wind pounding against her face, trying not to think about what she
might have gotten her teammate into, Shada kept going.
She was two kilometers out when the Imperials seemed to finally
wake up to the fact they had an intruder in their midst . . . and
those two kilometers more than made up for the preceding eight.
Three Mekuun hoverscouts rose from nowhere to meet her, bolstered
by two more squads of speeder-bike storm-troopers. Off to the
side, sections of two hills opened up, revealing a pair of what
looked like Comar an-tiatmospheric guns. The air around her was
suddenly thick with blaster and laser bolts, some missing, the
rest deflected by shields that hadn't really been designed with
this kind of all-out attack in mind. Clenching her teeth hard
enough to hurt, Shada kept going, maneuvering and returning fire
on pure reflex. Off to her left, she could see another whirlwind
of Imperial activity near where Karoly should be coming in-
And then, suddenly, the hoverscouts and speeder bikes seemed to
scramble out of her path. The Comar guns shifted their aim away
from her -
And with a screaming roar the Skyclaw shot past overhead,
spitting a withering fire of laser blasts at the Imperials.
"Kan si manis per tarn, Sha," Sileen's voice blared from the
Skyclaw's belly loudspeaker. "Mi nazh ko."
"Sha kae," Shada shouted back, shifting fifteen degrees to her
left as per Sileen's instructions and permitting herself a flash
of cold satisfaction. The Imperials might be able to jam comlinks
and slice sophisticated encrypts, but she would bet starships to
groundworms they wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do with
Mistryl battle language. To her left, she could see Cai and the
Mirage now, running cover for Karoly, and she made a quick
estimate of their intersect point. Just over the next row of
hills, she decided. Dropping a little lower to the ground, she
braced herself for whatever Sileen had sent her toward.
She topped the hills; and there, nestled in a wide valley, was
a complex of perhaps twenty buildings, ranging in size from flat
office blocks to a single win-dowless structure the size of a
capital ship maintenance hangar. The Hammertong base, without a
doubt.
And lying in the middle of it all, dominating the scene by the
sheer unexpectedness of its presence there, was the long sleek
shape of a Loronar Strike Cruiser.
"Sha re rei som kava na talae," Sileen's voice boomed again
from above her. Without waiting for an answer, both fighters
veered off to the right.
A motion to her left caught Shada's eye, and she turned as
Karoly's speeder bike slid into formation beside her. "You all
right?" Shada called.
"Yes," Karoly shouted back. She still looked ner- , vous, but
at least she didn't look as if she were going to freeze up again.
"What did Sileen say? I didn't catch it."
"More Imperials coming," Shada said. "She and Cai are going to
intercept."
"What about us?"
Shada nodded toward the Strike Cruiser. "We're going to make
the Imperials hurt a little. Bow hatchway's open-let's try to get
there before they get it sealed."
They found out immediately what two of the smaller buildings on
the periphery of the complex were for, as sections of wall fell
away and four more Comar guns opened fire. But it was too little
too late. Between the harassment from the two fighters and the-
small size and maneuverability of the speeder bikes themselves,
Shada and Karoly made it past the hot drive nozzles at the Strike
Cruiser's stern and into the relative shelter of its flank with no
damage apart from burned-out shields.
"Pretty rotten security they've got here," Karoly huffed as
they headed toward the bow hatchway. An instant later she nearly
had to swallow those words as, from the ground beside the landing
ramp, a dozen Imperials opened fire with blaster rifles. But the
two speeder bikes had the edge in both firepower and targeting
accuracy, and they'd covered no more than half the Strike
Cruiser's four-hundred-fifty-meter length before that nest of
opposition had been silenced.
"Now what?" Karoly asked as they braked to a halt at the foot
of the ramp.
"We do some damage," Shada said, half standing up on her
speeder bike and taking a quick look around. There was still some
resistance, mostly from the Comars and the handful of speeder-bike
stormtroopers that hadn't yet been blown out of the sky. She and
Karoly should have enough time to make their way to the Strike
Cruiser's bridge, drop a canister or two of their corrosive green
smoke where it would do the most good, and get the blazes out
again.
And then, over the distant hills ahead, a new group of Imperial
forces appeared, burning through the air toward them like scorched
mynocks. "Uh-oh," Karoly muttered. "I take it back about their
security. Maybe we'd better get out while we still can."
Shada took a deep breath, her last views of Manda's and Pav's
faces floating up from her memory. "Not until we've hurt them,"
she said, swiveling around and pointing her speeder bike at the
ramp. "Stay here long enough to give me a two-minute warning, then
you can take off."
Karoly hissed between her teeth. "Get moving," she gritted out
as she dropped her speeder bike into the limited protection of the
ramp and unslung her blaster rifle. "I'll cover you. Make it
fast."
