Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (46 page)

“Evacuation.” Chalis still didn’t look at him, studying a screen on her terminal instead. She paused as if trying to decide whether explaining was worth the effort. “A dozen squads will proceed to the city and hijack ships in port. Half will return here to try to retrieve survivors. The others will break for space under cover of the
Apailana’s Promise.

“We’ll have a fleet of merchant ships. Not the
Thunderstrike
, but better than dying on a volcano. And it spreads the risk, allows us to suffer a few losses without a catastrophic failure.” She tapped a button on her terminal and spoke into her link in a crisper voice: “Groups one and three to positions.”

Namir had come with the intent of winning Chalis over, of convincing her of his plan and bartering if he had to. He was willing to maneuver through whatever verbal maze she might construct. Yet Chalis seemed to have no interest in conversing.

And she was giving orders to his people.

“You’re taking direct command now?” he asked, fighting to keep the ire from his voice.

She looked up at him then, and he winced. Her eyes were bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles like bruises. Her cheeks were sunken. She looked old but not fragile, as if she’d been whittled down to a knife’s edge by the events of the past days.

“You were gone,” she said. “I’m glad you’re alive. Doubt my motives later.”

He winced again. He’d crossed a line with his accusations in the rebel safe house. Whatever bond he’d built with Chalis over the past months was now cracked. “I have another idea,” he said. “Some of the troops are behind it, but I need you—”

“There isn’t time.” She tapped another button. “Chalis to sentry five—where are they?”

A static-riddled voice announced, “Four hundred meters and closing on the peak. Just outside our firing zone.”

Chalis looked at Namir expectantly, as if that pronouncement ended any possible lines of discussion.

She was right. There wasn’t time.

“We need to give up on the shipyards,” he said.

Chalis tapped something into her terminal and rose slowly from her desk.

“It’s not your fault,” Namir said. “But the plan is killing Twilight, and we both know it won’t win us the war.” Maybe she’d crafted the campaign to avenge herself on her former colleagues and maybe not. He didn’t care anymore. “If we stay here—you saw what the city is like—we can do some good.”

Chalis began trembling. Her lips twitched. Namir had never seen her yell, never seen her lose control. Was that what was coming?

“You know better than that,” she said, almost too quiet to hear. “Reinforcements will be here in moments; that’s the only reason they’ve held back on an attack.”

He tried to speak as she walked around the desk, but her rough, nearly inaudible voice silenced him. “Kuat is still in reach. When we get there, you’ll thank me.”

In Governor Chalis’s hand was a snub pistol aimed at Namir’s chest.

He was no longer angry. He should have been, he thought—angry over the way she’d taken control, angry that she would betray him. But he saw nothing of the woman he’d become almost
fond
of in the bitter creature that stood before him. The woman who’d saved Howl’s life, who’d advised him over breakfast, who’d seemed to have a genuine, inexplicable passion for art.

“Hard to thank you if I’m dead,” he said.

“When I want to murder someone, I don’t drag it out,” Chalis snapped. “You’ve seen that.” She gestured him toward the doorway. “Third compartment down. You’ll leave Sullust when I do.”

Namir looked at the blaster, judged his odds of lunging and grabbing it before Chalis could pull the trigger. They weren’t in his favor. He turned and walked toward the door, followed by Chalis.

He’d barely stepped outside the office when he saw his salvation. He gestured to one side with his chin, hoped his eyes would convey the rest.

When Chalis crossed the threshold, two impossibly powerful alien arms wrenched her wrist up and to the side. Two more hands closed around her head and waist, immobilizing her. Gadren looked down on the woman from beside the doorframe, his expression mournful.

“I rescind my request,” Gadren said. “If I must put my faith in a commander, it will be you.”

Clasped in a leathery hand, Chalis gazed at Namir with hate.

Namir made no speech to the company. He had no faith in his own words; Gadren, Roach, and Brand would win over the squads more effectively than he could. His only concession to rhetoric was a brisk outline of his plan to the company’s senior staff. Von Geiz seemed almost relieved and only a few voices spoke against him—his opponents included Carver, who declared Namir mad but smiled grimly nonetheless. Hober clasped Namir’s hand tightly after the meeting adjourned.

Namir chose not to think about what would become of Chalis. For the moment, she was locked in the third compartment down the hall from the administrative office. In all likelihood, Namir wouldn’t have to worry about what to do with her after the battle. Or about anything else.

Less than thirty minutes after his confrontation with the governor, her prediction of an imminent attack was proven correct. Namir had positioned himself atop one of the facility’s spires—an access point for piston machinery that Twilight had converted into a sentry post—when a runner arrived from below.

“We just intercepted an Imperial message,” the runner said.

“The attack’s starting?” Namir asked.

“Yes, sir,” the runner said. “But the source of the order—”

Namir looked at him, tried to remember the boy’s name and failed. One of Hober’s assistants, officially a noncombatant. Probably should’ve been aboard the
Thunderstrike
instead of in a war zone.

“What was the source?” Namir asked.

“Prelate Verge,” the runner said. “The Star Destroyer
Herald
has arrived in the system.”

PLANET SULLUST

Day Three of the Siege of Inyusu Tor

The senior squad leaders finished passing on Namir’s new plan—the plan he’d hastily composed with the rebel cell the previous night, refined in the back of his brain during the long trek up the mountainside, and finally detailed in his too-short meeting with Twilight’s command staff—just as the first wave of the Imperial attack began.

He watched the assault from his position atop the facility spire, macrobinoculars clutched against a rising wind. A few hundred meters below, a ring of Imperial stormtroopers was climbing slowly upward, ranks closing as armored figures scrabbled over obsidian. Imperial airspeeders whipped about the mountaintop in increasingly swift passes, taking quick shots with their blaster cannons at retreating Twilight scouts.

