Star Wars: Yavin

1

The huge red sphere of the gas giant Yavin greeted ten snubfighters dropping out of hyperspace in the Yavin system, some of them looking as if they were going to come apart every moment. Five X-wings and five Y-wings formed up in something like a formation, although there was hardly one wing pair still left intact, steering towards one of the planet’s moons in what might have reminded a casual observer of a funeral procession, if there had been any casual observers.

And Samica was glad there weren’t. They were five minutes’ real space flight from the Rebel base on the fourth moon of Yavin, and she’d half feared the Empire had tracked them here, even if Dutch had taken all possible precautions. They had made a micro-jump out from the base at Suolriep to another part of the system, where Tiree had been forced to leave his Y-wing behind. The ship had somehow sustained the micro-jump and even the re-entry into real space, but after that, it would have been suicide to trust in it making the jump to Yavin. Dutch had taken his wingman into his Y-wing, which was a two-man fighter, before continuing here.

The jump had taken twenty-two hours, and Samica had slept during most of it. R5, her R2 unit, hadn’t made any suggestions about playing another match of Quadrant; if she hadn’t known he was only a droid, she’d have sworn he could feel her exhaustion and emptiness after the terrible twenty minutes before their escape to hyperspace like a human being. But then, she suspected he could just have looked at the losses that battle had resulted in and been able to generate a droid’s equivalent of emptiness. Eight pilots dead, three starfighters so badly damaged that they wouldn’t be flying for quite a while, one more Y-wing lost, and above all, the loss of the command ship Liberty, if not of her crew.

Or so Samica hoped. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about Rhun, but had simply told herself he’d got out of Liberty before they’d had to abandon the cruiser. Likewise, she’d hoped Pops had safely reached Yavin when his badly damaged Y-wing had left the battle almost before it had begun.

Samica had never fought in an all-out battle like this one where there had been so much at stake. She’d fought smugglers over Garon II, but that had not been the same. She had absolutely no idea how many enemy ships she’d shot down during those twenty minutes, but she didn’t really care. During the battle, she had not even wasted any thought on the fact that she hadn’t seen any combat to write home about so far, she’d just done what she’d been trained to do for two and a half standard years: kill the enemy. There had been moments when she’d suddenly realised this was real, this was not a simulator run, and if she got killed, there would be no canopy popping open over her and no commander to tell her how stupid she’d been. Those realisations had not lasted long enough to unnerve her, however; she’d been so absorbed that there hadn’t been any place for fear.

It was not until now, almost a standard day after the battle, that she was able to reflect on anything that had happened yesterday. Perry’s and Plancal’s deaths hurt, even more so because she felt responsible for both of them to some degree—Perry because she should have told Commander Willard or Dutch about the existence of Skiprays, but her neglect had meant none of them had been prepared for the blast boats; and Plancal had been shot down while he was acting as her wing. She’d known his ship had been damaged, and she could have ordered him to retreat.

Another part of her knew that she probably could not have prevented the pilots’ deaths, that Plancal had not told her how badly damaged his fighter had been, and Perry might not have made it against the Skipray even if he’d known what he was facing. Dutch would probably not hold her responsible for either of them, but she supposed he would have quite a few questions about the Skiprays—as would Commander Willard. The thought of another interview with the commander left her with a queasy feeling to her stomach—not because she was afraid of any consequences such an interview might have, but because she was still fighting for his trust as well as his respect, and yesterday hadn’t done much for either of those, she guessed.

They were flying over the dense jungle that was Yavin 4, and Samica saw that it was night on the side of the moon where the Rebel base was located. Several areas of the tree-covered continent were lost in fog, or maybe rain, she wasn’t sure which.

‘This is Yavin base,’ she suddenly heard a voice over her comm. ‘Incoming ships, please transmit your code.’

‘This is Gold Leader,’ Dutch replied, tiredly. ‘Transmitting code.’

There was a pause, then the ground control came back in. ‘Is Blue Leader not with you?’

‘Blue Leader’s not coming,’ Dutch answered. ‘But I’m sure we can settle that after we’ve had some caf.’

‘Sure, Gold Leader. You’ve got landing clearance in the main hangar.’

‘Thanks, control.’ Dutch steered his Y-wing into one of the huge stone buildings, one of which was large enough to house a hangar for three starfighter squadrons, and the remnants of his own squadron followed him, after them the X-wings.

Samica sighed with relief when she saw three snubfighters standing there already, two Y- and one X-wing, one of which she recognised as Pops’. She set her ship down next to Jay’s, then opened the canopy. The hangar was lit by glow panels along the ceilings and walls, keeping out the darkness, but not the smell of a rainy tropical night. The air was even more oppressive than it had been the last time she’d been on the moon, only that it smelled different. The lights in the hangar were attracting all sorts of insects, some of them as large as her hand, all fluttering wings as they threw themselves against the glow panels.

Samica took off her helmet and ran a hand through sweat-drenched brown hair. She took a few seconds before she felt up to tackling the task of getting down the ladder, which, she soon found, had been a good idea; her knees threatened to buck as soon as she climbed to the floor.

Pops was standing at Dutch’s ship, slapping the commander’s back, but without too much enthusiasm. Samica heard a tootle behind her and saw R5 wheeling towards her, looking inexplicably awake. She took the time to pat his domed head and gave him a fleeting smile. ‘Good work up there, ’Five,’ she said, and he whistled happily.

‘Now look who’s developing a soft spot for droids,’ she heard someone chuckle, and turned to Pops, who’d come over after he’d welcomed Dutch.

‘I never said I wouldn’t,’ she replied.

‘Not expressly, no.’ The old pilot squeezed her shoulder, and she winced. She’d almost forgotten about the burns on her arm, and Pops threw her a searching look. ‘D’you need a medic?’ he asked.

‘It can wait,’ she answered. ‘Just a few second-degree burns or something. What I could use now is a shower and something to eat. In that order. The capital ships aren’t here yet, are they?’

‘No, Redemption and Defiance won’t be here for another standard day. They’re not going to stay anyway, just shuttle down the personnel that are staying on Yavin. If I heard correctly, Commander Willard will join us here.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Three hours; unlike you, I came here directly. I heard you took the long way round.’

‘You don’t know anything about the crew on Liberty, do you?’ Samica asked, and he shook his head.

‘No. I know that she had to be left behind and they tried to get the crew out, but I don’t know if they got everyone. But don’t worry, Sam; they usually do.’

She nodded, not caring if he knew the reason for her concern. She was almost certain he did; he’d seen her and Rhun together often enough, and he seemed to be one of those people who always felt what was going on inside you. Apart from that, from what she’d been able to gather during her time with the Rebellion, there were no restrictions on relationships between personnel in the Alliance, and so far, nobody had taken exception to her seeing a non-commissioned Intel agent.

Pops nodded towards the other pilots, who were following Dutch out of the hangar. ‘Well, come on, then,’ he said encouragingly. ‘You’re lucky, Sam. There’s separate refreshing rooms in the pilots’ wing, and it looks like you’ve got the ladies all to yourself.’

OoOoO

Samica came to the canteen for a bite to eat before going to sleep two hours later, after a shower and a visit to sick bay. This synthflesh allergy was turning out to be very annoying, she decided—under normal circumstances, a few second-degree burns wouldn’t have taken more than a day or so to heal, but as it was it looked as if she’d be forced to let her arm heal naturally.

The temple—called Massassi temple for some reason Samica hadn’t been able to find out—was huge, with more stairs and halls and rooms than she could hope to sort out anytime soon. She suspected she’d have to start finding her way around the more important places first of all, and the canteen seemed to be a good place to start, but she didn’t plan to stay for long. Even though she’d slept in the cockpit during the hyper jump, such naps didn’t do much to render you awake afterwards.

There were no pilots in the canteen except Dutch, who sat alone at a table in the large stone room, with a steaming cup before him. Samica got some food from a food processor, which looked out of place in the ancient stone temple, and joined the commander. The brew in his cup looked as if you could have stuck your spoon in and it would have remained standing.

Dutch nodded to her in greeting when she sat down, and she indicated his caf.

‘You know, Chief, my mother always used to have a good home remedy against tiredness. It’s even better than caf.’

He raised his head and watched her through dark-circled eyes. ‘And what might that be?’ he asked.

‘It’s called s-l-e-e-p. Me mum swears by it.’

He blinked, then got the joke and snorted dutifully.

‘I’m serious, Chief.’

He sat back from the table, stretching, tendons popping. ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.’ He glowered at her from under dark eyebrows. ‘Still, that’s not a tone you should use with your commanding officer.’

‘Sorry, Chief. Just worrying.’

He took a sip from the caf and said, ‘Anyway, Sam, I was quite impressed with you up there.’ He motioned towards the ceiling, as if the battlefield hadn’t been light years away from Yavin. ‘Even if you gave me quite the headache when you told me you’d known about those Skiprays.’

‘I know.’ Samica looked down at her hands. ‘Perry could still be alive if I had—’

‘Stop it.’ Dutch’s voice was sharper than she’d ever heard it, and she looked up, eyes wide.

Dutch leaned forward. ‘Sam, listen. You’ve made a mistake, and you and I both know this is something I’ll have to report to Commander Willard. But you’re not perfect, Sam. Nobody is, and nobody can expect you to be. Yes, you should have remembered it, and yes, you should have told someone, and yes, Perry’s dead. Yes, he might still be alive if he’d known about Skiprays. And maybe he wouldn’t. You can’t change it, Sam. You can do your best to prevent it from happening again, and I’m pretty sure you will, but you can’t turn back the time. Don’t let it get at you. It’s war, Sam. People die. Stars know I don’t want them to, and I’m doing all I can to keep my people alive, but if I accused myself for every pilot who died under my command, I could just as well hang myself.’ He stopped, drew a hand over his face, and sighed. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured, reaching out to pat her arm when he saw her staring at him. ‘Didn’t mean to distress you. You probably never heard such words from an Imp commander, did you?’

She could only shake her head, dumbstruck.

‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘But these three dots’—he indicated his rank insignia—‘don’t mean I’m something like a god. What I’m trying to tell you is that you’ll make mistakes, and bad ones, too, and you mustn’t let them keep you from your duty. If you go into a stupor every time you make one, that won’t help anyone.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ she asked softly.

He took some time before answering. ‘Because I suspect strongly that if you keep performing like you did back in Suolriep, StarCom’s going to dump a helluva lot responsibility on you. You’ve got leadership abilities, Sam, and you’re a good pilot. Those’re the qualities that’ll end you up in a command position pretty soon. And if you don’t start coming to terms with the fact that you’ll lose people, and lose some friends too, and that you’ll have to fall on your feet again, you won’t make in the biz for very long.’ Dutch rubbed his face. ‘Enough rambling. I think I’ll try that remedy of your mother’s. And I guess you should too.’

Sam nodded, and watched him leave the canteen, wondering if his ‘rambling’ had been directed at her . . . or at himself.

OoOoO

Rhun opened his eyes when there was a tremor running through Defiance that told him they were leaving hyperspace.

He’d slept on blankets in the corridor, as well as most of the other Rebels who had been rescued from Liberty. The frigate was designed for about a thousand crewmembers; with the refugees, that number had doubled, and Rhun was glad that he’d be able to leave this anthill in a few hours. He’d be staying on Yavin, along with Commander Willard and Captain Candela and his lot, as well as several hundred others, Intelligence and Army personnel for the most part. He knew that the base commander was General Jan Dodonna, something of a legend of wartime stories that went back to the Clone Wars. Squadrons Gold and Blue would also be staying on the jungle moon, but Rhun supposed that, after the battle in Suolriep sector, High Command would have to detach another squadron to Yavin.

He had seen the tentative list of those who’d died in that attack – several people on the cruiser who had been unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and eight pilots, especially the X-wing pilots, who’d taken the brunt of the assault when they battled the enemy TIE fighters. Rhun had been relieved to find Gold Seven was not among the dead; as far as Defiance’s sensors had been able to tell, she’d made hyperspace.

He got up and stretched, then folded his blankets and put them on a pile in the corner. They were not really his blankets, of course – what little he’d possessed was now in the hands of the Imps. There hadn’t been much he’d been able to salvage in the past few years, after all, he’d been cooped up in Rebel ships and on Rebel bases most of the time, places not noted for the possibility to go shopping anywhere near, but the loss of his sound slugs hurt. He’d gathered a few recordings of Deeply Religious concerts and one Red Shift Limit album, and it hurt even more because the Imps were not going to keep them anyway, since both bands were indexed and the possession of their albums carried penalties in most Imperial communities.

Rhun had finished clearing up his portion of the floor when someone tapped his shoulder, and he turned to see Cora standing next to him.

‘Thought I’d say goodbye . . . and good luck,’ she said.

‘You’re not coming with us?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘As soon as we’ve dropped you ground dogs, we’re out of here. There won’t be many ops from this base, or so I’m told. Mandy and I are bound for the action.’

Rhun smiled. ‘Yeah, right, I can imagine . . . especially in Mandy’s case. It’s hard to imagine her chatting up the birds and bugs after she’s through with all the male personnel on the base.’

Mandy had come up during their exchange. ‘Careful, Rhun,’ she said. ‘I heard that.’

‘You were meant to.’ He extended his hand to her, grinning. ‘Good luck . . . and good hunting.’

‘Thanks, and you.’

Rhun felt himself blush. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Mandy winked. ‘I think you know. Just keep up that innocent look with those puppy eyes of yours, and she’ll go for it. Just don’t you think you can fool me—sly one.’

Rhun turned to Cora. ‘What’s she talkin’ about?’

Cora grinned and squeezed his arm. ‘We must be going.’

He saw them disappear down the corridor, and shook his head. Mandy liked playing the dumb blonde, primarily because nobody would ever suspect a dumb blonde of being an Intelligence agent, but he knew that there was a very sharp mind working underneath all those curls.

He went to the mess to get something to eat before going down to the base, then started towards his quarters to pack his stuff until he remembered there was no stuff to pack—and no quarters around here either. He only hoped he’d get his hands on some new sound slugs soon.

OoOoO

Rhun had been prepared for warm, sticky air, but he hadn’t realised it would be quite this bad. The shuttle had set down in the large main hangar in the great Massassi temple, and even if it was evening now, the sun shining through the foliage outside all day had warmed the hangar as well. Rhun wondered how they kept all the equipment dry in this environment. He could see that moss and mould had been scraped off most of the walls, but work was obviously still in progress, and the plants that had taken over the ancient Massassi structures centuries or even millennia ago seemed very reluctant to yield their dominion to the Rebels, growing back slowly, but persistently.

Rhun had grown up on Garon II, a world with a moderate to cool climate and rather little rain, resulting in many prairies and some patches of woodland in more rainy areas in the mountainous ranges, and he felt distinctly uncomfortable in this humid climate. He was relieved to find that it was better in the temple itself, slightly cooler and less humid. The further he went from the hangar, the more the walls were overgrown with moss; apparently, the Rebel scouts who had prepared the temple for use as a base had concentrated on cleaning away any plants from those parts of the building which were meant to house technical equipment and had left the others alone. Rhun thought this was fitting—despite the fact that the place was now full of people, he felt as if he was disturbing the peace of a place that had lain in silence for an eternity. Nobody knew why the Massassi, who had once built and lived in these structures, had disappeared, but Rhun could almost feel their presence, watching. Not that he was going to share these thoughts with anyone else. He’d long since discovered that people looked at him very strangely when he tried to tell them things like these.

He found the mess after some time, and saw that it was rather full; apparently, most of the people who’d arrived aboard Defiance had had the same idea as he: eating, catching up on some stories, and see who had made it. Rhun steered towards a speck of orange in one corner, where several pilots sat. He recognised the commander, Dutch, as well as Pops, Teddie and Jay, and Dutch’s wingman, Tiree.

One didn’t sit, however—Teddie was standing on a table, bending over, arms flailing at his sides, and most of the others were grinning or laughing. Then Rhun saw Samica, turned halfway away from the table, her expression between embarrassment and anger.

Then she saw him, and her face lit up at once. She was on her feet immediately, coming over to greet him, and against his first impulse to hug her, Rhun settled for clapping her on the shoulder when he saw that her right arm was bandaged.

She smiled at him, eyes shining. ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said softly.

‘You, too.’ He glanced at her arm. ‘Are you all right?’

She chuckled. ‘I promised I’d hit you the next time you said that, remember?’

‘Okay . . . so, how’s your arm?’

‘I’m all right.’ She grinned, then grimaced with a look back at Teddie. ‘Apart from those idiots, that is.’

‘Why? What’s he doing up there anyway?’

‘Kindly demonstrating the Emperor trying to bite his own behind.’

Rhun scratched his head. ‘What for?’

She sighed. ‘For letting me go and join the Rebels.’

‘Agent van Leuken!’ Teddie called through his legs, then straightened and jumped down from the table. ‘Great to have you back. Sam was so stressed out when Liberty got hit that she took it out on the TIE fighters. Shot down six of them, and two Skiprays! Whew!’

Samica had whirled to stare at him. ‘What did you just say?’

Teddie shrugged. ‘You made ace in your first combat mission. Nearly double ace, actually. I don’t know if the Skiprays count double, I’ll have to check that . . .’

Her voice became icy. ‘And how did you get at the number of my kills?’

Teddie frowned, finally beginning to suspect that she was furious. ‘I asked that imp of yours. Your astromech, I mean. Why, was it anything I said?’

‘Teddie,’ Dutch cut in, sharply. ‘Leave her alone.’

Samica hadn’t listened to the commander. ‘And why precisely has my imp told you about my kills in the first place?’

Teddie was looking around among the others for help, then said, ‘I don’t know—I asked him, and he told me. Was there anything wrong with that?’

Jay spoke up now. ‘Sam, he’s right. Why would you keep your kills secret? They’ll go on your ship anyway. And I’ve certainly never heard about someone who scraped together eight kills on his first mission . . . or on her first mission.’

She looked at them in disgust. ‘I don’t want them to go on my ship.’ She watched their expressions, waiting for reactions, and when no one answered, she repeated, ‘None of them.’ Then she went out.

Rhun followed her from the mess, and to his relief, she waited in the corridor for him to catch up.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he said. ‘You’re a Rebel now, and that’s the way the Rebels do it.’

‘Would you want to paint a little stormtrooper on your blaster every time you shoot one with it?’ she asked.

‘That’s something completely different, Samica. It’s a tradition—’

‘It’s exactly the same. It’s one of the things I found most disgusting in the Empire, and I’m not going to do it here. I don’t want to be a little scratch on a TIE fighter entry hatch one day. Do you?’

‘Whatever you or I want, it’s not going to change age-old fighter pilot traditions,’ Rhun said softly.

‘So it’s not going to. But I decide if I want to play this macabre little game, and I decide that I don’t. If they think I’m crazy, that’s fine, but I’m not going to be proud of killing. Proud of saving a cruiser, saving a wingman, even if I have to kill for it, yes. But not of the killing itself.’

Yes, and that’s one of the more important reasons why I think I love you, Rhun thought, but he didn’t say it aloud. They’d reached the entrance hall of the great temple, and Rhun could feel the cooling night air outside. Night on Yavin 4 was not necessarily dark; even after sundown, the red gas giant remained in the sky in most nights, lending a ruddy glow to the jungle and the temples. The jungle sounds had quieted, and all that could be heard was the slow, steady drizzle of rain dropping through the leaves.

Samica sat down against the wall, drew up her knees, and looked out over the jungle.

‘During your time with the Empire . . . did you ever shoot down a Rebel ship?’ Rhun asked at length.

She didn’t move, didn’t look up at him, and he wondered whether she’d heard his question. Then, finally, she said, ‘Yes. One.’

‘And you didn’t make a mark on your entry hatch,’ he guessed.

‘No.’

‘Why?’

Finally, she twisted around to look up at him. ‘I think I may always have been a Rebel . . . and it just took me such a long time to find out.’

OoOoO

Samica went to the hangar once again before going to bed. Despite the fact that she was now on a base with a discernible day and night cycle, activity on the Rebel base never fully slept, and there were still people in the hangar, but they did not pay her any heed, after she’d waved off an inquiry by one of the techs.

Her Y-wing looked decidedly better, apart from the new scorch mark on the side of the cockpit. The ion cannon had been repaired, and an upgraded sensor package was being installed. She patted the hull over her head, then looked around for her astromech.

She found him with several other R2 and R4 units near a workshop at the end of the hangar, and he whistled happily when she went over to them, then hooted when his optical sensors registered her expression. He wheeled towards her and let out a series of whistles.

‘If you’re apologising for what you told Teddie, forget it,’ she said sharply. ‘How could you stab me in the back that way? I’m not interested in my kills!’

The R2 unit bowed down and warbled something that sounded like a whimper.

Samica remained standing before him, arms folded in front of her chest. ‘You won’t broadcast my kills to anyone, is that understood?’

R5 hooted plaintively, and she sighed.

‘All right,’ she said, relenting. ‘So you didn’t know. But you know now. And if anyone asks you about my number of kills, you tell them it’s not their business. And if anyone wants to paint any kill markers on my Y-wing, you tell them to come to me. Got that?’

The astromech whistled, straightening again.

She shook her head, her mouth curving into a faint smile, and reached down to pat his domed head. ‘Glad you see my point. Well then, see you tomorrow—Imp.’

Imp let out a happy whistle and wheeled around to rejoin the others.

2

There was something flapping.

Samica sat up in bed and reached for the light switch, looking around the room. Pops was not in; he was on an escort mission with Dutch, since Dutch’s wingman, Tiree, was still without a ship, and she could see nothing unusual. Her and Pops’ quarters were about as small as the ones they’d shared on Defiance, with two bunks in the walls, a small space between them and a table hewn from the stone at one end. She could not see anything that could have caused the sound that had woken her up, and it seemed that it hadn’t come from the door, which probably ruled out Teddie.

