Mara’s X-wing settled on its struts. “Keep the engines hot,” she ordered her astromech. “We won’t be long, and when we get back we’ll want to be in the air immediately.” She barely registered the R4’s answering whistle as she popped the canopy open and climbed out. Without a ground crew, there was no ladder available; she let herself drop until she held the edge of the canopy by her fingertips, then let go and dropped the rest of the way to the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smoke billowed from the Great Temple’s hangar. She glanced over at Skywalker’s X-wing. He was sliding to the ground as well, and he landed in a half-crouch before he rose. On his right hip, he wore a heavy blaster pistol, a Merr-Sonn knockoff of BlasTech’s popular DL-44. On his left hip hung a silvery cylinder that Mara recognized immediately as a lightsaber. Her mind flicked to the bottom of her pilot duffel in the X-wing’s storage compartment, to the cloth-wrapped\u2014no, don’t even think about that<\/em>, she interrupted herself. Instead, her hand fell to the butt of the BlasTech DL-18, worn low on her right thigh, the holster strapped on over her flightsuit. The grip was leather-wrapped and worn, but it fit her hand perfectly as she drew it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker had his own blaster in hand, lightsaber still swinging from his belt. Wordlessly, he waved for her to follow as he trotted into the Great Temple’s hangar. Mara grimaced and followed. Why did he order me to follow him in and not Sarkli?<\/em> she asked herself. A Pathfinder would have a lot of experience with this sort of fight. Or raid. Or rescue. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The hangar was empty, Mara realized when her eyes adjusted to the relative darkness. The half-disassembled Y-wing she’d observed earlier was the source of the smoke, though whether it’d been set ablaze by Imperial marauders or a Rebel technician to destroy evidence was impossible to determine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She finally caught up to him at a personnel turbolift. Skywalker glanced over his shoulder at her while waiting for the carriage to arrive. “We need to move fast. The command room where General Dodonna was coordinating was most of the way up the Temple. They’re probably pinned down on that level. Dodonna’s team should be the last people here, so the Imperials will be focused toward them, not us.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Just two of us against a few hundred stormtroopers?” Mara asked wryly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker shook his head. “No, think about it. None of their transports got near enough to drop squads close to the Temple. Every drop ship that came within a couple kilometers of the Great Temple we destroyed. We also didn’t pick up any speederbikes or troop carriers down at ground level approaching during the battle, either. I bet this is a small team that inserted days ago and hiked in. The Empire knew when they tried a large-scale assault we’d evacuate whoever was left. This was probably a special team meant to catch stragglers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara grimaced again at the logic. It tracked clean. “So, not just regular stormtroopers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “No, I’d bet it’s a commando team. Small.” He offered a smile as the turbolift opened with a quiet chime. “We hit hard and fast and we run.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n She stepped into the turbolift behind him and didn’t return the smile. “Has anyone told you your planning is terrible?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Wedge. Frequently.” Skywalker considered. “Han, too. Artoo already told me this doesn’t qualify as a plan.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mara shook her head as the turbolift rapidly ascended through the Great Temple. “Not inspiring a lot of confidence here, Commander.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n He grinned. “At least this isn’t enemy territory yet. And just remember, even if it looks crazy, I’d come for you, too.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Stupid.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Maybe, but it’s the right thing to do.” The turbolift slowed and Skywalker moved to one side of the door, blaster in hand with muzzle pointed up at the ceiling. Mara moved to mirror him before the door slid open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two Imperial commandos, dressed in green-painted camouflage-patterned scout trooper armor, were already turning toward the unexpected sound. Skywalker’s shot took one; Mara blasted the other a quarter-second later. Both fell with a clatter that Mara barely heard, because Skywalker was already in motion and she fell in beside him, not a full sprint but faster than a jog. Over her own labored breathing, Mara could hear the report of weapons – the harsh, consistent chatter of the stormtrooper-favored E-11 rifle, but also the return fire of several distinctly different models of blasters, mostly the higher-pitched screeches