/ know just enough about the Force to be dangerous more so to myself than my
enemies. He had really appreciated Skywalker including information about
lightsaber maintenance and fighting styles. He'd gotten a chance to practice
with the weapon in the Cloudrider's galley and began to feel comfortable with
it. He was notoriously bad when fighting against a remoterecalling his failure
at picking off its stinging bolts made him shift uncomfortably in his seatbut
four days of practice had made him feel confident enough with the lightsaber
that he sincerely doubted he'd lop off any of his own limbs using it in a fight.
In my hands it's more of a lightbludgeon, but it will do in a close fight.
The shuttle's wings creaked as the pilot began to retract them. The viewscreens
on the interior of the shuttle's cabin showed a heavily forested landscape up
through which occasionally thrust very inorganic stone and transparisteel
towers. The buildings didn't look so much inappropriate for the setting as they
did alien to it. Corran knew instinctively these were the human dwellings on
Thyferra, because no Vratix could live in one.
Mirax indicated one particularly blobby building with a nod of her head. "I bet
she lives there."
Corran hesitated for a second, wondering which she Mirax meant, but the cold
anger in her eyes took the choices from two to one. Anyone else might have been
pointing out where Ysanne Isard lived; but Mirax had no use for Erisi
Dlarit, so Corran knew it was Erisi to whom Mirax referred. While Corran had not
been at all pleased to become a guest of Ysanne Isard's through Erisi's efforts,
Erisi had engineered the destruction of a whole convoy of freighters
specifically to kill Mirax.
Corran turned his right hand over and held Mirax's left tightly as the ship
settled down on the landing pad. "Might want to throttle back there just a hair.
You're probably right, but we're not going to go on a social call just to find
out."
Mirax gave him a sweet smile. "I was thinking of sending a gift."
Corran returned the smile. "Ah, but how does one gift wrap a bomb?"
"Bomb?" Mirax shook her head. "Nope, too quick. I want her to linger."
"Remind me never to make you angry."
She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. "You'll never do that, love ...
at least not more than once."
Corran and Mirax slid from the seats and followed the rest of the passengers out
of the shuttle. It brought in crews from a half-dozen tankers parked in orbit
around the planet, most of which were returning from runs they completed after
the Rogues had hijacked their convoy. Of main concern for most of the crews was
whether or not they'd be docked pay by their employers for making unauthorized
runs. The majority opinion seemed to be that they would be because the
Thyferrans never lost sight of the bottom line and were willing to cut costs
anywhere and everywhere.
The five infiltrators did not appear to be that different from the rest of the
crews going dirtdown. While Thyferrans owned and ran the shipping companies,
they hired laborers from throughout the galaxy to actually do the work. On
Thyferra these foreign workers were restricted to certain areas around the
spaceport, but none of them seemed to find these restrictions that tough to
bear. Most of the crews found the Thyferrans arrogantthe word Imperial was used
to punctuate this point several times on the trip downand preferred to keep
with other spacers.
Once outside the shuttle, Corran picked up his luggage
satchel. He opened it and pulled out the heavy tool belt and looped it over his
left shoulder. A big hydrospanner hung at his left hip. He picked the bag up
with his left hand, leaving his right hand free to deal with his identity card.
Or the lightsaber. To disguise the weapon, he'd grafted the working end of a
hydrospanner onto the butt of the lightsaber. One quick, smooth draw and he had
a working weapon in hand. Elscol had pronounced his work useless and suggested
he would do better being able to produce a blaster in a pinch. He'd replied that
a blaster and hydrospanner don't look a lot alike.
A tall, slender Thyferran man with blond hair looked down his long, skinny nose
at Corran. "State your name and the nature of your business."
Corran hesitated for a second and immediately felt heat flush up from within his
jumpsuit. "Eamon Yzalli. I am here to wait for my ship to be refilled and head
out again."
The Thyferran snatched the identity card from Corran's hand and ran it through a
datapad's card slot. "Ship's mechanic?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you always bring your tools with you when you come to a planet?"
"Well, sir, not always, sir, but I have a friend who might get me a berth on
another ship so . . ."
The Customs official's eyes darkened. "You would not think of overstaying your
welcome here and trying to go into business for yourself doing repairs, would
you?"
Unless it's fixing your attitude, nope. "No, sir, never my intention, sir."
"Very well." He hit two buttons on the datapad, then swiped the card back
through the slot. "Your provisional visa is good for a week. Remain longer than
that and face criminal charges."
Corran looked down as he accepted the card back, refusing to meet the man's
eyes. "Yes, sir. I understand, sir. You have been most kind, sir."
"Yes, well, be gone. Next."
