Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [124]
“Repeating: This is Luke Skywalker. All Republic ships—”
“Cut it off.” For what seemed like a long, long moment, Lando could only stand and stare into space. Had he really heard this? Did Luke actually believe he could simply order Imperial stormtroopers to surrender?
That was beyond preposterous. It was completely bloody insane.
“Sir?” TacOps said. “TIE fighters are withdrawing.”
Lando said, “What?”
ComOps looked over his shoulder. “Wait a Minute reports that the gravity gun has ceased fire.” He blinked. “Subspace comm is operational.”
“What?”
NavOps could only shake his head. “Mass-shadows diminishing—the gravity stations are shutting down, sir! Jump window projected to open in twelve minutes.”
And Lando found, to his astonishment, that his feet were striding forward and taking the rest of his body along with them, and his hands were gesturing, and his mouth was snapping off orders about jump coordinates and rendezvous points and search-and-rescue priorities, while his mind was still, for the most part, doing nothing except saying, What?
FENN SHYSA PRESSED HIS BACK AGAINST THE BULKHEAD and scowled down at the red-blinking charge meter on his blaster rifle. Ten shots. One grenade. Maybe just enough to last until Lando’s counterstrike vaporized them all.
He exchanged a grim look with the mercenary commander who stood in an identical posture on the other side of the blown-open hatch between them. The mercenary commander was at his side because in the proudest Mandalorian tradition, he would cover his men’s retreat or die in the attempt. Fenn Shysa, though, wasn’t there because he was a commander. Or even because he was commandant of the Mandalorian Protectors, or because he was Lord Mandalore. He was there because he was Fenn Shysa.
He’d discarded his helmet at some point—a glancing hit had disabled his heads-up display, and the malfunction had triggered the autopolarizer to black out his visor altogether—and now he had a fresh burn streak along his temple where a near-miss had set his hair on fire. The haze in the bunker flickered and flashed with scarlet streaks of blasterfire, and it smelled like smoke, roast meat, and lightning.
The blasterfire through the doorway paused for just an instant, only long enough for a pair of thermal dets to tumble in and skid across the floor. On the dets’ first bounce, Fenn swung through the hatch and went right, launching his anti-armor grenade on the run. As blasterfire out of the smoke tracked him, the mercenary commander slipped in and went left a millisecond before the blast of fire from the paired thermal dets roared through the hatch behind them.
Fenn located the focal point of the blasterfire. He ran in a tight arc, holding down his rifle’s trigger, not aiming, putting fire on their position to keep their heads down and spoil their shooting as he threw aside his empty rifle and turned his tight arc into a straight-line charge, just wide of the line of fire pouring at the stormtrooper position from the mercenary commander. He charged partly because he still had his gauntlet blades, and if he could get into hand-to-hand he could rearm himself with the blasters of dead enemies—but mostly he charged because he was Fenn Shysa, and if today should bring his death, he would fall with his teeth in the throat of the man who killed him.
But before he could get there a new source of blasterfire erupted from a different angle and lanced through the smoke. Fenn clenched his jaw and kept running, because he could take a hit or two and still bring down a few men before he fell—but the blasterfire didn’t strike him; it didn’t seem to even be aimed at him. The bolts flashed high, directly over the helmets of the stormtroopers toward whom he charged, and were accompanied by authoritative shouts to surrender; but he was ready to die, so he ignored the shouts and put his head down