Chapter One

THE IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYER REPRISAL SLIPPED SILENTLY through the blackness of space, preparing itself for action against the Rebel forces threatening to tear the galaxy apart.

Standing on the command walkway, his hands clasped behind him, Captain Kendal Ozzel gazed out at the planet Teardrop directly ahead, a mixture of anticipation and dark brooding swirling through him. As far as he was concerned the entire planet was a snake pit, crawling with smugglers, third-rate pirate gangs, and other dregs of society. If he’d been in command of the Death Star instead of that idiot Tarkin, he mused, he would have picked someplace like Teardrop instead of Alderaan for the weapon’s first serious field test.

But he hadn’t been in charge; and now both Tarkin and the Death Star were gone, blown to shrapnel off Yavin 4. In a single, awful moment the Rebel Alliance had morphed from a minor nuisance to a bitter enemy.

And Imperial Center had responded. Less than three days ago the word had come down to show no mercy to either the Rebels or their sympathizers.

Not that Ozzel would have shown any mercy at any rate. Eliminating Rebels, and Rebel sympathizers, had become the best and fastest way to success in the Imperial fleet. Perhaps all the way to an admiral’s rank bars. “Status?” he called behind him.

“Forty-seven standard minutes to orbit, sir,” the navigation officer called from the crew pits.

Ozzel nodded. “Keep a sharp watch,” he ordered. “No one gets off that planet.”

He glowered at the faintly lit disk ahead of them. “No one,” he added softly.

“Luke?” Han Solo called from the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit. “Come on, kid—move it. We’re on a tight schedule here.”

“They’re in!” Luke Skywalker’s voice came back. “Ramp’s sealed.”

Han already knew that from his control board readouts, of course. If the kid stuck around, he’d have to learn not to clutter the ship’s atmosphere with unnecessary chatter. “Okay, Chewie, hit it,” he said.

Beside him Chewbacca gave a rolling trill of acknowledgment, and the Falcon lifted smoothly off the hard-packed Teardrop ground.

Apparently not smoothly enough. From behind, Han heard a couple of muffled and rather indignant exclamations. “Hey!” someone shouted.

Han rolled his eyes as he fed power to the sublight engines. “This is absolutely the last time we take on passengers,” he told his partner firmly.

Chewbacca’s reply was squarely to the point and a shade on the disrespectful side.

“No, I mean it,” Han insisted. “From now on, if they don’t pay, they don’t fly.”

From behind him came footsteps, and he glanced back as Luke dropped into the seat behind Chewbacca. “They’re all settled,” he announced.

“Great,” Han said sarcastically. “Once we make hyperspace, I’ll take their drink orders.”

“Oh, come on,” Luke chided him. “Anyway, you think this bunch is stiff, you should have seen the ones who got out on the earlier transports. These are just the techs who were in charge of packing up the last few crates of equipment.”

Han grimaced. Crates which were currently filling the Falcon’s holds, leaving no room for paying cargo even if he managed to find some on the way to the rendezvous. This was going to be a complete, 100 percent charity run, like everything else he and Chewbacca had done for Luke and his new friends in the Rebel Alliance. “Yeah, well, I’ve seen plenty of useless techs before,” he muttered.

He was waiting for Luke to come to the techs’ defense when a splatter of laserfire ricocheted off the rear deflector. “What the—” he snarled, throwing the Falcon into a tight drop loop.

The instinctive maneuver probably saved their skins. Another burst shot through the space they’d just left, this one coming from a different direction. Han twisted the ship back around, hoping fleetingly that their passengers were still strapped in, then took a second to check the aft display.

One glance at the half dozen mismatched ships rising behind them was all he needed. “Pirates,” he snapped to the others, throwing power to the engines and angling the ship upward. Facing pirates deep inside a planet’s gravity well, with no cover and no chance of quick escape to hyperspace, was about the worst situation a pilot could encounter.

And even the Falcon couldn’t outmaneuver this many ships forever. “Chewie, get us up and out,” he said, throwing off his straps. “Come on, Luke.”

The kid was already on it, heading down the cockpit tunnel at a dead run. Han followed, rounding the corner in time to see Luke duck past the passengers crammed into the wraparound seat and head up the ladder to the upper quad laser station. “Captain?” one of the passengers called.

“Save it,” Han shot back, grabbing the ladder and sliding down toward the lower quads. He caught himself as the gravity around him did its ninety-degree shift, then dropped into the seat.

