The Last Command Read online

  There was a warning twitter from the astromech droid riding in the socket behind him: they were now registering too close to a large mass to jump to lightspeed. Wedge glanced around with a frown, finally spotted the Interdictor Cruiser hovering off in the distance, keeping well out of the main battle itself. Apparently, the Imperials didn’t want any of the New Republic ships sneaking out of the party early.

  Dead ahead, some of the Victory Star Destroyers’ TIE fighters were sweeping up to meet them. “Porkins’ Formation,” Wedge ordered his team. “Watch out for flankers. Star Cruiser Orthavan, this is Rogue Squadron; we’re coming in.”

  “Stay there, Rogue Leader,” a gravelly Mon Calamari voice said. “We’re too badly overmatched. You can’t help us.”

  Wedge gritted his teeth. The Mon Cal was probably right. “We’re going to try, anyway,” he told the other. The advancing TIE fighters were almost in range now. “Hang on.”

  “Rogue Squadron, this is Bel Iblis,” a new voice cut in. “Break off your attack. On my mark cut thirty degrees to portside.”

  With an effort, Wedge suppressed the urge to say something that would probably have earned him a court-martial. On his list, as long as a ship was in one piece, there was still hope of saving it. Apparently, the great General Bel Iblis had decided otherwise. “Copy, General,” he sighed. “Rogue Squadron: stand by.”

  “Rogue Squadron … mark.”

  Obediently, reluctantly, Wedge swung his X-wing to the side. The TIE fighters shifted course to follow; seemed to suddenly get flustered—

  And with a roar that carried clearly even through the tenuous gases of interplanetary space, an assault formation of A-wings shot through the space Rogue Squadron had just exited. The TIE fighters, already in motion to match the X-wings’ maneuver, were caught flat-footed. Before they could get back into barricade position, the A-wings were past them, heading at full throttle for the embattled Star Cruiser. “Okay, Rogue Squadron,” Bel Iblis said. “Your turn. Clear their backs for them.”

  Wedge grinned tightly. He should have known better of Bel Iblis. “Copy, General. Rogue Squadron, let’s take them.”

  “And then,” Bel Iblis added grimly, “prepare to retreat.”

  Wedge blinked, the grin fading. Retreat? Turning his X-wing toward the TIE fighters, he looked back at the main battle area.

  A few minutes earlier, he’d realized the situation had looked bad. Now, it was on the edge of disaster. Bel Iblis’s force was down to barely two-thirds of the fifteen capital ships he’d started with, with most of those huddled into a last-ditch bastion formation. Surrounding it, systematically battering at its defenses, were over twenty Star Destroyers and Dreadnaughts.

  Wedge looked back at the approaching TIE fighters; and, beyond them, to the Interdictor Cruiser. The Interdictor Cruiser, whose gravity well projectors were keeping the beleaguered battle force from escaping to lightspeed …

  And then they were on the TIE fighters, and there was no more time for thought. The battle was sharp, but short—the sudden appearance of the A-wings from Rogue Squadron’s shadow had apparently thrown the TIE fighters just enough off stride. Three minutes, maybe four, and Rogue Squadron was again in the clear.

  “What now, Rogue Leader?” Rogue Two asked as the squadron re-formed through the debris.

  Mentally crossing his fingers, Wedge looked back at the Orthavan. If Bel Iblis’s gamble hadn’t worked …

  It had. The A-wing slash had distracted the Victory Star Destroyers’ attack just enough for the Star Cruiser to catch its breath and go back on the offensive. The Orthavan had both its extensive turbolaser and ion cannon batteries going, scrambling the Imperials’ systems and pummeling away at their hulls. Even as Wedge watched, a geyser of superheated gas erupted from the midsection of the nearer Star Destroyer, sending the ship rotating ponderously away. Pulling under the derelict’s hull, the Star Cruiser moved away from the battle and headed for the Interdictor Cruiser.

