Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [115]
“Right,” said Irek softly. And he grinned. “You put it down, Princess, or I let the kretch come all the way across the bridge. Maybe I should do it anyway.” He tittered, and stepped back a pace; the kretch flooded across, pouring onto the near side of the floor like a seethe of bloody mud.
“Irek!” commanded Roganda furiously.
The kretch stopped, milling again; Leia had backed a few paces but knew at the speed they ran she’d never make it to safety even if she knew in which direction it might lie. Particularly not, she thought, if Elegin had his blaster trained on her.
“Well, why not do it now?” demanded Irek sullenly. “Without her the Republic would crumble.”
“Without her the Republic would simply elect another Chief of State,” replied Lord Garonnin quietly, a twinge of disgusted contempt in his voice.
He stepped around Roganda and walked across the room toward Leia and the kretch. Leia, fighting not to run headlong from the filthy things, wasn’t sure she could have done that. The light of the single glowpanel in the doorway behind Roganda made a stiff gold fuzz, like a metal halo, of the elderly man’s short-cropped hair.
“Surrender your weapon, Your Highness. That’s the only hope you have to come out of this alive.”
Some hope, thought Leia bitterly, as she switched off the vibroblade and slid the forcepike to him across the stone of the floor.
Chapter 17
When Nichos had been diagnosed with Quannot’s Syndrome, Cray had said, There’s got to be something I can do.
Trembling and panting for breath, Luke leaned on the wall of the fifth or sixth gangway Callista had shown him, his leg a cylinder of red pain that spread upward to devour his body in spite of the double dose of perigen he’d plugged into it. He remembered Cray’s face that day, the brown eyes blank with shock and refusal to give up hope.
There’s got to be something, she’d said.
He closed his eyes, the wall cold against his temple.
There had to be something.
And Cray would be the one to do it.
The Eye of Palpatine would be jumping to hyperspace soon. Even the most intricate of waiting games came to an end at last. It had waked, and it would fulfill its mission, and something told Luke that this wasn’t simply a matter of laying waste a planet that thirty years ago had sheltered the Emperor’s foes.
Something wanted the ship. Something that could use the Force to affect droids and mechanicals. Something had called out to it, commanded the long-sleeping Will.
Whatever it was, he couldn’t risk letting it wield this kind of firepower, this kind of influence.
Not even for Callista’s life.
But everything within him turned away from the thought, unable to bear the understanding that he wouldn’t get to know her. That he wouldn’t have her always somewhere in his life.
It was worse than the pain of his crippled leg, worse than having his hand cut off … worse than the pain of realizing who his father was.
He literally didn’t know if he’d be able to do it.
He leaned his weight on the gangway railing to support himself while he stepped up the next riser with his good leg, and straightened his body again. Lean, step, straighten. Lean, step, straighten, and every muscle of his shoulders and back cried out with the days of unaccustomed labor. The few perigen patches Threepio had been able to scrounge for him from emergency kits around the ship were nearly gone, and the droid had covered all of Decks 9 through 14. When he’d lost his hand he’d had a mechanical within hours, and he would have fought, or traded, or sold almost anything he could think of for a working medlab and a 2-1B unit.
The foo-twitter