Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [104]
The astromech, trundling toward the doorway in his wake, denied any expertise in the piloting of the lumpy Gamorrean cubeship. Threepio muttered, “Oh dear, oh dear,” as he followed Artoo out the door and down the ramp, hoping against hope that the situation outside wasn’t going to get any worse.
The moment he emerged at the foot of the ramp it became evident that it was unlikely that it would—or could—get worse. The next bay over was in flames, black oil smoke and thirty-foot columns of fire pouring skyward and Gopso’o troops and Drovian government forces searing one another with blaster fire and cannister grenades across the wreckage.
For a moment the docking bay in which the Zicreex lay was quiet. None of the Gamorreans was to be seen. Then under the arcade a door opened and a muddy, shabby little figure darted through. The fugitive slammed the keypad to close the door behind him, pulled a crowbar from the nearest heap of scrap under the arcade, and smashed the lock. The effort was to little avail. It was clear that whoever was on the other side of the door also had crowbars, battering rams, and grenades. The fugitive dashed madly across the open permacrete, and Threepio said in surprise, “Why, it’s Master Yarbolk from the Chug ’n’ Chuck! Master Yarbolk! Over here, Master Yarbolk!”
The Chadra-Fan needed no further encouragement. He bolted past them and up the entry ramp, instants before the doors gave way and an exceedingly mixed congregation of Drovians—some wearing the Gopso’o scalplock and others, though presumably sympathizers, not so decorated, accompanied by a couple of Durosian and Devaronian lay-about spaceport types—came smashing through. Someone yelled something about a stinking traitor sellout swine, and Threepio, correctly interpreting the remark to reflect on the fugitive Master Yarbolk, pointed toward the doorway that led to the unburning bays beyond.
“That way!” he boomed in his alternate alien voice. “Unclean hairy undersize journalist!” He hoped the invective was as acceptable to them as it was informative.
Hollering imprecations, the mob smashed its way through the farther doors at the same moment a twenty-centimeter shell struck the arcade between the burning bay and the one currently occupied by the Zicreex. Threepio let out a squeak of panic and retreated up the ramp as the Drovian government forces scattered, regrouped, and fired on the Gopso’o who were attempting to advance over the wreckage. At the same moment Ugmush and her husbands appeared at a run. They must have passed the mob just within the other doorway, and they added their mite to the battle, firing on the Gopso’o as they lumbered across the permacrete and up the boarding ramp, an assortment of parcels and packing boxes hung over their shoulders and backs.
Dirty pink curls flying and morrts clinging to her for their very lives, Ugmush burst onto the bridge, screaming, “Get yourselves strapped in, you stupid garbage eaters! What in sithfestering blazes do you think this is, a luxury liner?” She flung herself down behind the console, jabbing keys and flipping levers with far more speed than seemed possible in hands so huge. “Close that festering boarding ramp, you muck-sodden flapdragon, do I have to do everything on this maw-sapping ship? Jos, get us out of here! Fruck, open fire on those festering Gopso’o—hang on, the lot of you! Bunch of crabsucking morrtless soap-using cheesebrains!”
She rammed the activation levers over, the engineer cut in the power overrides, and in a roar of ground fire, ion cannons, and retro