In this case, the course supplied to the Interceptor on Corran’s tail was the course the missile was traveling. The destination was the missile’s target coordinates and the speed was as close as the fighter could manage to approximating the missile’s speed. The implementation of such programming required an override code, which had been supplied. Because of the potential problems caused if such codes were to fall into enemy hands, the pilots could override the automatic programming, provided they hit the correct console buttons in the appropriate order.
Doing that required approximately 2.5 seconds of the pilot’s undivided attention.
The Interceptor pilot’s attention was anything but undivided.
The concussion missile caromed off the edge of the breach its predecessor had opened and exploded. It blasted a hole in the shielding of the energy conduit. Shards from the conduit and its shielding sprayed the interior of the conduit, severing some cables, merely nicking others. Sparks flew and several circuits shorted out. Power died in several buildings for a second, but other lines accepted more power and the shields remained intact.
Then the Interceptor hit. While it was not traveling as fast as the concussion missile, it did mass significantly more than the projectile. It was able to build up a considerable amount of kinetic energy that it transferred to the target upon impact. In addition, the crash compacted the Interceptor’s fuel cells, compressing the fuel that subsequently detonated. The Interceptor’s crushed hull sheered through the power conduit, severing the thick bundle of cables running through it, and the explosion that followed tangled and fused lines that had never been meant to touch.
Outside Corran’s cockpit, Coruscant went black.
“Ten, nine, eight,” Captain Iillor counted down.
“Look!”
Her eye came up off the chronometer. The last shield sphere flickered.
“Seven, six, five …”
The shield sphere died.
“Kill the projectors, Lieutenant Jhemiti.” Captain Iillor looked out toward the planet sparkling like a star in the distance. “Now the battle for Coruscant begins.”
44
Still basking in the glory of his redemption, Lieutenant Virar Needa stared out the viewport at Imperial Center. He saw lights on the world flicker and die, but even that unusual a thing happening did not penetrate the aura of well-being in which he cocooned himself. Clearly, it seemed to him, those responsible for the power problems on Imperial Center would be banished to oblivion and he would be free to ascend into the positions they vacated.
As he stared out into space he saw the stars ripple along a wide front. Ships began to revert from hyperspace and his heart rate picked up as this happened. He always enjoyed ships entering and leaving Imperial Center space. He took great delight in cataloging them by type and later correlating a sighting with news from the war against the Rebels.
A smile spread across his face as two large ships materialized. He recognized them instantly as Imperial Star Destroyers. As they reverted they executed a turn to starboard, putting them into a geostationary orbit. That’s standard procedure, as the Captains of the Accuser and Adjucator know quite well.
His ability to recognize the two ships pleased him, which is why he wondered about the underlying sense of unease slowly seeping into his heart. About the time one of the long, gently curved Mon Calamari battle cruisers reverted and swung into the line, he recalled the Accuser and Adjucator had both been captured at Endor by the Rebels. The fact that a number of Mon Cal ships were pulling into line with them meant … Needa paled. At the moment of my greatest glory, the Rebels have come to ruin me!
More and more Rebel ships poured from hyperspace. Big ships, small ships, snubfighters, freighters, frigates, and corvettes, each of them pulled into line with the heavier ships. The battle cruisers and destroyers formed a central layer, with ships diminishing in size and strength as they stretched out from equator to pole in the northern hemisphere.
Instantly the black void of space came alive with turbolaser and ion-cannon fire. Toward the bottom of the viewport Needa saw a Golan Space Defense station. The lozenge-shaped platform launched spread after spread of proton torpedoes while its turbolaser batteries sprayed green energy projectiles at the invaders. The return fire it took splashed harmlessly against its shields, or so it seemed at first, though Needa noticed the shield sphere slowly shrinking.
This cannot be! He turned from the viewport, raking fingers back through brown hair. “To your battle stations, men! The enemy is upon us!”
Pedetsen looked up from the sabacc game. “Begging your pardon, sir, but a mirror doesn’t have battle stations.”
Needa’s jaw worked up and down a couple of times as he mulled over the cadet’s comment. True, but we must do something. “Arm yourselves. We won’t go down without a fight.”
The darkness in the computer center only lasted for a couple of seconds, but it seemed like eons to Wedge. It was time enough for remnants of childhood fears of darkness to meld with adult fears of failure. The darkness left him blind and opened the doorway to any number of possible and horrible futures. For all he knew the power to the subsidiary computer center had been severed by Imperial stormtroopers who were even now preparing to enter the room and resume control of the facility.
The lights came back up again. The holographic map wavered and popped, then stabilized. Elation filled him for a moment, then he realized that having power available meant failure. Or does it? “Why do we have power?”
Winter hit two keys on the datapad. “Reserve generators came on-line here after the external power was cut.”
“And power is down? And the shields?”
She hit more keys and the map expanded up from the tactical one showing the Palace district to the orbital one showing the planet as a whole. There was no indication of shields anywhere. “They’re down.”
Wedge keyed his comlink. “Corran, you did it.”
“I just aimed, Wedge, you sliced the victory together.”
