33
Near the center of the Cauldron Nebula, the two surviving Star Destroyers hung poised and ready to launch their attack on Coruscant.
Admiral Daala stood tall on her bridge platform, filled with an electrifying new self-confidence and determination. She had not slept in the past day.
Her officers sat at their stations, keyed up and anxious. A double complement of stormtroopers marched up and down the Gorgon’s halls, fully armed and battle ready. They had had a decade of drills, and now they would use their training to strike the greatest blow they could imagine for their cause.
“Commander Kratas, report,” Daala said.
Kratas snapped to attention, barking out his report. “All equipment and weaponry have been transferred from the Basilisk to the Gorgon. Only a skeleton crew of volunteers—all stormtroopers—remains on the Basilisk. Captain Mullinore reports he is ready for his final mission.”
Daala turned to the lieutenant at the comm station. “Patch me through to Captain Mullinore.”
The image of the Basilisk’s captain appeared in front of her. The hologram wavered, but the man himself seemed completely rigid and in control, looking stoic as he met Admiral Daala’s emerald eyes. “Yes, Admiral,” he said.
“Captain, is your ship ready?” She paused, clasping her hands behind her back. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, Admiral. We have reconfigured all weapons systems to increase power to our shields. The stormtrooper crew has rigged the self-destruct mechanism into our primary hyperdrive reactors.” He paused as if gathering courage, but his close-cropped blond hair showed not a glimmer of sweat. “The Basilisk is ready whenever you give the word, Admiral.”
“Thank you, Captain. History will remember your sacrifice—I swear it.”
She turned to the rest of her crew and switched on the intraship comm system. Her clipped voice rang throughout the Gorgon. “All hands, battle stations! Prepare to begin our run. We will destroy Coruscant and strike a death blow to the heart of the Rebellion.”
Kyp Durron piloted the Sun Crusher to the core of the Cauldron Nebula, where Exar Kun had told him Admiral Daala’s fleet lay in wait.
The controls of the Sun Crusher felt cool and familiar as he sat forward in the hard, uncomfortable pilot seat, looking through the segmented viewpanels. He had helped fly the superweapon during the escape from Maw Installation with Han Solo.
During that battle they had taken out one of Daala’s Star Destroyers. Now he would use the Sun Crusher to obliterate the rest of her fleet.
Igniting an entire nebula seemed like an excessive blow to squash an Imperial insect, but Kyp appreciated the irony of destroying them with their own weapons. And it would signal to the rest of the fragmented Empire what was about to befall them as Kyp continued his purge.
The Sun Crusher’s sensor panels became useless in the ionized discharge from the knot of blue-giant stars that illuminated the Cauldron Nebula. The front viewscreens dimmed to filter out the blazing light.
Kyp stretched out with the Force, dropping his inhibitions and letting the power burst from him like compressed gas. After the effort of yanking the Sun Crusher from the core of Yavin, finding a few Star Destroyers seemed a simple exercise.
After only a moment he sensed the arrowhead-shaped silhouettes of two Imperial battleships.
He piloted the Sun Crusher toward the bloated super-giants at the heart of the nebula. The titanic blue stars were huge, and young, and ripe for destruction. On a cosmic timescale they would burn hot, but briefly, ending their lives in supernova explosions that would send shock waves through an entire region of the galaxy.
With the Sun Crusher, though, Kyp could ignite the supernovas now, rather than in a hundred thousand years.
He stared across the soothing rainbow sea of gas and thought of the splashed-color sunsets on his colony world of Deyer, the placid terraformed lakes around the peaceful raft towns where he and his brother Zeth had played. But the Empire had broken into Kyp’s home and taken him and his family away—without warning.
Years ago the Death Star had approached the quiet and pristine planet of Alderaan and had blown it to pieces with its planet-destroying superlaser—without warning.
Admiral Daala had captured Kyp and Han and Chewbacca after they had passed through the black-hole maze; but because Kyp had possessed no “worthwhile” information for her, she had sentenced him to death.
Daala deserved no warning. None at all.
Kyp increased the radiation shields on the Sun Crusher and approached the mammoth blue-giant stars, seething in their ocean of star material. He powered up the targeting display in front of him.
A recessed section of the control panel slid aside. A screen popped up, displaying a diagram of closely orbiting spheres. Seven enormous stars crowded in the middle of the nebula, circling in complex orbits as they stole gas from each other. Their intense radiation shone through the scattered hydrogen, oxygen, and neon clouds.
Kyp’s face was a grim mask as he flicked a row of red activator switches. He knew exactly how the Sun Crusher worked; he had stolen those memories from Qwi Xux.
