Chapter Twenty-Five

Vice Admiral Litsen paced the bridge, ignoring the twinge in her broken arm. The medsplints were supposed to dull sensory input so there would be no pain, but that was about as true as most propaganda the Coruscant brass had always issued about the military. She went from crew pit to crew pit, watching every readout over her officers' shoulders. Waiting. The Courani ships orbiting the planet, loyal and traitorous alike, waited as well.

"Admiral?"

She turned in midstride to face the communications officer, who was standing by his console.

"I think you should see this, Admiral. We're picking up three messages repeating on the Courani intraplanetary net."

The first message came in two parts- the Emperor's dying speech, and, timestamped less than two minutes later, Kinneth's- the Admiral's- coronation. The ceremony was in Courani, and the decrypt programs didn't work on audio yet, but the image was unmistakable. The heavy, dark-metalled crown was placed on the Admiral's head.

The second message was a denunciation of the first. It, too, was in Courani, but while the man in it spoke, images of the coronation played in the background. He gestured to them frequently, violently, brow creased and teeth bared, half-yelling in a compelling and furious voice.

The man in the second message also wore a crown. To Litsen's eyes, it looked the same as the crown on the Admiral's head, but the image analysts dissented- the light refraction was off by a detectable margin from that of Cassian Azarile. The second crown was a fake.

The third message was in Basic, from the Admiral himself.

"Piett to all Imperial forces. Assuming that you are monitoring transmissions planetside, let me brief you on the situation: there is a coup in progress. The Courani Emperor and his sons are dead. I have…. been adopted… and declared the rightful Emperor. I expect that a large fraction of the populace may be rather upset by this. I'm told that at least fifteen percent of the ground-based military forces are loyal. I want, as quickly as they can be sent, five hundred stormtroopers, fully equipped, to the palace grounds. There is fighting in the city. I also want all pilots to their fighters. When the space battle starts, I expect them to do what they do best: defend the Empire." There was grim amusement in his voice. "Piett out."

~~~~~~~~~

Commander Talaer Shivon Andleton- recovering from another lengthy bacta dunk and adjusting to a three-week-old promotion- was in the first crowded drop ship sent down to the surface. Major Traggat's unit was known for its precision and discipline, and he had joined it willingly- more so when he learned he would be a squad commander. Unlike his brother, he did not suffer from a sharp temper and a sharper sense of ambition, but he knew that he was competent, ready for command- and, knowing that, felt almost obligated to take it.

They'd studied magnified sensor images of the palace towers on the way down, but the sight that greeted them was different. The pale gleam of the towers was darkened with carbon deposits, and three of the tower spires were shattered and burning. Over half the bridges were broken, over half of the balconies collapsed. The terraced landing platforms were clogged with debris and corpses, and ringed by over a thousand men in black or silver armor.

The trooper next to him, a sublieutenant who hadn't been off Carida for more than six months, swore at the sight.

"Are we going to fight all of them?"

Andleton shrugged. "They're not firing on us, they must be loyal." He watched the other man sag in relief under his armor, then smiled.

"If current estimates are correct, the force we're going to fight is at least five times larger than that."

The sublieutenant tensed again, and Andleton tried not to laugh.

"Relax," he said, making it as much an order as it was a suggestion. "We're stormtroopers. Five to one is nothing. We have the advantage."

"Right," the sublieutenant said, sounding dubious. "Anyway, our armor creates a blaster-proof cocoon, so-"

This time, Andleton did laugh. "You've been listening to the recruiters too much. Blaster-proof cocoon, my ass. It'll deflect maybe one shot, if it doesn't hit you directly. And the Courani weapons aren't really analogous to blasters, so who knows how good our armor is? We won't win because of the armor. We'll win because we are the most disciplined and elite fighting force to exist in the known galaxy since the end of the Clone Wars."

The sublieutenant shook his head. "But the Courani aren't really part of the known galaxy, sir."

"Shut up, kid." Andleton told him, sighing inwardly as the drop ship touched down with a last shudder of repulsors.

They would win.

~~~~~~~~~

Piett shook hands with Major Traggat before he gave his orders.

"Break up by squads. You and two squads of your choice wait back here to direct the rest of the incoming troops. Each squad will be paired with a group of Courani, and at least one in each group will speak Basic. Your squads are to follow their commanders' leads. Make sure there is a trooper at point and rear-guard of each group. Any squad you see without a stormtrooper at either end is hostile. Right now, I need one squad to accompany me."

The Major looked surprised. "Where are you headed, Admiral?"

"To the front lines. Barbaric as it might seem, Courani don't respect commanders who lead from the rear. And without their respect and loyalty, Major, we're all dead."

Chapter Twenty-Six

Commander Andleton took the point position as the stormtroopers and guards surrounded the admiral, walking forward at a brisk pace. How the admiral- the emperor, now, he supposed- managed that speed was a mystery. His face was pale as any Courani's, and tight with worry or pain. Though burgundy-lacquered armor covered most of him, Andleton saw the stiffness with which he moved, the splinted fingers on one hand, the bandage under his eye- at some point before they arrived, the Admiral had been hurt. That he could keep up the pace he did now was a testimony either to his endurance or to the quality of Courani medical stimulants.

Nine other troopers and fourteen Courani Royal Guard marched in step with them. the guard closest to him had a band of white cloth tied around her upper arm- the symbol they had arranged to identify those Courani that spoke Basic. He'd spoken with her briefly, long enough to learn about Courani firearms, ground tactics, and chains of command. She was a Marshall- a rank equivalent to Lieutenant, but the lowest rank at which an officer could transfer from the City Guard to the Royal. The commander of this unit, a Septentrion, walked beside Piett and a second white-banded guard, six paces and two rows of Guards back. It was a compromise they had worked out- commanding from the front line was one thing, but commanding from a point position when going into unfamiliar territory was suicide.

