Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [10]
“Senate Security! Raise the hatch and move to the center of the bay with your hands above your head. Make no attempt to flee.”
A smile of satisfaction was just taking shape on Jadak's face when he heard noise from above. A blade of white-hot light was tracing an arc through the ceiling. Taking the boarding ramp in long strides, he skidded into the connector, ducked into the cockpit, and threw himself into the pilot's chair.
“You tell them to go away?” Reeze asked, eyes on the status displays.
“I toasted the door locks, all right. But they're rappelling through the kriffing ceiling!”
Reeze glanced at him. “They want us that badly?”
“We're not waiting around to find out.”
Jadak was strapping in when sounds of impact issued from the Envoy's roof. Above the modulating whistle of the warming engines came the throaty rasp of a cutting torch.
In a rush Jadak enabled the repulsorlifts. The YT was a few meters off the floor when blaster rifle bolts began to sear into the hull.
“Bork them!” Reeze said.
Jadak grabbed the yoke and whipped the Envoy through a rapid about-face, trusting that centrifugal force would hurl the clone soldiers from the hull. A trooper in red-emblazoned armor flew past the cockpit viewport, arms and legs flailing.
Reeze winced. “That's not going to earn us any points with them.”
Without a thought for approaching traffic, Jadak took the ship hurtling out of the landing bay.
“I HAVE THEM,” ISARD SAID INTO THE MIKE SECURED TO THE SHORT collar of his uniform. Standing at the rim of the speeder bus berth, he traversed the macrobinoculars to keep the fleeing YT centered in the visual field. Far below him, the freighter dived into the broad cleft opposite the Senate Annex.
“Captain Archer's ARC squadron will take up the pursuit,” the assistant director said through the comlink.
“What about Fang Zar and the others?”
“Gone by the time the shock troopers entered the bay. Someone had to have tipped them off.”
Isard lowered the macrobinoculars and hurried down the red carpet toward the atrium. “We'll see to them in due time. Right now that freighter is our priority.”
“Disable or destroy?”
“Archer's call. Have a forensics team standing by to retrieve the bodies and pick through the wreckage if it comes to that.”
* * *
Blaster bolts nipping at her stern, the YT dropped from the high ground, nearly colliding with a speeder bus that was making a stately approach to one of the upper-tier berths. Whizzing from around the east curve of the annex dome flew a pair of speeders with front-mounted repeating weapons. Jadak pushed the yoke forward, plunging the Envoy into one of the canyons that radiated from the Senate circle. Cutting through traffic lanes, he tilted the freighter up on her side, then completed a rollover and clawed for the sky. The speeders were soon a memory, but the Envoy hadn't ascended to the penthouse levels of 500 Republica when the threat-assessment board began to chime.
“V-wings and ARC-one-seventies,” Reeze said. “Count five … six, seven. Closing from our four and nine.”
Jadak nudged the throttle and pulled the yoke into his lap, fomenting chaos in several midlevel airlanes as the YT executed a vertical climb of several hundred meters, ahead of her own sonic boom, the threat board hollering all the while.
“More ARCs.”
Jadak glanced at the instrument panel's main screen. Heat-shedding S-foils parting into attack position, the pursuit ships were flying full-out, laser weapons and proton missile launchers coming alive.
“Has the blockade been lifted?”
“Just,” Reeze said, twisting the comm's selector dial and listening through the headset. “Ships are dispersing from the holding patterns. Most of the incoming traffic has been routed to Sectors Thirteen through Twenty.”
Jadak changed vectors, slewing widely to the east and calling more power