Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [20]
She extended a hand down and helped haul him to his feet. “You may be hurt worse than you know.”
“No. I am not hurt.” He looked around. “Put me to work.”
She jerked a thumb toward the largest remaining portion of the coralskipper, where more members of her unit were working. “Join them. Look for survivors like yourself. And if you feel strange, if you feel anything wrong, go talk to the medics.”
“I … yes.” Without offering a thank-you, the tall man headed in the direction the crew chief had indicated.
She motioned after him, a gesture suggesting irritation. “He’s in shock. They’ll wrestle him down when it gets obvious.” But as she continued her search through pieces of skip debris, she caught sight of the man on several occasions as he helped her crew, carrying the injured to aid stations, shoving debris aside to look for other survivors.
With half its capital ship resources gone, the Yuuzhan Vong attack was done. The remaining cruiser analog and two units of coralskippers took to the skies, harassed by New Republic starfighters until General Antilles called off the pursuit.
“How’s the leg, Tarc?” Han asked.
The boy on the hospital ward bed, brown-haired, blue-eyed, and impossibly energetic, pulled aside the sheet to show his right leg. Much of his calf was covered by a transparent bactabandage. The bandage was pink from the healing material contained within it, but still clear enough to show the angry lines of a crescent-shaped burn on the skin beneath. “Not bad,” the boy said. “I can’t run very fast, but I can walk. They just don’t want me to.”
Han tried to say something, to offer some smart remark at the expense of the medical staff, but it wouldn’t come. He’d been through this scene many times, offering put-on-a-brave-face advice to his own son Anakin, and the simple fact that this boy wasn’t Anakin, despite his near-identical resemblance to him, was like a vibroblade being shoved centimeter by centimeter into his chest.
Leia seemed to sense Han’s hesitation. “Well, you listen to them,” she said. Her own voice seemed just a trifle hoarse, too. “If we get back from our mission and hear that you’ve been pushing yourself too hard, we’re going to be angry.”
“What if I bribe them not to tell you?”
Han swallowed against the lump in his throat and managed to force his voice into something like its normal register. “Bribe them with what? This isn’t exactly a money-based economy, kid.”
“I could put on a show, and charge admission, but instead of taking money, I could make everybody who came promise not to tell you that I’d been running around.”
Leia gave him a cool politician’s smile. “You forget about our spies. They’re everywhere, you know.”
“What if I started my own spy network, and figured out which ones your spies were, and kept them from coming to my show?”
Leia reached out to ruffle the boy’s hair. “We have to go. But we’ll stop in before we leave Borleias.”
“I could go with you. I can be a diplomat.”
“Sorry, kid,” Han said. “I figure you’ll be too busy practicing for your show.”
“I don’t need to practice. I’ll just make it all up as I go along.”
Han and Leia shared a look, a glance of private amusement and long experience. “Well,” Leia said, “there’s some merit in that approach, too. Good-bye for now.”
“Later, kid.”
“Awww.”
As they left the ward, Leia said, “He’s going to be bored while we’re gone.”
“We could leave Goldenrod to baby-sit him. Tell him stories.”
“It’s better that he be bored than horribly bored, Han.”
“True.”
C-3PO stood near the Millennium Falcon’s parking space on the kill zone and stared up at the topside hull of the light freighter. Han Solo was up there, as he often was between flights of the ancient vehicle. He wore goggles as he performed arcane welding tasks on the hull.
C-3PO did not watch Han; instead, his attention was on the sparks from the torch. A stream of them leapt