Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [119]
Just beyond the rim he fell, and hit the floor hard. His crippled leg gave beneath him as he tried to stand, stumbled and plunged for the door, crawling desperately as the droids clanked and ground in pursuit. They weren’t as fast as the trackers had been—he had the coverplate off the manual door release when they were still a meter behind him, and ran his lightsaber into the works to fuse them once the door was down between him and the droids.
He managed to crawl a considerable distance before he passed out.
“Callista, we can do it.” The man’s voice held a thin veneer of patience and confidence over a core of rough irritation. He put his big, callused hands through the back of his belt and looked from her to the blackness framed by the faintly glowing rectangle of the magnetic field.
Luke recognized the hangar, though it seemed less cavernous in the clear cold lighting of the glowpanels than it had been when he’d stood there by the shorn, chalky light of the stars. The Moonflower Nebula’s drifting banks of light could be seen outside, speckled with the darker chunks of asteroids, an eerie field of glow and lancing shadow. The Y-wing stood where he’d seen it, scars and holes glaring in the brightness. On the marks that had been empty stood a Skipray Blastboat, crowding the smaller craft.
“The station lays its defensive fire in a double ellipse pattern, that’s all. We got in, didn’t we?” The man’s eyes were bright blue in a hatchet-jawed, amiable face grubby with three days’ rust-colored beard. He had a gold ring in one ear.
“The Force was with us or we’d never have made it.” It was the first time Luke had seen her clearly, but it was as if he’d always known that she was tall, slim, long-boned without the smallest trace of lankiness. The lightsaber with its rim of bronze cetaceans hung at her belt. Like her companion she was filthy, a universe of heavy brown hair unwashed and trailing from a knot the size of his two fists at her nape, gray eyes light against the soot and oil that stained her face. Shrapnel or shattering glass had opened a three-inch cut on her forehead; the way it was scabbed, it would leave a hell of a scar. Her voice was like smoke and silver.
She was beautiful. Luke had never seen a woman so beautiful.
“I’d like to think I had something to do with that.” The man’s long mouth twisted.
“You did.” Callista looked taken aback that he’d feel offended. “Of course you did, Geith. The Force—”
“I know.” He made a gesture, a slight pushing of the air, as if against something heard before for which he had no time. “The point is, there’s other ways of doing this than getting ourselves killed.”
There was silence between them, and Luke saw, in the way she stood, in her diffidence, her concern that he would be angry at her. She started to say something, visibly checked, and after a moment changed it to, “Geith, if there was any way for me to go up that shaft, you know I—”
By the flare in his eyes Luke saw he’d read her words as an accusation of cowardice. “And I’m telling you neither of us has to do it, Callie.” Anger in his voice; Luke saw that no lightsaber hung beside the blaster at his waist. Was that between them, too?
“It’s not going to take us that long to get clear of the Nebula’s interference and back to where we can signal for help. Help in dealing with this hunk of junk”—his expansive wave took in the chill gray-walled labyrinths of the silent Eye—“and at least let Plett know what’s coming at him. As it is, if we try to be heroes and fail, they won’t know zip until they catch a lapful of smoking plasma.”
“They won’t know if we make a run for it and get nailed, either.”
Her voice was low. His rose. “It’s a double ellipse with one randomized turn. I’ve got it scoped, Callie. It’ll be tougher in that tub than in the Y-wing but it can be done.”
She drew breath again and he put a hand on her shoulder, a finger on her lips; a lover’s gesture of intimacy,