Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [140]
So that Seti Ashgad could disable a gun station, he thought, and create a corridor through which a ship could fly.
He’d only need to disable one.
As they came out of the hanging canyon above the gun station Luke said softly, “They’re in.”
Most of the wood and metal palisade that had crowned the ancient tower had been torn away by the violence of the uncontrolled Force. Beams and shards and huge mats of razor wire strewed the gravel at the base of the walls; and with the sheer poltergeist wildness of the Force, these would rise up and hurl themselves like rabid things against the walls, the remains of the defenses, the surrounding rocks. As Luke watched, a rusted beam flew like a javelin from the ground, dragging after it a whole tangle of wire, and fell among the struggling forms that ran and dodged and fired on one another on the top of the tower. The beam thrashed and whipped until it fell, dragging two of the Rationalist fighters down with it in a snarl of debris.
On the flat top of the tower they were still fighting before the door that led down into the building itself. From the mouth of the hanging canyon Luke couldn’t tell, but he thought that there was another, smaller scrimmage going on around the coils and shielding of the barrel of the laser cannon itself. Rationalists were struggling to get up on top of it, raggedly dressed Therans fighting them hand to hand to keep them from damaging the gun. The flare of blasters and ion cannon burst like pale lightning in the morning air, but such was the nature of the Force storm that not many of the shots were getting in, and the Therans had quite clearly stopped even trying to throw spears or shoot arrows. Even pellets and bullets from projectile weapons were whirled away like chaff.
“Beldorion’s there,” said Liegeus. He shoved back the long ash-colored hair hanging in his eyes. “Back out of the front lines somewhere, I should think—there!” He pointed down to the silvery shape of a round floater, some distance from the base of the walls. Luke could see the coiled shape of the giant Hutt on it, muscular and serpentine, not at all like Jabba’s slothful bulk.
The sense of decayed Force, of rotted abilities and spent purpose, rose to Luke like a stench, as it had from Taselda.
In many ways it was worse than Vader, worse than Palpatine. At least their dream had been grand.
“What do we do?” said Liegeus.
Luke began to back the assault speeder up the canyon again, the way they had come. A speeder wasn’t an antigrav platform and generally couldn’t be used as one without restructuring of the buoyancy tanks, but Chariots had motors on them that would do credit to many of the combat vessels Luke had flown. “We hold on tight.”
Liegeus gasped, “What are you going to do?”—A silly question, thought Luke, as he slammed the speeder into full-bore acceleration and readied his hand on the turbothrust lever. It should have been patently obvious what the only possible course of action was. The walls of the canyon blurred into a shining curtain, wind and flying gravel scorched back over hood and metal, the gap of the canyon walls rushed toward them and beyond that, the wide break in the tower’s defensive crown beckoned like a ridiculously enormous bull’s-eye.
Liegeus wailed, “Luke!” and hid his eyes.
The speeder cleared the twenty-five-meter gap between the last ridge