Chapter 14

“Koornacht Cluster” was always an outsider’s name—an astronomer’s name, hundreds of years old, but barely more meaningful than a cataloger’s letters and numbers.

Aitro Koornacht had done a favor involving a woman and an Imperial coach for the First Observer at the Court of Emperor Preedu III, on Tamban. That next night, the astronomer spotted a bright, fuzzy disk in the eyepiece of his newest telescope. That grateful First Observer had repaid his benefactor by naming the newly discovered star cluster after the night commander of the palace guard.

But that same gathering of stars had other names. To the Fia of Galantos, in whose skies it appeared as a great oval of light, it was known as The Multitude. The Wehttam, another galactic neighbor, revered it as God’s Temple. The Ka’aa, a wandering species old enough to have seen the youngest stars in the Cluster wink on, remembered it as no’aat padu’ll—the Little Nursery.

The Yevetha knew it by a word that meant Home.

Two thousand suns and twenty thousand worlds, all born together from the same great cloud of dust and gas that still filled the spaces between them. They were young suns and hard worlds, and there were few eyes on hand to know either. The faces of fewer than a hundred planets had been brightened with the colors of life, and only a single species spawned in the Cluster had made the leap from its home soil to the stars.

Two thousand suns keeping company in space, burning so brightly in the skies over N’zoth and its daughter worlds that they blinded the eye to the dimmer lights, the wider galaxy beyond. It was not until visitors came from beyond the Cluster to mine its riches that the Yevetha learned they were not alone.

It was a difficult lesson. A young species with a hard ethic, the Yevetha were accustomed to their place as the center of their universe. The relentless otherness of the outsiders was a profound challenge to the Yevetha’s conception of themselves. In the end, the answer to that challenge was a new vision built on purity of line, sanctity of territory, and hate.

The occupation by the Empire had been an education for the Yevetha, in more ways than one.

When the Empire came to Koornacht, it belonged to the Yevetha alone. Traveling through realspace in their immaculate spherical thrustships, they had spread from the spawnworld of N’zoth to eleven daughter worlds.

In all the recorded history of the galaxy, no species had established more interstellar colonies without the benefit of hyperdrive technology. To the Yevetha, the stars of N’zoth’s bright night sky seemed to hover just above their heads, beckoning. Their will was strong enough to leap the distances between the stars.

After the Empire retreated from Koornacht, that will was wedded to a technology that could leap the distances between the stars. Vastly faster ships made the other Yevethan worlds seem no farther away from N’zoth than the other side of the globe, and Imperial comm units could carry the viceroy’s voice throughout the Cluster in a matter of minutes.

N’zoth and its daughter worlds were bound together as one in a way never before possible, and the Second Birth began. The Yevetha scouted and settled a dozen more prime worlds in a spasm of expansion that satisfied the frustrated ambition of the occupation years.

But the greater vision guiding the Yevetha required a longer period of preparation and consideration. In that time, Yevethan engineers worked to adapt thrustship designs to Imperial technologies, while the metal artisans labored to complete and repair the captured warships.

Claiming and protecting all of the Yevethan birthright would require that and more, an unparalleled marshaling of effort—not only ships and crews, but whole communities, an entire generation ready to leave their birthworld for a home in the sky of stars.

And it would also require that someone go before and prepare the way.

For during its time as trustee of Koornacht Cluster, the Empire had allowed some immigrant colonies, encouraged others, and created still others for its own purposes. When the Empire left Koornacht, the Yevetha were no longer alone.

The transfer between Aramadia and the eight-kilometer-long Star Destroyer Pride of Yevetha took place at a rendezvous point deep in the heart of the Koornacht Cluster, far from any prying eyes.

Three trips by the thrustship’s ferry were required to complete the transfer of the viceroy. In the first trip his darna and breeding mates came across. The second brought his personal staff, including first attaché Eri Palle. The final run delivered the honor guard, Nil Spaar himself, and Vor Duull, Aramadia’s proctor of information science. Vor Duull’s inclusion was a reward for his work during the successful Coruscant mission.

