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.

He didn’t know if he’d heard those words before or composed the line himself, but it struck him that those words embodied the nugget of Rebel opposition to the Empire. Mon Mothma and the other leaders had enough foresight to look ahead and plan out the course of the campaign against the Empire, but for people in his position, the fight was one to defeat the forces who made them fear. The fact that after each battle, each victory, there was just that much less to be afraid of became almost tangible and served as a very sweet reward indeed.

Corran nudged his stick back and climbed up away from the fleeing yacht. Run, but always know you cannot run far enough.

He started to bring the Headhunter around on a course to the hangar, but he saw an anomalous blip on his sensor screen. He initiated an identification program, but the contact faded and returned, depriving the computer of enough solid data to make a match. It seemed to settle on an unknown fighter and a Super Star Destroyer. “Pash, what have you got for a contact at 352.4 degrees?”

“Nothing. Do you have something?”

“Yeah, but it’s weird. Probably a storm ghost. I’m going to check it out.”

“Want a wing? I can abort my approach.”

“Negative, I’m just doing a flyby. If I need help, I’ll need you all ready to go.” Corran glanced at his fuel gauge. “One pass, then I’m in.”

With the Golan Space Defense platform gone, Admiral Ackbar sent a signal to the fleet that started an evolution of the battle. Originally the Rebels had expected two or three times more by way of Star Destroyers than had appeared to defend Coruscant. That only the Triumph and Monarch remained to oppose them surprised him because neither ship had a particularly illustrious reputation or crew. At last reports Emperor’s Will and Imperator had also been part of the Coruscant defense force as well, and their participation in the battle would have made things much more difficult.

Liberator, Emancipator, and Home One formed a line moving past Triumph and Monarch. The two lines exchanged fire and missiles, savaging each other. Shields held at first, then, inevitably, crumbled. Beneath them the ships’ heavy armor had to absorb the force of the missile blasts and laser bolts. Some shots, guided by the Force or the product of pure chance, hit turbolaser batteries or torpedo launch tubes, vaporizing them, crushing them, and destroying them. Others just nibbled away at a ship’s hull or superstructure. Molecule by molecule they weakened the barrier between the ship’s interior and the void.

As always with war the best strategy was to hit without being hit back. With ships the size of Star Destroyers and heavy cruisers, avoiding being hit was, at best, difficult. The closest that could be managed in that regard was to minimize the number of weapons bearing on the ship. With the two lines passing broadside to each other, the ships were exposed to the maximum possible damage inflicted by the other side.

At Ackbar’s signal another Mon Calamari heavy cruiser, Mon Remonda, turned from its position in line behind Home One, and pointed its bow toward Coruscant. It surged forward, cutting across the Imperial Star Destroyers’ line of flight. In doing so it was able to bring all of its starboard firing-arc weapons to bear on Triumph while the Star Destroyer could hit it with its forward arc weapons.

Mon Remondao’s gunners began to pour fire in on Triumph. The Imperial Star Destroyer had already lost its shields, so the turbolaser strikes played easily up over the spine of the ship. Even more devastating were the hits by the Mon Calamari cruiser’s ion cannons. Their blue lightning chased all over the destroyer’s hull. Explosions trailed in the lightning’s wake.

The same time that Mon Remonda moved to strike at Triumph, the umbrella force began to separate. Assault frigates—a fanciful name for refitted freighters—began to close a net around the two Imperial warships and their smaller support ships. While they could not sustain the sort of damage the heavier ships were taking and survive, the Star Destroyers’ ability to strike at them had been diminished by combat. The smaller ships closed in, firing away at the destroyers. There were so many of them that the gunners who could target them could not target all of them.

Other heavier ships—Corellian corvettes, gunships, and a variety of bulk cruisers and Mon Calamari cruisers—pushed up and out away from Coruscant. They used distance to let them see over Coruscant’s horizon and spot other Imperial forces that could have been hidden on the world’s far side. They remained out of range of the Golan Space Defense platforms, yet close enough to respond quickly to any situation that demanded overwhelming firepower.

Starfighters and troop carriers began their runs to the planet. The outcome of the battle in space was important, but without troops on the ground to take, hold, and secure facilities and impose order, Coruscant would remain unconquered. Ackbar suffered under no illusions about Coruscant and its defenselessness. That the shields were down he felt was nothing short of a miracle, but he couldn’t count on how long they would stay down. He had, as nearly as he knew, a narrow window in which to insert his troops, so he pushed them forward as quickly as seemed prudent.

