Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [25]
Jets of icy gas surged up from deck grates and curled themselves around the consoles that still spat sparks and gushed smoke. Luke moved toward the comm console, stumbled on something yielding, and dropped to one knee.
He’d tripped over Kalback. Over his body. Half the Mon Cal admiral’s face was crushed; it looked like he had taken a square console corner to the head at some point during the series of impacts that had knocked everyone on the battle bridge off their feet and shaken them around like dice in a cup. Luke lowered his head, laid one gentle hand on the intact side of Kalback’s face, and commended his departed spirit to the Force.
In the instant he touched the Force, it gave him back the profound certainty that if he didn’t get moving, he’d soon be similarly commending the spirits of everyone on the ship. Including himself. In the Force, the truth was solid as the deck on which he knelt. The Justice was doomed.
He made it to the comm console. Lieutenant Tubrimi was still at his post, but he was clutching a bloody shoulder and looked unsteady and shocky. “What—what was that?” was all he could say, again and again.
“Lieutenant, put out an all-hands. Marines to the landers. Everybody else to escape pods. We’re abandoning ship.”
“The—the admiral—he won’t—we can’t—”
“He’s dead, Tubrimi. Pull it together.”
“But—but we don’t even have damage reports yet—”
“Damage reports?” The battle bridge shuddered, and more Klaxons went off. “Feel that?” Luke said. “That was another piece of this ship exploding. Get that all-hands out. Then get yourself to a pod, too. That’s an order.”
“Sir, I—copy that, sir.” Tubrimi turned back to his console with a grimly desperate look. “Thank you, sir.”
Luke had already moved on. Farther down the deck, R2-D2 was down, whirring and whistling, leaking smoke as he rolled from side to side. Luke reached out through the Force and set the little droid upright. “It’s okay, Artoo, I’m here,” he said, crouching beside him. “Let’s have a look.”
R2-D2 whistled plaintively and rolled in a tight circle; one of his locomotor arms was bent and spitting sparks at the joint; the rollerped on that side wasn’t functioning at all, just skidding as Artoo dragged it across the deck. “Okay, I see it. Doesn’t look serious—you can probably fix it yourself, once we’re clear. Come on.”
The little astromech tweetered in a more decisive tone.
“Forget it,” Luke said. “I’m not leaving you. We’ll get out of this together.”
“Um, sir?” Tubrimi said with a shaky laugh. “We might not get out of this at all.”
Luke rose, and cleared smoke from the air around Tubrimi’s console with a gesture. “Show me.”
The blurred, hazy readout that ghosted into existence above the console had no good news for them: the Justice had already broken up. The three major pieces tumbled helplessly through Mindor’s asteroid-filled orbit, each surrounded by swarms of dogfighting X-wings and TIEs. The two larger pieces streamed pinwheel fountains of thruster signatures as marine landers and escape pods streaked away in random directions through the fight. The smaller piece streamed only billows of flash-frozen atmosphere. “That small piece—that’s us, sir. The bridge section has taken multiple torpedo hits to the pod bays. There, uh, aren’t any pods. Not anymore. There aren’t any pod bays. There aren’t any—”
Luke stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder. “How many hands trapped with us?”
Tubrimi swallowed hard. “Can’t say, sir. Could be several hundred. But they won’t be with us for long.” His webbed fingers fluttered helplessly at the display. “In no more than five minutes this battle bridge will be the only place with any life support at all. The breakup has wiped out atmosphere