Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (22 page)

She was negotiating with Quartermaster Hober, attempting to requisition a set of flash-bang grenades from another ship in the flotilla, when the
Thunderstrike
’s klaxons sounded. By the time she was halfway down the corridor to her assigned shelter, the alarm had stopped—but the
Thunderstrike
was in motion, the vibrations of the deck indicating that its thrusters had come online.

She marched toward one of the central turbolifts and watched for crew members, senior Twilight staff, anyone who might know what was happening. When she spotted Von Geiz boarding the lift, medkit in hand, she slipped in behind him.

Von Geiz eyed her curiously.

“Situation?” she asked.

He bit his lip, as if debating how much to say. Brand locked her gaze on him until he relented. “Another ship has arrived, just out of battle. They lost life support—we’re taking the survivors aboard.” He tapped at a panel and the turbolift hummed alive.

Brand nodded. More ships were showing up at the rendezvous every few days. It wasn’t surprising one of them had barely made it.

Still, it paid to be cautious. When Von Geiz exited the lift and headed toward one of the upper air locks, Brand stayed at his side. She drew her sidearm from her belt—a modified DX-2 disruptor pistol banned by Alliance regulations and which she certainly wasn’t supposed to carry openly aboard the
Thunderstrike
—and ran disaster scenarios through her mind.

The deck rumbled as something latched onto the
Thunderstrike
’s hull. When Brand and Von Geiz arrived at the air lock, full security and medical teams were already present, pulling floating medical gurneys burdened with bodies into the corridor. Brand observed the wounded as they passed by: a young man with blood crusted on his chin and nose shivered and stared at her; a woman with blackened palms hissed in pain, her eyes wide; a green-skinned Rodian whose twisted neck looked broken lay still.

It took fifteen minutes for the bodies to stop arriving. There were almost twenty wounded in total, with others dead aboard the damaged ship. At a signal from the bridge, the security team sealed the air lock. The remaining medics followed the last gurneys toward the
Thunderstrike
’s medbay.

Brand remained in the corridor, observing the air lock for some time. She kept her disruptor gripped in one hand.

Something was wrong. She wasn’t sure what.

Now she had something to focus on.

PLANET HOTH

Zero Days Before Plan Kay One Zero

The preparations for evacuation went swiftly. Echo Base was built to be abandoned—its designers had known the Empire would find it eventually, just as the Empire had located Alliance bases on Yavin 4 and Dantooine. All personnel had been assigned emergency transports long ago. When the alert came down, rebel troops began loading equipment and purging data with precision instilled by a hundred drills.

An Imperial probe droid had been the rebels’ only warning. Scouts had found the machine floating through the icy wastes, broadcasting a signal to its distant masters. Whether the Empire would come in force or send additional probes first was anyone’s guess, but the base was compromised and an attack would come.

Victory would be measured in the number of survivors.

Namir was running systems checks aboard the Twilight shuttle when he heard Chalis enter behind him. “I’m scheduled to leave on the first transport,” she said as he watched diagnostics scroll on the bridge terminal. “The offer still stands—you’re welcome to join me.”

“I can’t,” Namir said. “I’m getting Howl off first.”

Howl had volunteered to help coordinate Hoth’s infantry in the event the base was besieged before evacuation was complete. That had made Namir’s decision an easy one: Whatever else was troubling him, his priority was still Twilight’s protection. Duty eclipsed all other thoughts.

“There might not be a fight,” Chalis said. “Hoth’s a long way from the nearest Imperial garrison. Besides which, Captain Evon can handle himself.”

“You really think the Empire won’t come?” Namir asked dubiously. He skimmed the diagnostics report, looked for anything labeled a warning. The rest was nonsense to him.

“I’d rather not find out. You know where to find me; if I don’t see you again, Sergeant, good luck.”

