Obi-Wan and his Padawan had only a few seconds remaining before the charge went off, and it was time for Charza to make his own escape.
Chapter 65
Obi-Wan kicked aside the high-pressure hose and ducked a spray of corrosive fuel. Smoke billowed within the bay. Gravitation within the bay was failing; Charza's bore must have severed grid cables in the doors. Debris drifted up from the floor.
He jumped through the hatch and closed it tight behind. Anakin waggled their ship back and forth to free her from two fallen mine racks. He clasped his master's hand firmly as Obi-Wan settled into his couch.
"Ready?" Obi-Wan asked.
Anakin had never been more ready to leave a place in his life.
"Brace," Obi-Wan warned.
The charge blew and the doors drew up and ripped aside in less than the blink of an eye. Racks and smoke and debris shot out into space, and the extra nudge pushed the mine ship against the hull of the Einem. The control ship shields braced its hull against the intrusion, but the smaller mine ship did not have a chance. Older, built to be expendable, it cracked along its main structural elements like an egg, and all its fuel-and three defective mines kept in storage-exploded.
The shock wave propelled the Sekotan ship through the breach in the doors. A rack punctured one lobe, and in Anakin's mind the ship gave a small cry of pain, then sealed the wound. He could not control her motion yet; the turbulence was too extreme. He felt more punctures and then a rip across her stern, and again the ship made healing repairs, but her pain was intense.
As the brilliant light of the explosion faded, Obi-Wan saw they were tumbling end over end away from the control ship and the expanding wreckage and plasma ball of the old mine ship.
Anakin brought them up and around, through bursts of aim less laser fire, and directly into a swarm of starfighters. The fast, deadly droid ships seemed to flock out of nowhere, two nearly solid walls flanking the Einem. Anakin had no choice but to reverse course, swoop into the control ship's shadow, and make a desperate run down toward Zonama's atmosphere.
Every other route was blocked.
"She's intact," Anakin told Obi-Wan. He gave his master a quick smile. "She's brave and she's beautiful. She'll go anywhere we tell her to."
Obi-Wan gripped his Padawan's shoulder. "Shall we live to fight another day?"
"You bet!"
Anakin buried his arms in the control panel, and the ship told him everything that she knew about the planet, where they could fly, and how they might escape.
"The sky is still full of mines," Obi-Wan said. He touched his set of controls lightly. His fingers sank into the panel, and rows of small green lights flashed around his hands. Impulses passed up his arms, and he was directly connected with the ship and with Anakin, as well. The ship fed him her specifications and characteristics. In a few seconds, he learned almost all a pilot needed to know-but Anakin had spent hours attached to the ship, and his expertise was much greater. There is only one pilot.
"I think it's best if I just supervise," Obi-Wan said.
"You can keep track of what's going on down below. Sekot talks to the ship while we're in range."
"Sekot?"
"The mind Vergere was talking about."
"Vergere?" Obi-Wan was at a loss.
Anakin quickly explained.
The ship skipped lightly along the upper atmosphere near the equator, reentered with six quick shudders, and shed her friction-generated heat.
"She likes being warmed that way," Anakin said.
"I can tell. She's frisky."
"She's great." Anakin could feel relaxation and reassurance smoothing up along his shoulders, into his neck and back. He sighed and wriggled in the seat. Being connected with the ship was like conversing with an old friend, and they had so much gossip to catch up on.
She almost made him forget the last few hours.
But Tarkin's forces were not about to let them go. All the sky mines and most of the starfighters that had fled the ruined mountain were now massing directly west of them, and another tide of mines was dropping from the east. They were about to be enveloped once again in devious, automated death.
Above, a tight-packed ceiling of starfighters flowed in like a storm. Whatever damage the Rim Merchant Einem had sustained had not reduced its ability to command and control.
Anakin could easily imagine the grimly determined face of Tarkin, tracking them with gray hunter's eyes.
"We have to go lower."
"The factory valley," Anakin said. "Our ship says the canopy has withdrawn and they've stopped manufacture."
Obi-Wan could piece together the ship's message, but not as quickly as Anakin.
"But they've been stockpiling a lot of ships, Obi-Wan. And something else…"
"What?"
"She says the settlers are going to escape."
Obi-Wan narrowed one eye. "Everybody, in one big ship?"
"That's what she seems to think. Could they make some thing that big?"
"With the Jentari, I don't see why not. But it would take days to assemble all the settlers, even if they were willing to go."
Starfighters climbed from behind a low chain of hills and fanned out in a V behind them. Anakin accelerated and dropped down to the level of the tampasi, as he had done earlier when Ke Daiv rode beside him.
The starfighters tracked close behind, weaving around the taller boras.
"There it is," Anakin said. The factory valley's concealing canopy had shrunk away, exposing the basalt floor and leaving the stone pillars thrust up like snaggled peg teeth.
The sky over the valley was alive with the still-raging battle between the Sekotan defenses and yet more starfighters.
"It looks very narrow from up here," Obi-Wan said.
"It is," Anakin said.
Obi-Wan kept track of the Sekotan ships defending the planet. They came in a bewildering variety, none larger than sixty or seventy meters in any dimension, and none as sleek or fast as their ship. But all pursued starfighters with impressive determination, clamping them in implacable jaws and bringing them down to the tampasi, or to the valley floor, where they exploded in brilliant red flashes and arcing showers of metal debris. Smaller craft took on the sky mines by simply ramming into them.
"They don't have pilots," Obi-Wan said.
"I think Sekot is the pilot. It's controlling all of them."
Obi-Wan was still absorbing the idea of a planetwide mind, but he did not doubt his Padawan.
"It's going to be real close," Anakin said. "Any other ship and we'd get creamed for sure."
"They're forming up all along the valley," Obi-Wan observed. "We have about three minutes until we reach the end." He suddenly accessed different eyes, and seemed to rush along the valley walls well ahead of them, seeing patterns of enemy ships in much greater detail. The tampasi was supplying their ship with its own sensory data, and the ship was translating for her human occupants.
"Don't you just love her?" Anakin said softly.