"Bet on it," Shada agreed tightly, trying to visualize the
standard Strike Cruiser layout as she headed up the ramp. She
would have to go forward about ten meters along the exit corridor,
then starboard to the central corridor, then forward another
twenty meters to get to the bridge. Standard Strike Cruiser
complement was something over two thousand crewers; if there was
even a fraction of that number aboard who felt like getting in her
way . . . but she would just have to do what she could. She
reached the top of the ramp, swerving to the side as she passed
under the hatchway arch to avoid the exit corridor bulkhead-
And lurched to an abrupt halt. "Mother of-"
"What?" Karoly's voice snapped from the comlink on her collar.
"Shada? What is it?"
For a moment Shada was too stunned even to speak. Stretched out
in front of her, where the command rooms, crew quarters, and
combat stations should have been, was a vast cavern of open space,
three hundred meters long and nearly fifty in diameter, running
all the way from the bow to the main drive section. A heavily
reinforced deck had been built across the bottom of the huge room,
connected to the outer hull by an intricate spiderwebbing of
support lines and bracing struts.
And extending down die center of the chamber for at least three-
quarters of its length was a three-meter-diameter cylinder studded
with thousands of pipe connections and multicolored power and
control cable linkages
. Carefully wrap-protected, just as
carefully static-fastened to the deck, all ready for travel.
The Hammertong.
"Shada?" Karoly called again.
Shada swallowed, glancing around. The chamber seemed to be
deserted, its crew or workers probably those who'd been shooting
at them from the foot of the ramp. To her left, at the far forward
end of the chamber, the standard Strike Cruiser bridge had been
replaced by a simplified freighter-style cockpit, also unmanned.
And from the looks of the status displays- and the way those drive
nozzles had been humming when she and Karoly had passed them-it
looked as if they'd been running an active status check on the
flight systems when the Mistryl attack had interrupted them.
Which meant the ship should be pretty much ready to fly ...
"Change of plans," she told Karoly, swiveling around and
gunning the speeder bike forward toward the cockpit setup. "Get in
here. And seal the door behind you."
She was running the start-up procedure at the Strike Cruiser's
helm by the time Karoly joined her. "Mother of space and time,"
Karoly breathed, backing up to the copilot's seat, her eyes
goggling at the room behind them. "Is that the Hammertong thing
Kellering was talking about?"
"I don't know what else it could be," Shada said, mentally
crossing her fingers as she eased in the repulsorlifts. A ship
this size wasn't really designed to come this deep into a gravity
well . . . but it seemed to be lifting okay. The Imperials must
have added more repulsorlifts while they were gutting the
interior. "Get the comm adjusted to our frequency, will you?"
"Sure." Still keeping half an eye behind them, Karoly sat down
and busied herself with the comm. "What's the plan?"
"The Imperials went to a lot of work to build that thing and
modify a ship to transport it," Shada said, giving the displays a
careful scan. For all their arrogance, the Imperials weren't
stupid, especially when it came to hardware as impressive as the
Hammertong. If their ground defenses had been low-profile, they
were bound to have some heavy space-based weaponry nearby to back
it up.
But if it was there, it wasn't showing up on the displays.
Hiding around the horizon? Or could the Mistryl counterattack have
caught the whole bunch of them by surprise?
Either way, there was no percentage in waiting around for them
to get their seats under their rears. "You got Cai and Sileen
yet?" she asked Karoly.
"Almost," Karoly said, her hands busy on the board. "I'm
running a split-freq mix . . . there we go."
"Shada? Karoly?" Sileen 's voice came over the speaker. "What
in blazes are you doing?"
"We're giving the Empire a bloody nose," Shada said. The Strike
Cruiser had cleared the boundary of the base now and was starting
to pick up speed, leaving what was left of the speeder-bike force
behind them.
"Shada - look, we're all upset about Manda and Pav," Sileen
said carefully. "But this is just crazy. You're going to bring the
whole Imperial fleet down on top of us."
"They need to know they can't just go around killing Mistryl,"
Shada retorted. "Not without paying dearly for it. Karoly and I
can handle it ourselves if you want to leave."
There was a hissing sigh from the speaker. "No, we'd better
stick together," Sileen said. "Anyway, what can the Empire do to
us that hasn't already been done?"
"I'm in, too," Cai said. "One small question Now that we've
got the Hammertong, what are we going to do with it?"
Shada glanced back at the long silent cylinder behind her, the
enormity of what she'd gotten them into belatedly starting to sink
in. What were they going to do with the Hammertong? She and Karoly
could nurse the Strike Cruiser along for a short flight by
themselves, but that was it. Anything beyond that - fancy maneu
vering, combat, even basic running maintenance - was out of the
question. "We'll have to ditch the ship," she told the others.
