Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [136]
The four medics lay with their limbs tied, their mouths gagged, as Lara assembled the humanoids she’d freed. There were two pachydermal Ortolans, three Ewoks, male and female Gamorreans, three bilars looking like large children’s toys, two knee-high Ranats with suspicious eyes and frequently bared incisors, one huge, white-furred Talz with four pain-racked eyes, and five waist-high Chadra-Fan whose ears flicked back and forth between listening to Lara’s words and to the struggles of the medics.
“We can get you out on escape pods,” Lara said. “Unless—can any of you pilot a shuttle?”
One of the humanoids raised a paw.
The Ewok.
Lara stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” he said. “Doctors put me in sim-u-la-tors. See if Kolot can learn to fly.”
“And you can.”
“Yes.”
“Kolot, you can’t even reach all the controls.”
“Warlord had mechanics make me pros-the-tics. For hands and feet—”
“Stop it!” The words emerged from Lara as a shout and she buried her face in her hands. “I know this joke already.”
“Joke?”
After a moment, she uncovered her face and knelt before the Ewok to look at him from his own altitude. “Kolot, we’re the same thing, you and I. We’re both lies that eventually became the truth.”
The Ewok shook his head, not comprehending.
“Don’t worry. You’ll understand someday. Let’s go.”
Tonin was still in the turbolift, his scomp-link inserted into the lift controls. He uttered a relieved whistle when he saw Lara returning safely.
She counted heads as her rescuees entered the turbolift and came up two short. “Where are the Gamorreans?”
She saw them now, down at the end of the corridor, coming toward her at a trot. As they got closer she could see something different about them.
Blood. It was splashed across their chests and dripped from their tusks.
She looked at the viewport into the zoo. She couldn’t see much of the containment chamber, certainly couldn’t see where she had left the bound medics, but she could see the splash of blood across the inside of the near corner of the viewport.
She looked at the Gamorreans and could think of nothing to say. How could she protest their actions, not knowing what was happening behind their eyes, not knowing what the medics had subjected them to? As they entered the turbolift, they regarded her steadily, with no hint of regret or apology in their eyes.
Her voice emerged in a whisper. “Let’s go.”
Zsinj’s fleet moved out over the broad portion of Selaggis’s debris ring, then turned back toward Solo’s. Two of the ships, the antistarfighter frigate and the bulk cruiser acting as a TIE carrier, continued on toward the inner edge of the ring. The stream of TIE fighters fleeing Mon Remonda and the starfighters pursuing them caught up with the two smaller ships, passed them by, then dove into the debris ring.
“That’s where they’re making their stand,” Solo said. “All right. Bring up Allegiance, Crynyd, Tedevium, Etherhawk, and Ession Strike to engage and hold Zsinj’s fleet. The rest of our fleet will bounce around them and head on straight for Iron Fist. Except Warder—keep the medical frigate out of the engagement zone.”
Solo’s two Imperial-class Star Destroyers, one of the frigates, his Marauder-class corvette, and his Corellian blockade runner surged ahead, a spearpoint aimed at Zsinj’s fleet. Solo waited until they were well ahead, then directed the navigator to enter the angled course that would take the three Mon Cal cruisers, remaining Star Destroyer, and Quasar Fire carrier toward Zsinj himself.
Within Iron Fist’s computer system, the three-minute countdown ended.
The program looked for and found the fleet diagnostic data being piped to the ship’s bridge—damage analysis from each ship in Zsinj’s fleet. It was already assembled in a convenient package