She’d just switched off the light once more and prepared to go to sleep again when she felt something moving, touching her left hand, but when she tried to flick it away, she felt a sharp pain between her thumb and forefinger. She shook her hand and could feel something clinging to it, something that refused to let itself be shaken off, something that was rather heavy. Samica managed to hit the light switch again and saw an iridescent blue beetle the size of her fist cling to her hand, and she yelped as she tried to jerk it off, but the insect clung to her flesh. Heart beating wildly, she grabbed it with her free hand and jerked it away, hitting the opposite wall with a clattering sound, falling on its back, little legs flailing around, and she took up her boot and hit the beetle with it. There was a sickening crack when the boot shattered its shell, but it stopped flailing.

She felt her heart racing and forced herself to calm down—this hadn’t been anything but an insect, after all—when she felt something warm trickle on her bare foot and she saw it had bitten a chunk the size of a fingernail out of her left hand, which was bleeding heavily. Drawing a deep breath to steady herself, she sat down on the bed, saw that there was blood on her blanket as well, and pressed it against her hand to stop the bleeding.

The little room was quiet once again, but Samica still searched it for more of the small creatures, listening for the flapping of wings against stone—which was, as she now realised, what had woken her from her sleep in the first place—but there was nothing to be seen or heard. She took the blanket away from her hand to inspect it, but the wound immediately started bleeding again. Samica cursed softly. She was left-handed, and she could just imagine the others’ comments when she was put on light duty because she’d been attacked by a ferocious killer beetle.

She waited for a couple of minutes before taking the blanket away a second time, and this time, her hand had stopped bleeding. She wrapped some more cloth around it, then lay back down again, but she left the light on.

Samica was drifting back to sleep when there was a shout from the adjacent room, and she jerked upright as she heard a blaster being fired. She was in her flight suit within seconds, and opened the door to look out.

There were other doors being opened in the pilots’ wing, and she saw that the door to the next room stood ajar—the doors here in the temple were the ancient, unpowered sort—and Ryle was pressing a hand against his cheek, a smoking blaster in his hand, an unidentifiable smouldering mass on the floor. Gawky was standing on his bed, pulling on his boots even if he wore little else, while Ryle searched for more attackers, blaster ready.

‘Come on, you little suckers,’ Samica heard him mutter. ‘Let’s see how brave you are!’

‘What’s happened, Ry?’ Jay asked, his voice sleepy, but he, too, was armed with a blaster. ‘What was that?’ He pointed to the mass on the ground.

‘Beetles,’ Samica answered for him, and Jay looked at her quizzically.

‘Beetles,’ he repeated.

‘Yes, carnivorous ones.’ She turned to Ryle, who had looked up at her and now saw the bloodstained cloth wrapped around her left hand.

‘So you’ve had the pleasure as well,’ he said, then lowered his blaster, but did not yet put it away. He grimaced as he gingerly touched his right cheek where the creature had bitten him. ‘Blast, I guess that spoils my chances for the Mister Gold Squadron contest.’

Samica looked around the corridor, where most Blue and Gold Squadron pilots had assembled by now. ‘We’d better take a careful look around our rooms,’ she said. ‘And someone ought to tell General Dodonna about this. I think these beetles justify waking him.’

‘I’ll go,’ a young X-wing pilot called John D. offered.

Gawky came down from the bed, looking a bit more confident with his boots on to face any attacking beetles, even if he cut a rather ridiculous figure otherwise. ‘What makes you believe you can order people around anyway?’ he asked Samica, but she was by now used to that kind of questions.

‘The fact that my equals were busy hunting for killer beetles or hiding from them standing on the bed like squeamish little girls,’ she answered.

‘Fair enough,’ Gawky replied, then busied himself with pulling on his flight suit.

OoOoO

Dutch and Pops returned to base early the following morning, and Samica and Teddie were working on their ships when their two Y-wings set down in the hangar.

General Dodonna had ordered search parties composed of most of the personnel on Yavin base to look for the beetles’ hiding place later that morning, and Samica had decided it was no use to go back to sleep again, joining Imp in working on her snubfighter instead. Teddie obviously hadn’t been able to sleep either, helping his R4 unit, Patches, to adjust the laser configuration on his ship. He’d grinned broadly when he realised his nickname for her R2 had stuck, but she thought it was fitting. Most astromechs—all droids, actually—in use by the Empire were painted black or white, hardly as colourful as the Rebel astromechs (although not normally the red, green and yellow Patches was painted in), and Imp hadn’t been redesigned when the Rebels had taken him over, so Teddie’s joke hadn’t been all that far-fetched.

‘How was the mission?’ Samica asked Pops when the old pilot climbed out of his cockpit beside her and stretched with a groan.

‘As boring as can be,’ Dutch answered for him. ‘Which is probably for the best, come to think about it.’

Teddie had joined them as well, but was now watching Pops’ back with horrified interest.

‘Pops,’ he said, ‘there’s something crawling up your suit. I think it’s one of those killer beetles that attacked the base last night . . .’

‘Oh, that,’ Pops replied without looking. ‘That’s probably just the visitor my Wookiee’s expecting.’

Dutch furrowed his brow. ‘Your what?’

‘The teeny-tiny Wookiee living in the pocket on my left sleeve. He told me he expected a killer beetle to visit him later this morning.’ Pops’ voice or face never indicated he was anything but serious.

‘Um—Pops,’ Samica cut in. ‘Teddie’s not joking for once. There were carnivorous beetles, and there is one of them crawling up your back.’

Immediately, Pops turned and saw the insect. He beat it off hastily, stepping on it with a crunch, crushing the creature. ‘Blast, you were right,’ he said with a sidelong glance at Teddie.

The youth set his hands on his hips. ‘What did Sam do so that you believed her and not me?’ he asked, indignant.

‘A lifetime of painstaking, scrupulous honesty,’ Pops replied. ‘Think about that one, Ted.’

Teddie scratched his ear. ‘ Not worth the trouble,’ he decided.

Dutch shook his head. ‘What was this about killer beetles?’ he asked.

‘Piranha-beetles,’ a tech supplied from behind them, wiping his hands on a piece of cloth. ‘They’ve been seen here on occasion, but they’ve never attacked anyone so far. But it looks like they’ve finally found out Rebels are edible. You find them out in the jungle, and if you see a swarm of them, you’d better run, for all the good it’s gonna do.’ He flung the grimy cloth over his shoulder. ‘They can pick a local piiruu cat to the bone within seconds.’ He indicated the length of his arm. ‘And we’re talking pretty large cats here.’

Dutch threw Pops a concerned look. ‘Not quite the peaceful place we all hoped it would be, is it?’ he asked.

‘Better beetles than Imps, if you ask me,’ the tech answered. ‘But the search parties are about to start to go looking for the little killers.’

‘Not me,’ Pops yawned. ‘If they’re going to pick my bones clean, that’s fine with me as long as they don’t wake me.’ He trudged off towards the hangar exit and the sleeping quarters.

OoOoO

The sun had only gone up two hours ago, but that had been sufficient to heat the jungle up to something like a sauna. Last night’s humidity still lingered, and in combination with the heat, it made breathing difficult, let alone fighting through the dense undergrowth in Yavin 4’s tropical forests.

Rhun was wearing heavy boots, the best thing available against the piranha-beetles, and his feet felt like lead. Looking over at Samica, he saw she’d rolled her flight suit down and knotted the sleeves around her waist, wearing only a light, short-sleeved shirt. A backpack was strapped to her shoulders, which carried supplies as well as basic equipment. Her left hand was bandaged where the piranha-beetle had bitten her that morning. There were two others in their search party, a human Intel agent called Lorrs and Vel Thri’ark, a Bothan. The small, furry nonhuman looked distinctly unhappy, even more so than his human fellow searchers, but they needed him; Bothans were famous for their tracking abilities and their silence when stalking something. Or that was what Rhun had heard about them; at the moment, Thri’ark was no less noisy than the other three, perhaps a bit demonstratively so.

They had searched their portion of jungle for two hours but had not quite covered half the ground they still had to search. Rhun exchanged a glance with Samica, and she turned to the others.

‘We’ll have some minutes’ rest,’ she decided; as senior officer among the three of them, she was in charge of the small party.

‘About time,’ Thri’ark grumbled, putting down his sensor pack. ‘I think I’m allergic to something here.’

Lorrs paused with his water bottle at his lips to glower at the Bothan. ‘So am I,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’d better split up.’

Samica threw the slender, dark-skinned agent a sharp look. ‘Nobody’s going to split up,’ she said before the Bothan could make a reply. ‘Rhun, what’s our direction?’

Rhun looked at his compass. ‘Still on course,’ he answered. ‘According to the chart, there’s a river crossing after a hundred metres or so.’

Thri’ark looked up from his water bottle sharply. ‘We don’t have to swim, do we?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rhun replied. ‘It doesn’t say how deep the water is. The river’s not too wide, though.’

‘But you can swim, can’t you, Thri’ark?’ Lorrs asked the Bothan.

The nonhuman’s silver-grey fur rippled in a pattern that conveyed disgust even for someone not familiar with Bothan body language, and he bared sharp teeth. ‘I hate getting wet.’

‘Well, I’m not too wild about swimming in a place like this either, but I don’t think we’ve got much of a choice.’ Rhun took another deep swallow from his water bottle. He only had one left, and he felt he could easily have drained this one in one draught.

Samica brushed her hair out of her face. The strands had grown long enough again to bother her, she realised, for the first time since the Academy, and she supposed she’d have to have them cut again. She remembered her mother’s shock at her shaven head when she’d come home to Imperial Centre after her graduation, and she recalled her own regret when they’d cut her shoulder-length hair three years ago, but she found short hair was much more comfortable, especially under a helmet—or in this climate. She caught Rhun’s weary grin as she looked over to him; he’d obviously guessed what she’d been thinking, and he demonstratively ran a hand through his own short hair.

‘Ready to go on?’ Samica asked the others, her eyes lingering on Thri’ark.

‘Yep,’ Rhun answered and came to his feet, Lorrs following with slightly less enthusiasm. Thri’ark stood with a moan and shook his water bottle; it seemed to be empty.

Rhun rolled up his sleeves and brought up their map on his datapad once again. Lorrs, who was also a weapons specialist, was armed with a flame projector carbine, since General Dodonna had apparently did not trust all his people to be able to shoot down single piranha-beetles the way Ryle had—and if they were to meet more than single beetles, a blaster would not do them much good.

Ahead of them, the ferns were becoming thicker, flourishing in the shade of towering Massassi trees named after the long-vanished Massassi race, which dominated the view, swallowing much of the light and, fortunately, the heat. Rhun saw several mucous salamanders flow out of their path, while their distant relations, the tree-dwelling woolamanders, were chittering in the trees above, warning their kind of intruders. Rhun heard a distant rushing and turned to the others. ‘I think I can hear the river,’ he said, pointing through the foliage ahead.

Samica nodded. Rhun guessed she was even less comfortable in this jungle than Thri’ark—at least there were trees on Bothawui, as opposed to Imperial Centre, where you had to line up in a queue for hours to see the holoprojection of one in the Galactic Museum. Or so Rhun had been able to gather.

The young woman brushed tiny insects off her arms. ‘Thri’ark,’ she said. ‘Can you hear anything?’

The Bothan pulled himself together visibly and looked around, also consulting the data his sensor array was transmitting to him. ‘Nothing that sounds like piranha-beetles,’ he answered, then continued, grumbling, ‘Even if I knew what those should sound like.’

Rhun set his bag down on the ground, exasperated. ‘None of us does,’ he said, finally fed up with the furry nonhuman’s attitude. ‘And we’re all sweaty and sticky and thirsty and Stars know what, but we’re not complaining!’

Thri’ark’s fur rippled wildly. ‘Then maybe you think you can do without me?’

‘Sithspit, yes, you’ve finally got it!’ Lorrs said, gesticulating with his flame projector. ‘Thanks for finally getting the point across to the little bastard, Rhun!’

Samica stepped in between the Bothan and the other two. ‘That’s enough, all of you,’ she said sharply. ‘Rhun’s right, we’d all prefer to be at the base right now, and Thri’ark’s right, we can’t do without him.’ The pleased grin spreading over the Bothan’s face was cut short by her next remark. ‘None of us is expendable. And now pull yourself together so we can get this over with.’

Thri’ark opened his mouth to make a reply when they all heard a high-pitched shriek from the river, followed by a wailing sound like a cacophony of musical instruments that was cut short seconds later, and four heads jerked into that direction.

Samica had her blaster drawn—it was a good thing, she reflected, that she had learned to shoot right-handed at the Academy—and motioned for Lorrs to bring his flame carbine up. Rhun had also drawn his heavy blaster pistol. He knew it would probably not be very useful, but he felt a bit more secure with it in his hand.

Carefully, the four of them went on through the fern, Samica first, then Lorrs, Rhun behind him, with Thri’ark bringing up the rear. After a minute, the shrieks stopped, and it was quiet again. Rhun uneasily realised even the birds and woolamanders were silent. They pressed on to the river’s edge, with the rushing of water growing louder, until they stood before it—a stream about five metres across, flowing languidly, swirling up brownish-purple dust from its bed. There was a clearing to their right, and Rhun was the first to see what they’d been looking for.

‘Emperor’s black bones,’ he breathed.

By the water’s edge lay something gleaming stark white through the fern and shrubs, and they finally realised they were looking at a large mammal’s bones. It might have been one of the local herbivores called runyips by the Rebels, and any doubt that it had been alive minutes earlier were wiped away at the sight of a few lumps of raw, bleeding flesh still hanging from the bones.

‘I guess we’ve heard what piranha-beetles sound like,’ Lorrs murmured.

Rhun nodded. ‘And we can only hope they’ve had enough now,’ he added.

Suddenly, the comlink at Samica’s belt beeped, and she picked it up and pressed the answer button. ‘Team Six,’ she said.

‘This is Team Five,’ a voice answered, sounding distorted through the interference from the vegetation. ‘We may have found something and could use some help.’

‘Have you found another carcass?’ Samica asked.

‘Carcass?’ the voice at the other end repeated. ‘No, we’ve found a crashed vehicle or something. Maybe even a starship. Our position is 65-5-14.’

Samica glanced over at Rhun, who nodded. ‘Got it,’ he said.

‘We’re on our way,’ she told the other group, and cut the link.

Rhun was holding the datapad displaying the map slightly sideways. ‘Good news,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to cross the river to get there. It should take us something like half an hour.’

Samica took another swallow of water from her bottle, and the others followed her example. ‘All right,’ she finally said when she put it away. ‘Let’s move.’

OoOoO

The Massassi trees had given way again to smaller shrubs and bushes, and they’d followed the winding course of the river to their destination. The water was teeming with life, and Rhun was glad that they didn’t have to get into it but could stay on their side of the stream. Once or twice, a large, streamlined shape had broken through the surface only to submerge again seconds later, snatching a smaller fish or jellylike mucous salamander, which were able to live in the water as well as on land.

After half an hour, they saw a gleaming surface through the trees and bushes, and Samica brought out her comlink again.

‘Group Five, this is Six. Can you hear me?’

Rhun, Lorrs, and Thri’ark all turned to look at her, expressions tight, when there was no reply.

Samica bit her lower lip and tried another channel. ‘Team Five, Six here. Do you read?’

Again, nothing.

‘All right,’ Samica said softly. ‘It looks as if we’re on our own.’ She spoke into her comlink once more. ‘This is Team Six. Can anyone hear me?’ Again, there was no reply, and she sighed as she clipped the comlink to her belt.

‘We are on our own,’ she said. ‘There’s too much interference. The other teams must be too far away to hear us.’

‘Wouldn’t it be possible that Team Five is still around somewhere, but that they can’t hear us because of the interference?’ Lorrs asked.

‘Possible, but not very likely,’ Samica answered. ‘I doubt they would have gone that far when they asked for help and knew it was coming. Plus the fact that if we were able to pick them up half an hour ago, and we’ve been moving towards them since then, we should be able to pick them up now . . . which means they’re probably not alive anymore.’

Rhun wiped his forehead and looked around in the undergrowth. He didn’t like this a bit, but usually, those situations didn’t care whether he liked them or not.

‘We’d better wait for reinforcements,’ Thri’ark proposed, sitting down on a fallen tree.

Rhun sighed. ‘Haven’t you been listening?’ he asked. ‘There won’t be any. And we ought to have a look at whatever’s going on here. This crash site or whatever it is may or may not have something to do with those beetles, but it’s our job to find out.’

Samica nodded. ‘My thoughts entirely. Lorrs?’

The dark-skinned human made a face but inclined his head. Thri’ark snorted. ‘What makes you think we’re going to survive what four other equally under equipped Rebels didn’t?’ he asked saucily.

‘We’ve got a Superbothan with us,’ Lorrs murmured, and Thri’ark was on his feet at once. Samica reached out and grabbed a handful of his fur before he could jump at the Intel agent, and the Bothan yelped. ‘That’s enough, Thri’ark, Lorrs,’ she said. ‘Rhun, can you put up a distress signal beacon here?’

‘I guess I can,’ Rhun replied. ‘But it could be hours before anyone who picks it up can react to it.’

‘Then we’d better do it now,’ Samica answered. She drew her blaster and looked at Lorrs. ‘You’re coming with me, you as well, Thri’ark. We’ll see what’s crashed there. Can you pick up anything with your package?’

The Bothan briefly considered to keep up his sulking, but then brought up the sensor data. ‘Seems to be a shuttle of some sort,’ he said after a moment. ‘There’s a power source still in it. And I can pick up something alive in there.’

Samica exchanged a glance with the others. ‘Let’s go.’ Rhun hurried to get the beacon installed, and the other three began to fight their way through to the ship.

They had to cover about twenty metres to the shuttle, and as she came closer, Samica saw that the craft must have been there for years. It was overgrown with vines and lianas, and the rust had eaten into the hull in some places that had cracked, probably during the crash landing. It had been a bulky craft, unarmed, the sort of landing shuttle used by civilian mining companies and other corporations. There was an inscription on the hull barely visible through the plants, displaying the Imperial Aurebesh letters, which meant that it could not be all that old.

Suddenly, she heard Thri’ark’s horrified gasp behind her, and she turned quickly. The Bothan was staring into the shrubs to their right, and she paled as well when she saw what had terrified him.

The skeleton half-hidden under the vegetation was definitely human, and several shreds of clothing still hanging from the bones made it all too clear this had been one of the hapless searchers in Team Five. His equipment lay scattered around him, but there was no trace of the other three.

Thri’ark had turned to the right, staring into the dense jungle, nostrils flaring as he stared, motionless.

‘What is it, Thri’ark?’ Samica asked softly, but he made no reply, just remained standing there in horror. Then he bolted.

‘Wait!’ Lorrs screamed as the furry nonhuman dashed past him through the undergrowth, away from the shuttle, but into unknown territory, and he looked at Samica. She cursed. It was obvious Thri’ark was not going to listen to reason in his present condition, but she could not let him run off on his own either. She and Lorrs exchanged a nod, and they ran after him.

It was not difficult to follow his path, and, luckily, it would not be difficult to retrace it afterwards. His flight had ripped vines off the trees and torn gaps into the dense foliage, and Samica and Lorrs could simply follow the trail of destruction the Bothan had left in his wake. Lorrs was several metres ahead of her, and she guessed they’d run a good two hundred metres from where Rhun was. If they didn’t find Thri’ark within the next two minutes, she decided, they would return to the shuttle without him. Suddenly, she felt her foot getting entangled in one of the tougher vines, and she went sprawling, spitting out a mouthful of leaves, but when she tried to scramble to her feet again, her blood froze at the sound of the same high-pitched scream she’d heard just before they’d found the runyip skeleton.

She saw Lorrs stopping short ahead on a clearing in the trees, bringing up his flame carbine, but the next minute, a dark, sapphire cloud was over him, all around him, and he barely had time to scream before it was over.

Samica ducked instinctively, pressing her forehead against her arm, as much against the sight as the sounds, but it didn’t take more than half a minute before the swarm was finished with its victim, buzzing away far above her head.

Shaking, she lifted her head again, staring at the spot where she’d last seen Lorrs, fighting the urge to gag when she saw a white gleam through the green. Not trusting her legs, she remained lying where she was, waiting for her heart to stop racing and her insides to calm. After a while, she felt a painful throbbing in her right foot and realised she must have sprained it when she fell.

‘Samica!’ she suddenly heard someone call behind her. Rhun’s voice.

‘I’m here,’ she called back and struggled to her feet, forcing herself not to glance at Lorrs’ carcass.

He came through the trees, blaster in hand, worry on his face. ‘What’s happened? I heard you all shouting, and then there was this shrieking again—’ He broke off, his face going white, when he saw the cleanly picked bones at the end of the clearing.

‘Lorrs?’ he whispered.

Samica nodded jerkily.

‘Are you hurt?’ Rhun asked, looking at her.

‘I think I hurt my foot when I stumbled, but otherwise, I’m okay. If those beetles had got me, you wouldn’t have had to ask.’

‘What about Thri’ark?’ he asked. ‘He as well?’

‘I don’t know,’ Samica said weakly. ‘He suddenly panicked when we found that dead Rebel, and he bolted into the forest. Lorrs and I tried to run after him, but then these beetles came. I don’t think we’ll find him again.’

‘Let’s at least try,’ Rhun said. ‘Can you walk?’

