Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [5]
“She's dirt-bound,” Jadak said.
“And already coming apart. Two to one she won't make it halfway.”
“I'll take that bet.”
With one hand clamped on the control yoke, Jadak tweaked the inertial compensator and shot the YT forward. No one tried to prevent them from plunging into the heart of the maelstrom. If they were hell bent on becoming just another battle casualty, it was their business.
“We could at least try an end run, you know,” Reeze said, one hand clamped to the chair's armrest.
Jadak countered it with a shake of his head. “The Seps have the rest of the planet blockaded. Our best shot's here, with the Invisible Hand breaking trail.”
Reeze shot Jadak a look. “We're following her down?”
“Let's say, in.”
Reeze nodded. “I'm good with in.”
“Even if it means losing the bet?”
“Even if.”
If they were to ride the Invisible Hand's wake to the surface, first they had to reach her. That meant threading a path among the countless frigates and gunboats that stood in the way, dodging the fighters that continued to spill from the bellies of the KDY carriers and the curving arms of the Neimoidians' behemoth Lucrehulks, and avoiding the turbolaser fire that crosshatched near space. But they didn't doubt for a moment that the YT was up to the task. The ship had never let them down, and there was no reason to think she would fail them now.
An unknown quantity to the friend-or-foe interrogators of the warships they streaked past, the YT became a target of opportunity for one and all. Absent weapons of their own, Jadak and Reeze had to rely on the freighter's remarkable speed and near-preternatural agility. They pushed the ship for all she was worth, corkscrewing through churning clouds of fighter dogfights and executing twists and turns better left to Jedi Interceptors than forty-year-old light freighters— even one as upgraded and enhanced as the YT was. Power that wasn't being consumed by the YT's sublight engine was being gobbled up by the deflector shields, taxed by each glancing bolt the ship sustained.
Leaping out from behind one of Coruscant's crazed orbital mirrors, they raced to fall in behind the flaming deteriorating hulk the Separatist flagship had become, her blunt bow dipped toward Coruscant in a gesture of surrender, ablative shielding glowing red-hot, and sloughing pieces of armor like a monar serpent shedding scales.
“Cruiser's escape pods are away,” Reeze said.
Jadak magnified the forward view of the ship. Hands vised on the yoke as the YT slalomed through a fragment cloud of parts and components, Jadak watched in awe as the warship altered vector for the planet's governmental district. The Invisible Hand was falling to be sure, but it was clear that someone still had the helm and was determined to guide the vessel in by deploying the drag fins and using the exterior hatches as needed to keep the ship from burning up in the atmosphere.
“Skywalker?” Reeze said.
“I doubt it's Palpatine—unless he's got talents he hasn't revealed.”
Hundreds of warships too large to be annihilated by Coruscant's artillery and rocketry had penetrated the umbrella and cratered the urbanscape. But it was obvious that the standoff gunnery crews had been ordered to allow the Invisible Hand through, which in turn upped the YT's chances of making planetfall. All they had to do was remain close enough to the ship not to be spotted, but far enough from it not to be incinerated.
Jadak had his hand on the throttle when the entire aft portion of the Invisible Hand tumbled away in a mass of flaming wreckage. Only Reeze's last-moment evasive actions kept the YT from being atomized. Just as quickly, Jadak brought the freighter up on her side and barrel-rolling out of harm's way. But the hail of debris that slammed into the shields was worse than anything they had flown through earlier,