They were met by Dar Bille, who had been Nil Spaar’s loyal second since long before the day of retribution. Now primate of Pride of Yevetha, he had directed the training of the other primates as each former Imperial warship had joined the growing Black Fleet.

“Etaias,” Dar Bille said, adding the salute of obeisance to the honorific. It was more than was called for by the difference in their standing, and drove the lower-ranking officers behind him to a similar excess; each dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

“Noreti,” Nil Spaar said warmly. “This was unnecessary, but it pleases me. Eri, see that everyone finds his quarters. Dar, lead me to the bridge. Is the fleet ready?”

“This way, Viceroy. The fleet is well ready. But Glory could not be launched in time to join us,” Dar Bille said, knowing that Nil Spaar would not be surprised by that news. Glory was the vessel the Imperials had called EX-F, and its curious propulsion system, unlike that in any other starship, had been an ongoing vexation.

As he followed Dar Bille into the corridor, Nil Spaar let his fingertips graze across the bare necks of the kneeling officers as he passed them. The touch symbolized his acceptance of the offer of their lives, and freed them to rise. “And the others?” he asked.

“After the last combat trial, I made the decision that the crew of Blessings was not ready. But that will not hinder us on this mission.”

“I presume the primate earned the expected reward for his failure.”

“He did, at my hand, and his second as well.”

“Excellent,” said Nil Spaar. “It doesn’t do for those who serve in the lesser posts to think that the knife will cut only the throat of authority.”

“The new primate of Blessings expects another combat trial when we return. Perhaps you would like to witness it.”

“Perhaps,” Nil Spaar said as they reached the bridge. “For now, my mind is full of the work ahead of us. And of memories. It seems a right thing to me that you should be the primate of my flagship today. Do you remember the Beauty, and the day we discovered the first nest of the vermin?”

The little starship Beauty, a former Imperial corvette, had carried Nil Spaar to the far reaches of the Cluster and beyond. That long scouting mission had opened his eyes to the true challenge ahead and had given purpose to everything he had done since. He had taken the measure of the All and understood its meaning, taken the measure of their enemies and understood their threat, and had come home to N’zoth to make himself viceroy.

“Of course, etaias. And here we are again, together on the bridge of a fine ship. Soon we will again look down undetected on the nests of the vermin—but this time they will know that we were there.” He looked past Nil Spaar to the proctor of information. “Lifath—what news do you have of the New Republic’s Fifth Fleet?”

“Primate, our shadow reports the fleet has disappeared from Hatawa. Our contacts on Coruscant tell us that it has been recalled.”

Nil Spaar bowed his head and breathed relief. “Then it will be done. I am vindicated.”

Dar Bille turned a proud and joyful face toward Nil Spaar. “On your orders, Viceroy.”

“I wish to speak to all our vessels.”

Turning quickly toward the proctor of communications, Dar Bille arranged the necessary connections and announced the viceroy to the crews of the twenty-five warships secreted in twos and threes across the Cluster.

“Remember that we are the blessed, born of the light of the All,” Nil Spaar told them. “All beauty belongs to us. All that we see in our skies was meant for our children. It was not meant for the creatures that creep in from the darkness beyond. Their presence alone fouls the light and defaces the beauty of the All.

“Today we will remove them, as the steward of a granary must remove the vermin to keep the stocks pure. And when next you stand on N’zoth and look to the sky, you will know that none but the children of N’zoth stand above you.”

Then Nil Spaar stepped away from the hypercomm and looked back to Dar Bille. “You may give the order,” he said generously.

Dar Bille’s crests swelled with pride and gratitude. “All vessels of the Black Fleet—this is the primate of the flagship Pride of Yevetha,” he said in a strong clear voice. “On the word of the viceroy, I direct you to commence your attacks. May each of us honor the name of the Yevetha today.”

Wearing an approving look on his dirty, deep-lined face, Negus Nigekus slammed the check hatch shut and threw the locking bolt home. The ore sheds were more than two-thirds full, and there was still a month to go before the gypsy freighter returned to New Brigia. Perhaps this time there would finally be enough profit over the cost of their supplies to clear the last of their passage debt.