She nodded, putting some weight on her foot. It still hurt, but at least it was not broken. Rhun had walked over to where Lorrs lay—or what was left of him—and she heard him choke when he saw the body. It had been different with the runyip and even the Rebel from Team Five—they had known what a swarm of piranha-beetles was capable of, and had been shocked to see it with their own eyes, but to see a man who only minutes ago had been alive reduced to a heap of bones on the forest floor was something else. Samica did not join him there; she had seen enough.

Rhun rejoined her minutes later, carrying the flame carbine from Lorrs. The weapon’s casing was dented all over, as if the beetles had tried to eat through it as well before they had decided it was not worth the effort.

‘Do you know how to use one of those?’ Samica asked Rhun.

He shrugged. ‘There’s a first time for everything, and one of us has to use it.’

Samica drew a sharp breath. ‘Well, then. Let’s try to find Thri’ark.’ They started to make their way through the jungle, following the Bothan’s trail, until suddenly Rhun stopped and pointed to three more skeletons to their left.

‘We’ve found the rest of team Five,’ he said, his voice hoarse.

‘Did you get the distress signal going?’ Samica asked.

‘Yes, and by now, I’m convinced that we’re pretty much in distress.’ Rhun took out his water bottle and had a few more swallows. ‘Okay,’ he said when he put it away again. ‘How long do we give Thri’ark?’

Samica glanced at her chrono. ‘Half an hour,’ she replied. ‘If we haven’t found him by then, I don’t think we’re ever going to.’

They set off again, while the sun overhead reached its zenith. The jungle quieted during the hottest hours of the long Yavin 4 day, and Rhun felt sweat drenching his clothes and hair. Small stinging insects settled on them no matter how often they brushed them off, and he found his thoughts returning to the shower back at the base more frequently. After a while, they suddenly stood at the river’s edge again, which had apparently wound its way around to cross their path again. The open strip left behind by Thri’ark ended at the bank, near a pattern of intricate labyrinthine nests built into the embankment by tiny crabs. Rhun looked through the vines and branches to the other side, but could not see the trail going on there.

‘He must have jumped straight in,’ he stated, incredulous.

Samica sat down on the water’s edge, longing to follow the Bothan’s example but remembering the predators they’d seen in the water earlier. ‘So, that was it,’ she said tiredly.

Rhun slumped down beside her and brought out his water bottle once more. It began to feel alarmingly light for his taste, but it didn’t seem a good idea to him to refill it from the river—not without a thorough scan first, which was impossible without Thri’ark’s sensor package.

Samica also produced several survival ration bars from one of her flight suit’s pockets and took a bite off one. ‘We’ll go back after we’ve rested,’ she said, ‘to have a look at that shuttle. Just make sure you have that flame projection carbine ready at all times.’

Rhun nodded, chewing on his own survival rations, clapping his hand against the weapon’s barrel.

Samica leaned back against a tree and looked up into the branches above, high above her head.

‘So this is what I would have done if I hadn’t been drafted into StarCom,’ she said softly.

‘What do you mean?’ Rhun asked.

‘I always wanted to join the Survey Corps. Discover new planets. Lead exciting expeditions.’ She grimaced.

Rhun raised his eyebrows. ‘D’you regret it?’ he wanted to know.

Samica snorted. ‘A couple of months ago, yes. Desperately. But I don’t think I ever will again.’

‘Nor me,’ Rhun agreed. ‘I hate to say it, but . . . we’d better get started again. I could fall asleep here without even noticing.’

Samica stood, stretching. ‘You’re right. Let’s get back to that shuttle. With luck, there’s even a rescue team on its way.’

OoOoO

They stood by the shuttle once again more than an hour later, and Rhun wished they had brought two life scanners. He remembered Thri’ark mentioning something alive in that shuttle, but at least that probably did not indicate the presence of piranha-beetles, since they would not produce enough warmth for the scanner to pick up . . . or so he hoped.

He readied the flame carbine and nodded to Samica. ‘I’m going in first. I doubt there are any of those beetles in there, but I have a feeling this moon doesn’t like us.’

‘I can assure you the feeling is mutual,’ Samica murmured and drew her blaster pistol, then produced a glow rod from another of her suit’s many pockets. Rhun found the entrance hatch at the craft’s side open and made room for Samica to shine her light inside. There was a rustle from the shuttle’s interior, followed by cooing sounds, and they exchanged glances. Apart from rusty equipment and mouldy passenger seats, they hadn’t been able to see anything alive, but the sounds told them it was there.

‘Not piranha-beetles,’ Rhun said. ‘The question is, is whatever’s in there better or worse than piranha-beetles?’

‘Can’t be any worse,’ Samica replied, and he shrugged.

‘You’re probably right.’ He put one foot in the opening, tested the balance, and drew himself up into the shuttle, then quickly made way for Samica to follow him. She stood next to him, illuminating the small chamber with her glow rod, balancing herself against the bulkhead. The shuttle had crashed into the ground and ended up slightly askew, so the floor sloped downwards to their left. They stood in a cargo/passenger compartment, with two seats faced away from them, the upholstery spilling from the outer material in several places, and a console with lockers to their right. There were transparisteel shards everywhere, crunching under their boots. The vines and moss had found their way into the ship, covering much of the seats and a portion of the bulkhead. When the sheen from Samica’s glow rod wandered past the seats, they heard the cooing sound again.

Samica carefully went closer, going around the chair as far as she could, blaster ready, Rhun directly behind her, until they could get a good look into the chair.

In the seat were several short-furred animals, not longer than her forearm, with long, sleek bodies and round faces with pointed ears. They were covered with black, some with purplish fur. There was one larger animal among them, and it was hissing when it saw them.

Rhun lowered his flame carbine. ‘Piiruu cats,’ he said. ‘That must be her litter.’

Samica sighed in relief. ‘So that was the life form Thri’ark picked up.’

‘Most likely.’ Rhun squatted down beside the seat and watched the female, which was still eyeing him warily, ears twitching, with the kittens squirming around her. ‘I bet she would have bolted at once if it hadn’t been for the little ones.’

Samica looked around the compartment, kneeling before the lockers, looking at one of the transparisteel shards. ‘NavGap,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘It says NavGap on here. That’s a mining company. Research, too, as far as I know. I wonder what they were doing on Yavin?’ She looked over to Rhun and hid a smile when she saw he had taken out one of his food rations and offered it to the female piiruu cat on his open hand. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Making friends,’ he answered. ‘Did you never have a pet as a child? A pittin or something?’

‘My friend Tass always had pittins. Until her father decided they were reproducing too quickly for the small flat they lived in at the time. My parents never allowed me to keep a pet.’

‘Pity,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard children learn to take responsibility when they have pets.’ The piiruu cat was sniffing at Rhun’s hand suspiciously, but there was also curiosity. The kittens had started cooing again. Rhun moved his hand a little closer to one of the kittens, which looked more curious and less afraid than its siblings, then drew his hand back with a curse.

‘What is it?’ Samica asked at once.

Rhun inspected his hand, then put his finger his mouth. ‘She’s bitten me,’ he said.

Samica laughed softly. ‘If I were a piiruu cat living in abundance like these, and anyone tried to offer me survival rations, I’d bite him too.’ She came over to him to look over his shoulder. ‘Bad?’ she asked.

Rhun sucked at his finger once more. ‘No,’ he grumbled. ‘Don’t you think I’m going to make that offer to you again,’ he told the cat, who seemed to be very pleased with herself.

Samica shook her head, walking over to the hatch that led into the cockpit, and after a while, Rhun followed suit. The hatch was slightly ajar, and together, they managed to break it open all the way. Samica muffled a curse when the wound on her left hand started bleeding again from the exertion, but at least, this time, it stopped after a few minutes.

‘I wonder what NavGap was doing here,’ she said. ‘Maybe they were mining Corusca jewels, but they’re normally found on Yavin itself, not on one of its moons.’

‘Corusca jewels?’ Rhun asked.

‘Coruscant was named for them before it became Imperial Centre. They’re jewels from the gas giant, and they’re really priceless. They don’t exist anywhere else in the galaxy but on Yavin.’

‘And these NavGap folks would launch an expedition to Yavin 4 because of them?’ Rhun asked, doubtfully.

‘Well, I can’t imagine what else they would have wanted here.’ Samica looked at the ship’s instruments. ‘Maybe there’s still data in these banks that our people can recover,’ she said. ‘Although I doubt it after all this time. Fragments, maybe.’

‘What’s this?’ Rhun suddenly asked, opening a locker in the cockpit. In it hung two white suits.

‘Space suits, I suppose,’ Samica replied after a short glance.

‘Without grav boots?’

‘Hmmm.’ She sat down near the co-pilot’s seat to have a look at something she’d found there.

Rhun sighed, leaning against the pilot’s seat and wiping his brow. In here, it was even hotter than outside, probably because of all that metal. ‘Pity all the supplies must have gone bad by now . . . or eaten by piiruu cats,’ he murmured, taking another swallow from his water bottle. There were maybe two or three left. He supposed that reinforcements were well on their way by now, but they probably wouldn’t reach them for another two or three hours.

‘Rhun, would you take a look at this?’ he heard Samica ask from behind the co-pilot’s seat, and he went around the cockpit to join her.

‘What is it?’

She held up something that looked like a cage, slightly less than a metre in diameter, made of a tight grille, but with a large hole ripped into the front.

‘It was ripped open?’ Rhun asked.

Samica stood, inspecting the cage more closely. ‘I’d say it was chewed open,’ she corrected.

Rhun frowned. ‘Chewed?’ he repeated, leaning on the seat in front of him.

‘Look. There’s small dents all over the wire, see? You know what I think?’

‘No.’

‘I think they tried to get out piranha-beetles.’

Rhun frowned. ‘Why would they do such a thing?’

‘That’s the question.’ Samica put the cage back. ‘Anyway, I think I can put together what must have happened here. They tried to bring out a couple of the beetles—for whatever reason—but didn’t count on the strength of their mandibles. When they were still in the moon’s atmosphere, the insects chewed their way out, and the first thing they did was to eat their captors. The shuttle, naturally, spun out of control, and crashed here.’ She thought that over again and nodded. ‘The bones would be gone after all this time in the jungle—plenty of scavengers to take care of them.’

‘Which leaves us with only one, albeit important, question,’ Rhun said. ‘What did they want the beetles for in the first place?’

‘Let’s try to find out.’ While Rhun sat down before the memory banks to see whether he could coax some information out of them, Samica went back into the cargo hold, keeping respectful distance between herself and the piiruu cats in the chair. She was not very comfortable with animals, especially wild ones, and these had sufficiently demonstrated they were indeed wild. There were several more cargo lockers in the compartment, and she began to break them open. It was not too difficult a task, since the years of humidity had eaten away at the materials, and the doors that simply refused to open could be forced with some effort. It took her about half an hour to open them all. Most of them had been storage rooms, containing food that had decomposed nearly completely over the years, but the last ones were more interesting. They contained small, transparent jars that looked like medicine vials from a medpak. There were several different substances, some of them labelled with numbers and scientific-sounding words, which didn’t mean anything to Samica. One of them was labelled in plain Basic, however; it said, ‚Blue Serum‘.

‘Have you been able to find out anything?’ Samica called to the front of the shuttle.

Rhun didn’t answer.

‘Rhun?’ she called again, getting to her feet.

‘Uh—no,’ Rhun finally answered, sounding infinitely tired.

She was in the cockpit in an instant. Rhun lay slumped in the pilot’s seat, eyes half-closed, and there were red blotches around his mouth and nose.

‘Rhun!’ she said, her voice urgent, shaking him gently. ‘What is it? A heatstroke?’

He moaned, his eyelids fluttering as he tried to look up at her. ‘Head hurts,’ he murmured.

She took the medpak he’d brought with him on his belt, taking out the small diagnosis unit and scanned him with it. She’d never seen the effects of a heatstroke, but if it was one, the unit would also give her instructions how to treat it—on a basic level. The little display blinked as it ran checks, then there were four words on the screen which caused her stomach to knot together: VIRUS DETECTED, TYPE UNKNOWN.

For a few seconds, she simply stared at the display in horror, then she bit her lip. Was she imagining things, or did her forehead feel warmer than it ought to? She looked back at Rhun, who stifled a cough, and managed to open his eyes. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he got out.

She gently touched his shoulder. ‘I need to get help,’ she said. ‘Should I leave you here, or do you think you’d be better outside?’

‘Here,’ Rhun replied, stifling another cough. Then he weakly pointed to the console. ‘Power cell,’ he gasped. ‘Link it to the—comlink. Creative.’

She frowned, looking at him in desperation. ‘What?’ she whispered.

‘Like in Equipment,’ he said. ‘On Star Destroyer. Got out Blissex. Amplify comlink range.’ He squinted up at her, and she finally got it.

‘Okay. I’ll get us out of here, Rhun. Don’t worry.’

He nodded weakly, coughing, and she felt her eyes sting as she saw blood bubbling from his nose. She gave him an antibiotic before she went to work, which was all she could do, and hoped she’d be able to copy the trick with which he’d powered the detention cell doors aboard Resolve, a lifetime ago. There was one dose of antibiotics left, which she injected herself, then she hurried to kneel in front of the console to remove the power cell. She remembered that Thri’ark had said it was still working, but she supposed she would need a cable to link the comlink and the power cell together. She wished she could have used the homing beacon to call for help, but it could not be used for explicit transmissions, and apart from the fact that she had to tell the base that there was a virus around, she needed to ask for medical assistance as well. She desperately hoped they had the necessary medical means available on the base to treat Rhun’s illness. Redemption had left Yavin two weeks ago.

She got the power cell out—it was the one that powered the emergency systems, not the main power cell, but if it worked, it would be enough for her purpose—then took it out of the ship to be able to start transmitting as soon as she got it working. She stumbled on her way to the entry hatch, shaking and sweating all over, but she tried to push away the thought of anything that was not immediately concerned with her task. Outside, the sun was beating down with terrible intensity, and she had a close look at the cell. There was a power outlet at one side that she supposed could be used for what she had in mind, but she was going to need two things for that: a cable and engine tape. The latter was not a problem; in the backpack she carried, there was an entire roll of it, but she’d have to hurry to find a cable that would fit.

Suddenly, she remembered that the comlink could be linked into her datapad and the datapad itself could be linked to another power source, so she would not even be needing the engine tape for insulation, and she hurried to find a cable that fit with the device. It was not too difficult. Datapads were standardised everywhere in the galaxy, and she soon found a cable that would suffice. She briefly looked in on Rhun before returning outside.

Rhun lay in the seat with his eyes closed, his face underneath the nose caked with blood, but his laboured breathing told her he was still alive. He seemed to be unconscious, so she rejected her initial idea of giving him water, but she wet a piece of cloth and wiped away the blood, then cleaned it again and laid it on his forehead, which was searing to the touch. Then she went out to enhance her comlink range.

The trees seemed to be moving when she looked up at them, and she steadied herself against a trunk, which seemed to give way until she found she was swaying. Hurriedly, praying that it would work, she linked the datapad to the power cell and then inserted her comlink. She chose an open frequency.

‘This is Lieutenant Trey from Team Six,’ she said. ‘Base, do you read me?’

There was a short pause and a lot of interference, then she almost groaned with relief when someone answered, ‘This is Yavin base. Where are you?’

‘65-5-14,’ she answered, remembering the numbers Team Five had given her that morning.

‘What the hell are you using to call!’ she heard the voice on the other end.

‘Home-made transmitter,’ she replied. ‘Base, we need a medevac here. Agent van Leuken is seriously ill, there’s some sort of virus.’

‘I’ll see to that. Does it have anything to do with the beetles?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, feeling her head throb. ‘Just suit up when you get here—’

‘Lieutenant,’ another voice cut in. ‘This is Commander Willard. Is there anything else you can tell us about that virus?’

‘I don’t know, sir. The Imps have been here, but some years ago, I think, and a piiruu cat’s bitten Rhun, and he’s dying . . .’

‘Hold out, Lieutenant. We’ll be with you in fifteen minutes. Is there a landing point anywhere near?’

She suppressed a cough. ‘Bit northeast of here, sir. There’s a clearing. Ten minutes on foot.’

‘All right. We’ll get you out of there. Willard out.’

Samica switched off the comlink and sat there for several seconds, shaking. Despite the sun burning down on her, she was cold, and there was a splitting pain in her temples. With knees that threatened to buck at every step, she made it back into the shuttle to Rhun, sitting down in the co-pilot’s chair. Rhun lay as she’d left him, still breathing with difficulty. She thought his breathing had become even more erratic than it had been when she’d last seen him, and she tried to get up again to cool his forehead once more, but found her legs wouldn’t bear her anymore. There were black clouds hovering on the edge of her field of vision, and she tried to keep herself awake, clinging to consciousness with all the strength left to her. Fifteen minutes, she told herself desperately. Only fifteen minutes.

OoOoO

Samica was still conscious when the medevac shuttle arrived, and she actually managed to leave the cockpit with the medics’ support. The whole evacuation team wore sealed suits, some of them taking the time to take a few samples of the blue serum. Rhun had to be carried out on a stretcher, and she doubted that he knew anything that was going on around him. The medevac had landed on the clearing where Lorrs had died. Samica felt a faint surprise when she saw Commander Willard standing at the shuttle, equally suited up; the commander patted her on the shoulder when the medics half-carried her inside.

‘Don’t worry, Lieutenant,’ he told her. ‘They’ll get you back on your feet again. And Agent van Leuken as well.’

She only nodded, her throat hurting too much for her to speak, feeling unconsciousness threatening to overwhelm her for the third time during the past ten minutes, and this time, she didn’t resist it anymore.

3

‘ . . . been touch and go with him for the first twenty-four hours, but he’s stable now, sir. She’s slightly better off . . . Well, in fact, I think she’s coming to.’

Samica tried to open her eyes and immediately squeezed them shut again when bright lights blinded her. The throbbing in her head had eased slightly, but she still felt too weak to move. The voice she’d heard when she regained consciousness had been female, and she thought she recognised it as the doctor’s who had already treated her injuries aboard Liberty.

She could hear someone sitting down beside her bed, then Commander Willard’s voice: ‘Can you hear me, Lieutenant Trey?’

She blinked, and this time, she made herself keep her eyes open. Her vision was still blurred, but she could see his face against a glow panel on the ceiling. She tried to raise her arm to block out the light when she felt a slight stinging in her left wrist, an intravenous line or something like it, and she gave up her plan.

‘Yes, sir,’ she croaked.

He reached out to touch her arm. ‘It’s good to have you with us again, Lieutenant. It’s all right. You’ll recover.’

‘Rhun?’ she managed.

The ghost of a smile touched his face. ‘Agent van Leuken will recover as well. His condition was more serious than yours, but he’s stable now.’ He turned his head to look behind him, and she followed his glance, fighting a moment of vertigo when her body protested against the sudden movement. There was another bed beside hers, and she saw Rhun, attached to a sickening number of tubes, the medical indicator lamps above his head showing up yellow to orange, and there was a slow but steady beeping measuring his cardiac sounds. He was unconscious, looking very pale, and the commander seemed to have noticed the fear returning to her face. ‘He’ll make it,’ he repeated. ‘Don’t worry, Lieutenant, you need your energy for more important things right now.’

She relaxed again, then noticed that Willard was not wearing a sealed suit. ‘Infection?’ she asked.

Willard shook his head. ‘Only through blood contact,’ he replied. ‘You were lucky, even if that sounds cynical. You remember the blue serum you found?’

Samica nodded.

‘It’s derived from the piranha-beetles, which was why the Empire was interested in them in the first place. Obviously NavGap was experimenting with that substance as a remedy against close to everything. The infection you contracted was one of those against which the blue serum actually worked; the virus must have spilled from one of the vials on the floor. The piiruu cats had contracted it, but through their contact with the serum, which was spread widely throughout the shuttle, they didn’t fall ill. Another theory is that they are immune for some reason; our xenobiologists are still investigating that. You were given the serum as soon as we knew what we had on our hands. You probably got the infection through the wound in your hand, Agent van Leuken from the cats.’

The doctor approached the bed, and Samica saw it was indeed the one she knew from Liberty. ‘If you’re trying to do what the virus didn’t, you’re on the right track, Commander,’ she said disapprovingly. ‘I doubt she got half of what you just told her.’

‘I’m sorry, Commander Sedgers.’ Willard got up from his chair again. ‘Just see you get well, Lieutenant.’

Samica twisted around to look up at him. ‘Sir . . . thank you,’ she whispered.

The commander nodded, squeezing her shoulder, then he left the room.

Surgeon Commander Sedgers stood beside her bed. ‘Try to get some sleep, Lieutenant. I’m willing to bet the commander’s just slowed your recovery by years.’

Samica nodded weakly, closing her eyes again. She was going to survive, and Rhun would too. That was the gist of what Willard had told her, and all that really mattered to her.

OoOoO

If Commander Sedgers had been worried about her charge during Commander Willard’s visit, she had more opportunity two days later, when most of Gold Squadron assembled in the medical station. Samica had been transferred from the intensive care unit to a normal sick bay the previous day; Rhun was still back in intensive, as his condition had been much more serious than hers. She knew that he had received the blue serum treatment just in time, since all the Rebel medics had been able to do before they found out about the serum was to slow the course of the illness through the use of bacta. Samica was feeling a lot better than she had a day ago; otherwise, her squad mates would probably not have been allowed anywhere near her at all. Especially Teddie was in his usual high spirits.

‘We won’t be bothered by the beetles again; one of the search parties found a nest of them, and smoked them out. The techs also found out they don’t like a particular subsonic sound, which now secures the base. So, knowing you weren’t going to see them again, I brought you this.’ He opened his hand and she nearly recoiled when she saw it contained one of the fist-sized insects.

‘It’s not alive anymore, is it?’

‘No, I restored it. Quite pretty, isn’t it?’

