Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [66]
The door heaved, shook. There was a splintering crash, another harsh zatter as the lock was subjected to rifle fire, and the door opened a slot. Blaster fire roared through, raking the small area of the room accessible through the slit, but it was only the smallest of rooms. Ricochets bounced and sizzled wildly against the walls, and Luke flattened into a corner, trying to summon enough of the Force to keep from getting fried by strays. To an extent he could keep the spattering randomness of them off him, but once the Sand People got the doors open enough to crisp the room wholesale …
The Force. If he could use the Force to blow the doors off outward, to hurl himself through in a flying levitation, it might buy him a few seconds …
He knew that was absurd but was summoning his strength, his energy, to try it anyway when a faint clanging noise by his right foot drew his attention.
The repair shaft coverplate had fallen neatly inward.
Luke ducked through, pushed the panel back into place behind him—it had been dogged, and there was a lock mechanism on it, top—and latched it again with the bolts alone, which even without the lock should hold against Sand People. The worklights still burned dimly here, a grudging ocher glow that faded around him as he climbed down, leaving only the faint light of the glowrods on his staff.
At the next level down he paused, resting his forehead against the panel and stretching out his senses through the metal and into the room beyond. He heard no sound, so dogged back the latches and, holding on to the handgrips within the shaft, swung himself back and away from the hatch and summoned the Force, like a violent kick of kinetic energy, from the outside of the panel, smashing it in despite the magnetic lock.
The metal buckled, twisting against the outer latches, sufficiently for Luke to work it free. He slipped through into a dim-lit storage area on Deck 14.
Threepio was waiting for him in the laundry drop. “I was able to find nothing, Master Luke, nothing,” moaned the droid. “Dr. Mingla is doomed, I know she is.”
In the corridor outside, the lights were out. Those in the laundry room dropped to the grimy yellow glow of the emergency batteries in which Threepio’s eyes shone like headlamps.
“And at the rate the Jawas are stealing wire and solenoids from this vessel,” added Threepio tartly, “we’re all doomed.”
“Well, nobody’s doomed yet.” Luke eased himself down against the wall and stretched out his splinted leg, which had begun to throb in spite of all the concentration, all the Jedi healing techniques he could summon. He pulled open the engine-taped flap in the leg of his coverall and affixed another perigen patch to his thigh. The analgesic compound lowered the pain but did nothing for his utter weariness. He wondered if he could force his own alertness to sustain a search of the Deck 6 Detention Block, or whether he would miss some subtle clue from sheer exhaustion.
We’re talking about Gamorreans here, he reflected. How subtle can they be?
Though his every instinct told him to look on the upper decks for Cray, he knew he couldn’t neglect even the possibility of a lead. It did make a kind of sense.
He took a deep breath. “You willing to search the next deck up, Threepio? I can levitate you as far as the opening on Deck … I think it’s Seventeen.” He leaned through the open hatch and looked. The next opening looked at least two levels above the Deck 15 hatch.
“Very well, sir. But I do suggest, Master Luke, that you get some rest. And permit me to re-dress that wound on your leg. According to my perception of your vital signs—”
“I’ll get some rest when I get back from Deck Six. Really,” he added into Threepio’s pregnant silence. “We just … I get the feeling we don’t have a lot of time.” His bones hurt at the thought of climbing down all those levels—one foot down with his whole weight supported on his arms, then move his arms to the next rung to take his whole weight again …
But his escape from the Sand People had convinced him that he was right in not expending his concentration