Heir to the Empire

C H A P T E R 16

There was no dreaming in the Jedi hibernation trance. No dreaming, no consciousness, virtually no awareness of the outside world. It was very much like a coma, in fact, except for one interesting anomaly: despite the absence of true consciousness, Luke’s time sense still somehow managed to function. He didn’t understand it, exactly, but it was something he’d learned to recognize and use.

It was that time sense, coupled with Artoo’s frantic gurgling in the foggy distance, that was his first hint something was wrong.

“All right, Artoo, I’m awake,” he reassured the droid as he worked his way back toward consciousness. Blinking the gummy feeling out of his eyes, he gave the instruments a quick scan. The readings confirmed what his time sense had already told him: the X-wing had come out of hyperspace nearly twenty light-years short of Jomark. The proximity indicator registered two ships practically on top of him ahead, with a third off to one side in the distance. Still blinking, he raised his head for a look.

And with a rush of adrenaline came fully awake. Directly ahead of him was what looked like a light freighter, a blazing overload in its engine section visible through crumpled and half-vaporized hull plates. Beyond it, looming like a dark cliff face, was an Imperial Star Destroyer.

Anger, fear, aggression—the dark side of the Force are they. With an effort, Luke forced down his fear. The freighter was between him and the Star Destroyer; concentrating on their larger prey, the Imperials might not even have noticed his arrival. “Let’s get out of here, Artoo,” he said, keying the controls back to manual and swinging the X-wing hard around. The etheric rudder whined in protest with the turn—

“Unidentified starfighter,” a harsh voice boomed from the speaker. “This is the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera. Transmit your identification code and state your business.”

So much for hoping he wouldn’t be noticed. In the distance now, Luke could see what it was that had yanked the X-wing out of hyperspace: the third ship was an Interdictor Cruiser,¹ the Empire’s favorite tool for keeping opponents from jumping to lightspeed. Obviously, they’d been lying in wait for the freighter; it was just his bad luck that he’d run across the Interdictor’s projected mass shadow and been kicked out of hyperspace along with it.

The freighter. Closing his eyes briefly with concentration, Luke reached out with the Force, trying to discover whether it was a Republic ship, a neutral, or even a pirate that the Chimaera had caught. But there was no hint of any life aboard. Either the crew had escaped, or else they’d already been taken prisoner.

Either way, there was nothing Luke could do for them now. “Artoo, find me the nearest edge of that Interdictor’s gravity-wave cone,” he ordered, throwing the X-wing into a stomach-churning downward drop that even the acceleration compensator couldn’t quite handle. If he could keep the freighter directly between him and the Star Destroyer, he might be able to get out of range before they could bring a tractor beam to bear.

“Unidentified starfighter.” The harsh voice was starting to get angry. “I repeat, transmit your identification code or prepare to be detained.”

“Should have brought one of Han’s false ID codes with me,” Luke muttered to himself. “Artoo? Where’s that edge estimate?”

The droid beeped, and a diagram appeared on the computer scope. “That far, huh?” Luke murmured. “Well, nothing to do but go for it. Hang on.”

“Unidentified starfighter—”

The rest of the harangue was drowned out by the roar of the drive as Luke abruptly kicked the ship to full power. Almost lost in the noise was Artoo’s questioning trilling. “No, I want the deflector shields down,” Luke shouted back. “We need the extra speed.”

He didn’t add that if the Star Destroyer was really serious about vaporizing them, the presence or absence of shields wouldn’t matter much at this range, anyway. But Artoo probably already knew that.

But if the Imperials didn’t seem interested in vaporizing him out of hand, neither were they willing to just let him go. On the rear scope, he could see the Star Destroyer moving up and over the damaged freighter, trying to get clear of its interference.

Luke threw a quick look at the proximity indicator. He was still within tractor beam range, and at their current relative speeds would remain so for the next couple of minutes. What he needed was some way to distract or blind them …

“Artoo, I need a fast reprogramming on one of the proton torpedoes,” he called. “I want to drop it at zero delta-v, then have it turn around and head straight aft. No sensors or homing codes, either—I want it to go out cold. Can you do that?” There was an affirmative beep. “Good. As soon as it’s ready, give me a warning and then let it go.”

