Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 07_ Conviction - Aaron Allston [44]
Luke set the old man down and ran to Ben’s side. “You all right?”
Ben stood. He had a cut on his cheek, and his cloak was gone. His breath, like his father’s, emerged as a cone of frozen vapor. “Just fine. Dad, Zara. Zara, meet Luke Skywalker.”
The woman, dark-haired and big-eyed, no more than glanced at Luke before running to Vestara and her son. The little boy wailed—not in pain; he was watching his home sail away, borne by phantom winds.
The dome disappeared over the horizon of Hweg Shul’s low skyline. Then they heard it come to ground, a terrible crunching and crashing in the distance.
That seemed to be a signal for the powers that tormented the town. All around, the dancing, whirling, zooming devices and building components that had made the neighborhood a nightmare of danger and mayhem crashed down to city streets and building roofs.
They fell, and then silence fell—silence broken only by the gasps of the injured, distant cries of pain, proximity alarms being triggered.
Vestara rejoined them.
Luke looked at the youngsters. Vestara, too, was little damaged; her robe was ripped at the shoulder, and its lower hem was splashed by liquid that smelled as if it came from an aquarium.
Luke nodded at the destruction around them. “Let’s get to work.”
* * *
An hour later, they had done all they could—helping Oldtimers and Newcomers alike dig victims out of collapsed houses, helping find children separated from parents, helping round up cu-pas freed when a corral fence collapsed.
The flying dome had, fortunately, come down in a field rather than atop another dwelling. It had claimed no victims.
Reports were sketchy. It appeared that there had been deaths, one of a man electrocuted in his sanisteam cabinet, one of a teenage boy crushed by a tumbling airspeeder. There might have been more; some dwellings had caught fire, and their charred ruins had not yet been fully explored. There were indications, too, that other Nam Chorios towns and settlements had been hit by the Force storm.
But for now the chaos had subsided, and Sel led the three of them back to their hostel.
Ben shook his head, wondering. Or perhaps Luke mistook his constant shivering for a shake of the head; Ben had not found his cloak. But Ben’s voice certainly sounded impressed. “So that was a Force storm.”
“That was worse than any I’ve ever seen.” Luke tried to recall the descriptions Leia had provided him of the ones she’d weathered. “Worse than any I’ve heard about, actually.”
Vestara frowned, the expression barely visible under her goggles. “Why was it mostly electronics affected?”
“No one is sure.” Sel’s voice was heavy with regret. “And we haven’t had any Force storms in thirty years to evaluate. But there’s a theory that, since Force activity is magnified and scattered by the presence of the tsils, and since the tsils themselves are a crystal life-form resembling programmable computer chips, the Force energy is reshaped and resonates with computer circuitry. Everything manufactured these days has circuitry in it—even durasteel girders, for self-diagnostic purposes. A dome like that would have hundreds in it …”
Vestara sounded impressed. “Did we cause that?”
“No.” Sel’s voice was decisive. “No. Listener techniques don’t do that. I’d have seen it happen before. This was … something different.”
“Abeloth.” Luke repressed a sigh. “She’s here. Somewhere. Experimenting. Using the Force with greater strength than I ever did, certainly. And not caring what happens when she does so.”
Sel caught Luke’s eye and deliberately lagged a little behind. Luke matched his pace to hers. The two teenagers drew ahead.
Luke heard Vestara’s voice rise, her tone one of accusation. “That’s just a ploy, Ben.”
“No, it’s not. I’m freezing. Look at me.”
She sighed and opened her cloak, wrapping it around him as well. He tucked in close to her, and they shared its warmth.
Sel