[Thrawn Trilogy] - 01(146)

And just before it closed the gap completely, he caught a glimpse of an acridly brilliant light.

“What was that?” Luke asked.

“I don’t know,” Wedge said, blinking away the afterimage. “It looked too bright for laser fire.”

“It was a plasma jet,” Han grunted as the Falcon came up alongside him. “Right on top of the bridge emergency escape hatch. That’s what they wanted the mole miners for. They’re using them to burn through the hulls-“

He broke off; and, abruptly, he swore. “Luke-we got it backwards. They’re not here to wreck the fleet.

“They’re here to steal it.”

For a long heartbeat Luke just stared at the Frigate … and then, like pieces clicking together in a puzzle, it all fell into place. The mole miners, the undermanned and underdefended capital ships that the New Republic had been forced to press into shipping service, the Imperial fleet out there that seemed to be making no real effort to push its way past the system’s defenses-And a New Republic Star Cruiser, mole miner planted firmly on its side, that had just fired on Wedge’s X-wing.

He took a moment to scan the sky around him. Moving with deceptive slowness through the continuing starfighter battle, a number of warships were beginning to pull out. “We’ve got to stop them,” he told the others.

“Good thinking,” Han agreed. “How?”

“Is there any way we can get aboard them ourselves?” he asked. “Lando said the mole miners were two-man ships-the Imperials can’t possibly have packed more than four or five stormtroopers in each one of them.”

“The way those warships are manned at the moment, four stormtroopers would be plenty,” Wedge pointed out.

“Yes, but I could take them,” Luke said.

“On all fifty ships?” Han countered. “Besides, you blast a hatch open to vacuum and you’ll have pressure bulkheads closing all over the ship. Take you forever to even get to the bridge.”

Luke gritted his teeth; but Han was right. “Then we have to disable them,” he said. “Knock out their engines or control systems or something. If they get out to the perimeter and those Star Destroyers, we’ll never see them again.”

“Oh, we’ll see them again,” Han growled. “Pointed straight back at us. You’re right-disabling as many as we can is our best shot. We’re never going to stop all fifty, though.”

“We don’t have fifty to stop, at least not yet,” Wedge put in. “There are still twelve mole miners that haven’t attached themselves to ships.”

“Good-let’s take them out first,” Han said. “You got vectors on them?”

“Feeding your computer now.”

“Okay … okay, here we go.” The Falcon twisted around and headed off in a new direction. “Luke, get on the comm and tell Sluis Control what’s happening,” he added. “Tell them not to let any ships out of the orbit-dock area.”

“Right.” Luke switched channels on the comm; and as he did so, he was suddenly aware of a slight change in sense from the Falcon’s cockpit. “Han? You all right?”

“Huh? Sure. Why?”

“I don’t know. You seemed to change.”

“I had half a grip on some idea,” Han said. “But it’s gone now. Come on, make that call. I want you back on the quads when we get there.”

The call to Sluis Control was over well before they reached their target mole miner. “They thank us for the information,” Luke reported to the others, “but they say they don’t have anything to spare at the moment to help us.”

“Probably don’t,” Han agreed. “Okay, I see two TIE fighters running escort. Wedge, you and Rogue Five take them out while Luke and I hit the mole miner.”

“Got it,” Wedge confirmed. The two X-wings shot past Luke’s canopy, flaring apart into intercept mode as the TIE fighters broke formation and came around to meet the attack.

“Luke, try to blow it apart instead of disintegrating it,” Han suggested. “Let’s see how many people the Imperials have got stuffed inside.”

“Got it,” Luke said. The mole miner was in his sights now. Adjusting his power level down, he fired.

The truncated cone flared as the metal dead center of the shot boiled away into glowing gas. The rest of the craft seemed intact, though, and Luke was just lining up for a second shot when the hatch at the top abruptly popped open.

And through the opening, a monstrous, robotlike figure came charging out.

“What-?”

“It’s a spacetrooper,” Han snapped back. “A stormtrooper in zero-gee armor. Hang on.”