Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [33]
The ranking officer was halfway out of his seat before she shot him. The blaster shot took him in the chest, burning through the armor and dropping him to the floor.
She froze. She thought she had set the weapon to stun.
Then she was hit from the side as her first target slammed into her, barely slowed by the blow she’d dealt him. His rush propelled her and bent her sideways over a desk. If not for her armor, she’d have been impaled on the collection of trays, spikes, and knickknacks littering its surface; instead, the force with which she hit the top of the desk smashed them flat.
Instead of struggling to get free, instead of wrestling with him for control of her blaster, which his big hand now gripped, she braced herself with a free hand on one edge of the desk, extended one leg as far as she could, and then swept with it with all her strength. Her kick caught her assailant behind his knees and knocked his legs out from under him. He crashed to the floor, dragging her on top of him.
With his free hand, he reached for her throat. She abandoned her grip on her blaster, swept aside his hand, and, her striking hand formed into the flattest, tightest fist she could manage, struck at his throat.
Her blow was hard and true. She felt his windpipe give way under it. Her opponent’s eyes grew wide in sudden shock and he, too, released her blaster, clutching at his throat with both hands.
She grabbed her weapon and stood away from him to watch him die. He made strangling noises as he tried to draw breath through a channel no longer capable of conveying it. He cast an imploring look her way, but she shook her head; this injury was beyond anything she could repair.
A sudden wave of trembling swept her. She knew it wasn’t all the aftereffects of adrenaline. Two men dead because she’d fouled up. Killing didn’t bother her unduly; it was the act required of a warrior in wartime. But killing because of a lapse in judgment … well, her father would not be proud of her.
She shook her head, willing away the unwanted vision of the old man’s stern features, and tried to force the trembling to stop. She stepped around the dying stormtrooper and hit the light switch on the wall. Now the other hangar residents, if they looked over, would see a dark and presumably unoccupied office.
She made a quick checklist of things to do, and found that it had lengthened considerably because of her mistake. Move the two bodies into the bed of the skimmer she’d come in on. Clean up this office so the next person in didn’t wonder about the spilled fluid and ravaged desk. File that stormtrooper’s report. Repair her helmet comm system with components from one of these troopers’ helmets. Choose a skimmer, perhaps the one she came in on, mark it out of service if possible, disconnect its comm system so that it couldn’t be used to trace the skimmer or override its controls. And then stand by. All within hearing of the men working, or playing cards, or doing whatever they were doing at the back of the motor-pool building … unless she chose to assault them, too.
She sighed. It was going to be a long several hours’ work … packed neatly into half an hour or less of available time.
It took Castin another agonizing five-minute wait before he cracked the guards’ code. One of the two guards had thirty-two classic Quadrant games recorded on his datapad—every move the games’ master-level players had made, plus commentary by analysts who were far too serious about the game. Thirty-two was also, Castin pointed out, the number of days in the local monthly calendar. He transmitted the name of the match whose number corresponded to the day of the month, and the front personnel door opened right up.
Wraith Squadron marched into the hangar in formation … a formation they lost as soon as they saw the hangar’s contents. “Boss,” Tainer said, “we have hit the jackpot.”
Wedge was, for once, grateful for the stormtrooper helmet.