Her ride down the access chute was fast, bumpy and bruising. And when she shot out the other end she didn’t land on hard decking … but on a warm, woolly mass of alarmed dwarf bantha.
“Stang!”
The stink of fresh bantha dung was a hundred times worse down here. Flailing about in the half-light, fending off wet, anxious muzzles and blunt, hairy foreheads, feeling the animals mill and shift, in danger of falling beneath their heavy feet, Myri struggled to find a way to safety.
“Myri! Over here!”
And that was her father. Using her knees and elbows as bantha-prods, trying not to suffocate while holding her breath, she escaped the bantha corral.
“So much for studying the schematics!” she wheezed, as he took hold of her arm to help her over the corral’s durasteel side. “When was the last time you had your eyesight checked?”
Her father’s teeth gleamed briefly in the gloom. “Everyone’s a critic. Come on. The lifepods are this way.”
“Are you sure?” she grumbled, following. “Because the last thing we need is —”
Blaster bolts stitched a line of red fire across the deck plating before them.
“Halt!” demanded the lead security droid. Four others loomed behind it, heavily armed and menacing. “On the floor, face down, hands where we can see them.”
“Face down?” Myri echoed. “On this floor? You’ve got to be joking!” Taken aback, unused to an argument, the droid stared. Not looking at her father, Myri slid her scalpel earring out of her pocket. “The more the merrier, I think.”
He’d given her the earrings for her last birthday. Another gleam of teeth as he grinned. “So do I.”
Before the droids could react, he unsheathed his own laser pen and in a perfect duet they loosed the banthas from their corral. With an added “Sorry!” Myri laser-blipped the nearest hairy rumps, sending the bewildered creatures into a panic.
“Run!” her father shouted, pointing. “That way! I’ll drop us into realspace, you get the intel out of here.”
Leave him? But -
“Go!”
No time to argue. The panicked bantha were as lethal as the droids, who were wasting no time in shooting anything that got in their way. Now the air stank of charred hair and meat as well as fresh dung. The bantha bellowed, blundering between herself and her father as blaster shots zinged off wall and ceiling and floor.
Summoning all her speed, strength and cunning, Myri broke for freedom. Felt her left shoulder pop as she crashed a droid aside, felt a crack in her right knee as she hurdled a fallen bantha. Sweat stung her eyes, blinding her. She couldn’t see her father.
Never mind. Keep running. General Antilles can take care of himself.
Startled Chadra-Fan menials scattered as she sprinted through the freighter’s dimly-lit engineering bay. Lifepods, lifepods, where were the kriffing lifepods?
There. Up ahead. Two of them. Heading for them, she felt the freighter shudder as its lightspeed engines cut out. Way to go, Dad. She wanted to wait for him, but if she did he’d skin her alive. The mission mattered, nothing else. She knew that.
She did.
“Come on, Dad, come on!” she groaned, reaching the first lifepod and slamming open its hatch. One last look behind her— and there he was, bursting out of the engine bay with a droid on his heels. Stang, but the stinking tinny could run. Oobolo must’ve been tinkering.
Not waiting, no, she knew better, but before making her escape she opened the other lifepod’s hatch. A few heartbeats’ advantage was all Wedge Antilles needed.
She heard blaster fire as she slammed her own ‘pod’s hatch closed then hit the launch key. An explosion of propulsive gases and she was spat out into space, distant stars twinkling, the bulk of Oobolo’s freighter looming large. But where was the Alliance cruiser?
A biofeedback surge reactivated Bilpin’s crystals, so Alliance security would know it was her. A quick check of the lifepod controls revealed rudimentary steering and a comlink. She fed the link a secure ID code, started broadcasting, then pressed her face to the viewport. Looking for her father. Looking for help.
And there! There was the Alliance cruiser, almost close enough to kiss, its beautifully sleek lines rippling into sight as the cloak deactivated. And there was the other lifepod. Her father. But something was wrong, the ‘pod was spinning, not drifting. Sparks spat before vacuum killed them. An unlucky blaster-hit. The other lifepod was crippled.
Blinding streams of light as Oobolo’s freighter blasters fired — and missed. But next time? Myri struck her fist to the viewport.
She couldn’t sit on her hands, watch Oobolo blast her father out of the sky. Even as the Alliance cruiser leapt into the fray, answered the freighter’s belligerence with its own lethal stream of plasma, she threw herself on the ‘pod controls. Let the cruiser keep Oobolo and his shockingly well-armed freighter distracted, and she’d do the rest.
The lifepod was sluggish, reluctant. Worse than a Podracer with a belly full of sand. Stang. What she wouldn’t give to be a Jedi! Swearing under her breath, Myri coaxed and cajoled and bullied the useless piece of junk into an intercept course, feeling her bones creak and her muscles shriek as she willed the kriffing pod to close the gap … close the gap …
The lifepods connected with a teeth-jarring thud.
