• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Sha re rei som kava na talae,” Sileen’s voice boomed again from above her. Without waiting for an answer, both fighters veered off to the right.

A motion to her left caught Shada’s eye, and she turned as Karoly’s speeder bike slid into formation beside her. “You all right?” Shada called.

“Yes,” Karoly shouted back. She still looked nervous, but at least she didn’t look as if she were going to freeze up again. “What did Sileen say? I didn’t catch it.”

“More Imperials coming,” Shada said. “She and Cai are going to intercept.”

“What about us?”

Shada nodded toward the Strike Cruiser. “We’re going to make the Imperials hurt a little. Bow hatchway’s open—let’s try to get there before they get it sealed.”

They found out immediately what two of the smaller buildings on the periphery of the complex were for, as sections of wall fell away and four more Comar guns opened fire. But it was too little too late. Between the harassment from the two fighters and the small size and maneuverability of the speeder bikes themselves, Shada and Karoly made it past the hot drive nozzles at the Strike Cruiser’s stern and into the relative shelter of its flank with no damage apart from burned-out shields.

“Pretty rotten security they’ve got here,” Karoly huffed as they headed toward the bow hatchway. An instant later she nearly had to swallow those words as, from the ground beside the landing ramp, a dozen Imperials opened fire with blaster rifles. But the two speeder bikes had the edge in both firepower and targeting accuracy, and they’d covered no more than half the Strike Cruiser’s four-hundred-fifty-meter length before that nest of opposition had been silenced.

“Now what?” Karoly asked as they braked to a halt at the foot of the ramp.

“We do some damage,” Shada said, half standing up on her speeder bike and taking a quick look around. There was still some resistance, mostly from the Comars and the handful of speeder-bike stormtroopers that hadn’t yet been blown out of the sky. She and Karoly should have enough time to make their way to the Strike Cruiser’s bridge, drop a canister or two of their corrosive green smoke where it would do the most good, and get the blazes out again.

And then, over the distant hills ahead, a new group of Imperial forces appeared, burning through the air toward them like scorched mynocks. “Uh-oh,” Karoly muttered. “I take it back about their security. Maybe we’d better get out while we still can.”

Shada took a deep breath, her last views of Manda’s and Pav’s faces floating up from her memory. “Not until we’ve hurt them,” she said, swiveling around and pointing her speeder bike at the ramp. “Stay here long enough to give me a two-minute warning, then you can take off.”

Karoly hissed between her teeth. “Get moving,” she gritted out as she dropped her speeder bike into the limited protection of the ramp and unslung her blaster rifle. “I’ll cover you. Make it fast.”

“Bet on it,” Shada agreed tightly, trying to visualize the standard Strike Cruiser layout as she headed up the ramp. She would have to go forward about ten meters along the exit corridor, then starboard to the central corridor, then forward another twenty meters to get to the bridge. Standard Strike Cruiser complement was something over two thousand crewers; if there was even a fraction of that number aboard who felt like getting in her way … but she would just have to do what she could. She reached the top of the ramp, swerving to the side as she passed under the hatchway arch to avoid the exit corridor bulkhead—

And lurched to an abrupt halt. “Mother of—”

“What?” Karoly’s voice snapped from the comlink on her collar. “Shada? What is it?”

For a moment Shada was too stunned even to speak. Stretched out in front of her, where the command rooms, crew quarters, and combat stations should have been, was a vast cavern of open space, three hundred meters long and nearly fifty in diameter, running all the way from the bow to the main drive section.