Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [16]
Brassy lights flared over Marcopius’s dark frown, and the cool, neutral voice of an emergency recording began to announce monotonously, “This vessel is in stage two of hyperspace sequence. Taking a scout craft out at this time is extremely dangerous. Contact the main bridge and review your instructions. This vessel is in stage two of hyperspace sequence …”
“Hyperspace!” wailed Threepio. “Who could be taking it into …”
“One of the synthdroids. No one else is alive.” Marcopius delicately lifted the scout boat from its moorings and swung its nose weightlessly toward the black rectangle of the portal. “Can’t you shut that thing up?”
“I’m terribly sorry, Yeoman Marcopius, but my program forbids me to tamper with safety equipment of any kind.”
The young man made a final sequence of adjustments, lip between his teeth, sweat glistening on his forehead, while the warning voice repeated over and over that it was extremely dangerous to take out a scout craft of any kind. Ahead of them, through the portal, they saw the Adamantine flash bright as it turned, accelerating, then vanished in a spangle of hyperblue light.
“Where can they be going?” nattered Threepio. “That’s nowhere near the hyperspace jump point for Coruscant. If we can somehow extrapolate from the jump point to learn where they’re going …”
“They’re not going anywhere.” Marcopius was breathing hard now, setting the controls. On the decoder screen before them the digitalized images of the flagship and its escort continued to float among the empty, lifeless worlds that comprised most of the sector. “They’re just taking the ships into hyperspace, period. Don’t you see? The whole point has to be that Her Excellency vanishes, without a trace, after she’s seen to leave the rendezvous safely. They must have one turbo-powered holo faker working for them.” He put his hand to his chest, as if to massage away some deep, troubling ache. “Hang on.”
He eased forward on the levers, sweat sparkling in the cropped suede of his hair in the doubled glare of amber and scarlet warning lights. The small, boxlike craft slid through the magnetic portal and flipped immediately down, around, avoiding the Borealis’s stabilizers, picking up speed while interacting with a far larger vessel, which was ripping along at thousands of kilometers per second.
Threepio clutched at the back of the empty navigator’s station, circuits momentarily jammed with alarm. Artoo let out a long, trilling wail as the scout boat whipped by inches from the bigger ship’s secondary tanks. The wake of the flagship’s magnetic field tossed and dragged the little craft like a chip in a riptide. Marcopius’s dark hands flickered and danced from levers to joystick to toggles as huge sheets of metal and rivets rocketed past the observation ports, alternating with slabs of interstellar blackness already shimmering with the light-shift effects of hyperspace sequence. Then the scout boat plunged away, spinning dizzily, stars and ships and planets reeling in a disorienting tumble past the ports. There was a blinding flash, far too near for comfort, as the Borealis plunged into the glimmering void of quasi-reality that was called “hyperspace” for lack of any better term.
Far to starboard, as Marcopius stabilized the spinning scout boat, the Light of Reason had left orbit as well, streaking toward the Nam Chorios primary like an incandescent teardrop.
“Shall we go after them?”
“And do what?” The young yeoman’s hands were trembling where they lay on the console. “Throw spit-balls at them? This is a scout boat, not an E-wing. Besides, we’re too big to make it past those gun stations they were talking about.”
He nodded toward the viewport, where the Light of Reason was diminishing into the stars. “Just looking at that ship I’d guess it comes apart and goes down to the planet in self-powered sections, leaving the main reactor in orbit. It’s the only way they could get enough bulk for even limited hyperspace capability.”
He guided the scout boat in a