“I reckon they’d have a good twenty to thirty Moffs and their lackeys in a flagship, “Vevut said. “I count fourteen dead so far.”
“Well, they don’t look like they’re leading their troops from the front. Let’s drill out the rest of the maggots.”
Vevut and Fett crouched in the cover of a console ripped from the deck, squatting ready to spring forward as soon as Carid blew the hatch bolts. Fett felt no pain: he knew he’d feel like a wreck tomorrow, but right then he was im-mune, buoyed up on urgency, adrenaline, and long practice. His body knew what needed doing even if his brain kept trying to tell it that he was too old for this nonsense, and that he needed to worry about his granddaughter.
You didn’t give a mott’s backside about her mother for decades, and now you worry about the kid.
There was no logic to the things that went through your head when you thought you might die. And every time he drew a blaster, a little voice said that this might be the last time he did, even if he never believed it.
“Cover!” yelled Carid.
“Volume…” Fett sighed, ears ringing.
Whump.
The hatch doors ripped apart. Fett’s stream of blasterfire preceded him as he jumped over Carid and burst through the hatch. They were fresh out of troopers inside, and he didn’t care if he was dealing with armed Moffs or not, because his hand didn’t have time to factor that in before it carried on firing.
He waited for the noise to stop; blaster, exploding transpariplast light fittings, shouts, cries of pain. He’d heard folks say that Mandos were totally silent when they attacked, but then they never heard what went on inside the helmets. Carid had his vivid stream of invective running the whole time, and he never seemed to use the same profanity twice. Vevut muttered to himself. When they got hit, they yelped. Fett couldn’t recall making any sound apart from what was forced out of him by being winded by a blow or a fall.
“Well, endex for them, “said Carid. He aimed his blaster while he checked for any still alive. Five men: maybe there were other officers, but not here. They’d reached the core of the citadel. Fett looked up.
“No, I didn’t think they’d be that dumb.” There was a decent-sized hatch above his head, nothing so small as to need an undignified scramble to pass through. A panel of controls was inset into the deckhead next to it. Fett lifted his arm to poke the panel with the muzzle of his blaster, and it ratcheted open, releasing a ladder that extended to the deck and came to rest on two feet.
“They don’t go down with their ship, then.” He directed his penetrating radar by tilting his head, and his HUD showed that the shaft rose vertically, then branched off at forty-five degrees. If the schematic was right, the angled shaft would come out in a larger passage just under the emergency hatch. Sounds of twanging metal said that the shaft was either buckling with heat from a fire, or someone was hitting it-boots on rungs, probably.
“Why do people always run away from us?” Carid said. “Let’s go ask them, “said Fett.
IMPERIAL DESTROYER BLOODFIN: EMERGENCY ROUTE BETA-ONE
The Star Destroyer was riddled with shafts that reminded Jaina of sinuses in a skull.
She emerged at the top level, sweating. It had to be the top: she ran along the passage at a crouch, looking to either side, and couldn’t see any more openings. She didn’t have a sense of any concealed hatches, either.
But if Jacen was there-he’d know she was, too, even if he couldn’t pinpoint her exact location.
Mirta…. where’s Mirta?
Ben had once said to her that he used the GAG helmet comlinks, because the Force was all well and good, but he needed to send and receive complex information in apparent silence, and the Force was pretty poor at that. Jaina wished for a helmet-just for a moment-to communicate with Mirta. In the end, she didn’t need to. She found her squatting with her blaster leveled ahead. Jaina dropped down too.
Mirta’s hand signals were actually very clear: Three or four contacts ahead. Then she drew a T-sign in the air with her fingertip-Tahiri-and shrugged.
“She’s in there, “Jaina breathed. It was as quiet as she could make it. “I feel her.”
The schematic didn’t show everything, apparently. Mirta lifted her left forearm, blaster held one-handed in her right just like her grandfather, so Jaina could read the datapad housed in it. Jaina could see a hatch in the deck of the passage that wasn’t shown. They bolted past it at a crouch, peeling the soles of their boots from the surface to avoid noise, and then they came to a corner.
There was a slow, rhythmic scraping sound, like someone unscrewing a metal container. What happened next felt completely natural: Mirta pointed to the front and side, then to Jaina, and then to herself and indicated forward. She’d give Jaina covering fire as she rounded the corner. Hey, I’m getting used to these people. Mirta signaled: One, two-go.