Corellian Trilogy_ Assault At Selonia Part 27

"I quite agree," said Ossilege. He thought for a moment. "How long until closest approach with Wa tchkeeper?"

Kalenda checked the time. "Ah, we will do the flyby in about eight hours, sir."

"I see. I see. Very well." Ossilege stood up abruptly and turned toward his flag communications officer. "Set up a direct laser line-of-sight link with the captain of the Watchkeeper. Patch it through to my cabin, full privacy scramble." The com officer saluted and set to work at his console. "As for the rest of you, suffice to say that Lieutenant Kalenda's report has inspired me to make a change in plans. I will inform you of those changes as soon as I have completed my consultations with the Watchkeeper. That is all. Good day to you." And with that, Ossilege swept out of the room.

Everyone stood up and made their way toward the door. "What was all that business about consulting with Watchkeeper Lieutenant Kalenda?" asked Captain Calrissian.

"I don't know, sir," she replied. "But I've got a hunch that I wouldn't want to be the captain of the Watchkeeper just at the moment."

"Oh, yeah," Calrissian agreed. "When admirals take a sudden interest in disabled ships, it's almost always time to start worrying."

That much was beyond debate.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

All Together Now endra Risant was close to despair. It seemed as if she had been stuck aboard this ship for years instead of days. The Gentleman Caller had appeared a roomy enough ship when she had first boarded and explored her, but now the craft felt no larger than a coffin-an image she did not much care for.

She was not sure how much longer she could hold on.

Tendra had never solo-piloted a ship before, never been this alone before. The silence, the solitude of s.p.a.ce seemed to close in around her, and the vast open emptiness seemed to confine her. The ship had enough food to sustain her, and the recycling system would keep her air and water pure for at least a year without any trouble at all. But was there enough sanity left aboard the craft to keep her going? The ship could keep her body functioning as long as need be-but it could do nothing to keep her mind working.

Why didn't Lando answer? what had happened?

What had gone wrong? Had she gambled everything in her life on a foolish whim, and lost?

She reached over and listened again to the radionics monitor speaker as it echoed what the transmitter was sending. She knew that hearing the message could do her no good at all, and might simply reduce her to tears once again. But she had to hear it, had to know it was still going out.

"Tendra to Lando," said the voice, her voice, from the speaker, sounding far more sensible than she had felt for a long time. "Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency." Pause. "Tendra to Lando. Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency." Pause. "Tendra to Lando.

Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency. ."

Admiral Hortel Ossilege stood on the flag deck of the Intruder, resplendent, as usual, in his dress white uniform. "The time has come,"

he said, "to explain the situation. As you know, we have taken the Watchkeeper in tow and transferred virtually all of her crew to the other vessels. You no doubt are wondering why we are taking a near-derelict craft in tow as we enter into battle. I will tell you flat out now. I intend to sacrifice her."

If that statement was intended to elicit a general murmur of astonishment, it succeeded. Ossilege waited for the room to quiet down.

"We have been baffled by the badly timed arrival and inadequate coordination of the opposing fleet," he said. "We are now only a few hours away from contact with the first elements of that fleet, and yet the tail end of it has barely begun to form up.

We have just now started to track launches from Selonia itself.

"I have a.n.a.lyzed the ship placements of the enemy, and I can tell you this-they are very bad, if the enemy does in fact try to do what we think he will try to do. If he offers a straight fight, he will lose, and lose badly.

"But. If they intend instead to draw us, to herd us, to move us around by offering themselves as a target and then retreating-then they have deployed themselves very well indeed.

"The obvious question is, of course, draw us toward what? I intend to find out, and without risking all of my command.

"We have managed to restore a very small percentage of the Watchkeeper's propulsion power, and will shortly rig a slave system capable of flying the ship by remote control, at least well enough for our purposes. I will operate the main remotes myself. I recognize that it is the traditional prerogative of the ship's captain to fly the craft at such times, and I do wish to make public acknowledgment of the fact that Captain Mantrony asked, very strenuously, for that privilege.

I have refused her. II the Watchkeeper is indeed attacked in some novel way, we need to fly her so as to find out as much as possible about that weapon. Captain Mantrony would be less than human if the laudable instinct to protect her own ship did not interfere with that need. Her protests of my actions have been recorded.

"I want my fleet to be led toward whatever trap they have setwith the Watchkeeper well in the lead. I do not want our fighters to be overly aggressive. They should take battle if it is offered, but not seek it out. I want a defensive, not an offensive, posture. I think there is no doubt that we can deal with any number of these PPBs and other light fighters at the proper time. For now, I simply want to preserve our force and probe the enemy's capabilities.

"So," Ossilege said in solemn voice as he looked out over the faces of his officers. "Let it begin." He nodded to the Intruder's tactical officer.

"All crew to battle stations," she ordered. "All fighter pilots to their s.p.a.cecraft. Stand by for fighter-craft launch."

The briefing was over, and the officers and pilots stood up and began to file out.