Warning beacons flashed across the command-system panels, and Kyp confirmed his intentions to the onboard computer. The torus-shaped generator at the long end of the Sun Crusher powered up, crackling with blue plasma.
Kyp remembered the New Republic engineers attempting to determine how the superweapon worked, how they had panicked at the sight of a simple message cylinder. The resonance torpedoes that triggered stellar explosions were dense packets of energy, programmed and modulated to make the core of a star unstable. The torpedoes could initiate a collapse and rebound of the outer layers of star material, unleashing a tremendously violent explosion that would rip a star apart.
Kyp targeted the cluster of blue-giant stars. He did not hesitate. He knew in his heart what he had to do.
He pushed the activation buttons. The Sun Crusher shuddered as the superweapon launched seven high-power resonance torpedoes.
Against the muted swirls of the Cauldron Nebula, he saw sizzling ovoid shapes of electric green, white, and yellow fire. The energy torpedoes streaked out, plunging into the boiling surfaces of the giant stars.
Kyp dimmed the segmented viewport and fixed his gaze on the blue giants. The cluster would explode simultaneously, and the shock waves would ignite vast oceans of nebular material in a galactic wildfire. It would be a perfectly clear signal to the remnants of the Empire.
But it would take hours for the torpedoes to tunnel to the stellar cores and set up the chain reaction. The wave of destruction would boil up from the depths of the stars until a flash of incredible force spewed brilliant light, high-energy radiation, and star matter into the Cauldron. The entire sector would become an inferno.
Kyp felt a cold fist clench inside his stomach. He could not turn back now. Once launched, the resonance torpedoes were irrevocable. These seven stars were doomed to explode in a few hours.
He pulled away at a leisurely pace, killing time. The Sun Crusher was so small that few sensor systems could detect it, especially within the electromagnetic chaos of the Cauldron Nebula. The weapon was designed to flit into a system, drop its torpedo into a star, and vanish without a battle, without loss of ordnance or personnel. A simple first—and final—strike.
Admiral Daala would never detect his presence.
Kyp’s gaze wandered back to the chronometer, impatient to watch Daala’s ships being wiped out in the murderous waves ripping through the nebula. He had the most powerful weapon ever invented, and he had the powers of the Sith that Exar Kun had shown him.
Where others had failed against the Empire, Kyp Durron would succeed. Completely.
As he drifted away from the blue-giant cluster, he noted that only about an hour remained before the massive explosions would begin. The waiting seemed to go on forever. He sent out his thoughts again, wishing he could taunt Daala.
Then, unexpectedly, her Star Destroyers began to move. The Basilisk and the Gorgon powered up their sublight engines and started a slow drift, aligning themselves to a hyperspace path, as if they were ready to launch another attack.
Kyp felt a flame of anger sear through him. “No—she can’t leave now!”
He could not go back and stop the explosion of the core stars. Daala had to stay where she would be trapped!
Kyp slapped at the Sun Crusher’s weapon-control systems, powering up the defensive laser cannons mounted at sharp angles on the weapon. Then he shot forward at full thrust.
When he and Han had first escaped from the Maw cluster, Daala had thrown all of her fighters at him in a desperate attempt to recapture the Sun Crusher.
Kyp figured it would take little more than a few potshots to give her the incentive to stay around.
Admiral Daala raised her right hand, looking at the navigator. “Prepare to engage hyperdrive,” she said.
“Admiral!” the lieutenant at the sensor station cried. “I’ve detected an intruder!”
A tiny ship streaked across the bow of the Gorgon, blasting at them with puny laser strikes.
“What?” Daala said, turning. “Viewscreen,” she called, “Enhance.”
A shimmering image of Captain Mullinore from the Basilisk appeared at the comm station beside her. “Admiral, we have just detected the Sun Crusher,” he said. “Shall we engage?”
“The Sun Crusher!” Daala took a second to accept the information. She could not answer before the small ship flitted in front of the Gorgon’s bridge tower again, blasting at the turbolaser batteries. She instantly recognized the thorn-shaped ship, the tiny superweapon bristling with defensive laser turrets. But the Sun Crusher’s lasers had too little power to cause damage to a Star Destroyer.
“Launch two TIE squadrons,” Daala said, feeling a new excitement. “I want the Sun Crusher recaptured. This changes everything in our strategy against the New Republic.”
The stormtroopers, already keyed up from a day’s worth of red-alert status, swarmed across the decks. Moments later the bottom bay of the Gorgon opened and spewed out a hundred plane-winged TIE fighters soaring through the curling gas of the nebula.