He turned his attention back to the rear scope, gave the X-wing’s course a slight readjustment. With its guidance sensors in their normal active state, the torpedo would be subject to the Star Destroyer’s impressive array of jamming equipment; going out cold like this would limit the Imperials’ response to trying to shoot it down with laser fire. The flip side of that, of course, was that if it wasn’t aimed very accurately, it would shoot right past its intended target without even a twitch.

Artoo beeped; and with a slight lurch, the torpedo was away. Luke watched it go, reaching out with the Force to give it a slight realignment tap—

And a second later, with a spectacular multiple flash of sympathetic detonations, the freighter blew up.

Luke looked at the proximity indicator, mentally crossing his fingers. Almost out of range now. If the debris from the freighter could screen off the tractor beam for a few more seconds, they should make it.

Artoo warbled a warning. Luke glanced at the translation, then at the long-range scope, and felt his stomach tighten. Artoo warbled again, more insistently this time. “I see it, Artoo,” Luke growled. It was, of course, the obvious tactic for the Imperials to employ. With the freighter no longer of any interest whatsoever, the Interdictor was changing position, swinging around to try to bring its huge gravity field projectors more fully to bear on the escaping X-wing. Luke watched as the cone-shaped field area angled across the scope …

“Hang on, Artoo,” he called; and, again too abruptly for the compensators to totally negate, he swung the X-wing into a right-angle turn, blasting laterally to their original course.

From behind him came a shocked screech. “Quiet, Artoo, I know what I’m doing,” he told the droid. Off to starboard now, the Star Destroyer was belatedly trying to shift its massive bulk, pivoting to track Luke’s maneuver … and for the first time since the beginning of the encounter, flashes of laser fire began lancing out.

Luke made a quick decision. Speed alone wasn’t going to save him now, and a near miss could end the contest right here and now. “Deflectors up, Artoo,” he instructed the droid, giving his full attention to his best evasive maneuvering. “Give me a balance between shield power and speed.”

Artoo beeped a response, and there was a slight drop in engine noise as the shields began drawing power. They were going slower, but so far the gamble seemed to be working. Caught off balance by Luke’s right-angle maneuver, the Interdictor was now rotating in the wrong direction, its gravity beam sweeping across Luke’s previous course instead of tracking the current one. Its commander was obviously trying to correct that mistake, but the sheer inertia of the ship’s massive gravity generators was on Luke’s side. If he could stay out of the Star Destroyer’s range for another few seconds, he’d be out of the beam and free to escape to hyperspace. “Stand by for lightspeed,” he told Artoo. “Don’t worry about direction—we can do a short hop and set things up more carefully once we’re clear.”

Artoo acknowledged—

And without warning, Luke was slammed hard against his harness.

The Star Destroyer’s tractor beam had them.

Artoo shrilled in dismay; but Luke had no time to comfort the droid now. His straight-line course had suddenly become an arc, a sort of pseudoorbit with the Star Destroyer playing the role of planet at its center. Unlike a true orbit, though, this one wasn’t stable, and as soon as the Imperials got another beam focused on him, the circle would quickly degenerate into a tight inward spiral. A spiral whose end point would be inside the Star Destroyer’s hangar bay.

He dropped the shields, throwing full power once again to the drive, knowing full well it was most likely a futile gesture. And he was right—for a second the beam seemed to falter, but it quickly caught back up with him. Such a relatively minor change in speed was too small to foul up the beam’s tracking equipment.

But if he could find a way to arrange a more major change in speed …

“Unidentified starfighter.” The harsh voice was back, unmistakably gloating this time. “You have no chance of escape; further efforts will merely damage your vehicle. You are ordered to power down and prepare to dock.”

Luke clenched his teeth. This was going to be dangerous, but he’d run out of choices. And he had heard stories of this working at least once before. Somewhere. “Artoo, we’re going to try something tricky,” he called to the droid. “On my signal, I want you to reverse-trigger the acceleration compensator—full power, and bypass the cutoffs if you have to.” Something warbled from the control panel, and he risked a quick look at the scope. His curving arc had brought him right to the edge of the Interdictor’s gravity projection. “Artoo: now.”

