• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Luke toggled the communications panel. “Thanks, guys.”

“Master Luke!” Threepio cried. “What are you doing here? We need to get away!”

“It’s a long story, Threepio. We’re doing our best to do just that.”

On the opposite side of the Maw, the Gorgon spun about and accelerated toward the unprotected Installation like a wild bantha, its rear engines blazing with star fire. A flurry of green turbolaser bolts blurred out from the Star Destroyer’s fore section, angling down to strike the Installation’s clustered asteroids. With the facility’s shields down, ionized rock dust sprayed into space.

Daala fired and fired again, picking up speed in what appeared to be a suicide run. Her strafing beams pummelled the Installation, striking asteroid after asteroid. Metal bridges vaporized, transparisteel shattered and blew outward.

The Gorgon came on, unstoppable until—just as she soared over at closest approach—the attack breached the containment housing the unstable power reactor.

Sitting in the cockpit of the personnel transport, Wedge and Luke both flinched as the entire Maw Installation suddenly became a blaze of light, like a miniature exploding star. The center of the Maw was filled with an incandescent purifying fire.

The glare flooded outward, automatically causing the viewscreens to darken. Wedge flew blind, trusting the navigation computer’s controls and aiming toward the waiting New Republic flagships.

When his vision finally cleared, he looked back to the stable point that had held the Empire’s most sophisticated weapons-research laboratory. He saw only a far-flung swarm of broken rocks and smoldering gases in an expanding backwash of energy. Eventually, the debris would drift far enough to be siphoned down to infinity through one of the black holes.

As the glare faded and the fiery gases cleared, he saw no sign whatsoever of Admiral Daala or her last Star Destroyer.

39

Working like automatons, the team of doomed spacetroopers attached themselves to the breached wall of the Death Star’s power core. Intense radiation spewed out, darkening their faceplates so they could barely see, slowly frying their life-support systems.

Moving sluggishly as they weakened under the invisible onslaught, they wrestled thick sheets of plating in the low gravity. They used rapid laser welders to slap patches over the breach, reinforcing it to withstand an energy buildup.

One of the spacetroopers, his control pack sparking with blue lightning as the suit’s circuits all broke down, thrashed about in eerie silence; his arm movements gradually slowed until he drifted free. One of the others took his place, ignoring the lost companion. Every one of them had already received a lethal dose of radiation. They knew it, but their training had been thorough: they lived to serve the Empire.

One of the troopers completed a last weld at the hottest point of the breach. His skin blistered. His nerves were deadened. His eyes and lungs hemorrhaged blood. But he forced himself to finish his task.

The cold vacuum of space solidified the welds instantly. With a gurgling voice filled with fluid, the spacetrooper gasped into his helmet radio, “Mission accomplished.”

Then the remaining troopers, with failing life-support systems and bodies already savaged by the fatal radiation, released their hold on the power core in unison. They drifted free, dropping toward the brilliant energy discharge like shooting stars.

At the total destruction of Maw Installation and the loss of Admiral Daala’s Gorgon, Tol Sivron’s initial reaction was one of annoyance and disappointment.

“The Installation was supposed to be my target,” he said. He glared at his other Division Leaders. “How could Daala do such a thing? I have the Death Star; she doesn’t.”

As the shock waves and light echoes from the huge explosion drifted and faded, Sivron could see the Rebel fleet gathering itself to flee the cluster.

Sivron sighed. “Perhaps we should hold another meeting to discuss options.”

“Sir!” The stormtrooper captain got to his feet. “Our power reactor is