About the Author
----------------
Michael Reaves received an Emmy Award for his work on the
Batman animated television series. He has worked for DreamWorks,
among other studios, and has written fantasy novels and
supernatural thrillers. Reaves is The New York Times bestselling
author of Star Wars: Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, as well as the
co-writer (with Steve Perry) of the two Star Wars: MedStar
novels, Battle Surgeons and Jedi Healer. He lives in the Los
Angeles area.
Steve Perry wrote for Batman: The Animated Series during its
first Emmy Award—winning season, authored the New York Times
bestseller Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, and wrote the
bestselling novelization of the summer blockbuster movie Men in
Black. Perry has sold dozens of stories to magazines and
anthologies, and has published a considerable number of novels,
animated teleplays, nonfiction articles, reviews, and essays. He
is currently the science fiction, fantasy, and horror book
reviewer for The Oregonian.
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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FLIGHT DECK, IMPERIAL-CLASS STAR DESTROYER STEEL TALON,
POLAR ORBIT, PLANET DESPAYRE, HORUZ SYSTEM, ATRIVIS SECTOR, OUTER
RIM TERRITORIES
The alert siren screamed, a piercing wail that couldn't be
ignored by any being on board with ears and a pulse. It had one
thing to say, and it said it loud and clear:
Scramble!
Lieutenant Commander Villian "Vil" Dance came out of a deep
at the blaring alarm, sat up, and leapt from his rack to the
expanded metal deck of the Ready Room quarters. Save for the
helmet, he already wore his space suit, one of the first things
an on-call TIE pilot learned to do was in full battle gear.
He ran for the door, half a step ahead of the next pilot to
awaken. He grabbed his headgear, darted into the hall and turned
to the right, then sprinted for the launching bay.
It could be a drill; there had been plenty of those lately to
keep the pilots on their toes. But maybe this time it wasn't. One
could always hope.
Vil ran into the assembly area. A-grav on the flight deck was
kept at slightly below one g, so that the pilots, all of whom
were human or humanoid, could move a little faster and get to
their stations a little sooner. The smell of launch lube was
acrid in the cold air, and the pulsing lights painted the area in
bright, primary flashes. Techs scrambled, getting the TIE
fighters to final-set for takeoff, while pilots ran toward the
craft. Vil noticed that it was just his squad being scrambled.
Must not be a big problem, whatever it was.
Command always said it didn't matter which unit you got. TIE
fighters were all the same, down to the last nut and bolt, but
even so, every pilot had his or her favorite ship. You weren't
supposed to personalize them, of course, but there were ways to
tell--a scratch here, a scuff mark there . . . after a while, you
got to where you knew which fighter was which. And no matter what
Command said, some were better than others--a little faster, a
little tighter in the turns, the laser cannons a hair quicker to
fire when you touched the stud. Vil happened to know that his
assigned ship this rotation was Black-11, one of his favorites.
Maybe it was pure superstition, but he breathed just a little
easier, knowing that particular craft had his name on it this
time around.
The command officer on deck, Captain Rax Exeter, waved Vil over.
"Cap, what's up? Another drill?"
"Negative, Lieutenant. A group of prisoners somehow managed to
take over one of the new Lambda-class shuttles. They're trying to
get far enough away to make the jump to hyperspace. That isn't
going to happen on my watch. The ID codes and tracking will be in
your fighter's computer. Don't let 'em get away, son."
"No, sir. What about the crew?" Vil knew the new shuttles carried
only a pilot and copilot.
"Assumed dead. These are bad guys doing this, Dance--traitors and
murderers. That's reason enough to cook them, but we do not want
them getting away to tell anybody what the Empire is doing out
here, do we?"
"No, sir!"
"Go, Lieutenant, go!"
Vil nodded, not bothering to salute, then turned and ran. As he
did, he put his helmet on and locked it into place. The hiss of
air into his face was metallic and cool as the suit's system went
online. It felt very comforting. The vac suit's
extreme-temp-resistant weave of durasteel and plastoid, along
with the polarizing densecris helmet, were the only things that
would protect him from hard vacuum. Suit failure could make a
strong man lose consciousness in under ten seconds, and die in
under a minute. He'd seen it happen.
TIE fighters, in order to save mass, had no defensive shield
generators, no hyperdrive capability, and no emergency
life-support systems. They were thus fragile, but fast, and that
was fine with Vil. He'd rather dodge enemy fire than hope it
would bounce off. There was no skill in piloting some lumbering
chunk of durasteel; might as well be sitting with your feet up at
a turbolaser console back on the ship. Where was the fun in that?
