Death Star (35 page)

“I know they won’t, Chief. That’s why they get the first
shot. You retire and have the great-grandkids at your feet, you can tell them that—how you shot the first round from the biggest cannon ever made.”

“Something to look forward to,” Tenn said. “That is, soon as I get a wife and get started on the kids who’ll get that great-grandkid ball rolling.”

Both men laughed.

“I still find that a pretty bizarre coincidence,” Memah said. “That out of all the cantinas in all the galaxy, the one guard who would know you on sight happens to walk into mine.”

“Stranger things have happened,” Ratua said. “I knew a farmer on a legume co-op on Duro, one of fifty workers there. He was drafted into the navy. So he went through a year of basic training, shipped out, wound up being sent halfway across the galaxy to patrol in the middle of nowhere. He got liberty on a planet called Pzob. He walked into a Gamorrean pub, sat down, ordered an ale. Guy came out of the ’fresher and sat on the stool next to him, turned out to be a shiftmate back on the farm. Nine zillion klicks away from home, they both just happened to be in the same pub at the same time—what are the odds on that?”

She shrugged. “Got me. Math was never my strength.”

“You don’t seem to have much of a problem counting your credits.”

She smiled. Okay, so he was a bad boy, but he did make her laugh. That was worth a lot, these days.

“Speaking of the worthy sergeant,” he said, looking at his chrono, “I’d better take off. Stihl’s duty shift is over in a few minutes and if he drops ’round to have a brew with Rodo, I want to be elsewhere.”

“Good idea.”

“Dinner, when you get off? My place?”

“As long as you promise not to cook.”

“You wound me, woman.”

“Better than poisoning you, like you nearly did me.”

“How was I to know your kind can’t eat sweetweed?”

“You could have looked it up. You plan to date outside your species, it’s on you to know what’s poison and what’s not.”

“You’re never going to let me forget it, are you?”

“Not a chance, Green-Eyes. I’ll pick up something on the way. Seafood, shellfish, like that.”

They smiled at each other. He put out his hand, she took it in her own, and they exchanged gentle squeezes. She could have done worse, Memah knew. She had done worse, more than once.

After he was gone, she sighed and stretched, feeling tense muscles loosen. There were only a handful of customers in the place—it was just before shift change, and people were either on their way to work or about to get off, so it would be another hour or so before the cantina started to fill up. Time to take a break. Business had generally been very good, better than she’d expected. As the station grew, new sections being added and pressurized, there had been new cantinas added regularly as well. There were at least half a dozen of them in this sector alone, and scores of watering holes throughout the other completed portions, but she hadn’t noticed that the competition had hurt her any. True, she was getting only a small percentage of the profits, but even so, at the current rate, when her hitch was up she’d have enough saved to start a new place of her own.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to do that, however. Chances were good they’d offer her an extension on her contract, and she needed to think seriously about that when it happened. True, it was the military, so there were some rules that were a little stiffer than on a civilian planet, but even
so it was clean, the patrons were generally well behaved, and she was making money like a jewel thief on a luxury spaceliner. She didn’t miss the great outdoors—she’d never been much of a nature girl dirtside, and she’d only ventured out of the Southern Underground a few times. Not that there was much “outside” there, all of Imperial Center being essentially one large urban area, save for a few parks here and there.

A cantina on an impregnable battle station, or one next to the spacedocks in the slums of Imperial Center? Put that way, it didn’t seem too hard a choice. Certainly this one was a lot safer than any she’d ever run before. Nobody was going to set it on fire by “accident,” and from what she’d heard no Rebel ship could scratch the paint, much less really damage it.

Staying on was definitely something to consider. She was having a pretty good time, all things considered, and Green-Eyes being around didn’t hurt much, either.

Memah smiled and hummed a tune as she began to mix more drinks.

V
il slewed into a drifting turn to port, engine and pressors working hard to compensate for the “slide,” and his pursuer, one of the newbies in Beta Two, wasn’t quick enough to stay on his tail.

He jinked again, this time to starboard, and again the newbie was a hair slow to react. Understandable; this wasn’t a move they taught in basic flight school, it was one you learned from somebody with a lot more cockpit time than the instructors had to waste on trainees.

The newbie said something excited that Vil didn’t quite catch, but prayer or curse, it didn’t help him: Vil had reversed their positions, finishing the loop lined up on the newbie’s rear.

Gotcha, kid …

Vil thumbed the firing control and painted the newbie’s backside with the scoring lasers. If his guns had been at full power, the kid would be dodging debris now, and both of them knew it.

“No big, kid,” he said over the comm. “We all got to slide down the learning curve—”

“Attention, all squadrons, attention! Break off your drill immediately, I say again, break off all maneuvers immediately! Arm your laser cannons to combat mode, defensive pattern Prime, and stand by!”

What the kark?

The order was completely out of the black, but Vil was too well trained to question it. He swerved away and toggled his op-chan to his squad’s frequency.

“Alpha One, on me, pyramid formation, green and blue, one, one, two!”

He punched the control button, and the signal diodes on his fighter began flashing in the sequence he’d given them, so that his squad would know his fighter and get to their positions. Green, one count. Green, one count. Blue, two counts, then repeated. Dit-dit-dah … dit-dit-dah …

“What’s up, Loot?” That was Anyell, of course.

“How should I know? Stow the chatter and listen!”

The other pilots quickly assembled and moved into the pattern. It was the most basic of fighter maneuvers, practiced hundreds of times, and it didn’t take more than a few seconds for all twelve to line up properly.

Vil switched to the main operations report-in channel: “Alpha One is ready.”

