Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [125]
He watched the hail of laser fire rain down through the atmosphere, and clouds of small fighters spewed from the hangar decks. Cronus observed the flurry of destruction. According to old intelligence reports, Khomm barely had token defenses. He doubted the inhabitants even remembered how to use them. They would wish differently after his fleet had finished.
“Quick and easy,” he muttered. His arm muscles tingled with weariness from his exercises, but he pushed harder, making them ache.
After watching the battle for half an hour, Cronus signaled the other ships. “Hurry up,” he said. “We have a lot of other targets on the list.”
An uneasy Dorsk 82 left the cloning facility at the end of his afternoon shift, as he always did, while Dorsk 80 remained behind to put in an extra hour of work, making up for the loss of Dorsk 81—as he always did. Predictability was comfort. On Khomm people lived by those words.
But the younger clone kept hearing the statement of Dorsk 81 echo in his mind. Changing possibilities opened up ideas he had never considered. What if, against all previous history, the Empire did decide to attack their peaceful world? But why? he wanted to ask. What would it gain them?
He knew that question would be carefully considered and settled by Kaell 116 and the political leaders. It was their job. They had no other task but to make such decisions. Young Dorsk 82 was confident in the Khomm system. It had worked perfectly for centuries. He had no cause to doubt it now.
A moment later, rivers of fire spat down from the hazy white sky, setting the identical buildings ablaze and drawing destructive fingers across the perfect gridwork of the organized city. TIE bombers roared overhead at a pitch that struck terror into the cloned pedestrians. The ships dropped proton explosives that flattened entire blocks at a time. Flames scorched skyward as fuel tanks and kindling from the ancient constructions were set ablaze.
TIE fighters screamed down from the sky, firing laser cannons and strafing the terrified aliens who poured from their buildings but knew not where to go.
Dorsk 82 fled into a narrow alley between two tall buildings. An unwise move, he supposed, with the imposing structures collapsing all around him. His mind was ablaze with shock and horror. Dorsk 81 had been right! Khomm had no plans, no defenses—and no chance.
A proton bomb exploded above the buildings like a huge slapping hand that knocked walls down. Dorsk 82 crouched near the ground, expecting the avalanche to crush him in an instant—but the flat wall slabs toppled against each other, forming a miraculous tent above him. Rock dust and fractured stones bit into his smooth skin. He supposed a bone or two was broken—a new experience for him in his gentle and predictable life—but he huddled in the unexpected darkness and waited as the screaming chaos continued around him for what seemed like an age, though he knew it must have been less than an hour.
The physical pain came to him as he tried to dig himself out from under the fallen slabs of rock. He was aching and sore, bruised and cut … but he was alive. He moved the rubble away and emerged blinking into an early afternoon dusk caused by black smoke and orange flames.
He stood completely numb. He saw but could not comprehend the magnitude of the devastation around him. The shining cloning facilities were entirely gone, turned into a jumbled mass of molten girders and shattered crystalline dust–all that remained of the broad sheetcrystal windows that had once shone so brightly in the sun. Greasy smoke drifted to the sky like an accusing finger pointing at the Imperial fleet high in orbit.
Old Dorsk 80 had been inside the cloning facility, and the younger clone stumbled with sick apathy into the rubble, looking without hope for some sign that his predecessor had survived.
This shock competed with the overwhelming consequences in his mind. The devastation of his entire world,