Star Wars - 114 - Episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Woodring Stover;George Lucas

Author:Matthew Woodring Stover;George Lucas
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Space Warfare, Star Wars Fiction, Space Opera, General, Science Fiction, Adventure, Life on Other Planets, Fiction, Media Tie-In
ISBN: 9780345428844
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

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GRIEVOUS

The ARC-170s of Squad Seven had joined the V-wings of Squad Four in swarming the remaining vulture fighters that hadscreened the immense Trade Federation flagship, Invisible Hand. Clone pilots destroyed droid after droid with machine-like preci-sion of their own. When the last of the vultures had been converted to an expanding globe of superheated gas, the clonefighters peeled away, leaving Invisible Hand exposed to the full fire of Home Fleet Strike Group Five: three Carrack-class light cruisers— Integrity, Indomitable, and Perseverance —in supportof the Dreadnaught Mas Ramdar. Strike Group Five had deployed in a triangle around Mas Ramdar, maintaining a higher orbit to pin Invisible Hand deep Coruscant's gravity well. Turbolasers blasted against Invisi ble Hand'sfaltering shields, but the flagship was giving as good as it got: Mas Ramdar had sustained so much damage already that it was little more than a target to absorb the Hand's return fire, and Indomitable was only a shell, most of its crew dead or evacuated, being run remotely by its commander and bridge crew; it swung unsteadily through the Hand's vectorcone of escape routes to block any attempt to run up towardjump. As its shields finally failed, Invisible Hand began to rollwhirling like a bullet from a rifled slugthrower, trailing spiral jetsof crystallizing gas that gushed from multiple hull ruptures. Therolling picked up speed, breaking the targeting locks of the ship's Republic adversaries. Unable to pound the same point again and again, their turbolasers weren't powerful enough to breach theHand'sheavy armor directly; their tracking points became ringsthat circled the ship, chewing gradually into the hull in tightening garrotes of fire. On the Hand's bridge, overheated Neimoidians werestrapped into their battle stations in full crash webbing. The airreeked of burning metal and the funk of reptilian stress hormones, and the erratically shifting gravity threatened to add asharper stench: the faces of several of the bridge officers had already paled from healthy gray-green to nauseated pink.

The sole being on the bridge who was not strapped into achair stalked from one side to the other, floor-length cape drapedover shoulders angular as exposed bone. He ignored the jolts of impact and was unaffected by the swirl of unpredictable gravityas he paced the deck with metal-on-metal clanks; he walked ontaloned creations of magnetized duranium, jointed to grab andcrush like the feet of a Vratixan blood eagle.

His expression could not be read—his face was a mask ofbleached ceramic armorplast stylized to evoke a humanoidskull—but the pure venom in the voice that hissed through the mask's electrosonic vocabulator made up for it.

"Either get the gravity generators calibrated or disable them altogether," he snarled at a blue-scanned image of a cringingNeimoidian engineer. "If this continues, you won't live long enough to be killed by the Republic."

"But, but, but sir—it's really up to the repair droids—"

"And because they are droids, it's useless to threaten them. SoI am threatening you. Understand?" He turned away before the stammering engineer could summon a reply. The hand he extended toward the forwardviewscreen wore a jointed gauntlet of armorplast fused to itsbones of duranium alloy.

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