Star Wars the Truce at Bakura - Kathy Tyers [112]
Thanas didn’t answer. On Han’s scanners, a squadron of large Ssi-ruuvi fighters converged on the Dominant. Its turbolasers blasted two away.
“Good try, Leia,” Han muttered. He cut in the comlink override. Abruptly, a swirl of lights blinked on his computer panel and Chewie bellowed over the comlink. “Great, Chewie,” Han exclaimed. “Get to a quad gun!”
“What?” cried Leia.
“Threepio’s running again. Just don’t ask what happened to him. He’ll bless us with the whole story as soon as we let him. He gave the Empire a Flutie translation program, but now we’ve got one too.”
Leia groaned.
“How’s Luke?” Han fired into another swarm of droid ships, targeting the leader. Twice now, they’d thought they’d gotten them all. Twice, some other cruiser launched a swarm.
“Still all right,” she murmured. “He just dealt with a major concentration of that … zombie energy.” The lower quad gun fired as she spoke.
“Sweetheart, forget the drones. Concentrate on your brother. You’d better warn him what Thanas just said.”
“I’m trying!”
“Get Threepio to try transmitting on their frequencies, or something.” Han ground his teeth. Luke had walked alone into Jabba’s palace. He’d singlehandedly rescued Han, Leia, and Lando, literally out of the Sarlacc’s sandy maw. Despite those delusions of grandeur, maybe he did know what he was doing.
What am I doing? Staggering on one good leg and one that cramped every time he set weight on it, Luke finished a circuit of the Shriwirr’s bridge. Consoles curved inward from deck to ceiling, marked by unfamiliar symbols. Several freestanding displays marked crew stations, but there were no chairs, benches, or stools. One long curved panel served as a viewport. “Do you know how any of it works?”
“I can read you the controls. That’s about all.”
“It’s a start,” Luke muttered. Something nagged at the back of his mind. Uneasy, he stepped away from Dev and ignited his saber.
Dev whirled around. “What is it?” he whispered loudly.
“I don’t know.” Luke paced toward the nearest concave bulkhead, then edged toward the hatchway, ducking his head. “Probably nothing.”
“I doubt that.”
Dev had left the cockpit hatch open. Luke slipped forward. Behind the bulkheads, he felt—thought he felt—an alien approaching. “Dev,” he called, “take cover.”
A P’w’eck dashed through. Luke sliced off its foreclaw, blaster and all. Then he glimpsed a pale metal gas grenade dangling by a chain from its neck. He cut the chain, thrust out a hand, and Force-flung the canister back out the hatch before whacking the bulkhead panel to slam it shut. Behind came a muffled whump. Wailing, the trapped P’w’eck backed across the bridge.
“Talk to him.” Luke adjusted his grip on the saber and took shallow breaths to prevent the distracting cough. “Tell him I don’t want to hurt him anymore. If hell help us, we stand a better chance of using this ship.”
Dev crept out from behind a control island and burst into chirps and trilling whistles. The P’w’eck hesitated, then dove for his blaster.
Luke grabbed it out of the air. “Tell him nobody else is coming till that gas clears out of the corridor.”
Dev chirped. The P’w’eck shook his head again. Luke wondered if he dared try to interrogate the alien. He wasn’t sure how. The creature didn’t think in Standard.
Luke tossed Dev the P’w’eck’s blaster. “Is there any way to tie him up? Keep him from slowing us down any further?”
Dev frowned, leveled the blaster, and shot the alien cleanly through its skull.
“Dev!” Luke exclaimed. “Never kill when you don’t need to!”
“He’d have murdered us the instant we ignored him. We’ve got a few minutes. Let’s use them!”
“Watch it,” cried a strange voice in Han’s right ear. Han increased power to starboard shields. Combined Rebel and Imperial forces had almost closed an arc around two more alien cruisers, but the aliens resisted. Black space sparkled with ships, shields, and energy as the Ssi-ruuk concentrated firepower on Rebel ships that occupied key attack points—just as he’d anticipated.
“Dominant to Falcon. Close up that gap at oh-two-two.”
The Dominant