Star Wars - [Black Fleet Crisis 01] - Before the Storm (by Michael P Kube-McDowell)

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The Black Fleet Crisis [049-5.0]

Book One

Michael P. Kube-McDowell

Synopsis

In the blockbuster bestselling tradition of Heir to the Empire comes

this thrilling addition to the Star Wars saga, as peace gives way to a

dire new threat...

The blackfleet crisis, book one

BEFORE THE STORM

It is a time of tranquillity for the New Republic. The remnants of the

Empire now lie in complete disarray, the reemergence of the Jedi

Knights has brought power and prestige to the fledgling government on

Coruscant. Yesterday's Rebels have become today's administrators and

diplomats, and the factions that fought against Imperial tyranny seem

united in savoring the fruits of peace.

But the peace is short-lived. A restless Luke must journey to his

mother's homeworld in a desperate and dangerous quest to find her

people.

An adventurous Lando must seize a mysterious spacecraft that has

weapons of enormous power and an unknown mission. And Leia a living

symbol of the New Republic's triumph, must face down the ruthless

leader of the Duskhan League, an arrogant Yevetha who seems bent on a

genocidal war that could shatter the fragile unity of the New Republic

and threaten its very survival.

BANTAM BOOKS

NEW YORK TORONTO LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND

In memory of my grandfather, Dayton Percival Deich, 1896-1975, who

believed in a universe of wonders beyond this Earth.

And for my children,

Matthew Tyndall, born 1983,

and Amanda Kathryn, born 1995.

May their lives be joyful journeys through their own universe of

wonders.

Author's note

Three people stand out above all others in deserving my gratitude and

appreciation, though my poor words are hardly the equal of their gifts

to me. Those three are Gwendolyn Zak, my best friend, SO, and POSSLQ,

for her unwavering love, patience, support, and faith; Tom Dupree, my

editor, for believing in me and giving me a chance; and Russ Galen, my

agent, for going out on a limb and trusting me not to saw it off behind

him. This book would not exist without them and their contributions.

I also want to thank Gwen, Matt, and Arlyn, for being such helpful

("Didn't you blow up this ship in the last chapter?") and encouraging

("All right--where's the rest of it? What? Go write more!") first

readers. Sue Rostoni at Lucasfilm saw to it that I had all the

references and resources I asked for, and then applied her extensive

knowledge of the Star Wars universe to keep me from violating the

historical record as often as I tried to. Fellow SW novelists Vonda

Mcintyre, Roger MacBride Allen, and Kevin J. Anderson generously shared

their insights and their maps of the minefields. Also pitching in with

SW trivia and general encouragement were Rich Mason, Timothy O'Brien,

Matt Hart, Skip Shayotovich, and the rest of the Star Wars fan

communities on GEnie and CompuServe.

The writing of Before the Storm bracketed a long-awaited move and the

even longer-awaited birth of a daughter. Generous gifts of time and

perspiration from Rod and Marion Zak, Tracy Holland, Greg Cronau, Arlyn

Wilson, Mary Ellen Wessels, Faye Wessels, Mike Thelan, Roberta Kennedy,

and other friends and family members allowed us to survive those

transitions and me to keep working.

Finally, I'd like to thank George Lucas, for his blessing to tell this

story in his wonderful universe--which I first visited nearly twenty

years ago in a theater in Mishawaka, Indiana. If someone had told me

then that someday I'd have a chance to add a few chapters to the life

stories of Luke, Han, Leia, and their friends and enemies, I'd have

just laughed.

As it is, I'm still smiling.

--Michael P. Kube-McDowell September 12, 1995

Okemos, Michigan

Prologue

Eight months after the Battle of Endor The Empire's orbiting repair

yard at N'zoth, code-named Black 15, was of standard Imperial design,

with nine great shipways arrayed in a square. On the morning of the

retreat from N'zoth, all nine slips were occupied by Imperial

warships.

Under most circumstances, nine Star Destroyers together would have been

an intimidating sight to any who might come under their guns.

