7
Darth Vader held his lightsaber firmly, wrists locked, and watched the killer droid circle to its left. The droid was a new model, one of a dozen identical units constructed to his personal specifications. Like Vader, it also held a lightsaber. It was tall, spindly, looked something like the general-purpose Asps to be found all over the Empire, but with a number of special modifications. The unit was faster than an ordinary man, stronger, programmed with the knowledge of a hundred sword masters and a dozen different fighting styles. Against a normal person, the droid would be unbeatable and deadly—
The droid stepped in fast and cut at Vader’s head. Vader blocked, and the droid chopped again, circling the humming blade in a second cut at Vader’s side. Fast, but again a block—
The droid’s third attack came from the opposite side as its blade flashed in a large half circle—
Vader parried and riposted, angling a slash at the droid’s head—
The droid blocked and slid back a meter, out of range, blade held over its head, point angled down.
The slight ache in Vader’s shoulder where Luke had cut through his armor during their fight was definitely better. He hardly felt any soreness at all with that series.
He moved in, swung a feint at the droid’s neck, twisted his wrists, and pivoted the lightsaber for a second feint at the same side, then a third feint, a jab at the midsection.
The droid stepped back and crossblocked the final feint—
Vader V-stepped to his left, cocked his blade over his left shoulder, and hacked forty-five degrees at the base of the metal neck—
The droid’s block was a quarter second slow. Strong as it was, it was not strong enough to offset the power and momentum of Vader’s strike. The blades met, hissed and sparked, but Vader’s sword shoved the droid’s blade to the side. It tried to backpedal—
Too late. The lightsaber hit midway between the droid’s neck and shoulder joint, sheared through the exoframe and halfway through the chest. Circuitry sparked, shorted out. Sparks and acrid smoke erupted from the droid’s body. It dropped the lightsaber as its hand controls died. Fell to its knees.
Vader cocked the weapon over his right shoulder and swung in a flat horizontal arc—
The lightsaber sliced through the droid’s neck and took its head off. The head fell, bounced, and the droid’s decapitated body fell backward.
Vader stood over the downed droid. Soon he would have to order another dozen of them produced—this was the eighth one of the originals; he had but four left. And the next batch would need to be improved. It was getting too easy.
His shoulder definitely felt better.
He shut off his lightsaber and turned away from the droid.
An aide stood in the doorway, looking impressed and nervous.
“Clean up the mess,” Vader said.
He strode away. He did not look back.
Inside his X-wing, Luke took a deep breath. “You ready, Artoo?”
Artoo whistled assent.
“This is Rogue Leader,” Luke said. “Lock your foils into attack position, accelerate to sub-six and acknowledge.”
“Rogue One, copy,” Wedge said over the comm.
“Rogue Two, that’s affirmative, lock and load.”
“Rogue Three, I copy.”
The rest of the squadron acknowledged Luke’s orders. They were ready, as ready as they were going to get. The dayside Destroyer lay dead ahead, and by now its long-range sensors would have spotted the incoming X-wings, and the commander would have started scrambling his fighter force. The latest TIE fighters were a couple of sublight units faster than an unmodified X-wing, TIE interceptors faster still, but they couldn’t get to top speed immediately, so Rogue Squadron would get one relatively free pass at the Destroyer before the TIEs got clear and moving. Not that they’d be able to do much to the Destroyer with fighter-wattage laser cannons or proton torpedoes; Destroyer shields and armor were too thick. But a lucky shot might do a little damage, and it would make the Imperials keep their heads down—they couldn’t know if the Alliance might have outfitted its snub fighters with some new weapon. It would make them sweat a little.
TIEs were faster but no more maneuverable, and the X-wings had the advantage in shielding—TIEs didn’t have any, save for a few of the specially equipped interceptors, like the one Vader had.
“Here they come,” Rogue Six said. That was Wes Janson, an old hand.
A score of TIE fighters spewed from the Destroyer’s flight bay ports.
“I see them, Wes,” Luke said. “Everybody stay alert!”