As searing lines of laser-cannon fire criss-crossed the darkness of space, she bounced her lifepod dent by dent along the hull of her father’s crippled craft, nudging and compensating until she was locked in behind him, and they were in line with the Alliance cruiser. Her lifepod’s cramped interior strobed with white-hot lightning, making her blink. She couldn’t believe Oobolo didn’t turn tail and run. That intel the Besalisk had passed him had to be explosive if it was worth this kind of risk.
She glanced again through the viewport. Her father stared back at her from his lifepod, close enough to touch, his mauve face wet with blood. But he was grinning at her, waving. Holding up his comlink. She snatched up her own, thumbed it back to its default setting and clicked it on.
“You’re good?” her father demanded, his static-crackled voice loud in the ‘pod’s near-silence.
“Yes. You?”
“Good enough. But my controls are fried, kiddo, so it’s up to you. Get us home.”
His confidence killed her fear. Myri laughed. “Yes, sir!”
She aimed their lifepods at the Alliance cruiser’s open hangar deck and wrung every last spark of power from her sputtering, inadequate engine. Stared white-knuckled at their destination as the sweat poured down her face, feeling the skin between her shoulder-blades crawl. One lucky shot from the freighter, just one, and they’d be tiny bits of slagged metal, blood and bone, floating forever in the vast cold of space.
Time slowed. The lifepods swam through the void. Suspended between possibilities, Myri felt her scrapes and bruises complain. Felt her pilot instincts move her fingers on the controls, a tweak this way, a shimmy that, as the sublight engine labored and plasma fire etched threats of disaster into the night.
And then, between blinks it seemed, the sky was full of safety.
Dreamily, she watched the Alliance cruiser’s shadow swallow them, felt the darkness fall over her face. Blinked again as the hangar lights banished darkness, bit her tongue bloody as her lifepod struck the hangar deck, hard. Through the viewport she saw her father’s lifepod crunch to the deck in front of her, then tip onto its side like a stricken shaak. She saw people, running towards them, their Alliance uniforms familiar and welcome.
A tech popped her lifepod hatch from the outside. “Hey in there. You all right?”
Myri nodded. “I’m fine. Thanks,” as she clambered out.
The tech was staring, his expression peculiar. She put it down to the garish crystals she wore, and turned in search of her father.
“Myri!” he said, approaching. The blood on his face had dried to a red mask, clashing horribly with the mauve skin. “Good job.”
Two small words hol
ding a galaxy’s worth of pride. She smiled at him. “Thanks.”
A crowd had gathered, and she noticed they were all staring with that same peculiar expression. Then someone started to clap. Within moments everyone was clapping, even her father.
Disconcerted, Myri blushed. “What? Cut it out, would you? Seriously, people. Dad?”
The crowd parted to reveal a familiar, rangy figure. Garik Loran. His lean face somber, he let the applause continue a few more heartbeats, then halted it with a raised hand.
“That was some stunt,” he said, eyes hooded. “Guess we’ll have to call it The Antilles Maneuver.”
She could never tell if her father’s old friend was joking, or not. All she knew for certain was that Garik Loran didn’t care for show-offs. “Sorry, sir,” she muttered. “But I couldn’t leave General Antilles to be fried.”
“I suppose not,” Loran agreed. He regarded her quizzically.
“You do know that what you did with those lifepods is technically impossible?”
Her father was grinning. “No such thing as impossible. Not for an Antilles.”
As Loran rolled his eyes at her father, Myri felt her blush deepen. Okay. Enough. “Sir, the mission. Did you -”
Loran nodded. “Yes, we received your transmissions intact. Oobolo made a run for it just as you reached us, but don’t worry. We tagged him in time. He and his friend and the intel will soon be in Alliance custody.”
“That’s good to know, sir.”
“Indeed,” said Loran, and stepped back. “Now if you two would come with me, there’s some debriefing to be done.” His eyebrows lifted. “And after that, Myri, there’s another mission I’d like to discuss with you. Everyone else? Back to work.”
“Ah well,” said her father, as they walked side by side from the hangar. “You know what they say, kiddo. The reward for a job well done is another job.”
That was very true. But she didn’t mind. She smiled as her father’s fingers clasped hers once, then let go.
“Bring it on, General,” she said. And laughed.
EXPANDED UNIVERSE
Mercy Kill by Aaron Allston is out now!
More on Karen Miller can be found at www.karenmiller.net
Visit David Rabbitte’s website at www.davidrabbitte.com
From Star Wars Insider 135 (08-09-2012)
11.6.18.15.14.5-1
Karen Miller, Star Wars - Roll of the Dice
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