But on the morning of the retreat from N'zoth, only one of the nine was

ready for space.

That was the sorry assessment of Jian Paret, commander of the Imperial

garrison at N'zoth, as he looked out on the yards from his command

center. The orders he had received hours ago were still playing before

his eyes You are ordered to evacuate the planetary garrison to the

last man, at best possible speed, using any and all ships that are

spaceworthy. Destroy the repair yard and any and all remaining assets

before withdrawing from the system.

Paret's assessment was shared by Nil Spaar, master of the Yevethan

underground, as he rode the work shuttle up from the surface with the

first commando team. The orders he had given hours ago were still

ringing in his ears

"Notify all teams that an Imperial evacuation has been ordered.

Execute the primary plan without delay.

It is our day for retribution. Our blood is in those vessels, and they

will be ours. May each of us honor the name of the Yevetha today."

Nine ships.

Nine prizes.

The most badly damaged, Redoubtable, had taken terrible punishment in

the retreat from Endor. The others ranged from old medium cruisers

being upgraded and recommissioned, to the EX-F, a weapons and

propulsion test bed built on a Dreadnaught hull.

The key to them all was the massive Star Destroyer Intimidator, moored

at one of the open slips.

Spaceworthy but completely unblooded, it had been sent to Black 15 from

the Core for finish work, to free up a Super-class shipway at the

command's home shipbuilding yard.

There was more than enough room aboard it for the garrison, and more

than enough firepower aboard to destroy the yard and the hulls

within.

Paret transferred his command to the bridge of the Intimidator within

an hour of receiving his orders.

But Intimidator could not leave the yard as quickly as Paret would have

liked. He had only one-third of a standard crew aboard, a single

watch--too few hands to quickly ready a ship of that size to fly

free.

Moreover, nine of every ten workers on Black 15 were Yevetha. Paret

despised the gaudy-faced skeletons.

He would have liked to seal the ship in the interest of security, or to

draft additional work details in the interest of speed. But either act

would prematurely alert the Yevetha that the occupation force was

leaving N'zoth, threatening the withdrawal from the surface.

All Paret would do was call a surprise departure drill and wait out its

lengthy checks and countdowns, letting the normal work details continue

until the troop transports and the governor's shuttle had lifted off

and were en route. Then, and only then, could his crew

close the hatches, cut the moorings, and turn its back on N'zoth.

Nil Spaar knew of Commander Paret's dilemma.

He knew all that Paret knew, and much more. For more than five years

he had worked to position allies of the underground throughout the

conscript work-force.

Nothing of importance happened without Nil Spaar's swiftly hearing of

it. And he had taken the information he had collected and woven it

into an elegant scheme.

He had put an end to the rash of minor "mistakes" and "accidents,"

demanding that those who worked for the Empire show diligence and

strive for excellence---while learning everything they could about the

ships and their operation. He had seen to it that the Yevetha made

themselves indispensable to the Black Fleet's yard bosses and earned

the trust of its commanders.

It was that trust which had allowed the work slowdown in the months

since the Battle of Endor to go on unquestioned. It was that trust

which had given his Yevetha the run of both the yard and the ships

moored in the slips.

And it was the patient and calculating exploitation of that trust which

had brought Nil Spaar and those who followed him to this moment.

He knew that he no longer need fear the Harridan, the Victory-class

Star Destroyer that had been protecting the yard and patrolling the

system. The Harridan had been ordered to the front three weeks ago,

joining the Imperial force fighting a losing rear-guard action at

Notak.

He knew that Paret could not seal the Intimidator against his men, even

by ordering a battle-stations lockdown. More than a dozen external

hatches in Sections 17 and 21 had been rigged by Yevetha technicians to

report that they were secured when they were not, and to report that

they were closed when they were not.

He knew that even if Intimidator got free of the slip in which it was

moored, it would not have a chance to escape or turn its guns on the

abandoned vessels. The packages of explosives concealed inside

Intimidator's hull would break it open like an egg the moment its

shields went up and blocked the signal that was sating the bombs.

