[Dark Nest] - 3(78)

R2-D2 piped an annoyed affirmative.

Luke tore his gaze away from the dust-filled murk ahead just long enough to check his tactical display. At this point, the image showed only the shaft behind them, a flared column of space packed with descending starfighters.

“Ours?”

That question was answered when the blue streak of an approaching proton torpedo appeared on the display. Luke instantly poured on some speed and ducked into the exposed decks, leading Mara and Jacen away from the detonation area. The torpedo streaked past behind them, then reached the bottom of the shaft and exploded.

Luke and his wingmates were partially shielded by several layers of deck, but the blast reached them with enough power to beat down their rear shields and hurl them into the next bulkhead. Their forward shields absorbed most of the impact, but their cockpits broke into a cacophony of damage alarms and depletion warnings.

Luke spun his StealthX around while it was still wobbling. The wings banged into a ceiling on one side and the floor on the other, but at least his targeting systems seemed unaffected. A constant stream of laserfire flashed down the shaft as Kyle Katarn and two members of his squadron attacked the approaching B-wings from behind.

Although the hull breach was considerably larger than it had been just a few minutes ago, with the nest ship’s artificial gravity nonfunctional, it was so choked with floating dust and rubble that the storm of cannon bolts was barely visible. Luke glanced over and found Mara and Jacen already using their attitude thrusters to move away from him, spreading out to lay an ambush.

As they waited, Luke silenced his alarms and wondered idly, “Where did Killiks get B-wings?”

R2-D2 ventured the obvious opinion.

After

all,

B-wings

were manufactured by Slayn & Korpil-one of the best known of the Verpine hive companies.

“All right-forget I asked,” Luke said. All the Killiks would have needed to arrange a third-party sale was a single highly placed tarhead. “How are the rear shields? Can you get them back up?”

R2-D2 let out a falling whistle, then a pair of B-wings appeared in the storm of laser bolts pouring down the shaft breach. With their head-like cockpits mounted atop a cross-shaped wing structure, the craft had a vaguely human profile, like a man standing with his legs crossed and his arms outstretched. The first B-wing was descending in the upright position, slowly spinning around to search the adjacent

decks

for

StealthX infiltrators. The second was flying on its back, firing back up the shaft at Kyle Katarn and the other attacking Jedi from behind.

The first craft started to spin more rapidly, trying to bring the torpedo launcher on its tail assembly to bear on Luke’s StealthX. He grabbed the vessel in the Force and held it in place, then opened fire with his laser cannons. The startled B-wing pilot applied more power, trying to break free. Luke drew on the Force more heavily to counter the maneuvering thrusters, and all of the energy flowing through his body began to make his skin nettle.

Mara and Jacen began to fire, too. The B-wing’s shields emitted an overload flash, then went down in a storm of discharge static. An instant later the starfighter itself simply came apart under the combined fury of the StealthX cannons.

The second B-wing gave up trying to hold Kyle and his companions at bay and dropped its tail to bring its torpedo launcher to bear. Luke started to Force-grab the fighter again, but Jacen had already caught it and was holding it in place while cannon bolts pounded its shields from above.

This B-wing did not even try to break free. The pilot simply launched the proton torpedo in the direction it was pointed. Suddenly the electronics in Luke’s cockpit were popping and spewing acrid smoke, and the spitcrete ceiling was crashing down on his StealthX, and Mara was touching him through their Force-bond, surprised and worried but somehow confident they were not going to die-not yet.

Then Luke and his StealthX became just so much flotsam, the laser cannons and broken wings tumbling away into the dust and the rubble, the fusial engines banging against the fuselage, still connected by a few twisted shreds of metal. R2-D2 was screeching warnings over the cockpit speaker, his voice barely audible over the roar of escaping air.

Luke sealed his vac suit and activated his helmet comm unit. “I’m okay, Artoo. Prepare to abandon the craft.”

R2-D2 ran a message across the heads-up display inside Luke’s visor. THE SELF-DESTRUCT CHARGE IS MISSING-AND THERE IS NO CRAFT.

“I know. Just unhook yourself.”

Luke could feel that Mara was not injured, either, but Jacen was more difficult to read. He had drawn in on himself and vanished from the Force.

Luke opened a comlink channel. “Jacen?”

“Over here.” Mara’s concern filled their Force-bond. “His canopy is smashed, but his visor is down and I can tell that his vac suit is pressurized. He may still he alive.”