The Bacta War (22 page)

The first torpedo lanced up from the snowy landscape and smashed full into the Interceptor’s cockpit. The subsequent explosion shredded the Quadanium solar panels, sowing chaff and debris in the path of the other two TIEs. The second torpedo blasted into the left wing of its target, snapping it off, then exploded right behind the cockpit. The Interceptor just disintegrated, its scattered pieces clipping the last Interceptor.

That squint immediately heeled over in a roll and dove for the planet. Gavin tried to get a lock on it, but it fell too quickly. Slight adjustments to its course told him it was still under power, but he doubted the pilot could recover from that sharp a dive.
He’s going in
.

Gavin braced for the explosion and fireball as he came up over a little crest, but the Interceptor didn’t crash. Instead it plunged in through the base of the steam plume and into the chasm that was the heart of the Halanit colony.

No one gets away that easy
. Gavin switched back to lasers and brought the X-wing up in a lazy loop that he took over the top. The black hole in the planet’s white blanket loomed before him like the mouth of a krayt dragon. He ignored the spark of fear in his guts and evened out the power to his shields.
The people of Halanit might be defenseless, but I’m not. Now you pay for the fun you’ve had
.

Erisi spotted the two
Lambda-class
shuttles flying down. Their wings began to retract as they prepared to land near the colony’s surface entrance. She brought her Interceptor around and vectored in toward the landing site. With the flick of a switch she cut in her repulsor-lift coils and extended the Interceptor’s landing gear, even though she expected them to sink into the snow.
Nice to have a ship with the hatch on top
.

She keyed her comm unit. “Bascome, you have command of the flight. Continue to orbit but do not make another chasm run unless it is specifically requested of you.”

“As ordered, Commander.”

The first shuttle landed and disgorged two squads of stormtroopers in their cold weather gear. The stormtroopers dashed into the opening of an ice cavern the colony used as a shelter for visitors’ personal spacecraft. Red lights flashed from within, bathing the snow with the color of blood, then some black smoke slowly drifted up through the narrow opening.

Looks like they’re in
. Erisi waited for the second shuttle to land before she popped the hatch on her fighter. The cold immediately cut through her flightsuit; yet despite it, she removed her heavy helmet. The sweat in her hair froze immediately, but she ignored it. Climbing up out of the hatch, she slid down the curve of the cockpit and found the snow crust sufficiently solid to bear her weight. Leaving her blaster in the shoulder holster she wore, she strode across Halanit’s frozen face and fell in beside the black-clad Captain Ait Convarion.

The Imperial officer acknowledged her presence with a nod she felt was calculated to be mildly dismissive of her even though she towered over him. Sandwiched between stormtrooper phalanxes, they wordlessly made their way into the ice cavern and to the heat-lock beyond it. The doors had been blasted open, and the rush of warm air filled the cavern. Steam and smoke hovered in a low cloud, trapped by the cavern’s roof.

Convarion preceded her into a rough-hewn tunnel, stepping over the sprawled body of a civilian. They continued on until they reached a vista point at one end of an elevated walkway bridging both sides of the chasm. Stormtroopers held both sides of it, with the pair guarding that end bringing their blaster carbines up across their chests when Convarion appeared.

Fists planted on his hips, Convarion surveyed the damage. Screams echoed through the chasm, chased by the piercing whine of blaster fire. Red lights lit previously dark
transparisteel viewports and red laser bolts reached out to knock fleeing figures from some of the other bridges.

Convarion looked back over his shoulder at Erisi. “You were unopposed in here?”

“Yes, Captain, we were. Flying in here was not easy, but we made our passes without mishap.”

“Good. Wouldn’t want your people to get bloodied in their first engagement.” He waved his right hand around to take in the whole of the colony. “My stormtroopers will neutralize the major pockets of resistance, then your people can come down and finish things up.”

Convarion’s condescension could have been cut with a vibroblade, but Erisi chose to ignore it. “As you will, Captain Convarion. Those of us from Thyferra much appreciate your diligence in helping us prosecute those who would victimize us.”

