27

Admiral Daala stood in the bridge tower of the Star Destroyer Gorgon, looking out at her fleet and feeling the energy build inside her. The time was at hand! The Empire might have fallen, but with it went all the people who had squashed her. Now she could show her worth. Daala could fight her own battle.

She gazed at the misty colors of the Maw and the clump of strung-together rocks that had spawned the weapons for her assault. In formation the Hydra, the Basilisk, and the Manticore powered up, waiting to spring out upon the galaxy with swift and deadly precision. The New Republic would fall to its knees.

She had no interest in ruling the former Empire herself—Daala never had any such aspirations. Her main intent right now was just to cause them pain. She licked her lips, and her hair hung heavy down her back, serpentine like the demon for whom her flagship had been named. Grand Moff Tarkin would have been proud.

Commander Kratas, the man who ran the subsystems of the Gorgon, spoke to her from a communication terminal. “Admiral Daala, I have a priority message from the detention level!”

“Detention level? What is it?”

“The prisoners Han Solo and Kyp Durron have escaped! One guard was found stunned in Solo’s detention chamber, and another is dead in Durron’s cell. Both were stripped of their armor. We are attempting to question the survivor now.”

Daala felt a jolt of anger disrupt the eagerness singing through her veins. She drew herself up taller, raising her eyebrows and focusing intently on Kratas. “Track the service numbers of the stolen uniforms. Maybe they’ve logged in somewhere.” Her orders came like staccato laser blasts.

Kratas consulted his terminal, spoke into the comlink. Daala clasped her hands behind her back and paced, barking orders to the bridge personnel. “Put together a search party immediately. We’ll comb every deck of the Gorgon. They can’t have gotten off the ship. There’s no place else they could have gone.”

“Admiral!” Commander Kratas said. “The surviving guard claims that one of the scientists from the Installation came to see Solo. Qwi Xux. The guard insists that Dr. Xux had an authorization directly from you.”

Daala’s jaw dropped; then she clamped her lips together in a bloodless, iron line. “Check on the Wookiee! See what’s happened to him.”

Kratas queried the database. “The keeper says that the new Wookiee prisoner has been requisitioned and taken to a higher-priority assignment.” He swallowed. “Qwi Xux was the one who requisitioned him. She used your authorization code again.”

Daala’s nostrils flared, but then another thought struck her like a crashing asteroid. “Oh no!” she said. “They’re after the Sun Crusher!”

Alone in the guarded hangar holding the Sun Crusher, Han clambered into the hatch. “Can’t remember the last time I had to use a ladder to get inside a ship! Pretty primitive for such a sophisticated weapon.”

“It works.” Qwi hauled herself up the rungs behind him. “The sophistication is inside. All the rest is just window dressing.”

Han sat down in the pilot’s chair in the cockpit and looked at the controls. “Everything seems to be labeled the way it should be, though the placement is a little odd. What’s this for? Wait a minute, I’ll figure it out.”

Kyp reached the top of the ladder, paused, then pulled off his stormtrooper helmet. “Those mask filters stink!” he said, then with obvious pleasure tossed the skull-like helmet to the floor of the chamber. It clattered and bounced like a severed head. Kyp’s dark hair was curled with sweat and mussed from the confining helmet, but his face shone with a grin.

Chewbacca swung into the compartment, ducking his head and squeezing through the narrow hatch. He looked at the skylights in the chamber’s ceiling, then growled at the shape of a Star Destroyer orbiting overhead.

Han dropped his own helmet to the floor of the cockpit. Kyp kicked it under the seat and out of the way. Han touched the Sun Crusher’s navicomp, switching it on. “This thing is in better shape than the Imperial shuttle we stole. Are all the coordinates burned into the database, Doc?”

Qwi nodded, sitting down primly and strapping herself into her seat. “The Sun Crusher has been ready to go for years. We’ve just been waiting for orders from the Empire. Good thing nobody came back, right?”

Han pursed his lips, scanning the controls. “Everything here looks pretty standard,” he said. “I won’t have much time for practice.”

