Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [30]
The base. Lifting her eyes from the section of road winding through the hills below—the road Manda and Kellering would be traversing in a few minutes if they made it through the gate—Shada studied the waves of rolling hills that stretched into the distance beyond the innocuous security fence cutting across her view. It certainly looked like the agricultural test ground the signs on the fence claimed it to be, not at all like the weapons-bristling popular image of an Imperial military research base. But its strategic location, within fifty kilometers of the Gorno spaceport and four major technical supply and transport centers, made its true identity obvious.
Perhaps too obvious. Perhaps that was why they were moving everyone out. She wondered how they would handle it: subtly with freighters, or blatantly with Imperial Star Destroyers. Kellering had implied this Hammertong thing had already been loaded for transport; a look at the ship they were using should give Manda a clue as to how they were going to go about it. That would affect how their screen net would be put together—
“They’re through,” Pav reported. “Gate’s closing. They’re headed your way.”
“Copy,” Shada said, frowning. There was something in Pav’s voice … “Trouble?”
“I don’t know,” Pav said slowly. “It all looks okay. But there’s something here that feels wrong, somehow.”
Shada tightened her grip on her blaster rifle. Pav might be a chattercase on the com, but she hadn’t survived long enough to become Manda’s team second without good combat instincts. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Pav said. “They got through just a little bit too quick—”
And abruptly, Pav’s voice dissolved into an earsplitting shriek of jamming static.
With a curse, Shada ripped the comlink from her collar with her left hand, throwing it as far away from her as she could. So much for Kellering’s naïve assurances of safety. In the split of a hair the thing had suddenly gone sour … and Manda and Pav were right in the middle of it.
With Shada herself about to come in a close third. Beyond the fence, from over the next line of hills, the gleaming white figures of a dozen stormtroopers on speeder bikes had suddenly appeared. Headed her way.
Shada cursed again, lining up her blaster rifle with her right hand as she groped for the switch on her backup comlink with her left. If they were lucky, they’d have a minute before the Imperials found that frequency and locked it down, too. She located the switch, flicked it on—
“—trap—repeat, a trap,” Pav was saying, her voice tight. “They’ve got Manda—she’s down. Probably. And they’re coming for me.”
“Pav, it’s Shada,” Shada cut in, squinting through the sight and squeezing off a shot. The lead stormtrooper’s speeder bike exploded into a shower of sparks, pitching him to the ground and nearly doing the same to the two on either side of him. “I can be there to back you up in two minutes.”
“Negative,” Pav said. The tension in her voice was gone, leaving a sad sort of resignation that sent a cold chill up Shada’s neck. “They’re already too close. I’ll do what I can to keep them busy—you and Karoly had better get back to the ships and get out of here. Good luck, and good—”
There was a brief crinkle of sound, and then silence.
Ahead, the speeder bikes had shifted into evasive maneuvers. Shada fired four rapid shots, catching another of the stormtroopers with the third of them. “Karoly?” she called toward her comlink. “Karoly? Are you there?”
“They’re gone, Shada,” Karoly D’ulin said, her voice almost unrecognizable. “They’re gone. The stormtroopers—”
“Snap out of it,” Shada snarled, keying the Viper grenade launcher attached to her blaster rifle barrel. The recoil kicked the gun hard into her shoulder as the slender cylinder blasted out toward the approaching stormtroopers. “Can you get to your speeder?”
There