‘He’d have been hard put to restore the one I shot,’ Ryle cut in. ‘We found this one in your room.’

‘I found it,’ Pops said. ‘Not "we". And it gave me quite a scare. You should have told me there was a dead piranha-beetle lying just before my bed!’

Samica shook her head. ‘Sorry, Pops. I didn’t think of it. And anyway, you were the one who said he was going to sleep like a log and not be disturbed by anything.’

‘Step on a beetle the size of a pittin with your naked foot, and you’re going to be disturbed,’ Pops grumbled.

‘Anyway, Sam, we’re glad you’ll be joining us again shortly,’ Dutch said. ‘We’ve got three new pilots, and I’d like to team you up with one of the newbies. No need to change rooms around, but I think it’d be a waste to have you and Pops fly together where experience is needed so badly.’

Samica felt herself blush. ‘Ah—Dutch, I’m nineteen.’

‘Not the sort of experience I was referring to, Sam.’

She lay back in bed, changing the subject. ‘Have you heard anything about Thri’ark?’

Pops shook his head, his expression sombre. ‘Not a trace of him. There have been several search parties, but even one of those got lost. General Dodonna thinks it’s too dangerous here, which is why all activities are confined to the base and its immediate surroundings. We don’t really know a lot about the animals and plants on this moon, so we’ll just stay out of nature’s way.’

‘Just see to it that you get well, Sam,’ Tiree said. ‘We even got new ships to go with the new pilots. That’s the good thing about being stationed with someone like Dodonna: we get the best treatment available. And there’s another squadron that arrived yesterday. An X-wing squad. So we really, really need you back to tell them what’s what.’

Samica smiled wryly. ‘No worries.’

OoOoO

It was another week before Samica was given the go-ahead to fly again by the medics; Rhun took even longer to recover from the disease. She went to see him a number of times after she’d left sick bay and was on light duty again, and she could tell how much he hated being confined to sick bay, even if he was still too weak to walk. He especially disliked the medical droids and the fuss they supposedly made over him; Samica was under the impression they made exactly the fuss he forced them to make with his reluctance to stay in bed.

The three new Y-wing pilots were a human male called Hol Okand, a dark-skinned young woman from Nar Shaddaa named Kaya, and a green-skinned Twi’lek who called himself Nous and who, in his free time, spent hours with Ryle talking about possible Y-wing modifications.

The canteen had become fuller with the arrival of Red Squadron, an X-wing unit. The commander, Garven Dreis, was a friend of Pops’ and got along with Dutch rather well, so there were less rivalries among the pilots than was common on other bases, but like all X-wing pilots, the newcomers had a lot of confidence in their ships and their own abilities, looking down slightly on their fellow pilots with their slower ships.

Samica, Tiree and Kaya, the new pilot, sat at a table in the cantina and were discussing last night’s simulator run when Samica heard a voice from one of the adjacent tables: ‘Sithspit, the next time I play with you guys, I’ll deal, or I’ll be convinced Rebels do cheat!’

Samica stopped short and turned around. Behind her, the X-wing pilots were sitting, four of them playing Sabacc. Her attention was on one dark-haired young man with a moustache, the one who had just spoken. It took her a while to place the voice and the face – his hair had grown, and she hadn’t seen the moustache – but then she remembered.

‘Darklighter?’ she asked, incredulous.

The four pilots turned their heads at her outburst and Darklighter frowned. ‘Yes. Do I know you?’

‘From the Academy. Prefsbelt IV. I was a year ahead of you.’

He frowned, but then, apparently, he’d visualised her without hair and got it as well. ‘Trey?’

‘That’s right. I’d never thought I’d see any fellow cadets here!’

To her surprise, he didn’t seem very happy to see her. ‘Neither did I,’ he replied, meaningfully. Then he turned back to his three companions—a female Twi’lek, a short, dark-haired young man, and a stout man in his forties—and picked up his Sabacc cards without any further word to her.

Samica stared at his back, without a clue to the reason for his behaviour.

‘Anything wrong, Biggs?’ the dark-haired man asked. His features looked a bit like Teddie’s—if Teddie had been able to look serious, that was. He spoke with the Corellian accent that Samica was by now used to in the Rebellion.

Darklighter turned around to her once again, and she almost flinched at the hatred she saw on his face. ‘Has your conscience gotten the better of you, Trey?’ he asked her. ‘Or are you going to turn this base in to the Imps as well?’

Conversation among the other pilots had stopped, and Samica was still gaping at him in bewilderment. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘You were the one sneaking on those friends of mine at the Academy, weren’t you?’

‘I never sneaked on anyone! Let alone on any friends of yours!’

Tiree watched Samica intently. ‘What do you mean, Darklighter? Are you saying she’s a spy?’

‘I don’t know about her now, but when we were at the Academy, there were several people there who’d formed a Rebel cell. She was not one of them, mind you, but she once bumped into one of their meetings. A few days later, they were all taken into custody and we never saw them again. I was lucky I wasn’t at that particular meeting.’

‘Is that true?’ Tiree asked Samica.

Samica shook her head vehemently. ‘I never realised I had bumped into anything until we were told by Captain Fel that those guys had formed a cell,’ she replied. ‘Sithspit, I didn’t even know what Rebels were at the time!’

Darklighter snorted a laugh. ‘No, of course not. We can only hope you’ve found out by now.’ With that, he turned his back on her once again, with finality this time, and glanced into his cards. ‘Five credits, Wedge.’

The dark-haired young Corellian cast another glance at Samica, then occupied himself with his cards again, and the other two followed their examples. Samica still faced his back, torn between fury and helplessness, but realised that the conversation was over where Biggs Darklighter was concerned. Tiree and Kaya were both watching her.

‘You don’t actually think I might be a spy, do you?’ she asked them.

Kaya made no reply; Samica hadn’t expected her to, after all, the silent woman had only known her for a few days, but Tiree’s silence frightened her.

‘You’re thinking about the Skiprays,’ she said softly.

‘They came to my mind,’ the pilot answered.

‘Tiree, this is insane. Do you actually think I’d try to betray you and then shoot down I don’t know how many enemy ships? Don’t you think the Empire would have been here weeks ago if I’d been a spy?’

He relaxed slightly. ‘Okay, Sam, it doesn’t sound very likely, but what did Darklighter just talk about?’

‘There was a Rebel cell at the Academy where we both learned to fly. I swear I didn’t know about it, but I may have bumped into one of their secret meetings. They used the gym for it, at a time when there should be nobody in, but I desperately needed to catch up on some hand-to-hand combat techniques. I was pathetic.’ She paused, then went on, ‘I never realised what I’d seen there. I thought they were planning something like a large-scale practical joke, the thing you’d try for graduation, since it was a few months before the end of term. I doubt I had anything to do with their being discovered. Maybe someone saw me head for the gym and return minutes later and got suspicious, but I can’t have been the only one who saw them there. And I’d never spy on anyone, Tiree. Never.’ She looked him and Kaya squarely in the eyes at that, and Tiree met her gaze levelly.

‘I believe you,’ he finally said, then looked at Kaya, who appeared to be a bit distressed at the sort of exchange she’d just witnessed. The dark-skinned woman cleared her throat. ‘If you didn’t know they were there, I guess you can’t be blamed,’ she agreed.

Samica looked down at her hands. ‘Thanks, guys,’ she said softly. ‘I suppose I thought I could just come over to the Rebellion and forget everything that’s gone before, but I seem to’ve been wrong.’

Tiree patted her shoulder. ‘I can imagine it’s quite a legacy. But don’t worry, in a few years, nobody will care two hoots about it.’

Samica grimaced. ‘Oh, great. Can I just skip the next few years then?’

OoOoO

It didn’t come as much of a surprise to Samica that Commander Willard wanted to ask her a few questions several days later. It occurred to her that she’d given him more than enough reasons to suspect her motives, but Willard’s demeanour gave her no clue as to what he was thinking when he asked her about her knowledge of the Skiprays and that wretched business at the Academy, and when she left his office, she was no wiser than she’d been when she’d entered it. At least that was all she heard from him for the next weeks, and she supposed that the discomfort she kept causing him was not sufficient to warrant any more serious repercussions.

Rhun was busy again in Intentions. It seemed Cora and Mandy had been right; Yavin was a secret base with little IntelOps activity, but after his illness, he didn’t really mind. He, too, had been asked to report to Commander Willard following his recovery, but all he’d been able to tell the commander was the same he’d been telling him for the past months – that, in his opinion, Samica was sincere, and that her Imperial past was exactly that: past.

Biggs Darklighter seemed to have been convinced that she was not a spy, but he kept avoiding her whenever he could, and that hurt her, since it did not even give her the chance to tell him he was wrong. At least none of it seemed to bother her squad mates overmuch—or Rhun—and she contented herself with that.

After Samica had been on Yavin 4 for two standard months, squadrons Red and Gold were sent to intercept an Imperial supplies convoy bound for the Core. Commander Dreis briefed them, together with Dutch, but the Y-wing pilot seemed content to stay in the background.

‘Gold Squadron will disable the freighters, covered by the X-wings, then stand by while our teams take over the freighters and repair their systems. Both squadrons will patrol the area to make sure there won’t be any unpleasant surprises, then we head home. We expect ten freighters and a TIE squadron as escort, so it should be a piece of cake. Any questions?’

A tall, broad-shouldered X-wing pilot raised a hand. Samica had seen him in the mess but had never considered exchanging more than a few words with him; she didn’t know anything about his piloting qualities, but he certainly thought a lot of them.

‘Yes, Jal?’

‘Only one squadron of TIEs? What do the Y-wings need us for, then?’

There was some sniggering among the X-wing pilots and angry faces among their colleagues, but at least Dreis threw Jal te Gniev a disapproving look. ‘Serious questions?’ he asked without deigning to answer.

Nobody had any, and Samica saw te Gniev bask in his fellow pilots’ laughter as the meeting dissolved, but then Teddie came over to the large man, stopping in front of him. ‘Y’know, Jal, I really don’t understand why you don’t like Y-wings. I mean, you should be flying one.’

Jal looked down at the small youth, frowning. ‘Why?’

‘Well, the BTL-S3 Y-wing is a two-man fighter, and I bet it must be really tight for you in that cramped X-wing cockpit.’

Jal smiled smugly. ‘Well, I manage, thanks. I bet you can comfortably go for a walk in your cockpit.’ His audience commented the joke with dutiful sneers.

Teddie scratched his head. ‘No, I wasn’t referring to that. I mean—how do you get both yourself and your ego into that cockpit?’

Jal’s face took on an interesting shade of crimson, but Teddie dodged his grasp and scooted out of his reach, whooping. Samica turned away to hide her grin from Jal and saw Teddie join Jay and Tiree before the briefing room.

‘I said it!’ Teddie crowed. ‘Ten credits, people!’

Grumbling, the two others counted credit chips in Teddie’s outstretched hand. Samica went over to them and patted Tiree on the shoulder. ‘Hey, it was for a good cause,’ she said.

‘Then why didn’t you do it?’ Jay asked sourly. ‘We wouldn’t have lost any money.’

‘Nah, not Sam,’ Teddie declared.

‘You don’t mean to say I lack the pluck,’ Samica challenged him.

‘Not the pluck,’ Teddie replied. ‘The creativity.’

Samica was ready to admit that he was not too far off the track.

OoOoO

They dropped out of hyperspace in the Illura system, whose most remarkable planet was surrounded by an asteroid belt, the other three barren cold rocks or barren searing rocks, respectively. None of the four planets or their seventeen moons was even remotely habitable, which was the reason why the Empire liked to conduct shipment transfers here, where there was no chance of any coincidental passers-by. Today’s raid was far from coincidental, but the Empire had no way of knowing about it; the information that this system was used for supply convoys had been known to the Alliance for several weeks, but High Command had decided to wait for a good catch before striking. That was another difficulty the Rebels faced whenever they attacked an Imperial convoy: they were given every chance only once. The next time, the Empire would either take another route or reinforce the convoy so heavily that another attack was likely to cost more than it gained. The Rebel Alliance might be forced to take on situations that were far from secure, but that usually happened only if they were surprised. If the Alliance was able to choose the rules of engagement, it liked to keep it on the safe side.

Samica stretched her legs and watched her HUD, which showed nothing at all. Everything going as planned so far. Kaya’s ship was behind and slightly to starboard of hers; Gold Squadron’s formation had got slightly messed up with the three new pilots. It would have been the usual arrangement to have One flying with Two, Three with Four, and so on, with the even numbers acting as wings for the uneven lead pilots in their element. Samica’s wingman should thus have been Jay, but for some reason, Dutch had simply decided the new pilots would fill new slots as well, so that Kaya, as number Ten, had ended up being Samica’s wing, and Hol Okand, who was designated as Gold Six, as Pops’, with Nous, the number Twelve, alone in an element, since Gold Squadron was still one pilot short of a full squad. Ahead of her and in a distance, she could see the X-wing squadron maintaining the same loose but exact formation. The faster ships were bringing their s-foils into attack position, resulting in the cross-shape that had given the snubfighter its name. The rivalries between X- and Y-wing pilots, she reflected, were not a bad thing altogether, since it kept the pilots wary. They might get sloppy if among themselves, but no X-wing pilot was going to make a mistake in a Y-wing pilot’s sights—or vice versa.

‘Red and Gold Squad, this is Red Leader,’ Commander Dreis’ voice came in over comm. ‘We expect the Imps to arrive here in fifteen minutes. Stay clear of the hyper jump point, but we’ll remain near it so they can’t micro-jump out of the system as soon as they realise it’s us.’

‘Gold Leader acknowledges, Red Leader.’ Dutch switched over to squadron frequency. ‘Now, guys, I’m not having any stupid errors in front of those X-wing jocks. But don’t get overenthusiastic. That’s not worth the trouble. Got me?’

There were acknowledgments from the rest of Gold Squadron, and Samica made sure her shields and laser cannons as well as the ion cannon were charged. Imp would take care of the shields during the attack, for which she was grateful, but she knew she had to have an eye on them as well—a good pilot could not rely on her astromech to do all the unimportant stuff on its own. She was still not as familiar with the deflector system as she would have wished. TIE pilots prided themselves on their ships’ lack of shields, and some of that mentality was still there, especially when she felt an enemy TIE fighter in her rear and remembered again what it meant not to be weighed down by shields and be able to manoeuvre with so much ease. She’d never have admitted it to an X-wing jock, but speed could be a distinct advantage . . . at times.

Samica was jerked out of her thoughts by her HUD exploding with red dots, three, five, eight, then eleven, and the next second, she heard Tiree’s, ‘Contact!’

‘I see ’em, Gold Two,’ Dreis answered. Then the X-wing commander switched to an open channel. ‘Imperial freighters, we have you under our guns and will open fire if you don’t surrender. Give it up.’

Samica was not surprised not to hear any response. She knew what the Imperials must be thinking: better dead than at the mercy of rebels . . . who, as Rhun had once pointed out to her, ate small children, as everybody knew.

She concentrated on the eleventh ship, which was too large to be another of the freighters . . . but that was not a surprise, either.

‘Gold Leader, this is Gold Seven. We’ve got an escort carrier among the freighters.’

‘I read you, Seven. Take Three Flight and torp it. Five, let’s take care of those freighters.’

‘Copy, Gold Leader.’

‘Gold Leader, this is Red Leader,’ Dreis’ voice came in. ‘Red Squad’s on the carrier as well.’

Samica armed her torpedo launchers but saw they would not be able to destroy the carrier ship before it could launch its TIEs. The KDY ec-72 was capable of carrying an entire TIE wing to battle, but this was the smaller ec-24, which carried no more than two squadrons. One of them was launching even now, and the multiple hangar openings on the craft enabled the Imperial fighters to clear the ship almost simultaneously.

‘This is Red Leader. We’ve got company, people. Gold Seven?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Samica replied.

‘Take care of the carrier before it can launch the second wave.’

‘Gold Seven copies,’ Samica said. ‘Ten, Twelve, arm your torp launchers, and fire on my mark.’ She awaited the other two pilots’ acknowledgments, then waited for her HUD to turn red to indicate a torpedo lock, hoping to finish the first pass fast before the TIE fighters were in range, but when she was about to shout, ‘Mark!’ Kaya’s voice came in, strained. ‘Seven, I’ve got a weapons malfunction of some sort. My targeting system’s jammed.’

Samica cursed, but she ordered Nous to fire his torpedoes all the same, and four missiles streaked towards the escort carrier. The TIEs were at two klicks, and she shouted, ‘Break!’

She cut to port, the other two to starboard, while the X-wings flew straight into the knot of enemy fighters, lasers blazing red, green Imperial lasers returning fire. As soon as she was certain she was out of reach of the TIEs, she brought up the tactical and saw the carrier ship’s shields were down to forty percent, which meant all four torpedoes must have hit their target dead-on. To port, she saw blue ion bolts flashing among the freighters; Gold Squadron had not been idle. Several TIEs that had been able to shake off pursuit were heading towards the freighters and the Rebel bombers attacking them, and Samica wondered what the convoy was transporting to warrant such a heavy escort.

‘This is Seven. Ten, Twelve, report in,’ she said.

‘Twelve standing by for another run.’

‘This is Ten,’ she heard Kaya’s voice. ‘Ready.’

‘What about that weapons malfunction of yours, Ten?’ Samica wanted to know.

The reply came in a very small voice. ‘I forgot to switch over to torps.’

‘All set now?’ Samica asked, not intending to chew the young woman out for this.

‘Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.’

‘We’ll be going in for another pass, then. Set your torp launchers for linked fire and fire on my mark.’ Samica brought her fighter around again, just in time to see twelve more fighters launch from the Imperial carrier ship, but these were not the round Imperial TIE fighters with the flat solar panels at the sides, but larger ships with double cockpits and the solar panels bent inwards.

‘This is Red Two. We’ve got a squad of dupes coming in from six-thirteen, Lead,’ an X-wing pilot’s voice cut in, Wedge Antilles’, Samica thought. She wondered what the TIE bombers were trying to achieve. They were slow ships, slower even than Y-wings, armed to the teeth, but no match against X-wings. Still, there were twelve of them, all heading towards them, and if she could prevent it, she tried not to get herself caught between a squadron of eyeballs and a squadron of dupes.

‘Gold Ten, Gold Twelve, this is Seven,’ she said. ‘The carrier has to wait. No reason to bring it down quickly when it’s launched its entire fighter complement anyway. Target the TIE bombers; they should be possible targets for your missiles. Single fire, though.’

‘Acknowledged, Seven,’ Nous’ voice came back, and she switched her torpedo launchers back to single fire and targeted one of the TIE bombers. Her HUD winked yellow, then turned red, and Imp let out a shrill tone, indicating a lock. Samica fired at the bomber, which tried to juke and break out, but was too slow to evade the incoming missile. The Imperial ship blew up, and she saw several others also being hit by the X-wings. There were five TIE fighters left and ten X-wings; Gold Squadron, Samica saw, had not suffered any losses so far.

To her surprise, when she was about to target another of the bombers, she found that the heavy Imperial fighters were not returning fire, but veering off towards the freighters, seven of which had been incapacitated by the Y-wing ion cannons. Then Samica finally realised what the bomber’s objective was.

‘Lead, this is Gold Seven. They’re going to try to shoot down the freighters rather than let them fall into our hands. We need your help to take them out quickly!’

‘Copy that, Seven,’ Dutch replied. ‘You’ve heard it, people. Scratching those dupes is top priority.’

Of the nine TIE bombers still flying, six started targeting the freighters, while the remaining three joined the TIE fighters’ struggle against the Rebel ships. Samica broke hard to starboard when Imp’s shrill wail warned her of a missile targeting her, and the lamp flashing yellow atop her HUD winked out again, which meant she’d managed to break the lock. She searched for her attacker on the plot, found him, and veered around to intercept him, switching back to lasers. She was headed for his flank and managed to get off a quick shot at him, which hit his ship, but did not cause very much damage, since TIE bombers’ hulls were far more reinforced than their fighter counterparts’. But he was slower than her Y-wing, and she had no trouble with tucking herself in behind him, firing a series of laser beams into his cone, which reduced his hull to twelve percent. Just before she could finish him off, Imp warbled a warning as a TIE fighter came in behind her and fired. Out of reflex, she broke into a sharp climb, and the beams missed her—barely.

‘Thanks, Imp,’ she said to her astromech as she broke off pursuit of the TIE bomber and tried to shake the enemy fighter behind her, but he was better then she could have hoped for, refusing to let himself be shaken. She jinked and zigzagged, but he was always behind her, never as close or in as good a position as to get off a good shot at her—she wasn’t going to let him have that if she could do anything about it—but entirely too close for comfort. And still he made no sign of letting her get away.

‘If you want to have this the hard way, that’s fine with me,’ Samica murmured between her teeth and stopped her jinking for a split second, just enough to appeal to his greed and give him an apparent opportunity no fighter pilot could resist, then she throttled her speed so abruptly that he shouldn’t stand any chance to react in time before he overshot.

At least, that was the theory. She hadn’t expected him to have the presence of mind to break, but he did—and into the same direction she’d chosen to get out of his path, too.

With Imp shrieking out his panic, she tore the stick around to avoid direct collision, then felt her Y-wing buck wildly as the TIE fighter slammed into it with such force that she was flung forward against her restraints, shields flashing white and coming up a deep red afterwards. She’d involuntarily closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, her opponent was gone, her shields were down to five percent, and her astromech was expressing his gratitude of the fact that he didn´t have a heart to suffer a stroke.

‘Seven, are you all right?’ Samica heard Teddie over comm.

She drew a deep breath. ‘Any reason why I shouldn’t be?’

‘Nothing in particular. Was that a trick or something?’

