Part 6 (1/2)

For perhaps half a minute he listened, his forehead wrinkled inconcentration Then, surprisingly, he sive it a try Lieutenant?”

”I'm on it, sir,” the clone trooper said

Roshton turned back to Doriana ”Maybe we do have a choice,” he said”Defense line, configure for inverse hailstoretthese doors open”

With a ponderous ruan to slide slowly to thesides 'Ti to the side'This way”

A few seconds later they were crouched behind a large cargo truck parkedalong the side wall ”What's going on?” Doriana asked, trying to keep hissuddenthe way he'd planned ”Won't this open us up to a full-scale assault?”

”It ht let us coame”

That sounded distinctly ominous ”Is this what the Jedi said to do?”

Doriana probed carefully

”No, this part was my idea,” Roshton said ”Master Tories simply reminded me of another of our objectives” He craned his neck

”There they go”

Doriana eased an eye around the truck's push plate Outside, the C-9979'sheavy cla open, the foot raround In the relative darkness behind the doors, hecould see the slightly bulbous nose and blaster cannon of a MTT ar pedestal ”Stand by,” Roshton ordered calet is starboard laser capacitor”

Doriana frowned; but before he could ask, the MTT gave a brief snort of cooling systean to slide forward toward the ramp

”Fire,” Roshton said calmly

And with a thunder of weaponry that echoed deafeningly through the huge room, the clone troopers opened fire

Doriana squinted into the glare as the hundreds of energy weapons focusedtheir fury on the thick armor behind the MTT's left at the noise and the waves of heat that rolled over him TheMTT's arners couldnever have anticipated a situation where so much firepoould be focused onsuch a san todiffuse outward as the casehardened metal alloy vaporized into superheatedplasma

And barely two seconds into the assault, the Republic weapons burned through the ary capacitor behind it

The entire left front of the MTT vanished in a gigantic fireball thatwrithed its way upward to billow across the leading edge of the C-9979'sforing A series of smaller blasts erupted from behind the first assecondary systems went up in a chain reaction A few seconds later, with anearsplitting screarated, and the blackened shellthat had once been a fully loaded MTT collapsed onto the ra behind it

”That's it!” Roshton shouted over the panderabbed Doriana's ar until they were two assembly areas into the plant and the noise outside had faded to a dull roar

”Clever,” Doriana said, breathing hard as Roshton slowed the ”You block the exit rae But what exactly did it gain you?”

”Options, of course,” Roshton told hi back over his shoulderDoriana looked, too, to see the clone troopers following in an orderlyretreat ”Before we did that, there would have been no way to retreat withoutbringing the battle into the plant, which you had forbidden us to do We wouldhave had to stand and die”

He gestured ahead of theh that tunnel of Binalie's and go to ground” Doriana felt his liptwist Nine hundred clone troopers, ready and waiting to harass the Separatistarone ”So what exactly didTories tell you?”

Roshton threw him a s”

They stood on the hill at the edge of the Binalie estate: Tories, Binalie hiuised in civilian clothing ”So that's it, is it?” Binalie asked

”For now, yes,” Tories told hirassy strip that lay between thean to fade fro hulks of half a dozen AAT battletanks stretched across the forbidden grassland ”My counners,” he added

”It wasn't hard,” Roshton said grimly ”Standard Trade Federation attackprocedure always includes throwing a cordon around the target zone All we hadto do was set our ambush and make sure we dropped the ones in the place thatwould irritate the Cranscoc the uilt It had been his idea,and it had been necessary But he still didn't much like the fact that he'ddeliberately caused distress and discos who had nothing to do with the chaos noirling around them

”I just hope it works,” Doriana murmured

”It will,” Tories assured hi to be able to relax until those hulks are re the Separatists want to build in there”

Roshton grunted ”Let's hope they don't figure it out until our reinforceood they are”