Star Wars_ Episode VI_ Return of the Jedi - James Kahn [37]
Leia staggered to her feet, “Over there, two more of them!”
“I see ’em,” answered Luke, rising. “Stay here.”
But Leia had ideas of her own. She ran to the remaining rocket speeder, charged it up, and took off in pursuit of the fleeing scouts. As she tore past Luke, he jumped up behind her on the bike, and off they flew.
“Quick, center switch,” he shouted to her over her shoulder, over the roar of the rocket engines. “Jam their comlinks!”
As Luke and Leia soared out of the clearing after the Imperials, Han and Chewie were just subduing the last scout. “Hey, wait!” Solo shouted; but they were gone. He threw his weapon to the ground in frustration, and the rest of the Rebel commando squad poured over the rise into the clearing.
Luke and Leia sped through the dense foliage, a few feet off the ground, Leia at the controls, Luke grabbing on behind her. The two escaping Imperial scouts had a good lead, but at two hundred miles per hour, Leia was the better pilot—the talent ran in her family.
She let off a burst from the speeder’s laser cannon periodically, but was still too far behind to be very accurate. The explosions hit away from the moving targets, splintering trees and setting the shrubbery afire, as the bikes weaved in and out between massive, imposing branches.
“Move closer!” Luke shouted.
Leia opened the throttle, closed the gap. The two scouts sensed their pursuer gaining and recklessly veered this way and that, skimming through a narrow opening between two trees. One of the bikes scraped the bark, tipping the scout almost out of control, slowing him significantly.
“Get alongside!” Luke yelled into Leia’s ear.
She pulled her speeder so close to the scout’s, their steering vanes scraped hideously against each other. Luke suddenly leaped from the back of Leia’s bike to the back of the scout’s, grabbed the Imperial warrior around the neck, and flipped him off. The white-armored trooper smashed into a thick trunk with a bone-shattering crunch, and settled forever into the sea of ferns.
Luke scooted forward to the driver’s seat of the speeder bike, played with the controls a few seconds, and lurched forward, following Leia, who’d pulled ahead. The two of them now tore after the remaining scout.
Over hill and under stonebridge they flew, narrowly avoiding collision, flaming dry vines in their afterburn. The chase swung north and passed a gully where two more Imperial scouts were resting. A moment later, they swung into pursuit, now hot on Luke and Leia’s tail, blasting away with laser cannon. Luke, still behind Leia took a glancing blow.
“Keep on that one!” he shouted up at her, indicating the scout in the lead. “I’ll take the two behind us!”
Leia shot ahead. Luke, at the same instant, flared up his retrorockets, slamming the bike into rapid deceleration. The two scouts on his tail zipped past him in a blur on either side, unable to slow their momentum. Luke immediately roared into high velocity again, firing with his blasters, suddenly in pursuit of his pursuers.
His third round hit its mark: one of the scouts, blown out of control, went spinning against a boulder in a rumble of flame.
The scout’s cohort took a single glance at the flash, and put his bike into supercharge mode, speeding even faster. Luke kept pace.
Far ahead, Leia and the first scout continued their own high-speed slalom through the barricades of impassive trunks and low-slung branches. She had to brake through so many turns, in fact, Leia seemed unable to draw any closer to her quarry. Suddenly she shot into the air, at an unbelievably steep incline, and quickly vanished from sight.
The scout turned in confusion, uncertain whether to relax or cringe at his pursuer’s sudden disappearance. Her whereabouts became clear soon enough. Out of the tree-tops, Leia dove down on him, cannon blasting from above. The scout’s bike took the shock wave from a near hit. Her speed was even greater than she