Star Wars_ Splinter of the Mind's Eye - Alan Dean Foster [4]
Luke fought his own instrumentation. It flaunted a farrago of electronic nonsense at him. The madly bucking X-wing was held in the grip of unidentified forces powerful enough to toss it about like a plaything. The chromatic storm vanished behind him as if he’d suddenly emerged from a waterspout, but his controls continued to exhibit what were probably permanent manifestations of the electronically addled.
A quick verbal survey revealed what he most feared: the Princess’ fighter was nowhere in sight. Trying to control his drunken ship with one hand on the manual controls, Luke activated the communicator with the other.
“Leia! Leia, are you …?”
“No … control, Luke,” came the static-sprinkled reply. He could barely make out the words. “Instruments … replonza. I’m trying to get down in … one piece. If we …”
Gone, no matter how frantically he cajoled the communicator. His attention was diverted as something in one overhead panel blew out in a shower of sparks and metal fragments. The cockpit filled with acrid fumes.
Impelled by a desperate thought, Luke activated the fighter’s tracker. Part of the little ship’s offensive armament, it was among its best-built and sealed components. Even so, it had been overloaded by the fury of the peculiar distorting energies, energies which its designers had never anticipated that it would encounter.
Useless now, nonetheless its automatic record was intact and playable. It showed for several moments the falling spiral which could only have been left by the Princess’ ship. As best as he could without autoenhancement, Luke set the X-wing on a pursuit course downward. There was little to no chance of following the Princess precisely. He simply prayed that now they might land somewhere other than on opposite sides of the planet from each other. He simply prayed they might land.
Swerving slightly like a crippled camel in a sandstorm, the fighter continued to drop. As the lush surface of Mimban rushed up at him, Luke caught rolling, twisting glimpses of mountainless green swaths interwoven with veins and arteries of muddy brown and blue.
Though he was utterly ignorant of Mimbanian topography, the green and blue-brown of rivers and streams and vegetation seemed infinitely preferable as landing sites to, say, the endless cerulean of open sea or the gray spires of young mountains. No rock is as soft as water and no water so soft as a swamp, he reflected, trying to cheer himself. He was starting to believe he actually might survive the touchdown, the Princess doing likewise.
Frantically he fought to discover a combination of circuits that would reactivate the target tracker. Once he partly succeeded. The screen showed the Y-wing still on the course he’d just plotted. His chance of setting down close to her ship was looking better.
Despite the demands on his mind, he couldn’t help but consider the energy distortions that had ruined their instrumentation. The fact that the rainbow maelstrom was confined to one area—an area very close to the location of the landing beacon—raised questions as intriguing as they were disturbing.
Trying to minimize the effects of his insane controls, Luke switched off his engines and continued down on glide. Back on Tatooine he’d had plenty of practice idling in his skyhopper. But that was considerably different from doing practically the same thing in a vehicle as complex as this fighter. He had no idea if the same thought would occur to the Princess, or if she had had any experience in powerless flight. Anxiously chewing his lower lip, Luke realized that even if she tried gliding, his own craft was far better suited to such a maneuver than her Y-wing.
If only he could see her he’d feel a lot better. Strain his eyes as he might, though, there