Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (27 page)

“They’re firing,” one of the ensigns called.

The holodisplay winked with a thousand tiny flashes as the Star Destroyer unleashed its weapons. The flares from the
Promise
seemed dull and lifeless in comparison.

The flotilla had scattered. The
Thunderstrike
hadn’t completed its repairs but it was, Brand knew, spaceworthy. And Prelate Verge was right—neither the
Thunderstrike
nor the
Promise
stood a chance against a Star Destroyer.

The right call was obvious, even without Howl or Paonu. Brand hoped the captain would forgive her.

“Get ready to jump,” she said.

“We need to get shields online,” one of the ensigns—a yellow-skinned Mirialan with a face covered in black tattoos—called back. He was leaning over his control panel, not looking at Brand.

“We jump and we take the hit,” Brand said.

She hated playing leader. She hoped the boy obeyed.

The
Thunderstrike
began to shake as the Star Destroyer’s particle rain pelted its hull. Brand ignored the shuddering and entered a set of coordinates into the navicomputer, transmitted them to
Apailana’s Promise.
She felt the deck shift as the vessel began moving.

She hoped that whatever was happening at the rebels’ secret base—whatever Howl and Chalis were up to with Alliance High Command—was worth the dispersal of the flotilla and the hijacking of the
Thunderstrike.

She wondered if she’d live to find out.

PLANET SULLUST

Zero Days After Plan Kay One Zero

SP-475 was the third stormtrooper into the docking bay. She kept her head low and her blaster steady, as she’d been trained. She followed her partner to cover behind the charging station, swept for enemies while the rest of the team poured in. She trusted her helmet display to pick out motion, to alert her to any enemy she’d missed.

“Clear!” a static-distorted voice called. The speaker’s designation blinked in her display, but it wasn’t important.
Trust the call
, 475 told herself.
Trust your colleagues—not just your equipment.

Twelve stormtroopers fanned out around a carbon-scored heap of a freighter registered as the
Keepsake.
If the Security Bureau’s information was correct, it belonged to the most wanted terrorists on Sullust.

475
hoped
the information was correct. She was ready for life in Pinyumb to return to normal.

Since the attack on the processing facility, the Empire had instituted aggressive new anti-terrorism policies. There were daily raids on the workers’ dorms and the housing blocks, strict limitations on computer network access, new security checkpoints at the tram and shuttle stations leading from city to surface. And, of course, never-ending shifts for the Stormtrooper Corps; no matter what civilians said, there were never enough troops to meet the Empire’s needs.

SP-475 had received a commendation for reporting a mysterious influx of supplies into the hands of workers. Her uncle had been taken into custody a week ago. He hadn’t been charged. He’d be free once things settled down, she was sure, but she was tired of the bitter stares from his friends when she walked home to the troopers’ dormitory.

She was doing her duty. Life was hard for the people of Pinyumb, true—but the best way to make things easier was to stop the rebels and resistance fighters who were blowing up factories and bribing innocents.

Her helmet’s comlink crackled to life again: “Two teams: Check inside. Watch yourselves.”

475’s partner nodded and led the way.

Rumor was that the rebels liked to rig their equipment with improvised explosives. 475 had heard thirdhand accounts of stormtroopers who’d lost limbs to detonite blasts, whose armor had been pierced by shrapnel sharpened by diligent rebel hands. She’d never seen a bomb outside training.

What sort of monsters are these people?
She’d read the file on Nien Nunb—rebel terror cell leader, native Sullustan, petty thief who’d embezzled from his employers before signing on with the Rebellion. But petty thieves didn’t leave soldiers drowning in blood inside their helmets. Petty thieves might
murder
when backed into a corner, but self-defense wasn’t the same as a coldly plotted massacre.

SP-475 was the second of eight stormtroopers onto the freighter. Her breath sounded too loud inside her helmet. The only light came from the docking bay.

“Night vision,” came the command from 113. 475 had never seen his face, but she’d been told he was one of the original clone commandos who’d founded the Stormtrooper Corps. His voice sounded old. “Don’t
touch
anything.”

She let her visor switch over. The night-vision enhancements left a green haze over the corridor, but it was better than nothing.

The group stalked forward and came to a three-way branch. 475 pulled up a blueprint of the freighter model—a Corellian Engineering VCX-150—on her display. More than half a dozen rooms to search. Half a dozen chances to be ambushed or to trigger a trap. She tapped her partner on the arm and took the left passage, hoping for the best.

The search went slowly, at first. They scanned each room for comm signals and power sources—anything that might be used in a bomb—before entering. When they’d barely finished the first bunk room after ten minutes, however, the order came from the garrison to speed things up. If the rebels weren’t aboard, headquarters wanted to know. Every second wasted in uncertainty was a second the foe could do more damage.

In the cargo hold, they found a chilled crate full of bacta packs sufficient to supply a hospital for a month or make a smuggler rich on the black market. Stuffed under a bunk, 475 discovered a trunk filled with enough specialized tools to dismantle a starfighter.