Nigekus would never have dreamed that after eighteen years working the chromite digs in the hills above the village, the little colony would still owe a debt to the captain of the freighter that had brought them there. In the beginning the land had been generous. And with the Cluster under the Empire’s protection and their claim to New Brigia accepted by Coruscant, there had been more than enough buyers for the blue-white metal to ensure good prices. War—so long as it stayed at a safe distance—was good for business.

In the first four years there wasn’t a quarter when the community failed to pare its debt. Even with the extra costs as families left the longhouses for cottage shelters, even feeding new mouths too young to contribute, and the mothers who gave their labor share in the nursery rather than the mines, even the summer when the crops withered and the winter when the processing dome burned, there was always something offered against their obligations.

But then the land had grown stingy, and, not long after, the Empire was gone. With the spacelanes from Koornacht to Galantos and Wehttam no longer secure, the colony’s best buyers lowered their offers or stopped bidding at all, pointing to the risk of piracy.

In time only Captain Stanz and the Freebird came calling, and his price was the lowest of all—an insult to the sweat and labor of the two hundred who each morning hiked up from the village to the diggings and each evening returned bowed by their labors. But Stanz was a pirate in heart if not in fact, and had no sympathy for them.

“This is droid work yer doing,” he said, “picking rocks from the ground. You can’t expect a living wage for droid work. Even at these prices, it’s hardly worth my trouble to come here.”

Nigekus doubted the truth of that, but there was no point in arguing. He had no choice but to stand there and listen to Stanz’s poor-mouthing as he figured the load and calculated the overage, using whatever prices the old Bothan’s whim dictated. And for years the overage had hovered around the figure for a quarter’s interest, sometimes a little more, more often a little less, with the shortfall added to their debt.

If the community had had its own hauler, even a worn-out Corellian freighter or a battered space barge—but that was a dream beyond reason.

Still, the land had suddenly turned kind again, with two new diggings bringing up rich ore that reminded the surviving elders of the promise that had coaxed them there from Brigia. If they earned no more for this load than the price Stanz had paid on his last visit, the overage should cover not only the interest but the balance.

To guarantee that, Nigekus had decided that this time he would hold back a third of the ore until Stanz set the price. It was a tactic not without risk, or it might have been tried long before. If the Bothan took offense, the community could lose its lifeline—and the offender might lose his life.

But Nigekus was determined to see New Brigia escape Captain Stanz’s thrall before the dust-cough that now plagued him at night rendered him fit only to sweeten the dirt of the gardens. If Stanz snapped his neck in a fury at being caught as a cheat, Nigekus would lose little.

“He will only spare me the last weeks of the coughing death,” he had said to the other elders in winning their approval. “And you can then kill him without shame, and claim his ship as honor payment to my family.”

Negus Nigekus walked slowly but proudly across the common toward the processing dome, his thin body warmed by the knowledge that a turning was coming.

It had been hard for him to admit that he could no longer make the climb to the diggings and do more than take up space in the pit. The aches of hard labor were easier to bear than the deep ache of feeling useless, of standing with the children and feeling that he had become one of them, a mouth that could not earn its table share. He was grateful to have found a way of escaping that feeling.

Before Nigekus reached the dome, a shadow flashed across the common. But by the time he looked skyward, there was nothing to be seen. The whine and clatter of the machinery had covered the sound of the approaching dropships until very near the end, and the landing sites were downriver around the bend, safely out of view. Shaking his head, Nigekus entered the dome, ignorant of the threat already moving up the valley toward the village.

When he left the dome just a few minutes later, his inspection complete, everything had changed. Tall creatures in green and brown body armor were advancing through the village in a wide line, their weapons turning the cottages into burned and broken shells. A child’s screaming pierced the din of the machinery behind him, then ended with ominous abruptness.

Nigekus was ignored or overlooked long enough to take half a dozen uncertain steps out into the common, long enough to realize in horror that some of the blackened objects littering the ground were carcasses, long enough to feel a wild rush of indignation over the fact that he did not even know the species of the invaders.