"Someplace close by. Find a way to hide it, then see if we can
disassemble the Hammertong into pieces we can put aboard one of
our own freighters."
"Sounds tricky," Karoly said. "You got someplace in mind?"
"We've got company," Sileen cut in before Shada could answer.
"Imperial Star Destroyer, coming out of hyperspace aft."
"Got it," Karoly said, swiveling around to the sensor section
of the board. "Confirm one Imperial Star Destroyer. Launching TIE
fighters."
"The base probably called for help," Shada said, keying the
navcomputer. This was it no second thoughts, no chance of
grounding the Strike Cruiser and escaping aboard the fighters.
They were committed now. "Cai, Sileen, here comes your course
feed- code Bitterness. Make the jump to lightspeed as soon as you
can; we'll be right behind you."
There was a brief pause. "You sure this is where you want to
go?" Sileen asked.
"I don't see us having a lot of choices," Shada said. "It's
close, it hasn't got much of an Imperial presence, and the locals
don't ask a lot of questions." She could imagine Sileen gazing out
at the Strike Cruiser and wondering just how far the locals'
indifference was going to stretch. But-
"All right," was all Sileen said. "You want both of us to come
with you, or should I head out and try to scare up a freighter?"
and I can handle this end."
"Okay. Good luck."
The Skyclaw flickered with pseudomotion and vanished into
hyperspace. "Here we go," Shada muttered, keying in their course
and hoping fervently that the Imperials hadn't torn the hyperdrive
apart as part of the ship's preflight check. Those TIE fighters
back there were getting uncomfortably close, and there wasn't much
margin for error here. "Everything set there, Karoly?"
"Looks like it," Karoly said, checking over her own board. "You
going to let me in on the big secret of where we're going?"
"No secret," Shada said, reaching for the hyperdrive levers.
"Just a useless little hole in space. Called Tatooine."
It was not so much a landing as it was a marginally controlled
crash; and by the time the Strike Cruiser had skidded to a halt
against one of the rippling sand dunes, it was clear to Shada that
the ship would never leave there again. Not without a great deal
of assistance.
"Terrific landing," Karoly commented, her breath coming a
little heavily as she shut down the drive. "I presume it's
occurred to you that we stick out here like a Wookiee wearing
landing lights."
"Not for long we won't," Shada said, checking the displays.
"That cloud to the west is the leading edge of a sandstorm.
Another hour and no one's going to find us. Come on, let's go take
a look at our new toy."
They had the wrap-protection off the first couple of meters of
the Hammertong by the time Cai joined them. "Any trouble?" Sha
da
asked.
"Not really," Cai said, stepping up to the Hammertong and
peering closely at it. "I'm not sure they even picked me up coming
in. They sure didn't hail me."
"Usually no one bothers with ships that aren't coming into the
spaceport at Mos Eisley," Shada said. "A lot of contraband comes
through Tatooine, and everyone pretty much looks the other way."
"I'm glad one of us keeps up with these things," Cai said
dryly. "So this is the Hammertong, huh? Any idea what it is?"
"Not yet," Shada said. "How's your astromech droid doing these
days?"
"Deefour? Erratic but functional. You want me to go get him?"
Shada nodded. "We'll want to get a technical readout at the
very least. Is the Mirage ready for that sandstorm?"
"As ready as it's going to be," Cai said, heading back toward
the hatchway. "I tried to position it to keep a passage clear to
both ships, and we can put the hatchway deflector shields up just
to make sure. I'll be right back."
The full force of the sandstorm hit about ten minutes after Cai
and the droid returned; and it took less than ten minutes more for
Shada to wonder if this whole idea might not have been a big
mistake. Even through the thick hull they could hear the drumming
of the sand against the ship, a drumming that was growing louder
with each passing minute. The plan had been to hide the Strike
Cruiser from probing Imperial eyes; it would be a rather costly
victory if they all wound up entombed inside it.
Cai was apparently thinking along the same lines. "That's all
die bolts down there," she said, climbing out from under the
Hammertong and han ding her hydrospanner to Karoly. "I'm going to
go check on the storm. Make sure we're not getting buried too
deep."
"Good idea," Shada said, returning her attention to her own
line of bolts. She finished them, waited as Karoly finished hers,
and then together they eased the massive access panel off.
The Hammertong's inner workings weren't nearly as complex as
the number of pipe and power connections poking through the
surface would have suggested. Most of the power and control cables
seemed to run to a series of multihelix prismatic crystals and a
group of unlabeled but identical black boxes; the piping seemed
mostly connected to coolant lines and sleeves. "Maybe it's some
new kind of power core," Shada suggested. "It's a modular