Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy_ Champions of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [111]
That made sense, didn’t it?
Didn’t it?
Mara Jade knelt beside the message cylinder, running her slender hands over its hull. She popped open the access plate. “Well, it’s not encrypted,” she said. “Either Kyp didn’t have time, or he knew we’d be the ones to pick it up. He left the homing beacon off.”
“Just open it,” Han said roughly. He’d had enough of this grim waiting. What had Kyp thought to say in his last moments?
Mara punched in the standard sequence. The lights blinked red, then amber, then flashed green. With a hiss of escaping air, a formerly invisible seam appeared down the center of the pod. The long black line widened as the two halves split, opening up.
Inside, looking waxen and emotionless as a statue, lay Kyp Durron. His eyes were closed, his face drawn into an expression of intense—yet surprisingly peaceful—concentration.
“Kyp,” Han shouted. His voice cracked with astonished joy, yet he tried to hold back his hope. “Kyp!”
Somehow Kyp had crammed himself inside the small volume of the message cylinder, a vessel barely large enough to hold a child. But Kyp had managed to crush his legs, fold his arms until the bones snapped, pressed down on his rib cage until ribs cracked, compacting himself.
Han leaned closer to the ashen face. “Is he alive? He’s in some kind of Jedi trance.” In his final desperation Kyp had somehow found the strength to use his Jedi pain-blocking techniques, his determination, and all the knowledge Luke had taught him … to do this to himself, as his only chance for survival.
“He’s slowed his functions almost to the point of suspended animation,” Mara said. “He’s in so deep that he might as well be dead.”
The message canister was airtight but had no life-support systems, no air other than the small amount that had fit around his own broken body.
“That’s impossible,” Lando said.
“Let’s get him out,” Han said. “Careful.”
Han gently, meticulously pried the young man free of the tiny cylinder. As Lando and Mara helped him carry Kyp to one of the narrow bunks, the young man’s body sagged and flopped from grievously smashed bones, as if someone had crumpled him into a ball and then tossed him aside.
“Oh, Kyp,” Han said. As he set Kyp on the bunk and straightened his arms, Han could feel the shattered wrists like jelly under his skin. “We have to get him to a medical center,” he said. “I’ve got first aid here, but not nearly enough for something like this.”
Kyp’s black eyes fluttered open, glazed and unfocused with incredible pain; but he drove it back. “Han,” he said in a voice as faint as beating wings. “You came to get me.”
“Of course, kid,” Han said, bending down. “What did you expect?”
“The Death Star?” Kyp asked.
“Sucked down into the black hole … along with the Sun Crusher. They’re both gone.”
Kyp’s entire body shuddered with relief. “Good.”
He looked as if he were about to collapse back into unconsciousness, but then his eyes blinked again, brightening with a new confidence. “I’ll be all right, you know.”
“I know you will be,” Han answered.
Only then did Kyp succumb to the pain and allow himself to sink back into his Jedi trance.
“Good to have you back, kid,” Han whispered, then looked up to Mara and Lando. “Let’s get him back to Coruscant.”
A Wookiee bellow split from the intercom system, and Han stood up straight, rushing back to the cockpit to see a battered Imperial gamma assault shuttle hanging in space in front of the Falcon, its engines white-hot and ready to go.
“Chewie!” Han shouted into the voice pickups, and the Wookiee responded with a roar.
“What Chewbacca is saying,” Threepio’s voice translated unnecessarily, “is that if you would like to follow us out of the Maw, we have the appropriate course programmed into our navicomputer. I believe we are all anxious to go home.”
Han looked at Lando and Mara and smiled. “You’re sure right about that, Threepio.