  “Change course for the Orthavan,” Wedge ordered. “They may need backup.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth when, shooting in from lightspeed, a pair of Dreadnaughts suddenly appeared at the Orthavan’s flank. Wedge held his breath, but the Star Cruiser was already moving too fast for the Dreadnaughts to get more than a wild shot at it. It passed them without pausing; and as they turned to follow it, the A-wing squadron reenacted their earlier slash maneuver. Once again, the distraction’s effectiveness was vastly out of proportion to the actual damage inflicted. By the time the starfighters broke off, the Orthavan was beyond any chance the Dreadnaughts might have to catch up.

  And the Imperials knew it. Behind Wedge, the astromech droid beeped: the pseudogravity field was fading away as the distant Interdictor Cruiser shut down its gravity well projectors in preparation for its own escape to lightspeed.

  The Interdictor Cruiser …

  And belatedly the explanation struck him. He’d been wrong—those Victory Star Destroyers hadn’t needed to rely on any half-mystical coordination technique to jump in so close to the Star Cruiser. All they’d had to do was fly in along a hyperspace vector supplied to them by the Interdictor Cruiser and wait until the edge of the gravity well cone yanked them back into normal space.

  Wedge felt his lip twist. Overestimating the enemy’s abilities, he’d been taught a long time ago, could be just as dangerous as underestimating them. It was a lesson he would have to start remembering.

  “Interdictor gravfield is down,” Bel Iblis’s voice came in his ear. “All units, acknowledge and prepare to retreat on your marks.”

  “Rogue Squadron: copy,” Wedge said, grimacing as he turned onto their preplanned escape vector and looked back at what was left of the main battle group. There was no doubt about it: they’d been beaten, and beaten badly, and about all Bel Iblis’s legendary tactical skill had been able to do had been to keep the defeat from turning into a rout.

  And the price was likely to be yet another system lost to the Empire.

  “Rogue Squadron: go.”

  “Copy,” Wedge sighed, and pulled back the hyperspace lever … and as the stars flared into starlines, a sobering thought occurred to him.

  For the foreseeable future, at least, underestimating the Empire was not likely to be all that much of a problem.

  CHAPTER

  6

  The starlines shrank back into stars, and the Wild Karrde was back in normal space. Straight ahead was the tiny white dwarf sun of the Chazwa system, not all that distinguishable from the bright background stars around it. Nearby and a little to one side, a mostly dark circle edged by a slender lighted crescent, was the planet Chazwa itself. Scattered around it in the darkness of space the exhaust glows of perhaps fifty ships could be seen, both incoming and outgoing. Most were freighters and bulk cruisers, taking advantage of Chazwa’s central transshipment location. A few were clearly Imperial warships.

  “Well, here we are,” Aves said conversationally from the copilot station. “Incidentally, Karrde, I’d like to go on record as saying this is an insane idea.”

  “Perhaps,” Karrde conceded, shifting course toward the planet and checking his displays. Good; the rest of the group had made it in all right. “But if the Empire’s clone transport route does indeed run through Orus sector, the Chazwa garrison should have records of the operation. Possibly even the origin point, if someone was careless.”

  “I wasn’t referring to the details of the raid,” Aves said. “I meant that it was crazy for us to be getting involved in the first place. It’s the New Republic’s war, not ours—let them chase it down.”

  “If I could trust them to do so, I would,” Karrde said, peering out the starboard viewport. Another freighter seemed to be sidling slowly in the Wild Karrde’s general direction. “But I’m not sure they’re up to the task.”

  Aves grunted. I still don’t buy Skywalker’s numbers. Seems to me that if you could grow stable clones that fast, the old clonemasters would have done it.”

&
nbsp; “Perhaps they did,” Karrde pointed out. “I don’t think any information on the cloning techniques of that era has survived. Everything I’ve ever seen has come from the much earlier prewar experiments.”

  “Yeah, well …” Aves shook his head. “I’d still rather sit the whole thing out.”

  “We may discover we don’t have a choice in the matter.” Karrde gestured to the freighter still moving up on them. “We seem to have a caller. Would you pull up an ID on him?”