But he wanted the respect of the Courani as much as the Admiral did, and since one of his men had to take point, there was no reason it couldn't be him. Several reasons it shouldn't, perhaps, but the best thing about command of even a small unit was being able to bend the rules, to do what you wanted when sense and sanity forbade it.

The sound of weapons fire grew closer- the stuttering cough that Marshal Shenza told him denoted fletchers- high-speed railguns that shot electrified splinters of metal.

Ahead, around the corner of a gleaming, polished ceramic wall, someone screamed. It was a familiar sound to Andleton: a gut-shot scream. He held up a hand, gesturing for the guards and troops behind him to halt. He beckoned to Shenza, who stepped closer.

"When I give the sign," he said, as softly as the mic in is helmet would allow, "have them sweep around the corner after me, to my left. Four rows of six- the first two low, the last two high. Keep close to the corner, as though it's the center of a wheel and we're the spokes moving around it."

"You are point," she reminded as he stepped away from her, toward the corner, "the Septentrion commands us. Do you not remember?"

He ignored her, sidling along the wall until his side brushed against the corner. Quickly, he shifted forward one step, glanced around it, then ducked back. The streets widened and joined into a broad, open square. There was no cover. Half a block away, two units of Courani troops were slaughtering one another. The nearest unit had the other pinned in the opposite corner of the plaza, sheltering behind barricades made by stacking the bodies of the fallen men.

There were no stormtroopers in the plaza, alive or dead. There was no way to tell which unit was loyal. When they came around the corner, they could almost undoubtedly wipe out one of the two units immediately, and suffer no casualties in doing so.

Which unit?

He stepped back, to see Marshal Shenza waiting.

"The Septentrion approves, " She told him, though the look in her eyes told him that she, at least, did not. "We await your signal."

"There's a problem." he said. "I can't tell which unit is loyal. Neither has stormtroopers with them."

Shenza shrugged. "No problem. Marshal-Initiate Ajellum studied with the Zhitai."

"And?"

"He will tell us who to shoot at. Didn't your Empire have Zhitai?"

Andleton looked back to where Marshal-Initiate Ajellum stood. His armor was marked on the chest with three blue chevrons, but other than that there was nothing to make him stand out, no reason to believe he could tell friend from enemy with a glance… until Andleton's gaze fell on the man's weapons belt. Besides the half-dozen unfamiliar Courani weapons was something that looked all-too familiar from the Kuati holodramas he'd watched as a child.

A ridged metal cylinder, ten inches or so in length, capped with a concave lens.

"He's a Jedi," Andleton heard himself say, ignoring the urge to go for his blaster. He'd served on the Executor- he'd seen what was left of the units Vader sent out after the Rebels' Skywalker, from time to time. The Courani had Jedi. Stang.

"Zhitai," Shenza corrected. "I will ask him."

He nodded, once. "You do that."

A minute later, when they swept around the corner, Ajellum, not Andleton, was at point, swinging a lightsaber with a static-grey blade. After a confused moment of diffuse, ill-aimed fire, half of the larger squad turned away from their targets.

As they opened fire, Ajellum exploded into motion. A wave of silver light seemed to replace his lightsaber, describing ellipses and figure eights in the air, curves that terminated in sparks of electric blue light as the fletcher's needles were caught by his blade.

After what must have been less than a second, there was a blast of sharp, roaring sound with tangible force, and Andleton staggered backwards, uncomprehending.

Then, he remembered. The fletchers' rounds flew at supersonic speeds.

The Jedi's blade was moving faster.

As his shock faded, he stepped sideways, out frombehind the parabolas Ajellum's saber was tracing, and opened fire with his blaster. His attack was slow, deliberate- since their body armor reflected blasterfire, every hit that counted would be a head shot.

Three of them fell before the others turned away from Ajellum to face him. By then, the rest of the loyal Courani were coming in from the other side.

It was a slaughter, and it was brief. Afterwards, there was a brief, half-deaf silence, while bodies were counted and wounds examined.

"All right," Andleton said, turning to Shenza. "Do we go right, or left?"

~~~~~~~~~

They had gone half a block when an uneven line of violet lightning snaked down from a rooftop and charred through a stormtrooper's helmet.

"Back!" Andleton yelled, pulling Shenza by the arm back into a recessed doorway, scanning the roofs of the nearby buildings for a sign of the sniper. The rest of the squad, half a block behind him, ducked back around the last corner, shielding the Admiral as they did so.

Again, there was quiet. Not silence- the stale, ill-smelling breeze carried faint screams and weapons-fire on it. But the block was still, until another violet bolt drilled into the doorway next to him. He turned towards it instantly, abandoning his cover, and fired, six times, sweeping across the area the shot had come from.

When no sound but laserfire shattering the ceramic of the building walls answered his shots, he ducked back into the doorway.

"What in the Sith is that?" he asked Shenza, checking the charge on his blaster.

"A lasher," she said. "Plasma weapon."

Plasma weapons cut through stormtrooper armor like turbolasers through tissue paper.

Then, he decided, it didn't matter whether or not he was wearing it. Quickly, he slung his rifle over his back, drawing his pistol instead. With his free hand, he pulled off his helmet, hefted it, then threw it at an angle across the street. As it struck the paving stones, a bolt of plasma blew it to smoking fragments.

This time, Andleton saw exactly where it came from. He fired only once.

After a moment, he stepped out of the doorway. There was a chance the wound hadn't been fatal, or that the sniper had company.

"Cover me," he told Shenza, and was halfway across the street before she asked him "With what?"

He swore, and turned back. "Make sure nobody shots at me while I make sure our friend with the lasher isn't breathing. Be ready to shoot at anybody who shoots at me, so they duck back into cover."

"Of course," she said, shrugging.

He ground his teeth and headed back across the street.

~~~~~~~~~

Piett watched as Andleton disappeared into the building the sniper had fired from. After no more than a minute, he saw the man on the room, sweeping around its perimeter with meticulous, paranoid care.

