Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [133]
Leaning as far as he could into the viewport, Han watched Jadak clamber out of the maintenance access and pick his way to the tip of the mandible. Hooking his hands around the floodlamp bracket, he lowered himself over the edge and dropped to the deck.
Han scanned the area in front of the ship for Leia, Allana, C-3PO, or Poste, but saw no sign of them.
Clinging to separate illuminators, Leia and Poste found themselves rescued from a plunge into the abyss by a sudden lurching of the lift deck that came close to catapulting them clear over the seesawing Falcon. The deck had leveled out and was beginning to move steadily downward. But now Allana and C-3PO, still entwined in the spiked vegetation, were suddenly above the ship.
Racing to the edge of the turbolift, Leia stretched her arms toward Allana.
But it was Jacen she saw; not with her eyes, but in her mind's eye. Jacen, living on in his daughter. Leia's heart swelled, and tears streamed from her eyes.
Drooping away from the structure's inner wall, the exotic foliage seemed to reach out for her and for the Falcon. At the same time, Allana and C-3PO extricated themselves from the thorns and all but walked through the air to the front area of the deck, carried there by the Force. Leia raced for her granddaughter and gathered her up in her arms.
Allana's voice was tiny and tentative when she spoke. “I shouldn't have been able to do that, right?”
“Wrong,” Leia said, wiping tears from her cheeks. “You were born to do that.”
With Poste, Jadak, and C-3PO in tow, Leia and Allana were just rounding the starboard mandible when Han came barreling down the boarding ramp, eyes wide and mouth ajar in apprehension. On seeing them, his entire expression changed. He rushed forward to hug them, and they remained in an embrace for the rest of the time it took the turbolift to descend.
Additional illuminators had flared, filling the air with electrical static and bathing the cavernous landing bay in eerie light. The keening of sentinel beetles was distant, but sparkbees bombinated overhead and the barbed undergrowth that had infiltrated the structure was crawling with larval insects and newts the color of arterial blood. Worse, the ancient floor was shaking in concert with Tandun III itself.
Already formulating an escape plan, Han gazed up at the opening in the roof. “We can't stay down there. This whole place could collapse.”
“Just a quick look around,” Jadak said.
Allana stopped gnawing at her fingernails long enough to give Han a fervent nod.
Stepping from the lift, the six of them headed for a corbeled archway that marked the entrance to an even more brightly lighted chamber. Last in line, C-3PO slowed his pace, cocking his head to one side, as if in response to something his audio pickups had monitored, then hastening to catch up with the others.
“I recognize this,” Leia said loudly enough to be heard over the thunderclaps reverberating in the vast chamber. “It was the emblem of the Republic.”
Hung on brackets affixed to the ancient block wall, the gleaming three-meter-tall by three-meter-wide emblem was an eight-rayed stellar symbol, centered in a circle whose circumference was made up of dashed lines. Other than a stack of empty storage crates, it was the only thing in the room.
Leia reached out to caress the luminous metal. “An emblem identical to this hung in the Hall of Justice on Alderaan—up until Palpatine's declaration—”
“But this is not that one,” a voice said from behind them.
Han had his blaster out even before he completed his turn; Leia, her lightsaber, its shimmering blade raised in front of her. Approaching them were Lestra Oxic and his assistant Koi Quire, surrounded by a quartet of armed bodyguards, two of whom were the ship thieves from Vaced.
“Lestra!” Leia said. “You tracked us.”
“Actually, my dear, it was the owner of the rental shop on Vaced. He has already reported the theft of his slicer droid to the authorities.”
“So you're here to see whether we want a lawyer,” Jadak said.
Oxic motioned for his henchmen to holster