Then he found his voice and cried out his rage, raised both fists in defiance and started across the common toward the nearest of the soldiers. A silver-barreled weapon turned his way, and Nigekus fell in agony, his last breath full of fire.

Two of the diggers at Pit 4 had seen the descending ships, making that crew the first to start back down to the village. The pall of black smoke rising over the ridgelines drew the other crews away from their work and onto the well-trod trails. Some had shouldered their tools as weapons, but most were armed only with fear for their families. They had had no enemies on New Brigia, and energy weapons were a luxury the colony could not afford.

The Yevethan troops, masked against the smoke and the stench of the vermin, waited patiently in the village for the diggers to return. There was no need to do anything more. As Nil Spaar had predicted, the sight of the ravaged village gave the diggers the final spur to a reckless charge.

It was a methodical slaughter. Standing back to back in a circle on the common, the soldiers allowed the diggers to reach the valley floor, then cut them down.

The last few deaths were suicides in all but name. With both the carnage and the futility before them, the remaining Brigians dropped their inadequate weapons, gave up their cover, and walked down the slopes to the village, offering themselves as targets rather than be left alive to remember.

When it was over, and the breeze falling through the valley had blown all but the last tendrils of smoke away, only the Yevethan troops, the ore sheds, and the processing dome were left standing.

It was no accident that those buildings had survived. As the troops returned downriver to their dropships, a fat-bodied cargo transport landed on the common. Within an hour its empty belly easily swallowed both the contents of the ore sheds and the machinery from the processing dome.

Once the cargo transport was safely clear of the target zone, Star Dream completed its sterilization of the valley with a long salvo from the cruiser’s heavy batteries.

The bodies turned to vapor and vanished, and the blood was scorched from the rocks. The ground turned to black glass, and the river exploded into steam. When the barrage was over, nothing was left of the vermin but the holes they had carved in the ground with their hands and the trails they had beaten into the hills with their footsteps.

Star Dream returned to N’zoth triumphant in her glorious victory, carrying a passage price in chromite in her hold.

In a garden city on J’t’p’tan, a world gentled by patient hands, a woman awoke from a dream to a nightmare. A falling star became a starship, the starship a warship, and the warship a fountain of death raining on the face of the world. In the dream, or the nightmare, the Current ran wild with the thrashings of murdered souls, and ran dark with the stain of blood.

“Rouse everyone, at once,” Wialu said, shaking her daughter. “Hurry—something terrible has begun.”

New Brigia was the smallest of the thirteen alien settlements visited by the ships of the Black Fleet in the first hour of the Great Purge.

Polneye was the largest, and the only one to fight back.

Orbiting a star on the far side of the Cluster from Coruscant, Polneye was an orphan child of the Empire. It had been established to serve as a secret military transshipment port for Farlax Sector. Cloaked in high-altitude clouds whose rains rarely reached the ground, arid Polneye became home to a vast open-air armory and supply depot.

Bustling hub-and-spoke landing and holding zones sprawled across the dusky-brown flats. Eventually, even the largest vessels capable of grounding could be accommodated, with cargoes unloaded, assembled, and transferred by small armies of droids.

As the traffic through Polneye grew, so did the population. At first it was a purely military billet, staffed by the Supply Command on a normal rotation. The planet was chosen to satisfy certain strategic criteria, not for its suitability for habitation. But over time, as more and more jobs were bid out to civilians, the center of each landing zone had grown into a small city largely comprised of semipermanent residents.

When the beaten remnants of the Imperial Fleet abandoned Farlax and retreated into the Core, the military staff fled in whatever ships were available on the ground. But the civilian population, which by then numbered nearly a quarter-million scattered across fifty sites, was left behind to fend for itself.

And though, suddenly, transports no longer dropped through the clouds with thrusters roaring to land on Polneye, the droids and cargoes that had been waiting for them proved a rich enough treasure to ease the shock of abandonment. Virtually everything a great army and a fleet of starships required to function could be found somewhere in the cargo containers left scattered on holding pads across the face of Polneye.