And with a scream of horribly stressed electronics, the X-wing came to a sudden dead stop.

There wasn’t even enough time for Luke to wonder what aboard his ship could possibly have made a scream like that before he was again thrown, even harder this time, against his harness. His thumbs, ready on the firing buttons, jabbed down hard, sending a pair of proton torpedoes lancing forward; simultaneously, he pulled the X-wing upward. The Star Destroyer’s tractor beam, tracking him along his path, had momentarily gotten lost by his sudden maneuver. If the computers guiding that lock would now be considerate enough to latch on to the proton torpedoes instead of him—

And suddenly the torpedoes were gone, leaving behind only a wisp of their exhaust trail to show that they’d been snatched off their original course. The gamble had succeeded; the Star Destroyer was now steadily pulling in the wrong target.

“We’re free!” he snapped to Artoo, throwing full power to the drive. “Get ready for lightspeed.”

The droid trilled something, but Luke had no time to look down at the computer scope for the translation. Realizing their error, and recognizing there was insufficient time to reestablish a tractor lock, the Imperials had apparently decided to go for a straight kill. All the Star Destroyer’s batteries seemed to open up at once, and Luke suddenly found himself trying to dodge a virtual sandstorm of laser fire. Forcing himself to relax, he let the Force flow through him, allowing it to guide his hands on the controls the way it did his lightsaber. The ship jumped once as a shot got through; in his peripheral vision he saw the tip of his dorsal/starboard laser cannon flash and disappear into a cloud of superheated plasma. A near miss burned past overhead; another, closer, scorched a line across the transparisteel canopy.

Another warble came from the scope: they were clear of the Interdictor’s gravity shadow. “Go!” Luke shouted to Artoo.

And with a second, even more nerve-wrenching electronic scream from behind him, the sky ahead abruptly turned to starlines.

They’d made it.

For what seemed like a small eternity Thrawn gazed out the viewport, staring at the spot where Skywalker’s X-wing had been when it had vanished. Surreptitiously, Pellaeon watched him, wondering tautly when the inevitable explosion would come. With half an ear he listened to the damage control reports coming from the Number Four tractor beam projector, carefully not getting himself involved with the cleanup.

The destruction of one of the Chimaera’s ten projectors was a relatively minor loss. Skywalker’s escape was not.

Thrawn stirred and turned around. Pellaeon tensed—“Come with me, Captain,” the Grand Admiral said quietly, striding away down the bridge command walkway.

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon murmured, falling into step behind him, the stories of how Darth Vader had dealt with subordinates’ failures running through his mind.

The bridge was uncommonly quiet as Thrawn led the way to the aft stairway and descended into the starboard crew pit. He walked past the crewers at their consoles, past the officers standing painfully erect behind them, and came to a halt at the control station for the starboard tractor beams. “Your name,” he said, his voice excruciatingly calm.

“Cris Pieterson, sir,” the young man seated at the console answered, his eyes wary.

“You were in charge of the tractor beam during our engagement with the starfighter.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes, sir—but what happened wasn’t my fault.”

Thrawn’s eyebrows arched, just a bit. “Explain.”

Pieterson started to gesture to the side, changed his mind in midmotion. “The target did something with his acceleration compensator that killed his velocity vector—”

“I’m aware of the facts,” Thrawn cut in. “I’m waiting to hear why his escape wasn’t your fault.”

“I was never properly trained for such an occurrence, sir,” Pieterson said, a flicker of defiance touching his eyes. “The computer lost the lock, but seemed to pick it up again right away. There was no way for me to know it had really picked up something else until—”

“Until the proton torpedoes detonated against the projector?”

Pieterson held his gaze evenly. “Yes, sir.”

For a long moment Thrawn studied him. “Who is your officer?” he asked at last.

Pieterson’s eyes shifted to the right. “Ensign Colclazure, sir.”

Slowly, deliberately, Thrawn turned to the tall man standing rigidly at attention with his back to the walkway. “You are in charge of this man?”

