Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [121]
Luke’s eyes were the eyes of the pickup camera concealed among the craters of the dreadnaught’s irregular hull. There was no question that Geith was one hellskinner of a pilot. Blastboats were landing craft, not fighters; clumsy to handle, though in a crisis they had the speed to outrun, if not outmaneuver, most pursuit. And Geith had been right—half by observation, half by instinct, Luke saw/felt the pattern of the shots the Will laid down, a complex double ellipse with a couple of random twitches.
A couple, not the one that Geith had said.
Dodging, dropping, veering among the sheets of light-filled dust, the half-hidden chunks of tumbling rock, Geith handled the Blastboat as if it were a TIE, flipping through the white streaks of death with breathtaking speed. He was almost out of range when a random bolt that shouldn’t have been there holed his stabilizer.
The more that hit you, the more that will.
He must have got the craft in hand somehow, spinning crazily but keeping his trajectory. An asteroid swam out of the dust and took off one of his power units, dragged him around …
And it was over.
Luke saw the white blast of the final explosion as a reflection from the replay screen cast up on Callista’s face.
She closed her eyes. Tears traced a line in the grime. She had the look of a woman who hadn’t slept or eaten in days, exhausted, skating the edge. Maybe the Will had tricks for dealing with those who entered by other means than the landers with their indoctrination bays. Maybe if Geith had been 100 percent alert, 100 percent sharp, he’d have done as he’d meant, and gotten out to fetch help.
She turned her head, and looked up at the dark shaft, like an upside-down well into the night above the ceiling. The enclision grid had the look of pale, dementedly regular stars. She drew her breath without change of expression, and let it go.
He woke again, or thought he woke, to utter blackness, and she was there, lying against his back. Her body curved around his, her hip spooned behind his, her thigh touching the back of his leg—his leg didn’t hurt, he realized, nothing hurt—her arm lying over his side and her cheek resting against his shoulder blade, like an animal that has crept stealthily to a human’s side, seeking reassurance and warmth. The tension of her muscles frightened him, the pent-up bitter grief.
Grief at dreaming the dream that he’d seen. At remembering the one who’d betrayed her. At having to do it alone.
Gently, fearing that if he moved at all she’d flee, he turned and gathered her into his arms.
As she had in the gun room, she breathed once, hanging on to something for as long as she could, then let it go.
For a long time she wept, silently and without fuss or apology, the hot damp of her tears soaking into his ragged jumpsuit, her body shaking with the draw and release of her breath.
“It’s all right,” said Luke quietly. Her hair, thick and rough-textured as it appeared, was startlingly fine to his touch, springy where gathered into his hands, filling them and overflowing. “It’s all right.”
After a long time she said, “He thought I’d never try it myself. He meant to save my life. I know that. He knew I’d know.”
“But he still made it his decision, not yours.”
Against his chest he felt her small, wry smile. “Well, it was his decision, so it had to be right, didn’t it? I’m sorry. That sounds bitter—a lot of his decisions were right. He was a demon of a fighter. But this … I felt it. I knew there would be no getting back in, once we were away. I was angry for a long time.”
“I’m angry at him.”
He remembered the faint, attenuated sense of her, less than a ghost even, in the gun room. Hidden, eroded, worn by exhaustion almost to nothing.
“I’m surprised you helped me at all.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said. He felt her move her arm, push the hair from her face. “Not out of hate, really, but … It all seemed so distant. So unreal. Like watching morrts scurry around the bones of the ship.”
“Yet you stayed,” said Luke, even as he spoke understanding that he was dreaming; understanding