He rolled to his feet and saw Nrin getting back up, too. The Quarren fired a short burst through the hole in the floor, then backed off to feed another clip into his blaster rifle. Ooryl took over for him, firing off a long burst that brought weak return fire. Corran ran to the corner cut he’d made and triggered a burst through it. He heard a scream and a clatter, but wasn’t certain who or what he’d hit. More distant sounds of sporadic firing came to him, but no hot light burned its way up toward his position, so he wasn’t certain what to make of it.
His comlink crackled again, this time with a voice he could not instantly place. “Nrin, please advise as to your situation.”
The Quarren frowned, then keyed his comlink. “Fourth floor is secure. The isolation cells shielded us from the missile blast. We’re holding off the guards, but are running low on power.”
“I copy. We’re incoming.”
Corran keyed his comlink. “Who’s ‘we’ and where are you incoming from?”
“We’ve cleared the tower to the second floor. Team One is on the way up.”
Nrin laughed aloud. “Come fast, Kapp. We promise we won’t shoot any Devaronians.”
“I like hearing that, Nrin.” Kapp Dendo’s voice pulsed confidently through the comlink. “Sit tight and we’ll have you out of there in no time.”
Wedge punched up the Rogue comm frequency. “Concussion missiles incoming prison east!” Even as he shouted the warning, he ruddered his fighter’s front to starboard and dropped the aiming reticle over the spark that was the first missile. He tightened up on the trigger and sent an ion bolt sizzling out after it. He cursed, switched to lasers, but by the time he tracked the second missile, it was too late.
The ion bolt succeeded in hitting the first missile, surrounding it with a blue energy web. The missile corkscrewed into a spiral and climbed skyward before detonating. A sky-fall of burning sparks slowly descended at the base of smoky snakes, falling among parks and homes.
The second missile slammed into the prison’s top floor at the southeast corner. The resulting explosion ripped a hole in the building that extended down two floors and shot debris hundreds of meters into the air. Bodies hung from the hole, then were pitched to the ground as prisoners from the second and third floors began a dash for freedom.
Wedge punched up One Flight’s tactical comm channel. “Gavin, Myn, Hobbie, give me full spectrum scans of the shuttle. Myn, Gavin, move to cut it off from the prison. Send the sensor data to me immediately, and take the shuttle with ion cannons if you can.”
Without waiting for a reply, Wedge rolled his Defender to port and came up, leveling out at the same altitude as the assault shuttle. His maneuver brought him in for a deflection shot that would hit the starboard aft section of the ship. The assault shuttle ruddered around to present its aft to him, then sideslipped to port.
Wedge switched to ion cannons and dropped his crosshairs on the shuttle. It juked up, then sideslipped port again. The pilot made the ungainly craft dance with a surprisingly light hand on the stick.
There has to be a targeting warning system in there. The moment my sensors pinpoint him, he gets a light on his HUD and jinks
.
Getting the shuttle wasn’t going to be easy, but the evasive maneuvers
had
moved the shuttle away from the prison. Wedge keyed his comm unit. “Myn, stay ninety degrees off my position. Gavin, get above it. He’s got an early warning system so we’ll have to herd it.”
He then punched up the shuttle’s comm channel. “Nice flying, Isard.”
“Coming from you, that’s a compliment.”
“I appreciate my foes and their abilities.” Wedge hesitated for a moment, then spoke with a cold confidence in his voice. “Then again, I would hope a clone would be an improvement over the original.”
“What?”
“You didn’t know you were a clone? No, of course not. Isard wouldn’t trust the dispersal of her prized captives to just anyone: She gave the job to herself. With you she could actually be in two places at one time.”
“That’s insane.”
“So was she.” Wedge triggered an ion bolt that laced aquamarine fire through the shuttle’s aft shield. “Corran’s escape and her evacuation of Coruscant broke her, but you were imprinted before then, so your brainwelds weren’t loosened. You did your job and
she
had you shot. She expected you to die, but you didn’t and here you are.”
The shuttle sideslipped starboard as gracefully as a hawkbat riding air currents in Coruscant’s citified canyons. “No, not possible.”
“It’s true.” Wedge laughed aloud. “In fact, I can prove it.”
“It’s a lie.”