Colclazure swallowed visibly. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Was his training also your responsibility?”

“Yes, sir,” Colclazure said again.

“Did you, during that training, run through any scenarios similar to what just happened?”

“I … don’t remember, sir,” the ensign admitted. “The standard training package does include scenarios concerning loss of lock and subsequent reestablishment confirmation.”

Thrawn threw a brief glance back down at Pieterson. “Did you recruit him as well, Ensign?”

“No, sir. He was a conscript.”

“Does that make him less worthy of your training time than a normal enlistee?”

“No, sir.” Colclazure’s eyes flicked to Pieterson. “I’ve always tried to treat my subordinates equally.”

“I see.” Thrawn considered for a moment, then half turned to look past Pellaeon’s shoulder. “Rukh.”

Pellaeon started as Rukh brushed silently past him; he hadn’t realized the Noghri had followed them down. Thrawn waited until Rukh was standing at his side, then turned back to Colclazure. “Do you know the difference between an error and a mistake, Ensign?”

The entire bridge had gone deathly still. Colclazure swallowed again, his face starting to go pale. “No, sir.”

“Anyone can make an error, Ensign. But that error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” He raised a finger—

And, almost lazily, pointed.

Pellaeon never even saw Rukh move. Pieterson certainly never had time to scream.

From farther down the crew pit came the sound of someone trying valiantly not to be sick. Thrawn glanced over Pellaeon’s shoulder again and gestured, and the silence was further broken by the sound of a pair of stormtroopers coming forward. “Dispose of it,” the Grand Admiral ordered them, turning away from Pieterson’s crumpled body and pinning Colclazure² with a stare. “The error, Ensign,” he told the other softly, “has now been corrected. You may begin training a replacement.”

He held Colclazure’s eyes another heartbeat. Then, seemingly oblivious to the tension around him, he turned back to Pellaeon. “I want a full technical/tactical readout on the last few seconds of that encounter, Captain,” he said, all calm business again. “I’m particularly interested in his lightspeed vector.”

“I have it all here, sir,” a lieutenant spoke up a bit hesitantly, stepping forward to offer the Grand Admiral a data pad.

“Thank you.” Thrawn glanced at it briefly, handed it to Pellaeon. “We’ll have him, Captain,” he said, starting back down the crew pit toward the stairway. “Very soon now, we’ll have him.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon agreed cautiously, hurrying to catch up with the other. “I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.”

Thrawn raised an eyebrow. “You misunderstand me,” he said mildly. “I mean that literally. He’s out there right now, not very far away. And”—he smiled slyly at Pellaeon—“he’s helpless.”

Pellaeon frowned. “I don’t understand, sir.”

“That maneuver he used has an interesting side effect I suspect he didn’t know about,” the Grand Admiral explained. “Backfiring an acceleration compensator like that does severe damage to the adjoining hyperdrive. A light-year away, no farther, and it will fail completely. All we have to do is make a search along that vector, or persuade others to do our searching for us, and he’ll be ours. You follow?”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said. “Shall I contact the rest of the fleet?”

Thrawn shook his head. “Preparing for the Sluis Van attack is the fleet’s top priority at the moment. No, I think we’ll subcontract this one out. I want you to send messages to all the major smuggling chiefs whose groups operate in this area—Brasck, Karrde, Par’tah,³ any others we have on file. Use their private frequencies and encrypt codes—a little reminder of how much we know about each of them should help ensure their cooperation. Give them Skywalker’s hyperspace vector and offer a bounty of thirty thousand for his capture.”

“Yes, sir.” Pellaeon glanced back down the crew pit, at the activity still going on around the tractor beam station. “Sir, if you knew that Skywalker’s escape was only temporary …?”

“The Empire is at war, Captain,” the Grand Admiral said, his voice cold. “We cannot afford the luxury of men whose minds are so limited they cannot adapt to unexpected situations.”

He looked significantly at Rukh, then turned those glowing eyes back on Pellaeon. “Carry out your orders, Captain. Skywalker will be ours. Alive … or otherwise.”