‘Don’t try this at home, kids,’ she answered, then checked the tactical to see how things had developed.

The bombers had managed to shoot down one of the freighters, but there were only three of them left, as well as three TIE fighters. Red Squadron was still at ten pilots, Gold Squadron had not lost a single ship. The escort carrier was closing the distance to the freighters, doubtlessly to fire at them as well. Again, Samica wondered what might be so important for the Empire to explain this sort of behaviour.

She saw a TIE fighter chasing an X-wing, and brought her Y-wing around to give pursuit, another X-wing joining her.

‘That’s all right, Three, Gold Seven,’ the X-wing pilot’s voice came in over comm. Red Five. ‘I don´t need any help here.’ His fighter was damaged, Samica saw, and it was obvious Jal te Gniev couldn’t fly full throttle or she wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the X-wing.

The TIE fighter scored a glancing hit at the X-wing, and Samica heard Biggs Darklighter’s voice from Red Three. ‘It doesn’t look like you didn’t need any help, Five.’ He fired at the TIE, missing barely, and Samica saw there was damage to his fighter, too. She knew it was her job to lead the attack, since none of the two outranked her and she was the only one with a (mostly) intact ship, and with anyone else, she would have done just that. In the present situation, however, she was willing to bet that would not be something Darklighter was going to like, so she decided to go against usual procedure. No standard procedures in the Alliance anyway, she reminded herself.

‘I’m your wing, Red Three,’ she told Darklighter. ‘Let’s pluck him off.’

Darklighter hesitated just a second longer than might still have been considered normal, then he replied, ‘All right, Gold Seven.’ She dropped in behind and to starboard of his fighter, and he accelerated to match the TIE’s speed, probably redirecting energy from the laser cannons or shields to thrusters to do so.

‘Five, when I say "execute", you break hard to port. Gold Seven, we’ll sandwich the TIE between us, you take him from portside, I from starboard. Got that?’

‘Got it, Three,’ she replied.

‘Execute,’ Darklighter ordered, at the same time breaking to starboard to intercept the TIE fighter, who tried to shake the X-wing and almost managed to—but his evasive manoeuvre brought him directly in front of Samica’s lasers, and her fire hit him dead-on. The fighter spun out of control and blew up several hundred metres further ahead.

‘Wasn’t necessary, but thanks anyway,’ Jal said.

‘Yes it was, and you’re welcome,’ Darklighter replied. ‘Nice shooting, Gold Seven. Where’d you learn to fly?’

‘Let’s say I had an excellent teacher,’ she answered, relieved with his reaction. This might not have been standard procedure, but it had worked fine for all involved.

‘Seven, we need you back here.’ Dutch was two clicks distant, by the escort carrier, which had by now arrived at the freighters and was firing at them. It was not a great danger for the Rebel snubfighters, since its cannons were not accurate enough for hitting anything their scale, but its lasers were quickly gnawing away at the freighters’ hulls, and Samica saw there were only six of them left by now. They had been incapacitated by ion cannons, which meant they were painfully unprotected against their own people’s fire right now. If they had still had communications systems available to them, Samica was almost certain they would have reconsidered surrendering, but they probably didn’t have a clue about what was going on outside the ships.

The X-wings were finishing off the few remaining TIE fighters, while the Y-wings were targeting the escort carrier with wave upon wave of proton torpedoes. The carrier had a very strong hull, and even if her and Nous’ torps had hurt it badly at the beginning of the fighting, it took several combined actions and most of Gold Squadron’s torpedoes to kill the capital ship.

At Red Leader’s signal, the Alliance freighters Rescue II through IX, which had waited just outside the fighting ground, entered the area to take over the Imperial freighters, and the Rebel starfighters waited for the teams to report successful repair of the ships’ systems as well as control of them. All the while, they watched out for enemy ships coming out of hyperspace. It was not unlikely that the Empire had foreseen a raid, since the convoy had been so well defended, but the problems, when they came, did not come out of hyperspace.

Four of the ships had reported complete docking operations when there was a panicked transmission from Rescue III. ‘Red Leader, we have trouble over here. Apparently, the freighter has been set to self-destruct in . . . ninety seconds!’

‘Detach, Rescue III,’ Commander Dreis ordered. ‘If you can’t get your team out in one minute, get clear of the freighter. All other ships, get clear as well!’

‘We’re getting data from our rescue team, sir,’ the pilot of Rescue III said, hurriedly. ‘It´s classified Security One, and coded, but I bet we can unscramble it when we get back to base . . .’

‘Forget it, Rescue III,’ Dreis replied, raising his voice. ‘Detach right now! That’s an order!’

‘Understood, Red Leader. Detaching. We’ve got most of the stuff, I guess. Stand by for retracting the airlock—’

That second, the Imperial bulk freighter exploded, and for two hopeful seconds, it looked as if Rescue III might be able to get clear of the other craft in time.

The third second, however, the explosion caught the airlock, fuelled by the oxygen in it, and chewed its way through to the Alliance freighter. A series of explosions rocked the ship, then it blew up, a brilliant flash for a split second, then the oxygen had burned itself out and all that remained were a few debris parts floating in cold vacuum.

‘Damn,’ Commander Dreis whispered, not caring to switch off the comm. Then he composed himself, and asked, ‘Did anyone pick up that transmission?’

‘Negative, Dave,’ Dutch replied, using Dreis’ nickname. ‘They were using an intercom frequency to transmit. Even if we’d known it was coming, it’d taken us several minutes to find the correct frequency. Whatever that encoded data was about, we’ll never find out.’

‘Rescue teams are finished, sir,’ the report came in from one of the Alliance freighters.

‘All right, Red and Gold groups, Rescue group,’ Dreis said, heaving a sigh. ‘Let’s jump out. Piggy?’

‘Yes, Chief,’ Jek ‘Piggy’ Porkins replied, the heavy-set man Samica had seen at a Sabacc game with Biggs Darklighter and Wedge Antilles several weeks before.

‘I want you to jump out last to make sure we’ve got everyone and nobody stays behind.’

‘Will do, Chief.’

‘You’ve heard it, Golds,’ Dutch said. ‘Set coordinates for home.’

Nineteen snubfighters complied, followed by seven Alliance and five former Imperial freighters. As the stars elongated into lines, Samica tried not to wonder about the Imperial convoy’s mission again. Something was up, she was certain of it, and she was not sure if she wanted to know.

4

Rhun rummaged through his locker until he found the spare blanket he’d remembered seeing there when he had first looked into it. That had been almost three standard months ago, and he recalled his surprise at the existence of such a thing—in fact, for most of the recent months, he’d done without any blankets at night.

Now, however, the temperature had dropped so suddenly it made him wonder whether he might have been transferred to another planet without noticing. It had started at nightfall, and that nightfall had been different from all the others he’d seen here on Yavin 4—it had been what those who had been here for longer called ‘dark night’, which meant there was no gas giant to be seen in the twilit sky, only profound blackness. Rhun knew that, due to the moon’s orbit around the planet Yavin, the climate was subject to sudden change, and that was what had happened now—and it would remain this way for another several days or even weeks, if the techs who had told him about it were to be believed. For the first few hours, he´d welcomed the reprieve from the oppressive heat, but by now, the cold was too much for his taste. This moon never seemed to behave in a nicely, normal, standard-worldly way.

He returned to his computer terminal and wrapped the blanket around himself. He’d agreed to work on a particularly nasty code after hours today; five of his Intentions colleagues were doing the same, all trying to figure out how the pieces of the code puzzle fit together. They’d snatched the data from secret Imperial transmissions via listening posts in the Core, whose personnel risked everything by their mere presence in the systems, but High Command had information that something big was afoot in the Empire, something that was worth taking some risks. Rhun didn´t know for certain what it was, but he could imagine the data had not been cut into pieces by the Empire but by the Alliance, who didn´t want their own people to find out too much about it yet. Somehow the thought gave him the creeps.

Rhun took another swallow from his caf, for the first time glad it was hot, when someone knocked on his door.

‘Come,’ he said, not looking up from his work.

The door opened, and he finally turned when whoever had entered did not say a word in greeting. It was Ritchett Bania, one of the other Intentions code-slicers who were working overtime to crack the code, but Rhun froze as he saw the other man’s expression.

‘Rick?’ he asked. ‘What’s up?’

‘I need your help on this.’ Bania laid a data disk on Rhun’s table. ‘How are you getting on?’

‘Well, could be worse,’ Rhun answered. ‘I’ve found a few regularities I can work on, but maybe it would be a good idea to compare results. Does Captain Candela know you’re here? I don’t know if he’ll be too happy that we work together on this—it’s probably highly classified.’

‘Candela’s sent me here, but they won’t keep this classified for very long, Rhun,’ Bania answered, producing another disk from the pocket of his jacket and inserted it into Rhun’s computer, then nodded to him. ‘Come on, bring it up.’

Rhun frowned, then complied. There was a string of nonsense numbers and words, but Bania typed in a series of commands, and a minute later, there were two short messages on the screen, one from the Imperial Holonews, one not listed with a source.

The first read,

News has reached us yesterday that, due to an asteroid collision, the detention colony world Despayre was destroyed. By lucky chance, most of the Imperial military personnel were not on the planet during the terrible disaster, but were attending a meeting with Grand Moff Tarkin on his personal ship in orbit around the planet. Most of the inhabitants of the planet were depraved individuals, but our condolences should go out to the families of all the Emperor’s brave and loyal soldiers who died in the catastrophe.

Rhun frowned at Bania. ‘ "Lucky chance"? What kind of bantha droppings is this?’

‘Read the rest,’ Bania answered grimly.

The second message was short, but it made Rhun´s hair stand on end.

Sir;

It seems your interest in Tarkin’s project was justified. Despayre’s fate was indeed not an accident. A battle station has been seen in orbit around the world just before it disappeared from the charts.

I’ll keep you informed.

‘A battle station that’s capable of destroying a world?’ Rhun whispered.

‘Damned well looks like it,’ Bania replied.

‘But why Despayre? I seriously doubt anyone would consider staging a breakout from there. And if there had been such an attempt, it would have been said in the news article that Tarkin had heroically put it down.’

‘That was just a test, if you ask me,’ Bania said. ‘See what that thing can do, and then . . . boom.’

‘Commander Willard has to hear this,’ Rhun said.

‘Yep. But before we present him with the facts . . . we’ll also present him with a possible solution.’ He gave Rhun the other disk. ‘If I’m not mistaken, then the data we’re trying to crack at the moment is from one of our outposts, a world called Toprawa. And they seem to have something we’d happily kill someone for.’

‘Stop playing your games,’ Rhun told him, getting fed up with this tension-building. ‘What have they got?’

‘In the part I’ve been able to decode,’ Bania said, bringing up the data, ‘it said they’d stolen some highly classified stuff from the Empire. What about yours?’

Rhun shook his head. ‘Nothing so far. Give me two more hours. Or do you have any ideas for successful approaches?’

‘Hmmm . . .’ Bania sat down on the other stool in the cabin, typing in commands, but shook his head. ‘Would have been too easy, trying the same sequence again,’ he said. ‘But I can give you the approaches I tried, so you can pass them by, at least.’

‘All right,’ Rhun replied. ‘Like I said, two hours. But maybe you should tell Commander Willard now anyway. He won’t like it if he finds out you let him wait.’

‘I guess you’re right,’ Bania agreed. ‘And not a word to anyone else about this battle station before we’re given permission.’ Rhun nodded, and Bania left.

Rhun heaved a sigh and went back to work, bypassing the tracks Bania had already tried, all the while bringing up worst-case scenarios in the back of his head. If the Empire had a battle station that could reduce a planet to rubble, that was bad for the Alliance because of two things. One, obviously, all planets known for collaboration with the Rebellion could be destroyed now, and Two, probably worse, they would know. Support for the Alliance was going to go down dramatically if there was a planet killer around, and Rhun supposed that was what Tarkin had had in mind. The man was obsessed with power and inspiring fear, wanting to make the galaxy tremble in terror before him, according to his ‘Tarkin doctrine’, and it looked as if he was on the right track to achieve it.

It took him two and a half hours, even with the preparatory work from Bania, to decode the rest of the message from Toprawa. All it said was,

Send in someone to retrieve the technical readouts!

Rhun stared at the message for a full minute before he hurried to get it out to Commander Willard.

OoOoO

Samica stepped down from the ladder, expecting the whiff of hot, humid air she had by now become used to, even if she still didn´t like it, and was surprised that the starfighter hangar was even colder than her cockpit had been. According to her chrono, which she’d set for Coruscant standard time as well as Yavin 4 local time, it was early afternoon, but outside, it was pitch-black night.

‘What’ve you done to the climate?’ she asked one of the techs that came over to inspect her ship.

The tech, a very young woman with ebony skin, who looked barely out of her teens, shook her head. ‘They call it "dark night", ma’am. Somehow fitting, I guess. It seems to happen every few months here, but I haven’t seen it either while I’ve been here.’

‘Better than this damp heat,’ Samica decided, pulling off her helmet and put it into her cockpit, along with her flight gloves.

‘Well, I don’t know, ma’am. I grew up on Lorrd, and I don’t like to be cold.’ Samica noted that she had to be wearing warm clothes under her tech’s coveralls.

‘It won’t be for long, I suppose.’ Samica rubbed the back of her head where her hair was plastered to her scalp by the long hours of wearing a helmet. ‘There’s something wrong with the deflector shield display. The shields themselves are fine, but the display keeps messing things up. Could you have a look at that?’

‘I’ll set to work on that immediately, ma’am,’ the tech replied. ‘Your ship was hit, I take it?’

Samica grimaced. ‘You could say that.’

‘Let’s put it that way,’ she heard Pops’ voice from behind her. ‘If it hadn’t been a Y-wing, it wouldn’t have been hit, it would have been junk.’

The dark-skinned youth grinned, white teeth flashing in her agile face. ‘I get it. Some of the sensors might have been fried, but I can repair them, ma’am.’

‘Thanks.’ Samica gave Pops a mock glare. ‘And thank you for blabbing.’

Pops raised both hands in a gesture of innocence. ‘Hey, that was meant to be a compliment,’ he said. ‘Other pilots would have built up that story even more by now, Sam.’

‘Probably.’ She looked over at Dutch, who was conferring with Dreis in low voices. ‘Have you got any idea what that convoy was carrying?’ she asked him.

He folded his arms across his chest and followed her glance. ‘A vague one.’ He kneaded his chin. ‘But I don’t think I should tell you.’

She frowned. ‘You don’t fully trust me either,’ she said.

‘Sam, I’d trust you with my life, and I have, and I’ll do it again, but this one’s something I shouldn’t know about in the first place, and neither should you. I’ll tell you as soon as I can, but not yet. Okay?’

She sighed and grimaced, but this time, it was more of a rueful smile. ‘I don’t have much of a choice, do I?’

‘That’s right.’ Pops put an arm around her and propelled her towards the exit. ‘Now let’s go get ourselves some caf, there’s a good girl.’

Samica shook her head, resigned. ‘I hate it when you say that.’

‘I know. You think I’d say it if you didn’t?’

OoOoO

Pops was not the only one affected by a shadow of some foreknowledge very few on the base shared, which did not mean the others didn’t feel it. You didn’t have to be a Jedi from some children’s fairytale, Samica reflected, to realise that something was going on, from the haunted faces of everyone above the rank of captain on the base, and quite a few Intel personnel below that rank, as well. She had asked Rhun, and the expression on his face had told her he was one of the people who knew more than she did, but she hadn’t pressed the issue. Samica was still very much aware of some people watching her, like Biggs Darklighter and probably several others she didn’t know about, and was doing her best to make a good impression. At least Darklighter had gone from outright scowling whenever he saw her to merely ignoring her, which was something she could live with.

A week after the fighter pilots’ return from the convoy raid, the tension was almost tangible when Samica entered the common room all Alliance personnel on Yavin base shared. The planet was still blocking out the sun, and the temperature had dropped as far as it would get on Yavin 4. It had been dark for ten local days. Storms and rainfalls had worn the Rebels’ nerve out even further; some of the gusts had swept rain from the outside as far as some of the sleeping halls at times.

Samica looked around the large stone room lighted by glow panels, saw Jay, Teddie, and Pops at one of the tables and went over to them. Even Teddie wasn’t in his usual quipping mood; Samica had never seen him so sombre.

She sat down with her tray and began to busy herself with her dinner when she noticed Rhun sitting at a large stone slab that acted as a bar. He had his chin propped on his fist, a glass beside him that didn’t look as if he had touched it at all, and he was staring at the wall, his eyes distant.

She got up and walked over to him, but he never looked up at her, not even when she sat down beside him, giving him a searching look.

‘Rhun?’ she asked, touching his arm.

He flinched, as if he’d realised for the first time that she was even there, then reached for his glass to cover his surprise, but his hands were shaking so much that he knocked it over, and before he could catch it again, it fell over the edge and shattered on the floor. He looked after it as if trying to figure out why exactly it was doing this, then finally looked at Samica.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked, almost in a whisper, without caring for the fact that he was most likely not authorised to tell her anything he knew.

He took so long in answering that she was beginning to wonder whether he’d heard the question at all, but at length, he drew a deep breath.

‘Alderaan’s gone,’ he said.

She narrowed her eyes, puzzlement on her face. ‘What?’

‘Just got it from unofficial sources. The Empire has not released any explanation so far, but they’re going to come up with some stupid story soon enough. Anything to claim they’re not to blame.’

She shook her head vehemently, in an attempt to clear her thoughts. ‘Wait, Rhun, I don’t think I got any of this. Alderaan’s been bombed, and the Empire did it?’ They had both kept their voices so low that none of the other people could overhear their conversation; there weren’t any near them anyway.

‘Not bombed,’ Rhun said. ‘Annihilated. Obliterated. Wiped out. It doesn’t get any better if you say it differently, does it?’

Samica felt an icy shiver down her spine. ‘How?’ was all she managed.

Rhun was still looking at her, but his eyes were focused somewhere beyond her face. He started to make a reply, but then he stopped himself when he realised he should never have said what he just had, not to her.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he murmured. ‘There’s nothing left anyway. If anything, I really can’t wait to hear how the Empire’s going to explain this away . . . if they even want to explain it away.’

‘But there has to be another explanation,’ Samica said. ‘It would take the entire Starfleet to destroy a planet, and why Alderaan? They don’t even have any weapons! There must have been something else – an asteroid collision, an accident . . .’

Rhun nodded, weary-eyed. ‘Go right ahead believing that if you want to. I don’t doubt there’re countless of others who’ll also be happy about every possible kind of stupid excuse the Empire will come up with, just as long as they don’t have to see the truth.’ He got up from his chair and left, the shards of his glass crunching under the soles of his feet. Samica stared after him in dismay, but decided against running after him. A lot of heads were turned into her or Rhun’s direction as it was. Her squad mates were also watching her, and she turned away.

It’s impossible, a voice in her head kept telling her. She knew all the numbers; she knew what which kind of ship could do, and none of them were capable of reducing a planet to the kind of rubble Rhun had implied. It was impossible for the entire Imperial Starfleet to go against Alderaan, a planet that had been demilitarised decades ago and been peaceful ever since, and pound it to so much space dust. It would have taken several squadrons of capital ships weeks to achieve that degree of destruction, and that could not possibly have passed unnoticed. From a strategic point of view, it was the height of stupidity. Even an institution as powerful as the Empire just could not commit such an act without having to fear retribution, could not hope to get away with it even if the victim had been a lesser world in the Rim, much less the Core world Alderaan. Alderaan might not be a militarily powerful opponent, but it was a political power, and there were a lot of Alderaanian politicians who were opposed to Palpatine’s regime.

Or had been.

All of a sudden, Samica’s thoughts returned from the strategic-political to the sheer horror of it all. If Rhun was right, a planet had been wiped out of existence, a world with some two billion people, with no chance to escape their fate.

Her eyes returned to her squad mates across the room—they had returned to their own quiet conversation once again, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Pops. He had never told her if he’d had any family back on Alderaan.

Samica didn’t know how long she had sat there, trying to sort out her thoughts, but at some point, she must have gone back to her and Pops’ quarters, although she couldn’t quite recall how she’d got there. She was sitting on her bed, staring into the darkness, listening to Pops’ snoring. It was almost midnight, so she supposed she must have stayed in the common room for about an hour, and she felt like a trapped animal. She knew something she wasn’t supposed to know, and she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone—yet she felt she had to tell someone. And the someone who had a right to know was peacefully sleeping across from her, happily ignorant of what had happened to the world he’d grown up on and to all the people he had known.

Suddenly, she heard Pops stir, then the light went on. He looked at her, sitting up as well.

‘Trouble sleeping?’ he asked.

She nodded numbly.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

What should she say? How could she possibly have told him what she knew?

Pops cocked his head, his usual avuncular smile on his face. ‘It’ll turn out fine, Sam. It’s about that Intel kid, right? Don’t worry, whatever you argued about, you’ll work it out, or else he’s not worth it.’

Samica blinked at him in utter confusion before she realised what he was talking about. He must have drawn his own conclusions about her earlier conversation with Rhun, conclusions that were probably a lot simpler than what actually had been up. Why, he seemed to believe she couldn’t sleep because she was lovesick!

The absurdity of it all finally made her head clear somewhat. Here she was trying to figure out a way to break the news to her former wingman, while he was trying to comfort her.

She shook her head. ‘That’s not it, Pops.’ There was no easy way of breaking the news, so she might just as well get it over with. He had a right to know. ‘The Empire has destroyed Alderaan.’

Pops froze, then relaxed somewhat, but his expression remained intent. ‘Sam, that’s not a very funny joke.’

