Before the Storm - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [118]
Before long, though, both of those fears paled against the fear that no one would ever know what had happened to his parents and lovers and friends. After reviewing the images captured by his combat recorder, he realized that he had to have more, and turned back.
Approaching the cities of Polneye, Mallar brought the interceptor up above the clouds just long enough to record the three marauding warships, now orbiting together. If his little fighter appeared on their defense screens at all, it was as a momentary blip among the static caused by the inversion.
Then he dipped below the clouds, and found the sky free of fighters. His holocam scanned across the ruins of seven cities, captured seven thin plumes of smoke spaced across the plains. But only seven, for Ten South was still standing, and a giant transport was ground-docked beside it.
The sight brought the first hope to Mallar’s heart since Nine South had disappeared under blaster fire. There was a chance for more than mere justice—there was a chance he could bring help in time to matter. Ducking back between the veils, he pushed both the interceptor and his ability to control it to the limit, racing for the receding horizon.
Half an hour later, on the far side of Polneye, a tiny single-seat fighter with a determined young student at the controls flung itself up from the clouds and out toward the stars.
Aboard the flagship Pride of Yevetha, Viceroy Nil Spaar personally supervised the extermination of the Kubaz colony—a particularly repulsive variety of vermin, he thought, with faces so hideously mutated that he actively took pleasure in their destruction.
Then, as Pride continued on to seize the Imperial factory farm at Pirol-5, the viceroy retired to his quarters to receive the attentions of his darna and the reports from the other elements of the fleet.
The news was uniformly good. There had been an unfortunate accident at Polneye that had left a pilot dead and the weapons master a suicide, but that was of no consequence. Everywhere the ships of the Yevetha appeared, the vermin were swept off the faces of the worlds they had soiled.
Calmly, ruthless, efficiently, the Black Fleet drew a curtain of death across the Cluster. One after another the vermin settlements fell beneath it—the Kubaz, the Brigia, the Polneye, the Morath, the Corasgh, the H’kig. The targets included colonies and species whose names and histories were unknown to those who plotted their eradication.
Full sterilizations were carried out on the two worlds to be reclaimed for the Yevetha. The colonists meant for those planets were already outbound from The Twelve in the new thrustships, which were faster than light itself. Others would soon follow.
It was the realization of a great destiny. At the end of one long day of glory, the All again belonged to the Yevetha alone.
When the last report was in hand, Nil Spaar called his broodmates to join him and his darna in celebration.
Afterward, the viceroy slept long, deep, and well.
Leia Organa Solo waited hopefully, eagerly, behind the gate for the Fleet shuttle to land at Eastport 18. The moment the shuttle’s engines were cut, she brushed past the gate supervisor’s earnest cautions and ran out onto the landing pad. When the hatch hissed open and the boarding stairs unfolded, she was already waiting at the bottom.
Han was the first to appear on the top step, wearing his lopsided grin and carrying his flight bag over one shoulder. Taking the stairs in three long strides, he tossed the flight bag down and gathered Leia up in a hug so deep and warm that it almost began to drive away the icy chill that had invaded her spirit since the collapse of the Yevethan negotiations and her humiliation by Peramis and Nil Spaar. She hid her tears against his chest.
“It’s gonna be all right,” Han murmured