It looked even worse from down here than it had from the cockpit. A second wave of pirate ships had joined the first, this group pumping laserfire all around the edges of the first group, forming a deadly cylinder of death around the Falcon’s flight vector. They were trying to force their prey to stay on that line so that the first group could chase them down.

Well, they were in for a surprise. Keying the quads with one hand, he snagged his headset with the other and jammed it on. “Luke?”

“I’m here. Any particular strategy, or do we just start with the biggest and see how fast we can blow them apart?”

Han frowned as he got a grip on the control yoke, an odd idea whispering at him. The way that second wave was positioned … “You go for that big lead ship,” he said. “I’m going to try something cute.”

Luke’s reply was a blast of laserfire squarely into the lead pirate’s bow.

The other ship swerved violently in reaction—clearly, they hadn’t expected this kind of firepower from a simple light freighter. The pilot recovered quickly, though, settling the ship back into its position in the battle array. The entire lead wave moved closer together, closing ranks to get maximum protection from their overlapping shields. Han watched closely, waiting for the obvious next move, and heard the twitter from his display board as the lead ships all shifted shield power to doublefront.

Which meant they’d just unavoidably lowered the strength of their aft shields. Perfect. “Chewie—dip and waffle,” he ordered into his comm. The Falcon dropped suddenly in response, and for a second the rear wave of ships was visible past the edges of the first wave’s shields. Han was ready, firing a double burst past the lead wave into the flank of the biggest second-wave ship, sending it into a violent swerve as its primary maneuvering system was blown to bits.

And as it did, the laserfire that had been forming that part of the Falcon’s entrapment ring sprayed with shattering force across the sterns of the lead-wave ships.

It was everything Han could have hoped for. Two of the smaller ships veered instantly and violently out of formation as their engine sections blew up. The first ricocheted a glancing blow off one of the other pirates on its way to oblivion, while the second slammed full-tilt into another. They fell away together, with Luke taking advantage of the distraction to blow one of the other lead ships into fiery dust.

Then, to Han’s shock and disbelief, the Falcon dropped and turned into a curving arc back toward the planet’s surface. “Chewie?” he snarled. “What in—”

The Wookiee growled a warning. Frowning, Han craned his neck to look in the direction Chewie was facing as the familiar shape of an Imperial Star Destroyer swung into view around the dark edge of the planetary disk.

“Han!” Luke gasped.

“I see it, I see it,” Han said, his mind racing. Clearly, the Rebel cell on Teardrop had gotten out just in time.

Except that the last half a dozen members of that cell were currently sitting a couple of meters directly above him in the Falcon’s lounge. If the Imperials caught them here …

Then his brain caught up to him, and he understood what Chewbacca had been doing with that last maneuver. “Luke, shut down,” he ordered, slapping the switches on his own quads. The last thing he wanted was for the Imperials to do a power scan and see that the Falcon had this kind of weaponry. “Chewie, give me comm.”

There was a click—“Emergency!” he called, putting desperation into his voice. “Incoming freighter Argos requesting assistance from Teardrop planetary defenses.”

There was no answer from the ground, of course. Given the shady character of most of the planet’s residents and visitors, Han wasn’t even sure they had a real defense force down there. But then, he didn’t especially care if anyone on Teardrop heard him or not. All he cared about was—

“Freighter Argos, state your intention and emergency,” a clipped military voice responded.

“Medical mercy team from Briston, responding to the recent groundquake on Por’ste Island,” Han called back. Behind the Falcon, he saw, the remaining pirate ships were re-forming to continue the attack. Apparently they hadn’t noticed Teardrop’s newest visitor. “We’re under attack—I think they’re pirates.”

“Argos, acknowledged,” the voice said. “Hold your present course.”

“But if I do—”

He never got to finish his token protest. Behind him a two-by-two group of brilliant green turbolaser bolts sliced across the pirates’ formation, blasting four of the ships into rubble.

This time they got the message. The survivors broke formation and headed off in all directions, some back toward the ground, others trying to escape into hyperspace.

Neither option worked. Calmly, systematically, precisely, the Star Destroyer continued to fire, blasting the pirates one by one until the Falcon was flying alone.

“Now what?” Luke murmured in Han’s earphone.

Han ignored him. “Many thanks, Captain,” he called. “Glad to see the Empire is taking this pirate problem seriously.”

“You’re welcome, Argos,” a new voice said. “Now turn around and go home.”