In another minute, he and the Marshall were running back down the street towards them.

"Are we clear to advance?" he asked, almost rhetorically- he was reasonably sure Andleton wouldn't have left any snipers behind.

"We retreat," Andleton said, glancing back over his shoulder.

"Retreat?"

"The streets north of here are filled with column after column of Courani More than three times the number left at the palace- four if the rest of the stormtroopers haven't landed yet. I- strongly recommend retreat, sir."

Behind him, two blocks distant, troops began pouring around the corners. When they saw the white glint of stormtrooper armor, they opened fire. A wave of electric blue fell upon them, piercing silver and white armor alike.

"A disciplined retreat, then," Piett told him, and they turned and ran.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was as though they were running from a stormfront. The thunder of five thousand feet marching toward them, the fires and hails and lightnings of weapons discharging, the endless waves of dark-armored troops- all of them constantly advancing, an inexorable force. Only the crookedness of the Courani streets kept them from the line of fire as they ran.

Ahead of them, the spires of the palace grew nearer, but Piett did not allow himself any optimism. He had no doubt that he would reach the palace before the approaching army- they were moving at a steady, even gait, while he was running for his life- but the palace was not the most defensible of positions, the odds were against them, and he was commanding an unfamiliar force in unfamiliar territory. It was not that he believed he would lose, not that he feared he would die- it was that he had to think of the situation in tactical terms only. He could not afford either panic or relief, he could not dwell on the ache of his exhausted legs and straining lungs, could not let himself feel his bandages loosening and wounds re-opening as he ran.

Tactical terms. His forces, both Courani and Imperial, had the high ground, and a more disciplined corps of troops. The enemy had the advantage of better cover- countless winding streets and thick-walled buildings- better numbers- as much as four to one- and the option of approaching from multiple directions. What else? Neither he nor his opponent were likely to inspire the civilian population to rally in their support- Usan Azarile had murdered his family, and Piett was an offworlder, a stranger, who did not even speak the language of the common folk.

The first ranks of silver-armored Royal Guard came into view before him, weapons held ready, parting to let him pass. They did not salute, or make any gesture of obeisance- their gazes and their weapons were fixed on the advance of the enemy forces behind him.

After a moment, the sound of weapons fire doubled, then redoubled- the two armies had come into firing range of one another.

A moment after that, the screaming of the wounded and the dying began. It was a sound he hadn't heard since he transferred into the Navy- a sound he'd become far too familiar with, before that, and had done his best to forget in the years since then.

He turned to the nearest Courani Marshal with a white-banded arm. If he wanted to forget it again, he'd have to do his best to make it end quickly. And the only way to do that was to make sure the other side didn't have anyone left with the breath to scream with.

"Is there artillery stored or mounted anywhere on the palace grounds?" he asked, and the Marshal- Airin, he thought her name was- looked at him blankly.

"Artillery," he repeated, then realized that wasn't a word they'd have reason to teach in universities. "Very big guns. To shoot long distances, or-"

"Not near the palace," she said. "The- the edge of the city, only."

"Fixed or mobile?" he asked, frozen for a moment by the image of neutronic cannon surrounding the palace and bringing its towers down on top of them.

"Fixed," she said, and he held back a sigh of relief.

"Find Major Traggat for me," he told her. "He'll be by the shuttles. Tell him we need the MM3s up in the upper levels of the towers. It needs to be done now. And find me a pair of Septentrions that speak Asciens on the way."

He decided after a moment that he couldn't wait for the Septentrions- he had to find where his forces were being coordinated from. The head of the Royal Guard- Etfilian something, though Piett was unsure whether Etfilian was a rank or a first name- had met with him briefly after the coronation. The man spoke flawless Basic, and, more importantly, would have better tactical knowledge of the area than anyone else.

He seized the arm of the next Marshal who ran past- though the man didn't have the white armband- and made sure he had his attention.

"Etfilian," he said, and indicated with two or three brief gestures that he should be taken to him. The man set off at a run, and Piett followed.

The Etfilian stood atop the broken, half-heartedly burning wreck of a Courani shuttle, at least two hundred yards from the front lines. Over a dozen men stood around him, all displaying rank badges that Piett was unfamiliar with. The Etfilian himself was wearing some sort of goggles- presumably analogous to macrobinoculars- and snapping orders to the men around him. With every order, one of them ran in a different direction, or spoke into bulky-looking commlinks.

Though the Etfilian was facing the other direction, he began speaking in Basic as soon as Piett started climbing up the side of the fuselage.

"Your Mazhestai. Do you wish to know the current state of affairs?"

"That would be helpful," Piett said, dryly. "Troop numbers, positions, movements, presence and status of heavy weaponry or military vehicles, and anything on Usan Azarile himself."

"We have twelve hundred, with your men, and are losing approximately thirty men with every minute that passes. All of our men are on the palace grounds, with improvised cover. We do not have any heavy weaponry except what your storm troops may have brought along. We are entrenched, and as of yet we are not losing ground- within half an hour, I think, our lines will be breached. The enemy has at least three thousand, with another five to seven hundred in reserve. They are in two groups- one fixed, of two thousand men, and the remainder circling the grounds so that we must keep shifting our own forces to prevent their advance. They have cavalry moving in from the east, but it is still at least forty minutes distant. If we have not defeated them, or killed enough so that we outnumber them by the time the cavalry arrives, we will all die within… seven minutes, I think. Usan Azarile is a coward as well as a traitor. He leads from the middle of the fixed portion of his forces, and he is wearing a cataphractos."

"A what?"

"A mobile suit of molecularly bonded armor- ship-grade. Infantry weapons cannot penetrate it. He is invulnerable to us."

Before Piett could speak, the Etfilian rattled off several sets of commands in Courani.

"I have the start of a plan, Etfilian."

"Honor me by relating it, Mazhestai, and I will see if I can complete it."

