Star Wars_ Cloak of Deception - James Luceno [5]
The firefight had left a vagrant tang in the air, the smell of ozone and scorched alloy.
“Atmosphere is enabled,” he told the rest of his band. “But oxygen levels are equivalent to what you’d find at four thousand meters. Off your masks, but keep them handy—especially you t’bac addicts.”
With some muffled laughter, the team complied.
Beneath the apparatus, the human’s dark-complexioned face was still a mask: thickly bearded with coarse black hair, and rashed from temple to temple with small diamond-shaped tattoos. His violet eyes surveyed the damage with obvious dispassion.
There wasn’t a security droid in sight, but the deck was littered with their remains. Labor droids of several varieties continued to route a few pods to berthing spaces.
A human member of the team kicked aside the severed arm of a security droid. “These things could be dangerous if they ever learn to think straight.”
“Shoot straight,” the bearded man amended.
“Tell that to Rasper, Captain Cohl,” another said—Boiny, a Rodian. “It was a droid that sent Rasper on his way.” A green-skinned and round-eyed male, Boiny had a tapered snout and a crest of pliant yellow spines.
“A lucky droid, a luckier shot,” a Rodian female remarked.
“That doesn’t mean we treat this like an exercise,” Cohl warned, eyeing everyone. “The central control computer will be deploying backup units soon enough, and we’ve got a kilometer to go before we hit the centersphere.”
The infiltrators glanced down the curved hangar toward a bulkhead that loomed in the distance. High overhead were massive box girders and I-beams, cranes, maintenance gantries, and hoists, a puzzle of atmosphere and vectoring ducts.
A human female—the only among them—whistled softly. “Stars’ end, you could hide an invasion force in here.”
As dark-complexioned as Cohl, she had short brown hair and an elegantly angular face. Even the mimetic suit could not camouflage her shapeliness.
“That would mean spending some of the profits, Rella,” a male human said. “And the Neimoidians don’t do that unless they can spend it on new robes.”
Boiny loosed a high-pitched laugh. “You grow up a half-starved Neimoidian grub, that’s what happens.”
Cohl raised his bearded chin to two of his band. “Stay with the pod. We’ll make contact when we have the bridge.” He swung to the others. “Team one, take the outer rim corridor. The rest of you are with me.”
The Revenue shuddered slightly. Muted explosions could be heard in the distance.
Cohl cocked an ear. “That’ll be our ships.”
Sirens began to blare throughout the hangar. The labor droids stopped in their tracks, as a basso rumble gathered underfoot.
Rella gazed at the far-off bulkhead. “They’re sealing off the hangar.”
Cohl waved a gesture to the first team. “Move out. We’ll rendezvous at the starboard turbolifts. Set your suits to pulse—that ought to confuse the droids—and use the concussion grenades sparingly. And remember to monitor your oxygen levels.”
He took a few steps, then stopped. “One more thing: You get blasted by a droid, bacta rehabilitation comes out of your pay.”
Daultay Dofine stood rigidly on the bridge’s walkway, watching in arrant horror as the Nebula Front showed his ship no mercy.
The motley starfighters fell on the Revenue in full force, picking away at the freighter’s fat arms and triple-thrustered hindquarters like ravenous birds of prey. Many of the unshielded droid ships were annihilated as soon as they emerged from the vessel’s protective force field.
Emboldened by their effortless mastery, the enemy craft violated the embrace the hangar arms threw about the centersphere by strafing the command tower at close quarter. Ion cannon fire from the gunship sent waves of aggravation through the Revenue’s deflector shield. Violent light washed against the bridge viewports.
It was all Dofine could do to keep himself rooted on the walkway, as he cursed the terrorists under his breath.
In return for having