There were few missteps, and little was wasted or discarded. Polneye was blessed by strong leadership at the outset, and the cargoes became the raw material for a transformation—from client to self-sustaining settlement to a unified state of eight consolidated cities.

So it was that the Yevethan warships Honor, Liberty, and Devotion arrived over a planet boasting a healthy population of nearly three hundred thousand sentients, seventy thousand droids—and six operational TIE interceptors.

“Weapons master! Attend me! Why has the attack not begun?”

The weapons master of the Star Destroyer Devotion bowed deeply to Jip Toorr before speaking.

“Primate, there is an ionization inversion above the clouds over this planet. Together, the two are interfering with the targeting computers on all our ships. I am not confident that the accuracy of our firing will satisfy your expectations.”

“The viceroy has expectations as well, which we both must fulfill,” said Jip Toorr. “How do you propose that we do so?”

“Sir—there are scout fighters waiting in their bays to confirm the success of our attack. I ask that three of them be launched now and sent below the clouds to direct the fire of our batteries.”

“Will this provide the accuracy needed to ensure the success of our mission?”

“Without fail, Primate.”

“Then I so order it. Tactics master, launch three scout fighters. The weapons master will direct them.”

The last of the navigation satellites on which Polneye’s traffic control system had depended had failed nearly a year earlier, or the arrival of the Yevethan task force would have been detected as soon as the ships exited hyperspace.

But the ground components of the traffic control system were still operational. Alarms began to sound the moment the Yevethan scout fighters cleared the ionization boundary, calling technicians to rarely tended stations. Many other Polneyi ran outside to look up and see what sort of visitors had come calling.

Those whose eyes were sharp enough saw three tiny black ships circling just below the clouds. One was over the city called Nine South, a second over Eleven North, and the third over the ghost city of Fourteen North, which was still being cannibalized for its structures and equipment.

Then fire poured down from the sky. Fierce turbolaser pulses tore holes in the clouds and split the air, and all three cities vanished under acrid mushroom clouds of golden dust and black smoke. Even after the firing stopped, thunder rumbled across the open reaches of Polneye like death drums.

On what had been one of the wide, flat landing pads of Ten South, those who had come out to watch the visitors land were evenly divided between the stunned and the screaming. A man near Plat Mallar went to his knees and vomited. Turning away from the sight, Mallar found a woman clawing madly at her allsuit with such force that she was bleeding profusely from beneath what was left of her nails. The sight galvanized Mallar out of his paralysis, and he began edging his way toward the east edge of the pad.

Then a cry went up, as someone in the gathering saw that the tiny ship that had been circling over Nine South was moving to a new position over Nine North. In a matter of moments, the crowd broke and ran, some for the feeble but comforting shelter of the terminal buildings, some for the open spaces beyond the city, as far from the city as their legs would carry them. Mallar fought free of the sudden stampede, then turned and ran as well.

Twelve students in Mallar’s second-form engineering classes had been granted the privilege of learning to maintain and fly the TIE interceptor berthed in 10S Technical Institute’s docking bay and equipment garage. The bay was halfway around the terminal hub from where he had stood with the crowd, and though he ran as hard as he could, he didn’t expect to be the first of the twelve to arrive.

But he was. The bay doors were standing open, and members of the junior form were hastily clearing away the droids and vehicles blocking the entrance, but the cockpit of the interceptor was still unoccupied.

Mallar did not hesitate. Grabbing a helmet and re-breather from the equipment lockers, he clambered up on the interceptor’s right-side wing brace and popped the access hatch release. “You!” he shouted, pointing at the nearest student. “I need a power droid over here, now!”

By the time Mallar settled in the cockpit and started the power-up sequence, two other would-be pilots had arrived. With a cool and purposeful efficiency that would have done a carrier deck crew credit, they helped hasten the dull gray power droid into position beside the fighter.

The moment the power coupling clicked in the starting port, Mallar ran up the capacitors for both ion engines, then dropped them back to a neutral idle. There was no point in completing the rest of the system checks. There was no time for repairs, and crashing was no more fearful a prospect than the next attack from beyond the clouds.

