Star Wars_ Young Jedi Knights 01_ Heirs of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [33]
Jaina froze, raising her hands in surrender. They couldn't possibly hide fast enough. Jacen climbed to his feet and stood next to his sister, brushing himself off. The TIE pilot took two steps toward them, encased in battered armor and wearing an expression of icy anger.
"Don't move," he said, "or you will die, Rebel scum."
His black pilot armor was scuffed and worn from his long exile in the jungles. The Imperial's crippled left arm was stiff like a droid's, encased in an armored gauntlet of black leather. He had been severely hurt, but it appeared to be an old injury that had long ago healed, though improperly. The pilot was a hard-bitten old warrior. His eyes were haunted as he stared at Jaina.
"You are my prisoners." He motioned with the old-model blaster pistol that was gripped in his twisted, gloved hand.
"Put down the blaster," Jaina said quietly, soothingly, using everything she knew of Jedi persuasion techniques. "You don't need it." Her uncle Luke had told them how Obi-Wan Kenobi had used Jedi mind tricks to scramble the thoughts of weak-minded Imperials.
"Put down the blaster," she said again in a rich, gentle voice.
Jacen knew exactly what his sister was doing. "Put down the blaster," he repeated.
The two of them said it one more time in an echoing, overlapping voice.
They tried to send peaceful thoughts, soothing thoughts into the TIE
pilot's mind... just as Jacen had done to calm his crystal snake.
The TIE pilot shook his grizzled head and narrowed his haunted eyes. The blaster wavered just a little, dropping down only a notch.
Why isn't it working? Jaina thought desperately. "Put down the blaster,"
she said again, more insistently. But inside the Imperial fighter's mind she ran up against a wall of thoughts so rigid, so black-and-white, so clear-cut, that it seemed like droid programming.
Suddenly the pilot straightened and glared at them through those bleak, haunted eyes. "Surrender is betrayal," he said, like a memorized lesson.
Jacen, seeing their chance slipping away, reached out with his mind and yanked at the weapon with mental brute force.
"Get the blaster!" he whispered. Jaina helped him tug with the Force, reaching for the old weapon in the pilot's grip. But the armored glove was wrapped so tightly around it that the black gauntlet seemed fastened to the blaster handle. The handgrip of the obsolete weapon caught on the glove, and the TIE pilot grabbed it with his other hand, pointing the barrel directly at the twins.
"Stop with your Jedi tricks," he said coldly. "If you continue to resist I will execute you both."
Knowing that the pilot needed only to depress the firing stud-much more quickly than they could ever mind-wrestle the blaster away from him-Jacen and Jaina let their hands fall to their sides, relaxing and ceasing their struggles.
Just then a buzzing, roaring sound crashed through the canopy above-a wound-up engine noise, growing louder.
"It's Lowie!" Jacen cried.
The T-23 plunged through the branches overhead in a crackling explosion of shattered twigs, plowing toward the crash site at full speed, like a charging bantha.
"What's he trying to do?" Jacen asked, quietly. "He doesn't have any weapons on board!"
"He might distract the pilot," Jaina said. "Give us a chance to escape."
But the armored Imperial soldier stood his ground at the center of the clearing, spreading his legs for balance and assuming a practiced firing stance. He pointed his blaster at the oncoming air speeder, unflinching.
Jaina knew that if the blaster bolt breached the small repulsorlift reactor, the entire vehicle would explode-killing Lowbacca, and perhaps all of them.
Lowbacca brought the T-23 forward as if he meant to ram the TIE pilot.
The desperate Imperial soldier aimed at the T-23's engine core and squeezed the firing stud.
"No!" Jaina cried, and nudged with her mind at the last instant.