Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 04_ Exile - Aaron Allston [40]
“Me,” Myri said. “I’m the only one of us whose face isn’t all over CorSec’s or assassins’ shoot-on-sight guides.”
Corran gave her a melancholy little smile. “It’s not going to happen, girl.”
“Uncle Corran, if you’re going to give me the same old you’re-too-young argument—”
Corran cut her off with a gesture and a shake of his head. “Listen.”
Everyone did. They could all hear the rush of thrusters and repulsorlifts. Wedge found it curious that he couldn’t identify the speeder from its engine noise.
Then he realized why. He wasn’t listening to one speeder close by, but to several farther away, their engine and thruster noises blending together and echoing off hangar walls. And the noise was getting louder, closer…
“Iella!” Wedge called.
His wife pulled the pillow from her face and looked at him, cross but alert.
“Everyone, set up for immediate evacuation.”
Iella rolled up out of her cot and began struggling into her boots. She caught Wedge’s attention, then glanced in the direction of his cot and boots.
Up the access way, from the direction Leia and her companions had come, a stream of CorSec speeders, orange-and-blue lights blinking to signal their official status, roared toward them, each coming to a stop in front of a different hangar. CorSec officers poured out of the vehicles and immediately began moving to hangar entryways. One began banging on the door into Wedge’s shelter.
Corran sighed. “Thanks, Leia.”
CORELLIA CONTROL CABIN OF THE LOVE COMMANDER
“Power coming online in two minutes,” Leia announced.
Lando tried to keep his dissatisfaction from his face. “I hate transports with slow start-up times,” he grumbled. “If that idiot had had any sense, he’d have installed a ten-second starter.”
“If he’d had any sense, he wouldn’t have lost his yacht to you,” Han said. “Relax. We have plenty of time.”
Through the front viewports, they could all see the line of sparks appear at the hangar door as a laser cutting tool outside sheared through the locking mechanism. The door rolled open, and half a dozen CorSec agents charged in.
Just outside, making the final turn to aim at the Love Commander, was an old, though doubtless still deadly, TIE crawler. The ball-shaped cockpit, familiar from TIE fighters, was mounted between two low, rectangular sets of tank treads, and Lando could see the machine’s twin blaster cannon barrels trained squarely on Love Commander’s control cabin.
A CorSec officer with an oversized comlink held up before his face entered with his men. His words came across Love Commander’s comm board and, magnified, could even be heard through the yacht’s hull: “This is Corellian Security. Power down and exit your craft immediately for identification.”
“Leia, stall them,” Lando ordered. “We can get our shields online in just over a minute—”
Leia shook her head. “No, they’re serious. They’ll open fire before then. We can surrender now and escape while we’re being transported…”
Han’s lip had twitched when the word surrender was uttered, and now he shook his head. “Princess, we—”
There was an engine roar from outside. All the CorSec agents still outside looked to their right. Some of them ran—into the hangar and toward Love Commander, or out of sight on the access way, anywhere that wasn’t toward the TIE crawler.
A flash of red light hit the crawler’s starboard treads—low, almost at the level of the permacrete. The shot flipped the crawler and it rolled, coming down resting on one of its treads. A starfighter flashed by outside.
“That was an X-wing, wasn’t it?” Lando asked.
Leia nodded. “Wedge?”
Han shook his head. “Emerald green, with a checkerboard pattern.”
Leia smiled. “Corran!”
Then an X-wing in standard gray with red piping flashed by.
“Power?” Lando asked.
Leia checked her status board. “Coming online in three, two, one…now.”
“Shields up,” Lando ordered. “Get us out of here.”
Leia lifted Love Commander up on her repulsors and glided forward. CorSec