Shattered Empire (Star Wars fan fiction)

Part 8

The shuttle plummeted towards the planet's surface, leaving a trail of black smoke in its wake. Down below, the frozen tundra of the southern arctic shot past at alarming speed, faster and faster as the shuttle quickly lost altitude bit by bit.

Then, without warning, as the shuttle passed over a set of ancient impact craters, two Z-95 Headhunters painted in mottled white camouflage rose up from within one of the craters, and a double flare of their engines they kicked into pursuit of the plummeting shuttle.

Inside the cockpit, the canopy suddenly erupted with a bright flash of yellow laser cannon fire.

"We're being attacked!", shouted Cayl as she clung to her seat.

"Warning shots", Regan muttered between clenched teeth, as he struggled against the shuttle's controls with his partially immobilized arm.

Suddenly, a voice crackled over the comm.

"Imperial shuttle", a harsh female voice barked. "Stand down, and prepare to land. If you do not comply immediately, you will be destroyed."

"L'qor starfighters", he said. "We are Rebel Alliance, repeat, we are Rebel Alliance. We have sustained heavy damage"

"We noticed that", the fighter pilot replied dryly. "If we hadn't seen you being fired upon by that frigate you would be here now to talk about it."

"We are requesting safe harbor", Regan said. "Please, allow us to land."

"I've already ordered you to land", the pilot said neutrality. "We will escort you down."

With a roar, one of the Z-95s shot ahead of the shuttle. With one fighter in front and one behind, still training it's laser cannons on them, Regan gingerly adjusted the shuttle's heading to follow the lead fighter. Bringing the group around, the fighter led the shuttle back towards the craters. As they approached, Cayl could see that inside one of them, barely visible in the shadow of the southern rim, was a small fighter base. More voices now crackled over the comm, issuing landing instructions. With a shriek of damaged repulsor lifts, Regan initiated the landing sequence and the battered wings of the shuttle slowly folded as the landing skids hit the deck with a thump.

******

Cayl sat cross legged in her underwear on the bed of a tiny cell, her hands cuffed behind her. Before her, two female guards were busily rifling through her clothing. Behind them, an old, Clone Wars era B2 super battle droid repainted in white arctic camouflage stood stiffly with it's blaster-mounted right fist cocked in the ready position. A short while later, a pair of intelligence officers of some kind entered the room, and began asking questions. Lots of questions. They came so fast and so furiously that Cayl quickly found herself babbling out whatever answers came first to her head. In short order, she had divulged enough sensitive material to get herself vaporized immediately by the Imperial Navy security service if she ever managed to get back. Not that she wouldn't have gotten vaporized anyway after what she'd done.

Hours past. Hours that felt like days. But eventually, the officers stopped asking questions, and Cayl was left alone in the cell. As the door shut and the clank of the battle droids footsteps faded away down the corridor, Cayl slumped over herself, exhausted. She felt sick. In one, crazy, reckless moment, she had completely, irrevocably destroyed her own life. Over and over, the events of the past few days swirled in her mind. First the news that Alderaan had been destroyed by the Empire's secret new superweapon, the Death Star. Then the news that the Death Star itself had been destroyed, with the loss of over a million personnel. Then there had been the prisoner, her patient. There had been the long night nights of sleeplessness, sometimes with the screams of her patient at the hands of his torturers still ringing in her ears, along with the screams of billions of innocent Alderaanians who had died in an instant at the hands of her brothers in arms. Then there had come the decision, that fatal, irrevocable decision that had led her here, alone, locked in a cell in power of the Empire's bitterest enemies.

Cayl awoke with a start. She hadn't realized she'd fallen asleep. Squinting, she saw a pair of super battle droids flanking the open door of her cell.

"Stand up", one of the droids said, it's mechanical voice echoing back in forth insided the cell.

"Put clothes on", the droid said next as Cayl swung her legs stiffly over the side of the bed. One of the droids was clutching her imperial jumpsuit in its hand, and the other her utility boots. With a soft whine of servos, both droids lifted their arms in unison and dropped her clothes on the floor with a thunk. A moment later, Cayl was dressed and had barely finished pulling her boots on when the droids commanded her to get up again.

"Follow", one of the droids set. Cayl fell into step between the two droids as they clanked across the steel grate of the tiny cell block.

Cayl was marched through a series of ice-waled passageways. It was warmer inside than one might have expected, but she shivered nonetheless inside her lightly insulated jumpsuit. Now and then they passed humans dressed in tan uniforms, who glared suspiciously at her as she went by, as well as a few diminutive blue-grey aliens with four spindly arms each, whom Cayl took to be native Pardians.

Cayl's journey ended at a large blast door, which opened out into a precious landing deck which clung to the steep slope of the crater's wall. Waiting for her was one of the officers who had interrogated her previously, along with two heavily armed human soldiers. Taking her roughly by the arms the soldiers cuffed her again, and Cayl was then marched up the ramp of a light cargo cloud car in the same mottled white camouflage that was on all the other vehicles parked on the various landing decks. Without a word, Cayl was strapped into a passenger seat, with the soldiers occupying seats across directly across from her, the muzzles of their short E-5 blaster rifles pointing languidly in her direction. Hitting the ramp seal the officer then strapped himself into a seat as well as the ramp retracted and sealed up the cabin as the cloud cars engines began to rev up for liftoff.