As the work shuttle neared the receiving dock, Nil Spaar felt no fear,

no apprehension. Everything that could be done had been done, and

there was a joyful inevitability about the fighting to come. He had no

doubt what the outcome would be.

Nil Spaar and the first commando team entered Intimidator through the

hatches in Section 17, while his second, Dar Bille, and the backup team

entered through Section 21.

There was no talking. None was necessary. Every member of both teams

knew the layout of the ship as well as any Imperial crewman. They

moved through it like ghosts, down corridors closed or cleared by

friends on work details, through crawlways and up access ladders that

appeared on no construction blueprint. In minutes they had reached the

bridge--without ever being challenged, or drawing a weapon, or firing a

shot.

But they entered the bridge with weapons drawn, knowing exactly which

stations would be occupied, where the guard station was, who could

sound a shipwide alarm. Nil Spaar shouted out no warnings, made no

theatrical announcement, demanded no surrender.

He simply walked briskly across the deck toward the executive officer,

raised his blaster, and burned the officer's face away.

As he did, the rest of the team fanned out behind him, each to his own

assigned target. Six of Intimidator's bridge crew were struck down in

the first seconds, sitting at their stations, because of the power that

rested at their fingertips. The others, including Commander Paret,

quickly ended up facedown on the floor, hands bound behind them.

Taking the ship was not difficult. Timing the raid to avoid

retribution had always been the challenge.

"Signal from the governor's shuttle," called out a Yevetha commando,

slipping into the seat at the communications station. "The transports

are leaving the surface. No trouble reported."

Nil Spaar nodded approvingly. "Acknowledge the signal. Advise the

crew that we're moving out to pick up the garrison. Notify the yard

that Intimidator is leaving."

Like a cluster of insects returning to the hive, the fleet of Imperial

transports rose from N'zoth toward the great dagger-shaped Star

Destroyer. More than twenty thousand citizens of the Empire were

crammed into the insect fleet--soldiers and bureaucrats, technicians

and families.

"Open all hangars," said Nil Spaar.

Their destination in sight, the transports slowed and began to align

themselves on approach vectors.

"Activate all autotargeting batteries," said Nil Spaar.

There was a collective gasp from the prisoners on the bridge, who were

watching the same display screens as the Yevetha commandos who now

occupied their stations.

"You're all cowards," Commander Paret called out to the invaders, his

voice bitter with contempt and anger. "A real soldier would never do

this. There's no honor in killing the defenseless."

Nil Spaar ignored him. "Lock on targets."

"You vicious, pathetic fool. You've already won.

How can you justify this?"

"Fire," said Nil Spaar.

The deck plates barely vibrated as the gun batteries erupted and

approaching transports disappeared in balls of fire and fragments. It

did not take long. None escaped. Moments later the communications

station began to scream with shocked and panicked inquiries from all

over the ship. There had been many witnesses to the carnage.

Nil Spaar turned away from the tracking display and crossed the bridge

to where Commander Paret lay on the decking. Grabbing the Imperial

officer by the hair, he dragged Paret out of line and rolled him over

roughly with his booted foot. Seizing the front of Paret's tunic with

one hand, Nil Spaar lifted him half off the deck. For a long moment he

loomed over the officer, looking like a tall, vengeful demon with his

cold, black, widely set eyes, the white slash down his nasal ridge, and

the deep scarlet-splashed ridges that furrowed his cheeks and chin.

Then, hissing, the Yevetha made a fist with his free hand and cocked it

back. A sharp, curving dew-claw emerged from the swelling at his

wrist.

"You are vermin," Nil Spaar said coldly, and slashed the claw across

the Imperial captain's throat.

Nil Spaar held on through the commander's death throes, then dropped

the body carelessly to the floor.

Turning, he looked down into the pit at the commando who had taken over

the communications station.

"Tell the crew that they are the prisoners of the Yevetha Protectorate

and His Glory the viceroy," said Nil Spaar, wiping his claw on the

trouser leg of his victim.

