Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 01_ Outcast - Aaron Allston [61]
“Just what you see here. Mostly air currents caused by our repulsors. They return short, false movement positives.”
“No, I mean you. Through the Force.”
“Ah.” She shook her head. “Not much. There's life all around us, mostly very faint—lower life-forms like insects, I think. Nothing as bright or vital as a humanoid or a giant arachnid.”
“Would the spiders show up in the Force?” Han asked.
“We'll see. They'll show up in the motion detectors.” Leia tilted her head, her eyes narrowing in concentration. “Wait, there's something.”
Han gulped and looked all around. “Where?”
“Below us. Strong, but distant.”
“What's under us on the map?” Han gave the speeder a little more altitude, but this tunnel was only five meters tall; he could bring the speeder as close as possible to the irregular ceiling and a Wookiee standing on the floor could still reach up and touch it.
Leia switched her attention to the monitor where she kept the map. “Nothing,” she said. “This isn't the deepest point in the mine, but there's no part of the mine beneath us.”
“Uncharted tunnels, then.”
Leia turned her head this way and that as if listening to something whose location she couldn't quite gauge. “It's coming this way.”
“Straight up?”
“Yes.”
Han nudged the thrusters. It wouldn't do to build up too much speed in these twisting tunnels, but he also didn't want to be directly over something when it came crashing up through the floor.
“It's adjusting to follow.”
Han blinked. “That's no spice spider, then.” He put on more speed.
“Coming up closer. Pacing us, directly beneath.”
Han glanced at the sensor board. It showed nothing but their own air displacement manifesting on the movement detector readout. “Pacing us in the rock?” Then realization hit him. “Hey, I know what that has to be.”
“What?”
It burst up from the rock below and ahead of the speeder, a swirling ball of colored lights, just large enough to fit an astromech like R2-D2 completely within it. It leapt up directly into Han's path, its comparative brilliance all but blinding him. He twitched the speeder to port, the barest of maneuvers, intended to return the speeder to its original course instantly after it avoided the obstacle …
But the speeder plowed right through the ball of light. Han felt hair standing on end all over his body. Instantly, the repulsors quit, and every monitor and readout on the control console crackled and went black.
Han yanked back on the yoke, knowing the attempt was futile. The speeder dropped three meters and plowed nose-first into the tunnel floor. It skidded forward, its contact with the bare stone sending up sparks, then fetched up against the right-hand tunnel wall and was still.
Leia leaned over him. “Are you all right?”
“No problem.” Han turned to stare back the way they'd come. The swirling ball of luminescence hovered there, thirty meters away, un-moving, as if watching them.
Leia put her hand on her lightsaber. “Very pretty. And destructive. What is it?”
“The miners here call them bogeys. Some sort of indigenous life-form—”
Leia extended her free hand toward the thing and closed her eyes.
“—and the spiders eat them, so, you know, if one is here, the odds improve that a spider is coming—”
“I don't think it's alive. I can't detect it in the Force as life, just as energy. Energy and intent.” Leia opened her eyes again. “I'm going to give it a look.” She donned her breath mask, then opened the door. Han felt the air pressure diminish; he grabbed and put on his own mask. Leia stepped out of the speeder.
“Leia, no, get back in the speeder, it just may mean that no Kessel life-form shows up in the Force, you know, like the Yuuzhan Vong, meaning that the spiders might not, either—”
She wasn't listening. Muttering a swear word that would have caused other smugglers to raise an eyebrow,