‘I wouldn’t dream about joking about something like this, Pops. Not to you. It’s true. I just got it from Rhun, he shouldn’t have told me either, but I just couldn’t . . .’ She broke off, saw his face crumple, and he whispered, ‘What do you mean, "destroyed"?’

‘According to Rhun, there’s nothing left,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t know how it happened, how it could have happened, but . . .’

She didn’t know how she had expected the old pilot to react, but she bit her lip hard when he abruptly turned his back to her, curled up facing the wall, his shoulders twitching. He didn’t make a sound, but that only made it worse. In that second, Samica finally believed that it was true, that it was not just an exaggerated rumour, because she remembered the conversation she and Pops had had a week earlier, and she realised that he had known it was possible for the Empire to destroy a planet. There was not a trace of incredulity in his reaction, just plain horror that it had been Alderaan.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, but he didn’t react.

OoOoO

Samica didn’t have to worry about keeping the secret the next day, because for some reason or other, everyone knew it, and talked about it in hushed tones. Before noon, there was a very short announcement over the intercom, summing up what by now everyone knew, and while she heard Commander Willard’s words recounting more or less what Rhun had told her last night, she remembered the old commander had been from Alderaan as well.

Alderaan’s destruction was a severe shock to the Rebel Alliance, not from a military point of view, but from an almost personal one. Despite their despise for war and fighting, the people of Alderaan had been among the Alliance’s staunchest supporters, and had supplied the Rebellion with something at least as important as weapons and technology: faith and courage. Some very fine minds had been involved in the Rebel Alliance almost from the start, had formed the Alliance into something more than just the bunch of dissidents and anarchists the Empire mistook them for. One of these had been Bail Organa, the viceroy of Alderaan, who had been one of the political leaders that had called the Rebellion into being some years ago.

But now Organa was dead, as must be most of his two billion people, all of those who had not been fortunate enough to be away from their home planet when it was obliterated by the Empire. That part of the story was still kept secret; there were speculations, to be sure, about how the Empire had managed to destroy an entire world, but there were no answers. At least Samica was able to find out that what the Imperial freighters had carried on their last mission had been supplies bound for a secret Imperial military project, which had been the reason for the strong escort and the order to destroy the freighters rather than let the Alliance have them. Intel had let nobody near them for days.

It would remain to be seen whether Alderaan’s fate would bring other worlds to knuckle under to the Empire to avoid sharing that same fate, or whether it would serve as a rallying call for other star systems willing to support the Alliance. Whatever it would prove to be in the future, the news had shaken everyone on Yavin base, with the result that most people in the Massassi temple spent as much time as they could before the holoprojector in the common room.

Rhun kept to himself the following days. He knew it had not been a good idea to tell Samica about what had happened to Alderaan, and he didn’t want to tell her about the rest as well—that the Empire controlled a battle station called Death Star, which could destroy worlds with one blast from its superlaser. The Alliance had despatched someone to pick up the technical readouts of the battle station from Toprawa, so they knew what they were up against, but the little the Alliance knew to date was bad enough. The station was supposed to be the size of a moon, many times as powerful as an Imperial Star Destroyer, and nothing short of a Star Destroyer would be able to cause it any damage. With its limited contingent of corvettes and a couple of frigates, the Rebel Alliance could scarcely hope to achieve anything against it unless the technical readouts showed a miraculous flaw. Which was unlikely enough to begin with, even if it hadn’t been for the fact that the Alliance did not have the readouts yet. And with every day that passed, hopes decreased.

He was returning from getting a bit of fresh air when, passing by the freighter hangar, he saw a familiar old YT-1300 freighter he recognised as Grant Dyson’s Noble Cause. The old smuggler stood at the entry hatch with a blond, confident-looking young woman and examined a new dent near the rear cargo compartment.

Rhun quickly came over to them, and Dyson turned at the sound of footsteps and grinned when he saw the younger man.

‘Why, so the Empire still hasn’t managed to get hold of you?’ he quipped.

‘Ill weeds grow apace,’ Rhun replied, equally grinning. ‘Does your arrival mean there’s real food around tonight?’

‘’Fraid not,’ Dyson answered. ‘Unless you want to try and eat a proton torpedo, that is.’

‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ Rhun said.

The woman had waited out the exchange, but now turned to Rhun with a smile. ‘Since the captain has forgotten about his manners, I’ll have to introduce myself without his help.’ She extended a hand to him. ‘Lieutenant Firia de Boeck. I’m Grant’s new co-pilot.’

‘Rhun van Leuken.’ He took her hand.

‘I know. Grant has told me a lot about you.’

‘He has?’ Rhun threw the smuggler a suspicious glance. ‘I hope he hasn’t told you about the pittin in the fridge.’

‘No, just about that souping-up job you did on the power converters,’ Dyson cut in. ‘Maybe you could repeat it if you have time. The old lady is malfunctioning again.’

‘The old lady should have been given the final jump to a junkyard years ago,’ Rhun observed, looking at the dent at the freighter’s underside. It did not look that serious, a new paint job, probably, and she would be as good as new. The power converters would be another matter entirely, if they looked anything like Dyson had implied.

‘I’ll get round to it as soon as I have the time,’ Rhun promised, ‘but you can imagine we’ve got a lot of work here already as it is.’

‘I’ve heard it.’ Dyson’s face was serious again, and so was de Boeck’s. ‘How’s Commander Willard?’

‘I don’t know. He told the rest of the base five days ago, and he sounded like he always does. Personally, though . . .’ He sighed. ‘I’ve never known the feeling of losing my entire home world, and I hope I’ll never find out.’

‘I’ve got a couple of news he might be interested in,’ Dyson said. ‘They’re beginning to contradict themselves. I’ve heard two versions about what happened to Alderaan so far; one says they destroyed themselves, by accident, with a terrible new weapon Bail Organa was devising. Not very imaginative, and bloody unlikely.’

‘And the other?’ Rhun wanted to know.

‘Alderaan was destroyed because of a terrible virus Bail Organa was experimenting with. Then, of course, there are those who say Grand Moff Tarkin destroyed the planet because he wanted to make it clear he meant to abide by his so-called Tarkin doctrine.’

‘Which he has made amply clear, I should say,’ de Boeck murmured.

Rhun nodded. ‘But you shouldn’t talk about things like these too openly at the moment. Some of them are still classified. Especially everything about that monstrous bit of machinery that caused the whole thing.’

‘The Death Star,’ de Boeck supplied softly.

Rhun threw them both a surprised look. ‘How did you know about it?’

Dyson laughed mirthlessly. ‘If the Alliance could win the smugglers as allies or just listen in on their scuttlebutt every now and then, you’d sure give the Empire a run for its credits, kid,’ he said. ‘But well, it was a bit of luck . . . and a matter of greasing the servos of a couple of Imperial officers.’

Rhun nodded knowingly. ‘Bribing Imperial officers. You know, Captain, it’s a miracle you haven’t been dumped on Kessel yet.’

‘Won’t happen before I run out of brandy to bribe them with. Y’know, kid, these Imperial types know quality when they see it.’

‘One day you’ll run into a teetotaller, and I wish I could see it.’

Lieutenant de Boeck tapped Dyson’s shoulder. ‘Sorry to interrupt the two of you, Grant, but we have some business to attend to. Willard will want to hear some of the things we’ve just told Rhun here without permission, and I think the commander should hear about them as soon as possible.’

Dyson nodded. ‘Be around for a bite of proton torpedo in the canteen later? I won’t be around tomorrow; we’re heading off again in the morning.’

Rhun smiled. ‘Wouldn’t miss it.’

OoOoO

The prospect of dinner with Dyson had lifted Rhun’s spirits already, and that afternoon, the planet Yavin finally moved away from the sun, still looming in the sky like a predator, but at least now some late sunrays could pass the gas giant and warm up Yavin 4. Several Rebels had assembled on the top of the great stone temple, and the canteen was rather empty considering it was dinnertime for those on the base who followed a standard activity cycle.

There were several Y-wing pilots in the hall, but Samica was not among them. Rhun saw neither her nor her wing, Kaya, so it was a safe assumption that they were on a patrol together. Since the base commanders had known there was an Imperial superweapon around, patrols had been doubled, and their range had been tripled.

Rhun saw Dyson at a table near the centre of the room and steered towards him with a tray of food. The smuggler was looking at his plate, but then he greeted him with a wry smile. ‘If I’d known it was this bad, we wouldn’t have brought proton torpedoes,’ he said.

Rhun sat down with a shrug. ‘The pilots will be happy to have them,’ he said. ‘Where’s Lieutenant de Boeck?’

‘She’s gone back to go over some modification ideas with the techs.’

‘Modification ideas? Don’t you think it might be a better idea to repair the Cause before you modify her even further?’

‘Perhaps.’ Dyson looked down again.

‘What’s the matter?’ Rhun asked.

The smuggler drew a deep breath. ‘Just thinking about Atmos again. Commander Willard just told me that it was as stupid a death as you can possibly get. The Imp pilot who shot him down defected only days after that.’

Rhun shook his head. ‘He could have made up his mind a bit sooner,’ he said softly.

‘She,’ Dyson amended.

Rhun froze, staring at the freighter captain. ‘What did you just say?’

‘I know what you’re thinking, but you’d better forget about it. Yes, it was your friend Samica Trey who killed him, but she’s done with that, isn’t she?’

‘How can you say that?’ Rhun asked, aghast. ‘She—she never told me! She killed your friend, and all you’re saying is that I should forget about it?’

‘What should she have done? She didn’t know you knew him. I doubt she even knew whom she killed. Rhun, she’s probably killed dozens of Rebels before she joined herself.’

‘No, she didn’t. If she told me the truth, she’d shot down only one "enemy" ship before she deserted. She said that herself, but she never . . .’ He broke off, ducking his head quickly, and rested his forehead on his hands.

Dyson leaned over the table to pat his shoulder. ‘Rhun, you can’t change her past. I’d have to be blind to miss how much you care for her, and I’d be willing to bet you were her strongest motivation to defect, but you can’t turn her into something she never was. She’s developed remarkably for someone who has grown up with the Empire’s lies, and she’s doing her best to become a proper Rebel, but you can’t rush her into anything. And there was no way she could have known that the only Rebel she ever killed was an acquaintance of yours. If she’d known, she would have told you.’

Rhun raised his head again. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Blast, Atmos was more than just an "acquaintance"! He certainly was more to you! I can’t just go to her and say, "Y’know, Samica, you killed the man who gave me a chance and picked me up off the streets, but that doesn’t matter, because you know better now, don’t you?" ’ He drew a hand over his face and stared into his food, which was almost untouched. ‘How can you forgive her for that so easily?’

Dyson sat back with a sigh. ‘Kid, I was Atmos’ friend, and I knew him a lot better than you ever did. Stars know I wish he was still around, but he isn’t. Still, I know he knew people can change, if they’re given a chance. Do you think any of us would have let a sixteen-year-old little rascal work on our hallowed ships if we hadn’t thought he deserved a chance?’ Rhun opened his mouth, but Dyson cut him off. ‘Don’t think it’s easy, Rhun. Neither of us—nor Samica Trey—can change the fact that Atmos has ended a scratch on a TIE fighter hatch—’

‘He didn’t,’ Rhun grumbled, almost against his own will. At Dyson’s questioning look, he added, ‘She thinks it’s a barbaric custom.’

The old smuggler nodded. ‘Maybe she wouldn’t have helped you on that Star Destroyer if it hadn’t been for Atmos’ death,’ he said.

Rhun frowned. ‘That’s beyond me.’

‘Give her that chance, Rhun. I think she deserves it . . . both of you do.’

OoOoO

The blackness of space had remained unrelieved for the duration of the whole patrol, and Samica checked her chrono once more. Thirty minutes to go. Still, even if this had been another uneventful patrol, of which there had been many in her life, this had been one of the more interesting nonetheless. Nobody of them knew what exactly they were looking for, only that it was bad, and probably very, very big.

Kaya was directly behind her, scanning the area to port, while she was scanning to starboard. Both were using their focal sensor mode, by General Dodonna’s orders, to spot any incoming ship at once, even if that meant being spotted as well, which would not have been the case in a passive scanning mode. High Command had decided, however, that any hostile entering the Yavin system knew what to look for anyway, and the sooner the Rebels saw him, the better.

Samica’s chrono had counted down to twelve minutes when there was a blue dot appearing on her front screen. Her initial moment of shock soon gave way to relief when the colour registered. Blue was the designation for neutral, but generally friendly, objects. She quickly brought the ship up on her HUD, seeing it was a heavily modified YT-1300 Corellian light freighter called Millennium Falcon.

‘Millennium Falcon, this is Gold Seven. You are entering Alliance space. Report your destination and business.’

‘This is the Millennium Falcon,’ a male voice answered in a Corellian accent. ‘Our business is to get outta here as quickly as possible after we’ve been paid for this trip, right, Chewie?’ There was another sound over comm, one that made Samica flinch: Wookiee. ‘Can we talk to someone responsible around here?’

Samica was just about to make an angry reply when another voice cut in, this one female and a lot more commanding than the male one. ‘Gold Seven, this is Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan. We need landing clearance at once. Is General Dodonna on the base? Or Commander Willard?’

‘Both, ma’am,’ Samica replied without thinking. How do you address a royal princess?

‘See to it that they’re notified immediately, please, Gold Seven,’ the princess went on. ‘I’m beginning to transmit the code.’

‘Right away, ma’am. They’ll be glad to know you’re here.’ She switched to another frequency. ‘Yavin base, this is Gold Seven. Princess Leia Organa is here, on a freighter called Millennium Falcon. They request landing clearance and an audience with General Dodonna.’

‘I copy, Gold Seven.’ The ground controller switched over to an open channel. ‘Millennium Falcon, stand by. I’ll have to check that code.’

‘Yeah, but hurry up, base,’ the male voice answered, the one that had spoken first. ‘I ain’t gonna stick around when the Imperials drop by for a visit.’

‘I’ll discuss that with General Dodonna,’ the princess replied coolly. ‘Ground control, Gold Seven, I ask you to treat this as confidential. As for you, Captain, leave the talking to me, please.’

Samica watched the ship descend towards the moon, feeling the tension that had built within her for the past weeks mount to a new level of intensity. So the princess had managed to escape her homeworld’s fate, but from what she’d heard from the freighter’s captain, the Empire was likely to track them here.

Whatever was going to happen, it would happen soon.

5

The hangar was busier than Samica had ever seen it, with several military speeders carrying personnel to and from the docking bays. Samica saw the Millennium Falcon standing at the back of the hangar, near her fighter when she set it down, several people surrounding it, among them Commander Willard. She was too far away to hear anything that was being said, but she could see the relief on the commander’s face as he hugged the princess briefly. A motley array of people exited the YT-1300 freighter: a brown-haired man in his thirties with an air of indifference, closely followed by an enormous Wookiee. Both stood aside when another man came out, this one much shorter and very young looking, wearing simple civilian clothes that looked like a farmer’s. Behind him came two droids, one R2 unit and a golden protocol droid, who looked around the hangar with interest. A couple of techs came towards them, exchanged a short word with the princess, then they took the R2 unit away with them. The young man—who, on second glance, looked even younger than Samica—had gone over to Tiree’s Y-wing and examined the ship with fascination.

Kaya had climbed down from her cockpit and joined Samica at her snubfighter.

‘Have you got any idea what’s going on here?’ she asked, her voice nervous.

Samica folded her arms across her chest and leaned against her Y-wing’s landing gear, looking over at the small group around Commander Willard and Princess Leia, who were now following the techs with the R2 unit towards the interior of the temple.

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘Not yet. But I bet we’ll soon find out.’

She was surprised at how tiny the princess was. Commander Willard was not a tall man, a centimetre or two shorter than Samica, but he towered over the young woman from Alderaan. Somehow she must have thought someone with royal blood ought to be taller.

‘Come on,’ she told Kaya. ‘Let’s get back to the others. Dutch is bound to be one of the first who is given more information than the rest of us. It’s going to hit the fan pretty soon if you ask me, I want to be informed when that happens.’

OoOoO

Information was slow to trickle down to the less exalted Rebels on Yavin base, but the next day, Samica could tell it had reached Dutch, at least. He was sitting in the canteen, the dark circles under his eyes telling her that he hadn’t slept at all, and he was staring into space. She got some caf from the processor, the strongest available, and sat down next to him.

‘How about some dutchcaf?’ she asked, offering him the cup.

He raised his head to look at her wearily. ‘Is that how it’s called?’

‘At the very least, that’s what it should be called, considering I don’t know anyone else whose stomach is strong enough to bear it.’

Dutch looked into his caf. ‘Thanks, anyway, Sam.’ He raked a hand through his hair and then scratched his chin. ‘Do I really look that bad?’ he asked.

‘Do you want an honest answer or a nice one?’

‘Thought so.’ He took a deep swallow of caf, then sighed appreciatively. ‘That’s better.’

Samica looked around the canteen until she saw Rhun at the other end of the room. She hadn’t talked to him for the last five days, since he’d told her about Alderaan, and got up. ‘Excuse me, Chief,’ she said, and went over to him.

Rhun quickly looked at her as she came towards his table, then turned away, and she frowned.

‘Is anything wrong?’ she wanted to know.

He returned his eyes to her. ‘Has there ever been anything you thought you should have told me about but then didn’t?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she replied, still confused. ‘Like what?’

‘See?’ he observed sadly. ‘That’s what I meant.’

Baffled, she shook her head. ‘Rhun, I haven’t got any idea what you m—’

She was cut short by the shrill wail of the alarm, and a voice blared over the speakers, ‘All starfighter pilots report to the briefing room immediately! Repeat, to all fighter pilots! Report to the briefing room immediately!’

Everywhere in the canteen, people jumped up from their seats, and Samica cast a last distressed glance at Rhun before she hurried out.

She was already dressed in her flight suit; the base had been on alert since the previous evening, and so were most of the others when she entered the briefing theatre. The large room was already crammed to the last seat, so she stood near the side with some of the others who had not found seats, near Kaya and Jay. Dutch was standing at the front and to the side of the room, together with the Princess Leia, and Samica saw the others who had arrived aboard the Millennium Falcon in the room as well. The human pilot, Han Solo, and Chewbacca, his Wookiee co-pilot, were standing near the entrance, the young farm boy, whose name was Luke Skywalker, was sitting in the middle of the room, next to Wedge Antilles, still wearing his white civilian clothes, and the R2 unit was in front of the audience. Samica wondered what the little droid was carrying that was so important.

Conversation in the briefing room died when General Dodonna entered and stood in front of the assembly. The general was an old man in his seventies, with a white beard and white hair, wearing a long coat over his uniform tunic, which made him look more like an intellectual or an armchair historian than a military leader, but everyone in this room knew appearances were deceiving. Dodonna had been a commander back in the Clone Wars, and he still was one of the finest tacticians in the galaxy.

The general waited for the crowd to fall silent, then brought up the holo display of something round, looking like a perfect orb except for an indentation above the equatorial line of the thing. Samica felt her stomach go cold as she realised it had a diameter of one hundred and sixty kilometres.

"Gentlebeings,’ Dodonna began without preamble, ‘you are looking at the greatest battle station ever built—the Death Star.’ He waited for the subsequent murmur to die down before continuing. ‘It is on its way to this moon and will arrive here within the hour, according to our calculations. However, there is hope, thanks to Princess Leia.’ He punched a button at the display, and the image of the enormous station began to rotate. ‘The battle station is heavily shielded and carries a firepower greater than half the Starfleet. Its defences are designed around a direct large-scale assault. A small one-man fighter should be able to penetrate the outer defence.’

There was a lot of murmuring among the pilots now, and Samica saw the Corellian smuggler roll his eyes heavenward at a remark of his furry co-pilot’s, then make a dismissive gesture with his hand. Dutch voiced what everyone was thinking. ‘Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are snubfighters going to be against that?’

Dodonna nodded. ‘Well, the Empire doesn’t consider a small one-man fighter to be any threat, or they’d have a tighter defence. An analysis of the plans provided by Princess Leia has demonstrated a weakness in the battle station.’ He punched in another command, and the image began to zoom in on the equatorial line of the massive construction, ending in a trench that ran along it.

‘The approach will not be easy. You are required to manoeuvre straight down this trench and skim the surface to this point.’ The image showed a small opening in the battle station, looking ridiculously small on a craft that size.

‘The target area is only two metres wide. It’s a small thermal exhaust port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the station. The shaft is ray-shielded, so you’ll have to use proton torpedoes.’

The briefing room erupted into talking and muttering, all the pilots letting out their incredulity at such a preposterous task. ‘That’s impossible, even for a computer!’ Wedge exclaimed.

‘It’s not impossible. I used to bull’s-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They’re not much bigger than two metres.’ It was the white-clad farm boy that had spoken. Samica wondered what he was doing here in the first place; normally, only pilots were allowed into the briefing room, especially at a time like this. He sounded like any odd hotshot who thought he was a pilot because he had won a couple of skyhopper races.

Well, I decided I was going to be a pilot after I’d won a couple of skyhopper races.

General Dodonna favoured the young man with a nod. ‘Then man your ships,’ he said solemnly. ‘And may the Force be with you.’

Samica had known the term, even if she’d never heard it used before. She knew the Rebels—some of them, at least—believed in the Force, and even if she didn’t, it didn’t seem strange to hear the words. At the very least, it was the strongest ‘good luck’ she could think of, and if there was such a thing as the Force, they had never needed it as badly as they needed it now.

