Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 02_ Dark Apprentice - Kevin J. Anderson [119]
Daala turned to the lieutenant at the comm station. “Patch me through to Captain Mullinore.”
The image of the Basilisk’s captain appeared in front of her. The hologram wavered, but the man himself seemed completely rigid and in control, looking stoic as he met Admiral Daala’s emerald eyes. “Yes, Admiral,” he said.
“Captain, is your ship ready?” She paused, clasping her hands behind her back. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, Admiral. We have reconfigured all weapons systems to increase power to our shields. The stormtrooper crew has rigged the self-destruct mechanism into our primary hyperdrive reactors.” He paused as if gathering courage, but his close-cropped blond hair showed not a glimmer of sweat. “The Basilisk is ready whenever you give the word, Admiral.”
“Thank you, Captain. History will remember your sacrifice—I swear it.”
She turned to the rest of her crew and switched on the intraship comm system. Her clipped voice rang throughout the Gorgon. “All hands, battle stations! Prepare to begin our run. We will destroy Coruscant and strike a death blow to the heart of the Rebellion.”
Kyp Durron piloted the Sun Crusher to the core of the Cauldron Nebula, where Exar Kun had told him Admiral Daala’s fleet lay in wait.
The controls of the Sun Crusher felt cool and familiar as he sat forward in the hard, uncomfortable pilot seat, looking through the segmented viewpanels. He had helped fly the superweapon during the escape from Maw Installation with Han Solo.
During that battle they had taken out one of Daala’s Star Destroyers. Now he would use the Sun Crusher to obliterate the rest of her fleet.
Igniting an entire nebula seemed like an excessive blow to squash an Imperial insect, but Kyp appreciated the irony of destroying them with their own weapons. And it would signal to the rest of the fragmented Empire what was about to befall them as Kyp continued his purge.
The Sun Crusher’s sensor panels became useless in the ionized discharge from the knot of blue-giant stars that illuminated the Cauldron Nebula. The front viewscreens dimmed to filter out the blazing light.
Kyp stretched out with the Force, dropping his inhibitions and letting the power burst from him like compressed gas. After the effort of yanking the Sun Crusher from the core of Yavin, finding a few Star Destroyers seemed a simple exercise.
After only a moment he sensed the arrowhead-shaped silhouettes of two Imperial battleships.
He piloted the Sun Crusher toward the bloated super-giants at the heart of the nebula. The titanic blue stars were huge, and young, and ripe for destruction. On a cosmic timescale they would burn hot, but briefly, ending their lives in supernova explosions that would send shock waves through an entire region of the galaxy.
With the Sun Crusher, though, Kyp could ignite the supernovas now, rather than in a hundred thousand years.
He stared across the soothing rainbow sea of gas and thought of the splashed-color sunsets on his colony world of Deyer, the placid terraformed lakes around the peaceful raft towns where he and his brother Zeth had played. But the Empire had broken into Kyp’s home and taken him and his family away—without warning.
Years ago the Death Star had approached the quiet and pristine planet of Alderaan and had blown it to pieces with its planet-destroying superlaser—without warning.
Admiral Daala had captured Kyp and Han and Chewbacca after they had passed through the black-hole maze; but because Kyp had possessed no “worthwhile” information for her, she had sentenced him to death.
Daala deserved no warning. None at all.
Kyp increased the radiation shields on the Sun Crusher and approached the mammoth blue-giant stars, seething in their ocean of star material. He powered up the targeting display in front of him.
A recessed section of the control panel slid aside. A screen popped up, displaying a diagram of closely orbiting spheres. Seven enormous stars crowded in the middle of the nebula,