  “Sure.” Aves threw a quick look at the freighter, then turned to his board. “Not registering as any ship I’ve ever heard of. Wait a minute … yeah. Yeah, they’ve altered their ID—simple transponder overlay, looks like. Let’s see if Ghent’s magic decoder package can untangle it.”

  Karrde nodded, the mention of Ghent’s name sending his thoughts flicking briefly across the galaxy to Coruscant and the two associates he’d left there under New Republic care. If the timetable their medical people had given him was correct, Mara should be about recovered by now. She should be trying to get in touch with him soon, and he made a mental note to check in with the contact pipeline as soon as they were finished here.

  “Got it,” Aves said triumphantly. “Well, well—I do believe it’s an old friend of yours, Karrde. The Kern’s Pride; the slightly less-than-honorable Samuel Tomas Gillespee, proprietor.”

  “Is it, now,” Karrde said, eyeing the ship pacing them a hundred meters away. “I suppose we’d better see what he wants.”

  He keyed for a tight-beam transmission. “This is Talon Karrde calling the Kern’s Pride,” he said. “Don’t just sit there, Gillespee—say hello.”

  “Hello, Karrde,” a familiar voice came back. “You don’t mind if I figure out who I’m talking to before I say hello, do you?”

  “Not at all,” Karrde assured him. “Nice little overlay on your ship ID, by the way.”

  “Obviously could have been nicer,” Gillespee said dryly. “We weren’t even close to slicing yours yet. What are you doing here?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing,” Karrde said. “I was under the impression you’d been planning to retire.”

  “I did,” Gillespee said grimly. “Out of the business for good, and thanks for everything. Bought myself a big chunk of land on a nice little out-of-the-way world where I could watch the trees grow and stay out of everything that smelled like trouble. Place called Ukio—ever hear of it?”

  Beside Karrde, Aves shook his head and muttered something under his breath. “I seem to remember hearing that name recently, yes,” Karrde conceded. “Were you there for the Imperial attack?”

  “I was there for the attack, the surrender, and all the occupation I could stomach,” Gillespee growled. “Matter of fact, I had about as good a front-row seat to the bombardment as you could get. It was pretty spectacular, I’ll tell you that.”

  “It could be profitable as well,” Karrde said, thinking hard. As far as he knew, the New Republic still didn’t have a handle on what exactly the Empire had done at Ukio. Hard data on the attack could be invaluable to their tactical people. As well as commanding a hefty fee for both witness and finder. “I don’t suppose you took any readings during the attack.”

  “I’ve got a little from the bombardment part of it,” Gillespee said. “The data card from my macrobinoculars. Why?”

  “There’s a good chance I can find you a buyer for it,” Karrde told him. “It might compensate somewhat for your lost property.”

  “I doubt your buyer’s got that much to spend,” Gillespee sniffed. “You wouldn’t have believed it, Karrde—you really wouldn’t. I mean, we’re not talking Svivren here, but even Ukio should have taken them a little longer to overrun.”

  “The Empire’s had a lot of practice overrunning worlds,” Karrde reminded him. “You’re lucky you made it out at all.”

  “You got that one right,” Gillespee agreed. “Faughn and Rappapor popped me about half a jump ahead of the stormtroopers. And half a jump behind the workers they sent to turn my land into a crop farm. I’m telling you, that new clone system they’ve got going is really creepy.”

  Karrde threw a look at Aves. “How so?”

  “What do you mean, how so?” Gillespee retorted. “I don’t happen to think people ought to come off an assembly line, thanks. And if they did, I sure as mynocks wouldn’t put the Empire in charge of the factory. You should have seen the guys they had manning the roadblocks—put a shiver right straight through you.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Karrde said. “What are your plans after leaving Chazwa?”

  “I don’t hardly have any plans before I get there,” Gillespee countered sourly. “I was hoping to get in touch with Brasck’s old contact man here, see if they’d be interested in taking us on. Why, you got something better?”

  “Possibly. We can start by sending that macrobinocular data card on to my buyer, drawing payment for you against a credit line I have set up with him. After that, I have another project in mind which you might find both interesting—”

  “We got company,” Aves cut him off. “Two Imperial ships, heading this way. Looks like Lancer-class Frigates.”