of blaster pistols but occasionally the heavier boom of a Rebel-favored A280 longblaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which means Dodonna’s team is still alive and fighting<\/em>. Skywalker led the way into a long corridor, and the cacophony of the firefight grew, with the blaster reports echoing down the stone passage. At the far end, another pair of the camouflaged scout troopers had taken position on either side of a doorway, but they were both turned and focused toward the connecting chamber. They were taking turns leaning into the doorway at unpredictable intervals, firing at targets Mara couldn’t see, then withdrawing back into cover. Return fire splattered against the doorframe, and a stray bolt zipped down the corridor barely above Skywalker’s head. Skywalker didn’t flinch; if anything, his pace increased, and Mara was hard-pressed to keep up with him. The closer we get<\/em>, Mara told herself, the better our shot. If we open fire here and don’t put them both down, we have no cover.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Skywalker apparently had the same idea, and he hit a full sprint – a pace Mara couldn’t match. Another wave of blasterfire splattered around and through the doorway, this time a stray bolt hitting the floor three meters in front of her. She pushed as hard as she could, preparing to stop and shoot the trooper on the right side of the doorway the moment Skywalker stopped to make his shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Except he didn’t stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He passed his blaster to his left hand and in one smooth motion as he closed the last few meters, the scout troopers’ heads both snapping around as they realized in the same breath there were enemies behind them. Even as blasters started to come up, his right hand pulled the lightsaber from his belt. The impossible-to-forget snap-hiss<\/em> of ignition echoed down the hallway, and Mara saw Skywalker swing without breaking stride – a blue-white flash of light – and both troops went down, their chestplates streaked with a smoking, orange-glowing slash. The lightsaber shut off almost as fast as it had ignited, and Skywalker was through the door with his blaster back in his right hand and firing. Mara was still ten meters behind as Skywalker ducked to the left inside the chamber, vanishing from sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Mara finally cleared the door herself, Skywalker had taken cover behind an overturned table eight meters inside – something crude built from the local Massassi trees and thankfully durable, judging by the charred and smoking surface. There were five Imperial troops still upright and firing, two of them at Skywalker and the other three at the other end of the chamber where Rebel officers were crouching behind a long, overturned stone table. Two more of the scout troopers were prone and unmoving, dead or near enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of them were looking at the late-arriving Mara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She fired twice, three times, and both the scouts who had been shooting at Skywalker went down in a flurry of sparks and acrid smoke. Skywalker rose immediately from cover and fired, sending one of the last three spinning into a boneless fall. The last two were caught in a three-way crossfire and died a few seconds later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “General Dodonna!” Skywalker called.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The white-haired and bearded Commenorian rose from his cover stiffly. “Commander Skywalker. I may need to write you up for disobeying orders, right after I give you a medal for getting us out of here.” He paused. “You have an extraction plan?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Back to the hangar, sir,” Skywalker said. “The Luminous<\/em> will pick you up. Our X-wings are waiting there.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dodonna’s eyes flickered from Skywalker to Mara, a brief puzzled look on his face before he turned back to Skywalker. “Thank you. Captain Derlin and I owe you our lives.” He gestured with his blaster pistol toward the door. “Lead the way, before more Imperial surprises arrive.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n The VCX-100 freighter had not been built for war, but a decade of service to the cause of freedom, tens of thousands of credits, and some seriously deranged mechanics had turned the Ghost<\/em> into a weapon of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Corellian Engineering Corporation had, of course, designed the diamond-shaped freighter to defend itself against pirates. The recommended factory equipment for the VCX line included a dorsal-mounted light laser cannon and an aft-docked, short-range auxiliary fighter-shuttle which provided tail-gun coverage. The Ghost<\/em> had plenty of upgrades over the years; the forward observation bubble had been equipped with a nose-mounted twin laser cannon turret, the dorsal light laser cannon replaced with heavier twin cannons, proton torpedo launchers and magazines