Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [166]
And the pulleys that held the bed to the trolley overhead let go with a snap.
Leia flung herself at the hanging jungle of the supply station’s vines, Han leaping after … she thought he wouldn’t make it, reached out with the Force, but didn’t afterward know whether it was his own agility or some added energy of hers that let him grab the bottom ends of that trailing green beard.
But in any case Ohran Keldor, architect of the Death Star and sole surviving technician of the Eye of Palpatine, had neither the Force nor the trained muscle of a rough-and-tumble smuggler to help him.
And if Irek was capable of levitating him out of the falling ruin of the silk bed, he didn’t react quickly enough or didn’t try. The scientist’s scream of terror echoed in the ghostly broil of fog still streaming down through the cracked dome, and when Leia and Han gained the safety of the platform, all trace of Irek was gone.
Chapter 24
With the closing of the shuttlecraft door behind the last contingent of the Gakfedds, the hangar seemed profoundly silent. Beyond the magnetic seal, the blue-white curve of Belsavis flung back a cold glory of light, a bony radiance that bleached Cray’s features to a haggard shadow and turned Nichos’s to silvery marble.
“There it is,” said Callista softly. “There, where the clouds rise up in columns over the heat of the thermal vent.”
Even from here, Luke could see the star-silvered night side chaos where the Plawal Rift lay.
Leaning like a tired old man on his staff, he remembered the young Jedi who’d come to him a year ago, bringing the tall, elegant blond woman—the most brilliant AI programmer at the Magrody Institute—and strong in the Force as well.
She’d stepped forward, he remembered, to shake his hand, taking charge of the situation so that it wouldn’t take charge of her.
I’m sorry, he wanted to say to them, not knowing quite why.
For life.
For this.
For everything.
“The lander’s going to be launched first, on automatic,” he said, forcing his mind back to the matter at hand. Time was, he knew, now very short. “Once it gets clear of the magnetic field, Blue Shuttle will go …” He gestured to the massive pale block of the Telgorn; it rocked, very slightly, and a muffled thumping could be heard within. He felt a momentary rush of gratitude that the control cabin was completely separate from the passenger hull.
“Triv …”
The elderly stormtrooper stepped forward from the shadows where he’d been standing with Threepio. He’d shed his white armor, and wore again the faded, flower-embroidered makeshifts he’d had on when he’d come on board. His dark face was calm, but there was an infinity of sorrow in his eyes.
“I’m putting you in charge of Blue Shuttle in case there are any problems, but the controls are slaved to Red Shuttle’s console—Nichos will pilot both crafts from there.”
Luke drew a deep, shaky breath. “Cray …”
She raised her eyes. Silence had been growing around her, like a sea creature manufacturing a shell of its armor; a double shell, this time, enfolding them both.
It was the first time he’d seen Cray and Nichos so comfortable together, so close, since the days on Yavin before Nichos’s hands had started to go numb, his vision to blur. With the various small camouflages gone—the steel mesh and the ornamental housings covering wrist joints and neck—he was more than ever a droid, but something in the way they stood, something in their silence, was as if the past eight nightmare months had not taken place.
“There’s an escape pod at the end of the corridor outside the gunnery deck,” he said quietly. “Once I make it to the top of the shaft, I’ll yell down to you and you get to that pod and get the hell out of here. I think there’ll be time.”
“I thought I was the one,” said Cray softly, “who was going up the shaft.”
He shook his head. “I could never make it to the pod. I’ve rested …” It wasn’t much of a lie, he reflected. “I can use the Force to help misfire