Star Wars the Truce at Bakura - Kathy Tyers [60]
A disturbance. He couldn’t imagine Rebel troops making trouble—
Well, yes. He could. He clipped on his lightsaber.
He dashed out his bedroom door and around the corner into Chewie’s, then stepped back from the bed. He didn’t want to tangle with a suddenly roused Wookiee. “Chewie,” he whispered, “wake up. We’ve got trouble.”
“Slow down, Chewie.”
Chewbacca steered the landspeeder around the spaceport’s outer-arc access road. Luke peered ahead and to the right. Pad 12, the temporary Alliance ground base, lay just beyond the next radial road outward from the control tower. Spaceport lights gleamed on this side of the radial, but on the other side, dark night was lit only by occasional flashes that looked like blaster fire. Either someone had shot out Pad 12’s lights, or someone had shut them down. Where was Spaceport Security?
They swooped left, past Pad 12, then onto its access road through an open gate in its high metal-chain fence. Unguarded, Luke observed. Maybe the guards had gone in to settle the disturbance. He pulled down the hitched-up back of his parka. Out here in the night, between two rivers, damp air wasn’t so pleasant.
Four multiship launching/landing pads lay in a cluster between these radial roads and the spaceport boundary, and in the middle of that cluster sat a small, unattractive cantina that looked like two bungalows joined at right angles. Someone standing next to it waved them down.
Chewie grounded the speeder in the angle between bungalows. With the repulsor engine shut down, eerie silence rang for about ten seconds. Then another whizz of blaster fire brought up the hair on the back of Luke’s neck and lit the silhouette of a tall repair gantry. The dark-haired person sprinted toward them. “Manchisco!” Luke exclaimed. “What’s happening?”
The Flurry’s captain shook her black braids. “Our allies—right over there—insist they’ve got a pair of Ssi-ruuk trapped behind one of our ships. I can’t get in close enough to confirm it. They’re shooting everything that moves.”
“Nobody has any macrobinoculars?” Han had a pair on the Falcon, a quarter of a kilometer away.
Manchisco shook her head.
“Well, c’mon. You too, Chewie!” Luke ran toward the gantry, unhooking his saber.
Before they reached it, a voice shouted, “You! Get down! Get back, if you’re unarmed—the aliens have landed! They’ve killed two of us!”
Manchisco ducked into the pitiful cover of an Artoo-size recharge unit. Chewie edged closer to the gantry.
“Ssi-ruuk wouldn’t kill people,” Luke muttered. “They’d take prisoners. Chewie, cover me.” If the Ssi-ruuk were here, he’d rather deal with them himself—despite that eerie warning.
But he had an unsettling hunch. He drew and ignited his lightsaber. By its glimmer, he spotted Chewbacca aiming his bowcaster into the darkness. “Stay there,” Luke said softly. “That’s close enough.”
Eerie silence had fallen again. “Everybody hold your fire,” Luke shouted. Step by step he advanced, holding the saber upright in front of him. Although its light was dim compared with the spaceport beacons, it was all the light in Pad 12.
He rounded an Alliance gunship. Two human bodies lay sprawled on that odd, rough glassy surface. He paced past them, listening hard for hostile intent. All he felt was panicked fright.
Geometric forms sparkled ahead, metallic surfaces of another repair gantry reflecting the light of his saber. “Who’s there?” Luke shouted. “Show yourselves!”
A domed Calamarian head appeared behind the gantry. Then another.
Luke groaned and sprinted toward them. “What are you doing down here?” he demanded.
“Shore leave,” wheezed the nearer one, straightening his stiff, high round collar.
“Authorized?” Luke asked. Surely their commanding officer had more sense than to—
The Calamarian waved a finny hand. “Of course, Commander. Our rotation came up. We’re as tired as anyone else. But these strangers spotted us.”
“So you killed two of them?”
“Commander, they were charging us! Ten of them! They