[Legacy Of The Force] - 08(117)

“You think he’ll come for her?” “If it’s not too much trouble for him.” Carid leaned across Orar’s console to the chart and put a marker on the Anakin Solo. “Not that he’ll bring that alongside, but it’s comforting to keep an eye on him.”

“Reige, “Fett said. “Stand by. Orade, you join Zerumar in the Tra’kad.”

Orar was a little under forty meters long, and in the shoal of ships ten, twenty, thirty times larger, she was a small target to pick up visually; a transponder trace showing her to be an HNE broadcast unit getting way too close to the action in this chaotic battle meant that by the time anyone checked what she was doing coming so close to Bloodfin’s stern, it would be too late. Tra’kad, even smaller, trailed behind her. Orar crept along the port side to settle over the replenishment hatches and clamped herself to the hull. The belly hatch of the assault ship opened and they were looking at an aperture not quite two meters wide.

It was a poor access point and a good place to get trapped. As soon as Fett slid into the hatch and put his glove on the metal, he could feel distant vibrations from something pounding away inside Bloodfin: someone was trying to smash through a hatch. Fett hoped the engineers and weapons techs could hold back the shock troopers a little longer.

The replenishment hatch opened onto a storage compartment with access to the main deck of the destroyer. Jaina emerged from the hatch in the middle of a stream of armored troops, a small figure in gray with a lightsaber hilt in one hand and blaster in the other.

“I’ll locate Tahiri, “she said.

The ship was in semi-darkness lit only by dim green emergency lighting in most passageways. With visor enhancements, Fett and his troops could see a lot more. Jaina shot off down the passage with all the confidence of someone in broad daylight; Fett found that if he thought of Jedi as having built-in armor and HUDs, then he didn’t find them quite so unsettlingly different.

It’s not about their powers. It’s about their attitude. The powers - I can cope with those.

Kubariet, the Jedi agent he’d worked with in the vongese wars, had been reassuringly matter-of-fact about his abilities and hadn’t had any qualms about using a blaster when the situation demanded. It might not have made any difference to the outcome of a fight, but Fett was better able to see what he was doing. He had trusted him more.

Fett and Carid reached the hatch that opened directly onto the command center section. Jaina was already there, flat against the bulkhead.

“I’m sensing about thirty beings in there, and definitely a

Jedi, “she said. “They’ve barricaded themselves in. The only way they’re getting out is via the same hatches we enter.”

“Let’s do it, then.”

“And she’ll probably have sensed me already.” Fett didn’t specify it. Once those hatches were open, he and his troops would kill everything that moved inside. If Jacen Solo wanted to extract his apprentice, he would have to do it fast.

“In three, “said Carid. “One…. two…. go!” A stream of concentrated blasterfire took the hatch off its clips and it fell into the passage beyond, wedged on the coaming like a safety ramp. Fett laid down covering fire as six of his Ori’ramikade rushed in and dived on the deck, firing from prone positions and meeting a returning hail of blaster bolts.

The Moffs weren’t going down without a fight. Fett plunged into the smoke and stabbing bolts of energy, suddenly realizing how much more punishment his beskar armor plates absorbed than the old durasteel ones.

In the noise and chaos, with even his HUD display sometimes overwhelmed by the volume of flashing blasterfire, he was unnerved to see Jaina Solo, a small woman by any standards, deflecting bolts with a lightsaber and with nothing but a gray fabric flight suit for protection.

He’d have to remember to tell her one day how impressive it looked. For the time being, all he could register was the direction of incoming fire, and Jaina-cursing loud enough for him to hear over the crack and slap of blaster discharge-saying that Tahiri had vanished.



GALACTIC WARSHIP OCEAN, OFF FONDOR

Chimaera cut a swath through the battlefield and headed straight for the Anakin Solo, firing turbolasers.

“They always say that Daala tore up the strategy books.” Niathal was still assessing the strength and firepower of the eclectic fleet that had just fallen into her lap. Her immediate guess was that she now had 30 percent more hulls than the Moff-Jacen fleet, as she now thought of it. “She looks as if she’s going to ram him.”

“I’d get out of her way, “Makin said.