The TIE tech had the hatch up on Black-11 as Vil arrived at the
gantry above the ship. It was the work of an instant to clamber
down and into the fighter's snug cockpit.
The hatch came down and hissed shut. Vil touched the power-up
stud, and the inside of the TIE--named for the twin ion engines
that drove it--lit up. He scanned the controls with a quick and
experienced eye. All systems were green.
The tech raised his hand in question. Vil waved back. "Go!"
"Copy that, ST-One-One. Prepare for insertion."
Vil felt his lips twitch in annoyance. The Empire was determined
to erase all signs of individuality in its pilots, on the absurd
theory that nameless, faceless operators were somehow more
effective. Thus the classification numbers, the anonymous flight
suits and helmets, and the random rotation of spacecraft. The
standardizing approach had worked reasonably well in the Clone
Wars, but there was one important difference here: neither Vil
nor any other TIE pilot that he knew of was a clone. None of the
members of Alpha Squad had any intention of being reduced to
automata. If that was what the Empire really wanted, let them use
droid pilots and see how well that worked.
His musing was interrupted by the small jolt of the cycling rack
below the gantry kicking on. Vil's ship began to move toward the
launching bay door. He saw the tech slip his own helmet on and
lock it down.
Already the bay pumps were working full blast, depressurizing the
area. By the time the launch doors were open, the air would be
cycled. Vil took a deep breath, readying himself for the heavy
hand of g-force that would push him back into the seat when the
engines hurled him forward.
Launch Control's voice crackled in his headphones. "Alpha Squad
Leader, stand by for launch."
"Copy," Vil said. The launch doors pulled back with tantalizing
slowness, the hydraulic thrum of their movement made audible by
conduction through the floor and Black-11's frame.
"You are go for launch in five, four, three, two . . . go!"
Outside the confines of the Star Destroyer, the vastness of space
enveloped Lieutenant Vil Dance as the ion engines pushed the TIE
past the last stray wisps of frozen air and into the infinite
dark. He grinned. He always did. He couldn't help it.
Back where I belong . . .
The flat blackness of space surrounded him. Behind him, he knew,
the Steel Talon was seemingly shrinking as they pulled away from
it. "Down" and to port was the curvature of the prison planet.
Though they were in polar orbit, Despayre's axial tilt showed
more of the night side than day. The dark hemisphere was mostly
unrelieved blackness, with a few lonely lights here and there.
Vil flicked his comm--though it came on automatically at launch,
a good pilot always toggled it, just to be sure. "Alpha Squad,
pyramid formation on me as soon as you are clear," he said. "Go
to channel five, that's tac-fiver, and log in."
Vil switched his own comm channel to five. It was a lower-powered
band with a shorter range, but that was the point--you didn't
want the enemy overhearing you. And in some cases, it wasn't a
good idea for the comm officer monitoring you back on the base
ship to be privy to conversations, either. They tended to be a
bit more informal than the Empire liked.
There came a chorus of "Copy, Alpha Leader!" from the other
eleven pilots in his squad as they switched over to the new
channel.
It took only a few seconds for the last fighter to launch, and
only a few more for the squad to form behind Vil.
"What's the drill, Vil?" That from Benjo, aka ST-1-2, his second
in command and right panelman.
"Alpha Squadron, we have a Lambda-class shuttle captured by
prisoners. They are running for hyper. Either they give up and
come back, or we dust 'em."
"Lambda-class? That's one of the new ones, right? They have any
s?"
Vil sighed. That was Raar Anyell, a Corellian like Vil himself,
but not somebody you'd want to hold up as a prime example of the
human species. "Don't you bother to read the boards at all,
Anyell?"
"I was just about to do that, sir, when the alarm went off. Was
looking right at 'em. Had the latest notices right in my hand.
Sir."
The other pilots laughed, and even Vil had to grin. Anyell was a
foul-up everywhere except in the cockpit, but he was a good
enough pilot that Vil was willing to give him some slice.
His sensor screen pinged, giving him an image of their quarry. He
altered course to intercept.
"Anybody else behind on his homework, listen up," he said. "The
Lambda-class shuttle is twenty meters long, has a top speed of
fourteen hundred g, a Class-One hyperdrive, and can carry twenty
troops in full battle gear--probably a couple more convicts in
civvies.
"The ship carries three double-blaster cannons and two
double-laser cannons. It can't accelerate worth a wheep and it
turns slower than a comet, but if you get in its s, it can
blow you to itty-bitty pieces. It would be embarrassing to have
to inform your family you got apart by a shuttle, so stay
alert."
