Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [54]
“Yes: stick to the plan. Our best hope for getting close to K’sar is to get ourselves arrested.”
Anakin grinned. “Shouldn’t be a problem. Hang on.”
Obi-Wan already was, and so was able to remain more or less upright in the chair as Anakin firewalled the thrusters and threw the cruiser into a hard turn—not away from the corvette, but aimed directly toward it.
The console chimed another alert.
“They’re warning us away, Anakin.”
Anakin kept the cruiser on course. “Quick flyby. Our way of saying we’re not happy about being turned away.”
“No lasers.”
“Promise. We’re just going to buzz them.”
Obi-Wan watched the corvette grow larger in the viewport. The console continued to chime, in escalating alerts. An instant later, two turbolaser beams streaked across the cruiser’s bow.
Obi-Wan clenched his hands on the chair armrests. “They’re not amused.”
“We’ll just have to try harder.”
Dropping the cruiser’s nose, Anakin increased speed. He seemed bent on maneuvering directly under the corvette, but at the last moment he pulled back on the control yoke, taking the cruiser through a spiraling, high-boost climb. A fusillade from the corvette’s forward batteries narrowly missed clipping the ship’s tail.
“Enough plausibility,” Obi-Wan said. “Level out and signal that we’re complying.”
“Master, you are not taking our assignment seriously enough. If we make it too easy for them, they’ll suspect we’re up to something.”
Obi-Wan saw that two patrol craft were rushing in to join the pursuit. With flashes of scarlet light racing alongside, Anakin whipped the cruiser through a teeth-rattling bank and shot for the thick of the asteroid belt.
“The only thing worse than being your wingmate is being your passenger!”
Anakin had the ship tipped to one side, intent on weaving it through a cluster of rocks, when a laser bolt struck the closest asteroid. Rubble from the explosion peppered the cruiser’s shields, but the console displays confirmed Obi-Wan’s hunch that no damage had been done.
Anakin took a firm grip on the control yoke and yanked the cruiser into a turn. The patrol craft clung doggedly, angling to outflank the larger ship, but Anakin kept cheating the turn tighter and tighter, forcing the fighters to break off. The cruiser had no sooner realigned itself than it gave a sudden lurch, snapping Obi-Wan and Anakin back into their seats, then forward into the console. Anakin reached over his head to make adjustments, and the cruiser raced forward once more, only to freeze, then tremble.
Obi-Wan scanned the displays. “Are we hit?”
“No.”
“Asteroid?”
“Not that, either.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve come to your senses and decided to surrender?”
Anakin showed him a long-suffering look. “Tractor beam.”
“From Escarte? Impossible. We’re much too far away.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Anakin’s hands flew across the instruments, shutting down some systems and activating others.
“Don’t try to fight it, Anakin. This ship won’t hold together.”
A deep shudder from the bowels of the cruiser reinforced his words.
Anakin clenched his jaw, then let his hands fall to his sides.
“Look at it this way,” Obi-Wan said, as the cruiser was being drawn toward the distant facility. “At least you made them work for it.”
Gentle with the cruiser, the tractor beam had deposited it in a guild-made crater that was now a docking bay. Ordered out of the ship, Obi-Wan and Anakin stood at the foot of the boarding ramp with their hands clamped on top of their heads. Uniformed Neimoidians and Gossams surrounded the cruiser, and a security team comprising humans, Geonosians, and battle droids was marching toward them.
“Not exactly the warm welcome we received on Charros Four,” Obi-Wan said.
Anakin nodded slightly. “Almost makes me nostalgic for the Xi Charrians.”
“Keep your hands where we can see them!” the human chief of the security detail shouted as he stepped onto the landing platform. “Make no sudden moves!”
“Such drama,” Anakin said.
“No mind tricks,” Obi-Wan cautioned.
“Spoilsport.”
The light-complected, blond security officer