Other squads logged on. There were 10 of them out there, 120 fighters in all.

After a moment, Command Channel took over:

“All units, this is Grand Moff Tarkin. We have detected an enemy carrier shifting into realspace from lightspeed in Sector Seven, at two thousand, two hundred kilometers’ distance from the station, repeat, enemy carrier in Sector Seven. The vessel is identified as the
Fortressa
, a
Lucre-hulk
-class carrier. Star Destroyers are moving to engage, but we expect the enemy to launch fighters. They pose a risk to the station. Stop them.”

The local op-chan sig flashed, then overrode the main:

“All fighters, all squadrons, this is Flight Commander Drolan, Dee Ess One One. We are deploying in Zone Defense Delta, I say again, Zee-Dee-Delta. We are about to get our feet wet, boys, and I’m buying for the pilot who shoots the most of the fatherless scum out of the vac.”

Vil’s mind was awhirl.
Lucrehulk
-class vessels were originally Trade Federation ships, mostly modified commercial freighters. They were huge, circular craft, the biggest three thousand meters in length. After the Clone Wars, some of them had fallen under Rebel control. Unless the Alliance had done some major refitting, they weren’t heavily armed, nor were they well shielded compared with a Star Destroyer, but they could carry a lot of fighters. Originally they’d spaced vulture droids, but the Rebels would have no doubt switched to X-wings. There might be a thousand of them in that ship, maybe more.

Vil swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. This was it—the real thing, a full-scale engagement, and his squad was going to be among the first ones to arrive at the party.

It was both exciting and terrifying. This was what all the training had been for: not some police action on a back-rocket planet but an actual battle with Rebel pilots, some of whom were vets who had flown TIE ships before they defected. This wouldn’t be like shooting targets on a range or painting newbies with low-powered beams; this was do or die.

This
was why Vil Dance had signed on.

Now it was time to see who had the right stuff and who didn’t.

“Our first wave of TIE fighters will arrive on zone station momentarily, sir. We have scrambled an additional thousand craft from the station.” Admiral Motti didn’t seem disturbed, but then he didn’t have the primary responsibility. Tarkin did, and he was most aware of that as he looked at the hologram shimmering over the operations theater projection. He wasn’t really surprised, however. He had halfway expected something like this for weeks, ever since
they had lost the
Undauntable
to sabotage. The Rebels—some faction of them, at least—knew they were here, else they would not have been able to blow the ship up. Strategically, it made sense to attack the station now, before it was fully finished and operational. Tactically, a carrier was the smartest way. It would cost much, if not most, of the entire Rebel fleet to get past the Star Destroyers posted here in order to engage the battle station directly. But out of a thousand fighters or more, some might get by the TIE squads and inflict damage, even if the mother ship was taken out. Maybe not enough to destroy it, but if they could slow construction, that would be a victory of sorts.

The lieutenant running the sensor array said, “Sir, the first wave of enemy fighters has left the carrier. Two hundred and fifty X-wings.”

As Tarkin nodded, the comm tech said, “Sir, I have a coded message incoming on your personal channel.”

Tarkin blinked. Who could that be? “Put it on my personal screen.”

Their TIE fighters were holding at a thousand klicks out, and it would take a few minutes for the X-wings to get that close to the station. The Star Destroyers were en route. There was nothing more to be done at the moment. Tarkin activated the message.

Daala’s face appeared on his screen.

He tried not to let his surprise show. “Admiral?”

“Grand Moff Tarkin. We’re en route to the station, and it seems there is some interesting activity out there.”

“Nothing we can’t handle,” he said. “Though you might want to circle around and avoid it.”

“By
it
, you mean that enemy carrier and all those X-wings pouring out of it?”

“Yes. That area is about to become inhospitable.”

“You’re sending in Star Destroyers?”

“I was, but as of this moment, I have a better idea.”

“Ah.”

“Precisely.”

“Well, I’ll move away from—blast!”

“Daala?”

“We have company. Disconnect.”

She broke the connection, and Tarkin frowned. Daala was an excellent commander, and her ship was fast and well armed; she could deal with a few X-wings. Still …

“Sir, the enemy has disgorged a second wave. That makes five hundred fighters,” the sensor technician said.

“We’ll put a stop to that.” To Motti, he said, “Admiral, have the Star Destroyers stand down. Break off their intercept.”

“Sir?” Motti looked at him as if he had just turned into a purple-dyed Wookiee. Tarkin smiled. He moved his hand over his comm.

“Superlaser Control,” came the response.

Motti’s expression changed. Now he smiled, too.

“Commander,” Tarkin said to the comm. “I have a target for you.”

The CO said, “You heard the man, Chief. Can you do it?”

“Sir, no problem.”

“Two thousand, two hundred and nine kilometers. Not an easy target.”

“If we have the power to reach that far, I will hit it, sir,” Tenn replied.

The CO checked a readout. “We have four percent in the discharge capacitors.”

“More than we need,” Tenn said.

The CO looked relieved. “Go, Chief.”

Tenn nodded, turned to the console, and opened the speakers.

“We have an order to commence primary ignition,” he
said to the crew. “All right, boys, let’s pull the hammer back and cock this sodder! Report!”

The various sections reported each operation’s status, quickly and enthusiastically:

“Hypermatter reactor level one twenty-fifth of maximum.”

“Capacitors, four percent available.”

“Tributaries one through eight, green for feed.”

“Primary power amplifier, green.”

“Firing field amp is … green.”

“We are go on induction hyperphase generator feed.”

“Tributary beam shaft fields aligned.”