“What?” Han demanded, trying to sound both outraged and stunned. “But, Captain—”

“That’s an order, Argos,” the other cut him off tartly. “As of right now Teardrop is under Imperial interdiction. Go back to Briston and wait until the block has been lifted.”

Han allowed himself a sigh. “Understood,” he murmured, careful to maintain a straight face. Sometimes a particularly clever and perceptive man could sense a satisfied grin even over an audio comm channel. Not that this particular Imperial appeared to be either clever or perceptive. “You heard him, pilot,” he continued. “Turn us around. Again, Captain, thanks for the rescue.”

He climbed out of the quad seat and headed back up the ladder. “Captain Solo, I demand to know what’s happening,” one of the passengers said stiffly as Han crossed the lounge on his way back to the cockpit.

“We’re taking you to the rendezvous,” Han told him, putting on his best puzzled-and-innocent look. “Why?”

Before the other could recover enough to try the question again, Han had made his escape.

Chewbacca had them well on their way out of Teardrop’s gravity well by the time Han dropped into his seat. “Nice move, Chewie,” he said as he keyed for a status report. The attack had added a few new dents to the aft armor plating, but considering how many there were already, it wasn’t likely anyone would notice. “It’s always nice when we can obey an Imperial order. For a change.”

Behind them, Luke came into the cockpit. “He actually bought it?” he asked, leaning over Han’s shoulder to gaze out at the Star Destroyer in the distance.

“Why not?” Han countered. “He saw us heading in, and we told him we were heading in. Sometimes you just have to help people think what you want them to.”

“I suppose,” Luke said, still sounding doubtful. “They still might have decided to board and search us.”

“Not a chance,” Han said. “Just because they ride around in big fancy ships doesn’t make them smart. They’re here to hunt Rebels, not inspect cargo. Once Chewie had us turned back inward, the only real question was whether the captain would feel like giving his gunners some target practice.”

“Too bad they’ll never know what they missed,” Luke murmured, taking a last look and then sitting back down. “Sure glad you two are on our side.”

Han frowned over his shoulder. But Luke was peering at the nav computer display, apparently completely oblivious to what he’d just said. Han shifted his gaze to Chewbacca, to find the Wookiee looking sideways at him. “What?” he demanded.

The other shrugged his massive shoulders and turned back to his board. Han glanced at Luke again, but the kid had apparently missed the byplay completely.

He turned back to his board, a sour taste in his mouth. Our side. Luke’s side, in other words. And Princess Leia Organa’s side, and General Rieekan’s, and probably the whole blasted Rebellion’s.

Trouble was, Han couldn’t for the life of him remember when the Rebellion had become his side.

So he’d dusted those TIE fighters off Luke during that lunatic Yavin battle. Big deal. That had been strictly a favor to the kid, and maybe a little payback for the way the Imperials had dragged him aboard the Death Star and then walked all over the Falcon with their grubby feet. He didn’t mind the Rebels being grateful for that.

But it didn’t mean he’d enlisted in the Big Cause.

Chewbacca was all set to do so, of course. His personal history with the Empire, plus the way they had treated his people in general, had left him with a deep hatred for them. He would enlist in the Rebellion in a heartbeat if Han gave the okay.

But Han wasn’t going to let anyone’s passion drive him on this one. Not Chewie’s, and certainly not Luke’s. He had his own life to lead.

The Star Destroyer was settling into orbit as the Falcon made the jump to lightspeed.

With a final burst, more felt than really heard, the Reprisal’s turbolasers fell silent.

Seated on the portside bench in the number three stormtrooper drop ship, Daric LaRone notched up his helmet’s audio enhancers, wondering if the battle might be continuing with a more distant set of the Star Destroyer’s weapons banks. But he could hear nothing, and after a moment he eased the enhancement back down again. “Wonder what that was all about,” he murmured.

Beside him, Saberan Marcross shrugged slightly, the movement eliciting a slight crackle from his armor. “Maybe the Rebels tried to make a run for it,” he murmured back.

“If they did, they didn’t get very far,” Taxtro Grave commented from his seat on the starboard bench, shifting his grip on his long BlasTech T-28 repeating sniper rifle.

“Look at the bright side,” Joak Quiller suggested from beside him. “If they’re all dead, we can cancel this op and go someplace more promising.”

“Whoever’s talking back there, stow it,” an authoritative voice called from the front of the drop ship.

“Yes, sir,” Marcross answered for all of them.

