The Hand Of Thrawn Duology_ Specter Of The Past Part 16

Seated at the next console, Captain Shirlee Faughn tapped Mara's arm. "Take a look at the starboard end of the asteroid," she murmured, pointing. "We've got a flotilla heading for deep s.p.a.ce. I make it . . . eighteen ships."

"Terrific,". Mara muttered. "You've got trouble, Luke-your rats are staging a ma.s.s desertion. Faughn's got readings on eighteen ships; probably more on the way. Ten to one those explosions you're hearing are the base's self-destruct system kicking in. You got any transport?"

"I had a Y60 freighter when I came in, with Artoo and a hidden X-wing aboard," Luke said.

"But I haven't been able to raise him."

"Well, don't panic yet," Mara advised, giving the displays a quick glance. "They're still jamming your primary comlink frequency-we just happen to have the equipment to sneak in on a harmonic. How far are you from your landing bay?"

"I don't know exactly-"

Faughn snapped her fingers, pointed to one of Mara's displays. "Hold it ," Mara cut in.

"Their jamming's just gone off. Let me release your comlink back to primary freq."

She looked across the bridge at the comm station. "Corvus?"

"Already cleared," the other reported. "I'll key you back in on primary."

Abruptly the comm speaker burst into a staccato flow of astromech droid machine language.

"Slow down, Artoo," Luke's voice cut in through the warbles and squeals. "I can't understand a thing you're saying."

"He says he and the X-wing are okay," Mara told him, watching as the translation scrolled across her computer display. "They were coming for him, so he popped the X-wing out of its hiding place-"

She grimaced. "And chased them away by blasting the landing bay's atmosphere shield generators."

There was a long moment of silence. "Which I presume means the landing bay is now full of hard vacuum?" Luke asked. "Up to its brim," Mara confirmed. "I suppose it would be too much to hope there might be a vac suit locker near the bay somewhere."

"I don't know, but I wouldn't want to count on it," Luke said.

"Me, neither," Mara agreed. "Faughn, you used to fly Y60s, didn't. you?"

"More often than I care to remember," the other woman said. "You thinking about him trying a cold-shirt crossing?"

"It's the simplest way to get him out of there," Mara said. "Can he do it?"

"I doubt it," Faughn said. "Skywalker, is the freighter's landing ramp up or down?"

"Down, last I knew."

The R2 unit twittered, the droid's confirmation scrolling across the display. "It's still down," Mara said.

"In that case, not a chance," Faughn said, shaking her head. "The Y60's ramp mechanism is a piece of junk. Getting it sealed and repressurizing the ship would take at least fifteen minutes."

"I was afraid of that," Mara said. "A little long for him to hold his breath."

"What about his X-wing?" Faughn suggested. "It can't take very long to pressurize a c.o.c.kpit that size."

"Except that most fighter canopies are pressure-locked these days," Mara pointed out.

"Opening them to vacuum without squeezing the manual override usually pops the ejector seat. It's a safety mechanism-I don't think the R2 can override it."

"You're right, he can't," Luke said. "I'd better hope I can find a vac suit."

"Sure." Mara hissed softly between her teeth, measuring the distance to the asteroid with her eyes. The chances that the pirates would have vac equipment within handy reach of potential escapees were somewhere between slim and none. "In case you can't, we're coming in."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Faughn turn startled eyes on her. "Jade, we don't know the safe path in," the other woman muttered.

"No, but Skywalker's astromech droid does," Mara reminded her. "Droid, how about feeding us some numbers?"

The R2 warbled acknowledgment, and a course layout appeared on the computer display. "Got it," Mara said. "Let's go."

Faughn turned back to the helm, still obviously less than enthusiastic about risking her ship this way. There was a brief surge of acceleration, and the Starry Ice began moving forward. "The path doesn't look too bad," Mara told her, studying the display.

"It didn't," the captain said, tapping her nav display. "There's just one slight problem: the asteroids aren't in the same relative positions anymore."

Mara shifted her attention to her own nay display. Faughn was right. "Blast-they've scrambled it," she said, getting out of her chair and heading for the door. "We'll have to bantha-roll our way in. I'll take Number One; get Elkin and Torve to the others."

She had reached her turbolaser station and was strapping in when Faughn signaled. "We've just tripped an automatic beacon warning us away," the captain reported. "Ought to be hitting the first wave of trouble anytime."

