Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [106]
He rattled the datacubes like dice in his hand. Artoo-Detoo, taking him at his word, promptly extruded a gripper arm, picked up a cube, and withdrew the arm into his own vitals. “Hey, give that back!” protested Yarbolk, loudly enough that two of Ugmush’s husbands, an armed guard, two very nervous Aqualish smugglers, and the dozen or so others who shared the waiting chamber of the Quarantine Enforcement Cruiser Lycoming turned to glare at them, as if blaming them for their present situation.
The Zicreex had not even made it to the hyperspace jump point when it ran into trouble. Just outside the outlying asteroid fields of the Drovian system they had encountered the Republic cruiser Empyrean, firing furiously with all guns in all directions without any target immediately apparent—not until the flash of one of the cruiser’s shield generators blowing up had illuminated what at first appeared to be a cloud of space debris surrounding the vessel like flies. Within moments, however, it was obvious that the tiny slips of matte black metal were vessels of some kind, pouring concentrated fire on the huge ship and slipping and scattering from return fire like a cloud of butterbats.
Since the battle lay between the Zicreex and the outer reaches of the system, where it would be safe to jump to hyperspace, the small trader was trapped where it was. Ugmush, the droids, and Yarbolk clustered by the viewport and watched as the Empyrean tried first to battle, then to flee the swarming attackers.
“Fascinating,” Threepio said, looking over Ugmush’s shoulder as the captain tried to scan up a reading on the nearby area in the hopes of not running afoul of whatever larger vessel was controlling the swarm. “They seem to be nothing more than ambulant weapons. Don’t be silly,” he added, to Artoo, who had surreptitiously hooked into the console behind Ugmush’s broad back. “There has to be a principal ship. Whatever it is, it must have amazing range.”
Yarbolk, crowding at Ugmush’s elbow and peering back and forth between Artoo’s readouts and those on the console, whispered, “No principal ship. Just weapons. It’s got to be CCIR of some kind.”
Light flared over their faces as a bolt from one of the tiny ships achieved target. The fire cloud from the exploding cruiser enveloped the daggerlike little weapons; a hundred white stars flared in the dissipating ball of heat and gases as they, too, were destroyed. The score or so which survived simply pivoted, like a school of glimmerfish in the darkness, and moved away. Black painted as they were, they were swiftly lost to sight.
Yarbolk whispered, “By the Big Green Fish …” And then, “What are you doing?” as Ugmush moved the levers, and the Zicreex swung around.
“Salvage,” the Gamorrean said. She jerked one meaty hand at the viewport, where the two or three huge chunks of what was left of the cruiser hung glowing in blackness, surrounded by whirling fields of half-melted shielding, metal shards, spears of glass, and vacuum-bloated corpses. “Lots of stuff.”
Ugmush and her husbands, resplendent in deep-space environmental gear customized to their species for use by mercenaries, were looting the wreck when the Quarantine Enforcement Cruiser Lycoming made its appearance. Its captain, a much-harried Gotal female in charge of a small troop of fighters and a squad of medics from the Coruscant Institute, had picked up the Empyrean’s distress call, and was not amused by the presence of the Gamorrean free traders at the wreck site.
Threepio supposed it was a credit to his disguise that he’d been put under arrest with the others. Artoo-Detoo had simply been impounded.
Now the little blue access hatch in Artoo’s side slid open again and his gripper arm deposited the cube on the table in front of Yarbolk. Yarbolk snatched it up possessively and bestowed it in his breast pocket.