Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [85]
Something on the data monitor squawked at him. He knew it was Rodian but he could no more understand the spoken tongue than he could read the written language. The guys on the bike and sidepod are comlinking with the others. They’ll coordinate and they know this city better than I do. His hand snaked up to where he usually wore his good luck charm but he felt nothing. On my own.
He refused to despair and instead set the speeder bike at a moderate pace and took it down farther and farther into the lower reaches of Coruscant. He had no idea where he was, but that did not matter to him as much as being aware of where his pursuit was. Fortunately for him they tended to announce themselves with blaster shots that sizzled past close, but never seemed to tag him.
With three on his tail, he dove into a black hole at the bottom of a canyon, then came around and shot back against his previous line of travel. Trimming his speed he ducked and dodged his way through a tangle of support girders, then dove back out of them and came up and around through a hole in the roof of a passage. Cutting back on his throttle, he locked the speeder bike in a gentle circling pattern that flew around the hole. He drew the blaster and waited. One has to be coming soon.
One of the three did jet up through the hole, but he came out riding a rocket. Corran snapped a quick shot off at him but missed. The way he came out means he was warned.
A speeder bike swooped at him from above. Something bright flashed at the front of the sidecar, then he felt a thump on the aft end of his bike. The whole speeder bike jolted, then started flying backward. Because of the way he’d locked his controls, the bike began spinning through an awkward spiral that almost pitched him to the ground.
Dropping back into the saddle—literally willing himself back into it—Corran shifted to neutral and adjusted the vector control to kill the roll. They’ve got a line on me. He twisted himself around and tried to see the line so he could shoot it, but it was too slender for him to spot in the darkness. Given no choice, he shifted his aim toward the main body of the Ikas-Ando Starhawk and triggered three shots at the lump a meter or so below a fist that had been thrust victoriously into the air.
The Starhawk’s pilot slumped forward over the front of the speeder bike and Corran immediately felt his bike begin to slow. Dropping back down into the saddle, he shifted the Zoom II into gear and punched the throttle forward. Coming around to his right, he sailed on past and below the hovering Starhawk. Twenty meters out from it he felt a tug and his bike slowed.
Damn, the sidecar guy didn’t release me. All speeder bikes came with a deadman switch that returned the throttle to zero thrust if it was released. That prevented the speeder bike from racing along if the person at the controls died, fell off, or somehow could no longer pilot the bike. It was a safety precaution built into the machines, but as with the one Corran had stolen, it was possible to put in a suicide-cruise switch that would keep the throttle set despite having no hands on it.
Corran cranked his throttle up full, but the drag from the Starhawk was making him far too slow. The trio of bikes that had chased him down were pacing him, but their drivers had clearly decided to call in other help to box him in. I have to get rid of this thing. I have to cut that line.
Corran sent the Zoom II into a dive, hauling the Starhawk after it. He sped on through level after level, then came out into a huge intersection of canyonlike airroads. Damn, back out in the open. His pursuit began to close, shooting again. Corran tried to make the bike dance as before, but with an air-anchor attached to it, he was having no luck