"Understood," Mara said, kicking the turbolaser into emergency warm-up and wishing for about the twentieth time this trip that the Jade's Fire wasn't stuck on Duroon getting its nay systems refitted. Karrde had done a good job of arming his freighters, but the Fire had as much sheer laser power as the Starry Ice and a lot more maneuverability on top of it.

But it wasn't here, and there was nothing she could do about it. Rubbing her palms briefly on her jumpsuit to dry them, she got a firm grip on the controls and stretched out to the Force. She might not be as glorious and powerful a Jedi as the great Luke Skywalker, but she'd be willing to match her finely honed danger sense against his any day.

The problem was that the danger sense wasn't particularly directional. And there were a lot of different directions out there for trouble to come from.

"Here we come, Luke," she called into her headset. "Last chance for you to wave your hand and sweep all the traps away."

The instant the words were out of her mouth she was sorry she'd said them. Luke was too far away for her to fully touch his mind; but even so, she could sense him wincing from her remark. She opened her mouth to apologize&mdash And suddenly her danger sense flared, an asteroid drifting along nearby catching her full attention. She spotted a circle of unnatural smoothness on its edge-the faint glint of metal&mdash Her turbolaser flashed, shattering the suspect asteroid into rocks and rubble. From the expanding dust cloud came a single reflexive burst of answering turbolaser fire: too little, too late, and well wide of its target.

"Good shooting, Mara," Elkin's voice came in her ear.

Mara nodded, too preoccupied with her task and her guilt over that snide remark to reply.

Her guilt, and a growing annoyance at herself for feeling guilty in the first place. After all, it was Skywalker and his apprentice Jedi, not her, who were playing fast and casual with their power. If having someone point it out bothered him, that was his problem, not hers.

There was another flicker of warning; but before she could identify the source of the danger, multiple shots of red fire lanced out from Tone's turbolaser and a string of small boulders exploded prematurely into clouds of knife-edged shrapnel bursts Mara winced as a few stray shredders bounced off the Starry Ice's deflector shield in front of her canopy; and then the ship was past that trap and on its way to the next.

Resettling her fingers on the controls, Mara again stretched out to the Force.

Among the three of them they had blasted eight more traps by the time the Starry Ice reached the main base. "We're here," Faughn's voice announced in Mara's ear. "Skywalker?

Where are you?"

"I'm at my landing bay," Luke replied. "Artoo, fire a few blasts at the rim to mark it."

The droid beeped, and a shadow between two rocky ridges flickered with laser fire. "Okay, we've got you," Faughn said. "Coming in."

The laser flashes stopped; and as they did, another of the muted explosions flickered on the asteroid surface, uncomfortably close to the target bay. "There goes another blast,"

Mara said.

"You've been missing most of the performance out there," Luke said. "I've been hearing one go off every ten seconds or so.' They seem to be working their way my direction."

Another explosion flashed, this one even closer to the landing; bay. "Too close, if you ask me," Faughn grunted. "You sure you, want to risk putting down there, Jade?"

"Not especially," Mara conceded, "but we don't seem to have a lot of choice. You're going to owe us big for this one, Luke."

"I'll put it on your account," Luke promised. "Better hurry&mdashno, wait. Back off!"

"What?" Faughn asked.

"You heard him," Mara snapped as her own danger sense tingled. "Back off!"

The Starry Ice lurched back and as it did so one of the ridges framing the landing bay began crackling with sequential blasts like an Endor Day multistage show rocket. "Jade, this is crazy," Faughn said. "I can't put down there. The whole area could go anytime."

"She's right," Luke said . . . and as Mara stretched out to the Force she felt a subtle grimness touch his emotions. "I guess we've only got one option left."

Wave your hand and sweep all the traps away? "What's that?" she asked aloud.

"I'll have to meet you halfway," he said. "You have a docking bay that'll handle my X-wing?"

"We've got a pair of half-ports with tractor a.s.sists," Faughn told him. "They'll put an air seal around the c.o.c.kpit, anyway."

"Good. Artoo, get out there right now and dock with them-"

Wait a second," Mara tut him off. There was something in Skywalker's voice and thoughts that told her he was about to try something really stupid. "You're not thinking of cold-shirting it all the way out to us, are you? We can't get in close enough for that."

"I know," Luke said. "I'm going to have to go into a Jedi hibernation trance as soon as I clear the blast door."

She'd called it, all right-something really stupid. "And how are you expecting to accomplish that?" she demanded. "You'll have to go into the trance right after you've blown the door. That won't leave you any air reserve."

"If I cut open the door properly there should be a burst of air that comes out with me,"

Luke pointed out. "That ought to give me enough to start the hibernation, as well as nudging me your direction."