"I have had several small artillery units placed in the higher levels of the towers. Their range is one kilometer, and their armament has an explosive radius of ten meters. Any suggestion on where to aim them?"

"The vanguard of the moving forces- then the rear guard- then the vanguard again."

"Tell someone who speaks Basic to convey the orders to Major Traggat."

The Etfilian erupted once more into rapid-fire Courani, and one of his men ran off.

"How many…. Zhitai… do you have among the forces here?"

"Fourteen, if all still live."

"I need them here. Heavy armor or not, I believe I have a way to get to my adoptive cousin."

~~~~~~~~~

It took ten minutes to assemble the Courani Jedi- the eight of them that survived. In that time, the Etfilian kept a steady summary of the battle's progress.

Nine hundred loyal soldiers remained- six hundred Courani, three hundred stormtroopers. Usan Azarile's fixed force had committed the reserves- but after its losses, had fewer than twenty-three hundred remaining. The forces that had been circling the grounds were broken and dying, pinned by mortar fire- three hundred all told, perhaps, divided in two different groups.

There was no word from the Imperial forces in orbit- only the ear-splitting squeal of static that meant indicated combat jamming on all frequencies.

The Zhitai- calling them Jedi seemed inappropriate, given four thousand years of diverging traditions and the fact that Piett was only here as an indirect result of what one Jedi had done to the Empire- were grim, dark-looking men who held themselves in a way that spoke of almost unimaginable discipline- it would have been unimaginable, if it were not for the fact that Piett had seen a group of Jedi once, in his youth on Chad- had even had a crush on one of the older apprentices.

Six of the eight Zhitai spoke Basic.

"How good are you," Piett asked them, stepping down off the hull of the wrecked shuttle, "at lifting things with your minds?"

Chapter Twenty-Eight

As the Phantom's darker-than-black hull fell away behind his fightercraft, M'thas found an entirely inappropriate smile on his face and an understandable boiling in his blood. He reveled in both sensations. After a moment spent in fierce, primitive bliss, he forced his smile into a snarl and flicked on his comm.

"Mynocks, this is lead. Three Flight, get planetside. I imagine our Admiral, or Emperor, or whatever his proper form of address is now, could use a little air support. One and Two Flights, with me. Keep your eyes on your tac boards- as far as I can tell, the traitors don't have any visible markings. And watch out for friendly fire- your sensors can't scan someone's character, they're going to have a hard time determining when some Courani's loyalties shift. The Eviscerator is launching a mostly intact squadron of bombers- we're their cover. Get moving."

There were nine bombers, moving with the same sluggish and suicidal determination that TIE Bombers always did toward one of the smaller Courani destroyers, a spiky, angular, almost insectile ship, every mandible-like shape that projected tipped with neutronic cannon, every curve and hollow spotted with torpedo launchers. Only a single squadron of fightercraft flanked the destroyer as it swam through the vacuum. Skirting the fringes of the battle, the destroyer came about, vectoring toward where the half-crippled Imperial fleet was strung out in orbit- rather obligingly, M'thas thought, as the vector carried it almost straight towards the bombers.

There were a dozen small, obscenely bright flares of light as the Courani fighters angled their oversized engine nozzles and accelerated toward their formation.

M'thas watched them approach, assessing their strengths and weaknesses as well as he could, and flicked on the comm again.

"We can't outrun them, but that doesn't matter while we're guarding the bombers. Move out in front of them, draw their attention, outmaneuver them. Go for the weapons emplacements- the Sith-cursed things are huge- and the engines. Or concentrate your fire with your wingman on one spot."

He toggled the switch so that he was on a private channel to his wingmate.

"You ready, Kamsov?"

"Less talk, more shooting, Captain."

As if in answer to her words, the first of the thornlike Courani fighters moved into range.

~~~~~~~~~

The numbers, as Vice Admiral Litsen figured them, were about even. That meant two separate things: the first and most obvious was that the coup was rushed. It was messy. No half-competent military officer would attempt a coup without overwhelming superiority or devastating weapons, and while there were more traitorous ships than loyal, the difference was small enough that even the crippled remnant of the Imperial fleet could balance the engagement.

The second fact was that, even if the Courani loyalists won, the Imperial fleet would likely be destroyed. The Courani engineers wanted quality, not quantity- the largest ship in the Courani fleet was half the size of the Sleipnir, with one-quarter its number of energy weapons, but between the molecular armor and the energy in its cannons' neutronic blasts, it could tear her ship apart.

Luckily, there was only one Courani cruiser that size, and it was loyal. The point was moot- three smaller ships were moving toward the Sleipnir now. The Imperial vessels were the weakest fighting for the loyalists. They would be savaged- the Phantom might have been able to survive, if it wasn't drifting, without the power needed for engines, shields, or weapons.

She needed a trick. She needed something clever, something the Courani did not know and could not match.

