Jedi Bounty

18

Feigning a calm nonchalance, Lowbacca led his sister Sirra through the tunnels toward the smallcraft bay where the Rock Dragon waited.

The Diversity Alliance engineers had not managed to crack its access codes yet. They could not get into the ship’s main memory, activate the hyperdrive controls, or set a course in the navicomputer.

But Lowie knew the codes. He and Sirra could use the Rock Dragon as an escape vehicle. They had few choices at this point. He had to get his friends away from Ryloth and Nolaa Tarkona.

Lowie hoped the preprogrammed warning sirens would keep the Diversity Alliance soldiers occupied. Technicians, dock workers, inventory control officers, and maintenance engineers ran through the tunnels, panicked by the alarm klaxons.

Lowbacca had stripped off his guard armor and tossed it down a waste chute into an underground well. He smoothed his black streak back with a brush of his hand, and once again looked like a studious Wookiee who spent too much time around computers.

Lowie had found Sirra diligently helping out in a loading bay. She hadn’t seemed to mind the hard work of lifting pallets of materials in sealed containers labeled FOOD or MEDICAL SUPPLIES to be taken to downtrodden alien worlds. And she had been glad to see him.

Lowie had pulled her aside and breathlessly told his story of betrayal.

The truth had been kept from them, he explained; the young Jedi Knights were being held captive down in the spice mines. Sirra was shocked at the news, and reluctant to believe it. But she had seen the Rock Dragon herself, Lowie reminded her. Em Teedee’s very presence substantiated his story. How else could Lowie have gotten his translator back, since he had left the little droid on Yavin 4?

Lowie crept behind one of the supply crates and motioned for his sister to follow him. The other workers, intent on the blaring alarms, took no notice of them. Lowie punched his fist through the side of a crate, breaking a hole in its thin veneer to reveal not medicinal supplies or food, as the labels declared, but power packs for long-range, military-style blaster rifles.

Sirra swallowed hard; her shaved patches and tufts of fur stood out prominently in all directions.

She picked up one of the blaster packs and stared coldly at it.

“I believe Mistress Sirra will require no further demonstration of the veracity of your claims,” Em Teedee said.

Sirra groaned, realizing that Raaba herself must have known the truth.

Lowie growled in sympathy. Hi wanted very much for Raaba to see the light, to escape with him and Sirra—but their Wookiee friend was too much a part of the Diversity Alliance and its plans.

As Lowie and his sister left the loading dock behind and made their way toward the smallcraft bay and the Rock Dragon, he found himself wondering if the young Jedi Knights had found their way to safety in the mountains by now.

When the false sirens fell silent, though, Lowie realized instantly that they were in trouble.

He grabbed Sirra’s patchwork-furred arm and dragged her forward. They raced down one level, then through a long corridor. Just as the doorway to the vehicle bay loomed up ahead of them, tantalizingly close, Nolaa Tarkona’s angry voice burst over the intercom, declaring the presence of a traitor in their midst.

Em Teedee waded, “We’re doomed! Oh, my! Whatever shall we do?”

Lowie growled a response that did not require any translation. His heart sank. He had left his human friends to fend for themselves, and now they would be pursued harder than ever. At least his false emergency had given them a small head start toward the surface. That was all the time he’d been able to buy them; he hoped it was enough.

The minimal Diversity Alliance crew still working in the smallcraft bay came to attention as the two Wookiees approached. Lowie took a deep breath. Before they could enter, though, a hulking form stepped out of the shadows and blocked their way. The giant reptilian form of Corrsk blocked the passageway. The Trandoshan held a blaster cannon powerful enough to fry both Lowie and Sirra to ragged, smoking hunks.

“Traitors die,” he said in a rough, gargling voice. “Kill Wookiees!”

His fang-filled jaws flexed in a vicious grin. He brought his blaster cannon to bear. “These are traitors!” Corrsk bellowed, glancing over his shoulder to the workers in the smallcraft bay.

Two Duros star pilots and a group of Ugnaught mechanics turned to stare at the commotion.

One ran to a comm panel and called for security backup.

Corrsk did not appear interested in sharing the glory for the prizes he had captured.

Lowie drew his lightsaber and ordered Sirra to make a run for the Rock Dragon as soon as she saw a chance. Without the access codes she wouldn’t be able to set any course, but she could prepare it for flight.

He shoved his sister behind him as he switched on his molten-bronze blade.

Then, holding it aloft like a powerful, glowing club, Lowie advanced toward the enormous reptile, taking the offensive against his natural enemy.

Corrsk drew back in surprise and lifted his blaster cannon, firing a shot before he had a chance to aim. Lowie dodged out of the way as the ragged bolt of energy hammered the tunnel wall.

Sirra used the moment of distraction to sprint past Corrsk into the smallcraft bay and make a beeline for the Hapan passenger cruiser.

Two Ugnaughts tried to block her way, but she bowled them over, batting one to the side with her left paw and knocking the other down with the sheer force of her charge.

The Rock Dragon waited, a sanctuary, their escape. Sirra had admired the ship, had hoped someday to fly it. She would soon get her chance.

Lowie charged at Corrsk with a furious roar.