Perimeter Outpost Delta stood far to the northwest of Echo Base, a hundred meters outside the base’s energy shield and barely within comm range when the weather was clear. It consisted of a three-person laser turret, a hand-dug trench in the ice, and a handful of light artillery emplacements. It was the sort of outpost Twilight might have taken in under a minute during a well-planned raid; against anything the Empire might field, it was doomed to obliteration.

But what couldn’t be stopped could still be slowed.

Namir, Roja, and Beak stood above the trench line, bodies clustered together for heat. Two soldiers from Echo Base stood nearby, adjusting a tripod-mounted cannon, while three more enjoyed the shelter of the turret interior. Fresh snow was falling, but not enough to reduce visibility or interfere with transmissions. Namir wasn’t sure whether that counted as good luck or bad.

His earpiece crackled with static. “Fleet of Star Destroyers coming out of hyperspace,” a voice announced. “Keep your eyes peeled, Out post Delta.”

A
fleet
of Star Destroyers
? Namir had seen the massive ships before—great, wedge-shaped dreadnoughts that dwarfed the
Thunderstrike
—but never more than one at a time. He’d witnessed a single Star Destroyer bombard a city into a crater of steaming sludge; seen skyscrapers melt and stone burn. One Star Destroyer had been reason enough for Twilight to abandon a planet.

Roja looked at Namir and started asking questions. How long before the Destroyers reached Hoth? How long before the transports could take off? Namir only half listened and shook his head. Howl might know the answers, but he didn’t.

Beak saved him from responding, tapping Roja on the shoulder and pointing him south. A moment later, the sky shimmered like a mirage. Then the effect disappeared.

“Energy shield’s at full power,” Beak said. “That thing can hold against bombardment long enough. Now the Imps
have
to come down.”

A ground war, then. It was preferable to bombardment from orbit, but it wasn’t encouraging.

Namir, Roja, and Beak passed a pair of macrobinoculars among themselves, scanning the horizon beyond the white snowdrifts and watching the cloud-streaked sky. Roja saw the ships first—just black specks impossibly high above, drifting down like snowflakes. Through the macrobinoculars’ magnification, Namir saw that each vessel bore an immense, solid metal form on the underside of its hull.

“Gozanti cruisers,” Beak said, when he took the macrobinoculars back. “They’re bringing walkers.”

“You sure?” Namir asked.

“Clamped onto the undercarriage. Only thing it could be.”

“Call it in,” Namir said. Beak nodded and tapped his comlink.

Outpost Beta was the first to confirm the presence of troops on the ground. As Beak had predicted, the Empire had indeed landed walkers: All Terrain Armored Transports, four-legged giants that dwarfed the machine Namir and his squad had faced on Coyerti. That had been an AT-ST scout, devastating against infantry but vulnerable to light artillery and clever tactics. The AT-ATs had no such weaknesses.

“One of those things comes for us, it’ll stomp us flat. Doesn’t matter how much firepower we throw at it.” Roja was shaking his head, but his tone wasn’t panicked. He was stating a fact.

“Echo Base promised air support,” Namir said. “If it’s just walkers out there, we pull back. If there’s another force coming, though—”

Something flashed in the sky, too quickly for Namir to trace to a source. Laserfire, maybe, but originating from where?

A dozen meters down the trench, one of the Echo soldiers cheered. She raised a hand toward Namir and spoke into her comlink.

“That was the ion cannon,” Namir heard through the link. “Command center says the first transport is away.”

Roja grinned. “Few more of those and maybe we’ll head home ourselves, huh?”

Namir smiled slowly, stared into the sky as if he could watch the transport jump to lightspeed. “It’s better than that,” he said.

Beak started laughing. Roja appeared confused. Namir wrapped his arm around the latter man’s shoulders and pulled him tight for an instant, grinning before letting him stumble away.

