Star Wars_ X-Wing 08_ Isard's Revenge - Michael A. Stackpole [55]
My father would probably think me terribly selfish in making that decision. He sighed and blew on his hands to warm them. He knew Whistler carried with him an encrypted message from Hal Horn about his Jedi heritage, but he couldn’t bring himself to listen to it. He didn’t want to be torn between his father’s urging him to become a Jedi and his responsibilities to Mirax and their life together. He wished he had the courage to face that dilemma, but knowing he didn’t, he sidestepped it entirely.
Well, I may not be a Jedi, but I am a Rogue, and figuring out what’s going on in there is going to be important. Getting in will be a trick, though. Corran backed away from the edge of the ravine and began to work his way to the west. He wanted the sun at his back as he moved, and once again was pleased that he wore a dark green flight suit, not the bright orange most of the squadron’s other pilots wore. I’d stand out like a Hutt at an Ewok celebration. Of course, white stormtrooper armor isn’t much better in a forest.
The undergrowth made his passage very slow. Though he’d been raised in Coronet City on Corellia, he wasn’t hopelessly unfamiliar with forests and how to move through them. He used the thick-boled trees to his advantage, and watched out for icy patches of ground that would bring him down. Moving from point to point, he avoided skylining himself at the crest of a hill, carefully surveyed the next leg of his journey before moving out, and listened for signs of the enemy, knowing he’d hear them before he ever saw them.
Crouched in the shadow of a snow-capped fallen tree, he scouted his way along a little depression that headed to the southwest. It ran for approximately thirty meters and gradually sloped up into a thicket of thorny zureber bushes. He was looking for a way around them when two stormtroopers came over the depression’s northern lip. They paused and looked around, sweeping the area with their blaster carbines, then one started his way down into the depression.
The lead stormtrooper caught his left toe on a root that had been hidden by snow and pitched forward. He landed flat on his face, bounced once, then rolled to a stop at the bottom of the depression. His blaster carbine flew further south and landed on the depression’s south slope. The other stormtrooper watched his comrade fall, then came down the slope in a high-step gallop that sprayed snow and frozen leaves into the air.
The second man bent over his partner and started laughing. The first stormtrooper rolled onto his back. “Huttspit! If the designer of these helmets ever had to use them in the field …”
“Very funny. Maybe you should just learn to walk.”
“Oh, shut up.” The fallen man sat up, then pressed his right hand against the edge of his helmet. Corran heard a click and a buzz from a comlink. “No, Control, no problem. Just had an equipment failure. I’m going offline to fix it. Seven Six One out.”
The standing man cocked his head. “Equipment failure?”
Seven Six One extended his left leg and ran his foot around in a little circle. “Twisted the ankle.”
“I can use the rest.” The second man sat down and removed his helmet. The first stormtrooper did the same. Steam rose from both of their heads as the second one reached for the canteen on his equipment belt.
Corran’s first blue stunbolt dropped the canteen from the stormtrooper’s hand. The second one hit the same man again, tensing his body for a second, then slackening it. Two more bolts caught the first man as he made a dive for his blaster carbine. It took a third before he stayed down.
Corran came up over the fallen log and slid down into the depression. He quickly crossed to the stormtroopers and stripped them of their weapons and equipment belts. He also removed their torso armor, then dragged them through the snow to a tree at the southern edge of the depression. He tied them to the