“Oh, then explain why, in a similar situation on Thyferra, Isard was using her shuttle to run and you, on the other hand, are still trying to deny us the
Lusankya
prisoners,
as per her orders to you
?”
He cut off her anguished scream by switching over to One Flight’s tactical channel. “Myn, move into the shuttle’s aft port. Gavin, set up for shots after a sideslip starboard.” Wedge punched an inquiry into his tactical computer. “Take it down, now.”
The other two trips moved in for the kill like teopari on the hunt. Myn’s Defender curled in past Wedge’s fighter and snapped off a pair of ion bolts that took the shuttle in the aft. Electricity played through the aft shield, shrinking it to a tiny sphere that imploded in a brilliant flash.
The shuttle, as predicted, sideslipped to the right. Gavin’s two bolts shot down at it and caught the shuttle on the high dorsal stabilizer, gushing down as if a fluid. Sparks shot from shield projectors as they shorted out and smoke began to trail from the concussion missile launchers. The light in the engines died out as the ship’s electrical system failed and a ship that had once been elegant in flight became a heavy construct of metal and ceramics suddenly unable to defy gravity.
The left wing tip hit the ground first, gouging a furrow in a bridge roadway. Scattered speeders whirled, spun, and flipped away as huge chunks of ferrocrete decking dropped twenty meters to the shallow river below. Portions of the wing whipped through the air as it hit the durasteel supports at the bridge’s edge.
The shuttle’s flattening spin would have slammed it into the ground, crushing the pilot’s compartment completely, but the river valley meant there was no ground for it to hit. The ship continued to spin and the right wing tip came down to splash through the water and strike riverbed. The wing lodged as firmly as if the riverbed were solid stone.
Metal screamed and ferroceramic armor tiles snapped along the wing’s joint with the ship’s hull. Because the wings were meant to fold up for ease of storage in the belly of a ship, the joint was not nearly as strong as it would have been were the wings part of the basic hull. Hydraulic fluid sprayed out as the hinges parted and the wing tore completely off.
The hull whirled through the air, the nose almost kissing the water after the first revolution. It came up again, sparing the pilot’s life, then the shuttle hit on the right rear quarter. The section of the boxy hull crumpled, splashing out great torrents of the river water it displaced. The ship bounced up, then landed hard on the aft. The impact jolted the drive units, tearing them free of their mountings and slamming them forward into the passenger compartment.
The shuttle wavered there for a second, then the last bit of its momentum pitched it over onto its port side. Water splashed up on both sides, then the craft settled back, resting on its blackened dorsal stabilizer. Water washed up around the ship’s hull and steam rose from the drive units.
After ten seconds, though, aside from the splashing of debris falling from the bridge, the lazy Daplona River had absorbed the violence of the shuttle’s crash and wended on its way.
Wedge glanced at his secondary screen and the answer to his computer inquiry. He punched up Isard’s comm frequency again. “I know you won’t reply since you’re busy playing dead. Just to let you know, there’s one more way I know you’re a clone. Isard tried the same trick to escape us on Thyferra. Won’t work this time. It’s over.”
He ruddered his Defender around on a course that directed it toward the Daplona base training center. When he’d asked the others in One Flight for a full scan of the shuttle, it had included data on the comm frequencies being used, including their strength and the direction from which they were coming. By having his computer compare the vectors, he triangulated Isard’s location and the place from which she was directing the shuttle.
“Oh, one more thing,” Wedge added. “Tell Colonel Lorrir he sideslips too much. That’s why I got him. And you.”
Switching over to concussion missiles, Wedge targeted the building and tightened his finger on the trigger. A pair of
concussion missiles jetted out on azure fire and another pair quickly followed it. All four hit it in sequence, blowing into the squat building’s lower two floors. Brilliant explosions ripped through the building, blasting out transparisteel windows and cutting through support structures. The comm dish on the roof tipped and broke off as the upper two floors twisted, then descended into the dust cloud below them. Smoke, both black and white, rolled through the surrounding area like surf breaking. In its wake lay a mountain of rubble leaking thin vapors.
Wedge got nothing but static on Isard’s comm frequency.
With a smile blossoming on his face, Wedge brought his Defender around and headed it toward the prison. Isard had betrayed them, and the individual that was a slice of her tried to deny them the prize for which they had worked so hard. Both Isards had been thwarted and, no matter what else happened, that made it a very good day.
