Free Fate of the Jedi: Backlash by Aaron Allston Page B

seen them yet. Perhaps the noise andconfusion of the fight would keep them distracted for a few crucial seconds. “We’re outmatched.”
    “Why aren’t Luke and Ben using their lightsabers?” Leia held hers at the ready but unlit, her thumb on the ignition button.
    The Witches and rancors remained unaware of Han’s speeder as he entered the pass. He killed forward thrust, slewed to port, and kicked the repulsors to full strength, skidding the speeder bottom-first toward the nearest group of enemies.
    With any lesser pilot, the maneuver would have caused the speeder to slam nose-first into the pass wall, killing everyone on board. Han couldn’t see but could feel as his bottom-mounted repulsors went from hammering at empty air to hammering at obstacles. There were shrieks as Witches were abruptly propelled out of the way. The wrong-angle deceleration pressed Han deep into his seat.
    Then they came to a sudden, spine-compressing stop. The engines kicked off. In the moment he had before gravity took over, Han decided that only a handful of pilots could have pulled off such a maneuver. Himself, Jaina, Luke, Wedge, Tycho. That was it.
    Leia and Dyon leapt free. They went to starboard, which was almost straight up into the sky. Each leapt to a different side of the rancor. Then the speeder fell leftward, sliding down the calves of the rancor legs it had fetched up against, falling two or three meters, and crashed onto the rocky floor of the pass.
    Han’s breath was jolted from him. But the instincts of a pilot finding himself in a crashed vehicle—
get out, get clear
—took over. Though dazed, he rolled out of and away from the speeder, coming to his feet, off-balance and face-to-face with one of the Witches, a redhead who perhaps looked angrier than any woman Han had seen, Leia excluded.
    Someone shot her; a stun bolt took her in the face and she fell out of sight. Who had done it? Oh, that’s right,
Han
had; now he saw the blaster pistol in his hand, saw the charge meter click down by one. Leia had insisted that he switch over to stun bolts. He so seldom did that.
    Farther up the pass, Luke and Ben were now moving in concert, gesturing to turn back the reduced wave of flying boulders. Ben launched himself through the air, a perfect flying side kick, and took a dark-haired Witch right in the solar plexus. The woman went down.Closer at hand, Leia, her lightsaber lit, and Dyon, unarmed, leapt right and left, crossing each other as they did, striking at nearby Witches.
    The closest rancor turned, roared down at Han, and raised its club.
    “Oh, stang.” Han crouched, gauged which way would be the best to leap.
    A blaster bolt—no stun bolt, and bigger, more explosively powerful than any that came from one of Han’s blasters—took the rancor in the center of the chest. The site sizzled and turned black. The rancor, wounded but not impaired, staggered back from the impact and howled again, now looking far past Han.
    Han hazarded a look backward. In the distance, just topping the nearest rise, came Yliri’s cargo speeder. Beside her on the front seat, half standing, his rifle braced on the windscreen, was Carrack. Sha and Tarth held on for dear life in the backseat.
    Han looked up in time to see the rancor bearing down on him, but it was charging the oncoming speeder. Han leapt out of the way. The rancor’s furious gait, he saw, was jarring the Witch in its saddle, preventing her from aiming whatever spell she was weaving. As the rancor passed, Han aimed a shot up along its back, hitting the Witch at the base of her spine.
    Yliri’s speeder headed straight for the oncoming rancor, then sideslipped left and abruptly gained altitude. The rancor swung at it, but the beast’s club missed its bottom by meters. The speeder climbed the slope of the leftward hill, toward the larger rancor standing there.
    Carrack’s second blaster bolt hit that rancor, a forehead shot that staggered the beast. Then Yliri’s speeder topped