The cannon ports on the approaching Courani destroyers glowed with pale, volatile light.

~~~~~~~~~

Time seemed to have slowed to a ridiculous sort of crawl, and so the first fighter was almost too easy. The torpedo tubes yawned, conical depressions in molecularly bonded hull, almost as if they were designed to funnel laser fire.

When M'thas saw an incandescent sphere appear, deep within the approaching fighter's starboard tube, he fired. Pacing the lead bomber, moving at half the speed he was accustomed to in combat, his aim was precise.

Two of the three laserbolts vanished in the glow of the hyperthermal torpedo, which swelled, first slowly and then exponentially faster, swallowing the Courani fightercraft in blistering, blinding light. When the light vanished, the fighter's hull had gone with it, sublimated and superheated to plasma.

Then, his focus widened, and as he became aware of the furious movement in the space around him, his perception of time became normal once more, and events accelerated.

Something like thick grey lightning- a neutronic burst- passed close enough that his systems were momentarily scrambled, and he saw that already one of the bombers had been annihilated by enemy fire. A second Courani ship vectored towards him, light spilling from both torpedo launchers. Before he could even think of repeating a trick, both torpedos were screaming his direction through the vacuum. He had barely enough time to comm the bomber he escorted and yell "break starboard, low!" before his hands closed on the Adversary's control yoke in something in between a reflex and an involuntary spasm, born of panic, propelling his fighter upwards and to port- directly in the torpedos' course.

He was firing, missing, trying to remember how large their blast radius was and track from the corner of his eye both the enemy fighter and the bomber he was supposed to be riding herd on, and watching distance close and acceleration rise on his fighter's gauges, until he pulled back on the control yoke again, inverting his fighter and sending it the other direction, fleeing from the torpedos.

For a fraction of a second, the inertial compensators cut out, and with a force as reminiscent of something called gravity as a holdout blaster was of a turbolaser, M'thas was slammed or flattened back into the fighter's acceleration couch. He felt as though he was being crushed, pulverized, reduced to an organic paste one cell thick, and his hands were almost pulled from the control yoke, until he felt the bones in his fingers ready to be popped from their sockets, dragging against skin and sinew and blood vessels, and he was tempted to succumb and to let the Sith-cursed control yoke go before he died in the middle of a panicked thought that was, perhaps, the worst run-on sentence of his life, and he believed he could sense cerebral hemorrhaging begin as the blood vessels in his head compressed and imploded except he was sure that no such thing was truly happening or he'd be dead already- and he remembered the torpedos.

He let the fighter fly straight as he dropped in behind them, as they began the upwards loop he had just completed, and, as his tongue unglued from the back of its throat and dropped into its proper place, he spoke.

"Jackpot," he said, and fired. The torpedos detonated in a wash of excruciating brilliance. His viewport went black as he flew through the fading light, and half the heat gauges on his fighter jumped to the edge of the red zone, though the worst of the explosion was past and the cold of vacuum was swallowing it.

His foot slammed down on the retrothrusters and killed his acceleration as he cleared the edge of the blast zone, and found himself looking into a lighted, spacious cockpit less than ten meters away, and, within the cockpit, a shocked Courani face, and M'thas fired again, and pulled up again, his hull passing within a half-meter of the fighter, so close the Adversary was lifted slightly by the rush of air as the Courani fighter's cockpit suffered explosive decompression.

Another burst of acceleration and a dive to starboard put him back above the bomber, and past the enemy fighters' rearguard.

"One and Two Flights, report."

"This is Mynock Two, lead. We've lost Three and Six and three bombers. Four and Eight are proceeding chaperoning duties toward the target, I am en route to Seven and her charge."

There was a pause.

"Correction, sir. Four bombers down. Seven and I will cover your runs."

M'thas dismissed the ache of seven dead pilots and tightened his focus on the weapons emplacements of the Courani destroyer, looming ever larger in his viewports, and swiveling his direction.

"That's all I ask, Two." He flicked channels to contact the double-hulled Tie beneath him.

"Ahead at your discretion, kid. Bombs away."

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Piett had been unaccustomed to gambling when he served under Vader. He didn't like risking his command in any case, and he liked it less when he or any of his men might be strangled for a mistake. Right now, he was betting his life and his command both on one premise: with the battle in orbit being more vital than the battle on the ground, Usan Azarile's army had no air support. Besides being logical in theory, it seemed to be supported in fact- if Usan had had air support, he almost certainly would have called on it to destroy the mortar emplacements Piett had set up.

Hovering in the armored belly of the wrecked diplomatic shuttle, surrounded by eight Zhitai whose faces were pinched with the strain of lifting over ten tons, he prayed that he was right. If not, one of the Courani fighters' superheated, spherical torpedos would melt through hull and flesh alike within seconds.

There was a constant, echoing roar of noise from the battle, and the staccato spang of weapons fire against the lower hull. They were floating barely ten feet above the head of the enemy forces, toward the massive, insectile cataphractos that encased Usan Azarile. Three armored Courani stood beneath the ruptured upper hatch of the shuttle- two providing steady cover fire with mobile mortar emplacements, and one, in heavier armor, keeping a lookout for any soldiers who managed to scale the hull, and shouting down course corrections to guide the Zhitai toward their target.

Piett had glanced through the Etfilian's telescopic goggles before he had been sure that this strategy, this strike, was worth the risk. The cataphractos armor his adoptive cousin wore was a mobile suit of burnished bronze molecularly-bonded plating, nine feet in height. The sight of it had disturbed him- it looked almost too organic to be technology, and far too like the omnivorous, near-indestructible Karmiklic on Ladures that had come close to killing him and two of his SpecOps squadmates two decades before.

The primary thing that marked it as technology, besides the polished shine of metal, were the ugly, abrupt extrusions on its arms and chest: thermal projectors, fletchers, plasma lashers, blade matrices, electrolytic harpoons, and half-a-dozen other Courani weapons, varied enough so that two or three could be brought to bear in any direction, and be lethal under any conditions, despite whatever advantages or protections an enemy might employ.

Piett was counting on the Force, and the Zhitai, to defend against those weapons, dissect that armor, and keep the nearest hundred or so of Usan's soldiers occupied while they did it.

The lookout ducked down into the cover of the shuttle once more, shouted something incomprehensible in Courani. Piett swore to himself that, if he survived this day, he was going to start taking lessons in the language tomorrow.

The nearest Zhitai translated.

"Forty meters away, moving away to our right. There are two Zhitai in the crowd with him. We must close the hatch, or they will direct fire through it."

"Tell him to do it, then," Piett said. "Can we stay on course without the lookout."

The man smiled. "We can feel the traitor's Zhitai. We can find them, and he is keeping them close."

Another order was barked in Courani, and the hatch irised shut. The volume of the echoes increased, until all the interior of the shuttle was seemingly filled with the cacophonous roar of weapons fire, the sound ricocheting and growing ever louder.

"Twenty-five meters," the Zhitai yelled, his voice cutting smoothly above the echoes.

"Twenty meters………fifteen……ten…" the last pause was more drawn out than the others, and at the end of it there was something like surprise on the Zhitai's face. It looked foreign there.

As one, the eight Zhitai ignited their lightsabers.