Similar reports came in from the others: datachips loaded with propaganda videos; fresh bandages; ration packs. No weapons. When the teams had finished sweeping their discrete sections of the ship, they gathered in the tight corridor outside the cockpit.

SP-113 was giving instructions on locking down the equipment, readying the ship for the forensic technicians, when 156 stepped away from the group, staring at a conduit access panel in the corridor. When 475 looked toward him, he shook his head briskly and indicated the wall with a gesture.

As one, the stormtroopers moved to block the corridor in both directions and leveled their rifles at the panel.

156 studied the panel—no wider than his arm span, set a meter high in the corridor wall—then finally gave it a solid strike with the butt of his rifle. The panel shifted in its frame, already unbolted. 156 reached out and pulled the metal sheet away.

In a cramped compartment made even smaller by waterfalls of tubing and wires, a brown-furred alien crouched, scrawny legs pulled to its chest and its long snout sandwiched between its knees. Wide black eyes stared out at the troopers as half a dozen rifles took aim. 475’s helmet identified the species before she could: Chadra-Fan.

The alien was trembling, but it didn’t move. 475 tried to see its hands, but they were buried behind its legs. If it was holding a weapon, she couldn’t tell.

“Where’s Nien Nunb?” 113 barked. “Where are the others?”

“Not here,” the alien said in a soft, high-pitched voice. “Somewhere in the city. Good luck finding them.” It tittered weirdly. 475 took it as a nervous laugh.

She wanted to glance behind her, as if other rebels might begin crawling out of air ducts and maintenance shafts. She kept her focus on the Chadra-Fan.

“Who are their contacts on Sullust?” 113 asked. “Who are you working with here?”

Again, the weird laughter.

“What makes you think we’re working with
anyone
?” the alien asked.

113 started to respond, but the Chadra-Fan kept talking between titters. “You’ve got them all so terrified they won’t work with us at all. Oh, they’ll take our food, but join the Rebellion?

“No, no, no. The attack on the processing facility? That was
us.
Our cell. Nobody else.”

“Get him out of there,” 113 said.

Three stormtroopers—those nearest to the panel—stepped forward. 475 stepped back, trying to establish a secondary cordon in case the alien tried to flee. She breathed slowly, forcing air in and out between her teeth. She’d been trained for this. Her comrades knew their duty. They could take a single rebel.

She nearly lost sight of the alien as the three stormtroopers closed in, but she heard its words: “Not okay. Not today.”

And then the shout, screeched in static through her comlink:

“Detonator!”

She froze a second too long. A body in white armor slammed into her, trying to push past, trying to run. The impact spun Thara halfway around and she scrambled away. She was no longer thinking about her team. She wasn’t thinking about anything.

She felt a blow on her back, felt her legs kicked from under her, and her face smacked against the front of her helmet as she was propelled forward. There was a sound, a massive crack and roar barely dulled by her armor.

For long moments, she was too stunned to move. When she looked up again, she found herself lying prone halfway down the boarding ramp. She heard nothing but a distant ringing. She felt congested and realized her nose was bleeding.

Thara—475—had survived her first rebel attack. But the ship smelled of melting plastic and burning flesh and fur, and she wondered who else had been so lucky.

PLANET CRUCIVAL

Day Four of the Battle of the Tower

Nineteen Years After the Clone Wars

The dome over the tower gleamed with oily iridescence, as if one of the offworlders’ great airships had bled out its gears onto Crucival. In the evening twilight, its glimmering outshone anything else on the horizon, and it shimmered brighter and coruscated more furiously with every energy blast that struck, every volley from the enemy. Green and yellow fire streamed in perfect lines from distant cannons, rippling the dome’s unnatural surface. Burning, crackling shells descended upon the dome with a shriek, exploding in bursts that could have leveled a hillside.

Outside the dome, for over a kilometer around the bristling steel tower, the landscape consisted of ash, twisted metal, and the bodies of the dead. Here and there, blades of yellow grass nestled against the scorched frame of a downed flier. Trenches and stone walls had collapsed. A few brave, foolish men and women crouched low on the ground, firing occasional shots toward the invaders encamped just out of sight.

The battle was lost. The young man named Hazram knew as much. More important, it had never been winnable, and he hated himself for not seeing that sooner.

He dragged himself through the dust, fingers digging into soil and feet scraping through gravel. He felt something sharp press into his chest and carefully rose no more than a hand span to avoid cutting himself on shrapnel. When he was exposed, he scampered lizardlike toward shelter. When he found himself in the remnants of a trench, he rested.

To raise one’s head meant death: incineration by one of the enemy’s beam weapons as it swept across the battlefield; murder by a sniper’s blaster shot; disintegration by one of the tower-masters’ ambulatory machines, who seemed eager to target friend and foe alike; impalement on the shards of one of those same machines as it burst apart.