Daala watched the small battle unfold. The Sun Crusher had been designed to be extremely swift and maneuverable. With its indestructible quantum armor, the superweapon seemed to laugh at the attack she sent against it. It was only a matter of time, though.
“But why does he attack us at all?” Daala said, tapping black-gloved fingers on the bridge railing. “Something’s wrong here. He provoked us, but he has no way of causing us damage. Why did he call attention to himself,” she mused, “and how did he find us here?”
Commander Kratas answered her, though she had been muttering to herself. “I can’t speculate on that, Admiral.”
“Bring the Star Destroyers about,” she said. “Lock a tractor beam on the Sun Crusher next time it passes.”
“The Sun Crusher’s pilot is maneuvering at speeds much too high for us to be certain of a firm lock,” Kratas said.
Daala glared at him. “Does that mean you’re unable to try?”
“No, Admiral.” Kratas turned and clapped his hands, directing the tactical officers on the bridge. “You heard the Admiral! Set to it immediately.”
“Admiral, the Sun Crusher is signaling us,” the comm officer said. “Voice-only transmission.”
Daala whirled. “Put the pilot on.”
With a crackle the thin voice of a mere boy echoed through the Gorgon’s command center. “Admiral Daala, I’m Kyp Durron—remember me? I hope so. You put me under a death sentence. That made quite an impression on me. I hope it made some sort of impression on you.”
Daala recalled the wiry, dark-haired youth who had been taken prisoner along with the Rebels who had blundered into the Maw Installation. She motioned for the comm officer to open a channel.
“Kyp Durron, if you surrender immediately and deliver the Sun Crusher intact, we will take you to the planet of your choice. You can be free. Don’t be foolish.”
“Not a chance, Admiral.” Kyp laughed at her. “I’m thumbing my nose at your supposed Imperial superiority. I’ll take my chances.” He cut off the transmission and streaked by again, firing darts of laser energy that bounced harmlessly off the shielded hull of the Star Destroyer.
“Tractor-beam lock—” the tactical officer said, “… lost it.”
“Admiral!” the sensor chief broke in, his voice filled with urgency. “I’m picking up unusual readings from the star cluster. The blue giants are fluctuating, all seven of them, I’ve never seen anything like—”
Daala froze. Her mouth dropped open in horror as she suddenly realized the terrible plan this … this boy had put into effect against her fleet.
“Full about!” she shouted. “One hundred eighty degrees, maximum speed. Get out of the nebula, now!”
“But, Admiral—?” Commander Kratas said.
“He’s used the Sun Crusher!” she screamed. “The stars are going to explode! He’s just trying to stall us here so we’ll be trapped.”
Kratas scrambled to the navigation station himself. The Gorgon lurched as the sublight engines kicked in, spinning the enormous Star Destroyer about.
“We no longer have our navicomputer lock on Coruscant,” the navigation officer said. “When we turned to strike at the Sun Crusher, we lost our alignment.”
“Get us out of here now,” Daala said. “Any vector! Inform the Basilisk.”
The sublight engines powered up, blasting as they lumbered away from the center of the nebula, picking up speed. The hyperdrive engines were primed, gathering power. The Star Destroyers began to move away—
Then all the stars exploded.
Kyp Durron watched the Star Destroyers wheel about and flee like wounded banthas.
“You can’t get away fast enough.” He smiled. “Not fast enough.”
The Gorgon and the Basilisk began to heave themselves through the nebula at top speed, abandoning scores of TIE fighters. The small Imperial fighters veered off in a panic when their mother ships suddenly turned to run.
Kyp ignored the rest of the TIE fighters and punched his engines to twice the Sun Crusher’s maximum-rated capacity, shooting straight up and out the plane of the nebular cloud.
When the cluster of blue giants detonated, concentric shock waves of blinding light and searing radiation blasted outward like a cosmic hurricane.
The Gorgon had managed to pull two ship lengths ahead of the Basilisk.
Hauling on the controls, Kyp continued the Sun Crusher’s race upward, confident that the quantum armor would protect him from the worst. The incredible surge of energy from the supernovas darkened his viewports to near opacity.
Curtains of fire overtook the Basilisk, washing over the Star Destroyer and igniting it like another tiny nova erupting in the nebula, as the firestorm front swept on.
The viewscreen blackened, but where the Gorgon had been Kyp saw another flash—and then the firestorm obliterated all detail.
After his screens opaqued completely, Kyp used the onboard navicomputer to set a new course. This was just the beginning.
Leaving the galactic inferno behind him, and awed by the power of the Sun Crusher, Kyp moved off to seek out those remaining worlds that still swore allegiance to the Empire.
Now, without doubt, he had all the power he needed.