“Governor Chalis was on that transport,” Namir said. “Forget Coyerti, forget the whole damn strategy conference. The woman was a curse; this is the best news we’ve had for
months.
”

Outpost Beta was the first sentry post destroyed, annihilated in half a dozen laser blasts fired from the mandible-like cannons of an Imperial walker. Namir saw flames through the macrobinoculars, red and orange against white snow. As the walker trundled forward, the ground flashed blue under its footpads—proximity mines planted by Outpost Beta personnel, utterly impotent against the walker’s mass.

It should have been horrifying—and it was, in its way. The enemy outnumbered the rebels and had a massive technological advantage. According to Roja, none of the rebel ground artillery could penetrate the walkers’ armor—at best, precise, targeted bursts might disable the machines’ weapons, but the piston-driven crush of their feet would be no less lethal to organic targets.

Yet along with the horror came a warmth inside Namir. He’d spent the last weeks without purpose, wandering a dusty mental labyrinth he hadn’t yet escaped. Hoth might be a losing battle. It might be his death. But it was a battle he knew how to fight.

The walkers were angling toward Echo Base’s main power generators. Destroying the generators would bring down the energy shield. Without the shield, the base and any unlaunched transports were vulnerable to the Star Destroyers. “Protect the generators” was the order from above and the priority of the rebel troops. Protect the generators. Hold out as long as possible. And when necessary, fall back.

Outpost Delta was on the western edge of the walkers’ projected path. There were possibilities there: If the walkers ignored the outpost’s threat, Namir’s troops might be able to flank the machines as they passed. He ran through scenarios as he watched his breath steam. Could there be chinks in the walkers’ armor, on the sides or rear or undercarriage? Could his squads act as spotters or give covering fire for the rebel air support?

“Sergeant!”

One of the Echo soldiers—the woman who’d cheered for the transports—was waving him over. He trudged through the snow to her side. “What’s going on?”

“Command says snowspeeders have engaged the walkers. No damage yet, but they’re slowing down.”

Namir nodded, glanced into the northeast and tried to make out the battle. He saw nothing except splotches of darkness on the horizon.

The woman wasn’t finished. “The bad news, sir, is that the Empire’s sent recon forces fanning out. Troops are heading this way.”

Of course.
The Empire’s commanders weren’t stupid. They wouldn’t let anyone flank the walkers if they could avoid it.

Namir wanted to call for the Delta troops to scatter—to let the turret and the trench and the artillery serve as bait while they hid and plotted an ambush. A straight-up fight against a superior force went against every instinct he had.

“Get ready, then,” he said, and swung down into the trench.

Orders were to hold out as long as possible. He intended to do precisely that.

The enemy scout force consisted of a pair of floating gunnery platforms and an AT-ST escort. Each platform carried half a dozen stormtroopers wearing armor Namir hadn’t seen before, stark white and almost invisible against the snow. They weren’t skeletons; they were ghosts. And, he suspected, better equipped for the weather than he was.

“I want the turret and artillery focused on the platforms first,” he said into his link. “They’ll want us aiming for the walker so they can ride in, off-load the troops, and overrun us. Don’t give them the chance.”

The Echo Base personnel didn’t argue. Roja and Beak crouched in the trench. Namir checked his rifle—the A280 he’d been assigned with his cold-weather uniform, the one he’d never used in combat before—and kept his eyes on the horizon.

The plan lasted less than ten seconds after the enemy came into firing range. As ordered, the turret gunners kept their weapon focused on one of the platforms even as the AT-ST charged forward, kicking up snow with its spindly metal legs. The first platform went up in a fireball, its passengers caught in the blast. But the rebel artillery missed the second platform, shots going wide by half a dozen meters. That vehicle’s stormtroopers leapt into the snow and dashed toward the outpost.

Namir, Roja, and Beak fired at the AT-ST from their separate positions in the trench. Their goal was to distract the machine’s pilot, to force the walker to retarget and give the turret a chance at a second shot. The walker was not distracted—it reared and fired on the turret, sending metal and ash and flames spattering across the ice. Namir was certain the three gunners inside died instantly, incinerated by plasma or crushed by the turret’s walls.