“That’s got it,” Mallar called over the microphone. “Uncouple me, and then clear the bay—I’m flying her out.”

Ordinarily, the TIE would have been towed out of the bay and onto the landing pad on her skids by a tug droid. But that would take precious time, and Mallar was already afraid he was far too late. The moment the last of the other students fled out the bay doorway, he shoved the throttle forward.

The interceptor jerked forward as the engine backblast lifted loose debris and rained it on the fighter’s combat-hardened solar panels. Picking up speed rapidly, the ship began to lift just as it passed through the bay doorway, and the upper edge of the left panel dragged against the durasteel frame with a screech that shivered everyone in earshot, including Mallar.

Then, with a bump and a lurch, the ship cleared the bay, bursting out into the bright, diffuse light of a Polneye midday. Pointing the twin booms of the wing-mounted cannon skyward, Mallar threw the interceptor into a full-power climb.

The tiny black ships were still circling high in the air like carrion birds. Activating his targeting system, Mallar was heartened to see that three more of the settlement’s TIE interceptors were in the air. Selecting the nearest target and steering toward it, Mallar then did something no instructor had ever authorized—powered up the four Seinar laser cannon.

With an insistent beeping, the targeting system informed Mallar that it had identified the primary target as a TIE/rc reconnaissance fighter. But to Mallar’s surprise, there was no safety interlock preventing him from firing on what the interceptor took to be a friendly target. Moments after the target was identified, the attack computer locked on.

TARGET IN RANGE, said the cockpit display as the indicators changed from red to green.

He squeezed both triggers, and the ship quivered around him as the quad cannon spoke.

No one was more surprised than Mallar when the target stayed in his sights and then exploded in a yellow-white gout of flame. Whether it was the interceptor’s superior speed, Mallar’s crude headlong rush up from the surface, or simple surprise, the TIE/rc never responded to the approaching ship’s presence.

As he blew past the falling debris, Mallar heard voices over the interceptor’s combat comm, exulting. But he himself felt neither joy nor relief. He was shaking and covered in clammy sweat, the reckless momentum dissipated, the awful reality sinking in.

The interceptor entered the clouds, and in the next moment Mallar was suddenly blinded by light pouring in through the viewports. The interceptor was shoved roughly sideways as though by a great hand, and shuddered violently in the aftermath. For a long moment he was certain his ship had been hit and he was about to die.

But the moment stretched out, and he did not die. The afterimage of the flash began to fade from his eyes, and his ship, still climbing, emerged intact into the space between the clouds and the stars.

Immediately the targeting system again beeped urgently at him, and Mallar squinted, first to read the display, then to peer out the viewport. What he finally saw nearly overwhelmed him with fear. Riding above him in orbit was the largest ship he had ever seen, a great triangular shape bristling with gun ports and launching fighters from bays on either side.

“Identity.”

PRIMARY TARGET: VICTORY-CLASS STAR DESTROYER, the computer informed him.

And he was still climbing toward it.

SECONDARY TARGETS:

“I don’t want to know,” Mallar said nervously. Hauling the interceptor over on its back, he dove away from the starship at a flat angle and all possible speed, seeking the cover of the clouds.

The weapons master of the Devotion lay cowering on the bridge catwalk. The ship’s primate, whose backhand blow had sent the master sprawling, loomed over him.

“Your incompetence sacrificed the life of a Yevethan pilot!” the primate bellowed. “How will you repay his family for this dishonor?”

“Sir! I wasn’t told that this infestation was capable of resistance—”

“The scout fighter was under your direction. You did not free him to pursue or evade when the vermin fighter appeared. That is your offense.”

“We were preparing to fire—”

“You are relieved. And there will be a price in blood, I promise. Get out of here. Report to the stockade.” The primate turned to the tactics master. “Launch your fighters. I want the skies of Polneye cleared of vermin.”

The fight for Polneye did not last long.

