Star Wars_ Splinter of the Mind's Eye - Alan Dean Foster [79]
With soft mumbles and alien gestures, the Coway took their leave, vanishing back down the hole. Luke crawled on his belly, freeing the exit for those behind him.
When all five were once again on the surface of Mimban, Luke turned to crawl clear.
“Just a darn minute, Luke boy!” Halla whispered. “Do you think you can catch up to this Vader on foot?”
Luke paused, returned to stare at the silent crawler poised over the Coway exit. “All right, so what do we do, Halla? I agree … we have to have transportation. But that armed crawler happens to be full of Imperial troops.”
Halla studied the vehicle. “Its upper port is wide open … big enough for two men. I can see two … no, one trooper with his head exposed. Probably giving information to those below.” The head disappeared. “He’s gone now. We should get in the branches hanging over it.”
“Then what?” the Princess asked. “We jump inside?”
“Listen,” the old woman protested, “I can’t think of everything, can I? I don’t know … drop an antipersonnel charge down them, or something!”
“Wonderful,” the Princess quipped. She looked from Halla to Luke. “Now if one of you two magicians will use the Force to conjure up a convenient canister of explosive, I’ll volunteer to do the dropping.” She folded her arms, gazed questioningly at them. “Personally, I think I’m pretty safe in volunteering. Luke?”
He wasn’t looking at her. “We don’t have any explosives, true, but we have something close.” She turned, saw what he was staring at, and found she had to agree.…
The Imperial sergeant had been fortunate to escape the underground ambush with his life, and he knew it. If he’d had any voice in the matter he never would have led his men beneath the surface. On Mimban, he was acutely uncomfortable whenever he had to leave the relative familiarity of the towns and venture out into the bog-ridden countryside.
It had been a terrible battle, terrible. They’d been overwhelmed and nearly wiped out to the last trooper. So many things had gone wrong.
The outcome of the engagement was decided in the first few minutes, when total surprise had belonged to the enemy. Even when it had dawned on the detachment that they were under attack, they still hadn’t responded in the fashion Imperial troops were famous for.
There was no blaming the men, really. They were so accustomed to dealing with the subservient, pacific greenies that the concept of a fighting Mimbanite was unbelievable to most of them. They’d proven unprepared to cope with the reality.
Now, as he stared out the foreport at the ominous mouth of the cavern he’d retreated from with the rest of the survivors, he feasted on a single thought. If he knew the Captain-Supervisor at all, then as soon as he and the Dark Lord Vader returned from their journey, a retaliatory force would be organized. They would return here with heavy weapons, he mused grimly, and roast that cavern until every native male, woman, and infant had been reduced to ashes.
Idly, he wondered where Grammel and the Dark Lord had taken themselves so hastily, and shuddered. He had no desire to accompany that tall, black-armored spectral shape anywhere whatsoever. He preferred to speculate on the forthcoming massacre that would take place in the native warrens below. That favorable mental image mitigated his usually brusque call to the man posted in the open turret above.
The trooper heard the sergeant’s order, turned to call downward that he saw nothing. It was an honest answer, the last one the trooper ever made. In glancing down into the armored crawler he failed to see the bomb that fell from the large tree branch overhead.
A little over