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“Not your service number, your name!”

The young man paused for a long time, as if pawing through rusty, unused memories until he came out with a word that sounded more like a question than an answer.

“Zeth? Zeth Dur … Durron.”

Kyp didn’t need to hear him speak his name, though. He remembered the tanned, wiry boy who swam in the lakes of Deyer, who could catch fish with a small hand net.

“Zeth,” he whispered. “I’m coming.”

The comm officer waved his hands. “You can’t make it in time,” he said. “You must stop the Sun Crusher torpedo. Reverse the chain reaction. That’s our only hope.”

“I can’t stop it!” Kyp answered. “Nothing can stop it.”

Dauren screamed, “If you don’t, we’re all going to die!”

“Then you’re going to die,” Kyp said. “You all deserve it. Except for Zeth. I’m going to come for him.”

He plowed like thunder through the high atmosphere of Carida. Heated air pearled off the sides of the superweapon as a shock front pushed a shield in front of him. Sonic booms rippled behind him.

The planet surface approached with gut-wrenching speed. Kyp soared over a cracked, blasted wasteland with craggy red rocks and fractured canyons. Out in the flat desert he saw geometric shapes, tracks of precise roads laid down by the Imperial corps of engineers.

The Sun Crusher shot like a meteor over a cluster of bunkers and metallic huts. Isolated stormtroopers marched about in drills, unaware that their sun was about to explode.

On the chronometer seven minutes remained.

Kyp called up a targeting screen and found the primary citadel. The air tugged at his ship, buffeting him with heavy winds, but Kyp did not care. Flames from the ignited atmosphere flickered off the quantum armor.

“Give me your specific location,” Kyp said.

The comm officer had begun sobbing.

“I know you’re in the main citadel building!” Kyp cried. “Where exactly?”

“In the upper levels of the southernmost turret,” Zeth answered precisely, responding in a military manner, slipping back into stormtrooper training.

Kyp saw the jagged spires of the military academy rising from a cluttered plateau. Kyp’s scanners projected an enlarged image of the citadel, pinpointing the turret Zeth had mentioned.

Five minutes remained.

“Zeth, get ready, I’m coming in.”

“To rescue us both!” Dauren said.

Kyp felt a twinge inside. He wanted to leave the comm officer who had lied to him, who had made him despair and forced him into the decision to destroy Carida. He wanted to let the lieutenant die in a burst of incinerating solar flame—but that man could help him, for now.

“Get yourselves into an open area. I’m going to be there in less than a minute. You can’t get up to the roof in time, so I’m going to blast it off.”

Dauren nodded. Zeth finally overcame his own confusion and said, “Kyp? My brother? Kyp, is that you?”

The Sun Crusher streaked over the jagged minarets and pinnacles of the Caridan citadel. A mammoth wall surrounded the entire fortress. Out in the courtyard hundreds of low-ranking refugees scrambled about in tiny fliers aiming up into the skies, though with no hyperdrive capability they could never outrun the fury of the supernova.

Kyp decelerated abruptly until he hovered over the fortress. Suddenly the Sun Crusher lurched from side to side as automatic perimeter lasers targeted him and fired.

“Shut down your defenses!” he screamed at the comm officer. He wasted time targeting and firing at the perimeter lasers. Two of the weapon emplacements blew up in roiling smoke, but the third, a blaster cannon, scored a direct hit against the Sun Crusher.

The superweapon spun end over end, out of control until it smashed into one of the tall turret walls. Kyp managed to get control again and raised the vehicle up. No time to vent his anger. No time to do anything but get to the tower.

Kyp watched the chronometer click down from four minutes to three.

“Take shelter!” he said. “I’m going to blast open the roof.”

He targeted with one of his weapons and fired—but he received an ERROR