“We can argue who gets stuck with credit later. Be careful, you still have TIEs flying around you.”
“They’re all vectoring up, Wedge.”
“What?”
“We have company.”
Wedge pointed to Winter. “Slice me into Traffic Control. I want to see what’s orbiting out there.”
“Will do.” Winter’s fingers flew over the keys and the sphere that was Coruscant suddenly became surrounded by a shell of orbiting stations, satellites, and ships. The Rebel fleet formed a concave cap over part of the northern hemisphere. Within its range floated a number of Golan stations as well as several Star Destroyers racing to oppose the Rebels.
“Can you get me better visuals? Is there a feed from that mirror you can pull?”
She shook her head. “No visual feed from it and all of the military ships have gone independent of the ground, so I can’t get their visuals either. We know where they are, but we don’t know what they’re doing.”
A few holes opened in the Rebel formation. Wedge knew that the ships lost were small—most likely converted freighters with weapons grafted on—but their losses disturbed him. Just looking at the situation, the size of the Rebel fleet and the paucity of defenders, there was no way Imperial forces could defeat the Rebels. Slow us down and hurt us, yes, but keep us off Coruscante? No. That’s clear, which means everyone who dies up there today doesn’t need to.
Tycho pointed to one of the space platforms. “I’d bet that’s a Golan III. Our heavy ships can’t concentrate on it until they eliminate the destroyers. It’s not quite as heavily armed as the Victory-class destroyers, but it’s got to be the source of most of the damage to the fringes of the fleet.”
“You can’t slice into any ground-based missile batteries to use against that thing?”
Winter shook her head. “Aside from Corran and the other Headhunters, we have no weapons here. It would be nice if the Golan station would shoot streamers down into the atmosphere and into ou
r thunderstorm, but I wouldn’t count on that happening anytime soon.”
Tycho shrugged. “Look on the bright side, Wedge …”
“Is there a bright side?”
“Sure, if it had targeted us, we’d be slag.”
“That’s not what I’d call particularly bright, Tycho.” Wedge brought his head up. “But it could be. It could be very bright indeed.”
“Go down without a fight, Lieutenant Needa?” Pedetsen frowned in Needa’s direction. “One proton torpedo and we go down without even a whimper. I’ll take two.”
Needa blinked in confusion. “You want us hit with two?”
“No, I want two more cards.” The cadet glanced at his cards, then up at Needa. “Of proton torpedoes I want zero.”
“The Rebels have come!” Needa pointed at the viewport. “We must do something!”
Pedetsen shook his head and laid his sabacc cards on the table. “Sir, if we do anything, we’ll die. Now either side might have a use for dead heroes, but I don’t think the heroes will get much out of it. On the other hand, whoever takes Imperial Center—or maybe we should call it Coruscant—will have use for an undamaged mirror and a live crew.”
Needa glanced back at the fleet. “But those are the Rebels.”
“You think they can find us worst duty than this?” Pedetsen smiled. “They’ll probably hail you as a hero.”
“What?”
“Hey, it was your cousin who was martyred by Darth Vader after he let Han Solo escape Hoth. After all, your cousin had Rebel sympathies that he only confided in you, which is why he let Solo escape. Your having been punished with this duty proves the Empire suspected him, but could prove nothing.”
That is one way to interpret the facts of the case, I suppose. Needa frowned. “Do you think the Rebels would believe that?”
“I don’t know, but I think if we’re dead, you won’t be able to convince them that you and your loyal crew have been waiting for them for ages.” Pedetsen raked a pile of chips toward himself and started to shuffle the sabacc deck. “Your choice, sir. Do what you think is right.”
Needa thought for a second, frowned, then nodded. “I think I choose not to choose. If we do something, we risk death. We can’t do anything anyway, so there is no reason to choose.”
A tremor shook OSETS 2711. Needa braced himself against the bulkhead as the mirror started to shift. “We’re moving.”
“I know, Lieutenant.” Pedetsen smiled. “Looks like someone just made your mind up for you.”
On Home One’s bridge chaos reigned. Hundreds of voices competed with one another, each filled with urgency. Admiral Ackbar sat at the center of it, listening intently to comm feeds from his group commanders. The two Imperial Star Destroyers entering the battle were the Triumph and the Monarch. Already Emancipator and Liberator had begun pounding the ships. Triumph’s shields had collapsed on one side, prompting the Captain to execute a roll that brought undamaged shields up between the destroyer and the Rebels.
Though the Triumph’s difficulties heartened Ackbar, the Golan Space Defense platform off the port stern sickened him. It had engaged many of the smaller ships in the fleet and was hammering them mercilessly. The Commander on the platform had targeted ships with multiple proton torpedoes while saving his turbolasers for snubfighter defense. TIE fighters coming up from Coruscant seemed content to fight beneath the umbrella of his fire. The fact that the station could not move made it marginally less lethal than the Star Destroyers, but in the time it took for them to be taken out of action, a lot of smaller Rebel ships would die.
He looked up at the Quarren who had just appeared beside his command chair. “What is it, Commander Sirlul? Something about the station?”