The second they did, a ninth blade, glowing the blue-white grey of liquid mercury, sheared through the hull in a precise, molten circle. The circle of hull-metal hung unsupported in the air for a moment, then accelerated inwards, straight at Piett.

No thoughts crossed his mind as it hurtled toward him. There was, quite simply, no time for them.

It froze in the air perhaps six inches from him.

"We cannot fight and hold the shuttle up at the same time," the nearest Zhitai said, and they dropped.

The fall was slow, unreal- at least one of the Zhitai was still working on holding the shuttle and cushioning their fall- and in the three seconds of their descent Piett watched as the traitorous Zhitai stepped in through the smoldering hole he had carved in the hull.

The impact was jarring, and the metal of the hull rang like a massive, broken bell.

The Zhitai ignored it, running forward at their opponent. Framed in the gap in the hull, Piett could see the gleaming shape of the cataphractos, obscured by running soldiers.

If they fired into the shuttle, whatever plasma bolts or flechettes they launched would ricochet as easily as the sound of the firing had, and cut them to pieces.

The flashes and blurs of swinging lightsabers were impossible to follow, but as all eight of them left the shuttle, Piett saw a dead man- mercury-hued blade still live in his hand- left behind.

Piett followed in the wake of the Zhitai.

They cut a swathe through Usan Azarile's army, a corridor of bisected bodies and cauterized wounds, a void that no other soldiers seemed anxious to fill.

The cataphractos turned to face them, one Zhitai still at its side.

Before him, the others formed two loose lines, concentric half-circles with Usan Azarile as the point in their center. Piett and the three soldiers who had accompanied them stood between the two circles, protected from weapons fire on either side.

Rather than trying to break through the arc of Zhitai that separated them from their leader, Usan's army stood back. None of them wanted to fire, when misses might strike the cataphractos. And none of them was willing to try to fight the Zhitai with swords or pikes or hand-to-hand.

Usan Azarle had no such reluctance to fire. Clouds of flechettes, glowing tongues of flame, and tendrils of plasma struck out at the inner arc of Zhitai.

The plasma was deflected. The flechettes stopped in mid-flight and fell to the ground. The flame washed across their armor without effect.

Three volleys, each different than the last, were deflected or defeated. Then the Zhitai at Usan's side moved forward. Two of the inner arc stepped forward to engage him.

As soon as their blades crossed and their attentions focused, the cataphractos fired again, catching and dropping all three of the combatants.

There was a cry of outrage, and the other six Zhitai charged him, ignoring and passing through another two volleys, climbing the polished suit of metal and cutting into it.

As they did, its surface electrified, arcs of blue lightning crawling up and across its surface.

All six Zhitai dropped, dead or disabled, from their perches on the armor.

Ponderously, inexorably, the cataphractos turned to face him. Precise bursts of fire picked off the soldiers on either side of him.

A hush fell over the army around him, though screams and fire still came from the front lines, on both sides.

Once both arms and all weapons fixtures were aimed toward Piett, there was the sound of a catch being released, and a hiss of hydraulics. The canopy of the cataphractos swung up and outward, revealing a pale, sneering face beneath a crown that was identical to Piett's.

Piett stood motionless, impassive, attentive.

"Cousin," he said, nodding to the man.

Usan Azarile's lips pulled back from his teeth, sneer growing wider, and mirrored the nod. His eyes, fixed on Piett's face, held an insane sort of intensity, a fervor and a hatred that he could not even begin to guess at the depths of. "Cousin."

One of the background noises, something distant and quiet, something like a hoarse and high-pitched whining, caught Piett's attention.

"Be careful of what you fire at me, cousin." Piett said, mildly gambling yet again. "You wouldn't want to damage the real crown."

The sneer became a scowl. "I shall. Cousin… fool… foreigner… corpse… do you have any last words before I remove your head from beneath my crown?"

Piett straightened, and his eyes flicked to the distance in between where he and Usan stood. Over five meters, and he, without the armor, was of course much shorter. Good. He thought of the smile Cassian Azarile had died with, and felt it sneak onto his face. He thought of the tone in Darth Vader's voice when the Dark Lord gave a command you had to follow to the letter, or be killed.

"In the name of both the Empires I represent, and the pieces of them I lead, I, Kinneth Piett-Azarile, Admiral and Emperor, order you to power down your weapons and surrender immediately, on pain of death."

Usan Azarile threw back his head and laughed.

Three verdant laserbolts converged on his face and chest in an explosion which threw Piett backward to the ground, half-deaf, as the dark silhouette of an Adversary passed overhead with the hoarse, high-pitched scream of twin ion engines.

Three other fighters came in low behind it, strafing the traitorous army

Within a minute, Usan's followers had thrown down their weapons and surrendered.

The first of the Adversaries settled down next to where Piett stood, and a black-clad pilot, face still hidden by a helmet, climbed down.

Piett had an idea of who he would see under the helmet. After all, it seemed that any time he was resigning himself to hopelessness and death, M'thas Char piloted something to his rescue.

He was, therefore, shocked when the pilot removed her helmet, revealing a young, female face.

"I thank you, and I commend your timing," he said, holding his hand out to her, "but I don't believe I recognize you."

"Lieutenant Siran, sir," she said. "Captain Char thought that maybe you could use some air support."

"He was right. How are things going in orbit, Lieutenant?"

"Not so well, sir."

Chapter Thirty

"Ion cannons," Vice Admiral Litsen said. "That was why they hadn't beaten back the Ssi-Ruuk before we thinned them out- they're vulnerable to ion cannon. Non-hardened electronics."

The second volley of neutronic blasts from the destroyers rocked the ship as she spoke, the deck wobbling beneath her feet, as if the Sleipnir were a ship at sea, being tossed by the waves.

"What about the turbolasers?" the gunnery control officer asked, and before she could respond, another voice interrupted her.

"All turbolaser batteries should vent their coolant," it said, smoothly, and, as Litsen turned to face the speaker, added "at least, that would be my suggestion," in a nonrepentant sort of way.

The speaker was a relatively young man- no more than thirty- with dark, straight hair, eyes that slanted ever so slightly, and a face that looked as though it wore its present, bemused expression permanently.

"Brevet Captain Yovell Mal, Special Operations," the man said. "My pardon, Admiral. But our turbolasers are next to useless at the moment. The Courani hyperthermal torpedoes are penetrating our shields. Their advantages over proton torpedoes are heat and speed. The shields greatly reduce their speed, and the momentum of their impact. If we vent the coolant, they'll cool somewhat before they hit the hull, and probably do nothing more than scorch the paint."

"Do it," she said to the g.c. officer, then turned back to Mal. "I reserve the right to bring you up on insubordination charges. Whether I do depends on whether or not we're destroyed."

"And if we survive?"

"I probably won't. Any other suggestions, Brevet Captain?"

"Launch the blastboats we're carrying around. They've got ion cannons, they've got torpedoes- they're a better match for Courani fightercraft than TIEs. For that matter, launch all probe droids, and send them up the Courani's engines- the probots are armored for re-entry, so they can survive the heat and do some damage."

"Done," she said, and turned to give the orders. When she reached the section of the crew pit where the Intelligence analyst officer sat, she paused. "Commander Kuire," she told the man who sat there, "pull up the latest updates and your list of sensor contacts. Then stand up, salute your replacement, give him your command codes, and get off of my bridge." She turned again to face Mal. "Captain Mal," she said. "This is your new seat. Get down here."

Then she went back to directing the battle.

