Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [109]
The technician made an entry on his datapad. “Even the stormtroopers are slipping. They tried to prevent me from coming into this sector this evening, but I would not be dissuaded by them, no, sir. I bulled on through and they let me go!”
“Stormtroopers?” Wedge shook his head, then pointed at Gavin. “Do you hear that, son? Even stormtroopers are becoming so undisciplined that you could join them. Perhaps those outside could tell you where their recruiting office is.”
The technician looked surprised. “Son? Is he your boy?”
“Takes after his mother.” Wedge guided the man toward his repulsorlift truck. “Don’t want to keep you.”
Suddenly sparks shot from the loading dock side door and rained down from the warehouse ceiling. A halo of brilliant white fire surrounded the door, then imploded leaving a smoking hole through which stormtroopers began to run. Duracrete and steel rained down from above as teams blasted their way in through the roof and descended on slender lines. Out past the nose of the computer center truck Wedge saw a Mekuun Hoverscout’s blunt prow batter the far gate. It bounced back, fired one burst with its laser cannon, then came on again over the molten remains of the gate.
Wedge gave the technician a shove forward, then spun on his heel and started running back into the warehouse’s shadows. He hurdled a line of memory cores, then cut left and back right as blaster bolts exploded all around him. Leaping over another line of crates, Wedge crouched down behind cover. From his right Iella slid him a blaster carbine, then activated her comlink. “Shiel, Ooryl, Wedge is clear. Open up.”
From deeper in the warehouse both the Gand and the Shistavanen started firing with a pair of Merr-Sonn E-Web Heavy blaster cannons. The weapons were mounted on tripods and had very specific fields of fire. Ooryl raked a stream of fire over the loading dock and out at the Hoverscout. The scarlet blaster bolts burned their way up over the vehicle’s nose and punched through the cockpit windscreen. The cockpit exploded in fire and smoke.
Shiel concentrated his fire on the stormtroopers descending on the lines from the roof. The high rate of fire allowed him to track his shots and pick stormtroopers off the lines. Wedge and Iella added their fire, but concentrated it near the holes to shoot people just beginning their descent.
The exit over at the far corner of the factory exploded. Wedge hit his comlink. “Corran, report.” He got nothing in reply and could see nothing but fire and twisted metal where a stairway had once been. The original evacuation plan had designated that stairway and the area beyond it, which Corran, Mirax, and some of the Black Sunners were holding, as their primary exit. Not anymore.
He looked at Iella. “Plan two. Fall back.”
She passed the signal along via her comlink. Portha, Pash, and Gavin pulled back from their positions first while Iella and Wedge provided covering fire. Once they were set, Iella and Wedge pulled back, but they didn’t get far. Even with covering fire from the heavy blasters and the others, the stormtroopers managed to concentrate enough fire to make it impossible for him to move.
Lying prone on the ferrocrete, with his left cheek pressed against the cool floor and sparks from burning crates stinging his right cheek, everything seemed to collapse in on him at once. Wedge knew that being in the warehouse in Invisec on Coruscant was utterly and completely insane—more so even than sending snubfighters out to destroy a Death Star. He should have been in an X-wing if he was going to be fighting Imperials. Having a firefight with stormtroopers was still one of the best ways he knew of committing suicide, and he was afraid he was going to prove it in the next three or four minutes.
In setting up their operation they had taken