Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 07_ Fury - Aaron Allston [112]
And Caedus’s additional defenders should be arriving—
The bridge doors opened and they marched in, a double column, eight YVH combat droids in all. Two turned to face the stern as the blast doors there shut. Two dropped to the officers’ pits, one on either side, their mass causing deck plates to crumple as they hit. The other four marched forward, then, four meters short of Caedus’s position, turned toward the stern. More would be stationing themselves elsewhere in the ship.
Caedus didn’t think these measures would stop the Jedi. But they might whittle down the numbers of Jedi.
They had to. Jacen could defeat his mother or Ben without trouble; Saba, with difficulty. Saba plus Luke would be impossible odds. One of the Masters had to fall if Caedus was to survive this day.
Moving so fast that they blurred, the four Jedi, breather masks over their faces, emerged from the edges of the smoke cloud.
The security team at the entrance to the turbolift corridor opened fire—too late; the Jedi were already among them, striking with fists, feet, and, in Saba’s case, tail. Six security personnel fell in an instant, their blaster rifles clattering to the deck plates, barely audible over the alarms howling through the hangar bay.
Iella and Han, R2-D2 between them, emerged from the smoke, removing their own masks.
Luke gave them a nod, clapping his hand on Ben’s back. “All right, time to move out. Artoo?”
The astromech wheetled his confirmation, then turned and rolled along the hangar wall toward the nearest datajack.
Ben swung toward the doorway into the corridor and launched a kick. A ship’s security officer, not visible before Ben began his maneuver, rounded the corner and ran right into it, catching Ben’s heel across his jaw, and staggered back into his men. One was alert and nimble enough to jump clear, and aimed his rifle; Han shot him in the gut, the stun beam folding the man over and putting him down.
The other Jedi leapt forward, making quick work of the rest of the squad.
Han holstered his blaster and smiled at his wife. “Nice not to have to do all the work myself for once.”
Rakehell Squadron approached the stern of a troop transport shuttle. It looked as though it had already sustained damage in this battle—the bow was blackened all along the starboard side, with a fracture pattern on the viewport suggesting that the transparisteel was on the verge of cracking, of venting its atmosphere into space—but Syal knew it was a sham. The battle damage was nothing but a paint job.
The shuttle accelerated away from the X-wings, toward the station and the battle raging all around it. “Just like before.” Wedge’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Shoot, but don’t hit.”
The X-wings closed in, firing.
The shuttle Broadside rocked as a Rakehell near hit grazed its shields. Seyah held on to the webbing across his chest with a white-knuckled grip of death.
“Hey, Doctor.” The shout came from the cockpit, where, up until a moment before, the pilot had been singing something about a drunken Devaronian spacer and the females he loved in each port. “Which end, Talus or Tralus?”
“Weren’t you awake at the briefing? Tralus end!” Seyah stared, aghast, at what little he could see of the pilot’s back and neck through the cockpit door.
“Talus?”
“Tralus!”
“That’s the end toward Talus, right?”
Seyah took as deep a breath as he could, intending to blow out eardrums with the volume of his reply, and then he caught sight of Kyp Durron. The Jedi Master was grinning, shaking his head. “He’s messing with you, Doctor. Pilots do that.”
Seyah let out his breath with a whoosh, and glared. “I’ll shoot him after we dock.”
ABOARD THE ANAKIN SOLO
Caedus kept track of the battle on one monitor and of the progress