~~~~~~~~~

M'thas found, much to his disgust, that he was having fun. Flying again against the Ssi-Ruuk, he'd been exhilarated, and thought he'd recaptured the joy and energy which he'd missed in SpecOps.

But combat against the Ssi-Ruuk was different than anything he'd experienced before- the endless waves of tiny, agile fighters, the distant capitol ships that he had to avoid, lest their tractor beams capture him- and while fighting the Courani had its own peculiarities, it was far closer to fighting the Rebels. For that matter, technically, he was fighting the Rebels- he was just fighting for a different Empire now.

One of the things he'd missed most was strafing enemy cruisers.

Something revoltingly like nostalgia swept over him as he flew in behind the Bomber he was escorting, coming in low across the bronze armor of the ship's hull, firing at the weapons emplacements as the Bomber traced its flight path with a line of half-melted hull plates, launching concussion missile after concussion missile at the ship beneath them.

He wondered for a moment what kind of a maniac that nostalgia made him, what wires in his head adrenaline had permanently crossed.

He was in the middle of a rationalization when, with a sick jolt, his fighter was thrown into a spin or a roll or some stomach-lurching melding of the two, and he saw half the readouts and control boards before him spark, then fade to darkness, twisting with the heat of fires in the circuitry.

Sithspit. A neutronic blast had grazed him, and he hadn't even seen it. He flicked five of the six panic switches to his right- the fire extinguisher, the emergency stabilizer, the engine shutoff, the computer restart, and something with a highly technical name that would work around fried circuitry and re-route power to all systems. Almost immediately, the Adversary's course straightened, then slowed to a crawl.

Together, the switches would need time to complete their work in the proper sequence- more than five minutes, during which he'd be drifting through a battle zone.

He kept his hand hovering over the sixth switch, the only button he could hit until his fighter was running again and hope to get a response- the trigger for the ejector seat.

He refused to hit it- refused to give up just yet.

Instead, he waited.

~~~~~~~~~

Under wave after wave of ions bolts sparking against their hulls, the Courani destroyers stopped advancing. Lights flickered, engines flared, hyperthermal torpedoes misfired, taking out the ships' launchers and large portions of hull in spectacular chains of nova-white, spherical explosions.

The probe droids reached their destinations, and the destroyers' engines went dark. One of them, more damaged than the rest and unable to switch its fusion reactors off before the probots destabilized it, shuddered, then stilled. Its aft sections glowed- light actually shining through the hull as metal superheated. Then its engine nozzles shattered in a rain of armor fragments and thick, seemingly solid fusion-fire.

Glowing shards of hull plating struck the Sleipnir's shields, until they simply gave way, overtaxed. One triangular splinter of gleaming metal, thirty meters long, gouged a deepening rut across the Sleipnir's bow, and flames reached briefly into the vacuum as sections of the ship decompressed and their atmospheres combusted.

Despite the damages, the Sleipnir's batteries of ion cannon struck out again, illuminating the half-darkened Courani ships with flashes of blue lightning, until the last of the enemy destroyers' lights blinked out.

Formations swirled and reformed, and the Sleipnir, the largest ship operating, found itself at the heart of one, beside the barbed, spearlike shape of the Courani flagship.

The line of ships that faced them was half again as long, and a disconcerting number of the enemy vessels were the compacted, darkened shapes of ramships.

A number of Commodore Andleton's favorite curses came unbidden to Litsen's mind.

In a series of staccato flashes of light, the size of the enemy line grew again, almost doubling, as another Courani fleet appeared. The cavalry had arrived, yet again. It was disgusting, she thought, how often that seemed to happen in space battles. A few of Andleton's curses slipped free- mostly directed at Captain Lam and Lieutenant Piper. The analysis of the situation Litsen had gotten from SpecOps showed that Usan Azarile had next to no support in the outer systems of the Cluster. How in the name of the Sith had he managed to collect a fleet that size?

Then, the fleet opened fire.

On the traitorous Courani force.

That was, if anything, more inexplicable- with the sloth at which Courani ships moved through hyperspace, how could a fleet have arrived within hours of when the coup started?

She determined not to look a gift tauntaun in the mouth, and gave her orders.

