Star Wars - X-Wing - The Bacta War

by Michael A. Stackpole

  / 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 secondr />
  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