One of the three TIE interceptors that followed Mallar into the air was piloted by a first-form student who had never been aloft. That he got the ship off the ground under control was a credit to the simplicity of Imperial cockpit design. But the first-former’s target melted into the clouds while he was still calling for help unlocking the laser cannon. Not long after, a squadron of Yevethan fighters, tracking his comm signal, fell on him from the clouds. His flight ended in a fiery flat spin and an explosion on the plains east of Twelve North.

The interceptor launched from Eleven South was piloted by the engineering instructor. Like Mallar he climbed through the cloud layer to the edge of space and found the cruiser Liberty orbiting above. Unlike Mallar, he did not escape after his discovery. An antifighter turbolaser battery on the cruiser tracked the interceptor and blew it into a thousand pieces, which returned to the surface as a rain of metal.

A veteran combat pilot was at the controls of the interceptor from Nine North, but he barely escaped the destruction of the city, and one of the fighter’s engines was damaged by shrapnel. It faltered as he was swept into a dogfight with three Yevethan fighters, and he and his ship vanished in a brilliant ball of flame.

The fourth interceptor was destroyed on the ground by strafing TIE fighters as a frantic volunteer crew tried to ready it for launch.

The fifth was lost in the first moments of the attack, as Eleven North came under Liberty’s savage cannonade.

Plat Mallar’s success against the TIE/rc was the only victory of the day, and no one was more aware than he how meaningless it was. Because he was afraid to die, he fled to the far side of the planet, hiding in the clouds under the ionization shield the Empire had created for Polneye. Because he was afraid to face the guilt of not dying, he lingered there, circling.

Before long, though, both of those fears paled against the fear that no one would ever know what had happened to his parents and lovers and friends. After reviewing the images captured by his combat recorder, he realized that he had to have more, and turned back.

Approaching the cities of Polneye, Mallar brought the interceptor up above the clouds just long enough to record the three marauding warships, now orbiting together. If his little fighter appeared on their defense screens at all, it was as a momentary blip among the static caused by the inversion.

Then he dipped below the clouds, and found the sky free of fighters. His holocam scanned across the ruins of seven cities, captured seven thin plumes of smoke spaced across the plains. But only seven, for Ten South was still standing, and a giant transport was ground-docked beside it.

The sight brought the first hope to Mallar’s heart since Nine South had disappeared under blaster fire. There was a chance for more than mere justice—there was a chance he could bring help in time to matter. Ducking back between the veils, he pushed both the interceptor and his ability to control it to the limit, racing for the receding horizon.

Half an hour later, on the far side of Polneye, a tiny single-seat fighter with a determined young student at the controls flung itself up from the clouds and out toward the stars.

Aboard the flagship Pride of Yevetha, Viceroy Nil Spaar personally supervised the extermination of the Kubaz colony—a particularly repulsive variety of vermin, he thought, with faces so hideously mutated that he actively took pleasure in their destruction.

Then, as Pride continued on to seize the Imperial factory farm at Pirol-5, the viceroy retired to his quarters to receive the attentions of his darna and the reports from the other elements of the fleet.

The news was uniformly good. There had been an unfortunate accident at Polneye that had left a pilot dead and the weapons master a suicide, but that was of no consequence. Everywhere the ships of the Yevetha appeared, the vermin were swept off the faces of the worlds they had soiled.

Calmly, ruthless, efficiently, the Black Fleet drew a curtain of death across the Cluster. One after another the vermin settlements fell beneath it—the Kubaz, the Brigia, the Polneye, the Morath, the Corasgh, the H’kig. The targets included colonies and species whose names and histories were unknown to those who plotted their eradication.

Full sterilizations were carried out on the two worlds to be reclaimed for the Yevetha. The colonists meant for those planets were already outbound from The Twelve in the new thrustships, which were faster than light itself. Others would soon follow.

It was the realization of a great destiny. At the end of one long day of glory, the All again belonged to the Yevetha alone.

When the last report was in hand, Nil Spaar called his broodmates to join him and his darna in celebration.

Afterward, the viceroy slept long, deep, and well.

