Star Wars_ X-Wing 08_ Isard's Revenge - Michael A. Stackpole [70]
The men at the vehicles didn’t fire at the running women—whether from surprise or out of fear of hitting their confederates Iella didn’t know and didn’t care. She cut into the alley with Mirax and started running full out. The alley broke to the right and they raced around the corner, then stopped.
“Sithspawn! Dead end.” Mirax slapped her hand against a ferrocrete wall. “Don’t have anything to blow a hole through it on that toolbelt, do you?”
“Sorry.”
“Never a husband around with a lightsaber when you need one, you know?”
“Yeah, having him or Wedge or all of Rogue Squadron here right now would be rather handy.” Iella slid back behind a fiberplast crate and hunkered down. She aimed her blaster twenty meters back at the alley mouth. “They’re going to be coming and they’re going to be angry.”
“I gathered that might be happening.” Mirax shifted another fiberplast crate around and started piling broken chunks of ferrocrete on the top. Smaller pieces she kept closer at hand.
Iella raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to throw ferrocrete at them?”
“Might not work well, but it will make me feel much better.” Mirax shrugged. “Besides, to hear Wedge tell it, rocks worked for the Ewoks.”
“Well, I’d be happy to see a battalion of those furry little critters right now.”
Down at the far end of the alley the white crescent of a face poked its way around the corner, then drew back quickly. The muzzle of a blaster carbine followed and sprayed lethal red energy darts through the narrow, ferrocrete alley. The bolts left guttering flames burning on the walls.
“I’d rather take you alive,” someone called around the corner.
Iella sighted in on the corner, dropped her aim point thirty centimeters, and moved it a meter out. “Don’t expect us to make this easy for you.”
“I didn’t think that was in the plan.”
Iella watched, waiting for them to make a move. A muffled thump rolled down the alley, but she couldn’t place the sound. The stuttered whine of blaster carbines going off followed, with a hail of red darts tattooing the end of the alley. Two men came rolling and stumbling past the alley mouth, driven forward and picked apart by concentrated blasterfire. They rolled to a stop in the middle of the alley, their clothes smoldering and their bodies limp.
Iella glanced at Mirax. “What’s going on?”
Mirax shook her head. “I have no idea, but I think I like it.”
The two of them remained down behind cover until a chittering filled the alley and two blaster-toting Verpines crouched over the dead men. They poked at one of the bodies, then waved someone else along. They remained over the bodies, looking at Mirax and Iella, but they made no move toward them, nor did they point their weapons in their direction.
An older man with a fringe of white hair on his head and a flowing white mustache ducked his head into the alley and pulled it back again. “Don’t shoot, I’m a friend.”
Iella set her blaster down. “We believe you.”
“Good.” The man stepped into the alley, letting his blaster dangle by a shoulder strap from his right shoulder. “You’re both unhurt?”
“We are.” Iella stood and folded her arms across her chest. “Who are you?”
The man smiled. “Baz Korral. Mirax’s father saved my life in the mines on Kessel, and he asked me to keep an eye on you. When one of my Verpines reported you’d been taken, we moved. Meant to be here sooner, but we came as fast as we could.”
Iella nodded. Verpines were able to communicate via energy waves produced and received by their antennae. They were the perfect species for creating a net of watchers. “Don’t worry, the guy you had in the alley had us covered.” She pointed at the holdout blaster. “He gave me this and got things moving.”
“Someone gave you a holdout blaster?” Korral’s white brows arrowed in at each other. “I had no one in the alley, no one with a blaster.”
Mirax frowned. “The derelict, he wasn’t yours?”
“Derelict?” Korral looked at his Verpines. Their