the east and west sides two spacious galleries, easily five meters wide, separated the back walls of the cells from the tall, translucent windows along the exterior walls. A wall of heavy durasteel bars separated the containment area from the cells and galleries, but allowed Corran to see everything on the fourth floor very clearly.
And it allowed the guards who had overturned a desk and were using it for cover to see Corran. They opened fire from the western gallery, which drove him to the floor. He rolled to his right, reaching the doorway to the stairs. Nrin and Ooryl grabbed him and dragged him onto the landing.
He looked up at them. “Good news is that there’s only four of them. Bad news is that they have cover and there’s a metal bar wall between us and them.”
Nrin shrugged. “Use the lightsaber to slash it open.”
“Oh, I’d love to, but I’d be shot to pieces while getting there.” Corran hesitated for a moment, then bounced the heel of his left hand off his helmet’s forehead. “Sometimes I’m an idiot.”
Ooryl’s helmeted head canted to the side. “Sometimes?”
Corran gave his wingman a contemptuous sneer, but being hidden by the helmet drained it of its effect. “Nrin, give me your blaster rifle.”
The Quarren handed it over. Corran took it, ignited the lightsaber, and laid it parallel to the blaster rifle’s barrel. He walked over to the wall near the door and pressed the muzzle to the wall. He then slid the lightsaber forward until its tip poked through the wall on the far side. He retracted it to about a centimeter shy of the surface, then held it tight against the barrel.
Nrin and Ooryl both ducked down the stairs as Corran brought the weapon around and stabbed it into the wall on the south side of the stairwell’s landing. Because he was using the rifle barrel as a guide, the silver blade only penetrated the wall to the depth of twenty-nine centimeters instead of piercing it completely. Corran cut across for about a meter, then ran down for a meter and a half, burning a black outline of a doorway into the wall. He shut the lightsaber off and handed the rifle back to Nrin.
“There should only be a centimeter of tile between the wall and the gallery at the cut lines. I’ll draw their fire, you break through and catch them with flanking fire.”
Nrin’s tentacles curled up smartly. “For an idiot, you seem to think well.”
“First time for everything.”
“Thanks, Ooryl.”
Leaving his two friends poised to act, Corran dove out through the doorway and triggered a burst of blasterfire. He let himself continue to slide to the left, using the security cell block corner to eclipse the guards’ fire, then he sprinted forward to the wall of bars. Peeking around the corner he triggered another burst of red bolts, then ducked back as a flurry of bolts burned into the walls and scorched metal bars.
He heard a crackling sound, then heard the whine of more blasterfire. He scooted forward and fired. His bolts nibbled away at the desk, but Nrin’s heavier bolts burned clean through it. One guard tumbled back and another scrambled to maintain his balance. His arms flailed, then a bolt to the chest picked him up and sent him flying deeper into the gallery. A third guard took a bolt in the shoulder, and the fourth tossed his blaster out onto the floor before raising his hands.
Corran slashed the gate in the wall of bars open while Nrin and Ooryl kicked their way free of wall debris. As the other two kept their weapons on their captive, Corran used his lightsaber to cut away a corner of the stairwell wall, allowing someone to cover the lower landing and the flight up to the door. “This should let you hold off reinforcements.”
Ooryl nodded and took up a position beside the corner hole.
Corran waved the man who had surrendered over to him. “General Dodonna, now!”
The man’s jaw dropped. “But I can’t open the cell. I don’t have a cardkey.”
Corran worked the humming lightsaber blade through an infinity loop. “I can handle it.”
The guard led him into the isolation cell area and pointed at a cell about a third of the way down. Corran stabbed the lightsaber into the lock mechanism, then worked the blade around in a spiral to sever the latch. The door slowly swung open, the lightsaber’s light seeding the recesses with dark shadows.
In the corner, on a hard pallet that served as a bunk, an old man raised his left hand to shield his eyes from the glare. The white hair and beard spoke to the man’s age, and the way he straightened up in the face of what seemed to be an Imperial pilot armed with a lightsaber gave testament to his inherent courage.
“General Dodonna?”
The old man nodded. “I’m Jan Dodonna.”
“It’s been a long time, General.” Corran removed his helmet and smiled. “Are you ready to go home?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The reddish glow from the fist Prince-Admiral Delak Krennel made with his mechanical right hand painted his face in bloody highlights. Through the viewport on Reckoning he watched the New Republic fleet begin its withdrawal. Yes, they’re running. This is better than I could have expected.
Krennel could not believe his good fortune. He’d been staging for a long grazing strike at Coruscant. He expected it to embarrass the New Republic while they were waiting to ambush him. In reality they struck at Ciutric, expecting him to be away waiting to ambush another convoy
. Their error, which was compounded by the relative weakness of their taskforce, would allow him to crush them and then make his strike at Coruscant.
“Weapons, target the Mon Cal cruiser. Same orders to Decisive and Emperor’s Wisdom.”
“As ordered, Prince-Admiral.”
A smile spread over Krennel’s face as his forward gunners lashed Home One with heavy turbolaser battery fire. Gold-tinged scarlet energy bolts battered the New Republic ship’s bow and port shields. The Mon Cal shield sphere slowly shrank as the incoming fire boiled off layers of energy. Finally the bow shield collapsed and the hull itself crisped to a blackness as paint ignited and armor ablated. Ion bolts skittered, arced, and danced over the rounded ship’s surface, then a dozen concussion missiles from Emperor’s Wisdom tracked a series of explosions over the hull. Fires raged in a couple of craters, prompting cheers from the bridge crew.
Krennel stared down at the crew pit from his catwalk. “Why isn’t Decisive firing?”
The communications officer looked up from his station. “Decisive reports that Emancipator reinforced their port shields and soaked off the damage that had to pass them to get to Home One. They request leave to engage Emancipator.”
“No! Tell Decisive to roll to port, then come up and over Emancipator.” Krennel thrust a finger at the viewpoint. “I want that cruiser dead!”
The Mon Calamari cruiser and Emancipator fired. The Mon Cal’s turbolaser batteries concentrated their fire on Reckoning’s forward shield. The invisible energy bowl protecting the ship’s bow suddenly filled with a translucent pink that quickly evaporated as blue ion cannon bolts lanced through it. Blue lightning crawled from corner to corner and glided along lines over the ship’s hull. Two heavy turbolaser batteries exploded and Krennel saw at least two gunners ejected into space as their stations ripped themselves apart.