Chewbacca gave an ear-splitting Wookiee bellow of challenge. Below, Han heard the heavy armored door grind open and then clattering footsteps as a squad of stormtroopers charged into the chamber.

Standing at the door, Kyp stuck his head out of the narrow hatch. “Here they come!”

“Seal that hatch, kid,” Han shouted. “We’re in here for the duration now! Chewie, have you found the weapons controls yet?”

In the copilot’s chair, Chewbacca ran his huge hands over the buttons and dials. Finally finding what he wanted, he let out a yowl. Defensive laser cannons mounted at different targeting angles swiveled as he tested the aiming mechanisms.

Small thuds banged against the Sun Crusher’s hull as the stormtroopers fired their blaster rifles, causing no damage. Han looked at Qwi. “We don’t even have the shields on!”

“This armor will hold against anything they can throw against us,” she said with a smug smile. “It was designed to.”

Han grinned and cracked his knuckles. “Well, in that case let’s take an extra few seconds and do this right!” He worked the controls, activating the repulsorlift engines. The interior of the Sun Crusher wobbled as the entire craft rose into the air, floating on its repulsor cushion. Outside they could hear the faint screeching of an alarm.

“Chewie, point those laser cannons straight up. Let’s give ourselves a twenty-one-gun salute—right through the roof!”

The Wookiee roared to himself; then, without waiting for Han to give the order, he fired all of the Sun Crusher’s weaponry at once. Kyp scrambled for his seat, strapping himself in. Qwi stared at the roof of the cockpit with wide eyes.

The ceiling of the hangar chamber blasted outward under the barrage of laser energy. Some of the larger chunks of rubble fell downward, clanging against the Sun Crusher’s hull, but most of the skylights burst into space with the outrushing of contained air that spewed into the Maw.

Stormtroopers, flailing their arms and legs, were sucked out through the breach, flotsam among the rock and transparisteel debris in low orbit around the clustered rocks. Their armor might protect them against massive decompression for a few minutes, but every one of them was doomed.

Han raised the Sun Crusher up, accelerating through the escape hole they had blown through the top of the chamber. They shot into open space, and Han felt an exhilaration he had not felt since they had first arrived at Kessel.

“Here goes nothing!” he said. “Now for the fun part.”

Staring down at the Installation from the Gorgon’s bridge, Admiral Daala felt her stomach knot. For years her entire duty had been to protect that small clump of planetoids, to pamper the scientists. Grand Moff Tarkin had said these people held the future security of the Empire, and she had believed him.

Daala had been stepped on, abused, taken advantage of at the Caridan military academy. Tarkin had rescued her from that. He had given her the responsibility and the power she had earned through her own abilities. She owed Tarkin everything.

She would avenge him by destroying the New Republic as she caused their star systems to go supernova one by one. They could hide nowhere. At the same time, she would make her mark on the history of the galaxy, a warlord who had succeeded where an entire Empire had failed. The thought made Daala’s pale lips curl upward in a grim smile.

As she watched, Daala saw the puff of an explosion on one of the rocks of Maw Installation. Then the tiny form of the Sun Crusher streaked by, a characteristically angular speck fleeing the confines of the planetoid containing it.

“Red alert!” she shouted. “Mobilize all forces. They have the Sun Crusher, and we can’t let them take it away. That is our most valuable weapon!”

“But … Admiral,” Commander Kratas said, “if the technical reports are correct, nothing can harm the Sun Crusher.”

“We must find some way to capture them. Mobilize the other Star Destroyers. We’ll try to blockade them, cut off their escape. Release enough small fighters to overwhelm them.”

She fixed Kratas with her gaze. Her hair seemed to rise by itself, as if threatening to become a garrote for his throat. “Make certain you understand this, Commander. I don’t care how many losses we take, we cannot forfeit the Sun Crusher. That one weapon is worth more to me than all six TIE fighter squadrons onboard this Star Destroyer. Retrieve it at all costs.”

Three Star Destroyers closed in behind the stolen Sun Crusher.