The scream of an Interceptor diving into the chasm overrode Convarion’s reply. As it passed the bridge, a pair of red laser bolts pierced the ion-engine exhaust vector system, spraying half-melted louvers out in its backwash. The Interceptor began a roll that ended in a brilliant explosion as it hammered one of the lower walkways. The ferrocrete decking undulated out away from the impact point, crumbling with the wave front. It held for a moment or two, then, piece by piece, began to rain stone into the depths.

As terrifying as that was, it was nothing compared to the sight of the X-wing swooping through the chasm. Painted like a brutal, fearsome creature, it appeared more like a predator seeking prey than a war machine piloted by the enemy. Without being able to identify the pilot as he flashed past, Erisi knew it was one of her old squadron-mates.

And she knew the only way she would survive was to get back to her Interceptor and shoot him down.

Gavin flew past the collapsing walkway and saw a hail of laser bolts streaking past him from all angles.
Small arms fire. No real threat
. He smiled grimly, pulled back on his throttle to reverse his thrust and cut in his repulsor-lift coils. He
flipped the X-wing’s lasers over to single fire, then applied enough rudder to bring the fighter’s nose around toward his tormentors. He leveled the fighter out, killed his thrust, then let the repulsor-lift coils propel him up through the chasm.

Using his rudder pedals, he turned the ship left and right. He dropped his crosshairs on the stormtroopers shooting at him and returned their fire. Whereas their laser bolts skipped harmlessly off the X-wing’s shields, his shots proved to be anything but harmless. It wasn’t that they were sufficiently powerful to pierce a stormtrooper’s armored chestplate as much as they evaporated it, and most of the person beneath it.

Part of Gavin rebelled at the slaughter. The stormtroopers had no chance of survival facing him, but they did not break and run. They stood their ground, giving their lives for the dead creation of a dead Emperor.
They gain nothing from this. Why? Given enough time, I will kill them all
.

Gavin slowly nodded.
Right, they’re buying time. The
Corrupter
is scrambling more TIEs. If I stick around, I’m not leaving
.

He kicked his throttle in and sped up his ascent. He still sprayed knots of stormtroopers and concentrated a lot of fire on the uppermost region, trying to get the one black Imperial uniform lurking amid a squad of stormtroopers. Most of them went down, but he couldn’t tell if he got the officer or not.
Analysis of the sensor data may answer that question. I hope so
.

Realizing he had done all he could for the people of Halanit, Gavin accelerated the X-wing and launched it through the hole in the transparisteel shield. “They’ll pay, Cort, they’ll pay dearly for this.” Rolling out to port, he pointed his fighter west and began his run home.

Erisi pulled the Interceptor’s hatch shut and dropped into the pilot’s seat as the X-wing jetted up and out through the shield hole. She pulled on her helmet and strapped in, then went for an engine start.

Both refused.

Diagnostics scrolled over her primary monitor.
Reactor chambers are too cold for a start
. She punched up a directory of systems software, then worked her way down through a hierarchy of choices until she got to a list of emergency overrides. She glanced at her weapons display, then picked a program that drained the energy from her lasers into the reactor cores to warm them enough for a restart. She waited until the temperature had climbed sufficiently, then restarted the engines.

The twin ion engines roared to life and sent a gentle
thrum
through the cockpit. Erisi shunted energy back into recharging the lasers, then cut the repulsor-lift generators in, retracted the landing gear, and throttled up to head after the X-wing. Coming up and around, she dropped her Interceptor on his tail, but saw he already had ten kilometers worth of lead over her.
Even with the Interceptor’s greater speed, I won’t catch him before he escapes the atmosphere and goes to lightspeed
.

Erisi reached over and punched up a broad band frequency selection for her comm unit. “Fleeing X-wing, this is Commander Erisi Dlarit of the Thyferran Home Defense Corps. Land at once or be destroyed.”

“Erisi?”

She recognized the voice immediately. “Gavin? Listen to me. You have to stop. If you don’t, they’ll get you.”

“Don’t you mean
you’ll
get me?”

Erisi smiled. “No, the Imps will get you. Surrender to me and I can protect you from them.”

“How should I do that? Give you my override codes so I end up like Corran?” Gavin’s laughter stung her ears. “You want me, come get me.”

