Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy_ Champions of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [31]
Three transports bearing New Republic strike teams landed on the Installation’s central asteroid, blasting through the closed bay doors with their forward laser cannons. As the transports opened egress doors like mechanical wings, the teams flooded out of the passenger compartments and fanned into defensive phalanxes. Crouched low, heads ducked behind blaster-resistant armor, they held high-energy rifles in front of them.
Chewbacca let out a Wookiee bellow as he thumped down the ramp, holding his bowcaster in front of him. He squeezed a hairy paw around the stock and pointed the crossbow-shaped weapon. His fur bristled. He smelled smoke, oil, and coolant fumes. Chewbacca scooped the air with his hairy paw, gesturing for the elite team of Page’s Commandos to follow.
Blaster shots rang out as four stormtroopers fired from ambush. A member of one of the other strike teams went down, then forty blaster bolts converged on the Imperial soldiers.
Chewbacca remembered being a prisoner in the Maw Installation, when he had been forced to perform maintenance on Admiral Daala’s ships. He had been tempted to sabotage one of their gamma-class assault shuttles, but knew that it would only get him killed while causing no irreparable harm to the Imperial forces.
Now, though, Chewbacca kept thinking of the other Wookiee slaves. He remembered their bowed heads and patchy fur, their gaunt frames. The fire in their eyes had gone out after years of hard and hopeless labor.
With a barely contained snarl he also remembered the sadistic lump of a man who served as the Wookiee “Keeper,” watching over the slave detail no matter where they were assigned. His blazing eyes, broken-glass voice, and deadly force whip had kept the Wookiees in line through intimidation.
Alarms shrieked through the intercoms, pumping Chewbacca’s adrenaline and anger. He growled for the teams to hurry. He thought about See-Threepio still onboard the flagship Yavaris and was glad the protocol droid would not be in all the cross fire now. Chewbacca didn’t want to have to put Threepio back together all over again.
He approached a vast rock-walled workroom, where he remembered performing endless hours of heavy labor. The doors stood sealed by heavy blast shields with rivets the size of Chewbacca’s knuckles.
He hammered on the metal door with his flat palm. Behind him Page’s Commandos rummaged in their packs. Two members rushed forward with thermal detonators in each hand. They placed the detonators at critical junctures on the blast door and flicked the timer switches. Amber lights winked on and off, counting down.
“Back away!” one yelled.
Chewbacca loped after the team as they ran around the corner just in time to hear a muffled explosion. An instant later a much louder sound reverberated as the heavy blast door clanged to the floor.
“Move out,” the strike-team leader said.
Chewbacca charged forward through the smoke as he pushed into the sealed bay. He heard thin hissing sounds, like lightning strikes mixed with outraged bellows of pain. The captive Wookiees were in such a frenzied state that they had forgotten their own language.
As the smoke cleared, Chewbacca was disappointed to find the battle already over—but he was elated that the Wookiees had finally taken a stand upon hearing the alarms and sensing that the tide of their misery had turned.
Nine Wookiees had converged on the Keeper, who now stood backed against a half-disassembled Lambda-class Imperial shuttle. The Keeper was barrel-shaped with oily skin enhanced by a sheen of terrified sweat. His lips pulled back in a snarl of defiance, and he kept lashing out with serpent strikes of his force whip. The Wookiees growled, trying to come close enough to rip him apart with their claws.
Chewbacca let out his own roar of challenge. Some of the Wookiees glanced up at the rescue force, but other hairy giants were so transfixed by their chance to get the Keeper