"You've got rotten odds."

"Last-ditch options are like that. And if we take too much time discussing it, we won't have any odds at all."

"Sounds like one of Solo's lines," Mara growled. But he was right, and as if to emphasize his words, the other flanking ridge began its own disintegration. "You win. Let's do it."

"Right," Luke said. "Artoo, get going."

The droid gave an unhappy twitter, but the X-wing lifted obediently out of the landing bay and headed toward the Starry Ice. "Faughn?" Mara called.

"Tractor a.s.sist is ready at the half-port," Faughn said. "The outer door of the starboard airlock is open, with an atmosphere barrier in place, and Krickle's standing by inside with a medpac. We're ready whenever he is."

"You copy that, Luke?"

"Yes," he said. "I'll set up the phrase welcome aboard' to snap me out of the trance."

"Welcome aboard,' right."

"Okay, here we go. Don't miss me."

Mara smiled tightly. Don't miss me. Once, those words would have had a totally different connotation for her. Luke Skywalker in her blaster sights, the Emperor's dying command that she kill the upstart Jedi echoing through her mind . . .

But she'd gone through that crisis ten years ago inside Mount Tantiss, and the Emperor's voice was now only a distant and powerless memory.

Skywalker would have his own crisis to go through one of these days. Maybe he was in the middle of it right now.

She hoped so.

There was a flicker from Luke's emotions. Mara concentrated, visualizing the flash of his lightsaber as the green blade slashed through the thick metal of the blast door&mdash And then, abruptly, he vanished.

"Faughn?" Mara called, closing her eyes as she stretched out as hard as she could. But Luke's presence was no longer detectable, at least not by her. Either he'd gone into his hibernation trance, or else he was dead.

"Here be comes," Faughn said.

Mara opened her eyes. He was there, all right, looking like a broken puppet as he glided rapidly toward the Starry Ice. His limbs flailed limply as his body tumbled slowly end over end, the flickering light from the asteroid's ongoing self-destruction adding a surreal air to the whole scene.

With a jolt that startled her, the Starry Ice began moving down toward the surface: Faughn, maneuvering the ship to match Luke's trajectory.

Or rather, trying to match it. Mara frowned at the approaching figure, trying to extrapolate his trajectory and impact speed-Faughn, with access to the ship's computer, got the answer first. "We've got trouble," she said tightly. "With the speed I'm having to use to catch him, he's either going to bounce off the hull or else hit the back airlock wall hard enough to break his neck."

"You just get him inside," Mara said, hitting the quick-release on her restraints and scrambling to her feet. "I'll make sure he lives through it."

He was almost there by the time Mara reached the airlock, cartwheeling toward them far faster than was healthy. "Computer says we're right on target," Faughn's voice called over the speaker as Mara peered through the atmosphere barrier. "Impact in ten seconds."

Taking a deep breath, Mara braced herself against the airlock bulkhead and stretched out to the Force.

The Emperor had taught her the basics of using the Force to move objects, rudimentary training that Skywalker himself had developed further during their trek through the Wayland forest and later for a brief time at that Yavin academy of his. She'd kept up practice on her own after that, and had thought she'd become pretty proficient with the technique.

But moving small objects like her lightsaber was one thing. Catching Luke as he fell toward her was something else entirely, rather like trying to stop the Starry Ice with her teeth. She threw everything she had into the effort, dimly aware that her whole body had gone rigid with the strain, fighting to at least slow him down before he barreled past her through the atmosphere barrier. She could sense him slowing-knew it wouldn't be enough-And at the last possible second she stepped away from the bulkhead directly into his path.

He slammed into her full tilt, the impact driving both of them back and down. "Welcome aboard," Mara gasped, an instant before the two of them slammed together to the deck.

A landing that was considerably less painful than she had expected it to be. She blinked, trying to shake the lingering stars from her vision&mdash "Thank you," Luke murmured into her ear.

The stars cleared, and Mara found herself looking up into a strange face-Luke's face, she realized, heavily disguised. He was straddling her, hands and feet on the deck, apparently having come out of his trance just in time to take his share of the impact instead of adding extra dead weight to hers. "You're welcome," she managed. "Nice disguise."

"Thanks," he said. "It worked, too, mostly."

"Mostly' doesn't count for much, does it?" she said. "How come you didn't use a Force illusion, like you have before?"

"I've been trying to cut back on my use of the Force except when absolutely necessary," he explained. "It didn't seem necessary in this case."