Corran and Jan Dodonna were the last two people to come down the stairs. Because of the hole at the top of the stairs, Corran had used the lightsaber to widen the door and let folks mount the stairs from the side instead of the landing. Nrin and Ooryl led the way down and the former prisoners filed out without incident.
Corran felt an odd chill as they made their way to the lower floors. Stormtrooper and guard corpses clogged the stairwell save for the narrow path that wormed its way between their bodies. It struck Corran as very odd that very few of the bodies showed signs of having been killed with blaster bolts. Blood leaked from most of them, with knife wounds in the chest, or armpits, or any other location where a blade could easily sever a major blood vessel. Broken arms and legs appeared on some of the corpses, along with spinal dislocations. A couple of guards had broken necks, with the damage so severe that it appeared someone had tried to twist their heads right off.
They came out into the sunlight and Kapp snapped to
attention. He tossed a salute to Jan Dodonna, which Dodonna returned with a crisp grace. The Devaronian extended his hand to the older man. “It is a pleasure to meet you, General.”
“My thanks to you and your men.” Dodonna smiled broadly and handed the borrowed blaster to Corran. “I never doubted you’d make good on your promise, Corran. You even got around to it faster than I expected.”
“Not as fast as I wanted to, but Warlord Zsinj and Grand Admiral Thrawn took up a fair amount of our time.” Corran turned to Kapp, shifting his recovered helmet beneath his left arm so he could shake hands with Team One’s leader. As he did so he glanced from the line of freed men making their way to the two freighters parked beyond the twisted prison doors to Kapp. “Speaking of your men, where are they?”
Kapp smiled and opened his arms. “They’re all here.”
Corran looked around and only saw a half-dozen bipeds he didn’t instantly recognize. The small, gray-skinned bipeds’ exposed legs and arms rippled with muscles and their large dark eyes watched each passing individual with the closeness of a predator seeking prey. They smiled at men who nodded thanks to them, exposing mouths full of sharp teeth. Gathering their homespun robes at the waist, they wore a belt that bore a holstered blaster on one hip, a sheathed knife at the other, and a couple smaller throwing blades sheathed at the small of their backs.
Corran frowned. “
Those
are all the men you brought?”
Kapp laughed aloud. “They’re Noghri, Corran, a half dozen is all I needed.”
“
Those
are Noghri?! I’m glad they’re on our side.” Corran glanced more closely at one and got a broad, tooth-studded smile in return. “They
are
on our side, right?”
“They worked for the Empire because Vader had tricked them. Princess Leia managed to turn them to our side. They’re a peaceful people, but they’re willing to act for us to atone for some of the things the Empire had them do.”
Kapp offered Dodonna his arm and the older man took it to steady himself. “General, if you’ll come with me, we’ll get you off this rock.”
Corran pointed to the sky. “What happened up there?”
“Bel Iblis’s battle group blasted
Reckoning
and
Emperor’s Wisdom. Reckoning
’s bridge is gone, and Krennel along with it. The crews of
Binder
and
Decisive
found themselves outgunned and decided accepting a New Republic amnesty was preferable to being reduced to scrap.” Kapp shrugged easily. “I think the pols intend for the Hegemony to enter the New Republic as a unit, and these guys would get stationed here to maintain order. They still protect their homes and we don’t have to kill them.”
“Win, win.” Corran nodded, then waved Kapp on toward the freighters. “I’ll catch up with you—I need to get air between me and dirt.”
Corran jogged over to where he’d landed his Defender and smiled as Wedge’s ship set down easily. He waited for Wedge to exit the ball cockpit and offered him his hand. “Thanks for the warning, Wedge. Air got a tad warm there, but no serious damage done.”
“Good.” Wedge surveyed the prison and the line of men heading toward the freighters. “Got them all?”
“As nearly as we can tell, yes. Did you get Isard’s clone?”
Wedge smiled. “She had Colonel Lorrir flying a shuttle by remote—I recognized his love of sideslips. Myn and Gavin brought the shuttle down, I triangulated back to the point of origin of the control and comm broadcasts and laced it with two concussion missiles. Brought the whole training center down.”