He hadn't rescued the ship a moment too soon. A burst of fire filled the tug module's viewports as a sudden crashing impact struck the frigate from below. The shock wave of an explosion ripping apart the empty dock jolted the frigate's stern. Klemp struggled with the navigational controls, fighting to keep the ship from toppling end over end and the prow out of the churning debris that welled up toward it.
The nearest dock cranes still towered above the frigate, like immense durasteel-strutted gallows. Even with the thruster controls pushed to their maximum, the ship seemed to be only inching toward the clear space where Klemp would be able to hit the main thrusters and bring it out of danger. The fierce heat from the explosions seeped through the tug module's thin hull, evaporating the sweat as it beaded on his brow.
A sharp blast ripped through the base of the nearest crane. Glancing toward the side viewport, Klemp saw the tapering metal structure begin to topple toward the frigate. There would be no way he could get the ship be-yond the reach of the crane's top-mounted arm as it swung scythelike into the hull. If the crane's weight struck midship, it would break the frigate in half, send-ing the pieces tumbling back down toward the exploding construction docks. Klemp knew he would be dead be-fore the ship's remnants hit the twisted metal rubble be-low it.
He quickly calculated the chances of abandoning the tug module, sprinting back toward the Y-wing, and fly-ing it out through the entangling construction shroud and into the clear. Possible, he told himself. But you wouldn't have done the job you came here forCursing, Klemp reached for the navigational controls. The frigate halted its slow rise as he diverted all available power from the auxiliaries to the stern's side thrusters. With increasing speed, the ship pivoted about on its ver-tical axis.
The toppling crane hit, its mass shearing along the flank of the frigate, grinding and tearing away any protruding structural elements; inside the tug module, the impact of metal shearing away against metal sounded louder than any of the explosions below. Wincing against the stabbing, deafening noise, unable to take his hands away from the controls to shield his ears, Klemp saw a jagged piece of the crane snag the construction shroud's fabric. As the crane continued to topple away from its shattered base, it ripped away the shroud and the Y-wing fighter mired in it.
No great loss, Klemp told himself as he looked over his shoulder and saw the Y-wing breaking apart, dragged toylike across the topside of the ship's hull. With a last, shuddering impact, the crane hit the stern and then top-pled away.
The ship was clear—at last. Klemp expelled his pent-up breath in one gasp, then slammed on the main thruster engines. The Lancer frigate seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second, then heaved its bulk toward the stars.
"All right. That does it." Dengar picked himself up from the floor of the Hound's Tooth's cockpit. On wobbling, unsteady legs, he confronted Boba Fett. "The partner-ship's over."
He reached over to the nearest bulkhead and steadied himself against it with one hand, watching as Fett me-thodically checked out the weaponry strapped across his Mandalorian battle armor. Lucky we're even alive, thought Dengar. Though how long that was going to last, he had no idea. Their ship had barely managed to survive the high-velocity plunge from open space into the thick of the construction docks' roiling explosions. More of the blasts, approaching in sequence, shook the Hound's shock-loosened frame, the metal of its hull grat-ing against the rubble-strewn area on which it had crashed.
"Suit yourself," said Fett. "I owed you for saving my life back on Tatooine. You decide if that debt's repaid by now."
"Oh, it's paid, all right." Trembling with anger and accumulated shock, Dengar stepped back as Boba Fett approached the hatchway. "A few thousand times over. You haven't managed to get me killed yet—but I don't feel like giving you any more chances."
"Fair enough." Boba Fett started down the ladder to the Hound's cargo hold. "I've got business to take care of."
From the cockpit hatchway, Dengar stared at him in amazement. He's going looking for Kuat. The realization caused Dengar to slowly shake his head. There's no stop-ping him.
"You go your way," Dengar shouted into the smoke filling the hold. "And—"
The explosions out in the construction docks grew louder, mounting on top of one another and blocking his words.
And I'll go mine, he thought to himself. Dengar turned from the hatchway and dived toward the controls.
He didn't bother plotting a trajectory, but simply slammed maximum power to the main thruster engines. Holding on to the controls inside the Trandoshan-sized forearm grooves, Dengar heard and saw a tangle of cables, their insulated sheaths charred and smoking, drag across the forward viewport. The hull's underside scraped across the warped freight tracks beneath as it ac-celerated; the explosions that had been marching across the docks finally caught up with the Hound's Tooth, lift-ing the stern as though it were caught and thrown by a giant hand. Dengar hung on desperately as the ship spun end over end, directly toward the side of one of the tow-ering cranes.
The sequence of explosions was faster than the tum-bling ship. Before the Hound's Tooth struck the crane, the dizzying image through the viewport was blotted out by pure white light, as if Dengar had caught a glimpse into the searing heart of a nova star.
Metal ripped apart from metal as the crane dissolved in the blast, its massive struts flaring outward and then spiraling into the vacuum. Through the flames and smoke filling what had been the explosion's center, the Hound's Tooth spun into the clear.
Dengar gaped at the cold, bright stars filling his vi-sion. Made it... I made it...
A few quick adjustments with the navigational jets steadied the ship to a level course. Panting, and with his pulse beginning to slow, Dengar let a fragile smile form across his face. He hadn't been expecting to survive at all; his real intent, he realized now, had been only to keep his corpse from being crushed and incinerated in the wreckage of the Kuat Drive Yards' construction docks.
Pulling his hands from the grooves on the control panel, he laughed in amazement. "After all that," he said aloud. "And I'm the one who's still alive—"
The words inside his head were wiped out by another blinding burst of light. Dengar shielded his eyes with a quickly raised forearm. As the glare faded, he lowered his arm and squinted through the forward viewport. In the distance, another, larger ship—one of the fleet that the Rebel Alliance pilots had been trying to rescue from the construction docks—had not been as lucky as he had been. The other ship's stern had been engulfed by flames just as it lifted away; one main thruster engine had been destabilized in the blast, and had gone into core overload. The resulting explosion had blown a gaping hole in the ship's hull, stranding the ship close to the Hound's Tooth.
Dengar watched, then ducked reflexively as another one of the larger ship's thruster engines went off. Weak-ened by the first engine's explosion, the ship disinte-grated, one fireball after another ripping the structural frame to pieces.
He watched, then froze in place, held by what he saw in the viewport. A massive section of the other ship's hull, larger than the Hound itself, shot away from the fragmented wreckage, its jagged edges trailing white-hot streaks and quick sparks of debris. The hull section spun and swelled in the viewport, heading directly for the Hound's Tooth.