Commander Sirlul reached over and tapped a command into the keypad on the arm of Ackbar’s command chair. A holographic schematic of Triumph appeared before him. Multiple systems were outlined in red, including the bridge. “Triumph has lost power and is beginning to slide back into the atmosphere.”

Ackbar hit his comlink. “Ackbar to Onoma.”

“Onoma here, Admiral.”

“Cease firing on Triumph. Use your tractor beams to pull Triumph along and accelerate its orbit so it won’t decay. We want to save the ship if we can.” Ackbar looked at Monarch and could see it taking as much damage as Triumph had. Between it and Triumph, we might be able to salvage most of a Star Destroyer.

“Order acknowledged, sir. Onoma out.”

Sirlul glanced over at Ackbar. “Captain Averen of Monarch has sent a truce-byte out to everyone.”

“He will surrender unconditionally?”

“If there are conditions, they will be insignificant.”

Ackbar nodded. “Conduct the negotiations.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And when you’re done with that, Commander, I have another job for you.”

“Yes, sir?”

Ackbar pointed at Coruscant. “Find me someone down there who can surrender that world to me.”

Wedge had Winter bring back up the Palace district tactical map. “Corran, we’re getting nothing on this contact you report.”

“Contact is weak, Wedge. It oscillates back and forth, as if running between buildings. The computer can’t make any sense of … wait a minute!”

“What’s going on, Corran.”

“I’ve lost throttle control. I’m speeding up!” The green arrow representing Corran’s Headhunter began a slow dip toward the planet. “Initiating emergency shutdown of fuel injectors one and two.”

That will cut fuel back to half, slowing him. Wedge looked down at Winter. “Can you help him?”

“I can try.”

“Negative, Winter, cut the override code you’re using. I need to shut those two injectors down.”

“I haven’t used an override code, Corran.”

“Yes, you have. I’m locked up. No control.”

Wedge dropped down to stare at the data scrolling across the screen on Winter’s datapad. “What’s happening?”

Near panic flooded through the comlink from Corran. “Manual override is not working.”

“Punch out, Corran! Eject!”

“Can’t. Inverting! Nothing I can …”

Static filled the comlink channel as the green arrow dropped from sight. Wedge heard an explosion and listened to its echoes rumble as the holographic image of the building Corran’s Headhunter had hit slowly collapsed. He saw the building implode, but he felt it in his stomach. A void formed deep in his guts, swallowing the elation he had felt moments before and having more than enough room to devour the pain and guilt trickling through him.

Wedge bounced a fist off the holopad workstation, then tore off his gas mask and hurled it across the room. He didn’t know if the gas in the room had fully dissipated yet, and part of him hoped it had not. He’d been fighting for more than seven years to oppose the Empire. Friends had come and gone—mostly gone—in that time. He’d grown cynical enough to keep his distance from new recruits because he knew they died earliest and if he didn’t befriend them it wouldn’t hurt him as much when they died.

The truth was, though, that the distance didn’t really insulate him, it just allowed him to think their deaths didn’t hurt as much. But Corran, as much as the rest of the Rogues and a little bit more, had managed to close that gap. No, they didn’t always get along, but disagreements didn’t dull respect and admiration. Corran was a good pilot and a smart man who treated loyalty as the sacred foundation of friendship. Corran was like Tycho and Luke—all of them knew the horrors and pressures and anxiety of war, and all of them knew the sense of satisfaction at having completed a mission.

Even though they fought against Imperial stormtroopers and pilots, it sounded somehow evil to take pride in killing other living creatures. And it wasn’t really the killing of which they were proud, but of surviving. They took pride in the fact that they had stopped someone from killing their friends and, in doing so, loosened the grip of an evil Empire on a fearful populace. Only those individuals who had gone through what they had could truly understand it all and only those who understood it could really, truly, understand why war and killing should never be anything but the last resort.

A hand landed on Wedge’s shoulder and he spun, knocking Tycho’s arm aside. “I lost another one.”

“Maybe.” The outline of his gas mask had left red lines on Tycho’s face. “But maybe, just maybe, Corran managed to punch out before the ship went down. Maybe he’s lying on top of that pile of rubble just waiting for someone to help him.”

And maybe he’s buried so deep we’ll never find him. Wedge drew in a deep breath, then nodded. “You’re right, that’s probably what happened. He’s probably waiting for us right now.”

“He’s a Rogue, after all.”

“Right, come on.” Wedge headed for the door. “He’s a Rogue and we take care of our own. No matter the circumstances, no matter the situation, we take care of our own.”