Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 03_ Champions of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [13]
Luke attempted to move over to Artoo, to touch the polished barrel-shaped body. It took him a moment to figure out how to move his ghostly “legs.” His image skimmed across the floor with a dizzying fluidity. But when he stroked Artoo, his hand passed directly through.
He felt no contact with the plasteel of the droid’s body, no sensation of the floor against his ethereal feet. Luke tried walking completely through the droid, hoping somehow to scramble Artoo’s sensors, but Artoo continued to take readings, unperturbed.
The droid gave another sad hoot as if in farewell, then spun around and whirred slowly back toward the turbolift.
Luke called out. “Wait, Artoo!” But he held little hope the droid would hear.
A quick idea came to him: rather than using his illusory hands, he reached out with the Force. He thought of how he and Gantoris had used little nudges from the Force to rattle metal antennas in the airborne ruins of Tibannopolis on Bespin.
Luke reached out invisibly to tap Artoo’s shell, hoping to make a loud spang that would at least let the droid know something was amiss. He pushed and thumped with all his intangible might, and succeeded only in what he thought was a barely audible bump against the droid’s metal casing.
Artoo paused, but while Luke gathered strength to make another Force assault, the droid dismissed the unexplained sound and entered the turbolift. Inside the turbolift, Artoo turned his optical sensor once more toward the body of his master, made a low, sliding whistle, and then the doors whisked closed. Luke heard the humming of the platform as it dropped back down to the lower levels of the Great Temple.
Luke stood in the echoing grand audience chamber all alone—awake again, but insubstantial and apparently powerless. He would have to find some other way to solve his predicament.
He looked out through the temple skylights into the blackness of the jungle moon’s deep night, and he wondered what he could do to save himself.
4
With a Wookiee bellow of impatience, Chewbacca urged the last members of the Special Forces team onto the remaining troop transport. The other transports had been shuttling up and down from Coruscant orbit all day, carrying weapons, equipment, and personnel to the strike force already assembled in space.
The heavily armed battle group consisted of one escort frigate and four Corellian corvettes—enough firepower to occupy the secret Imperial think tank, Maw Installation, and to overcome any resistance from the weapons scientists stranded there.
The last three stragglers hustled up the ramp, clad in light armor and securing tight packs onto their shoulders. Chewbacca watched the soldiers strap into their seats before he punched the ALL CLEAR button to raise the boarding ramp.
“Your impatience is not helping, Chewbacca,” See-Threepio said. “The tension level is already substantial, and you’re simply making things worse. I have a bad feeling about this mission already.”
Chewbacca growled at him, disregarding his comment. Impatient, he picked up the droid and dropped him with a metallic clatter into the only remaining spare seat—which was, unfortunately, next to Chewbacca’s own.
“Indeed!” Threepio said as he dutifully hooked himself in. “I’m doing my best. This isn’t my area of expertise, you know.”
Chewbacca settled into a seat that had never been designed to accommodate a creature of his massive proportions. He bent his hairy knees nearly to chest level. He wished he could be with Han in the Millennium Falcon, but Han and Leia had gone to see Luke Skywalker, and Chewbacca felt his stronger duty was to go rescue the Wookiee prisoners left inside Maw Installation.
The rest of the assault team shifted in their seats, looking around, double-checking their mental lists of equipment and procedures. Page’s Commandos, a crack assault troop, would be handling most of the front-line mission, with plenty of New Republic