Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [109]
Screams issued from Coruscanti wedged into the cars to the front and rear of Palpatine’s.
“Vulture fighters!” Mace told the Jedi and Red Guards.
Leaning low at the window, he saw one of the droids climb over the mag-lev, only to descend on the opposite side of the train in the midst of the free-travel lane, initiating a succession of collisions that flung speeders, taxis, and buses all over the skytunnel. Two vehicles careened into the train, only to rebound back into the travel lane, starting a second series of fatal crashes. Racing alongside Palpatine’s car, the same droid responsible for the collisions surged into a steep climb and disappeared from view.
Not a moment later an earsplitting sound reached Mace from somewhere in the rear of the train and overhead. Behind the tinted glass, sparks showered down the rounded sides of the car, and the smell of molten metal wafted from the ventilation grilles. A tumult of terrified cries rose from the car directly behind Palpatine’s, and hands and feet began to pound against the passageway door.
Part of a group of mag-lev security personnel stationed there, a Weequay looked to Mace.
“We won’t be able to hold them back!”
In turn, Mace whirled to Shaak Ti and Allie. “Move the Chancellor into the forward car!”
Shaak Ti regarded him as if he had lost his mind. “It’s packed, Mace!”
“I know that. Find a way!”
He gestured for Kit Fisto, and the two of them shouldered through the cluster of security personnel at the rear of the car and activated their lightsabers. Faced with the purple and blue blades, passengers on the far side of the door’s window began to retreat into the vestibule, battling with those behind them who were attempting to press into the forward car.
When there was space enough in the vestibule, Mace instructed the Weequay to unlock the door. Without hesitation he and Kit dashed through the vestibule and on into the rear car, where most of the mixed-species passengers were heaped atop seats to both sides of the wide aisle. Wind howled through the car from a jagged rend that had been opened in the roof, and through which had dropped half a dozen infantry droids.
Mace allowed himself a moment of bewilderment. Since the battle droids couldn’t have been delivered by the droid fighters, there had to be a third Separatist craft racing alongside the train.
The battle droids opened fire.
To many of the passengers all but fused to the tinted windows, the situation must have seemed hopeless. Not because the two Jedi couldn’t deflect the hail of blaster bolts aimed at them, but because they couldn’t deflect them without sending some into or through people in the car. But those passengers failed to recognize that one of the Jedi was Mace Windu—rumored to have single-handedly destroyed a seismic tank on Dantooine—and that the other was Kit Fisto, Nautolan hero of the Battle of Mon Calamari.
Together they returned some of the sizzling bolts into the advancing droids. Others they sent whizzing through the opening in the roof, managing in the process to catch one of the Vultures in the belly and send it spiraling to its death somewhere below the mag-lev line. Sparks and smoke whirled through the car, and parts of spindly arms and legs flew about unavoidably, but Mace and Kit called on the Force to control even those. A few Coruscanti were struck, but, against all odds, the Jedi saw to it that none was critically injured.
No sooner had the final droid dropped than Mace leapt straight up through the rend, landing in a crouch on the roof of the next car down the line, holding himself in place by the Force with the wind whipping