[Legacy Of The Force] - 04(113)

They appeared in his mind’s eye. The arm at the vehicle’s bottom could curl around into a landing base, or could stay extended and direct a laser attack. The arm atop the vehicle could line up on opponents and fire metal balls at them.

“Cannon.” He all but spat the word out. “Physical cannon.”

To his surprise, the vehicle responded with indignation to his words. His mental view zoomed in on the top-mounted weapon. He watched as a metal ball the size of his head rolled, propelled by magnetics, from a hopper into the base of the articulated arm.

And then it was gone, emerging from the far end of the arm as a blur, with no sound of propellants accompanying the action.

He peered more closely and the sequence ran again, more slowly, in his mind. The ball was there … and the same magnetism that had rolled it into place accelerated it along the arm, building up speed with every centimeter it traveled until it left the end of the weapon.

Magnetic accelerator. Ben had heard of such a thing - a Verpine weapon, he thought, though that was a much smaller device. He’d never heard of one being built on a starfighter scale.

And maybe his enemies hadn’t, either.

His mental query told him he had less than a minute until he was close enough for those enemies to fire reliably upon him. A minute to practice.

“Dodge,” he said. And the vehicle began a forward-and back, left-and-right shimmy that nearly hurled Ben from his kneeling position. Kiara slid around on the floor, rough as it was, until she grabbed one of Shaker’s legs to stabilize herself.

It was frustrating not to have direct control of the vehicle, but also exhilarating just to issue orders and have them carried out.

“Ready top weapon,” he said.

As if it were part of his body, he could feel a metal ball maneuvered into place at the base of the weapon. He could also sense a growing impatience within the vehicle. It occurred to him, whether the thought originated with him or his craft, that he didn’t need to say things out loud.

The freighter opened fire. Ben could see flashes of light around him-then pain crackled across his shoulders as one of those shots connected with the vehicle’s upper hull. The shock of it almost caused him to lose concentration, but anger was his friend, anger helped him keep his focus.

Fire top weapon. The ball left the weapon, hurtling toward the freighter … and grazed its shields and hull, ricocheting harmlessly away.

Too late, Ben realized that the ball was still an extension of the vehicle, an extension of himself. Even now, he could steer it a little, deflect its course. But he instinctively knew that turning it around and sending it back against the freighter would take too much of his energy.

Ben’s vehicle flashed past the freighter, and it turned to follow. It began turning well before they were past, in fact, keeping its bow and starboard side toward the Ziost vehicle, and Ben thought he saw something twisting and changing on the freighter’s port side.

He sensed his vehicle’s desire to fire with its bottom weapon, to splash laserfire across the enemy, but Ben was focused more on what he’d seen. Turn around, he thought.

Dive toward Ziost. Come around the other side o f the freighter.

His vehicle inverted with the speed and turning radius of a modern starfighter and angled down to come up on the freighter’s port side. The enemy commander sensed his intent, tried to turn to keep his bow and starboard side facing him, but the Ziost craft’s speed and maneuverability were too great. When the angle was right, he could see that a large panel on the port side was locked open, with another TIE fighter there, ready to launch.

Anger roared up inside Ben, anger remembered from being strafed, anger at what the other TIE had done to Kiara and her life-and a second ball left his top weapon before he realized he had launched it.

The freighter was rolling now, trying to bring its bottom hull into line to take or deflect the shot. But Ben applied himself through the Force and saw the ball change its arc, rising to avoid the freighter’s bottom-all but ignoring the shields, hurtling straight into the open hold, angling toward the stern.

The ball emerged through the starboard side, carrying with it a debris cloud that had once been atmosphere and thruster components.

The freighter’s course and speed were unchecked. In punching through it, the ball had imparted little of its own kinetic energy to the target and seemed at first to have done no damage of consequence. But then the freighter rolled and began an immediate descent toward the atmosphere.

Now Ben let his craft open fire with the laser. Red beams jittered their way across the freighter’s top hull, putting just enough energy through the shields to scorch the paint and sever a comm antenna.