added at the cost of cargo capacity. Her engines had been rebuilt and tuned to allow her to keep pace with Imperial starfighters, her shield generators replaced with equipment fitting for a vessel three times her size, and her sensor jamming suite earned the freighter her name, allowing her to slip through Imperial customs without detection. The original Corellian-built auxiliary shuttle had been lost on a mission years before, and she instead carried an unorthodox, heavily modified Sheathipede-class transport shuttle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And at that moment, the Ghost<\/em> needed every one of its refits, additions, and rebuilds just to stay alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Transport Shelterwind<\/em>, you’re drifting,” Hera Syndulla barked over the convoy’s shared comm channel. “Viper Squadron, we’ve got another group of TIEs coming in and two seven four mark forty. Scatter them so they can’t hit the convoy together.” She barely heard the acknowledgement from the A-wing squadron’s commander, rolling the Ghost<\/em> over the Shelterwind<\/em> to get a clean shot on a trio of TIEs angling up at the vulnerable transport’s belly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The nose gun barked, and the lead TIE fighter evaporated in a cloud of burning shrapnel. “They’re breaking off,” Sabine Wren reported, continuing to fire at one of the evading fighters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A warbling complaint echoed over the Ghost<\/em>‘s internal comm in Binary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Zeb, cover the rear!” Hera ordered. “More TIEs coming in behind for a run on the engines. Shelterwind<\/em>, get back in formation!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Roger that, Hera,” the Lasat in the dorsal turret answered, laying down fire back over the Ghost<\/em>‘s engines. The docked Sheathipede shuttle’s weapons fired, too, controlled by Chopper, the crew’s battered old C1 astromech droid. Another TIE evaporated, but the remaining pair pushed on, laying down fire on the transport, which was itself trying to maneuver back into formation with the other four Gallofree GR-75s clawing for open space, away from the Yavin IV moon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A trio of X-wings flashed past, s-foils spread wide in attack posture and cannons blasting. The TIEs evaporated, buying the formation a moment of breathing room. “Thanks, Comet Leader,” Hera breathed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We’ve got your back, General,” the squadron commander replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Twi’lek officer took advantage of the few seconds to evaluate the tactical situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Out of position and too far away for accurate targeting, a pair of Star Destroyers were keeping up harassment fire on the convoy, but they weren’t any real danger. Their inbound route to Yavin IV had clearly come on the major hyperspace route in, the same route flown by the Millennium Falcon<\/em> months ago, and the Death Star that followed. The Rebel Alliance, however, had planned carefully for the evacuation with hyperspace navigation in mind. Three cruisers, the Defiance<\/em>, the Independence<\/em>, and Hera’s own Liberty<\/em> were keeping station a mere twenty minutes away by hyperspace on different vectors, with routes held open by expensive s-thread boosters. The Empire would attempt a blockade, but evacuating Rebels could escape by temporary paths the Empire had no knowledge of. Hypercomm relays kept the three task forces and Massassi Base itself in communication, though long-range comms from the Yavin system had gone down when the Alliance evacuated the Great Temple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hera frowned as she studied the long-range sensor plots. Not all of the TIEs deploying from the Star Destroyers and their support ships were moving to engage the convoy; a surprising number were heading down to Yavin IV itself. That seems odd, unless…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n As if cued by her thought, a new voice spoke in her ear. “Two Flight, break them up as they come in,” a young man’s voice ordered. “Deny them momentum and we’ll clean up the mess. Luminous<\/em>, keep your throttle at maximum. We’ll keep up.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n That didn’t sound like any of the <\/em>Independence‘s pilots, and I know all my pilots off the <\/em>Liberty. Hera frowned and glanced at the comm board. Wait, that’s the Massassi fighter group channel. Is that…Skywalker?