Twilight Company’s own forces were divided into three rough lines between the Imperials and the processing facility. The outermost line consisted of little more than a few dozen troops stationed in fire teams behind boulders and in crevices—anywhere the landscape would provide concealment. The outer line couldn’t possibly hold for long, but a few bloody ambushes of Imperial forward infantry would make the foe cautious.

The middle line, halfway between the facility and the outer line, was entrenched in a narrow ditch the company had expanded from natural breaks in the stone. The trench would provide cover while—Namir hoped—reducing the effectiveness of the Empire’s bombers; it was close enough to the facility that heavy ordnance might damage the structure, something the Imperials still seemed determined to avoid. Almost a third of the company was positioned on the middle line, along with a smattering of portable artillery: swivel-mounted blaster cannons, mortars, and light missile launchers.

The third and innermost line encircled the facility’s perimeter. The inner line resembled in both form and function the defense the Empire had erected during Twilight’s own invasion; it had worked well then, and it would work well for the Rebellion. Another third of the company occupied positions there, and the remainder of the company’s artillery had been placed on the line as well. If the enemy made it past the inner line to the facility entrances, the time for heavy weaponry would be over.

It was a formidable defense, all told, capitalizing on the two advantages Twilight Company possessed. The terrain would give the company higher ground and shelter while slowing the enemy considerably, leaving opposing troops vulnerable to sustained fire. The Empire’s continued reluctance to simply obliterate the processing facility was key, as well—if enemy commanders chose to cut their losses and sacrifice the facility to rid Sullust of the rebel presence, the tide of battle would turn in a moment.

Neither advantage changed the fact that Twilight Company was outnumbered ten to one, or that the stormtroopers were better equipped, better trained, and better rested than Twilight had ever been. The horde of white-clad enemy soldiers seemed to cover the dark mountain like snow, separated by wedges of black-clad, lightly armored Imperial fleet troopers. Giant, vaguely insectoid forms hobbled behind the masses, occluded by clouds of yellow dust without the enhancement of Namir’s macrobinoculars: two-legged Imperial AT-ST walkers. Namir suspected that only the difficulty of the slope prevented the Empire from deploying the four-legged behemoths it had used on Hoth.

Twilight Company had fewer troops, fewer vehicles, and no air support to speak of. It had nowhere to retreat aside from the facility itself. There was every possibility the engagement would result in a slaughter.

Yet Namir found himself unafraid, even for the soldiers under his command.

There were worse ways to die than fighting to defend one’s comrades.

“That Star Destroyer is approaching the planet,” Hober said.

Namir had chosen the old quartermaster to act as his aide during the battle, passing along orders and messages via comm. It was rare that Twilight fought as a single unit, rare that it
needed
a strict hierarchy of communication. Howl had preferred to command such battles from the
Thunderstrike
, studying holographic maps of real-time battlefield data and allowing droids to send orders to Lieutenant Sairgon and the squads. But Hober knew Twilight intimately and he had no more pressing duties; Namir was content with the old man and his own eyes.

“How’s everyone holding up?” Namir asked.

“For now?” Hober snorted. “They know their jobs. Ask me again after the fight.”

Namir grunted and returned to observing the front.

The Empire struck the first hammer blow of the battle. As one, a dozen airspeeders released miniature scatter bombs over Twilight’s outer line—explosives small enough not to imperil the facility, powerful enough to tear armor and skin. Namir saw a hundred bright flashes among the rocks, pictured his friends pierced by shards of obsidian or deafened by the blasts. But the squads were sheltered and well hidden; the damage would be bearable. Two airspeeders plunged down in greasy black trails as Twilight missiles found their targets.

Before the echoes of the bombs had faded, the Imperial infantry charged. It was only the foremost troops who surged upward—a test, Namir supposed, of Twilight’s defenses. Red flashes licked the mountainside as the company’s middle line fired down at the assailants, doing little harm from such a distance.

The outer line remained dormant until the charging troops were only a stone’s throw away. Namir observed through the macrobinoculars, saw white boots seek purchase on black stone and rifles sweep for targets, and gave the order:

“Open fire.”

He needn’t have said anything. The outer line knew its duty. With the enemy so close, every blaster shot felled an Imperial soldier, sent a body tumbling down the slope. Crossfire tore stormtrooper squads apart, forced fleet troopers to seek shelter among the dead. Yet every blaster shot also gave away a Twilight soldier’s hidden position. The mass of the Imperial forces, withheld from the charge, trained assault weapons and sniper rifles and cannons on the newly revealed opponents. Airspeeders swept in, evading Plex-fired missiles as best they could and scarring the mountain with cannon fire.

“Tell the outer line squads to break off as needed,” Namir said. “Cede the territory, but do it slowly.”

He heard Hober speak into his comlink, observed squads—or surviving pairs, or individuals—peel off one by one and retreat to the middle line trench. He flinched when a Twilight soldier dragging a comrade’s body was incinerated in the flash of an airspeeder’s blasters. He reminded himself that this wasn’t a guerrilla operation but a pitched battle: Casualties would mount swiftly, and the losses so far were within an acceptable range.

The Empire was acting carefully, rationally—neither overplaying its hand nor visibly underestimating its opponent. Predictability and caution were precisely what Namir had hoped for. He could drag out that sort of battle. No use regretting the cost now.

The mass of the Imperial army began to advance. Volleys of particle bolts from Twilight’s trench line slowed the attackers, forced them into cover as they crept up the slope meter by meter. They passed over positions abandoned by the outer line and Namir squinted at the sudden blue-white flashes that ensued: the explosions of ion mines left over from the Mardona III mission, recovered from the
Thunderstrike
’s wreckage. Traps wouldn’t stop the Empire, but they would slow the enemy forces further.