The pilots left the briefing theatre, most of them silent, those who weren’t only conversing in a whisper. There were almost thirty of them; the Alliance had twenty-seven snubfighters on Yavin, eleven Y-wings and sixteen X-wings. Every single ship that would fly would be joining the attack, the sixteen X-wings forming a single squadron for the occasion. Samica caught up with Jay, Tiree, and Teddie before the briefing room. Dutch was just ahead of them, as were Pops and Ryle. She saw that Dutch’s face was intent and very pale, and she felt a pang of worry. She was certain he had known about the Death Star, had known it was on its way here, and remembered he hadn’t slept last night. Half an hour ago, she’d assumed he’d been up plotting all night, together with the other leaders, but now she began to wonder whether he was just troubled. Or was it afraid?

The hangar was all bustling activity, last-minute checks being run on the starfighters, even some last-minute repairs being performed. Dutch gathered his pilots around his ship before everyone headed off for their own fighters, looking each in the eyes. ‘Make it count, people,’ he said.

Imp greeted her with a series of excited bleeps and whistles as he was tucked into the droid’s socket behind her cockpit, and she leaned over to pat him on his domed head. ‘Yeah, you too, Imp,’ she said softly as she pulled herself in.

Samica put on her helmet and gloves, then let the engines warm up and took the time to make a more thorough systems check. All the lights came up in the green, also, to her relief, the indicator lamps for the shield generators, which had been malfunctioning on her last mission. Everywhere in the hangar, she saw pilots getting into their ships, and to her surprise, the young farm boy was among them, wearing a flight suit now. He was climbing into an X-wing cockpit, Red Five, and she remembered that Jal te Gniev was in sick bay—with measles. She could almost imagine the pilot’s face, which was probably so red with anger the measles hardly stuck out anymore.

The freighter called Millennium Falcon was also getting ready for take-off, and she saw the captain and the Wookiee load crates and boxes into the ship’s hold. Commander Willard was there as well, talking to the pilot, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. Samica had heard it say that Han Solo, the captain, had only agreed to take the princess to Yavin 4 in return for a reward, and when he found out that the Rebels on Yavin weren’t exactly rich, he’d made do with some precious metals and spare parts the Alliance badly needed. Samica couldn’t understand why Willard didn’t just send the man to hell for his insolence, but General Dodonna had apparently decided he was to have his reward. A mercenary, Samica thought, disgusted. She might have turned Rebel, and had undoubtedly changed certain points of view she’d never questioned up until half a year ago, but she would never understand how somebody’s single motivational factor could be money.

Across the hangar, she saw a pilot fiercely embrace his girlfriend, the technician from Lorrd who had fixed her sensor array, and she felt a painful stab at the thought of Rhun. She almost wished he were here, wishing her good luck, even if he had no business being in the hangar in the middle of pre-battle preparations; the remembrance of their last encounter just half an hour ago was not the sort of good-bye she would have hoped for if given half a chance. But she had not been given that chance, and all she could do was banish the thoughts about him for the time being. Still, one thought she hadn’t allowed herself to follow through began to creep up to her mind: if they failed, then the Death Star would destroy Yavin 4 just as it had Alderaan, and everyone on the moon would die.

Dutch’s voice over headset interrupted her contemplation. ‘Flight control, this is Gold Leader. Ready for take-off.’

‘Hang in there, Gold Squadron. You’re second after the X-wings.’

The sleeker craft began to clear the hangar in pairs, then Gold Leader launched, Tiree as his wing, followed by Ryle and Gawky, then Pops and Hol, Jay and Teddie, then Samica and Kaya, with Nous as the last pilot to leave the hangar. They were expecting resistance not only from the battle station itself but also from its TIE fighter contingent, the size of which could only be guessed at, but had to be as enormous as everything about the monstrosity. Until the time came to make their attack run, the wing pairs would remain that way, with Nous joining Samica and Kaya, but the formation for the attack run itself was supposed to be carried out by three fighters at a time, two wingmen covering for the lead fighter. The first attempt would be led by Dutch, with Pops and Tiree as his wingmen; Gawky, Hol, and Ryle as lead were scheduled to be the next should the first attempt fail. Samica’s flight group was third in line if both went wrong. For the first time in her life, she didn’t know the numbers. The odds were as bad as they could possibly be, and not even one of the Corellians had dared to calculate their chances for success. As General Dodonna had pointed out, their only hope lay in the fact that the Empire was not prepared for such a small-scale assault and would most likely underestimate them, but it was very likely that even the X-wing pilots had to be prepared to make an attack run—if they still had the time.

A red dot appeared on Samica’s sensor screen. It was ridiculous that a battle station the size of a satellite should take up as much space on her sensors as a TIE fighter would have. Seconds later, there was a transmission from the base.

‘Standby alert. Death Star approaching. Estimated time to firing range: fifteen minutes.’

‘This is Gold Leader,’ Dutch said over comm. ‘Report in.’

‘Gold Two, standing by.’ Tiree sounded as he always did, something that, if Samica thought about it, could not be said about Dutch.

‘Gold Three, standing by.’ There was anxiety in Ryle’s voice.

‘Gold Four, ready.’ Gawky, like Tiree, didn’t betray any nervousness whatsoever.

‘Gold Five, all in the Green.’ Samica had always envied Pops’ ability to remain calm in the most desperate situations—not that she had ever seen him in a situation quite this desperate.

‘Gold Six standing by.’ Hol Okand sounded reasonably composed.

Samica keyed her comm. ‘Gold Seven standing by.’ She hoped her voice had sounded steadier than she felt.

‘Gold Eight standing by.’ She had seen Jay’s face as he climbed into his cockpit, and his tone matched the fear she’s seen there.

‘Gold Nine, ready to burn.’ Teddie might be trying to sound confident, but the slight quiver in his voice was unmistakeable.

‘Gold Ten, I’m ready.’ It surprised Samica that Kaya sounded so serene; the young woman had not said a word since the briefing room.

‘Gold Twelve standing by.’ Nous actually sounded eager to engage the enemy.

The twenty-seven Rebel starfighters headed for the Death Star, the X-wings unfolding their s-foils to form the characteristic X. The Imperial craft had exited hyperspace on the far side of the planet Yavin, so the Rebels had several more minutes to carry through their attack plan before it could clear the planet. The gas giant hung in space between the moon and the battle station, looming an ominous blood red. Still, it was several minutes before they reached the station’s outer perimeter.

Red Leader’s voice came in over comm. ‘We’re passing through their magnetic field. Hold tight!’

Samica saw the X-wings before her shudder as the fighters entered the magnetic field, and adjusted her controls in order to avoid being jerked around like that. The Y-wings stayed slightly more stable, as their stabilisers were less massive than the X-wings s-foils.

Before them, the Death Star loomed ominously against the blackness of space, and the closer they came, the more they could make out tiny projections that after a while turned out to be turrets and ledges, as well as indentations in the superstructure, which, Samica realised, were hangars.

‘Look at the size of that thing!’ came an incredulous exclamation from Wedge Antilles.

‘Cut the chatter, Red Two,’ Red Leader interrupted the Corellian. ‘Accelerate to attack speed.’

The fighters complied, and soon, the X-wings were drawing away from the slower Y-wings. It was their task to take out as many of the gun towers as they could, to clear the path for the Y-wings while the heavier craft made their attack runs. It was the usual way of operating for both kinds of pilots, one flying cover, the other doing the dirty work.

Samica could see the trench below her, still three kilometres distant, but all too close. It was ten to twenty metres wide, a tight squeeze for a Y-wing—even more so for the wider X-wing.

‘Red Leader,’ Dutch said over the common Alliance frequency, ‘this is Gold Leader.’

‘I copy, Gold Leader.’

‘We’re starting for the target shaft now,’ Dutch went on, and Samica saw him, Tiree, and Pops peel off and head for the exhaust port. It was still a good five minutes’ flight until they would reach their target.

‘We’re in position,’ Dreis answered. ‘I’m going to cut across the axis and try and draw their fire.’ Another usual way of operating for X- and Y-wing pilots; the faster ships drawing fire from the slower ones, in return for leaving the dirty work to them. As if in answer to Red Leader’s remark, the turbolaser emplacements started firing at the Rebels.

Turbolasers, as Samica had found out in practice long after she’d learned it in theory, were close to useless against anything smaller than a corvette. A lucky shot might graze a freighter, but starfighters that could manoeuvre freely were usually safe from the massive but imprecise beams.

Down in the trench, however, the situation was different. With little or no space to dodge fire from as large an emplacement as the turbolaser batteries, the Rebel ships would have to pick the guns off the Death Star surface to enable Dutch and the other two to carry through their attack run. ‘Cover me, Ten,’ she said as she brought her Y-wing down towards the surface, lasers firing at the turbolaser turrets. The X-wings were a click ahead, equally firing at the gun towers.

Kaya followed her, avoiding a green turbolaser beam streaking past her ship, and Nous followed on her tail. Samica saw the laser beam pass his ship by mere metres, and keyed her comm. ‘Watch it, Gold Twelve,’ she said. ‘These things do a hell of a lot of damage when they hit.’

‘They’ll have to hit me first,’ Nous replied, causing one turbolaser battery to blow up in a flash, skimming past return fire from the next.

‘Twelve,’ Samica replied sharply. ‘Stop this nonsense! You’re too close to that thing!’

Nous flew another close run across the Death Star surface, taking out another gun tower when a further turbolaser beam streaked by, and he swept aside so it missed his Y-wing, but Kaya couldn’t get clear in time. The beam grazed her ship, but with a turbolaser shot, grazing was enough. Her fighter positively disintegrated, its shreds sweeping over the battle station’s surface, then drifting off into space.

Samica stared at the wreckage in utter horror, then keyed her comm to scream at Nous, but she couldn’t think of anything to put her fury into words. Jaw working, she left the comm channel open for a couple of seconds, but all Nous would be able to hear was the faint crackle in the line.

‘On me, Twelve,’ she finally said, her voice toneless. This was neither the time nor the place, but Sithspit, it had been such a stupid death!

‘Copy, Seven,’ Nous replied, much sobered.

‘Three,’ she said over comm, since Ryle was now in command of Gold Squadron, with Dutch and Pops away. ‘Ten’s gone.’

‘I’ve seen it, Seven. Eight?’

‘Yes, Three,’ Jay responded promptly.

‘If both the Chief’s and my attack run go wrong, you’ll join Sam’s group for the third attempt.’

‘Copy, Three,’ Jay acknowledged, sounding distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of six fighters before him being shot down.

Ahead, the X-wings were also being attacked by turbolaser fire, clearing the path for Dutch and his two wingmen to make their run. Samica glanced at the chrono counting down to the time the Death Star would be in firing range of Yavin 4—eight minutes. And the others’ approach was so unbearably slow, the distances so vast.

The towers, it seemed, had doubled their efforts to bring down the Rebel ships, now that they had seen it was possible to bring them down, and the starfighter pilots saw themselves showered with huge green blasts from all sides. It took two to three hits of their own to take out one of the towers, and Samica wished she could have used proton torpedoes. But they were not allowed to use any of them; they would still be needed.

She and Nous were taking apart another laser turret when suddenly a huge piece of wreckage flew past, doubtlessly from one of the gun towers further ahead. Samica saw it coming and shouted a warning to Nous, then broke hard to starboard while the giant piece of metal hurled past her ship, crashing into the Death Star surface and taking another turbolaser emplacement with it. The Twi’lek pilot jerked his ship to port, but a protruding piece of slag caught his starboard stabiliser, tearing it off. His Y-wing spun towards the surface, then collided with it, erupting in a blaze of bright flame before it was over.

Shaken, Samica reported to Ryle. ‘This is Seven. Twelve is gone.’

Ryle swore. The same instant, they saw Red Six’s icon wink out as well. Samica remembered the pilot called Piggy by his squad mates, the heavy-set sabacc player, and saw her chrono indicate seven minutes. They had lost three pilots to turbolaser cannons, and it was two more minutes before Dutch would be in position to enter the trench. In just eight minutes, they had lost a tenth of their strength, and there hadn’t even been a single TIE fighter involved in the battle.

Which was not to remain that way.

‘Squad leaders,’ there was a voice from one of the controllers down at Yavin base, ‘We’ve picked up a new group of signals. Enemy fighters coming your way.’

Samica’s belly knotted. She hadn’t really dared hope the Empire would pass over the opportunity to finish them off ship to ship, but the news fighters were on their way was enough to make any pilot nervous. No doubt the ones serving aboard the Death Star would be the best the Empire could get his hand on, if the battle station came into the equation of ground bases and space stations and Star Destroyers at the top, which was to be expected.

Dutch had obviously had similar thoughts. ‘Gold Three,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to keep them off us at all costs! With luck, they don’t know what we’re going for so they don’t realise we pose a threat.’

‘Copy, Chief,’ Ryle replied.

‘Here they come,’ they heard Red Leader, and seconds later, they saw them—one squadron of TIE fighters, five peeling off to intercept the X-wings, the other seven diving towards Gold Squadron.

Samica found one that was coming after Dutch and targeted it with her lasers. He saw her the very last instant, breaking pursuit of his prey, then coming around in a large arc to concern himself with her instead. She fired at him, but he was good; the bolts went wide. While she climbed to get into a better position, she keyed her comm. ‘Get clear, Chief,’ she said. ‘I’m on him. You haven’t got any time to waste.’

‘Thanks, Sam,’ he said. ‘Five, Two, it’s rotten business, but we have to let the others do the work. Deflectors forward and aft, speed to full throttle.’

Samica saw the three of them get clear of the fighting, and to her relief, the TIE fighters seemed to think they were running, and left them alone, bothering with their comrades willing to fight – more than willing, actually. Samica managed to cripple the TIE that had followed Dutch, then she heard Hol’s voice.

‘This is Six. Help me, somebody! I can’t shake him!’

She found him on her plot, then swore as she saw his shields were down completely, his hull strength reduced to forty percent. ‘On my way, Hol,’ she replied. He was half a klick away, and she found the TIE pursuing him. He was spitting green laser fire, never ceasing, and she could see two of the bolts slamming into Hol’s ship. She got off a shot at him, missing, but it should have been enough to show him there was someone chasing him now, which should have made him break off.

Samica realised that the TIE fighter pilots aboard the Death Star were not only good, they were foolhardy. The Imperial fighter before her continued firing at Hol, and despite her laser fire scoring several glancing blows on his solar panels, he stayed doggedly behind the Y-wing. One more shot hit the Rebel ship, and Hol screamed once again, ‘Damn, why is this taking so long?’

‘Punch out!’ Samica shouted.

‘Can’t!’ he screamed back. ‘Canopy’s jammed!’

She cursed and fired at the TIE once more. It should have been so easy, picking off a TIE fighter that as itself pursuing a slower ship, but the pilot in front of her was frighteningly good, managing to evade her fire and at the same time getting off another shot at Hol.

Gold Six exploded in a fireball, and Samica bit her lip hard as she punched the fire button once more, this time destroying the Imperial fighter. She blinked away tears of frustration and glanced at her chrono. Six minutes.

Two X-wings had been destroyed along with Hol’s Y-wing, those of Red Four and Eleven. The remaining Rebel fighters had managed, at least, to buy Dutch and his formation enough time to break free and start towards the trench.

‘This is Gold Nine,’ Teddie said. ‘Nine fresh eyeballs at eleven-two-four.’

‘Copy, Nine,’ Ryle replied. ‘Red Leader, we’re going to need your help with those.’

‘Copy, Gold Three,’ Dreis said. ‘Reds, we’ll take those newcomers. Gold Squadron, finish off the old ones.’

‘Finishing off, sir,’ Ryle acknowledged, even though they were far from finishing anything off. Samica had never seen a dogfight that was as even as this. But all the while, her Imperial standard procedure-trained mind kept nagging at her: Why only nine?

Imp screamed a warning at her, and she dove by reflex, which saved her from being fried in a turbolaser bolt from below. The continuing fire from the guns in combination with the attacking TIE fighters was beginning to make life really complicated, and immediately, there was a TIE fighter on her tail to take her ship apart before she could recover from her shock. He couldn’t have known that in moments of shock, she was quite adept at letting her instincts taking over, and the green laser bolts streaked by her cockpit narrowly but harmlessly.

She skimmed the surface, trying to shake her attacker by terrain-flying, but found that she had no advantage over him there, but fired into several gun towers just before she passed them, which forced him to fly wider circles than she did and let him fall back slowly. Still, he fired at her whenever there was nothing between them, and one of his laser bolts hit the belly of her fighter. She caught the bucking Y-wing, but saw with a sinking feeling her shields were down.

‘Imp?’ she shouted back to her astromech. ‘Can you do something about them?’

He warbled an answer she didn’t have the time to read on her screen, because the attacker was still behind her, gained ground on her, and another laser blast streaked past her, blackening the rear portion of her viewport.

‘This is Gold Seven,’ she said. ‘I can’t shake him!’

‘This is Four, I’m on him, Seven,’ Gawky’s reply came back, and she allowed herself a small sigh of relief. She hadn’t forgotten what had happened to Hol . . . but she also thought Hol had not been as good as she was.

While she concentrated on dodging the Imperial’s fire, she heard Dutch’s voice over common Alliance frequency. ‘Red Leader, this is Gold Leader. We’re starting our attack run.’

You’ll do it, Samica thought fiercely. Come on, just a couple of minutes, and we can get away from here!

‘The exhaust port is marked and locked in,’ Dutch went on.

‘Computer’s locked,’ she heard Tiree. ‘Getting a signal.’

Samica cut hard to port as the TIE behind her fired a new salvo into her direction, and she was grateful that they didn’t know what was happening here. She doubted very much the Imperials were aware of the danger the Y-wings posed . . .

‘The guns . . . they’ve stopped!’ The surprise was evident from Tiree’s tone of voice, and while Samica turned around in a large arc to get closer to Gawky and rescue, she heard Pops:

‘Stabilise your rear deflectors. Watch for enemy fighters.’

Nine fighters. The last squadron had contained only nine TIE fighters.

‘They’re coming in!’ Dutch shouted. ‘Three marks at two ten.’

Samica tore her ship around as Gawky appeared in front of her and the TIE, firing, and the utterly surprised TIE pilot had no time to break in time. Gawky elegantly climbed over her and was behind her the next instant, and she nodded, although he couldn’t see that.

‘Thanks, Four,’ she said. Her shields were at thirteen percent—not something to rely on, but at least they were rebuilding. The chrono was down to four point five minutes.

‘We’ve got to get over to the trench and help them,’ Samica said over comm.

‘No good, Seven,’ Ryle answered. ‘It would take us two minutes to get there. They’ll manage alone.’

Samica brought up her tactical and froze when she saw only five dots in the trench—two green and three red. Before she could look up the missing ship, Imp screeched another warning at her, and she had the presence of mind to return fire to the TIE fighter that came towards her head-on. She saw she hit it, but he scored a hit on her snubfighter as well. Her shields flashed white and were gone, and there was a warning light winking on her console. Taking a quick look out of the viewport and seeing there was no immediate danger for her, she decided she had some seconds to get a better overview over the situation and looked at the plot. Dutch and his remaining wingman were almost in reach of the exhaust port, and the X-wings were battling the second wave successfully, as far as she could tell. Then she brought up the damage report and cursed when she saw what had been hit.

‘Three, this is Seven. My proton torpedo launcher is damaged.’

Before Ryle could answer, they all heard Dutch’s voice, still over Alliance frequency, and Samica bit down on her lower lip as she heard the panic in his voice.

‘It’s no good, I can’t manoeuvre!’

‘Stay on target,’ Pops’ voice answered, sounding as calm as if he was calming a fretting rookie pilot in a simulator run.

‘We’re too close!’

‘Stay on target!’

Samica found she was gripping her stick with such force it hurt. She had never heard Dutch like this, and a part of her mind refused to hear him like this. Their meeting that morning came to her mind, his harried look, his voice when he’d commanded them to report in, his ‘rambling’ on their first morning at Yavin.

‘Loosen up!’ she heard Dutch shout, and she felt tears sting her eyes once more. She didn’t want to hear any more of this. It couldn’t be Dutch who was panicking like this . . . it couldn’t be the Dutch she knew and admired.

The comm was silent for several agonisingly long, slow seconds, then Pops’ voice came in again. He, too, sounded as if he was going to weep.

‘Gold Five to Red Leader. Lost Tiree, lost Dutch.’

‘I copy, Gold Leader,’ Red Leader answered. Samica didn’t know if he’d actually misunderstood just who had just died in that trench, or if he was addressing Pops as Gold Leader now that Dutch was gone, but it didn’t really matter.

Pops’ voice came in again, through a hiss of static, and the sound of explosions from somewhere near, Samica thought. ‘They drop in behind you, you can’t manoeuvre in the trench. Sorry . . . it’s your baby now. So long, Dave . . .’

Then the transmission broke off together with the last green dot vanishing from the trench.

Samica forced herself to focus on her tactical, where the number of green dots had been reduced to a mere twelve.

‘Gold Three, this is Seven. You’ll have to take the next turn. My torp launcher’s out.’ She marvelled at the fact she even got the words out so matter-of-factly.

‘Seven, this is Four.’ Samica closed her eyes for a millisecond; there was only one thing this could mean. ‘Three’s gone.’

Before she could make a reply, another laser bolt streaked past her, and Imp squealed in panic as she managed to avoid it barely in time. Two TIE fighters had broken loose from the X-wings and had gone to easier prey, it seemed.

‘Need help, Seven?’ Jay asked. His Y-wing drew up beside hers, but the TIE fighter before her veered off rather than take on two Y-wings simultaneously. She and Jay gave pursuit, and Samica saw Teddie’s ship fly an arc towards them as well. Three Y-wings to one TIE fighter was approximately what High Command liked to go for when they had a choice, and it was better than most Samica had seen during her six months with the Rebel Alliance.

There were days, however, when even High Command’s preferred odds weren’t enough.