Leia Organa Solo waited hopefully, eagerly, behind the gate for the Fleet shuttle to land at Eastport 18. The moment the shuttle’s engines were cut, she brushed past the gate supervisor’s earnest cautions and ran out onto the landing pad. When the hatch hissed open and the boarding stairs unfolded, she was already waiting at the bottom.

Han was the first to appear on the top step, wearing his lopsided grin and carrying his flight bag over one shoulder. Taking the stairs in three long strides, he tossed the flight bag down and gathered Leia up in a hug so deep and warm that it almost began to drive away the icy chill that had invaded her spirit since the collapse of the Yevethan negotiations and her humiliation by Peramis and Nil Spaar. She hid her tears against his chest.

“It’s gonna be all right,” Han murmured into her hair. “You should hear about some of the bad days I’ve had.”

Leia laughed despite herself and hugged him fiercely. “Let’s go home.”

“Can’t think of one good reason not to,” Han said, bending to pluck his flight bag from the ground. “Don’t make too much of it, hon, but I kinda missed you.”

Twenty-three hours out from Polneye, Plat Mallar turned on the cockpit recorder of the TIE interceptor. His face was pale and slick with perspiration. His voice was weak, and his eyes wandered as he tried to force his blurred vision to clear.

Designed without hyperdrive, the interceptor had never been intended for the kind of journey Mallar had attempted—across realspace from one star to another. He had fled Polneye, eluded the Yevetha, and left Koornacht Cluster behind, but he could not escape the cold equations of time, energy, and distance.

Mallar had run the fighter wide open for as long as the solar panels and the capacitors had allowed, accelerating the little ship to a straight-line speed well above that any pilot could use in combat. He had even persuaded the autopilot, designed for simple in-system navigation problems, to accept Galantos as a destination.

But the engines had been cold for hours now, and only emptiness surrounded his hurtling craft. The nose of the fighter was pointed directly at Galantos, but it would not reach that system for—he calculated—nearly three years. And Mallar did not expect to live another three hours.

The ship’s small oxygen reserve was gone. His re-breather could no longer cleanse the breaths he drew well enough to end the agonizing headaches. The recirculators were keeping the air dry, but he was slowly suffocating on his own waste gases.

Memory had deceived him. The images from his childhood, of Polneye as a bustling port, as the hub of the region’s spacelanes, were too strong to be shaken by facts. Those images offered what had proved a false promise—that he would find another ship to offer help or transport.

Dirtbound his whole life, he found it was beyond him to imagine how empty space was, or to believe how deserted that region had become. In twenty-three hours, not a single vessel of any size had been detected by the interceptor’s targeting system. He knew he was going to die, and he was going to die alone.

He cleared his throat, an uglier sound than his rasping breaths. “My name is Plat Mallar,” he said. “I was born in the city of Three North, on the planet Polneye. My mother was Fall Topas. She was a plant biologist, and quite beautiful. My father was Plat Hovath, a droid mechanic. I was their only son. We lived in Ten South, on blue level, near the algae pool.

“Yesterday was the fortieth day of Mofat. Yesterday warships attacked Polneye without any warning—without any cause. Unidentified ships. Imperial designs. They destroyed most of Polneye—killed my parents—killed most of us. I think the survivors are hostages now—there was a transport—”

He paused, heart pounding, to try to catch his breath. His voice had become frail and wheezy.

When he could continue, Mallar said, “The combat recorders of my ship contain evidence of this attack—of the destruction of my home. They murdered my people, thousands and thousands and thousands. Please help us. Please—if any are still alive—try to save them. Whoever sees this—you must find these monsters and punish them. It’s wrong. It’s terribly wrong. I beg—I beg for justice for the dead. For my parents. For my friends. For me.”

Mallar sagged back into his seat, exhausted by the effort of speaking. But the recorder kept running—he could not manage to raise an arm to stop it. It kept on, faithfully capturing Mallar’s image, for as long as he moved or made a sound at turns.

But it stopped when at last he slipped into unconsciousness.

He was still unconscious, barely clinging to life, when the crew of the Fifth Fleet prowler 5P8 stumbled on his hurtling ship.