Star Wars_ X-Wing 04_ The Bacta War - Michael A. Stackpole [140]
He checked the location of the Interceptor squadron, but saw it had not closed as quickly as anticipated. “Lead, Seven is set for one more run.”
“Negative, Seven. The squints have picked up a lamb and are running it clear of here. You and Nine, with your wings, are to pursue.”
Tycho’s astromech flashed a quick scan of the shuttle onto his monitor. “Shuttle is positive for one lifeform. You think that’s Isard?”
“Like as not. She’s not getting away. Go, Tycho, go.”
“I copy, Jesfa.” Iella crouched and quickly ducked her head around the corner. She jerked her head back and rolled away as three blaster bolts gouged a divot out of the ferrocrete wall. That was closer than I have any interest in getting in the future.
Iella keyed her comlink. “Your report was dead on, Jesfa. Keep telling me what holocams he’s killing and we’ll get to him.”
Elscol came running up and dropped to one knee at Iella’s side. “What have you got?”
Iella jerked a thumb at the corridor. “Trapped rat, it appears. Your people secured the stairwells?”
“Yeah. He’s trapped here on the fifth level.” Elscol gave Iella a half-smile. “You want us to evacuate innocents, or do we just track this guy down?”
“Let’s get him.”
Elscol waved a team of two men and two Vratix forward. “We have a live one. Be careful.”
Two of Elscol’s people took up positions at the mouth of the corridor. Their efforts to look down it produced no fire, so they gave the all-clear signal. The two Vratix then rushed forward to flank the only door in that hallway and then checked it. They indicated it was locked. Elscol and Iella went running down the hall to its end and crouched there, preparing to glance down either branch after their quarry.
Iella pressed her back against the corridor’s left wall. She started to nod to Elscol, inviting her to check her end of the corridor first, but she saw movement back the way she had come. The duraplast door exploded out into the hallway as blasterfire chewed it in half. Two bolts caught the Vratix on the right side of the door in the abdomen, spinning him further into the corridor. As the fire swung back through the doorway the second Vratix took a pair of shots to the thorax, dropping him to the floor with his sextet of limbs twitching.
The two men at the far end of the corridor came running up and rushed the doorway before Iella or Elscol could call them off. The second man in straightened up abruptly, then flew back into the corridor all loose-limbed and burning from a trio of shots to the chest.
Of the first man Iella only saw booted feet that jerked twice, then lay still.
“Jesfa, get me a six-man team up here now.” Iella looked over at Elscol. “We wait, right?”
“For that guy to escape? If he got in that room, he knows override codes. He could have a secret turbolift in there and be on his way out.”
“I doubt it.” Iella keyed her comlink again. “Jesfa, have them bring concussion grenades.”
Smoke drifted out of the doorway, then a blaster carbine came sailing out of it and clattered to the floor in the midst of the dead commandos. “I give up.”
Iella and Elscol exchanged glances, then Iella snapped a command. “Come out with your hands in the air.”
“Do I recognize that voice?”
Iella’s jaw dropped open. Fliry Vorru? She slowly smiled. “Vorru? I’m expecting those hands raised.”
The small white-haired man appeared in the doorway and gingerly stepped between the legs lying therein. “Ah, Iella Wessiri. Someone I can trust to do the right thing.”
Elscol stood and leveled her blaster carbine at the man. “You want the right thing? I have justice in a clip right here for you, murderer.”
Iella reached up and laid a hand on Elscol’s carbine. “You can’t. He’s surrendered.”
“Surrendered? He just burned down four people.”
“More crimes for him to be tried for.”
“Exactly.