Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 01_ Outcast - Aaron Allston [20]
Octa knew Valin's preferred tactics as well as he did. He needed to bank and roll, cause her to drop off. But, halfway emerged through an irregular aperture, he couldn't, not yet—to do so would mangle or even tear free the starfighter's strike foils, turning the X-wing into an expensive, uncomfortable, ugly airspeeder.
Instead, Valin grimaced and eased the yoke forward, emerging two more meters into the predawn air.
Octa got her offhand onto her lightsaber and managed to unclip it. She ignited it and thrust with the weapon at the canopy—not at Valin, but at the point closest to her right arm, where the canopy dogged into place against the fuselage.
The point of her weapon, driven at an awkward angle by her less practiced hand, skidded off the transparisteel and up, inflicting nothing but a scar on the canopy.
She tried again. Valin, timing his action by her attack, punched the thrusters just a little, throwing her off balance. She did not fall off, but the energy blade punched through the canopy centimeters behind the latch. The blade, just above Valin's hands on the yoke, hit the far side of the canopy and burned through there, too.
Now the X-wing was fully extracted from the hangar door. Valin gave Octa a mocking smile, elevated the starfighter's nose, and opened the thrusters full force. The X-wing shot upward at a steep takeoff angle.
Octa felt her right hand slipping across the fuselage. She slid farther down the side of the cockpit, wildly waving her left arm and the lightsaber in it for balance, and then tried another blow. Her attack had no accuracy or leverage; it hit the canopy over Valin's face, well away from her intended point of impact, and again left nothing but a scar.
Valin should have been rolling the X-wing by now, but he did not, and Octa lost a precious second or two trying to figure out why.
Then she understood. He's taking me as high as he can … so I'll die when I hit ground. She took a moment to look around, but of course there were no speeders below or close by—unauthorized traffic was forbidden this close to the Senate Building, and authorized traffic was rare at this hour.
Valin gave her a last look of triumph. He twitched the yoke and the X-wing shuddered. Octa's hand slipped free and she fell.
She felt a touch of regret. Force techniques to slow falling were of little use in open air at altitudes like this. She was going to be a mess, a dead mess, when she hit.
She deactivated her lightsaber and clipped it to her belt. It wouldn't do to have it shear through some innocent pedestrian running in the wake of the shuttle, which, now burning, had come to a rest against the government building on the far side of the plaza.
Octa prepared herself for impact.
When Octa woke up, she knew only moments had passed. The Senate Building alarms were still howling. Sirens announced the imminent arrival of other official vehicles. There was also a persistent ringing in her head.
She didn't hurt that badly. Quickly, carefully, she flexed limbs, shifted her body, explored herself in the Force.
Not even a broken bone.
She opened her eyes and Seha, framed by stars, was kneeling over her, looking worried, crestfallen. “Master?”
“I'm all right.” Octa struggled to sit up. Well, she wasn't entirely all right. Every muscle hurt and she was certain she had a concussion. “You caught me? With telekinesis?”
“Partly. You still hit hard.”
“Not that hard.” Octa managed a shaky laugh. “You did very, very well.”
“But we lost. He got away.”
“We won. He's in street clothes and his canopy isn't airtight. So he can't make space. And he's airborne, so his tracking device will give away his location continuously. We flushed him.” Standing, she stretched her back, trying to afford it a little relief. “Others will have to run him to ground.”
“COME TO COURSE TWO-SIX-NINE.”
Han, following his wife's directions, banked the Falcon around and headed toward the