Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 03_ Champions of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [4]
The only damage they could possibly do to the Sun Crusher would be to take out its tiny laser turrets. Daala’s forces had once succeeded in disabling the Sun Crusher’s external weaponry, but New Republic engineers had repaired it.
Another breached TIE fighter spurted flash-frozen atmosphere as it exploded. Kyp darted through the debris, straight toward the sun. The surviving Imperials charged after him, still firing. He paid them no heed.
Over and over in his mind he rolled images of Zeth, imagining his brother frozen and hopeless in a training exercise for an army he had never wanted to join. The only way for Kyp to cauterize that memory was to purge the entire planet with fire, a fire only the Sun Crusher could unleash.
He activated the firing systems for his resonance torpedoes. The high-energy projectile would be pumped out in an oval-shaped plasma discharge from the toroidal generator at the bottom of the Sun Crusher.
Last time Kyp had fired the torpedoes into supergiant stars in a nebula. Carida’s sun was an unremarkable yellow sun, but even so, the Sun Crusher could ignite a chain reaction within the core.…
As Kyp swooped in toward the blazing ball of yellow fire, flickering prominences reached out of the star’s chromosphere. Boiling convection cells lifted hot knots of gas to the surface, where they cooled and sank back into the churning depths. Dark sunspots stood out like blemishes. He sighted on one of the black spots as if it were a bull’s-eye.
Kyp primed the resonance torpedo and spared a moment to glance back. His TIE pursuers had split off, unwilling to come so close to the glaring sun.
Fail-safe warning systems flashed in front of Kyp, but he disregarded them. When the control system winked green, he depressed the firing buttons and shot a sizzling green-blue ellipsoid deep into Carida’s sun. Its targeting mechanisms would find the core and set up an irrevocable instability.
Kyp leaned back in the comfortable pilot’s seat with a sigh of relief and determination. He had passed the point of no return.
He should have felt elated, knowing it was only a matter of time before the military academy was finally extinguished. But that knowledge could not wash away the grief he felt for the loss of his brother.
Alarms screamed through the citadel of the military training center. Stormtroopers ran along flagstoned halls, taking emergency positions at strategic points as they had been drilled; but they didn’t quite know what to do.
Ambassador Furgan’s face held a comical expression of shock. His bulging eyes looked as if they might pop out of their sockets. His lips scraped together as he fought for words. “But how could all of our TIE fighters miss?”
“They didn’t miss, sir,” Comm Officer Dauren said. “The Sun Crusher seems to have impenetrable armor, better than any shielding we’ve ever encountered.
“Kyp Durron has reached our sun. Although our readings are scrambled from coronal discharges, it appears that he has launched some sort of high-energy projectile.” The comm officer swallowed. “I think we know what that means, sir.”
“If the danger is real,” Furgan said.
“Sir—” Dauren wrestled with rising agitation, “we have to assume it’s real. The New Republic was pointedly uneasy about being in possession of such a weapon. The stars in the Cauldron Nebula did explode.”
Kyp Durron’s voice broke over the intercoms. “Carida, I warned you—but you chose to trick me instead. Now accept what you’ve brought upon yourselves. According to my calculations, it’ll take two hours before the core of your sun reaches a critical configuration.” He paused for a beat. “You have that amount of time to evacuate your planet.”
Furgan slammed his fist down on the table.
“Sir,” Dauren said, “what are we going to do? Should I organize an evacuation?”
Furgan leaned over to flick a switch, toggling to the hangar bay in the