Teddie came towards the TIE fighter head-on, firing into the Imperial ship and destroying it instantly. The manoeuvre of two snubfighters sandwiching an enemy fighter between them and then evading each other was called a ‘Corellian Slip’, and normally, Jay should have dived while Teddie climbed to avoid collision with his wingman.

Jay, too, climbed.

Samica screamed out a useless cry of denial as her two friends slammed into each other, both vanishing in one and the same fireball, with absolutely no chance for either of them to punch out before it was too late. Gawky shook off his stupor before she did; her sole remaining squad mate from Gold Squadron had drawn up on the remaining TIE fighter, firing relentlessly, madly, until he caught him in one solar panel. Samica finally came to his support and her laser blast brought him down.

‘Another six eyeballs at five six, Chief,’ she heard one of the X-wing pilots. Biggs Darklighter, Samica thought.

‘Gold Leader?’ Commander Dreis asked.

‘This is Gold Seven,’ Samica replied, her voice weary. ‘Four and I are all that’s left.’ The words came automatically; she wouldn’t let herself think about them in any greater detail. It was something she wasn’t ready to face yet; if she tried, she knew she wouldn’t be of any more use.

‘Copy, Gold Seven,’ Red Leader replied. ‘Red boys, this is Red Leader. Rendezvous at mark six point one.’

Then there was another transmission from the moon below, the voice of General Dodonna. ‘Red Leader, this is Base One. Keep half of your group out of range for the next run.’

‘Copy, Base One,’ Dreis replied. ‘Luke, take Red Two and Three. Hold up there and wait for my signal to start your run.’

Samica felt a vague sense of surprise at the notion that young Skywalker was to make a third attack run if things went bad again, but it made sense, she reflected. Experience hadn’t helped the others, and neither she nor Gawky were able to make a run. Samica might have flown cover even if she had lost her torpedo launcher, but the X-wings were faster than they were and would only be slowed down by them, and speed was all that really mattered now.

Red Leader, with Red Ten and Red Twelve as his wingmen, dove towards the trench, leaving Luke Skywalker, Biggs Darklighter and Wedge Antilles as well as Lieutenant Naatayn, the pilot of Red Nine. They were all that had remained. The chrono at Samica’s console had counted down to three minutes until the Death Star came in firing range of the base.

‘Keep your eyes open for those fighters,’ Red Leader warned his wingmen.

‘There’s too much interference,’ Red Ten replied. Samica realised that, down there in the trench, the ships had to be virtually blind. ‘Red Five, can you see them from where you are?’

Samica saw Red Five’s X-wing climb a bit higher from the Death Star surface in order to get a clearer sensor image. The six TIE fighters Biggs had seen earlier where nearly in firing range of the four X-wings and two Y-wings that had stayed out of the trench for now, but they were not the ones Red Ten had been referring to.

‘No sign of any . . . Wait!’ Now she saw them as well, just as she started firing on the six newcomers, the same three TIEs that had killed Tiree, Pops, and Dutch.

‘Coming in at point three five,’ Skywalker reported, then he broke as well, dodging laser fire from two of the Imperial fighters. Samica had to admit he didn’t fly like someone who sat in an X-wing cockpit for the first time in his life. Doubtlessly the instrumentation had helped, which was very similar to the Incom T-16 skyhopper Skywalker had said he was familiar with, but she supposed he was one of the lucky ones who could claim to be natural born pilots. Hadn’t there been a pilot called Skywalker in the Clone Wars, some twenty years ago?

Samica cut left when an Imperial TIE appeared on her rear sensor screen and looked at her shield display, finding the deflectors were back at seventy percent. ‘Gawk,’ she said. ‘I’m going to draw his fire, you pluck him off me. Got that?’

‘Copy, Seven,’ Gawky replied, tucked himself behind the Imperial and fired. The enemy pilot saw him coming, but too late to do much against it; before he could go evasive, Gawky’s laser bolt had hit his suspension, and his portside solar panel caved in, sending him spinning out of control.

‘Thanks, Four,’ she said with relief in her voice. She had seen too many things today she would not have believed possible under other circumstances.

Gawky had gone on ahead, after the X-wings, who were following into the direction of Red Leader, to be able to start another attack run at a moment’s notice if it should become necessary. Samica dared hope it wouldn’t be. X-wings were more manoeuvrable than Y-wings, and, which was most important of all, they were faster. They stood a good chance of succeeding where the Y-wings hadn’t. The four remaining TIE fighters screamed after them.

‘This is Red Two,’ Wedge said. ‘We’ve got to finish them off before we get to the trench. The last thing Red Leader needs right now is more TIE fighters thrown into the balance.’

‘Right, Two,’ Nine replied. ‘Luke, Biggs, you with us?’

‘Right behind you, Nine.’ Luke had stopped using code names a few minutes ago, and Samica realised there was not much use for them at the moment anyway. If the Rebels won, there would be nothing left of the Imperials to make anything of their actual names . . . and if the Empire won, it would not matter anymore.

The TIE fighter before her was firing at Wedge’s X-wing, and it was hard to keep up with the two faster ships, but at least she didn’t have to jink as wildly as they did. For a split second, her HUD winked green, and she fired, but the TIE had already changed course again, and the bolts went wide. She stayed behind him, doggedly tracking his manoeuvres, then fired on a hunch the second her HUD winked green once more. This time, she hit, and the TIE lost speed rapidly, coming up in front of her within heartbeats. She fired again, and the ship blew up in a short, brilliant flash.

‘Thanks, Seven.’ Wedge stopped his jinking and got off a shot of his own at a TIE pursuing Luke. At the same time, they heard Red Nine: ‘I’m hit!’

Samica brought up the tactical. Red Nine had suffered damage to one stabiliser foil, and it was obvious he had trouble manoeuvring.

‘This is Gold Seven,’ she said. ‘Get clear, Nine. Not much you can do with that sort of damage.’

‘Copy, Seven,’ he acknowledged, regret in his voice, but he knew there was really nothing he could do anymore.

The comm chatter from the Death Star trench had become more urgent in the last few seconds, and just as she heard Red Ten’s panicked, ‘I can’t hold them!’, Samica realised there were only two Rebel ships left down there. The three Imperial TIE fighters maintained their exact formation, their discipline giving her the creeps. The next instant, Red Ten was also gone from her tactical display. Red Leader was still down there. He had to be at the exhaust port by now. Just a couple of seconds, and it would be done.

‘It’s away!’

Six Rebel pilots watched the Death Star with intense stares, willing to pull the proton torpedoes into the right direction by their power of will alone, and Red Nine, who was far enough away to be able to see the area, shouted, ‘It’s a hit!’

‘Negative,’ Red Leader’s voice cut in before the words could register. ‘It didn’t go in, just impacted on the surface.’

‘We’ve got to close up to him,’ Darklighter said.

It was Luke who spoke next. ‘Red Leader, we’re right above you. Turn to point . . . oh-five, we’ll cover for you.’

They began to descend towards the surface, the two remaining TIEs trailing them, when Red leader replied, ‘Stay there. I just lost my starboard engine. Get set up for your attack run.’

Luke Skywalker’s reply was cut off by a scream from the commander, then the last green dot in the trench was gone.

‘Five,’ Samica said. ‘We’re going in behind you. Maybe we can pick off those TIEs.’

‘Negative, Seven.’ Young Skywalker’s voice sounded as if he’d matured years in the last ten minutes. ‘We’ll have to rely on speed, and you won’t be able to keep up with us.’

Samica was about to protest they didn’t have to rely on speed if they had two Y-wings guarding their backs and trying to pick off those fiendishly efficient TIEs, but then her glance passed her chrono. One minute five seconds remaining.

‘Copy, Five,’ she said softly.

‘Biggs, Wedge,’ Luke said. ‘Let’s close it up. We’re going in full throttle. That ought to keep those fighters off our backs.’

‘Right with you, boss,’ was Wedge’s reply.

‘Sam,’ Gawky said. ‘Let’s finish off these piss-poor excuses for fighter pilots so at least they won’t have to worry about them.’

‘I’m your wing, Gold Four,’ she replied.

He raced after the TIEs, which, of course, were trying to tuck themselves behind Luke and the other two pilots, as soon as it became clear who was going to make the next run.

‘Four,’ Samica said grimly. ‘Put all power from deflectors to the engines, and let’s go behind them full throttle. No use otherwise.’ She suited action to words immediately, her Y-wing fighter picking up speed while her shields lost power gradually. The distance to the TIE fighters had been one point three klicks, almost out of firing range, but at least now it didn’t get larger.

‘They’re too far away,’ Gawky said, his voice distorted with fury generated by helplessness.

Then she had an idea. ‘Use your torp launcher.’

‘Sam, we were told not to. We’re supposed to keep them in case . . .’

‘Don’t be silly, Gawk! There won’t be another attack run after this! We’re lucky if they even pull this one through, which they won’t unless you torp those fighters!’

There was the slightest of pauses from Gawky, then his voice came back, resigned. ‘You’re the boss, Seven,’ he said.

‘Eyeball him,’ Samica went on. ‘Don’t use your targeting systems, or you’ll warn him off.’

She saw Gawky even out his course ahead of her, taking careful aim without targeting the ship, then a torpedo streaked away after the TIE fighters. None of the two pilots before them had apparently expected them to fire proton torpedoes, and it caught one of them by a solar panel, which was enough. The wing was ripped off the TIE, which spun and exploded seconds later.

‘Great shot, Four!’ Samica cheered. ‘Think you can do a re-run?’

Gawky tried, but this time, the TIE fighter was warned, and it was virtually impossible to get a torpedo lock on a TIE fighter when you were flying a Y-wing. At least the remaining TIE had decided it would be safer to take the attackers in his rear first before going on into the trench, which again demonstrated what sort of TIE pilots were stationed aboard the Death Star.

He came around, and Samica quickly transferred energy back to her shields. They had gone down to forty percent again, which was not enough to risk a head-on run at the Imperial fighter, so she broke out before he started firing on her. The Imp got behind her, but dived out of reach when Gawky tried to trap him from behind. These boys were not to be taken lightly.

Suddenly, they heard a transmission from Red Two.

‘I’m hit!’ Her stomach sinking, Samica saw the three TIEs were back in the trench, where Wedge now spun dangerously close to the surface before he got his fighter under control. ‘I can’t stay with you.’

‘Get clear, Wedge,’ Luke answered. ‘You can’t do any more good back there.’

‘Sorry,’ Wedge said, and Samica thought she could hear the regret in his voice. She didn’t know what she’d have felt if it had been her in that trench; whether she’d have been glad to be sent away from it or felt the same regret as Wedge when he realised there was nothing he could do for his squad mates any longer.

The TIE fighter battling her and Gawky had tried to extricate himself from the dogfight again to pursue Luke and Biggs, and she keyed her comm. ‘Wedge, there’s a TIE coming towards you from oh-eleven.’ Then she remembered something else. ‘Red Nine, do you read me?’

There was no response, and when she checked the tactical, she found he had vanished. Nine had apparently been killed by the towers at some point—the detachedness with which she figured this frightened her.

Wedge broke out when the TIE fighter came in range to fire at him, and the laser bolts from the Imperial ship missed the crippled X-wing narrowly. Still, the Corellian had the presence of mind to return fire, something the Imp had obviously not anticipated, and scored a glancing hit, enough to reduce his speed for the two Y-wing fighters to catch up with him. Samica’s shot scored another hit, and he nose-dived radically, then spinning towards the Death Star surface and out of sight.

Samica cast a nervous glance at the chrono. Thirty seconds to go before the Death Star would wipe out Yavin base. Suddenly a new fear gripped her as, for the first time, she imagined the possibility that they might destroy the battle station after it had obliterated Yavin 4. Until now, she had never given any thought to the chance of a partial success, but the prospect was nothing she wanted to think about right now.

She brought up the tactical to look at the situation in the trench, and closed her eyes for a second when she saw Red Three was no longer there. She had not been Biggs Darklighter’s friend, and there had been times when she had felt as if he considered her to be his enemy, but that had been forgotten for the duration of this attack. They all had the same goal, and his death hurt all the more because it meant Skywalker was down there alone now, and there was nothing they could do except wait . . . and maybe pray.

The chrono counted down to zero.

‘The Death Star has cleared the planet,’ they heard a voice from the Massassi base, sounding strangely calm. ‘The Death Star has cleared the planet.’ The green moon of Yavin 4 had materialised behind the gas giant, looking small and vulnerable before the Imperial battle station.

Samica watched the solitary green dot racing along the trench towards a two-metre-wide exhaust port, fervently wishing for it to complete its run in the next few seconds, despite its being followed by three red dots . . . and a blue one. Then one of the red dots winked out from her screen.

Her heart beat in her throat when she heard a yell over comm, a yell that had come from the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, which had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The next instant, the second Imperial ship vanished, and the dot that represented the third flickered a couple of times before it spun away from the trench.

Samica stared, incredulous. The smuggler had actually come back.

‘You’re all clear, kid!’ Han Solo called. ‘Now let’s blow this thing and go home!’

The seconds trickled away like hours, Samica, Gawky, and Wedge watching the battle station, spellbound, until they saw Luke’s X-wing and the YT-1300 freighter shoot out of the trench.

‘Get clear of that thing!’ she shouted, bringing her ship around, seeing Wedge follow her, Gawky lagging behind a bit, and speed away from it. Behind them, the giant Death Star shuddered.

Then it blew.

Over a cacophony of cheers from the base below and the comm chatter from the other ships around the station, it exploded in a fireball that made Samica squeeze her eyes shut despite the filters in her viewports as well as her helmet’s visor. For a few seconds, there were two suns blazing in the system, then the Death Star disintegrated into a million little shards.

Gawky was still behind her, and she heard him cheer: ‘We’ve done it, Sam, we’ve d –’

She felt the shockwave from the explosion wash over them, heard Imp let out a shrill wail, saw her shields had been fried, but that didn’t matter. They’d done it. Of the twenty-seven starfighters that had lifted off from Yavin 4 fifteen minutes ago, only two Y-wings and two X-wings were left, as well as a YT-1300 freighter, but they’d done it.

It was then that Samica realised Gawky had vanished from the plot. He hadn’t had any shields.

OoOoO

Rhun ran to the hangar, as did everyone else on the base. They had all been out on the temple roof, everyone who had had no business in the war room, watching the battle even if they had not been able to make out much. They had heard reports from the tactical centre, had listened as pilot after pilot had been reported shot down, and he had several times mentally kicked himself for the fool he had been. But even if he knew the chance Samica had survived was almost nonexistent, he still clung to the hope she’d somehow made it, mainly because it would have been so unfair. He’d denied her the opportunity even to say good-bye to him, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to face himself if she had died up there. But there was more—something inside him insisted he would somehow have known it if she’d died, and he had told himself time and time again she was good, probably better than most of the others in her squadron. He wouldn’t let himself dwell on the number of equally good pilots who he knew were dead—both squadron commanders, for instance—but as he ran for the hangar level, he forced himself to believe she had survived.

He heard snippets of conversations around him, ‘That Skywalker never flew in combat before’—‘Do you know if they also got Red Six?’—‘I knew all along that smuggler wasn’t going to sneak away like this’—‘Yeah, but he could have made up his mind a bit sooner!’—‘That should have been my kill! That—that kid just stole my X-wing and . . .’—‘Oh, put a sock in it, Jal, will you?’—‘I’ve seen them when they came in, two X-wings and one Y-wing’—‘That’ll be Gold Leader’—‘No, didn’t you hear they shot him down in the trench?’

The hangar was already filled with people, techs, ground personnel, officers, crews, even some people from sick bay. Most of them were clustering around a battered-looking X-wing, which bore the markings of Red Five, and an equally battered-looking Corellian freighter. The only one to stick out of a cheering crowd was Chewbacca the Wookiee, hugging someone clad in orange that had to be Luke Skywalker. Another X-wing was standing next to it, that of Red Two, the crowd around it almost as thick as around Skywalker’s ship, but Rhun had only eyes for the single Y-wing standing at the end of the hangar. It was scorched and blackened in several places, most of them new. Rhun couldn’t claim he knew Samica’s ship from sight—and from its bruises—but he did know her astromech droid.

Whoever had emerged from the cockpit was already surrounded by a jubilant throng, but the little R2 unit that was being removed from its socket at the back was grey and black, with a white, black-striped head.

Rhun elbowed his way through the crowd within seconds, saw Samica, and was with her in an instant, pulling her towards him in a fierce embrace. The case containing the life support control systems on her chest buried into his flesh, but he hardly noticed.

She returned the embrace, clinging to him like someone drowning, her face buried against his neck, and he could hear her sobbing. He just stayed that way for he didn’t know how long, holding her tight, stroking her sweat-matted hair, while the celebrating crowd surged on, looking for someone who was more inclined to share their exuberance. When she finally stopped sobbing, he took her face between both his hands, carefully, almost incredulously, as if he was still afraid she could vanish into thin air, and kissed her.

‘Sam,’ he whispered. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come back.’

Epilogue

Brevet Captain Samica Trey stood at the edge of the great hall, arms crossed, as she watched the Rebels assembled there. The ceremony was over, and the rest of the day would be devoted to feasting and celebrating the Alliance’s greatest victory.

Five days after the battle, she still didn’t feel like celebrating. The nightmares were still there, even if she tried not to carry them into the day. General Dodonna had talked to her to determine her state of mind, and she had found it was almost impossible to ignore the so-called survivor’s guilt that would pop up every now and then. She had known the phenomenon from reports about veterans, but she had never imagined it was something she would fall prey to. Her entire squadron dying around her within ten minutes was still something she could not really believe had happened, and the fact that she had been given a new room at the base—a single one this time, to reflect her new rank—had only augmented the feeling of surrealism that had accompanied her ever since the Battle of Yavin. She still thought she ought to be running across Pops or Teddie at every moment.

She looked over to Luke Skywalker, who was up there on the dais of the large throne room, after Princess Leia had awarded him and Han Solo medals for their bravery. It had been easier for him. She had heard after the battle that Biggs had been a childhood friend of his, but he had still only lost one friend, while the others in his squadron had been people he had only known for a couple of hours. Wedge Antilles had experienced much the same she had, and his thoughts on the matter had helped her a lot in the previous days . . . and vice versa, she supposed.

Solo was another matter entirely. She just could not bring herself to forgive him for turning up when he did, instead of fighting alongside them from the beginning; Wedge had probably had a point when he had pointed out to her, yesterday, that Solo would most likely have been killed just like all the others if he had been in the battle from the first. He would never have had the element of surprise he’d had when he came from out of nowhere, but she still was rather touchy where the Corellian was concerned.

When General Dodonna had put forward his intention to promote her to captain, she had very nearly refused. She guessed the fact that it had been only a promotion on a trial basis was not so much due to her age, but to the fact that she hadn’t acted like a senior officer in the last couple of days. She knew—she hoped—she would grow into it, but at the moment, she felt more lost than she ever had, and worst of all had been the last moments of Dutch’s life. She hadn’t realised how much of a role model he had been for her until he shocked her with his utter panic down there in that trench.

She’d told herself that she mustn’t let those seconds cloud the memory she had of him, but she supposed it would take time until she could believe it.

Someone slipped an arm around her from behind, and she smiled wryly when she turned to see Rhun. He was in Intel ground uniform for the occasion, something she hadn’t even known he possessed.

‘Thought I’d find you here,’ he said. ‘Too full of self-accusation to be happy with the others, but too dutiful to just leave.’

She felt her smile getting more sincere in spite of herself. ‘Here comes my conscience,’ she replied.

‘Oh, no thanks. I’ve got a full-time job already.’ He brushed a strand of brown hair out of her face. ‘Are you all right?’

She gently punched his shoulder. ‘Yes, I guess I’ll be.’

‘Ouch.’ He grinned as he rubbed his shoulder, then he tapped the second blue dot on her rank insignia. ‘A captain. We should be starting to worry about someone taking exception to a relationship like that.’

‘We’re not in the same department,’ she reminded him.

‘Just as well.’ He looked over into the hall. ‘Think I could persuade you to join us for half an hour or so? Wedge Antilles has asked about you.’ He cocked his head. ‘Should I worry?’

She shook her head with a smile. ‘Not about Wedge. He bet me Dodonna was going to promote me to commander, but that was a bit off, I guess.’

‘What did you bet?’

‘Just a drink.’

‘Would be a nice opportunity to make good that drink, don’t you think?’

Her face became serious again, but she nodded. ‘All right. I join you in a minute. Just go ahead. I’d like a minute on my own if you don’t mind.’

He looked into her eyes for a moment, then he nodded. ‘Okay. See you then, Sam.’ He quickly stroked the back of her neck, then went down the stairs into the great hall to rejoin the others.

Samica leaned against the wall again, the moss-covered stone cool against her back. The hall opened to the jungle, and she looked out over the tall Massassi trees, the familiar sounds of woolamanders, piiruu cats and a dozen different birds echoing over the forest.

The planet Yavin hung over it, red and huge, and she blinked as she looked up at it. She knew it was not really the place where her squad mates had died any longer; the planet’s rotation had taken the moon far beyond that place, but some wreckage bits of the Death Star continued to fall down on the moon. She had wondered if it was only pieces from the Death Star, but then, it did not really matter.

She took up her helmet she’d laid down on the steps beside her. She had worn it during the ceremony, and had not yet taken it back to her fighter. One of the deck officers had offered to paint it for her, and she had accepted his offer, since she’d finally decided on a design.

It was painted black, just like a TIE fighter helmet, but left and right of the middle ridge, the deck officer had painted the Alliance crest in gold, surrounded by eleven golden stars. She traced them with a forefinger, then tucked the helmet under her right arm and got up. Casting one final glance at the gas giant, she went back into the throne room to claim that drink Wedge owed her.