Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [133]
But he did his best to ignore those sensations, because none of them would help him kill that evil son of an inbred ruskakk.
When Nick closed his eyes and turned his whole mind to the task, he simply knew that this dark star of hunger and decay was straight ahead, on the shuttle’s current course. He knew it was moving, and when it smeared into a streak of jump radiation, he knew that too.
“He’s gone into jump,” Aeona said from the pilot’s chair. “Unless there’s more than one of these asteroids with a hyperdrive.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“The navicomputer says his vector’s wrong for the jump-out point.”
“He’s not going for the jump-out point. He’s making for deep space.”
“Then how are we supposed to find him? Guess?”
“I can find him,” Nick said. “He can run, but he can’t hide. Not from me. Get on his vector and jump.”
“How far?”
“Just outside the system.”
He could hear the shrug in her voice. “You’re the boss.”
“If you only knew how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that.”
He heard the tapping of codes being punched into the navicomputer. The rising whine of the hyperdrive sped them toward jump … then he heard the whine drop as the hyperdrive spun down.
Nick sat up so suddenly he whacked his head on the crawlspace’s ceiling. “What’s going on? Why didn’t we—”
“Fail-safe cut in.” Aeona’s voice was tight. She twisted to glance at him over her shoulder, and the look on her face made his stomach twist. “We’re in a gravity well.”
She checked the shuttle’s sensors. “Mass-shadows all over the place,” she said, low and slow and grim. “They’ve repowered the gravity stations.”
“What? Which ones?”
She lowered her head. “All of them.”
“No way,” Nick snarled. “No fraggin’ way!”
“All those ships. All those people. On both sides.” Again she twisted to look at him over her shoulder. Her eyes were haunted. “None of them are getting out. Not one.”
Nick felt hollow inside, as if somebody had reached down his throat and pulled out his guts. He turned half-blind eyes to the meters-thick custom shielding that so nearly filled the entire shuttle. “Just us,” he said. “Nobody else.”
Aeona nodded. “I think we’re the only ones who have a chance to live through this.”
LEIA STILL WRITHED AND TWISTED IN THAT HORRIBLE slow-motion convulsion, despite Han and Chewbacca’s best efforts to calm her and hold her still. “Take her to the cockpit and buckle her into your chair so she can’t hurt herself,” Han said. “I’m going after Luke.”
“Howergh!”
“He’d go back for me,” Han replied grimly. “In fact, he has.”
“Argharoo-oo hrf.”
“I’m not keeping count.” He sprinted for the gangway and clambered up to throw open the dorsal access hatch. When he poked his head out, all he saw was Luke’s tame stormtroopers up on the ring ledge, writhing and howling in incomprehensible agony.
“Hey, bucket-heads!” Han shouted. “What’s wrong with you guys? Where’s L—uh, where’s your emperor?”
All he got in reply was more howling, so he went up another rung on the gangway and peered around. The wreckage of the Falcon’s dorsal quad turret made him wince; all that was left was a flattened mass of crumpled transparisteel under great big gleaming chunks of what looked like obsidian. He made a mental note to bill the repairs to Lando.
Another couple of steps up the gangway raised his angle of vision enough that he could see the crown of the big man’s shaved head over the wreckage and rubble. One step more showed him Luke’s limp, unresisting form hanging from the big man’s grip while that son of a Pervickian dung camel chewed on Luke’s neck—!
Han cleared the hatch in a single leap, and by the time his feet touched the hull his blaster was in his hand. “Hey, monkey-breath! Chew on this!”
But he couldn’t just fire from the hip; Luke was in the way and Han knew stun blasts were useless against the Vastor body. In the fraction of a second that it took him to bring the DL-44 up to eye level to