Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [23]
Cray withdrew her head from the innards of the navicomp. “I’ll need couplers and some twelve-mil flat cable … you okay, Luke?” For he’d tried to stand, only to sink back, gray-faced and sweating, against the soot-stained bulkhead.
Luke concentrated the Force in his body, on his brain chemistry and the pinched capillaries of his lungs: relaxing, accelerating repair and regrowth. He felt very tired. “I’ll be fine.” Please don’t let there be hostile smugglers at that base, he thought, trying desperately to gather the strength he’d need. Or some kind of secret base of one of the warlords. Or a hidden mine worked by slaves. Or the concealed research station of some nefarious power we’ve never even heard of …
If there was any trouble—even the smallest fight—he didn’t think he could cope with it.
Cray had never seen real action, real trouble. Threepio wasn’t designed for it, and Nichos …
Whatever happened, he had to get back with word that there was definitely something hiding in the Moonflower Nebula. Something dangerous.
“Luke?”
He realized he’d almost blacked out again. Cray was kneeling in front of him—two Crays, dark eyes filled with concern. The accumulated heat of the engines still lingered in this compartment, but even that couldn’t account for the suffocating sensation he felt, hot and stifled, though his hands and feet were cold.
Capillaries. Recovery. Healing.
“Why don’t you let Nichos and me go investigate that signal?”
He took a deep breath and wished he hadn’t. “I think you may need help there.”
Of course, harmless people—good, helpful people—did inhabit unknown bases on remote planets. Please let it be that …
The bad feeling he’d sensed, the knowledge of darkness advancing, didn’t leave him.
“The sooner we can get a message out, the better,” the young woman pointed out. “Whatever’s out in the nebula, we can’t risk letting the Imperial warlords find it, and that risk grows every hour. I can scope out the settlement or camp or whatever it is, ask for the parts we need, and send out a distress signal while you rest a little, then start the patching part of the job as soon as you feel up to it. All right?”
Luke’s head was swimming. He rested it against the bulkhead behind him, fighting for breath. Not all right, he thought. Not if there’s any kind of danger in that camp or in the woods around it.
The spark-charred units, the ruptured hoses dangling like dead limbs, the opened hatches of the compression accelerator and gyro-grav systems, all seemed to be swaying gently, as if the ship were floating on deep water, and the hardrock miners in his skull had resumed their thermal blasting operations again. The thought of getting to his feet, of walking the two or three kilometers to the site of the signal, gave him a sinking feeling inside. I can do it, he told himself grimly. With the help of the Force …
“I think you’ll need me there.”
He held out his hand, shut his teeth hard against nausea as Cray helped him to his feet. She eased him through the hatch, helped him down the steep, ladderlike steps. “What makes you so sure there’ll be trouble?”
“I don’t know,” said Luke softly. “But I can feel trouble of some kind. There’s something …”
They stepped through the hatchway onto the bridge, turned, and found themselves staring down the muzzle of a blaster rifle held by a white-armored Imperial stormtrooper.
Luke’s hand shut around Cray’s wrist as she went for her blaster. “Cray, no!” The trooper tensed—Luke raised his hands, showing them empty. After a moment Cray did likewise. If he went for his lightsaber, Luke thought, the man might still catch them both in the rifle blast, and there was no way of knowing how many others were in the rest of the ship.
From the faceless white helmet a buzzing voice demanded, “State your name and business.”
Cray and Luke stepped back a pace, backs pressed to the wall. Dizziness hit Luke again—he tried to control it, tried to summon enough of the Force to pull the man’s rifle from him if he needed to do it, but suspected it was more than he could manage.
“We