Star Wars: Before the Awakening (16 page)

The senator spluttered. “Do you
know who I am? How dare—”

Poe fired a shot at the deck, sending sparks into the air.

“Mine!” Poe roared. “You’re good stock! You’ll make a fine slave!”

The senator blanched, recoiling to hide behind his servant.

“Now…now let’s not do anything hasty….”

“You have ten seconds to leave my ship!” Poe said. “Or else you’ll be mine, too!”

He fired a second shot into the deck for emphasis.

The
senator, the pilot, and the servant practically trampled one another running for the escape pods.

With three minutes and twenty-nine seconds left on the timer, everything went wrong.

Poe was in the cockpit, helmet and gloves now unceremoniously dumped on the floor, the data chip with the hyperspace coordinates plugged into the navicomputer. He was working on restarting the
Hevurion Grace
’s
main engines when Iolo’s voice came over the comm.

“Uh-oh.”

Just that, and it was enough for Poe to snap his head up from his work and search the empty space beyond the cockpit canopy. It was just possible—barely possible—that they’d miscalculated and the Republic had managed a speedier response than anticipated. But even as he thought that, Poe knew he was wrong. Iolo’s Keshian eyes had seen
trouble coming, but not soon enough to do anything about it, and what had been an empty view suddenly filled with one ship, then another, then another as vessels snapped back into realspace.

“First Order!” Poe shouted into his comm. “Jump! Iolo, Karé, get out of here!”

TIEs were already launching from the belly of the two Star Destroyers that had appeared, one of them a new model
Resurgent
class.
Another flight dropped from its moorings alongside the Nebulon-K that had come with them. Smaller vessels, assault ships, popped into view. Proximity alarms on the
Hevurion Grace
began screaming, and Poe twisted around, slapping switches back into silence.

“Commander, what’s your time to jump?” Karé asked.

“I gave you an order, Captain Kun.”

“Sorry, can’t hear you because of all these
TIE
fighters
coming at me.”

Poe glanced at the charging monitor for the hyperdrive. The ion blast to the yacht had forced almost every system aboard into reset, and while the navicomputer now had coordinates for his jump locked, it was the drive itself that needed to restart. Unfamiliar though he was with the flight controls of a
Pinnacle
-class yacht, Poe could see it would be another ninety seconds
on the outside before the ship’s twin SoroSuub Hawke engines reached full power. Any attempt to jump prior to that would be pointless; the
Hevurion Grace
’s hyperdrive motivator simply would refuse to engage the engines.

“It’s gonna be about forty, forty-five seconds,” Poe said. “I can evade these slugs for that long.”

“So about a minute and a half,” Iolo said. His tone was resigned. “You’re
a bad liar, Commander.”

“I am not.” Poe was indignant.

“We’ll keep them off your back, Commander.” This was Karé again. “You make your back hard for them to climb onto to begin with.”

“You’re both disobeying my orders.” Even as he was saying it, Poe was kicking up the thrust on the yacht’s ion engines. At least
those
were fully functional. “Don’t think I’ll forget this.”

“You can court-martial
us later, sir,” Karé said.

It didn’t take long for Poe to realize how serious the First Order was about stopping the
Hevurion Grace
. The first flight of TIEs, eighteen of them, blew straight past Iolo and Karé in their Z-95s without pause or deviation, racing directly for Poe and the yacht. The two leading TIEs had opened fire even before they were in range. Poe concluded three things from
this: first, that whoever was flying those TIEs had more enthusiasm than sense; second, that whatever information the Resistance might discover in the yacht’s computers was likely to be worth its weight in gold; and third, as a result of the second fact, the First Order was
very
serious about keeping him from escaping.

But that single-mindedness cost them.

For all its reputation as a pure luxury craft, Poe found the yacht surprisingly nimble in his hands, the ship leaping forward with a burst of speed as he opened the thrusters and banked hard, making for the nearest of the Uvoss gas giants. His goal was to put as much space as possible between himself and the capital
ships; and the capital ships, he’d noted at once, were closing on him, albeit much more slowly than the TIEs. The TIEs he felt he could handle; the yacht’s deflectors were fully charged, and Poe was confident enough in his piloting and, more, in Iolo and Karé that he believed he could survive long enough to make the jump. But those capital ships were another matter, their firepower truly terrifying;
a direct hit from any of their turbolaser batteries would turn
Hevurion Grace
into vapor, and Poe Dameron with it.

