Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(77)

“You heard me,” Kimmund said. “Go—I’ll cover you.”

“Right.” Pushing away from the bulkhead, Aksind backed his way across the common room, continuing to fire. Kimmund gave him a five-count, then fell back as well, also still firing.

The Grysks weren’t fooled. Despite the continuing blasterfire, they could see that the stormtroopers were retreating. Their suppression fire around the box edges intensified, and the metal-on-metal screeching grew louder as they picked up their pace, pushing rapidly forward in the hope of catching the stormtroopers in the open before they could reach the next defensive point.

There was a good chance they would make it, too. The moving shield had passed the self-opening cabinet now, with maybe three meters to go before the Grysks behind it reached the end of the corridor. Behind him, Kimmund heard Aksind gasp and swear as one of the Grysk shots got him—

Abruptly, the Grysk advance stopped. There were two more wild shots, and then their blasters fell silent. Kimmund stopped firing. There was a single muffled scream, followed by a pair of thuds.

And then, nothing.

“Damn it,” a filtered voice came from behind him. He looked back at Tephan, now fully armored, as she crouched down beside Aksind’s body.

“Dead?” Kimmund asked.

“Yeah,” Tephan said, straightening up. “You get the rest of them?”

“I didn’t, no,” Kimmund said. “You remember that secret back door to the ship, the one we were never able to find?”

“What?” Tephan said, sounding a little bewildered.

“Well, I think we just did,” Kimmund said.

And right on cue, one of the Grysks’ shields toppled forward onto the deck.

Standing behind it, a fighting stick swinging casually in each hand as he stood among the dead or unconscious Grysks, was Rukh.

“What the hell?” Tephan growled. “I thought you kicked him off the ship.”

“Special occasion,” Kimmund said. Lowering his E-11, he hurried toward the Noghri. “Welcome aboard. How did you know?”

“I saw blasterfire through the hatch viewports,” Rukh said. His eyes flicked to Aksind’s body, and Kimmund thought the Noghri’s expression hardened a little. “I thought you might need help.”

“Certainly aren’t going to turn it down,” Kimmund agreed, peering over Rukh’s shoulder. There were six Grysks laid out along the storage compartment deck, a combination of Rukh’s sneak attack on their rear plus the stormtroopers’ earlier fire between the shields. The ends of the Noghri’s fighting sticks had a bit of a glow to them—probably they were the halves of his usual electrostaff weapon—but even without that boost Kimmund had no doubt Thrawn’s bodyguard would have handled his opponents just fine.

So: six here, add in the three or four he and the other stormtroopers had taken out in that first exchange…“I figure there are seven or eight left up front,” he said. “Maybe as many as eleven if they brought the freighter prisoners with them.”

“I didn’t count numbers,” Rukh said. “But I saw some in the cockpit, standing over the control boards.”

“Trying to figure out how to fly it,” Kimmund said grimly.

“Oh, no they don’t,” Tephan growled. “They are not taking my ship.”

“No, they’re not,” Kimmund said, coming to a quick decision. Until the Grysks up front realized their force back here had been taken out, the Imperials had the element of surprise. Played right, that was worth half a squad of fully armored stormtroopers any day. “We hit them hard—right now, full-bore, all-out.”

“While they’re waiting for their friends to come back and report our deaths,” Tephan said. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

“What do you want me to do?” Rukh asked.

Kimmund frowned at him. “So now you’re taking orders from me?”

“I always took your orders.” Rukh waved a stick around to encompass the Darkhawk. “First Legion ship. First Legion orders. Otherwise I would have come out for the freighter attack whether you said no or not.”

“That would have been nice to know sooner,” Tephan muttered.

“Well, we know it now,” Kimmund said. “You have your personal cloaking device with you?”

“No,” Rukh said. “But I won’t need it.”

“Probably not,” Kimmund said. “Okay. We’ll go in hot, keeping our fire high. You go in low wherever you get an opening and make as much of a mess as you can.”

Rukh gave an evil grin, spinning one of his fighting sticks deftly across his fingers. “I can make a great deal of mess,” he promised.

“We’ll make it together,” Kimmund said. “And remember we want to come out of this with the ship still flyable. Lord Vader might want us to use it again someday.”



* * *



—

From the time the seventeen Grysks escaped from their makeshift cell to the time they boarded the Darkhawk was approximately four minutes. From then until Commander Kimmund and his forces recaptured the ship was approximately eight minutes. Returning the surviving prisoners—four of them—took another ten minutes. All told, the entire incident covered less than half an hour.