“Didn’t take them long to figure something was up,” Han said.

Clouds of TIE fighters spewed out of the launching bays of the Manticore and the Gorgon, swarming toward them in formations so dense that Han could not see through them. Flashing, splattering laser bolts struck like pelting raindrops on the viewscreen.

“I always wanted to see if I could fly blindfolded,” Han said.

“What are they doing? Trying to smother us or just confuse us?” Qwi said.

The Sun Crusher, undamaged, rocked left and right from the pummeling of blaster strikes. “No, but they can wipe out our external weaponry—in fact, they already have,” Han said, checking the readouts. “Every one of our lasers is offline.”

“We just have to outrun them then,” Kyp said.

Another Star Destroyer, the Basilisk, unleashed its squadrons of TIE fighters in wave after wave out of the launching bay.

“Those ships are going to clog space so we can’t even move!” Han wrenched the Sun Crusher’s controls, trying to dodge but just squeezing his eyes shut most of the time. “Whoever heard of a traffic jam in the middle of a black hole cluster?”

Kyp grabbed his shoulder. “Watch out, Han.”

The fourth and last Star Destroyer reared up between them and the outside universe, blocking their passage. The Hydra lanced out with its enormous turbolaser cannons, aiming concentrated firepower at the single small ship. The remaining three Star Destroyers pressed in from behind to cut off their escape through the maze of the black hole cluster.

“Now what?” Kyp asked. The great arrowhead shape of the Hydra filled space in front of them.

“Qwi, you said this armor could take anything, didn’t you?” Han asked.

“Everything I could test it with.”

“All right, hold on. Time to accelerate for whatever this fancy toy is worth.” He jammed the control levers back. The sudden force shoved the four escapees back into their seats as the Sun Crusher surged forward, straight toward the Hydra.

The huge battleship grew larger and larger, filling their entire field of view, and still expanding. Great green turbolaser bolts shot out at them, but the cannons could not refocus their aimpoints fast enough to compensate for the ship streaking directly at them.

“Han, what are you doing?” Kyp cried.

“Trust me,” Han said. “Or actually, trust her.” He nodded toward Qwi. “If she messed up her test measurements, we’re all going to be one big organic pancake!”

The Hydra’s trapezoidal bridge tower rushed toward them, directly in their path. One suicidal TIE fighter rammed into the Sun Crusher to deflect its course, but merely exploded upon hitting the invincible quantum armor. Han had no trouble compensating for the error in trajectory.

“Look out!” Qwi yelled.

Details of the bridge tower filled their view now as they screamed toward the Imperial battleship. Han could actually see the windows of the bridge, the tiny figures of the command crew, some of them paralyzed in horror, others fleeing madly.

“Han!” Qwi and Kyp screamed in unison. Chewbacca gave a wordless roar.

“Right down their throat!” Han said.

The armored Sun Crusher tore through the Hydra’s control bridge like a bullet. Flying debris sprayed in their wake. The ship shot out the other side, shredding the superstructure on its way out.

The impact, the inferno, and a sound like a thousand gongs knocked them into a temporary stupor. Han finally whooped. “We made it!” Behind them the great battleship erupted in flames.

“You’re crazy!” Qwi said.

“Don’t thank me yet, Doc,” Han said.

Burning, out of control, the decapitated Hydra wheeled backward, drifting helplessly toward the gravitational trap of one of the black holes. A flurry of escape pods shot out of the crew decks, but the low-power lifeboat engines could not generate sufficient acceleration to take them free of the black holes, and their trajectories began to spiral in.

The lower decks and the immense hyperdrive engines of the doomed Star Destroyer began to explode as it toppled into the unstable trap of the Maw cluster. Clouds of belching flames stretched out and elongated, mingling with the swirling gas as the Hydra began its infinite plunge into the singularity.

“We’re not home free by a long shot,” Han said as he soared into the soup of ionized gas. “Okay, Kyp,” he said. “Now it’s your turn to take the controls. Get us out of here.”

Moments later the other three Star Destroyers rallied behind them in howling pursuit.