Star Wars_ X-Wing 04_ The Bacta War - Michael A. Stackpole [59]
Shiel’s run on the aft battery proved just as effective, stripping the freighter of its offensive weaponry. The two fighters began to orbit the Alazhi, flashing past the cockpit one after another. Well away from them Rhysati, Inyri, and their two Twi’lek companions led the Meander off toward Coruscant.
Wedge adjusted his comm unit and tightened the beam to focus on the Alazhi. “Alazhi, you are defenseless.”
The man who had first answered him again spoke, but anger had replaced nervousness in his voice. “We can and will oppose you, Antilles. This is piracy. But we have a standoff here, because you only have fighters—you can’t board us. If you shoot us up, you or we will destroy the ship and you lose the cargo. You got some of what you want. Go away. Leave us alone.”
He has a point—we can’t board the ship. I hadn’t expected Isard’s threat to the crew’s families. I’d thought, given that we harmed no one last time, that we would have cooperative crews. Wedge thought for a moment, then forced an edge into his voice.
“Be advised, Alazhi, that the same software that allowed us to bring you here will, when the correct signal is sent, purge your ship of atmosphere and slave itself to our navicomp data. Your choice is not whether you come with us or not, but whether you do so alive or dead.”
He let that sink in for a moment or two. If they call my bluff, I let them off so they can tell others that we didn’t kill them. It’ll win us some goodwill, perhaps. “Your decision, Alazhi?”
Fear had returned to the captain’s voice. “You’d kill us just to get this bacta?”
“I’d kill you to get the bacta to those who need it. Isard unleashed a disease on Coruscant that kills ninety-five percent of the victims who go untreated. Which should I count as more valuable: the lives of a dozen freighter crewmen or the lives of billions?”
“You’ll help our families?”
“You have my word on it.”
Silence fell for several heartbeats, then the Alazhi’s captain spoke in a distant whisper. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Alazhi is yours.”
Wedge went back to the tactical frequency. “Gavin, Alazhi is yours to shepherd on her rounds.”
“I copy, Wedge. Transmitting data to Alazhi now. See you later.” Gavin’s X-wing swung out and around to head toward the exit vector. The two Twi’leks swooped in, taking up positions on either of the Alazhi’s flanks while the Shistavanen curled around and came up in the freighter’s wake.
As the Alazhi came about to starboard and began its run up to lightspeed, a vastly huge white dagger thrust itself through the fabric of space on a course that cut in at the freighter’s line of flight. Dread bubbled acid into Wedge’s throat as the Corrupter reverted to realspace and opened up with its weaponry. Waves of green turbolaser energy washed down from the Star Destroyer’s port batteries. While not made for engaging snubfighters, firing at point-blank range the gunners could hardly miss. The flank Deathseeds evaporated in a cloud of green plasma. The turbolaser fire eroded all the sharp lines from Shiel’s X-wing, reducing it from a sleek fighter to a fluid blob that slammed into the aft end of the Alazhi.
A second volley of fire from the Star Destroyer focused itself on the bacta tanker. In an instant the entire ship glowed orange, then the bacta storage tanks exploded one after another. The superheated bacta sprayed out and instantly congealed into delicate sheets of ice that mocked the violence of their birth. Similarly the transparisteel and quadaniumtitanium alloy plates used in the freighter’s manufacture twisted and flowed, tearing away and exploding outward, before they congealed into a warped mockery of what the freighter had once been.
Of Gavin, Wedge saw nothing.
“Condition Critical. Exit the