Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars (44 page)

“We need a change in strategy,” she said, mostly to herself. Imperial
battle tactics nearly always called for concerted, simultaneous effort by all ships engaged in combat, rigidly
controlled by a central command. When the Empire had possessed the advantage in strength and numbers, those tactics had made sense. Now Ciena thought they were clinging to the rules of a game that
had ended more than a year ago.

The rebels had proved that smaller strike forces
could be effective, even deadly. They often attacked on multiple fronts at once, segmenting their forces. That approach was riskier, but there
above Jakku, it was getting results.

The
Inflictor
shuddered. Although the sensation was no more than a faint vibration beneath her chair, Ciena knew the damage was significant even before control screens lit up red.

“Explosive decompression aft
starboard!” cried an ensign. “Losing atmosphere—”

“Seal off all affected decks!” With those words, Ciena knew, she had saved her ship—but condemned hundreds if not thousands to death by suffocation.

We can’t keep fighting by the old rules. It’s futile.

Ciena went to a viewscreen and pulled up a three-dimensional view of the battle, in miniature. If she could convince Grand Moff Randd
to split up the fleet, to attack the rebel star cruisers
from multiple directions, maybe even to send one of the twenty-gun raiders into the atmosphere to support the TIE fighters battling near the planet’s surface—at the very least
they’d shake the rebels up. They desperately needed any advantage they could claim.

Would Randd even listen to her? She might be captain of a Star Destroyer,
but he was a Grand Moff, and he’d subtly made it clear that she owed her rise in rank entirely to him.…

Once again it struck her how absurd it was—how foolish, how wasteful, how
stupid
—that rank mattered more than ideas in the Imperial fleet. It angered her. It disgusted her.
She hated the Empire she served, hated the values it stood for, hated the way everyone talked about Palpatine as
though he were some virtuous martyr. She hated herself for having ever believed in
it. Mostly she hated that it was all she had left.

But then she saw the other officers scrambling around her, trying so hard to fulfill their duty and to survive. Ciena owed it to them, at least, to do her best. If she had no other task worth
the doing, she could simply try to get them home.

She began,
“Open a channel to Grand Moff Ra—”

The entire ship trembled, hard enough to knock officers’ caps from their heads and spill at least two analysts onto the floor. Ciena braced herself against the wall. “What was
that?”

“Captain, we show another hull breach, port side, on decks RR through ZZ.” The young officer’s face betrayed her confusion. She looked up at Ciena, her skin tinted red
by the
light. “But sensors reveal no sign of vacuum.”

Then the
Inflictor
shook with another impact. Another. A fourth. Each resulted in the same bizarre readings: gaps in the ship that had not resulted in vacuum. There could be only one
explanation.

Ciena’s gut dropped. Although she’d never been aboard a ship when this had happened, she had learned the signs in the academy and relived
them sometimes in her nightmares.
“We’ve been boarded.”

Boarded. In the pitch of battle, that meant only one thing:

Her ship had to die.

“Get to the control center for engine three,” Thane ordered through his comlink as he edged down a corridor already thick with smoke. “If we can take out
their last fully functioning main engine, we have a chance.”

Thane’s job was simpler
and far more critical. He had to disconnect the self-destruct systems as soon as possible. Not one Imperial officer would hesitate before ordering the mass suicide
necessary to keep a Star Destroyer out of New Republic hands.

Ahead of him, along a perpendicular corridor, he saw blaster fire; the echoes of each shot ricocheted off his eardrums with painful intensity. Through the tinny ringing
in his head, Thane could
hear other reports coming in. Contrary to Rieekan’s prediction, the crew of the
Inflictor
was putting up stiff resistance. The Imperial troops aboard this ship seemed to be more
dedicated than most of the others. Just Thane’s luck.

The blaster fire ahead cleared, and then Kendy’s head appeared around the corner. “Cleared the way for you guys. Come on, let’s go!”

Thane ran at the head of the platoon, hoping they could advance as far as the portside auxiliary bridge. If they could gain control of that, they’d be in a much better position to help the
other New Republic soldiers throughout the ship.