LaRone leaned out slightly to look at the scowling officer seated by Lieutenant Colf. Emblazoned across his chest were the rank bars of a major; above the insignia was a face LaRone couldn’t remember ever seeing before. “Who is that?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“Major Drelfin,” Marcross whispered back. “ISB.”

LaRone leaned back again, a chill running through him. The Imperial Security Bureau was the darkest and most brutal of Emperor Palpatine’s tools. “What’s he doing on the Reprisal?”

“Someone up the chain must have decided we needed extra help,” Marcross said. His tone was carefully neutral, but LaRone knew him well enough to recognize the contempt beneath the words. “They brought in a few ISB men to direct the assault.”

LaRone grimaced. “I see,” he said, matching the other’s tone.

From the drop ship’s cockpit came a warning buzz. “Stand by for drop,” the pilot called. “Drop in five.”

LaRone looked across the aisle at Quiller, noting the other’s subtle squirming. Quiller was himself an excellent pilot, and consequently a rotten passenger. “Easy,” he murmured.

Quiller cocked his head slightly, and LaRone smiled at the strained-patient expression he knew the other was giving him from behind the anonymous white helmet faceplate.

Abruptly the bench lurched beneath him, and the drop ship was away.

Behind his own faceplate LaRone’s smile faded, his thoughts drifting back to that fateful day ten standard years ago when the Imperial recruiters had come to Copperline and set up shop. In his mind’s eye he saw himself joining with the other teens as they flocked around the booth, dazzled by the presentation, the crisp uniforms, and the unspoken but obvious implication that this was the best and quickest way off their dead-end little world.

Only this time, in his daydream, LaRone said no.

He’d believed in the Empire at first. He really had. He’d been ten when the Fleet and infantry had come in force and spent five months clearing out the pirate nests that had plagued Copperline for decades. Eight years later, when the recruiters had come, he’d jumped at the chance to join such a noble group of people. Three years after that, when he’d been offered a spot in the elite Imperial stormtrooper corps, he’d jumped even harder, working and sweating and praying for the chance to be worthy of this ultimate challenge.

For six years everything had gone well. He’d served with all his heart and strength, fighting against the forces of evil and chaos that threatened to destroy Emperor Palpatine’s New Order. And he’d served with distinction, or so at least his commanders had thought.

For LaRone himself, awards and citations meant nothing. He was wearing the white armor, and he was making a difference. That was what mattered.

But then had come Elriss, where an entire town had had to stand out in the pouring rain for six hours while their identities were double- and triple-checked. After that had come Bompreil, and all those terrible civilian casualties as they’d fought to root out a Rebel cell.

And then had come Alderaan.

LaRone shifted uncomfortably on the bench. The details still weren’t entirely clear, but the official reports all agreed that the planet had been a center of Rebel strength, and that it had been destroyed only when it defied an order to surrender the traitors.

LaRone certainly couldn’t fault the motivation. The Rebels were growing ever stronger, ever bolder, ever more dangerous. They had to be stopped before they destroyed everything the Emperor had created and dragged the galaxy back into more of the chaos of the Clone Wars era.

But surely the entire planet couldn’t have been on the Rebels’ side. Could it?

And then the quiet rumors had started. Some said that Alderaan hadn’t been a Rebel base at all, that its destruction had been nothing more than a field test of the Empire’s new Death Star. Others whispered that Grand Moff Tarkin, the Death Star’s borderline-psychotic commander, had destroyed all those billions of people over a personal grudge between him and Bail Organa.

But it almost didn’t matter what the reason was. The bottom line was that the response had been light-years beyond any provocation the Rebels could possibly have put together.

Something was happening to the Empire that LaRone had served so long and so well. Something terrible.

And LaRone himself was stuck right in the middle of it.

“Ground in three minutes,” Major Drelfin called from the front of the drop ship. “Stormtroopers, prepare to deploy.”

LaRone took a deep breath, forcing the doubts away. He was an Imperial stormtrooper, and he would do his duty. Because that was all that mattered.

The first of the speeder bike drop ships came to a cautious hover a couple of meters off the ground. As the ramps came down, Korlo Brightwater gunned his Aratech 74-Z Speeder Bike and roared out into the afternoon sunlight.

“TBR Four-seven-nine, pull it back,” the tart voice of his commander, Lieutenant Natrom, growled in his ear. “Re-form to Search Pattern Jenth.”

