Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [139]
He ground his jaws together and urged the ships to hurry.
Empty space rushed by until it began to be cluttered with debris. On the command deck of the Yavaris, General Wedge Antilles leaned forward to peer out the front ports. “Come on,” he muttered. “Come on!”
Beside him, Qwi Xux clamped her lips together, picking up on Wedge’s anxiety.
“Are we still at maximum speed?” Wedge called to the helmsman.
“Best we can manage, sir,” the young officer responded. “Hazardous conditions up ahead, though—General Madine’s signal is leading us directly into the Hoth Asteroid Belt.”
Accompanied by the Assault Frigate Dodonna from his arm of the fleet, Wedge rode the Yavaris into the asteroid belt. “Shields on full,” he said.
“Agreed, sir,” the helmsman answered. “But I’m reluctant to proceed at high speed into such a navigational hazard.”
Wedge shook his head. Somehow he knew they had to hurry. Hurry! “Just stay on your toes, Lieutenant,” Wedge said. “And keep moving with all possible haste.”
The asteroids flew around them like a cannon blast of fragmented rubble, but Wedge’s fleet continued undaunted, homing in on Madine’s signal, hoping to rescue him in time.
Strapped in to the pilot’s chair, barely able to move, Sulamar was livid. He spun around, still sputtering and trying to justify his existence.
Durga the Hutt growled, looking down at him from the height of his repulsor platform. “Why don’t you tell us again about this Massacre of Mendicat you kept bragging about, Sulamar?”
Madine rolled his eyes and snorted. One of the Weequay guards jabbed him in the kidneys; he gasped in pain, but recovered quickly. “Mendicat?” he said with a sneer, knowing that if he could provoke these people, keep them bickering among themselves … then he had a chance. A slim one.
“Mendicat was a scrap mining and recycling station.” Madine glared toward Sulamar. “Because of his error in programming the orbital computers, the station went off course and fell into the sun. He barely rescued himself, and now I see that was a wasted effort.”
Durga chuckled, deep hollow belly laughs that resonated through his Hutt bulk. “After my days of working with the great crime lord Xizor, I should have learned to double-check pretentious stories from my underlings.”
Madine answered the Hutt, as if speaking to an equal. “I’ve come to the conclusion that those people who truly do great deeds don’t feel the need to talk about them all the time.”
“You must stop listening to him, Lord Durga,” Sulamar squeaked, struggling against the pilot chair restraints he had strapped across his own chest. “Lord Durga, we must execute this man!” His words became sweeter, more insidious. “Imagine the possibilities. We could use a laser cutter to dice him into pieces, or we could chain him to the reactor core of the Darksaber as we power it up so that he cooks against its shell.”
Bevel Lemelisk, the pot-bellied, grizzled old engineer, who appeared to watch the entire proceedings with a combination of amusement and distaste, made a comment seemingly to himself but loud enough that everyone heard. “The Emperor could have imagined more … entertaining executions.” The old man visibly restrained a shudder.
Durga grumbled, still waving Sulamar’s blaster pistol around. “I don’t see any need to draw this out. After all, we have better things to do. A galaxy to conquer, and so forth.”
Madine stood bravely, clapping his heels together and staring into the large coppery eyes of Durga the Hutt. He said nothing for a moment as he thought back on his years of service to the New Republic.
He had had a good run, had helped the New Republic grow strong. And now he had followed his duty to the end. He didn’t regret defecting from the Empire many years ago, though he did wish he could have seen his fiancée Karreio one more time—but it was too late for those regrets now. He saw her image in front of his eyes. She had died in the battle for Coruscant, and he had never been able to explain anything to her. Madine just hoped that if she did love him, she must have