"Defensive posture," Lando muttered to Luke as they followed the others out. "II he really wanted a defensive posture, we could all just stay aboard ship."

"Hey, come on," Luke said. "You're my wingman out there. I don't want you too defensive."

"Look, you'll be lucky if I even remember how to fly my ship,"

Lando replied. "what with all the planning meetings, I haven't even been aboard her since we entered the Corellian system." Luke grinned and slapped his friend on the back.

"Well, they say once you learn, you never forget. Here's your big chance to find out if that's true. Come on. Let's get to our ships."

her spirit there, shining in the dark, as clearly as he could see Artoo being lowered into his socket on the X-wing. She was here. She was alive. She was all right.

What else could matter as much as that?

Luke got an answer almost before he could form the question.

For now that he was reaching out with his Force sense, he realized there was someone else out there as well.

Now, leia thought. Now they were close enough. At this distance she could reach across and sense her brother's mind, if he were indeed there.

She shut her eyes, and used her power in the Force to reach, to spread her senses outward.

And she felt him, at once, immediately, felt him strong and clear across the darkness and the distance.

leia smiled, reveled in the warmth of the contact, of the pleasure of knowing her brother was near, and coming closer. But that was only half of it. She knew that Luke would sense her in the Force in the same moment, would instantly know where she was.

Even if her ability was not strong enough to allow any meaningful communication, just the simple knowledge that he was there, that he would know she was here, was a tremendous comfort.

Luke was halfway up the access ladder of his X-wing when he felt his sister's touch through the Force. He froze and looked up, with his mind's eye, through the bulkheads and decks and durasteel of the Intruder up and out into the clean darkness of s.p.a.ce. He could see leia felt the same contact, almost by accident, as her Force sense swept across s.p.a.ce.

In some ways, a much fainter presence, a being not endowed himself with the slightest ability in the Force. But all living things were present in the Force, and this life shone bright with vigor and determination-and it shone especially bright for leia.

"Han," she said, the joy and amazement plain in her voice, turning to Mara. She worked the detector controls and brought the sensors to bear on the right piece of sky. "There!" she said, pointing to a small blip in the detector display. "Han is on that blown-out coneship.

Luke is aboard the largest Bakuran ship, but Han is here, too."

She shut her eyes and concentrated again.

"Thro other beings as well; Selonians, I think. I'm not sure about them, but it is Han. I know it's Han."

leia is here, Luke thought. leia is here, and Han is here, and there isn't a thing I can do about it. Things were moving too fast.

He b.u.t.toned up the canopy of his X-wing and ran his cross-checks with Artoo. He checked the deployment roster.

His X-wing and the Lady Luck were scheduled to launch from the belly of the intruder in thirty seconds.

Barely time to feel thankful that she and Han were all right. In between nay checks, system tests, and bringing the X-wing to hover, there was no time for anything else.

Not even time to use the laser link system to tell Lando the news.

That was perhaps fortunate, as Lando had his own startling news to contend with.

Strictly speaking, there wasn't really any point to running the automatic corn check. Not when all the standard corn systems were shut down by the jamming, and there was no way to test the laser link system onboard ship. But Lando tried to be a careful pilot, when he had the chance. And that meant full systems checks if he hadn't flown the ship in a while. He didn't expect any surprises, though. Artoo had run systems checks recently, and he was always careful to take care of the Lady.

But what one expected rarely had much to do with what one got. He learned that much when the radionic scanner picked something uand put it on the cabin speaker.

"Tendra to Lando," said the voice-Thndra's voicefrom the speaker.

"Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency." A pause, and then it repeated, "Tendra to Lando. Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency."

And repeated, "Tendra to Lando. Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency Lando was stunned. Absolutely stunned. How had she gotten to Corellia? What in the name of stars and skies was Tendra doing here? Why had she come here?

How far away was she?

Lando checked the launch clock. Just under half a minute to go.

Barely time to do anything. But he had to do something. He punched up the corn system, switched it to the rarely used radionics mode, and set it for repeater transmission. He thought for a minute before he replied. There was so much to say, and so little time.

"Lando replying to Tendra. It's a long story why, but I only arrived in-system very recently, and have just now received your transmission." He paused for a moment, and then went on, feeling more than a bit awkward. "It, ah, might sound melodramatic, but I'm about to go into battle, and there is no time for anything. There's a lot I want to say-but all of it will have to wait. The main question is, where are you? I will do my best to monitor your original frequency from here on in. Good luck to you, and to all of us. Lando out Message repeats."

Lando just sat there for a moment, thinking of all the ways he should change that message. It said too much, and it said not enough-but there was no time. It would have to do. Ten seconds until launch. Lando hit the continuous transmit-repeat b.u.t.ton, brought his sublight engines to standby, and began concentrating on staying alive.

Han Solo was not a happy man. There are few things that make a pilot feel as helpless as being aboard a derelict ship. It was bad enough for a pilot to be a pa.s.senger aboard a craft with someone else, anyone else, at the controls. But when no one is at the controls, when the ship is out of control, the sensation was far worse.

