Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [96]
Exhausted as he was, Luke found it a strain even to focus the Force on Ugbuz’s mind. “I’m not Major Calrissian.”
“That’s what the computer says, pal,” snarled Krok. “So who are you and what’re you doin’ on this ship?”
“We know what he’s doin’ …”
“You’re thinking of someone else.” But Luke felt the cold shadow of something else in their minds, the ugly certainty of the Will.
Turning to the nearest Kitonak, Threepio reeled off an endless chain of whistles, buzzes, and glottal stops, to which all the Kitonaks listened intently while Ugbuz growled, “There’s somethin’ funny goin’ on here since you first came on board, mister. And I think you and I need to have us a little talk about it.”
The Gamorreans closed in around Luke at the same moment that the Kitonaks, with a sudden burbling ripple of interest, closed in and as one entity seized the Gamorreans, each Kitonak grasping a Gamorrean’s arm in huge, stubby hands. And they began to talk.
Luke darted between them—“Grab him!” yelled Ugbuz between the two portly mushrooms that held him in a grip like stone. He tugged furiously at their hold, but he might as well have tried to un-embed his hand from fast-set concrete. The Kitonaks, having found an audience for whatever it was they had to say, were not letting go. “And somebody get these stinkin’ yazbos off me!”
Two ersatz troopers were already trying to free their compatriots with axes—as he ducked through the lounge door, yanking Threepio after him, Luke saw the ax blades bounce harmlessly off the Kitonaks’ rubbery hides. Then the door hissed down behind him with a furious snap.
>Deck 6, laundry drop< appeared on the narrow monitor plate where the door’s serial combination would usually be shown.
Luke grabbed Threepio by the arm and hobbled. Behind them the door jerked in its tracks, rising half a meter or so. There was furious pounding, curses, the sizzle of blaster bolts that sang and zapped and ricocheted wildly in the section lounge and—a moment later as the Gamorreans finally got out—in the hall. The fugitives ducked down a cross-corridor and across an office pod, hearing behind them a mellifluous treble outcry of “After them! After them!”
Luke swung around, gathered all the waning strength of the Force to sweep every desk and chair in the room like the blast of some huge hurricane at the multicolored riot of Affytechans who came barreling through the door. They tripped, fell, tangling in comm cords and terminal cables—Luke’s mind flashed out, transforming the cables for a moment almost into the semblance of living things, grabbing snakelike at his pursuers.
He staggered, his mind aching, and Threepio dragged him on.
“You go first,” he gasped, not knowing if he could levitate Threepio down eight decks of repair tube. He fell to his knees, trembling in a sweat of exhaustion before the open panel.
“Master Luke, I can remain behind—”
“Not after that trick with the Kitonaks you can’t,” gasped Luke. “What’d you say to them?”
Threepio paused halfway through the panel—an incredible display of trust considering that he was not flexible enough to use the ladder rungs. “I informed them that Ugbuz had expressed an interest in their ancestors’ recipe for domit pie. That’s what they’ve been discussing all this time, you know. Exchanging recipes. And genealogies.”
Luke laughed, and the laughter gave him a kind of strength. Closing his eyes, he called the Force to him, lifting the golden droid within the dark confines of the shaft. Lowering him … There is no difference between that leaf and your ship, Yoda had said to him once. Raising a single yellow-green leaf the size of Luke’s thumbnail, making it dance in the warm, wet air of Dagobah. No difference between that leaf and this world.
Luke saw the leaf—small, light, shimmering, shiny gold—descend the blackness of the shaft.
Voices in the corridor behind him. The Gamorreans’ curses and squeals, the stern soprano yammering of the rainbow Affytechans.
He dragged himself into the shaft, hung for a moment on