Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [107]
“Yours?”
“Low on blaster gas,” Padmé said.
Mon Mothma ejected the powerpack from hers. “Empty.”
Bail nodded glumly. “We’ll have to make do.”
Hunkering down behind the pedestal, he and Padmé took careful aim on the closest of the walking droids.
By then three had started onto the skyway, firing at random. Exploding against the façades of buildings above and below, torpedoes sent slabs of durasteel-reinforced ferrocrete avalanching onto plazas, landing platforms, and balconies, burying scores of hapless Coruscanti.
“Be prepared to move as soon as we fire,” Bail said. He indicated one of the kiosks that had survived the crashes of both speeders. “There’s our first cover.”
Padmé centered the lead droid in the blaster’s targeting reticle and squeezed the trigger. Her initial bursts did little more than catch the droid’s attention, but subsequent bolts from both blasters started to score hits on vital components. The droid actually retreated a couple of steps toward Hospital Plaza, only to launch a trio of torpedoes straight across the skyway.
Padmé and company were already in motion. One torpedo hit the pedestal, blowing it and the sculpture to fragments. A second slagged what was left of Stass Allie’s skimmer. The third detonated against the lowered security grate, blowing a gaping hole into the mall. Pedestrians to both sides hastened for it, fighting with one another to be first through the smoking maw. Padmé thought that one of the Vultures would target them, but in their moment of inattention, the droids had left themselves open to strafing runs by the gunships. Converging beams of brilliant light streaked from the fire dishes of the LAATs’ wing- and armature-mounted ball turrets, and staccato bursts erupted from the forward guns.
Two droids exploded.
One turned to answer the volleys, but not in time. Missiles from the gunships’ mass-drive launchers took off the droid’s left legs, then the head, then blew the rest clear across the plaza. The remaining two Vultures skittered onto the skyway to increase their odds of survival.
Bail and Padmé laid down steady lines of fire, but the droids were undeterred.
“And I thought the Senate was a battlefield!” Mon Mothma said.
The sight of smoke curling from holes in the lead droid’s fuselage seemed to invigorate the one behind. Driving Padmé and the others in search of new cover with a single torpedo, the droid scurried forward, edging around its stricken comrade and stepping brazenly into the mall plaza, red sensors gleaming.
A gunship made a quick pass, but couldn’t find a clear field of fire.
“I’m out,” Bail said, dropping his rifle.
Padmé checked her weapon’s display screen. “Same.”
C-3PO shook his head. “How will I ever explain this to Artoo-Detoo?”
They broke for cover a final time, hoping to throw themselves through the ragged hole in the still-smoking security grate, but the droid hurried to intercept them; then, in seeming sadistic delight, began to back the four of them against the wall of the Nicandra Building.
A rage began to build in Padmé, born of instincts as old as life itself. She was on the verge of hurling herself against the towering machine, ripping the sensors from its teardrop-shaped head, when the droid came to a sudden halt, obviously in reception of some remote communication. Retracting its head and stiffening its scissor-like legs into wings, it turned and launched itself over the edge of the plaza into the canyon below.
The droid on the skyway did the same, even with two gunships in close pursuit.
Padmé was first to reach the skyway railing. Far below, the Senate District mag-lev was racing south toward the skytunnel that would take it through the kilometer-wide Heorem Complex and on into the wealthy Sah’c District. The two Vulture droids were swooping down to join ranks with a Separatist gunboat that was already chasing the train.
How had Grievous known to attack 500 Republica? Mace asked himself as the mag-lev rushed at three hundred kilometers per hour toward the skytunnel that would spirit the