She moved, a floating bounce that allowed her to turn but keep Vectivus in the periphery of her vision. In the distance, where Vectivus gestured, the rails that had borne Brisha’s car to these depths were briefly illuminated. Even when the light faded, she could still feel them, could mark their presence in the Force as though they were living things.
“Go there,” Vectivus said. “And climb those rails to safety. Wait for the others to join you once they have made their decisions about their own fates.” His voice took on a kindly tone. “I don’t want you to die unnecessarily … and as weak as you are, if you meddle in the affairs of others, that’s precisely what will happen to you.”
“Go to hell,” Nelani said.
Vectivus shrugged. “Perhaps I did. I wouldn’t know.” Then he faded from sight, and as he disappeared, the susurrating noise of the mynocks wheeling overhead also vanished.
Nelani spared a look upward. They were gone, leaving not even a trace in the Force.
Anxiety welled within her, a fear concerning the fate of her friends, and she began bounding toward the distant, unseen spot where the rails reached the floor of this cavern. They were her path to the surface, true, but also her path into the lower reaches where Jacen and Brisha awaited.
RELLIDIR. TRALUS
Han winced as his pursuer’s lasers hammered at his stern. He’d diverted extra power from his bow shields to reinforce the stern, a dangerous gambit-if laserfire from the oncoming E-wings missed Wedge, it could accidentally smack into Han’s bow and ruin his day. Ruin the rest of his life, in fact.
But Wedge had managed to gape one of the E-wings with laserfire of his own, and the other had peeled off. It was now circling around to drop in behind the Aleph and reinforce it.
Not that the Aleph needed much reinforcing. Wedge’s little girl was good at her job. She’d dropped so low and come in so close behind the Shriek that Han’s turret lasers couldn’t depress enough to attack her, and meanwhile she could chew up his thrusters with impunity. If only he had a stern-mounted weapon
Wait a minute, he did. He had a bomb bay full of spotter droids.
His fingers flew over his weapons console, punching in a set of unusual commands. He hit the EXECUTE button. Two of his spotter droids would now be sliding into the bomb drop slots …
“Control reports missiles launched,” Wedge said. “They’ll be showing up on our sensors any second.”
“Good,” Han said. He gritted his teeth to keep from continuing, I hope your baby daughter, whom I’ve bounced on my knee, doesn’t shoot my tail off before I see them. I hope she makes a run for it when she sees them. I hope I don’t have to kill her.
The READY light glowed green on his weapons console. He hit the temporary-command button he’d just programmed.
“Got him, got him, got him,” Zueb called, gloating, as his lasers continued to chew the tail end of the mystery bomber to pieces.
“Something’s going on with the underside,” Syal said. She wanted to drop another meter, but suspected she’d bottom out on the street. Even so, she could already see something changing on the bomber’s underside, panels sliding aside, something moving into position there on either side of the bomber’s centerline. “That looks like-does that look like feet to you?”
Zueb ducked his oversized Sullustan head as far as he could. “Yes. Feet. Silvery feet. One pair on either side.”
“What the blazes-“
Those feet, and the humanoid bodies they were attached to, suddenly plummeted from the bomber. Syal had a glimpse of two flailing bodies, like dull-silver protocol droids with oddly shaped rifles, as they dropped into her path and hurtled toward her bow.
Syal couldn’t help it-her hand twitched on the control yoke, an instinctive attempt to avoid the collision. Then came the impact, one droid hitting each of the Aleph’s forward viewports.
The one hitting the starboard viewport shattered. In her peripheral vision, Syal had a momentary impression of arms and legs flying in all directions.
The one hitting the port viewport, directly in front of her, didn’t shatter. It held on, its face right there in the center of the transparisteel, and it offered Syal what seemed to her like a reproachful expression. In that moment she recognized it as a type of standard spotter droid.
Then Syal’s involuntary sideslip carried the Aleph far enough that its starboard laser turret began scraping along the building fronts there, tearing marquees and signs off edifices. She jerked the yoke to port, trying to free herself from that deadly friction before it spun her right into a building, and felt the shuddering end as she broke free.