Corran shuffled on past and into the spaceport's main
building. Its long, low shape, with softened edges and decorative elements
clustered in groups of six suggested to him that the insectoid Vratix had
designed and created the rectangular spaceport. The whole structure looked as if
it had been worked around and between existing trees, with the roof being open
to let some of them grow up through it. While clearly artificial, the two-story
building showcased the natural beauty of what had been there before it had been
created instead of trying to supplant and surpass the beauty of the native
plants.
Inside the spaceport itself, Corran rejoined Mirax. Ahead he saw Elscol and
Sixtus, off to the left he saw Iella. Their Ashern contact was supposed to meet
them in the spaceport building, but no one appeared to be paying any of them any
attention. There were backup contingencies in case contact could not be made for
some reason, but Corran hoped they didn't have to fall back on them because they
involved a lot of waiting and, in an emergency situation, sitting around waiting
meant disaster.
Seeing that nothing was happening immediately, Corran guided Mirax over to a row
of seats set beneath an overhead walkway servicing offices on the second level
of the spaceport. The seats were also located fairly near a refresher station
of which he wanted to make use. "Watch my stuff for me?"
Mirax nodded and sat while Corran piled his satchel and tool belt in the empty
seat beside her. He started to step away toward the refresher station when its
door opened and a stormtrooper with a blaster carbine slung at his right hip
came walking out. In that armor, how can they . . . ? Corran realized he was
staring, then turned away quickly. He realized that looked suspicious as could
be, so he leaned down and smiled at Mirax. "What did you say, dear?"
The look of fear in Mirax's widening eyes and the reflection of a
stormtrooper's helmet eclipsing her brown irises told Corran his attempt to look
inconspicuous had failed utterly and completely. He felt a heavy hand land on
his shoulder, straightening him up and turning him around. Belly to belly
with the stormtrooper, he looked up into the black eye lenses and tried to
smile. "Is there something I can do for you?" "I know you. Identification card."
Corran's mind reeled. It had to be impossible for the stormtrooper to actually
know him, then he realized the man may have been on the Lusankya and might have
seen him there. Then again I could just look like someone else.
Anxiety began to build in Corran as he handed over his identification card.
Think, quick, what to do? He forced himself to breathe normally. First thing is
to avoid panic. The identification is good and solid. It will hold up.
The stormtrooper held it up and examined it forward and back. "It seems fine,
but you're familiar, and I don't know anyone named Eamon. Come with me so I can
check you out."
Fighting the urge to panic, Corran flashed on one of the Jedi stories. He
settled a simple grin on his face and stared intently into the black recesses of
the helmet. "I don't need to go with you."
"You don't need to go with me?"
Corran's grin grew. Hey, it's working. I'm influencing his mind. "I can go about
my business."
"You can go about your business?" The stormtrooper shook his head, then grabbed
a handful of Corran's jumpsuit front. "Your business is my business,
void-brain." The stormtrooper's comlink clicked from inside the helmet. "This
is Nine One Five, bringing one in."
The stormtrooper looked past him at Mirax. "She with
you?"
Fear for her cleared Corran's brain of disbelief over his failure to warp the
stormtrooper's mind. He twisted toward his right to get a look at her, letting
his right hip hit the back of the seat containing his luggage. He let himself
begin to fall back, using his weight to tear his clothing free of the
stormtrooper's grip. His head went down and his feet came up, letting him
somersault backward over the chair. As he did so his right hand grabbed the
hydrospanner and slid it free of the belt. Landing on one knee, he brought his
head up and looked at the stormtrooper.
Corran found himself staring into the barrel of the man's blaster carbine.
"Hydrospanner will work better if you have the heavy end pointed toward me, but
it hardly matters." The stormtrooper's two-handed grip on the carbine kept his
aim steady. "Come along with me or the janitorial staff earns its pay."
"Sithspawn!" Corran swore and hammered the floor with the hydrospanner's head.
As the tool rebounded from the floor, and the head of the hydrospanner went
bouncing off to the right, he thumbed the lightsaber on. The silvery blade
sizzled out and swept up through the muzzle of the blaster carbine. The weapon's
barrel fell one way, the stormtrooper's left hand another as Corran whirled to
his feet and brought the lightsaber around in a slash at the stormtrooper's
eyes. The blade burned through the helmet, filling the air with the pungent
scent of melted armor and burned flesh.
The stormtrooper collapsed like an empty suit of armor. Someone in the spaceport
threshold screamed, then Corran saw two stormtroopers stationed near the Customs
officer come running. Two more appeared from in front of the spaceport,
entering the building closest to Sixtus and Elscol. She pulled a hold-out
blaster from her bag and shot at one of them. He went down with a wound to the
leg, and suddenly the whole building erupted with blasterfire as stormtroopers
appeared on the elevated walkways on the narrow ends of the rectangular
building.
Corran dove forward into the row of chairs and pitched them over backward. Mirax
went with them and hunkered down beside him. She brandished the smoking ruin of
the stormtrooper's blaster carbine. "I appreciate the rescue, but did you have
to destroy his blaster?"
