Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [119]
It was Wes Janson who first shouted the truth over the comm. “Wait, I get it! We’re not falling toward the base—it’s coming up at us!”
Characteristically, the most comprehensive grasp of the situation, as well as its most succinct analysis, belonged to Lando Calrissian. From the bridge of the Remember Alderaan, hovering with the rest of the task force in a sea of vast impact craters below the horizon, he watched the radiation flare and the mushroom clouds … and then watched the entire volcanic dome rise from the mushroom cloud and accelerate toward space.
He understood instinctively what was happening. The volcano itself was a solid mass of radiation-resistant stone; the base would be entirely impervious even to the gargantuan power of the stellar flares. All the bad guys would have to do was cruise away, beyond the perimeter of the gravity wells; then they could use the volcano itself as a radiation shield, to shelter whatever smaller craft they might want to use to flash away into hyperspace.
Using skills fine-tuned by a lifetime of living by his ability to instantly assess odds and opportunities, he reflected with part of his mind that it was actually a pretty nifty idea. He filed it away for future consideration; after all, there were a number of systems where intense stellar radiation made conventional ships too dangerous to use. But a flying shield, to provide cover for ships moving in and out?
There were some definite possibilities here.
Then another part of his brain—the part that ignored odds and opportunities to focus directly on threats to life and limb—reminded him that none of these “definite possibilities” would ever come to pass if his ship was destroyed along with the rest of the Rapid Response Task Force, which was an increasing likelihood, because the ion-turbo emplacements and that insanely dangerous gravity gun were on the upper curve of the dome, which meant they had just lifted off along with the rest of the base. Which meant that once the base achieved orbit, a simple half-barrel roll would aim those weapons back down at the surface of Mindor.
At anywhere on the planet’s surface. Including the craters where the Remember Alderaan and the rest of the Rapid Response Task Force were currently hiding. A hiding place they could not leave, because to swing around to the sunside of the planet would expose the ships to the stellar flares and destroy them just as conclusively.
Lando’s comprehensive grasp and succinct analysis of the situation required only four words.
“This,” he said, “is a problem.”
CHAPTER 16
WATCHING THE FLYING VOLCANO SLOWLY ROTATE AS IT rose into Mindor’s night sky pricked beads of sweat across Lando’s brow. The lieutenant at TacOps reported an estimated eighty seconds to the firing window for the nearside ion-turbo cannons, and only twenty seconds more for the full array, including the gravity gun. “Fenn,” he muttered into his personal comlink, “give me some good news. I mean it.”
When this request reached Fenn Shysa, the Protector commandant was lying flat behind the remnants of a blast-shattered wall within the gravity gun’s infantry bunker, along with the mercenary commander and six commandos, all shrouded in smoke and covered in rock dust and all doing their best to impersonate several hundred bloodthirsty Mandalorians. This was for the benefit of two full companies of stormtrooper heavy infantry who were holding a pair of redoubts to either side of a blast door that looked like it could withstand a good-sized fusion bomb. The purpose of this impersonation was to distract the stormtroopers from the actual several hundred bloodthirsty Mandalorians, who were about to