[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(117)
“You’re right,” said Neelah. She didn’t flinch from the weapon poised in her direction. “And you really do seem to have learned from your mistakes. There’s just one problem with that.”
A thin smile showed on Kodir’s face. “And what would that be?”
Neelah didn’t bother to reply. Instead, she stepped forward toward the blaster; at the same time, she brought one forearm up and smashed it against Kodir’s wrist, faster than the other woman could react. The blaster pistol went flying, its high arc broken by the nearest bulkhead. With her other hand, Neelah grabbed the collar of Kodir’s flowing cape; with a quick, sharp tug, she pulled her off balance. As Kodir fell forward, Neelah brought her raised knee into the other woman’s solar plexus, knocking the air from Kodir’s lungs in a pain-filled gasp. Neelah stood back and let Kodir fall, forearms clutched instinctively to her gut; another blow to the back of the head laid her out flat on the room’s floor.
A few seconds later, Kodir managed to twist herself onto her back. She blinked at finding the muzzle of the blaster pistol set right between her eyes.
“The problem with learning from our mistakes”- Neelah leaned down to keep the weapon aimed point-blank at her sister-“is that sometimes we learn a little too late.”
Face pale with shock and pain, Kodir gazed up at her in disbelief. “You … didn’t used to be able… to do stuff like that…”
“I’ve been hanging out with a tough crowd.” Keeping the blaster muzzle fixed on Kodir’s skull, Neelah reached down and grabbed the front of the cape, using it to draw Kodir to her feet. “If you can stay alive long enough, there’s a lot you can pick up from somebody like Boba Fett. Especially when you’ve got nothing to lose.”
Before Kodir could manage a reply, another sound pulsed through the room, so deep and low that Neelah could feel it through the soles of her boots. Both she and Kodir looked up, as though storm clouds could have been seen through the durasteel bulkheads surrounding them.
The noise sounded like distant thunder. But she knew it was something else.
News from a distant world arrived almost simultaneously with the shock wave from the explosions.
Commander Rozhdenst had been personally monitoring the link to the Rebel Alliance communications ship near Sullust. When word came at last that the attack on the uncompleted Death Star had turned into a full-scale battle between Rebel and Imperial forces, he closed his eyes for a moment, letting his chin sink down upon his chest. The desire to be there, to be in any fighting craft no matter how antiquated or unwieldy, as long as it was in the thick of the action, rose with tidal force through his heart.
He heard the door to the officers’ quarters open. Opening his eyes, Rozhdenst looked up from where he sat at the comm unit controls and saw Ott Klemp. “It’s started,” said Rozhdenst simply. He didn’t have to explain what he was referring to. “And we’re stuck here, in the middle of-“
His words were cut off by the first explosion shivering through the frame of the mobile base. A dull, low-frequency rumble made the air in the room suddenly tangible upon both the commander’s and Klemp’s skin. The younger man, muscles visibly tensing, looked up toward the ceiling. “What was that?”
Before an answer could be ventured, indicator lights burst red across the comm unit panel. The voice of one of the Scavenger Squadron’s forward scouts crackled over the speaker. “Commander! Something’s going on down at the KDY construction docks-something big!”
Rozhdenst had already switched on the scanners for the base’s viewport array. Across a row of display screens, from multiple angles, flame and churning smoke billowed up from the angular masses of equipment below. As both he and Klemp leaned toward the screens, another explosion was suddenly visible, uprooting one of the gigantic cranes at its base and sending it toppling down across the docks’ central access corridor. The crossed durasteel struts of the crane’s framework crumpled and bent upon one another with the force of their crashing impact; cables several meters thick snapped like string, their broken ends whipping through ranks of load shifters and rail trucks, scattering them as though they were toys.
The noise from the explosions couldn’t pass through the surrounding vacuum to the Scavenger Squadron’s mobile base above, but the shock wave and expelled metal debris were enough to conduct the rumbling and clattering sounds from the hull to the interior a few seconds after the bursts of glaring light on the display screens. As Klemp put out an all-craft command to pull back from the inferno erupting beneath them, the commander punched in the highest levels of surveillance magnification from the scanners.