There came another chorus of acknowledgments:
"Copy, sir."
"Yes, sir!"
"No sweat."
"Anyell, I didn't hear your response."
"Oh, sorry, sir, I was taking a little nap. What was the
question?"
Before the squad commander could reply, the shuttle suddenly
loomed ahead. It was running as silently as possible, with no
lights, but as its orbit brought it across the terminator and out
of Despayre's night side, the sunlight struck rays from its hull.
"There is our target, four kilometers dead ahead. I want a fast
flyby so they can see us, and then I want a fountain pattern
dispersal and loop, two klicks minimum distance and bracket, one,
four, four, and two, you know who you are. I'll move in close and
have a word with whoever they have flying the stolen spacecraft."
Benjo: "Aw, Lieutenant, come on, let us have a , too."
"Negative. If you had a clue about the vessel, I might, but since
you're just as likely to shoot each other as the quarry, you'll
hold the bracket."
More acknowledgments, but without much enthusiasm. He couldn't
blame his squad--they hadn't had any action except drills since
they'd been assigned to this project--but his secondary goal was
to bring all his men back alive. The primary, of course, was to
accomplish their mission. He didn't need a squad for this; any
fighter pilot worth his spit should be able to deal with a
lumbering shuttle, even one with the new-vehicle smell still in
it. The Lambda's delta vee wasn't all that efficient, but with
constant drive it could get above the solar plane and far enough
out of the planet's gravity well to engage its hyperdrive fairly
soon--and once it was in the chute, they'd never find it.
But that wasn't going to happen.
The pyramid-shaped formation zipped past the fleeing shuttle,
close enough for Vil to see the pilot sitting in the command
seat. He didn't look surprised, of course--he would have seen
them coming on the sensors. But he couldn't outrun them, couldn't
dodge, and no way could he take out a full squad of TIE fighters
even if he was the best ner who'd ever lived, not in that
boat. And anyway, Vil wasn't going to give him the rtunity to
try.
The squad flowered into the dispersal maneuver as ordered,
looping out and away to their assigned positions, angled pressor
beams in their arrays providing maneuverability. Vil pulled a
high-g tight turn and came around to parallel the shuttle a few
hundred meters away, slightly above it. He watched the wing
turrets closely. As soon as they started to track him, he jinked
to port, then to starboard, slowed, then sped up. They tried to
keep up with him, but they were a hair too slow.
Vil toggled to a wide-band channel. They'd hear this back in the
Destroyer, he knew.
"Attention, shuttle RLH-One. Turn the craft around and proceed
immediately to Star Destroyer Steel Talon's tractor beam range."
There was no answer; nothing but the slight hiss of the carrier.
"Shuttle craft, do you copy my transmission?"
Another pause. Then: "Yeah, we hear you, rocketjock. We aren't of
a mind to do that."
Vil looked at his control panel. They were two minutes away from
Minimum Safe Distance--the point far enough from Despayre where
they could safely attempt the jump to lightspeed. Jump too close
to a planet's gravity well and the shift would tear the vessel
apart. If the guy he was talking to had enough skill to fly the
shuttle, he'd know that. His control panel would tell him when he
reached MSD, and then it would be over. Lieutenant Dance would
have failed a mission, for the first time.
Never happen, he thought. "Turn it around, or we will fire," he
said.
"You'd do that? Just blow us apart? Essentially murder fifteen
men--and two women? One of them is old enough to be your granny.
You can live with that?"
He was stalling for time, Vil knew. The beings on that shuttle
were bad enough to have been sent to the galaxy's number one
prison planet, and the Imperial courts didn't bother to do that
with petty thieves or traffic violators. His granny hadn't robbed
any banks or killed anybody. Not that he knew of, anyway.
"Shuttle pilot, I say again--"
Vil saw the port turret on the shuttle open up. He cut across the
craft's flight path, angling away aft as the starboard began
firing. He hit his thrusters full, coming up in a half loop and
twist away from the incoming laserfire.
Even a good ner couldn't have spiked him at this angle, and
these guys weren't anywhere close to good enough. Still, the
pulsed incandescent beams came close.
"Lieutenant--!" That from Benjo.
"Hold your position, Alpha Squad, there's no problem here." Cool
and calm. Like discussing what they might be having for dinner.
He zipped Black-11 out of range.
The clock was running down. Less than a minute to MSD.
"Last chance, shuttle. Turn it around. Now."
In answer, the pilot pulled the shuttle topward so his ners
could get a better angle. They started shooting again.
The s were wild, but there was always a chance a stray beam
could hit you, even by accident.
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