“I would if you weren’t so intent on running.” By shunting more energy to her engines, she could increase her speed, but her lasers would have no power to shoot Gavin when she caught him.
If I had proton torpedoes, on the other hand … Iceheart is a fool
. “I never would have thought you a coward, Gavin.”

Gavin laughed again. “A year ago, maybe even three months ago, you could have gotten me to turn back with that
taunt, but not now. I’m not nearly as stupid as you’d need, for me to engage you while
Corrupter
comes around and cuts me off.”

“Rationalize your cowardice any way you want, Gavin.” She knew she couldn’t get him to turn around, so she tried to hurt him as their ships left Halanit’s atmosphere. “Run away so you can come back later. Know you’ve doomed the people of Halanit. And know I’ll kill you when next we meet.”

“You’ll pay for what you’ve done here, Erisi.” Emotion filled Gavin’s words, pinching their tone. “For you, getting out of this alive will be impossible.”

“Impossible is what Rogues do best.”

“Yeah, but you were never really a Rogue, were you?”

Kilometers began to scroll up impossibly quickly on Erisi’s range finder as the X-wing ran up to lightspeed and entered hyperspace. Erisi watched it vanish, then pulled back on the Interceptor’s yoke and looped the fighter back toward Halanit. No, I
was never a Rogue, Gavin. I never relinquished my grip on reality
.

She smiled as the
Corrupter
came into view around the curve of the moon. “I know where the true power in the galaxy is, and I know that if you keep trying to defy the impossible, eventually you fail.
This
is your time to fail.”

20

The feeling in Corran’s gut was as cold as Wedge’s narration of the holographic imaging from Gavin’s X-wing. At various points in the presentation Winter hit keys on the datapad connected to the holoprojector. The image froze, then the computer enlarged and enhanced an image from the background.
They’re all of dead bodies—dead civilian bodies
.

Corran shivered and felt Mirax gently rub her hand along his spine. I
was there not a week before this happened. I probably talked to some of those people, ate with them, joked with them
. Corran realized that, as he had with his comrades in CorSec, he had mentally prepared himself for losing friends who were in the squadron. All of them accepted the risks of warfare and all of them had the same things at stake. Riv Shiel’s death had surprised him, but he was able to tell himself that Shiel had died well, in combat, just as he would have wanted to go.

The people of Halanit however
 … He shook his head. “They were never meant to find themselves in that situation.”

Mirax leaned heavily against him. “I know, but Isard put them there, you didn’t.”

The glow panels in the small briefing room came up, in
no way easing the severe expression on Wedge’s face. “First I want to state publicly that, in my opinion, Gavin could have done nothing more than he did at Halanit. While he has felt he somehow led the
Corrupter
to Halanit, we know that isn’t true. Halanit stopped asking anyone but us for bacta after our first run, and the tanker pilots knew where they had dropped off a supply. It was easy for Iceheart to tag them as a target—I’m fairly certain she would have found out who we had supplied no matter how we got the bacta to the worlds, but we could have made it tougher for her. The fact is that Iceheart has publicized what happened at Halanit to frighten others into paying Thyferra for the gift of bacta we made to them.”

Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. “Since Gavin’s departure, there has been no direct communication from Halanit. According to the messages Iceheart has sent out, the
Corrupter
initiated a planetary barrage that expanded upon the damage the bombers and stormtroopers had inflicted. It is my assumption that no one was left living in the colony. I’m fairly certain that after all was said and done, the place was sown with mines and other boobytraps to kill survivors or rescuers.”

Nawara Ven’s braintails twitched. “So you’re saying we’re not going to try to save any of the people there.”

Wedge shook his head, his reluctance to forgo such a mission thick in his voice. “We do not have the ships we need to help them. If even one-tenth of the individuals there survived, that would dwarf our transport capabilities. I do know the New Republic is sending some ships to Halanit, but they don’t expect to find survivors either.”

He opened his hands. “I know that’s not easy for any of you to hear. Innocent individuals have suffered because of something we did, but what we did meant they lived just that much longer. Had we not acted, that colony would have been dead weeks ago. We kept it going that much longer. We were able to lift a blanket of oppression and misery from them, and this disaster cannot devalue what we did. Iceheart made choices that raised our conflict to another level.”