The nameless coneship might as well have been an asteroid, a lump of s.p.a.cerock, for all that could be done to maneuver it. All they could do was wait. Sooner or later someone would shoot them down, or they would crash into something, or the food would give out, or the air and water would go bad. With the luck this ship had, it -wUWSS MS . ugrave; LUn L I I wouldn't be more than a day or two before two or three of those things happened.

Unless. Unless Han could jury-rig some sort of propulsion system and bring the navicomputer back online. The odds for success weren't good, of course. But Han had never been one to give up easily. And the first stage of the job was clearly to make a detailed survey of the damage. It was lucky that they had nothing but time on their hands, because that was what this job would take. A lot of time.

Han stared at the mined initiator liuk, trying to fix every part of it in his mind, doing his best to memorize it before he touched it.

He was going to have exactly one chance to repair this thing, and he had to get it right. He noticed a slender crack in the base of the impeller bracket. If that crack went all the way through, the bracket would be useless. Well, he'd jut have to build a new one. Maybe he could find something on the ship that would"Honored Solo!"

The voice boomed down from the upper deck, loud enough and suddenly enough that Han nearly jumped out of his skin. "Dracmus, don't do that!"

he shouted back. "Scared me half to death. I could have snapped the impeller bracket clean off, if I had been touching it."

"My apologies, Honored Solo," Dracmus called back.

"But there is another matter, an urgent one. A ship is about to dock with us."

"what!" Han forgot all about the impeller and scrambled up the ladder to the upper deck. "what are you talking about?" he demanded.

He looked up at the detector screen and saw from the visual-mode display that there was indeed another ship out there, only a half kilometer away and closing fast. He looked up through the cone-apex viewports and spotted the ship easily.

"Salculd, why didn't you spot it until now?"

"She came up from our stern," Salculd said apologetically. "Our stern detectors were never very good, and the overload must have damaged them in some way the diagnostics couldn't spot."

"Great," Han said. "We've been flying blind and we didn't even know it."

"But what do we do, Honored Solo?" Dracmus asked.

"Do? What can we do? We have no com system with the jamming, So we can't talk with them. We have no propulsion system, so we can't move-unless we all get Out and push." He pointed to the fast-approaching ship land shrugged hopelessly. "All we can do is put out the welcome mat and hope they're friendly. I'd say I hoped they were on our side if I knew what side that wa" Han stopped talking and looked harder at the incoming ship. "Wait a second," he said. "I know that ship. I know that shijH"

"What ship is it?" Dracmus demanded.

"Are they friend or foe?"

"I'm not sure. Dracmus, Salculd, both of you. Grab sidearms and get to the air lock. Hurry!"

Salculd and Dracmus both froze for a second, not sure whether to obey Han. "Go!" he shouted again.

"Now!"

That got them moving. "I have two blasters in my cabin," Dracmus announced, and rushed to get them, Salculd hard on her heels.

Han scrambled back down the ladder and rushed over to the air lock, wishing for a wrench, a hammer, anything big and heavy. But there wasn't time. He heard the thud of hull clamps linking to the coneship, heard a high-pitched hum as a force field coming on vibrated through the hull.

Standard operating procedure when two ships with nonmatched hatches docked up. One would activate a tubular force field between the two air locks, allowing free transit from one ship to the other.

a.s.suming all parties cooperated. Han briefly considered disabling the air lock, preventing the boarders from coming over. But there would be very little point to that. Any cutting laser worth its salt would be able to slice through the coneship's hull metal in a matter of minutes.

Better to let them aboard and take it from there. And besides, she might be friendly. She might be . . . But then he heard the coneship's outer doors slide open. It was too late to worry about it.

"Solo!" Dracmus shouted as she rushed down the corridor, blaster at the ready. "Solo! what is going on?

what ship is that?" She stopped short, and Salculd almost knocked her over. "what is going on?"

"That's the Jade's Fire that just latched herself to our hull," Han said. "Mara Jade's ship. Your swell friend has just tracked mer you, or uhalfway across the Corellian system. And I can tell you right now, I am not giving her any more benefit of the doubt. She had better do a d.a.m.ned good job of convincing me she's on our side or-" The inner airlock door slid open, and Han stopped talking. He just stood there, openmouthed and in shock, for a full five seconds. And then, somehow, suddenly, they were in each other's arms, seemingly without either of them crossing the distance between them. "leia," he said.

"leia, how did you-" leia Organa Solo wrapped her arms around Han and hugg, e, d her husband. "h.e.l.lo, Han," she said. "I missed you.

Luke Skywalker kept his X-wing in formation with the Lady Luck, both cratt flying escort on the Intruder. The four ships of the Bakuran task force were set in a modified flying-wedge formation, a three-sided pyramid with the Watchkeeper at the leading point and the other three ships forming up in an equilateral triangle directly behind her. The hope was that the opposition would not be able to detect the tractor beams the three other ships were using to hold Watchkeeper in formation.