“Four-seven-nine: acknowledged,” Brightwater said, taking a quick look around as he turned into a wide circle that would bring him back to the rest of the scout troopers still maneuvering their way out of the transport. They’d come in on a ground-skimming course just to the north of a set of low, tree-sprinkled hills, with the edge of their target town a couple of hundred meters away on the far side. Activating his helmet’s sensors, he gave the hills a quick but careful scan as he circled back toward the transport. There didn’t seem to be activity anywhere, of any sort, which struck him as highly suspicious. The hills included a picnic area, several walking paths, and half a dozen trees that had been patiently nurtured and manipulated over the decades into an elaborate children’s climbing structure. Someone from town ought to be taking his or her leisure out here on such a fine, quiet afternoon.

But there was no one. Something, apparently, was keeping the townspeople indoors today.

Such as the news of an imminent Imperial raid?

Brightwater shook his head in irritation. So the whole thing was a bust. The word had leaked, and any Rebels who might have been hiding here were halfway to the Outer Rim by now. “Command; TBR Four-seven-nine,” he called into his comm. “No activity in staging area. The operation may be blown. Repeat, the operation—”

“Scout troopers, you are cleared to secure the perimeter,” an unfamiliar voice cut in.

Brightwater frowned. “Command, did you copy?” he asked. “I said the lack of activity—”

“TBR Four-seven-nine, you will restrict your comments to tactical reports,” the new voice again interrupted. “All transports: move in.”

Brightwater craned his neck. The stormtrooper drop ships were visible now high above him, dropping toward the ground like hunting avians moving for the kill.

Only there wasn’t anything down here worth killing anymore.

A movement to his right caught his eye, and he looked back as his partner, Tibren, came alongside. Brightwater lifted his hand in mute question; the other scout shook his head in equally silent warning.

Brightwater scowled. But Tibren was right. Whoever this idiot was running things, he was either too single-minded or too stupid to see reason. Nothing now for the stormtroopers to do but go along for the ride and treat the whole thing as just another training exercise. He nodded Tibren an acknowledgment and gunned his speeder toward his designated containment sector.

By the time they’d finished their encirclement the drop ships were down, their heavy guns sweeping over the rows of mostly single-story buildings, their hatches disgorging their complements of stormtroopers and uniformed command officers. Brightwater kept his speeder moving, watching with professional interest as the troops formed themselves into a double ring and converged on the town. For a change, everything seemed to be going perfectly, without even the small glitches that normally accompanied an operation this size. It really was a pity there weren’t any Rebels left in town to appreciate it.

The stormtroopers and officers disappeared from view, heading between and into the buildings, and Brightwater shifted his attention to the area outside the scout troopers’ perimeter. The Rebels had almost certainly fled the planet, but there were occasional cells with more audacity than brains who elected to stay behind and try to put together an ambush.

Brightwater rather hoped this bunch had gone that route. It would keep the afternoon from being a complete waste, and it would give the stormtroopers the chance to blast them out here in the open instead of having to sort them out from the civilians.

He had curved to the crest of the nearest hill, his helmet sensors on full power, when he heard the sound of blasterfire from behind him. He swung his speeder sharply around, searching the perimeter on the far side of town. But all the scout troopers over there were still on their speeders, with no indication that anyone was shooting at them. There was another volley of blasterfire, and this time he realized that it was coming from inside the town itself.

He brought his speeder to a halt, frowning. The volleys had been replaced by a less organized stutter, but the shots all carried the distinctive pitch of the storm-troopers’ own BlasTech E-11 rifles. Where was the cacophonous mix of military, sporting, and self-defense weaponry that was practically the trademark of the Rebel Alliance?

And then, with a sudden chill, he understood.

He revved his speeder back to full speed, twisting its nose down the hills and toward town. What in the name of the Emperor did they think they were doing?

“TBR Four-seven-nine, return to your post,” Lieutenant Natrom’s voice said in his earphone.

Brightwater flicked out his tongue to the comm’s selector control, switching to the squad’s private frequency. “Sir, something’s happening in town,” he said urgently. “Request permission to investigate.”

“Permission denied,” Natrom said. His voice was under rigid control, but Brightwater could hear the anger beneath it. “Return to your post.”

“Sir—”

“That’s an order, TBR Four-seven-nine,” Natrom said. “It won’t be repeated.”

Brightwater took a deep breath. But he knew Natrom, and he knew that tone. Whatever was happening, there was nothing either of them could do about it. “Yes, sir,” he said. Taking another deep breath, trying to calm himself, he turned his speeder back around.

The sun had set over the western horizon before the blasterfire finally came to an end.