Took them long enough, Luke thought. Must have thought it was a drill; they probably don’t get much action out here. Maybe they’d gotten fat and lazy. Well. He could hope they had.
“Double up on the forward shields,” Luke ordered. “Attack speed, targets of opportunity.”
“Yeeehhaaawww!” one of the squad yelled into the comm.
Luke had to smile. He really should tell whoever it was—sounded like Rogue Five, that was Dix—to bottle the unofficial commspeak, but he knew just how the pilot felt.
There was nothing else in the universe that felt like flying into combat.
“Watch yourselves,” Luke said.
Then he was cutting across the Destroyer’s axis, laser cannons spitting high-energy beams, no time to talk now.
The battle was joined.
On the Millennium Falcon, Leia crouched down behind Chewie and Lando in the control cockpit. Threepio stood behind them, braced more or less in the doorway.
“Do be careful, Master Lando. We’re awfully close to the tops of those trees!”
“Oh, really?” Lando said. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well. There’s no need for sarcasm.”
Ahead of them a couple hundred meters, Dash flew the Outrider, and the wind of his passage was enough to fan the tall evergreens below; you could see the air wake ripple through the foliage. The chrome-silver ship cleared the tops of the highest trees by no more than five meters.
“Any closer and we’ll get green stains on our belly,” Leia said.
“Tell me about it,” Lando said. “He said we’d have to fly low but I didn’t realize he meant this low. Chewie, what’s our altitude?”
Chewie looked at a control panel and said something in that half gargle, half moan of his.
“Oh, my!” Threepio said.
“Do I want to know?” Leia said.
“I don’t think so,” Lando said.
Over the comm on a shielded opchan, Dash spoke. “You nervous back there, Calrissian?”
Lando glanced at Chewie. “Who, us? Nah. I thought you said we were going to be flying low, Dash. We’re practically in the stratosphere way up here.” He cut the comm off.
Lando grinned at Chewie. “Guess I told him, didn’t I?”
Dash didn’t respond in words; instead, the Outrider dropped four meters lower. If a passenger on the smuggler’s ship could have reached through the floor, he would have been able to touch the tops of the trees with his fingertips.
He’s crazy, Leia thought.
“He’s crazy,” she said.
“Yeah, but he can fly, you got to hand him that,” Lando said. “Give me a little more thrust, Chewie.”
“Master Lando! What are you doing?”
“I can’t let him think he’s scared us, can I?”
“Certainly you can!” Threepio said. “He has!”
“You’re crazier than he is,” Leia put in.
The Millennium Falcon lost four meters of altitude.
Chewie said something.
“What?” Leia asked.
Threepio waved his arms. “He says that another centimeter and we’ll snag the laser cannon!”
Leia shook her head. “What’s with this guy? What’s he trying to prove?”
Lando concentrated on his flying—that was good—so he didn’t look at her as he spoke. “You never heard the story of the Rendars?”
“Should I have?”
Chewie yelled something.
“I see it, I see it!” Lando said. The ship lifted a meter to avoid a particularly tall tree directly in its path.
After they’d cleared it, Lando continued. “Dash was at the Imperial Academy, a year or so behind Han. His family was wealthy and highly placed. Dash’s older brother was a freighter pilot working his way up through the family shipping company. There was an accident. A control system blew out, not the pilot’s fault, and the freighter crashed on liftoff from the Coruscant spaceport. Killed the crew, destroyed the ship.”
Leia nodded. “Terrible. So?”
Chewie started to speak, but Lando beat him to it. “I see it. Do you want to fly it?”
Chewie grunted. Leia didn’t need to speak Wookiee to understand that one.
“Then be quiet and let me do it.”
The Falcon did another little hop behind the Outrider, settled back into its dangerous dance with the treetops.
“So, the building the freighter hit was the Emperor’s private museum. Had a lot of his mementos in it. Most of them were lost in the ensuing fire.
“The Emperor was not happy. He had the Rendar family’s property seized, then had them banished from Coruscant. That included Dash. They kicked him out of the Academy on Carida and off that planet, too.”
