Champions of the Force (Jedi Academy, 3) by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson [Anderson, Kevin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Star Wars, Science Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780553408102
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1994-09-02T07:00:00+00:00

20

Winter crouched by the metal hatch outside the landing grotto. She held a blaster pistol in one hand, knowing her white hair and light robes would make her easily visible even in the dimness.

Four huge mechanical assault transports picked their way over the wreckage of the left blast door and halted with hissing engines in the middle of the grotto. Transparisteel canopies flipped up with a high-pitched whir to disgorge stormtroopers.

Flicking her eyes from side to side, Winter took a quick inventory. Each of the four Spider Walkers carried two troopers—eight targets. She steadied her blaster and aimed at the nearest white-armored soldier.

Winter fired off three shots in quick succession. She couldn’t tell how many actually hit the trooper, but he flew backward with his armor blasted to pieces. Other soldiers boiled out of the transports, firing in her direction.

Winter hunched down, but could not get another shot in. The last Spider Walker opened up to reveal one stormtrooper and a squat man with huge eyebrows and thick lips.

The other troopers had pinpointed Winter’s position next to the door and hammered repeated blasts at her. She backed toward the open hatch.

Winter had two choices: she could either run back and stay with Anakin to defend him with her life—or she could lure the seven remaining invaders away from the baby and do her best to dispose of them.

Winter squeezed the firing button of her blaster without aiming. Bright streaks ricocheted around the grotto. The squat man ducked under the low-slung cockpit of a Spider Walker. “Go get her!” he yelled.

One of the stormtroopers, still in the cockpit of an MT-AT, brought laser cannons to bear and shot at the wall beside her head, leaving a smoking crater.

The squat man screamed from his hiding place under the MT-AT, “Don’t kill her. Use stun until you have the child. You”—he gestured to the trooper who had emerged from the Spider Walker with him—“come with me, we’ll … provide reconnaissance. The rest of you—capture that woman!”

Exactly as Winter had hoped. She fled down the corridor, knowing that most of the assault team would follow her. She sped along the sloping tunnels, ducking low through jagged archways, slamming heavy air-lock doors behind her as she passed into a deeper level of the installation.

The stormtroopers followed, making short work of the thick hatches by using focused thermal detonators that blasted the metal doors out of their seams.

Winter led them through the labyrinth of passages, farther and farther away from baby Anakin. The stormtroopers would be completely disoriented by now.

The troopers fired whenever they got a clear shot, but Winter managed to avoid being blasted to pieces. She heaved a sigh of relief—the only emotional release she allowed herself—when she finally succeeded in leading the troopers into the subterranean generator room and computer core.

The chamber itself was a dim morass of tangled equipment, cooling ducts, metal pipes, and throbbing life-support systems. The computer core glowed with oblong green lights that flickered in a waterfall pattern. The

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