Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 03_ Tyrant's Test - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [48]
At three thousand meters, it became clear that Anomaly 2249 was not the Teljkon vagabond or any part of it. The work floods illuminated a metal mesh cylinder some sixty meters long, capped by solid metal spheres fifteen meters across and studded with circular metal fittings. It was slowly turning end over end, rotating around a slightly eccentric center of gravity.
“What in blazes is that?” Hammax asked. “Spaceship? Probe? I don’t recognize the configuration.”
“Nor do I,” said Pakkpekatt. “But I know what it is not.” He dragged a datapad toward him and consulted the report provided to him by the keepers of NRI’s network of stationary blackball-tracking buoys. “Anomaly ten-thirty-three, near Carconth, is the next highest probability candidate.”
“Colonel?”
“Yes, Agent Pleck?”
“Could we give this one a few more minutes—get in to maybe five hundred meters and do a flyaround? I’d like to be able to resolve all the hull detail for the analysts, and there may be markings on the far side.”
“I am not interested in performing any extra services for the Analysis Section,” Pakkpekatt said curtly, turning Lady Luck away from the mystery object and onto a heading for Carconth. “Let them clear their anomalies themselves. Colonel Hammax, retract the cannon pod. Agent Pleck, lock down your imagers. Hyperspace in one minute. This will be a nine-hour jump, so we’ll make the watch change now.”
Apart from the ugly smell it left hanging in the air, Lando had no qualms about burning a path through the chain of chambers for himself and the others. If the ship survived what was almost certainly more serious damage elsewhere, closing the wounds Lando was making would be no problem—and if the ship was already doomed, the wounds he was making were irrelevant.
But Lobot quickly became uncomfortable watching Lando do it. After only four chambers and four black-edged burnholes, Lobot caught Lando and stayed his hand before he could make the fifth.
“Can’t we at least try each portal before we destroy it?” he pleaded.
“Do you have some reason to think the vagabond is recovering?” Lando asked, pulling his arm free and pointing the blaster ahead.
Lobot cringed as the beam burned a hole into the next chamber. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he said. “I do know that we are leaving a trail that will be no challenge to follow, a fact which makes our flight futile. The boarding parties will simply find us in the last chamber.”
A new sound reached them as Lando stopped and looked back. It was a series of wet-sounding percussive reports, akin to the sound of a stone falling into soft mud.
“Fluids blowing under pressure,” Lando said, craning his neck. “I heard a bad fuel slug pop once, sounded a lot like that.” He looked back at Lobot. “Yeah, you’re right. We won’t be hard to follow. But the darkness helps us, and we don’t have to be conveniently waiting for them at the end of the line.”
“Is that your whole plan?” Lobot demanded. “Do you think Threepio will have them coming after us so recklessly that we can surprise an entire boarding party with hand tools?”
“My plan is to postpone the confrontation,” Lando said. “That’s all I have going right now. I’m only thinking about putting some distance between us and whoever’s coming in back there.”
“Then what about making more than one hole? Make them make a decision. Get them to split up.”
“I’d gladly burn some more holes to make it harder for them to follow us, but I don’t know what I’d be cutting into,” said Lando. “And I sure don’t want to increase the odds of burning through into vacuum.”
“The topography of