Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [59]
Tycho’s voice came back. “Rogue Five, power down all weapons systems and return to Mon Remonda immediately or we will be forced to regard you as an enemy. And destroy you.”
“I’m not the enemy! Wedge Antilles is the enemy, that one-leg-hopping maniac! Celchu, clear my field of fire!”
Wedge, his X-wing moving sluggishly, continued his loop around to starboard. Tycho kept on him, keeping stubbornly between him and Tal’dira. The Twi’lek pilot gritted his teeth, sideslipped port, then starboard, but Tycho was always there, in the way.
Solo pushed off from his chair armature and staggered toward the door. Captain Onoma, approaching from the other side of the bridge, reached him and grabbed him.
They made two steps, three, but then, as they neared the doorway, the wind increased—channeled tightly by the doorway, it was more ferocious the closer they got. Solo felt his forward motion stop; then his left leg slipped out from under him and he went on one knee. His ears popped as the air pressure continued to drop and his head felt as though it would burst.
So close, so close—he and Onoma could reach out almost to the doorframe. But the roaring air stopped them dead.
Dead.
Then light from the corridor was partially blocked off and a long, hairy arm reached from the other side of the door to grip Solo’s. It was like a fur-covered vise clamping over his wrist. It hauled and suddenly Solo and Onoma were both through the doorway, staggering into the corridor, still battered but no longer endangered by the howling wind.
“Chewie.” Solo turned back to his rescuer. He grabbed the doorframe with one arm, Chewbacca’s waist with the other, helping pin the Wookiee in place.
Chewbacca reached in again and hauled, dragging the bridge communications officer out. Then again, and again, yanking each bridge officer into the comparative safety of the corridor. There was an explosion from the bridge or from beyond it, and Chewie lurched backward, bleeding from the chest from what looked like shrapnel. The Wookiee shook off the sudden shock and looked back in. He bellowed, noises that would sound like an animal roar to most people but which Solo knew to mean “All out.”
“No, there’s one left,” Solo said. He looked around. “Golorno, sensors.”
“Dead,” Onoma said. Even with the gravelly tones of Mon Calamari speech, Solo could make out the pain, the regret in his voice. “Out the viewport.”
Solo grimaced. “Chewie, let’s get this door closed.” He heaved against the metal barrier. Chewie flexed one arm and slammed the door closed.
Tyria’s sensors weren’t much use. This close to Mon Remonda, she couldn’t even detect Polearm Two as an individual ship. He had to be hugging the hull pretty closely.
Perhaps if machinery couldn’t help her, the Force could. She concentrated on Polearm Two, on his A-wing—
No, that was wrong. She leaned back, cleared her thoughts.
Closed her eyes.
Mission, he had a mission. He was going to destroy the bridge or someone in it.
She opened her eyes and banked toward the bridge, amidships and topside …
As she cleared the horizon of the ship’s curved hull, she saw the A-wing lining up for another shot at the bridge. Her targeting computer announced a clean lock on him.
“Don’t,” she said. But there was no time for a lengthy plea, for words that might get through to reach this madman. A few more degrees of turn, and he was in line, poised, a beautiful target—
She fired. Her proton torpedo hit and detonated before she registered that it was away. Polearm Two was suddenly nothing more than a bright flash and thousands of needles of superheated metal hitting Mon Remonda’s skin and heading into outer space.
“Captain, please,” Tal’dira said. “It is not in my nature to beseech. I beg you get clear of my shot before I have to kill you, too.”
But the voice that answered was Corran Horn’s, not Tycho’s. “Tal’dira, this isn’t honorable. You shot him in the back.”
Tal’dira checked his sensor board. Wedge’s maneuver was leading him back and around