So the gas giant was really his only choice, and if he could get close enough, there might even be a tactical advantage to be found in the planet’s intense gravity. That was the plan, but flying in a straight line would let the TIEs cut him to pieces, and that meant he was jinking,
dodging, twisting the yacht in ways he was certain its owner would’ve wept to witness.

The TIEs were on him as soon as he completed the turn, beginning his run for the gas giant, and
that
was their mistake. Iolo and Karé brought their Z-95s into tight, combat-Corellian turns, coming into line on the tails of the First Order fighters. In the space of twenty seconds, Poe’s comrades had cut the
initial force of eighteen down to nine before the remaining TIEs broke off their pursuit, for the moment more concerned with staying alive. Karé bagged another two on the breakaway, and Iolo took out one more.

“Leave some for the rest of us,” Poe said.

“You snooze, you lose,” Karé said. “Time until jump? For real, please, Commander.”

Poe checked the charge meter, did the math quickly in his
head. “Another forty seconds.”

A turbolaser blast seared space in front of him, the shot so close and so bright that Poe actually flinched. An instant later the yacht bucked, rocking as blasts from two strafing TIEs cut across the top of the hull. Lights lit up across the console, warning him about everything from diminishing deflector shield charge to fastening his safety harness.

“Little help,”
Poe said.

“On ’em,” Iolo said, and an instant later he saw the edge of a Z-95’s wing flash over the cockpit, and the bright glow of a TIE’s destruction.

“That
Resurgent
class is closing fast,” Karé said.

“You guys need to go, now,” Poe said.

“Right after you do.”

Poe bit back a curse. The Star Destroyer in question was a beast, capable of delivering a withering assault with its heavy cannons
and anti-starship batteries. In a straight line, running at full speed, it could be faster even than the TIEs it seemed to spit out in endless waves, powered as it was by multiple and massive ion drives designed to propel its bulk through space. It was a staggering amount of thrust. The trade was, of course, that running in a straight line and at full speed meant an equally staggering amount of
counterthrust was required to execute even the slightest maneuver, the barest change of direction. The Star Destroyers were big, and they were powerful, but only the most reckless of commanders would employ their speed and sacrifice their maneuverability.

He had to make a choice, Poe realized. He could continue racing for the gas giant in the hope that the massive planet’s gravity would scare
the capital ships off, or…

“Head for that
Resurgent
class,” Poe said.

“Say what now?” Karé asked.

“One hit from those turbolasers and we’re done,” Iolo said.

“And one hit from those turbolasers, those TIEs are done, too.”

“That close, you’re vulnerable to their tractor beams—”

“
Resurgent
beam emitters are to the prow.” Poe was already rebalancing the yacht’s thrusters, wheeling the ship
into yet another corkscrew turn and reversing direction. “Don’t come at it from the front.”

“Oh, well, that settles that,” Karé said. “Sure, let’s charge the Star Destroyer. Why not? Coming, Iolo?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No,” Poe said.

The two Z-95s came in on his starboard wing, then staggered back. The second wave of TIEs was still a fair distance out, but that wouldn’t last for long. Poe
glanced out the canopy and saw white mist wafting from the middle of one of the Z-95’s wings, along with an occasional spark of electricity.

“Iolo, check your port side.”

“Yeah, I know,” Iolo said. “Not really much I can do about it right now, though.”

“You could leave,” Poe said.

“What, and miss this? Karé would never let me hear the end of it.”

“That is true,” Karé said.

“Break,” Poe said.

They all knew the maneuver and executed it so quickly that the three ships were moving apart almost before Poe had finished speaking the word. In the lead, Poe took the yacht high, climbing and spinning, while Karé snapped her Z-95 to port beneath him and Iolo put his own fighter into a twisting dive. The TIEs opened up a fraction of a moment later, their shots lancing past harmlessly, then split
their formation, and Poe guessed at least half of them were coming for
Hevurion Grace
.

