Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [119]
“Run!” she shouted at him. Her voice was high with pain. “Run.”
Madine cursed again under his breath, wishing Trandia hadn’t been so impulsive. He began to crawl away from the propulsion computers, pulled his blaster, and looked for a chance to draw the guards away from her. The vicious aliens pushed toward her position—and just as they reached her, Trandia triggered every one of the detonators she carried.
The resulting explosion drowned out even the cacophony of engine sounds. A wall of flame gushed outward in a blazing ring. The explosion took out the entire complement of guards as well as Trandia herself, though it barely damaged the engines’ containment wall. Lights flickered and went out.
The shockwave knocked Madine flat, turning his consciousness into a static of black insects before his eyes. He shook his head, gasping for breath, and struggled back to his feet. The enemy was alerted, the infiltration ruined. It would do no good to stay.
Madine stumbled as he ran. He couldn’t think straight, stunned as much by the loss of Trandia as by the explosion. Then a deeper core of Madine’s personality asserted itself, reinforced by the years of training he had undergone, the lessons he himself had taught his commando team members.
The mission was paramount.
They had to succeed.
The mission.
Madine hauled himself to his feet and found that his back was bleeding, nicked by several chunks of shrapnel unleashed by the explosion. Alarms continued to whoop and screech, demanding attention. Madine somehow reached the doorway, though he was disoriented and couldn’t recall how to find his way back to their armored mission suits.
He lurched through the open door, staggered down the dimly lit corridor—and stumbled right into another group of alien guards rushing to see what the commotion was all about.
Madine’s heart sank. Trandia had given her life hoping to cause irreparable damage, hoping to let her commander escape—but she had accomplished neither.
Gamorreans clasped stubby fingers around his arms, throwing Madine to the deck and piling on top of him as if they meant to keep him from moving.
“Saboteur!” one of the Weequays snarled down at him.
They hauled Madine to his feet. Five separate guards clutched him, as if in a contest to see how many could actually claim credit for his capture. Madine struggled, but said nothing.
The guards hauled him off alone, a trophy to be brought before Durga the Hutt.
CHAPTER 42
Up on the Darksaber’s supposedly functional control deck, Bevel Lemelisk watched the childish glee evident on the faces of both General Sulamar and Durga the Hutt. The two normally surly partners sat enthralled with the controls in their grasp as they itched to begin their grand plan of conquest.
Despite the difficulties Lemelisk had experienced with the Taurill and any number of other convoluted problems encountered during construction of the massive superweapon, the Darksaber project had somehow bumbled along, adhering to its schedule more through mutual annihilation of errors than actual efficiency.
Per Durga’s demand, the Darksaber was now technically complete, constructed according to Lemelisk’s modified plans and completed in conjunction with the work and inspection crews—though Lemelisk did not want to guarantee the quality of any portion of the project. In fact, he felt great anxiety when he began to think Durga might actually wish to use the weapon anytime soon.
“Observe,” Durga said, summoning a holographic map of the galaxy centered on the Nal Hutta system and extending outward in the intended path of the Hutts’ “outreach program,” using the Darksaber to hold rich and vulnerable planets ransom.
Sulamar gave far too much unwanted advice, and Durga refused to listen any longer, gloating over the holo map, his rubbery lips forming a leer that pushed the discolored birthmark up the side of his