Again Tarkin tried to assemble all the pieces: the counterfeit distress call, the sneak attack on Sentinel, the bait set out on Murkhana, the theft of the ship, and now the flight.
But to where? To what end?
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vader prepare the Predator for the transition to sublight. The timeless corridor narrowed and vanished and the starlines compacted to pinpoints of light, skewing slightly as the ship reverted to realspace. No sooner had Vader engaged the ion drives than proximity alarms began to squeal and something large and white caromed off the forward deflector shield.
Tarkin quickly captured an image of the object on one of the display screens. It was the mangled and frosted body of a stormtrooper.
In the middle distance, fiery explosions flared at the edge of Galidraan III’s atmospheric envelope. Plumes of incandescence, like stellar prominences, erupted into space.
Vader firewalled the throttle and the Predator raced deeper into the system, the space station coming into unassisted view, an arc of its silvery rim blown wide open and hemorrhaging gas, flames, objects, and bodies. The source of the destruction was invisible to the naked eye and the Predator’s scanners, making it appear as if green packets of bundled energy were being fired from deep space. Even so, particle-beam weapons emplaced along the station’s curved outer surface were returning fusillades that streamed futilely into the void. Like some sea creature lunging forward to chew flesh and withdraw before it could be counterattacked, the invisible menace continued to advance and retreat, its lasers opening surgical lacerations along the spokes of the wheel as if intent on separating the rim from the hub. Larger explosions blossomed, along with dense clusters of superheated ejecta.
Tarkin bent to the controls, searching for a heat signature, gravitational flux, evidence of propellant glow, anything that might pinpoint the location of the Carrion Spike, all the while well aware that the ship was beyond his efforts to track. She could conceal herself from any sensor, contain her own reflection and heat, accelerate out of danger, maneuver beyond the capacity of any ship her size. But worse still was Tarkin’s realization about her new crew: They weren’t mere shipjackers; they were, as Vader had intuited early on, dissidents. Partisans with a deadly agenda to fulfill.
Flights of ARC-170 and V-wing starfighters, like swarms of stinging insects, were accelerating from the station’s launch bays in search of the veiled thing that was pummeling their nest. Keeping to the edge of the battle to avoid being inadvertently targeted, Vader abruptly veered the Predator starboard in an obvious attempt to parallel the curving storm of destruction the Carrion Spike was sowing.
Tarkin saw a rash of melt circles erupt along the station’s already pockmarked hull, an efflorescence of globular explosions.
Vader changed vectors and decelerated to match the Predator’s speed to that of the Carrion Spike. “We have you now,” Tarkin heard him mutter.
Through the viewports, he could see the ARC-170s and the V-wings playing a dangerous game with their opponent, speeding directly into hails of energy bolts in the hope of forcing the Carrion Spike to betray her location, and sacrificing themselves in the process.
His hands tight on the yoke, Vader called out, “Sergeant Crest, prepare to fire.”
The stormtrooper’s voice crackled from the cockpit nunciator. “Standing by, Lord Vader. But we have no visual on the target.”
“Follow the tracers back to their source, Sergeant, and pour all the power of those quad lasers toward the point of origin.”
“Shots in the dark,” Tarkin said.
“Only from your vantage,” Vader said; then he took his hands from the steering yoke and turned to him to add: “Your ship. Flank speed.”
Tarkin pulled the copilot’s yoke into his lap and began to slalom the Predator through the debris field spewed by the crippled station. At the same time, Vader swiveled to position himself at the controls for the forward guns. Wary of allowing the ion engines to overheat, Tarkin slued the ship through clusters of slagged alloy, incinerated starfighters, and tumbling bodies.
Far to starboard the explosions were thinning. The Carrion Spike had enough firepower to destroy the entire station, but the dissidents were tapering off the attack, perhaps to reserve energy for future targets. Was that the goal? Tarkin wondered. To use his ship to inflict as much damage as possible?
The thought of having the Carrion Spike leave such a legacy hollowed him.
“Commence fire,” Vader said.
Hyphens of raw energy surged from the Predator, the chuddering of her reciprocating quad lasers loud in the cockpit. Ahead, fire spattered against the Carrion Spike’s ray and particle shields, and for the briefest instant the ship was revealed. Quickly, then, the Predator’s beams were streaking into empty space.
Tarkin yawed to port, hoping to evade the Carrion Spike’s response, but the shipjackers yawed with him and their first salvo nearly overwhelmed the Predator’s inferior shields. Tarkin pushed the yoke away from him, skimming the atmosphere of Galidraan III with the Carrion Spike hewing to his trajectory and preparing to pounce. In the grip of a second barrage, the Predator shook in his grip and the console lights began to flicker.
“Drop behind them,” Vader said.
Tarkin rushed a deceleration burn and starboard feint, hoping to trick the shipjackers into overflying the Predator. Instead the Carrion Spike leapt and spun through a half turn — which Tarkin grasped only when he saw a tempest of energy beams converging on the cockpit.
Tarkin’s sudden swerve and spin almost threw Vader from his chair.
“They’re employing the pintle guns,” Tarkin said in a rush. “They’ll burn right through us.” He risked a glance at Vader. “We’ve one chance to survive this. Redirect all power to the aft shields.”
Vader took Tarkin at his word, and the Predator slowed significantly as a result. The Carrion Spike’s beams found their mark, all but driving the smaller ship forward.
“Shields at forty percent,” Vader said.
Tarkin pulled on the studdering yoke, taking the Predator into a sudden climb, but there was no escaping his own ship. Another barrage rattled the Predator to her rivets.
Vader slammed his fist on the console. “They have jammed our instruments. Shields at twenty percent.”
A powerful explosion aft worked its way forward to the cockpit, conjuring fire from the sparking instruments, stripping the ship of shields and propulsion, and leaving the Predator dead in space.
“Damage assessment!” Teller called toward the audio pickup as he scrambled to his feet in the Carrion Spike’s command cabin. Still strapped into the pilot’s chair, Salikk was in the midst of bringing some of the stunned systems back to life, tufts of his fur wafting through the cabin on currents of recycled air.