Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [130]
“Take cover,” Kirana Ti shouted. With a forceful motion she pushed Streen toward two mammoth blocks of stone that had toppled from the front of the ancient temple.
The TIE fighters swooped overhead as the Jedi trainees scrambled for shelter. Laser cannons shot from the Imperial ships, setting tall trees alight and blasting rubble from the old temple. The TIE fighters fanned out, uncertain of their target as they searched for the Jedi Knights hiding in the jungle.
TIE bombers cruised low, dropping concussion missiles that exploded into pillars of fire and smoke above the thick jungle canopy, splintering Massassi trees that had lived for a thousand years. But once the first wave of TIE fighters spotted the trainees at the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster, the forces concentrated their firepower on the far side of the river.
“We don’t have any weapons,” Streen said as he covered his head.
“We have the Force,” Dorsk 81 replied.
Three TIE fighters roared in, laser cannons shooting continuously as they approached in a triangular formation. The warrior woman Kirana Ti stood out in the open near the piles of rubble the Jedi trainees had so meticulously removed from the ruins. The TIE fighters saw her and fired. Ignoring her own danger, she gestured with her hand and, using the Force as a sling, she snatched one of the squarish boulders cut by Massassi slaves thousands of years before—and hurled it with all her Jedi strength.
The stone flew through the air and smashed one of the TIE fighter’s flat power arrays. It careened to one side, and the pilot could not regain control. The ship exploded in the trees on the far side of the temple.
Kam Solusar stood on the other side of the clearing and, using the Force, he, too, began hurling rocks at the remaining two TIE fighters. The boulders battered the Imperial ships, smashing through the cockpits. All the Jedi trainees had the idea now, and a blast of sharp rock shards hammered the two fleeing ships out of the sky. Both exploded in midflight to the cheers of the embattled Jedi students.
The second wave of four TIE fighters came immediately after. Streen, however, did not pick up rocks or other weapons with the Force. He used the air itself, moving molecules in the atmosphere to summon storm currents and scramble the air attack line with a wall of wind that achieved hurricane strength. The gusting currents buffeted the TIE fighters right and left, forcing the pilots to concentrate on simply flying and not allowing them to fire a single shot.
Streen looked up into the sky, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his hair wafting about his head. He held his trembling fingers outstretched and then brought his hands together symbolically, slamming his hands of wind so that the heavy crosscurrents smashed the four TIE fighters together. They crashed into a single knot of molten wreckage that tumbled out of the air.
A pair of TIE bombers came in low from behind, barely visible over the treetops but moving at full speed. Kyp shouted a warning. The first TIE bomber cruised over the temple and let three concussion missiles fall out of its bombing bay—but Kyp reached out, staring at the ship, and holding his palm flat and upright. He pushed upward with the Force, visualizing the three dropped concussion missiles, and nudged the explosives back up into the bomber’s bay … where they detonated.
The second TIE bomber dropped a single missile and then, seeing the fate of his partner, shot off at top speed. Dorsk 81 used the Force to pick up a boulder, which he hurled with all his might. The flying rock closed the distance to the bomber, striking the second cockpit and damaging its altitude control. The TIE bomber spun through the air and landed roughly in the jungle underbrush on the far side of the river. Its lone concussion missile struck the ground nearby and detonated, sending a rumble through the jungle that shook the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster. Loose stone blocks slid down the walls in a shower of dust, crashing around the Jedi trainees.
“This