Heirs of the Force

20

Qorl flew his single fighter at top speed over the thick jungle canopy. The rushing air of Yavin 4 screamed around the TIE fighter’s rounded pilot compartment and the rectangular solar arrays. He remembered his days as a trainee. He had been an excellent pilot—one of the best in his squadron—soaring through mock battles and enforcing the Emperor’s unbending will.

Air currents buffeted him, and the pilot reveled in the sensation of flight. He had not forgotten, not even after so many years. The vibrating power that pulsed through the fighter’s engines, along with a sense of freedom and liberation after so long an exile, buoyed him.

Qorl watched the knotted green crowns of Massassi trees flowing beneath him in the storm of his ship’s passage. With his thickly gloved, badly healed arm, he found it difficult to control the Imperial craft—but he was a fighter pilot. He was a great pilot. He had managed to land his ship, despite grievous engine damage, under heavy enemy fire. He had survived undetected in hostile territory for two decades.

Now, flying low over the trees to avoid notice from any possible defenses at the Rebel base, Qorl felt his memories, his ingrained skill, come flooding back to him.

The Empire is my family. The Rebels wish to destroy the New Order. The Rebels must be eliminated—ELIMINATED!

His greatest advantage was surprise. This attack would come out of nowhere. The Rebels would be expecting nothing. He would streak in with all weapons blazing. He would level the Rebel base structures, blast them into rubble. He would kill all those who had conspired to blow up the Death Star, who had killed Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin. He, a single soldier, would secure vengeance for the entire Empire.

There! Qorl squinted through the scratched goggles of his blast helmet. Protruding from a clearing in the dense jungle, a towering stone temple rose up—a ziggurat, the squarish pyramid that served as the main structure of the base.

Qorl roared low over the facilities of the old Rebel stronghold. A wide, sluggish river sliced through the jungle near the site of the temples. On the opposite side of the brownish-green current lay other crumbling ruins, but they seemed uninhabited. Then he noticed a large power-generating station next to the towering ziggurat and knew for certain that he had not been, wrong: this base was still used as a military installation.

As he brought the TIE fighter in on his first attack run, Qorl saw that the jungle had been cleared to make a large landing area in front of the Great Temple. On the flat field he saw only one ship—disk-shaped, with twin prongs in front.

Qorl didn’t immediately recognize the make or model of the lone ship below. It was some kind of light freighter, not a Rebel X-wing or any of the familiar battleships he had learned about during his rigorous combat training.

On the ground, several people ran toward the ship, sprinting away from the stone pyramid. Scrambling to battle stations perhaps? His lip curled in a snarl. He would take care of them.

He flicked the buttons on his control panel, powering up the TIE fighter’s weapons systems. Before he could align the victims in his targeting cross, though, all the small figures below managed to climb aboard the light freighter. Its boarding ramp drew up, preparing for launch.

He dismissed the light freighter as a possible target—for now, at least. It was probable, Qori realized, that the Rebels kept a large force of more powerful fighters in an underground hangar bay. If so, his first task was to prevent those craft from launching—even if only by damaging the doors enough to keep the ships trapped inside.

He decided his best strategy would be to continue his straight-line course and fire with full-power laser cannons on the main structure of the Great Temple. He would blow the entire building to rubble—perhaps causing it to collapse internally, thus eliminating the Rebels and destroying all their equipment inside.

Then he could swoop around and take care of the single light freighter, even if it managed to get up off the ground. His third target would be the power-generating station.

With the Rebels completely paralyzed by his lightning attack, he would swing back for the last time. He would charge up his laser cannons again and go for the kill, mopping up anything he had missed the first time.

From start to finish, it would take only a few minutes to bring the Rebels to their knees.

Qorl centered the Great Temple in his targeting cross, aiming at the apex of the squared-off pyramid, with its thin banks of skylights and ancient vine-covered sculptures. The TIE fighter zoomed in.

He grasped the firing stick with his good hand. At exactly the right moment he depressed the firing buttons, letting an expression of anticipation light his normally emotionless face.

Nothing.

He squeezed the button again and again—and nothing happened! The weapons systems did not respond.

Qorl flicked on the backups as he spun the TIE fighter in the air, barreling down again on his target. Over and over he tried to fire, but the laser cannons were completely dead. His eyes swept the diagnostic panels, but all the readings seemed normal.

With his gloved hand Qorl pounded on the instrumentation panel, as if that would fix anything—and with old Imperial equipment, sometimes it did. But not this time.

He frantically worked with the controls, digging under the panels to restart the weapons systems even as he flew on. He reached down and felt around his seat, searching for anything he could use to jump-start the malfunctioning laser cannons.

Qorl caught the glimmer out of the corner of his eye, reflected against the dark goggles of his helmet. He glanced down and noticed something moving … sinuous, barely seen, glittering and transparent.

The crystal snake reared up right beside him, its triangular head showing up as a faint rainbow in the glow from the cockpit lights. Qorl, who had seen plenty of the reptilian creatures during his exile on Yavin 4, spotted it immediately and reacted.

He let out a startled cry and tried to brush the snake away. It lunged and bit down as he reached out with his crippled arm to block it. The crystal snake dug its spearlike fangs info the thick leather of Qorl’s gauntlet, but was unable to penetrate all the way to his skin.

As he flung his hand back and forth, Qorl could feel the heavy weight of the crystal snake writhing, snapping, though he could see almost nothing at all.

He let the TIE fighter fly itself as he reached with his good hand to grab the long body of the serpent just behind its head, He ripped the fangs free and stuffed the thrashing creature into the cockpit jettison chute. With a cry of disgust he ejected the snake into the air, where it fell toward the treetops of the jungle moon, disappearing instantly in the bright sunlight.

He wrestled for control of his weaponless vessel. The Jedi twins must have done something in their repairs.

He managed to stabilize his erratic flight… but before he could decide on a new course, bright streaks from an enemy laser cannon sizzled through the air, bolts of energy that ionized the atmosphere around Qorl’s TIE fighter.

He yanked at the control stick with his good arm, and his fighter lurched into a starboard spin. The Rebel light freighter had taken to the air and was flying after Qorl like a furious bird of prey. And its weapons worked just fine.

Qorl punched in full power to the twin ion engines and decided that his only chance for now was to try to escape.

In the heart of the jungle, next to Qorl’s primitive dwelling, Jacen and Jaina sat beside each other, deep in concentration. They reached out with the Force to see what was going on back at the Jedi academy. Their powers were only sufficient to bring them shadowy images, distant echoes of thoughts… but it was enough.

“He didn’t know I never fixed the weapons systems… but then, he never asked. I managed to jury-rig the readouts so they would lock normal,” Jaina said at last. “He can fly, but his ship is defenseless.”

“Yes, and I think the crystal snake must have distracted Qorl somehow,” Jacen said.

“I wonder what happened to it.” They smiled at each other.

“I suppose our next step,” Jacen said, squinting up at the morning light that filtered through the trees, “is to figure out how to get back home.”

Jaina pushed a tangle of her usually straight brown hair back from her face and took a deep breath. “Agreed,” she said, then clapped her hands and rubbed them together. “So what are we waiting for?”