"Tell them that beginning today, their lives depend on their being

useful to us. And then I wish to speak to the viceroy, and tell him of

our triumph."

chapter 1.

Twelve years later [ In the pristine silence of space, the Fifth Battle

Group of the New Republic Defense Fleet blossomed over the planet

Bessimir like a beautiful, deadly flower.

The formation of capital ships sprang into view with startling

suddenness, trailing fire-white wakes of twisted space and bristling

with weapons. Angular Star Destroyers guarded fat-hulled fleet

carriers, while the assault cruisers, their mirror finishes gleaming,

took the point.

A halo of smaller ships appeared at the same time.

The fighters among them quickly deployed in a spherical defensive

screen. As the Star Destroyers firmed up their formation, their flight

decks quickly spawned scores of additional fighters.

At the same time, the carriers and cruisers began to disgorge the

bombers, transports, and gunboats they had ferried to the battle.

There was no reason to risk the loss of One fully loaded--a lesson the

Republic had learned in pain. At Orinda, the commander of the fleet

carrier Endurance had kept his pilots waiting in the launch bays, to

protect the smaller craft from Imperial fire as long as possible. They

were still there when Endurance took the brunt of a Super Star

Destroyer attack and vanished in a ball of metal fire.

Before long more than two hundred warships, large and small, were

bearing down on Bessimir and its twin moons. But the terrible,

restless power of the armada could be heard and felt only by the ships'

crews.

The silence of the approach was broken only on the fleet comm channels,

which had crackled to life in the first moments with encoded bursts of

noise and cryptic ship-to-ship chatter.

At the center of the formation of great vessels was the flagship of the

Fifth Battle Group, the fleet carrier Intrepid. She was so new from

the yards at Hakassi that her corridors still reeked of sealing

compound and cleaning solvent. Her huge realspace thruster engines

still sang with the high-pitched squeal that the engine crews called

"the baby's cry."

It would take more than a year for the mingled scents of the crew to

displace the chemical smells from the first impressions of visitors.

But after a hundred more hours under way, her engines' vibrations would

drop two octaves, to the reassuring thrum of a seasoned thruster

bank.

On Intrepid's bridge, a tall Dornean in general's uniform paced along

an arc of command stations equipped with large monitors. His eye-folds

were swollen and fanned by an unconscious Dornean defensive reflex, and

his leathery face was flushed purple by concern.

Before the deployment was even a minute old, Etahn A'Faht's first

command had been bloodied.

The fleet tender Ahazi had overshot its jump, coming out of hyperspace

too close to Bessimir and too late for its crew to recover from the

error. Etahn A'baht watched the bright flare of light in the upper

atmosphere from Intrepid's forward viewstation, knowing that it meant

six young men were dead.

But there was no time to linger over the loss. The monitors were

flashing images from dozens of scanners on ships and spy satellites at

a frenzied pace. Reports from the battle management section changed

moment to moment, almost as quickly as the master battle clock counted

up the tenths and hundredths.

The assault plan was too intricate and tightly scheduled for a few

deaths to stop it. Battle management quickly assigned a reserve fleet

tender to Ahazi's section. May your spirits fly to the zenith and your

bodies rest peacefully in the depths, General A'baht thought, recalling

an old Dornean sailors' blessing for the dead. Then he turned away and

studied the order of battle and tactical plan. There would be time to

mourn later.

"Penetration phase complete," sang out a lieutenant at one of the

consoles. Deployment complete.

Assault leader is approaching wave-off failsafe and requests final

authorization."

"Penetration complete, copy," echoed A'baht.

"Deployment complete, copy. All stations, call off."

"Battle management, go."

Combat intelligence, go."

"Tactical, go."

"Communications, go."

"Fleet ops, go."

"Flight ops, go."

"Ground ops, go."

"I read the call board as clear," General A'baht said in a strong,

confident voice. "Failsafe authorization is go, combat rules are

green--repeat, go green."

