Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [20]
“I’ve got a fix …”
“It’ll be inaccurate in two seconds.” Luke ran a hasty systems check. He was peripherally aware of the dig of his safety harness into his shoulders and hips; if internal gravity was failing probably heat and air were out, too. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Aft starboard sensors blind,” reported Nichos, hanging on to the safety handle by the crippled data console. His feet were off the floor. “Deflectors one-third power …”
Luke maneuvered carefully along the line of sight behind the shielding asteroid, fighting the helm’s drift to port, which told him the stabilizer was out. He didn’t even have to key the readout to know the vessel wouldn’t make hyperspace. “How far to Pzob?”
“Three or four hours at top sublight,” reported Cray. She sounded grim but not scared, though this was her first time under fire. Good, Luke thought, for a young woman who’d gone straight from the schoolroom to the lecture room with no stops in between. “That’s just guessing. I’ve got a helm bearing but I can’t get an exact distance.”
“Our sublight engines seem to be okay,” said Luke. “We’ll be on emergency oxygen and we’ll probably be pretty cold by the time we get there. Threepio, I hope you know Gamorrean.”
Threepio said, “Oh, dear.”
“Course seems to be clear all around.” Cray toggled through the setting a second time, though the navicomp screen was fritzing in and out of focus. If they lost that, thought Luke, they were really down a hole.
No further shots from the asteroid base. Nevertheless his scalp prickled, and he laid the course for the longest line of sight he could to keep the asteroid between him and where he figured the base was.
“Right,” he said softly. “Let’s make hyperdust.”
The Huntbird had just started to move when a bolt of ionized plasma hit the shielding asteroid like the hammer of Death. Rocks, energy, heat slammed into the explorer vessel like monstrous shrapnel. Luke felt the safety harness that held him tear loose with the violence of the impact: Cray screamed, and he was grabbed by darkness.
Chapter 4
Luke came to long enough to throw up, not a pleasant occurrence in zero-g. Two See-Threepios unhooked him from the safety harness in which he floated and steered him—with surprising nimbleness for a droid who always seemed so carefully balanced—out of the small cubicle and into what he thought was the aft crew room before he passed out once more.
The Force, he thought. Got to use the Force.
Why?
Because your lungs have stopped working.
It took an astonishing amount of concentration to inhale again, and it hurt a lot more than he’d thought it would. A little later he wondered if he could use the Force to do something about the crazed bantha that seemed to be trapped inside his skull and trying to ram its way out.
It occurred to him the next time he came to—the cold woke him, that time—that he probably had a concussion.
“Luke,” said Cray, and now she sounded scared. “Luke, you’ve got to wake up!”
He knew she was probably right.
The Force, he thought again. Cilghal, his Calamarian student, had taught him enough about the specific physiological mechanism of concussions that he knew exactly where to bring the Force to bear, though it was a little like trying to take off a glove one-handed. His lungs felt as if he’d inhaled a sand drill and neglected to turn it off. No wonder breathing hadn’t been a lot of fun.
Increased blood flow to the capillaries to clear the impurities. Accelerated healing to the cells of that rioting squadron of drunken Gamorreans that had formerly been his brain.
Opening his eyes, he worked on consolidating both Crays into the single individual he was pretty sure they were.
“Where are we?”
“Coming up on the K Seven Forty-nine System.” She had a huge bruise on the side of her face, the makeup that had been on her eyes streaked black with