Leia ground her teeth. That kind of thing was one of the reasons the Alliance was fighting the Empire. No one should have that much power, that he could arbitrarily do such things unchecked. And Leia knew of worse, knew of much worse. The Death Star had destroyed her homeworld, killed millions, as a test of its power. Just to see if it worked. It had meant nothing to the Empire, less grief than swatting a fly.
“I can see that he wouldn’t have any love for the Empire,” Leia said. “Why isn’t he working for the Alliance?”
Lando shrugged. “He doesn’t want to owe anybody, doesn’t want anybody to owe him. He works for whoever pays the most. He’s downright magic with anything that flies, and he can pick wing nuts off a tabletop with a blaster without scorching the finish. He’s a good man to have at your back when the going gets hot—as long as your money lasts.”
Leia nodded. The Empire had ruined a lot of good people. Looked as if Dash Rendar was one more casualty.
Four TIE fighters roared in, spewing death.
Luke yelled at Wedge. “Rogue One, look out! On your port, bearing three-oh-five!”
Wedge’s X-wing immediately peeled left and down. “Thanks, Luke!”
Luke punched it, swung a shallow turn, and headed straight for the attacking quad.
Use the Force, Luke.
Luke grinned. The first time he’d heard that, during the attack on the Death Star, he hadn’t understood. He knew what it meant now.
“Targeting sensors off, rear shields off, reroute more power to the guns.”
Artoo was not pleased and said so.
“Sorry, buddy, but this way is better.”
Luke reached out. The Force was here, as it was everywhere, and it was no harder to touch deep in space than it was in the swamps on Dagobah. He let it fill him.
The TIE fighters suddenly seemed to be moving slower. Luke’s hands flew over the controls; he moved the stick with sharp and precise movements. Swung to his starboard and lit the lasers, double-tapped the fire button.
Lines of fire lanced out and shattered one, two of the four TIE fighters. The explosion spat a hard spray of wreckage at him as Luke looped away. Shards of the destroyed TIEs sleeted against the X-wing’s transparisteel canopy, a metal and plastic hail.
“Fine shootin’, Rogue Leader,” Rogue Five said.
“Thanks, Dix.”
“More coming in, six blips at one-seven-five,” Rogue Four said.
“Watch your back, Luke!” somebody said. “You got a tail!”
But Luke had already felt the approach of the TIE and had put his fighter into a hard downturn. He flew an outside loop and came up behind the TIE.
Luke stroked his fire button once, and the TIE shattered into expensive scrap.
“Rogue Two, you got a pair of ’em coming in at two-two-four, move it!”
“Ah, copy that, Wes. I owe you one.”
“Pay me back later.”
The X-wings and TIE fighters streaked back and forth through the blackness of space, tossing incandescent spears of hard light at each other.
“I’m hit,” Rogue Two said. “Got my Artoo unit and punched a hole in my canopy. I’ve got a patch here … Okay, the leak is plugged.”
“Break off and return to base, Rogue Two,” Luke said.
“Hey, I can still shoot and I got manual.”
“Negative, Will, there’s too many for that. Take a walk.”
Artoo whistled rapidly.
“Doesn’t apply to me,” Luke said. “I’ve got an edge.”
“Copy, Rogue Leader. Rogue Two returning to base. Good luck, guys! I’ll put the kettle on for tea.”
Two more TIEs came at Luke, and he moved instinctively, pulled the stick and soared away from the attackers at almost ninety degrees, then looped at the top and dropped back toward the attackers in a power dive, lasers blinking.
One of the TIEs exploded; the other’s engine flamed and went out, and the wounded TIE coasted out of the fight without main power.
“Here comes another wave,” Wedge said. “Twelve blips at three-zero-three and closing fast.”
The odds were getting worse, the dangers increasing by the second, and Rogue Squadron was down one member. Things didn’t look good.
Despite that, Luke was having a great time. He might not be much of a Jedi, but he could fly.
He hoped Lando and Leia and Chewie were doing okay.
Acceleration pulled at his body as he swung the X-wing into a hard power turn.
The battle continued.