Star Wars_ X-Wing 08_ Isard's Revenge - Michael A. Stackpole [57]
Without pausing to check them for signs of life, Corran brought his grandfather’s lightsaber to hand and thumbed the silvery blade to life. With one swipe he carved a line down through the man-sized door, then kicked it in. He triggered a quick burst of blaster fire through the opening, then ducked inside and dove to the right.
A woman in a green Imperial army uniform had gone down with a smoking hole in her uniform over her stomach. She thrashed, clawing for a dropped blaster. Corran shot her twice more, then rolled onto his back and slashed his lightsaber around in an arc through the doorway to his left. The silver blade slashed through the legs of a stormtrooper, toppling the man backward. The stormtrooper’s carbine tracked a line of fire just past Corran’s head and up toward the ceiling as he fell.
Corran laid his own blaster carbine across his stomach and triggered off a burst that caught another stormtrooper in the chest. The trio of shots lifted the stormtrooper up and sent him tumbling back over a desk, scattering a glowlamp and a holoprojector plate.
Corran hit the powerpack release with his right thumb, dumping the spent duraplast packet to the ground. Letting the lightsaber rest on the ground for a second, he slapped a new powerpack into the carbine and rolled to his knees. He recovered the lightsaber, turned it off, and clipped it again to his belt. Then he got to his feet and moved deeper into the installation.
To the left, just beyond the vehicle doors, a ramp led down to a garage area. Off the foyer two corridors led away, one north and one south, going deeper into the facility. From the southern one, off to his right, two more stormtroopers came running. Corran’s initial burst caught the second one on the left flank, punching through his thigh and chest armor. That man slammed against the foyer’s back wall and bounced down to the floor.
The lead stormtrooper twisted and dove, extending his right arm toward Corran. The blaster carbine he was carrying spat hot light. One bolt burned through the flight suit over Corran’s right hip, but the pilot had already begun to move to his own right, so the rest of the stormtrooper’s bolts passed wide.
Corran’s return fire scythed across the man’s midsection. The armor did a good job of deflecting a couple of shots and ablating even more, but one drilled in through the gap between codpiece and thigh. The stormtrooper screamed and clutched at his leg. Corran stroked the trigger twice more as the man came up into a sitting position, dropping him to his back forever.
Something hot and hard caught Corran in the left flank, spinning him around. As he came about he saw a smallish man in an olive uniform holding a blaster in a double-handed grip. Corran staggered a bit, then dropped to his knees and flopped onto his back.
A grin slowly started to spread over the man’s face.
He was deliberately aiming at my back and only caught my flank? Corran groaned aloud. And he only shot once? Has to be a clerk.
The Lieutenant’s expression changed from one of joy to one of wide-eyed horror as Corran sat up. The Rogue’s carbine came around and the burst Corran triggered tracked blasterfire up through the doorway of the office with the two dead stormtroopers. A trio of bolts lifted the clerk from his feet and spun his body back deep into the office.
Corran slowly regained his feet and jogged over to the office. He peeked in quickly, didn’t get shot, then moved in past the dead stormtrooper and clerk. He checked the second stormtrooper to make sure he was well and truly dead, then searched the rest of the office for anyone hiding in desk legwells.
He was alone and slumped back against a wall for a second. He could have used more of a rest, but as he pressed his back to the wall, the wound complained. Reaching back with his left hand, he probed it and found a nice neat hole burned