Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [70]
The descent was longer than expected. Instead of ending up in the basement of the cantina, the poles ran completely through the hill on which that portion of Naos III had been built, all the way to the river itself. The bottom of the poles disappeared into thick ice. In dim natural light Obi-Wan saw that he was in a cavern that had become an inlet for the river. Close to the base of the poles sat three surface-effect sleds of the sort the locals used for ice fishing, outfitted with powerful-looking engines and pairs of long skis.
“I’m too drunk to drive,” Fa’ale was saying.
Anakin had already straddled the machine’s narrow seat, and was studying the controls. “You leave that to me,” he told her. With the flip of a switch, the speeder’s engine coughed to life, then began to purr loudly in the hollow of the cave.
Obi-Wan mounted a second sled, while Fa’ale was positioning herself behind Anakin.
“That one, then that one,” Anakin said, pointing out the ignition switch and the warmer. Demonstrating, he added: “Thrusters, pitch control, steer like this.”
Obi-Wan was instantly confused.
“Like this?”
“Like this, like this!” Anakin emphasized, demonstrating again, then indicating another set of switches on the control panel of Obi-Wan’s machine. “Repulsorlift. But strictly for handling small ice mounds, frozen debris, that sort of thing. This isn’t a conventional speeder—or even a swoop.”
“Do you remember where we parked the cruiser?”
“I don’t even remember landing. But the field can’t be far off.”
“Downriver,” Fa’ale said. “Swing south around the hillock, go under the bridge, then west around the next hillock. Under two more bridges, slalom south again, and we’re there.”
Obi-Wan stared at her. “I’ll follow you two.”
They roared from the mouth of the cavern and out onto the glacial river.
Blaster bolts began to sear into the ice around them before they made the first bridge. Glancing over his shoulder, Obi-Wan saw three sleds gaining on them from upriver.
On the bridge, two beings bundled up in cold-weather gear were drawing a bead on him with a pintle-mounted repeating blaster.
The star that warmed Naos III was a white blur, low on the horizon. Ominous clouds obscured the mountains to Obi-Wan’s right.
Snow was falling harder.
Tearing into it as fast as the sled would carry him, he felt as if he had run smack into a blizzard. The lovely, crystalline flakes would have been like pellets against his face and hands if not for the Force. Even so, he could barely see, and the ice—gray, white, and sometimes blue—was nowhere near as smooth as he had thought it would be. Pebbly where surface water had thawed and refrozen countless times; mounded up over debris trapped during the freeze; pocked by fishing holes; heaped high with ice that had filled the holes …
Matters weren’t helped any by the fact that he was being shot at.
Bolts from the repeating blaster on the bridge had him weaving all over the river, slaloming around ice dams and leaping small mounds. The repulsorlift would have allowed him to fly over the obstacles—as Anakin was doing, farther downriver—but Obi-Wan just couldn’t get the hang of it. More to the point, engaging the repulsorlift required using two hands, and just now he had none to spare. His left was gripped on the control bar/throttle; his right, tight on the hilt of his ignited lightsaber, as he fended off bolts from above and behind.
For a moment he was back on Muunilinst, jousting with Durge’s speeder-freak lancer droids.
Except for the snow.
A vacillating roar in his right ear told him that one of the pursuit sleds had caught up with him. Out of the corner of his streaming eye, Obi-Wan saw the sled’s human pilot bend low over the control bars to provide his Rodian rider with the clearance he needed to send a blaster bolt through Obi-Wan’s head. Braking, Obi-Wan allowed the sled to come alongside more quickly than the Rodian had planned. The rider’s first shot raced past Obi-Wan’s eyes; the second, he