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n “Copy, Lead,” Wedge Antilles answered, a voice Hera knew well from the months he spent with Phoenix Group before the disaster on Atollan. “Hobbie, Puck, loosen formation. Stay within five hundred meters, don’t break off a climbing vector, but take potshots. We need time and space, not kills.” Hobbie and Puck both answered in the affirmative. Hobbie, of course, had flown with Phoenix along with Wedge in Phoenix Group. Puck was likely Puck Naeco, who had a reputation<\/em>. He’d been on Yavin IV according to some of her pilots, and she’d fielded several complaints from a squadron commander who classified Puck’s application of a high-temperature decal portraying a nerf to three X-wings as vandalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hera looked over her sensor plots again and realized, belatedly, there was one more transport coming up from Yavin IV, six X-wings flying escort. She grimaced. I thought we had everyone. And Wedge has been flying with Skywalker for months now, so that was definitely Skywalker. But why was Luke Skywalker of all people still on Yavin IV?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n “One Flight, same instructions,” Skywalker said, his voice surprisingly light given the number of TIE contacts descending on his formation. “Force them to break. If you score the kills, great, but the objective is to get General Dodonna out.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Killing them is<\/em> breaking them,” a male voice Hera didn’t recognize answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Accept that you’re not going to beat Antilles’ kill count,” a young woman’s voice answered dryly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hera’s heart stopped. “Is that Mara?!<\/em>” Sabine immediately demanded on the internal Ghost<\/em> comm. “That sounded like Mara!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “More TIEs coming in!” Zeb growled. “Hera, fly!” The dorsal guns were already thundering, forcing Hera’s attention back onto the battle at hand. Three more vics of TIEs were screaming in on the transports from three wildly different vectors. Hera glanced at the Viper and Comet formations, gauged distances, and turned the Ghost<\/em> into the path of the TIEs most distant from both fighter groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chopper warbled protests as Hera continued to maneuver, both the dorsal and nose guns firing nonstop at the TIE formation. “No, Chopper, I don’t know what Mara is doing flying with Luke Skywalker,” she said through gritted teeth. “Wedge and I are going to have a talk<\/em> about this when we get to the Liberty<\/em>.” She switched comm channels to the formation frequency. “Transports, we’re twenty seconds out from jump. As soon as you can make the jump, do it<\/em>. No waiting.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n TIE fighters flared into incandescence, but Hera barely noticed, too much of her attention focused on the X-wings and the Luminous<\/em>, now just clearing atmosphere, red and green bolts being hurled between Rebel and Imperial fighters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Mara, scissor port,” Skywalker called, removing any trace of a doubt whose voice the Ghost <\/em>crew had heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’ve got her,” the unidentified male pilot said. “Your tail’s clear, Three.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Thanks, Sarkli,” Mara said. “Lead, do you have coordinates?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Artoo’s calculating it now. We’ll send jump data to the entire group. Stay focused. Luminous<\/em>, jump as soon as you’re clear.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hera couldn’t see them with her naked eye, but she could see the evidence of their ascent – long-range fire from the Star Destroyers, inaccurate but harassing; sensor traces; the occasional explosion bright enough to look like a flickering star.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ahead of the Ghost<\/em>, transports began to flicker with pseudomotion and vanish into hyperspace. “Comet Leader, Viper Leader, get your squadrons home,” Hera ordered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Are we going back for Skywalker’s fighters?” Zeb asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hera pursed her lips for a moment. “No,” she said reluctantly. “They’ll be clear before we do anything more than cause a distraction.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Why is Mara flying with a Massassi Base squadron?” Sabine asked. “I thought she was on the Liberty<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “So did I,” Hera said softly, the old guilt welling up. “But I never actually checked. I told her weeks ago that we were moving there. I just assumed…” she shook her head. “We’ll straighten this out on the other end of this jump. Let’s go.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ghost<\/em> rolled onto the same vector the transport group had used. X-wings and A-wings were vanishing into hyperspace around them. Hera hesitated one moment longer before engaging the hyperdrive, the Ghost<\/em> vanishing like her namesake into the ethereal swirl of hyperspace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mara’s X-wing settled on its struts. “Keep the engines hot,” she ordered her astromech. “We won’t be long, and when we get back we’ll want to be in the air immediately.” She barely registered the R4’s answering whistle as she … Continue reading
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