But even as they charged into the next section, another wave of stormtroopers met them, blasters blazing. Thane flattened himself against the wall. The
air smelled like ozone and smoke, and he
saw no way out.
What do I do?

They couldn’t get to the self-destruct systems—not like this.

Which meant that, within minutes, the
Inflictor
would explode and kill them all.

Get through this,
he told himself.
Go!

“Captain Ree, you can’t!” one of the junior ensigns protested. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. The Imperial fleet
was stealing them from the
remaining academies, even though they were still too young.

“I can and I must.” Ciena took her seat as she mentally prepared herself for what she was going to do. More gently she added, “Don’t be afraid, Ensign Perrin. We’ll
have time to get to the escape pods, and each of those is equipped with a homing device that will take it straight to the nearest Imperial
vessel.”

Perrin smiled shakily; around her, the other officers seemed to calm themselves, too. Why did regulations discourage speaking with any sense of moderation or compassion, when it sometimes did so
much good?

At least the Empire’s ruthlessness would help her after the battle. Once this was over—assuming they weren’t all in a New Republic prison camp—Ciena would be called on to
justify setting the self-destruct on a Star Destroyer, one of the most powerful and valuable ships in the Imperial Starfleet. She knew the game well enough to understand that any explanation she
gave would be found inadequate. Before Endor, it would have resulted in a long, grueling prison sentence on Kessel; now, she would either be cashiered out of the service or executed on the spot.
Ciena
found she didn’t care which.

“On my mark,” Ciena said. “Prepare for self-destruct. Initiating in ten—nine—eight—”

The
Inflictor
shuddered again. Even loathing the Empire as she did, Ciena was too much a captain not to feel a pang at the wounds to her ship.

She finished, “Three—two—one. Initiate.”

Ensign Perrin shoved down the lever that would set the self-destruct in motion. Ciena
waited for the red lights, the siren, the automated announcement sending all crew to escape pods—her
signal to seal the doors—but they never came. After the silence had lasted a moment too long, she raised herself from her chair to pull up ship schematics. Damage lights flashed in all the
wrong places, in particular one area not far from the portside auxiliary bridge.

“They targeted the
self-destruct systems,” Ciena said, almost in disbelief. “They specifically took them offline.”

Only a former Imperial officer would have known how to do that. In her head, she heard her father saying the words he’d told her once when she was only a child:
All traitors are
damned.

“Awaiting your orders, Captain,” said a lieutenant standing in the data pits. She realized every person
on the bridge—and probably throughout the ship—had no idea what to
do next.

But she did.

The knowledge dawned inside her like the most beautiful day she’d ever seen. She could do her duty, fulfill her oath, and free herself from this madness forever.

Ciena returned to her chair and hit the switch that would project her voice to all stations and to every starfighter based aboard the
Inflictor
. “All hands, abandon ship. All
starfighters, rendezvous with the next nearest Imperial vessel. All hands, abandon ship. You have ten minutes.”

Around her, the rest of the officers stared. For the only time in her command, Ciena shouted at them. “What are you waiting for? Get to the escape pods!
Go!
”

As all of them dashed out, the comms crackled and buzzed. Ciena knew who it
would be even before she heard the voice; only one person assigned to her ship would dare to question her now.

Nash yelled,
“Have you gone mad?”

“Not sure what you mean, Commander Windrider.”

“Don’t you ‘Commander Windrider’ me, not now. If the self-destruct were online, we’d have heard the automated signal. That tells me you’re planning on
destroying the ship by—some other means—”

Ciena sat back down in her black leather chair, as weary as if she hadn’t slept in years. “Just say it.”

“…you’re going to crash the
Inflictor
into the planet.”

She began punching in the coordinates that would drive her straight into Jakku’s surface. Already she could imagine the fire, the heat, the end.

Then she would have done her duty to the last and yet escaped all the ties
that bound her to the Empire, forever.

“I have to keep the
Inflictor
out of rebel hands no matter what.” Ciena tried to imagine she was talking to the boy she’d known at the academy, the boy who kept his hair
long and braided back in Alderaanian fashion and whose impish sense of humor made them all laugh. “This is the only way, Nash.”

