The Clone Wars: Star Wars (Star Wars: The Clone Wars Book 1) by Traviss Karen

Author:Traviss, Karen [Traviss, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307795960
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

COURTYARD, TETH MONASTERY

Rex had stopped thinking some minutes ago, but he was still on his feet and firing.

The tinnies hadn’t knocked him down yet. He reached for a reload. He’d perfected the technique of jamming the muzzle of his discharged blaster in a slot in the AT-TE’s carcass to hold it steady while he removed the spent power pack and replaced it one-handed, without needing to stop firing the blaster in his other hand.

It was quite a skill to learn in the last minutes of his life.

“Get down, sir,” Attie said, squatting to his left and sliding a round into the launcher. “Mortar surprise coming …”

Rex conceded. He dropped and turned his back to the launcher.

“Cover—fire!” Whoomp. “Cover—fire!” Whoomp. “Cover—fire!”

The explosions had become a continuous wall of noise and smoke. The six men were in a square now, facing out on four fronts, and relying on the generous supply of mortars still in the dead AT-TE interspersed with blasterfire and anti-armor rounds. Zeer had crawled into the wreckage of the walker for some respite while he worked on something. When he emerged, he was hauling a flamethrower.

“New and improved,” he said. “Removes those difficult, ground-in tinnies that other flamethrowers can’t touch.”

Zeer defaulted to stock phrases under extreme pressure, as if he had a script he could turn to when he was too hyped up or scared to think. It made him sound like a relaxed wisecracker. Rex knew different. They were all running on empty, spinning a credit, and the moment they stopped spinning it the chip would collapse flat, and that was what would happen to them. They kept moving and they stopped thinking beyond the next second. Even though Rex knew that was how it happened, he was still stunned by it. And he was proud.

They were an island sinking in an ocean of droids.

“Just end it,” Coric said to himself. He was facing the other side of the assault, almost back-to-back with Rex, emptying clip after clip from a repeating blaster through a gap in the barrier. “Got to stop sometime.”

Rex gestured to Zeer. “Hang on to that. Droid flambé for dessert.” He wanted the battle droids a lot closer to make that count. “Coric, you okay?”

“Always am, sir.”

“Good man.”

Rex had set his helmet comm circuit to cycle automatically through the frequencies. He was only monitoring subconsciously; he fired a grenade over the top of the barrier to give himself a second’s grace to get into position, and opened up with both blasters again. Droids fell, but there were plenty more where those came from. Ocean. Yes, it was a good word for it. The scene in front of him was in constant motion, with waves, and the droid shrapnel and smoke forming spray.

They will never stop.

But he still had five men, and to hold off a droid army even for this long was exceptional. It was a shame that nobody would ever know.

You can’t give up on Skywalker.

Heavy arty pieces would have been nice. And maybe

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