Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [43]
Seconds later, Kell landed where she had just been. His hair was charred and his eyebrows were gone, singed away. There were burn stripes on his chest, stripes identical to the flooring in the crematorium—and not only on his chest. His palms and fingers were also black and red with the marks, and shook uncontrollably.
Piggy came flying out of the inferno and crashed into the wall. He bounced off and slammed to the floor atop Face’s blood slick. A fraction of a second later, Shalla landed atop him. She was on fire and had burn stripes along her right side from armpit to knee, and she shrieked as she rolled to extinguish the flames. Piggy slapped at her, trying to help.
Seven of eight. The Wraiths looked at one another as, in their pained and distracted states, they tried to calculate who was missing.
“Oh, no,” Kell said. “Runt—”
Then Runt was among them, his chest and left side fully engaged in flame, his fur blackening away as it fed the fire. He landed on his knees atop Piggy, howling in pain, swinging arms as though to strike the enemy burning away at him.
Kell leaped at Runt, a body check that took him from atop the Gamorrean. Piggy got up to his feet and fell atop Runt, hammering away at patches of flame his corpulent body didn’t smother.
They just stood there breathing for a moment. Then Face straightened, despite what it cost him in agony to his back. When he spoke, he found that his voice cracked with pain and exertion. “We’re moving out,” he said. “There have to be access panels or stairs near where the turbolift used to be. First, open communications with our other team and the Rogues.”
Janson took the scorched comm pack from Runt’s back. Fortunately the unit within, though blackened along one side, was functional.
Maybe.
Janson looked up from it. “I’m getting nothing but hiss. Some of it may be because we’re too deep, but I think we’re being jammed.”
Face nodded. “That figures. All right, we go. Ten, you take point. Four, rear guard.”
Janson and Tyria nodded to accept their respective tasks.
Shalla got Dia up to her feet and quickly rigged a sling for her arm. Dia still looked groggy, but she managed to catch Face’s eye and gave him a look that said she was there, she was functional. There was no time for them to exchange anything else.
Piggy tried to haul Runt up to his feet, but the Thakwaash pilot shook off his hand and stood. He was a mess, much of his upper body marked by flame-blackened fur, and his eyes were wide, vibrating.
Face knew how he felt. It wasn’t just pain. Anger blossomed within him like the explosive cloud from a proton torpedo. “Wraiths,” he said, “no rules. No mercy. Take out anything that gets between us and home.”
From the looks in their faces he knew they’d have accepted no other order.
Lara hazarded another look over her shoulder. The nearest path to escape was the edge of the roof, some thirty meters back. But she was behind the last cover between this point and the edge. If she and Elassar got up to run, they’d be cut down. “I think we’re done for,” she said.
Elassar shook his head. “No. Today’s a lucky day. I calculated it before we started on this mission.”
“Ah. Did you remember to invite your luck? Or is it in its bunk on Mon Remonda?” Lara popped up to try another shot.
A laser blast, brilliant red, flashed out of the distance. It struck behind the equipment housing Lara had been firing at—and hit one of the stormtroopers there, blasting him sideways, leaving his charred and smoking body lying in plain sight on the rooftop.
Elassar gave her an infuriating grin. “My luck is your boyfriend. Excuse me.” He leaned out to the right of the housing protecting him.
Lara and Elassar had enemies dead ahead, and Donos with his sniper rifle across the street to their left. That meant that stormtroopers close to the Wraiths could be protected from Lara and Elassar, or from Donos, but not both. Lara saw stormtroopers scramble to get their cover between them and Donos’s more potent weapon … and