The
Resurgent
class was drawing closer. A turbolaser blast detonated perhaps only a half kilometer in front of Poe, and he felt the yacht shiver as he sped through the dissipating energy an instant later. He was, despite his own advice, approaching the prow, with TIEs closing in from his right and behind. The
ship bucked and shuddered as one of the chasing fighters sent blaster bolts glancing off the yacht. The shields flickered, but held.

The
Hevurion Grace
had never been built for combat, but that didn’t mean it was defenseless. It boasted a single dual-cannon turret, mounted on its dorsal side, near the tail.

Poe noted that it was fully automated.

He put the yacht into a sharp wingover and bled
off some of his speed while reorienting away from the bow of the
Resurgent
class, now looming before him. The move brought two of the TIEs in close, and Poe could imagine those pilots in their flight suits, thumbs itching on their triggers, lining up their shots, and then he hit the actuator on the turret and felt more than heard the gun opening fire. The salvo cut the two nearest TIEs to pieces
and clipped two more that had been following close behind. The pursuers banked away, trying to reacquire a new attack angle on
Hevurion Grace
.

Poe could hear Iolo and Karé’s chatter over the comms, rapid-fire give and take, the two of them working in concert. Another TIE down, and another, but for every one that Iolo or Karé managed to take down, there seemed another to take its place.

“Iolo!
Watch it!”

“I’ve got no room!”

“Cut port, cut port, I’ll pick him up!”

Static burst across the comm and fizzled, followed by a fraction of a second’s silence that felt much, much longer.

Then Iolo’s voice: “—hit, been hit, losing power—”

“Iolo, jump,” Poe said. The
Resurgent
class was a blur outside his cockpit as he spiraled and pulled up, reversing again for the command tower. “Go!”

“Not
going to leave you!”

The turbolasers from the
Resurgent
class were firing almost constantly. The yacht rocked again as the
Hevurion Grace
hit the wake of another detonation, this to the stern. One of the ion thrusters flickered, then dumped its charge, and at the same moment the hyperdrive motivator announced it was now prepared to initiate the jump to lightspeed. Another blast detonated so close
to the cockpit Poe feared the canopy would shatter.

“We’re leaving together,” Poe said. “Break off and jump to lightspeed!”

He yanked back on the yoke hard enough that the yacht’s gravity emulators snapped his head against the seat. The
Resurgent
class went from beneath him and ahead to somehow below and behind, and he was climbing fast, spinning in the ascent, and he could see the Z-95s, if
only for an instant, similarly trying to turn onto their jump vectors. Now that their target was away from the Star Destroyer, the TIEs were once again in pursuit, their incoming fire blurring with the resumption of turbolaser barrages.

“Jump! Go!”

Karé’s fighter went first, stretched and then vanished, and Iolo’s followed, and Poe reached for the jump initiator, pulled it smoothly back, and
Hevurion Grace
rumbled all around him. Then the TIEs and the frigate and the Star Destroyers and everything of Uvoss vanished, replaced by the hypnotizing swirl of the hyperspace tunnel.

Iolo and Karé were in the hangar bay waiting for him when Poe landed aboard
Echo of Hope
. They watched as he dropped the main ramp and descended, and for a moment all three pilots just looked at each other.
Then Karé burst into laughter and threw her arms around him and Iolo was clapping him on the back and all of them were talking at once about how
that
had been flying and Iolo had gotten lucky and Karé had saved him and he had saved her and they’d lost count of how many times they’d had each other’s backs. Laughing at the thought of the First Order trying to explain to General Hux or whoever exactly
how they’d managed to be vexed by three pilots flying a luxury yacht and two archaic Z-95s and—

“Muran would’ve loved to have seen that,” Iolo said.

That brought them back into silence for a moment, all three of them remembering their absent friend.

“He’d have been proud,” Karé said.

“Yes,” Poe said. “Yes, he would’ve been.”

Between Iolo and Karé, Poe could see General Organa at the entrance
of the bay, the protocol droid that so often accompanied her at her side. She caught his eye and Poe nodded and put a hand on Iolo and Karé’s shoulders.