Star Wars_ X-Wing 09_ Starfighters of Adumar - Aaron Allston [78]
And now they were headed straight toward an enemy that was numerically superior and anxiously awaiting their arrival.
Each time they passed a flatscreen, Hobbie said, “Still the old stuff.” Then they were a block closer, just coming into visual range of the crowd at the gate, and men and women there began to notice their approach, to point.
Wedge felt his stomach tighten. “Come on, come on …”
“Maybe we did something wrong,” Hobbie said. “We might not have encoded the right security protocols or something. We probably failed to—oh, there it is.”
On the flatscreen of the next building before them appeared new images. Four human silhouettes were suddenly illuminated against the side of a building. Two threw back cloak hoods, revealing their faces—Wedge Antilles and Wes Janson, their expressions at first startled, then vengeful.
On the flatscreen view, Wes Janson threw back his cloak and then drew his blastsword. The view wavered as if the flatcam holder was trembling, and then the distance to the pilots increased as though the holder was backing quickly away.
But Janson ran forward, lunging with his blastsword, its tip leaving a light blue trace in the air. There was a blue flash offscreen to the left, then the world spun as the flatcam holder flailed around and crashed to the ground.
In a moment, the view settled on the front of the building—with its distinctive red riding-farumme above the main entryway—and became still. The pilots, still barely visible at the left edge of the flatscreen, rushed out of view.
Wedge nodded. It was a crude attempt, but if the people of Cartann didn’t take too much time to analyze it, it would withstand inspection—long enough to serve Wedge’s purposes.
The pilots had made the recording minutes go, standing before a very distinctive building a short distance from the air base. Hobbie had held the flatcam in one hand, a piece of brick-colored street cover in his other. The fourth silhouette in the flatcam view was actually Hobbie’s cloak, held up on the point of Tycho’s blastsword. When Janson had lunged, his blastsword had hit the street cover, resulting in the flash of light suggesting the flatcam holder had taken the blow instead.
Ahead, the crowd must be seeing the recording. A roar of anger and expectation rose from the men and women there. Within moments, most were in motion, heading straight toward the pilots’ transport—and beyond, Wedge hoped, to the building that had been their backdrop. “Get ready,” he said, and drew the shawllike garment closer about his face.
In seconds, the leading edges of the crowd reached them. Most ran past. One man, chest heaving from his exertions, pointed with his blastsword toward the building of the red farumme. “Did you see them?”
Wedge nodded and pointed the same direction.
Behind him arose a terrified, high-pitched wail. Wedge jerked around to look, but it was Hobbie, uttering a noise of panic and suffering toward the sky, tearing at the clothes over his chest as though he were in mortal dread. Wedge blinked at the display and turned around again to steer.
“Never fear,” panted the man who’d addressed them. “We will capture them, and rend them, and make them suffer for every—” Then the still-rolling transport was too far beyond him for his words to carry.
Moments later, the pilots were beyond the main body of vengeful Adumari. “Good screaming, Hobbie,” Wedge said.
“I practice a lot,” Hobbie said, his voice hoarse. “Anytime Wes makes plans for the squadron, for example. Anytime a Corellian cooks for us.”
Janson and Wedge both turned to glare at him.
Ahead, perhaps thirty