Star Wars_ X-Wing 08_ Isard's Revenge - Michael A. Stackpole [127]
Corran set the Defender down and switched the ship into a passworded standby mode. Freeing himself from his restraining belts, he left his command chair, then pulled up the seat, exposing the small storage compartment. He pulled out a blaster carbine and a belt of powerpacks for it, which he looped over his chest from right shoulder to left hip. He also pulled out a fire extinguisher canister, which he flipped over. He unscrewed the bottom and tipped it upright so his grandfather’s lightsaber slid out. He clipped that to his blaster belt at the small of his back, then opened the fighter’s egress hatch. He poked the blaster carbine out first, then pulled himself out of the fighter’s cockpit.
He slid down the ship’s hull and landed in a crouch. Ooryl and Nrin had landed to his left and looked over at him. He scanned the line of the wall for signs of life, saw none, and sprinted forward. He crouched again in the shadow of one of the doors for another look, then darted forward again. He wove a zigzag course to the prison wall, then waited with his back against it, just to the western edge of the doorway.
Ooryl and Nrin joined him. Ooryl carried the standard issue blaster and carbine, but Nrin hefted a blaster rifle and a spare belt of powerpacks.
“You didn’t have that in your ship, did you?”
The Quarren shook his head and then pointed the gun’s long barrel at a smoldering corpse on the greensward between them and their ships. “You got him on your strafing run. I just appropriated things he no longer needs.”
Corran nodded, then took a peek around the corner. He drew his head back just in time as a flurry of blaster bolts chewed into the wall near him. Opening his mouth, he activated the comlink built into his helmet. “Five, you can come in at any time.”
“Copy that, Nine. Keep your heads down.”
Ooryl pointed to the north. “There.”
Corran crouched as the Defender came screaming in. He saw blaster bolts streak up into the sky and spark off the fighter’s forward shields, but they were mere droplets in comparison with the torrent of energy coming back toward the ground. Through the thick fabric of his flight suit Corran could feel the heat pouring off the Defender’s shots. The roar of the fighter’s passing thundered through his chest.
As Tycho’s ship flew over the wall, the trio rose to their feet. They ducked again, quickly, as Inyri’s fighter shot past and came up in a high loop to finish her south-to-north run. Keeping low, Corran looked around the corner, then waved the others on with him.
The main gateway had a fence-enclosed walkway that led to the main building. Looking to the right, Corran saw the western yard where stormtroopers and guards had been gathering. Thick smoke drifted over it, but not so thick that he couldn’t see burning bodies and figures crawling across the ground toward fallen comrades or parts of themselves that they’d lost. Screams of pain echoed within the yard, but a rising chorus of angry shouts started to eclipse them.
With the shouts came a scattering of blaster bolts. Corran swept his carbine over the yard, firing from the hip. Red bolts pierced the fog, pitching men over backward. Sprinting forward, he dropped an empty powerpack and slapped in a new one, then resumed firing. Hegemony troopers tracked their fire after him, spattering him with hot metal from the deteriorating fence.
Ooryl came running after him, keeping his blaster covering the eastern flank. Nrin advanced ten meters into the walkway—a third of the way to the main building—then scythed fire back and forth over the yard. His bolts spun men around, twirling them to the dirt. Their weapons flew as they went down. Other men snapped forward as bolts burned tunnels from stomach to spine. With the blaster’s backlight burnishing red highlights onto his black helmet and flight suit, the Quarren seemed the