  “Uh-oh,” Gillespee muttered. “Maybe we didn’t get off Ukio as clean as I thought.”

  “I think it more likely that were their target,” Karrde said, feeling his lip twist as he keyed an evasion course into the helm. “It’s been nice talking to you, Gillespee. If you want to continue the conversation, meet me in eight days at the Trogan system—you know the place.”

  “I can make it if you can,” Gillespee countered. “If you can’t, don’t make it too easy for them.”

  Karrde broke the contact. “Hardly,” he murmured. “All right; here we go. Nice and easy …”

  He eased the Wild Karrde into a shallow portside drop, trying to make it look as if they were planning to cut past the planet itself and pick up a new hyperspace vector. “Do I alert the others?” Aves asked.

  “Not yet,” Karrde said, giving his displays a quick look and setting the nav computer to work calculating their jump to lightspeed. “I’d rather abort the mission and try again later than tangle with a pair of Lancers who were serious about fighting.”

  “Yeah,” Aves said slowly. “Karrde … they’re not changing course.”

  Karrde looked up. Aves was right: neither Lancer had so much as twitched. They were still heading on their original vector.

  Straight for the Kern’s Pride.

  He looked at Aves, to find the other looking back at him. “What do we do?” Aves asked.

  Karrde looked back at the Imperial ships. The Wild Karrde was a long way from being helpless in a fight, and his people were some of the best. But with weaponry that had been designed to take out enemy starfighters, two Lancers would be better than an even match for the group he’d brought to Chazwa.

  As he watched, the Kern’s Pride suddenly made its move. Rolling into a sort of mutated drop-kick Koiogran maneuver, it took off at high speed at a sharp angle from its original course. The Lancers, not fooled a bit by the ploy, were right behind it.

  Which left the Wild Karrde completely in the clear. They could continue on to Chazwa, hit the garrison records, and be out before the Lancers could make it back. Fast, clean, and certainly preferable as far as the New Republic was concerned.

  But Gillespee was an old acquaintance … and on Karrde’s scale, a fellow smuggler placed higher than any interstellar government he didn’t belong to. “Apparently, Gillespee didn’t get off Ukio as cleanly as he thought,” he commented, bringing the Wild Karrde around and keying for intercom. “Lachton, Chin, Corvis—fire up the turbo-lasers. We’re going in.”

  “What about the other ships?” Aves asked as he activated the deflector shields and punched up a tactical display.

  “Let’s get the Lancers’ attention first,” Karrde said. The three men at the turbolasers signaled ready; taking a deep breath, he threw power to the drive.

  The Lancers’ commander was
n’t anyone’s fool. Even as the Wild Karrde drove toward them, one of the Imperial ships broke off its pursuit of the Kern’s Pride and turned to confront this new threat. “I think we’ve got their attention,” Aves said tightly. “Can I call the others into the party yet?”

  “Go ahead,” Karrde told him, keying his own comm for a tight beam to the Kern’s Pride. “Gillespee, this is Karrde.”

  “Yeah, I see you,” Gillespee came back. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Giving you a hand,” Karrde said. Ahead, the Lancer’s twenty quad laser batteries opened up, raining green flashes down on the Wild Karrde. The turbolasers fired back, their three groups of fire looking rather pathetic in comparison. “All right—we’ve got this one tied down. Better get out before that other one finds the range.”

  “You’ve got him tied down?” Gillespee retorted. “Look, Karrde—”

  “I said get out,” Karrde cut him off sharply. “We can’t hold him forever. Don’t worry about me—I’m not exactly alone out here.”

  “Here they come,” Aves said, and Karrde took a moment to glance into the rear display. They were coming, all right: fifteen freighters strong, all zeroing in on the suddenly outgunned Lancer.

  From the comm came an amazed whistle. “You weren’t kidding, were you?” Gillespee commented.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Karrde said. “Now get going, will you?”

  Gillespee laughed out loud. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Karrde. I’m not alone, either.”