"Authorization is go green, copy," acknowledged the lieutenant, turning

a key on his console. "Assault leader, the word is go--you are clear

to proceed. All weapons are live, and the target is hot."

Almost at once, a trio of assault cruisers and their complement of

K-wing bombers broke away and surged ahead of the primary formation.

Their new course would take them looping under the ptanet's south pole

en route to their targets--the primary spacefighter base and planetary

defense batteries located on the alpha moon, which was still over the

horizon from the armada's jumppoint.

Pairs of speedy A-wing fighters flashed out of formation and fanned out

to intercept and destroy the planet's lightly armed sensor and

communications sat ellites. The A-wings fired the first shots of the

assault on Bessimir, and did so with unerring accuracy, transforming

their targets into sparkling clouds of metal and plasteel.

The A-wings also drew the first opposing fire. Several ion-cannon

batteries on the surface opened up in a vain attempt to protect their

high-orbiting eyes. Moments after the ground batteries revealed their

location, gunners on the lead Republic assault cruisers had them

targeted.

High-powered lasers on the cruisers painted the batteries, blinding

ground sensors and testing for coun-terpunch fire from secondary

sites.

When there was none, the great pulse cannon mounted aboard the Star

Destroyers methodically turned the ground batteries into smoking black

craters. The only casualty for the Republic was an A-wing from

Blackfire Flight, which picked up a sleeper mine on the right wing

while making its pass against a recon satellite.

On the fa r side of Bessimir, the cruiser detachment approached the

alpha moon on a high-speed collision course. As drone fighters

appeared from concealed launch chutes on the surface, the big ships

fanned out three abreast and began releasing clusters of penetration

bombs.

Tall as a man and tipped by a reinforced spike, the black-cased bombs

sped down toward the fighter base as the cruisers veered off. The

drone fighters rising from the moon veered off as well. Moments later

a dozen antiship batteries on the surface surrendered their camouflage,

opening fire on the infalling bombs.

But the penetration bombs--propelled only by inertia, and with their

casings as dark and nearly as cold as space itself--did not offer much

of a target. Most fell through the defensive barrage unmolested. Two

seconds before impact, small thrusters in the tail of each bomb fired,

slamming them into the surface at even greater speed and driving them

twice their length into the barren ground.

A moment later, with the dust of impact still rising, the bombs

exploded as one. The flash and flame were swallowed by the moon's

face. But the terrible concussion propagated downward and outward

through the rock. It shattered reinforced walls like matchsticks, and

collapsed underground chambers like eggshells. Great plumes of gray

dust shot out of the launch chutes, and the ground itself subsided over

what had been the main hangar.

At the moment the bombs exploded, Esege Tuketu was flying lead in an

eighteen-ship formation following the cruisers toward the alpha moon.

"Sweet mother of chaos," he breathed, awestruck by the sight. For just

a moment, he took his hands off the controls of his K-wing and lowered

his forehead against his crossed wrists--the Narvath gesture of

surrender to the fire that consumes all.

From the second seat of Tuketu's bomber came an equally heartfelt and

respectful "Wow!" voiced by his weapons technician. "And I don't care

what they say," he added. "I felt that one."

"Seemed like I did, too, Skids," said Tuketu.

"No one had a better seat for it than we did, that's for sure."

They watched carefully ahead with eyes as well as passive scanners. No

more fighters emerged from the hidden base. The antiship batteries

were still.

But the drone fighters already launched fought on, even though deprived

of their controllers. Following internal combat protocols, they flung

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TheBlackFleetCrisis[049-5.0]BookOneMichaelP.Kube-McDowellSynopsisIntheblockbusterbestsellingtraditionofHeirtotheEmpirecomesthisthrillingadditiontotheStarWarssaga,aspeacegiveswaytoadirenewthreat...Theblackfleetcrisis,bookoneBEFORETHESTORMItisatimeoftranquillityfortheNewRepublic.TheremnantsoftheEmpire...

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