Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [105]
He said, “Nick. Now.”
The quads opened up at full power, blasting chains of laser bolts straight down into the lake of fire between the ship’s forward mandibles. The impact area flashed to superheated plasma that shot gouts of burning rock up over the Falcon’s hull armor. At the same instant, the port dorsal attitude thrusters fired in tandem with the starboard ventrals, exerting a powerful rotational force that, as the quads continued to vaporize and liquefy the cinder in which the mandibles were buried, was literally screwing the ship into the ground.
“You think this is helping?” Nick yelped.
“Shh. This isn’t my best trick, either.”
Luke focused on nothing until he could feel everything. Nick’s chatter, his own fatigue, the battle outside, and the doom lowering upon Leia all flowed into him and out again like water, leaving no trace behind. He let himself become clear as a crystal bell, so that he could chime with one pure note.
That note was a tiny twist of intention that the Force channeled high into the atmosphere to gently—very gently—nudge the falling proton bombs. This very gentle nudge altered their trajectories by no more than a degree or two apiece, giving each a bit of an outward curve, so that instead of landing in a precise ring one hundred meters in diameter with the Falcon at its centerpoint, they landed in an equally precise ring four hundred meters in diameter, which meant that their overlapping blast radii did not so much crumple the ship as give it a very, very firm squeeze, much like how one might squeeze a rakmelon pip between one’s fingers. And very much like this metaphoric rakmelon pip, the Falcon squirted free with considerable force.
Straight down.
That should have presented a greater problem, but the explosion of the proton bombs further weakened what turned out to be the cracked and fragile upper shell of a vast volcanic bubble that formed the floor of the cinder pit; the shock waves from the bombs, combined with the cannon fire from the Falcon’s turrets and the corkscrewing motion of its downward pressure, shattered the rocky shell so that the ship broke through and plummeted down a rugged natural vent that was several hundred meters deep, falling through a rain of boulders, jagged rock shards, and burning cinder while it bounced and clanged off rocks on either side.
Nick’s comment of “Whoa-aye-yi-yi-yiiii …” trailed off to silence when he ran out of breath. Luke was clambering out of his turret. “Aeona! Autosequence the attitude jets and engage the repulsorlifts!”
“Oh, you think?”
Luke braced himself in the access hatch as the Falcon jerked itself level. The repulsorlift engines screamed. The ship slammed into the pile of rubble at the bottom of the vent with much clanging and screeching of tortured metal, and finally sat, while rocks and cinder and unidentified debris clattered down on top of it.
Nick blinked at the pile of rubble on which his turret currently rested. “Okay, that was original. You know if she’d been half a second slower with the repulsorlifts, you’d have been scraping what was left of me out of here with a spatula.” He leaned forward to peer up through the dorsal turret at the tiny ragged disk of firelight and blaster flashes that was the hole through which they’d fallen. “And you did this on purpose?”
“Sort of. I knew we had to get underground; I just wasn’t sure how we’d do it. Nice of the bad guys to help us out, huh?”
“Remind me to send ’em a thank-you card.”
Luke fished out a comlink as he headed forward. “Aeona, cut the thrusters and cycle all power to the repulsorlifts. I’m on my way.”
“On your way where?” Nick asked.
“Somebody has to fly this bucket.”
“Fly it? Down here?”
“Yes. And from what I’ve seen of