He swung his lightsaber. The Trandoshan, more agile than his size suggested, skipped to one side.

Lowie’s sizzling bronze blade sheared through a metal support beam on the wall and gouged a smoking crater into the rock.

He reeled backward, raising the lightsaber again as Corrsk struggled to aim his blaster cannon. Lowie felt a tug and a snap at his syren-fiber belt, and Em Teedee pulled free, rising up on his new microrepulsorjets.

Lowie yelped in surprise. “I beg your pardon, Master Lowbacca,” the little translating droid said, “but I must have neglected to mention some of my more recent modifications.”

Em Teedee zipped forward and back, dancing like a target remote in front of the reptilian.

Corrsk batted at the little droid with a scaly hand. One curved claw clipped the silvery casing and sent Em Teedee tumbling and spinning. “Oh my, how very disorienting!”

Lowie slashed with his lightsaber while Corrsk’s attention was still on Em Teedee. The Trandoshan tried to dodge, but the edge of the molten blade scorched his scaled arm. Sizzling black blood congealed in the wound. Corrsk hissed with pain. He lifted his blaster cannon and launched a highpowered volley.

Lowie reacted with Jedi reflexes, bringing up the bronze blade to meet the blaster strike. The force of the blast drove him against the wall, but the energy blade deflected the barrage back into the rock ceiling above Corrsk’s head.

The reptilian let out a bellow as tons of rocky debris cracked and broke away from above. He threw his massive arms overhead, trying to protect himself from the falling boulders. Giant chunks of rock tumbled down in a deadly avalanche to bury him.

With Corrsk foiled for the moment, Lowie did not hesitate: he turned to charge after his sister into the smallcraft bay. Sirra, already aboard the Rock Dragon, was prepping it for takeoff. He heard the familiar whine of engines; a white flare of exhaust heated the grotto.

Heavily armed guards, summoned by the Ugnaughts, rushed in with hand weapons. They saw Lowie and fired. He dodged across the cluttered room, ducking and weaving around engine parts and coolant drums, using his Jedi senses to anticipate their shots.

Em Teedee zoomed after him across the grotto in a zigzag pattern. “Do hurry, Master Lowbacca! I’m right behind you!” Lowie made a mad dash toward the Hapan cruiser.

Several of the guards’ potshots struck the hull of the Rock Dragon, but the hand weapons did not have enough power to cause significant damage.

Lowie scrambled up through the entryway and into the cockpit. As he slid down into his familiar copilot’s seat, he wished briefly that Jaina were there with him. Fortunately, he had no doubts about Sirra’s ability as a pilot. She almost seemed to be enjoying the challenge of their dangerous situation. When she flashed her fangs at him, Lowie remembered watching her practice her wild flying skills in the skies above Kashyyyk.

He had every confidence in his sister’s abilities.

At the moment, though, he had grave questions as to how he would rescue his human friends, and whether he could ever free Raaba from this tangled web into which she had fallen….

With an electronic sigh of relief, Em Teedee zipped into the cockpit and dropped down onto the control panels. “Assistant navigator, reporting for duty! Might I recommend an immediate departure?” he said.

Roaring his agreement, Lowie sealed the Rock Dragon’s entry hatch while Sirra punched up the engine controls. The repulsorlifts barely had time to raise the craft off the ground before Sirra launched the ship forward. One of the landing struts scraped a white gash along the stone.

Lowie dragged himself into the cockpit and frantically began entering access codes and connecting Em Teedee’s wiring to the navicomputer.

The Rock Dragon shot toward the blast doors, which were even now closing as a few Ugnaughts furiously cranked mechanical systems to seal the Wookiees in. But Sirra put on a burst of speed that threw Lowie back in his seat.

From the outer tunnel, where the Trandoshan was now completely buried, more guards raced into the bay to set up heavier weapons on tripods.

They fired before they were ready, though, and only struck the blast doors and walls. The Duros, Sullustans, and Ugnaughts dove for cover from the ricochets.

Sirra let out a howl of triumph as the ship skimmed through the narrowing gap of the closing blast doors. The Rock Dragon soared out into Ryloth’s open sky.

In the dust-rilled tunnel, salvage workers scurried across the rubble, picking at the rocks and hauling away fallen boulders in order to open the collapsed passageway.

With a clatter of broken stone and a mighty roar of anger, the Trandoshan burst through the avalanche debris and hauled himself out of the rubble. He coughed and spat. Blood leaked from gashes in his tough, scaly hide. Filth encrusted the burned wound where Lowie’s lightsaber had scorched him. Corrsk didn’t feel any of it.

Two furry Bothans tried to help the reptilian, but he hammered them aside and climbed to his feet.

His left leg was terribly injured. Corrsk looked down at his mangled scales and crushed muscles with anger. Still, he felt no pain. He let out a snarl as he saw that the Rock Dragon had escaped through the closing blast doors. The ineffective guards shot their clumsy weapons again, but to no avail.

Corrsk clenched his clawed hands. He desperately needed to kill something, someone, and he wanted it to be one of the Wookiees.

The smell of Lowbacca’s blood was in his nostrils now. The Wookiees had injured him.

Corrsk would not stop until he was able to crush Lowbacca with his bare hands.