“Perhaps …” A tremolo distorted her words as she pointed out the port side viewport. “The mirror is moving.”
“Why would it …?”
Before Sirlul could offer a possible answer to Ackbar’s question, the mirror’s panels swung and locked into reflective position. The whole structure contracted slightly, sharpening the solar beam. Though the reflected light remained all but invisible in space—only showing up where it shone upon and incinerated debris—its brilliant focal point could easily be seen. It appeared as a bright dot on the edge of the Golan III station.
Silvery lines, like cracks forming in ice or rootlets spreading through the earth, began to appear at the edges of the circle. Delicate and almost brittle, they snaked away from the station and drifted into space. The bright spotlight shifted right ever so slightly, leaving in its wake a black crescent. The argent rootlets clung to the crescent’s outer edge while opposite them some of the rootlets spun off into space.
The Quarren clasped her hands at the small of her back. “At its focal point the solar beam is approximately 12.5 meters in diameter. Roughly the length of an X-wing.”
The hole on the end of the station grew as the beam shifted slightly. Already half the turbolaser batteries had stopped firing. Ackbar could easily visualize the destruction as the beam pierced bulkhead after bulkhead, burning from one end of the station to another. A sheet of metal would glow red, then white, then evaporate. The solar beam would stab deeper, igniting whatever it touched, then begin on another bulkhead.
Ackbar looked up. “When the platform stops shooting send the Devonian and Ryloth over there. I want our people on that station to assess it and help those who have survived.”
“Sir, the Ryloth and Devonian have less than one hundred troopers on board. The station has over a thousand.”
“Not anymore, Commander.” Ackbar half closed his eyes as something near the center of the station exploded. “Those who are left aren’t going to be hostile. They’ll want to get off that thing and we will oblige them. Send them to the other Golan stations, let them tell the story of what happened to their station. It’ll give their Commanders a lot to think about and maybe, just maybe, save a lot of lives on both sides.”
45
Corran glanced at the fuel indicator on his command console. It showed he had another ten minutes of fuel. A return to Tycho’s base would only take two or three minutes and refueling would take a half hour or so. He wasn’t certain if with the fleet orbiting above the Palace district, Wedge and the others in the computer center would face danger from Imperial forces, but in many ways that question was moot given his fuel supply. He suspected the others were not in much better shape.
“Hunter Lead here, report with fuel status.”
Everyone else in the flight reported being in the same situation he was. “What we will do is this: Everyone take a long-range scan of the area. If we have no immediate things to worry about, we head in, refuel, and come back out.”
“I copy, Hunter Lead,” came the replies.
“Corran, I caught that, too.” Wedge’s voice paused for a moment. “Winter shows no activity in your vicinity and we look pretty secure here, too. Head in and hurry back.”
“Will do, Wedge. Horn out.” Corran brought his Headhunter around in a vast circle, letting the others fly in on a more direct route toward their hangar. First up, last in. He smiled. He knew the others didn’t need him to provide a good example. The fact was that the five of them had accounted for over a dozen Imperial starfighters and Interceptors, proving the Rogues had not lost their edge and that Asyr Sei’lar was a good pilot in her own right.
He punched his sensors over to long range and immediately picked up a number of signals on his scanner. Corran keyed the comm unit. “Pash, I’m picking up nine or ten hits.”
“I copy, Corran. Looks like small civilian vessels. The exodus is beginning.”
Corran ruddered his ship to port and dove down to do a flyby on one of his sensor contacts. It did in fact appear to be a luxury yacht, with gentle flowing lines and a gaudily painted hull. Like the other ships it was heading northeast to slip beneath the edge of the Rebel umbrella. The ships would sail around to the daytime side of the planet and head out into hyperspace from there, using Coruscant??
?s mass as a shield to prevent the Rebels from attacking them.
Corran was certain the vast majority of the people heading out firmly believed the Rebels would steal their wealth, dispossess them of their treasures, defile their sons and daughters, torture, maim, and kill resisters, and commit any number of other crimes against them. He didn’t think plunder and raping were foremost in the minds of most Rebels, but here at the core of the Empire the belief in lies used by the Emperor to justify his dictatorship ran deep among some folks. And even those who knew better than to believe such lies did truly feel they had something to fear since the idea of bringing Imperials to justice had always been one of the Rebellion’s more appealing tenants.
He found himself of two minds about the fleeing people. Part of him wanted to bring them to justice. He could easily have sideslipped his Headhunter and blasted the hyperdrive engines from the hull of the yacht. That would trap its occupants on Coruscant and force them to face retribution for their crimes against their fellow citizens.
The other part of him sympathized with them. The Empire had forced him to flee from Corellia, carrying with him little more than a change of clothes. He even had to surrender his identity, as would these refugees, for to remain who he was would have left him vulnerable to the Empire’s hunters. He had been forced to change who he had been and had been forced into an entirely different lifestyle just to preserve his life. Because of the constant fear of discovery, of being made to run again, that life seemed more punishing than any prison term or even execution. Better no life at all than one lived in constant fear.