“The hell it is. You can set the coordinates and
get out of there.”

“And leave the ship to the rebels? They’d take the bridge, change course, and fly off with their new Star Destroyer.” She leaned her head back and stared up at the metal-tiled
ceiling, so absurdly high overhead. Was the scale of the bridge meant to represent a kind of grandeur? Instead it only made the space feel empty and cold.

“Ciena, please.” She could hear Nash’s
voice break, even over the distant roar of his TIE’s engines. “At least tell me you’ll try.”

That was the last thing she wanted to do. Now that Ciena had found her way out, she felt only relief. The pain of merely existing day to day had become wholly clear to her only now that it had
lifted, and she didn’t have to bear it one hour more.

“I have to lock the doors now,” she said. “Good-bye.”

With that, she snapped off the comm connection to all TIE fighters. Never would she hear Nash’s voice again.

As she went through the procedure for the bridge doors’ security locks, Ciena thought of the other things she’d never again experience. Being with her parents. Flying a starfighter
or, better yet, a V-171 she could take up above the clouds on Jelucan. Laughing at one of Berisse’s
dirty jokes. Trying to wake Jude up in the morning and hearing her usually logical friend
whine into her pillow. Riding her muunyak along the mountain ridges. Piloting a speeder bike through Reitgen Hoops. Eating Mr. Nierre’s snow-frosting cakes. Running on the Sky Loop while
Coruscant glittered beneath her.

Being with Thane. Making love with him. Flying with him.

“Good-bye,” she repeated
softly, saying farewell to it all.

Thane froze in place the moment he heard the announcement. As the voice echoed through the corridors of the
Inflictor
, telling all hands to abandon ship, he tried to
convince himself that it couldn’t be her—

—but he could never mistake Ciena’s voice.

“We just took out the self-destruct!” Kendy shouted. She didn’t seem to have recognized the voice
over the speakers. “How are they going to blow this thing?”

He knew what Ciena would do as surely as if he’d come up with the plan himself. “She’s going to crash it.” Quickly he grabbed the comm link that connected him to Rieekan.
“We need to get everyone the hell out of here, now. If they can’t reach our troop transports, they should go for the Imperial escape pods. Lights will mark the
way.”

Kendy, like everyone else on the blast-charred auxiliary bridge, began running for the pods even before Rieekan gave the orders Thane had suggested. Yet just as she cleared the final step down
and got to the doors, she realized Thane wasn’t following suit. “What are you doing? Didn’t you hear? We’ve got less than ten minutes.”

“I’ll catch up,” he lied. “Go.” Kendy gave him a look,
but she obeyed Rieekan’s orders and ran to safety, leaving Thane alone.

Ciena was alive. She was alive, she was
there
, and he had to get to her before she killed them both.

Thane dashed for the farthest corner of the auxiliary bridge, where his dusty memories of Large Vessel Design told him he’d find a repair shaft. Sure enough, one of the metal mesh panels
pulled away, revealing a plain,
cold tunnel leading upward. He slammed his hand against the switch by the door, summoning the antigrav platform that could take him to any deck he wanted within
moments.

When it appeared, he jumped on—then reeled as he grabbed for its safety handle. Thane had never actually ridden one of those things. They were more unstable than his classes had made them
sound. A few more centimeters
and he would have slipped from the platform and plummeted several kilometers to his death.

One deep breath and then he punched in the code that would take him to the deck where he could reach the main bridge.

As he flew upward at top speed, the gusts of air yanked at his helmet until he pulled it off and let it fall. Thane tried to get a sense of how much time had elapsed. Three minutes?
Four? By now
the
Inflictor
’s engines didn’t have to do any more work; Jakku’s gravity would take care of the rest. Even now the planet was pulling the Star Destroyer down toward its
doom.

Come on,
he thought, gripping the safety handle even more tightly.
Come on!

Finally he reached the right deck, kicked in the security plate there, and emerged into a corridor. After a moment’s disorientation,
he could have smacked himself for his idiocy; of course
the main bridge wouldn’t be so easily accessible. Thane ran for the doors, then skidded to a stop as they failed to open for him.