Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 07_ Conviction - Aaron Allston [61]
“Dad. Dad.”
“Got it, Ben.” Even to himself, Luke sounded weary, hurt. He tried to regain control, watched the altimeter numbers plummet.
Four thousand meters. Sky—dust storm—sky. Thirty-five hundred. Dust storm—sky—dust storm. The starboard wing had now lost all three solar panels and was providing lift only with their support strut.
Lift. The fog began to clear from his mind. How good was Snaplaunce’s repulsorlift landing system? Luke activated it, pulsing it at the same moment of each spinning rotation of the shuttle.
Three thousand meters. Twenty-five hundred. The dust storm below was frighteningly close, and it could conceal jagged mountain peaks just below its surface. “Vestara, I need normal atmospheric sensors again.” Sky … Dust storm … The rotation was slowing.
They plunged into the dust storm. Luke tried to ease the shuttle into a gentle starboard bank and descent.
Air bit wing the way it was supposed to. The shuttle made one more roll and came upright, the altimeter reading fifteen hundred meters.
Luke blew out a breath. “Sensors?”
“Nearest mountain altitude twelve hundred meters. Maintain current altitude and we’re safe. Higher might be better.”
“Above the dust storm, the Golan weapons platform will definitely see us,” Luke said. “Now, they either can’t, or are at least dealing with interference. I assume they vaped Ship.”
“No, Master Skywalker.”
“Come again?”
“It missed. It hit something down in a valley. That was the … death convulsion we all felt. I almost blacked out. Ship felt it, too. It wobbled, then turned away and ran.”
“It hit a tsil.” Luke felt deflated. “It killed a tsil.”
A cough from the engines got his attention, but the main monitor was still inactive. “Look, I’m setting this baby down. Storm winds are kicking us around, and we need to know how badly we’re hurt. Any idea where we are?”
“Dad, we’re sixty-two kilometers southeast of our destination. Come to one-three-seven.”
“In that direction, we’re safe down to five hundred meters, and it gets better the farther we go—that’s the descending slope of a mountain range.”
Luke turned to the course Ben had recommended and began a gradual descent. There was a shuddering he didn’t like from the starboard wing. The engines were losing power, and the less thrust they could provide, the less lift the damaged starboard wing would offer.
The repulsorlifts seemed fully functional, though. Under direction from his son and Vestara, he brought the shuttle down until he could occasionally see crystal-decorated hilly ridges just a few score meters beneath the keel. By eye and sensor reports, he slowed the shuttle and brought it down to fewer than five meters. A minute later, the shuttle was running like a landspeeder—repulsors keeping it off the ground while increasingly balky ion engines provided rear thrust.
“Snaplaunce is going to be mad, Dad.”
“We’ll get it restored for him. Assuming he didn’t arrange this.”
“Huh?”
Vestara sounded snappish. “Ben, be sensible. The mayor volunteered his shuttle and knew our destination. The systems that failed—did they do that because they were being overstressed? Or were they sabotaged?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t, either, but your father is right. If Snaplaunce tried to kill us, we don’t pay for his repairs.”
Luke snorted, amused.
The engines continued to weaken, the right one giving out completely, as they completed their journey to the old rock ivory processing site.
It was, according to the data Snaplaunce’s people had transmitted to the shuttle, situated in the foothills of the mountain range the shuttle had last cleared. Despite the uneven terrain, despite the way the dust storm winds grabbed the intact solar wing array and tried to drag the shuttle around by it, Luke was able to navigate through broad ravines and up gentle hill slopes, coaxing the shuttle as though it were an ancient landspeeder being towed behind a bantha, until the facility was, according to the sensors, three hundred meters away. That was when the second engine failed utterly.
The only sounds left