~~~~~~~~~

M'thas Char watched the battle unfold with mounting anxiety.

It was, of course, no different than he expected- as he watched TIE Bombers and his fellow Mynocks demolish the Courani ship, he had drifted steadily further behind enemy lines. He had just cleared the rear of their formation when the second fleet emerged from hyperspace. He knew immediately, instinctively, that the new arrivals were on what he considered his side- they had to be, because that meant the front lines of the battle would shift to somewhere quite near his exact position. It was impossible, inconceivable even, that the arrival of reinforcements would actually help him, personally. He would've wagered his fighter on it.

Though in its current condition, that wasn't saying much.

Thorn-shaped Courani fighters swept toward one another, converging on either side of him.

He watched with something like resignation as a fighter closed on him from beneath, watching the glow from its neutronic cannon grow closer and closer to its discharge threshold. He focused on it, stared at it, willing some sort of miracle- not a miss, that was too much to hope for, but some sort of situation where the shot would allow him to float free of the wreckage and spit on the enemy pilot's face- or at least, his cockpit- before he suffocated and froze to death.

He watched.

He watched as a hyperthermal torpedo punched into and through the cockpit of the approaching fighter, and its gutted hull veered off course and away.

He glanced up. Barely three meters away, another Courani fighter, with the markings of a squadron leader, hovered on thrusters only. He looked into the cockpit, hoping to see his savior's face, and lost his breath.

She was young- under twenty-five, for certain- and she was stunningly beautiful.

As she grinned sharp-toothedly at him and flew away, his Adversary's systems began returning, one by one. By the time the engines were on-line, however, he had lost sight of her ship in the maelstrom of the battle.

Sithspit.

~~~~~~~~~

The Courani traitors were not like the Rebellion- when outnumbered and outgunned, they did not tenaciously fight to the death, selling every life and every ship dearly.

Less than ten minutes after the second fleet arrived from hyperspace, they surrendered, unconditionally, to the new arrivals- the fleet of Viscount Dajicor Irivas, who ruled the largest and least pronounceable of the Courani colony worlds.

He was a large, dark-skinned (for a Courani), imposing man on the comm system, and he spoke Basic clumsily.

"I come when I hear new ships are over the heartworld. Too many times, the emperor … says no…when my people ask for new… machines, weapons, things-"

"Technology," Litsen said.

"Yes. I come so that he cannot say no again. On the way, I… make our havrilai hear what he says on the… what we say things on now, but on the heartworld-"

"Communications network," Litsen said.

"Yes. And I come to know there are more… more important things to do. I have argue with my liege, but I am true. I am-"

"Loyal," Litsen said, and smiled.

"Yes. To the true Emperor of Courani, by… Cassian's word, first, and his blood only second. I would ask that you, and some of your warriors, come with me down to the heartworld. I want to greet my new liege."

~~~~~~~~~

Some Imperial officer had the presence of mind to bring a holocam and record the event; doubtless he or she received a commendation later.

The palace was still a shambles, with towers broken open and burned, but the rubble had been cleared away from the terraces nearest the landing pads, and so that was where the ceremony took place.

The procession was led by the Viscount, with an escort of two dozen of his finest officers, with their full ceremonial armor and helmets thick with the decorative markings Courani painted on to show accomplishment.

Behind them came Vice Admirals Litsen and Misth, and Commodore Andleton leading Captain Malahos and the other ship commanders just behind. They ought to have looked tired, perhaps, after the end of a battle, but any weariness they felt, they kept hidden away completely. Their dress uniforms were crisp, clean, and shining, as were their manners in the presence of royalty.

Looking conspicuous and out of place in the dress colors of their unit- dark blue and grey- were the SpecOps team- Captain Mal looking almost as detestably smug as M'thas usually had, after accomplishing something, and Lieutenants Piper and W't'kaer with relaxed formality at his sides. They walked with an assuredness, with the certainty of promotions to come- for Piper and W't'kaer, probably transfers to the leading Intelligence division, and for Mal, a ship to command.

Behind them came six TIE pilots. Colonel Ahana was escorted by one of the Mynocks, a young man who looked more than a little nervous to be surrounded by so many people of higher ranks. Lieutenant Siran and her wingman followed, and the crowd cheered louder, ever so slightly, as she passed.

At the procession's end were Captain Char and Lieutenant Kamsov. The Lieutenant looked comfortable, professional, and satisfied; M'thas looked distracted. At every opportunity, he scanned the crowd of Courani officers that stood at attention beside the procession, trying to pick out one, specific face, and failing.

There was a dais at the end of the procession, and the throne had been moved out to rest upon it.

Six silver-armored men surrounded it. Two had obviously been Royal Guard for years, if not decades, by the way they stood. Two, bandaged and burned, were Zhitai. The final two, for their stance and their suppressed discomfort, were stormtroopers, adjusting to new uniforms.

One of the stormtroopers was fingering the red blazons painted on his armor- the insignia that denoted command of the Royal Guard. He was, of course, Commander Andleton, and for perhaps the first time since Endor he had gone through a battle without being injured. When the procession reached the throne, Captain Char spared a glare for him- a stormtrooper leading the Royal guard, indeed.

On the dais, in front of the throne, in the richest and most ornate robes of burgundy, tasseled and embroidered with jewels enough to buy a starship, his heavy, helm-like crown polished to darkly silver shine, stood Kinneth Piett- Azarile, now burdened by the command of over a dozen star systems, hundreds of ships, and billions of lives. The man he had been only months before, the commander of the Executor, would not have recognized him now. The man who had landed an escape pod on Endor would not have believed he could be real. The man who had led his fleet against the Ssi-Ruuk would not have dared hope that he could live to see it.

He was smiling.