She reached for the eject loop : and paused. By chance-or perhaps last-second instinct her crippled fighter was aimed almost directly at the first Star Destroyer s hangar entry port. If she could coax a little more power out of the auxiliary maneuvering system :
It took more than a little coaxing, but when she finally gripped the eject loop again she had the satisfaction of knowing that even in death the Z-95 would take a minor bit of revenge on the Empire’s war machine. Not much, but a little.
She pulled down on the loop, and an instant later was slammed hard into her seat as explosive bolts blew the canopy clear and catapulted her out of the ship. She got a quick glimpse of the Star Destroyer’s portside edge, an even quicker glimpse of a TIE fighter whipping past—
And suddenly there was an agonized squeal from the ejection seat’s electronics, and the violent crackle of arcing circuits : and with a horrible jolt Mara realized that she had made what might very well be the last mistake of her life. Intent on aiming her crippled Z-95 at the Star Destroyer’s hangar bay, she had drifted too close to the giant ship and ejected directly into the path of the Dreadnaughts’ ion beam bombardment.
And in that single crackle of tortured electronics she had lost everything. Her comm, her lights, her limited maneuvering jets, her life support regulator, her emergency beacons.
Everything.
For a second her thoughts flickered to Skywalker. He’d been lost in deep space, too, awhile back. But she’d had a reason to find him. No one had a similar reason to find her.
A flaming TIE fighter roared past her and exploded. A large piece of shrapnel glanced off the ceramic armor that wrapped partially around her shoulders, slamming her head hard against the side of the headrest.
And as she fell into the blackness, she saw the Emperor’s face before her. And knew that she had again failed him.
They were approaching the monitor anteroom just behind the Katana’s bridge when Luke abruptly jerked. “What?” Han snapped, looking quickly around down the corridor behind them.
“It’s Mara,” the other said, his face tight. “She’s in trouble.”
“Hit?” Han asked.
“Hit and:and lost,” Luke said, forehead straining in concentration. “She must have run into one of the ion beams.”
The kid was looking like he’d just lost his best friend, instead of someone who wanted to kill him. Han thought about pointing that out, decided at the last second they had more immediate things to worry about. Probably just one of those crazy Jedi things that never made sense anyway. “Well, we can’t help her now,” he said, starting forward again. “Come on.
Both the starboard and port main corridors fed into the monitor anteroom, from which a single set of blast doors led the rest of the way forward into the bridge proper. Lando and Chewbacca were at opposite sides of the port corridor entrance way as Han and Luke arrived, huddling back from a barrage of laser fire and occasionally risking a quick shot know. “What’ve you got, Lando?” Han asked as he and Luke joined them.
“Nothing good, buddy,” Lando grunted back. “There are at least ten of then’ left. Shen and Tomrus were both hit-Shen will probably die if we don’t get him to a medic droid in the next hour or so. Anselm and Kline are taking care of them inside the bridge.”
“We did a little better, but we’ve still got a couple of them coming up behind us,” Han told him, doing a quick assesment of the rows of monitor consoles in the anteroom. They would provide reasonable cover, hilt given the layout, the defenders wouldn’t be able to retreat farther without opening themselves to enemy fire. “I don’t think four of us can hold this place,” he decided. “We’d better pull back to the bridge.”
“From which there’s nowhere else to go, Lando pointed out. “I trust you considered that part?”
Beside him, Han felt Luke brace himself. “All right,” Luke said. “Into the bridge, all of you. I’ll handle this.”
Lando threw him a look. “You’ll what?”
“I’ll handle it,” Luke repeated. With a sharp snap-hiss he ignited his lightsaber. “Get going-I know what I’m doing.”
“Come on,” Han seconded. He didn’t know what Luke had in mind, but something about the kid’s face suggested it wouldn’t be a good idea to argue. “We can backstop him from inside.”
A minute later they were set: Han and Lando just inside the bridge blast doors, Chewbacca a few meters farther in under cover of an engineering console, Luke standing alone in the archway with lightsaber humming. It took another minute for the Imperials to realize that they had the corridors to themselves; but once they did they moved swiftly. Cover fire began ricocheting around the monitor consoles, and as it did so the Imperials began diving one by one through the two corridor archways into the anteroom, taking cover behind the long consoles and adding their contribution to the laser fire storm.