"Can't parry the bolts, so I just parry the weapon." Corran ducked his head as
crossfire from the far walkway nib-bled away at the chairs behind which they
hid. Above them, the stormtroopers on the balcony directed their fire toward
Elscol and Sixtus. Corran knew more folks than just Elscol were shooting, since
he saw one stormtrooper across the way go down, but the Imps definitely had them
outgunned and outmanned.
Unless I do something, what I started is going to kill us all. He leaned over,
kissed Mirax full on the mouth, then smiled. "Stay here, I have an idea." "Don't
get yourself killed."
"What, and make your father's day. Not going to happen." / hope.
Lightsaber in hand, Corran ran low and fast toward the refresher station. He hit
the door hard and cut inside as blaster bolts shattered tiles and burned into
the duraplast door. He could all but hear the stormtroopers who had shot at him
laughing about how screwed up his priorities were, and it struck him that a
refresher station, especially in a public spaceport, would be a really
ignominious place to die. Which is why I don't plan to die here.
He kicked open the door to one of the stalls, hopped up on the commode, and
climbed up on the edge of the durasteel partitions. He stabbed the lightsaber up
through the ceiling and made three quick cuts. A triangular section of ceiling
crashed down and a shower of tiles from the floor of the refresher station above
spattered down in its wake. Corran worked his way a bit further along the
partition, then boosted himself up into the second-floor refresher station.
Emerging from the stall into the empty refresher station, he felt a terrible
calm wash over himself. He'd felt it before, long ago and far away, on Talasea,
when he'd engaged other stormtroopers in combat. When I come out of here, the
stormtroopers across the way will see me and warn their comrades. I've got five,
maybe six seconds to get all of them. Any longer and I'm dead. He shifted the
lightsaber to his left hand, wiped his right hand off on his jumpsuit, then
grabbed the hissing blade again. I'm already dead, this is just to save my
friends.
He ripped open the refresher station's door and stepped onto the elevated
walkway. One step out he brought the lightsaber around in a waist-high cut that
caught the first stormtrooper in the back. He pitched forward, then rebounded
off the guardrail, but Corran had already moved past him. In a continuation of
the move that had taken the
first man, Corran shifted his right wrist, raised the lightsaber, and used a
backhanded cut to decapitate the second warrior.
That blow, though grandly struck to great effect, was a mistake and Corran knew
it. Though it popped the man's head off and sent it flipping up through the air,
it also allowed Corran's arm to carry too far back. Sliding forward toward the
next stormtrooper in linethe third of the four he facedhe wasted a second
bringing the lightsaber back into striking position. He tried a high, two-handed
cut that should have split the stormtrooper from outside shoulder to inside hip,
but the Imp had already begun to turn toward the attack and ducked it.
The stormtrooper lunged toward Corran, catching him with a shoulder in the ribs.
The stormtrooper drove him back, slamming him into the ferrocrete wall. Corran
felt something crunch in his chest, then he couldn't breathe. The lightsaber
fell from Corran's hand as the Imp drove him again into the wall, pinning him
there, crushing him. Corran stared into the black lenses of the man's helmet and
heard low laughter.
The laughter died as the stormtrooper's comlink came alive. "Get clear, Seven
Three, so I can shoot him."
The pressure in Corran's chest slackened for a moment and he knew he had only
one chance for survival. As the stormtrooper wi thdrew, Corran kicked off the
wall and knocked his foe into the guardrail. Launching himself at the man's
head, Corran grabbed him and held on as the metal guardrail shrieked and bent.
Overbalanced, they both whirled off the elevated walkway. Corran tried to twist
around so he'd land on top of the stormtrooper, but with a short fall and no
frame of reference, he only half-accomplished his goal.
He hit hard, his back slamming into the body of the first stormtrooper he'd
killed. His rear end hit the ferrocrete floor, sending a jolt of pain up his
spine, then the second stormtrooper smashed headfirst into the floor and his
limp body crashed down on Corran, sandwiching him between their armored bodies.
With his lungs burning for lack of air, he
leaned back and found himself looking straight up into the muzzle of the
remaining stormtrooper's blaster.
Unable to do anything but cough, Corran closed his eyes and prepared to die. He
heard the whine of a blaster being fired, then felt a hammer-blow to his chest.
It didn't hurt the way a blaster bolt hurt, but he knew he'd been hit. I'm dead,
I have to be dead. As much as he knew that was the truth, he immediately felt a
need to rebel and live. Open your eyes. If you can open your eyes, you're not
dead.
Corran willed his eyes open and would have laughed if he could have. Standing
over him he saw Bror Jace, a member of Rogue Squadron the Imps had killed well
Star Wars - X-Wing - The Bacta War Page 12