Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [99]
Nick scowled up at the ship’s dark silhouette. “What do we do, knock?”
“No comlink.” Luke held one hand pressed against his ear. “We have to get their attention somehow.”
“Where’s the hatch?”
“Up there.” Luke gestured vaguely overhead; the belly hatch was high up the underside, out of reach. “Maybe we can climb.”
“No problem. I grew up in a jungle. I can climb anything.”
“Not yet. Something’s wrong.”
“Other than their landing? Shee, in the holoshows, Solo’s supposed to be such a hot pilot …”
Luke frowned. “I feel … fear and anger. Aggression. Danger. Han’s my best friend—why would his ship feel hostile?”
“Dunno.” Nick looked around and spotted a slow swing of motion in the darkness above. “Think it might be because that quad turret’s tracking us?”
The Force stabbed Luke with an instant overpowering Move-or-die; in less than an eyeflick his foot lashed out to slam Nick back deeper under the hull and he sprang into the air, back-flipping away. The night ripped open with the choomchoomchoomchoom of high-cyclic cannon fire, burning the air into long streaks of brilliant yellow that lit up the cinder pit like noon on Tatooine, and blowing gouts of white-molten rock in all directions.
The turret tracked Luke, chopping red-hot craters toward him like the footprints of an invisible fire god. He landed and sprang again on a different vector, and by the time the turret followed that leap he was off again on another that took him behind a boulder the size of an adolescent bantha. He pressed his back against it while the turret blasted away at its other side, and from the amount of smoke going up and debris raining down, he was pretty sure that turret’s gunner, whoever he was, figured the easiest way to get him would be to just blast the rock to pieces.
He rolled across to the opposite edge and risked a quick glance. Looked like Nick wasn’t kidding about being able to climb anything; he was clambering up the overhanging slant of the hull faster than a hungry mynock. “Nick! Get off of there!”
Nick reached the gimbal cowling of the quad turret. With Nick hanging half across the transparisteel viewport, the gunner quit blasting; Luke could see him inside, shouting Get your fraggin’ grass off my turret, or something along those lines.
“Nuts to that,” Nick called back. “He can’t shoot me here! Toss me your lightsaber and I’ll shut this ruskakk down with one swipe!”
“No, Nick! Jump! The Falcon’s equipped with a—”
A burst of blue-white energy crackled over the freighter’s hull; the discharge threw Nick tumbling from the turret to the ground, where he landed on his back with an authoritative whump.
“—antipersonnel field projector,” Luke finished belatedly.
The gunner opened up again. Luke extended his hand and summoned the Force; a sharp shove sent Nick skidding, and Luke decided he’d had just about enough of being shot at for one night. He took a deep breath and sent his mind into the Force.
The Falcon loomed large in his perception, as did the thirty or so desperate people he now felt were inside. He shut them out of his consciousness and focused on the ship itself. There—he felt the circuit he was looking for … and he even felt the echo of Leia’s hand upon it! She had touched this only hours earlier. Maybe even less …
But this was a distraction—even more distracting than the shuddering of the boulder as cannon blasts chewed away at its opposite side. The mere awareness of Leia’s recent presence was enough to flood his mind with all manner of fears and hopes that dimmed his perception until he could banish them and focus once more. A few more deep breaths tuned his mind like a targeting laser, and he recovered his hold on the circuit. A slight nudge in the Force, and he felt the circuit trip.
The quad turret went dark, and its guns fell silent. The turret autorotated to face forward between the freighter’s mandibles.
Luke could feel the gunner’s confusion and rising panic; he figured he had at least five seconds before the gunner