Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 05_ Agents of Chaos 02_ Jedi Eclipse - James Luceno [105]
Retreating from the surrounding din, she reached out with the Force for Anakin and Jacen, then for Jaina, Luke, Mara, and some of the other Jedi. Each returned a subtle resonance, which, if nothing else, allayed her concerns temporarily. But when Leia tried to reach out for Han—whom she could sometimes feel, even through his denial of the Force—all she got back were images of a raging torrent and a plunge into measureless blackness.
TWENTY-FOUR
Han fought to keep from drowning. Lungs screaming for oxygen, he broke the raging surface of the muddy torrent, spewing water like a Coruscant downspout gargoyle and flailing his arms to keep from being sucked under by the current. The water level in the drainage ditch was rising fast. It was likely that the flood would soon bob him to within a meter of the top of the retaining walls, but probably not before the water dumped him unceremoniously into the river that allegedly ran past Facility 17.
Rain continued to teem from the sky’s granite underbelly, stinging Han’s face and hampering visibility. Paddling madly with one hand, he cupped the other to his mouth and shouted for Droma, but got no response. A loud slapping noise brought him around to find the crashed landspeeder gaining on him, upright and surfing the current.
The narrowness of the ditch worked for and against him. With no way to be sure that the landspeeder wouldn’t follow and crush him under its crumpled nose, Han angled frantically for the smooth eastern wall. Once there he managed to arrest his forward motion momentarily, which allowed the landspeeder to catch up and come alongside of him. On a downward slap of the crumpled nose, Han launched himself for the driver’s door, threw one leg over the top, and rolled himself into the cab, which, with the mix of threshed grain and rain, might as well have been filled with gruel. His body sticky with the stuff, he dragged himself into the driver’s seat and repeatedly flicked the repulsor engine switch on the off chance it would fire up, but the collision had disabled the ignition system. Leaning forward with his hands clamped to the brackets that had supported the retractable windshield, he scanned the roiling water ahead to both sides, finally catching sight of Droma’s tail, sticking straight out of the water like a flagpole.
Before Han could call out to him, the speeder was carried over the top of a sluice gate and down through a stretch of cataracts where the landscape was terraced. Droma disappeared under the rapids, then surfaced, only to disappear once more. Ultimately he heard Han’s call over the noise of the rain and echoing thunder and lifted one arm free of the current in a panicked wave.
Precariously balanced in the pitching vehicle, Han stretched out both hands and grabbed hold of Droma as the landspeeder shot past him. The weight of the waterlogged Ryn almost dragged Han out of the cab, but Droma helped by hooking his tail around a rear seat headrest and hauling himself aboard.
“You can just drop me at the next intersection,” he said, collapsed onto the seat and panting.
“How far do you figure the river is?” Han shouted.
“Close,” Droma said, tugging himself into a sitting position. “I’m just glad to be out …”
A persistent rumbling noise erased the rest of it. Han glanced at the sky, then put the edge of his hand to his brow and peered over the bouncing nose of the speeder. The rain and the tall stalks of grain to either side made it difficult to see anything, but dead ahead the fields seemed to end abruptly.
“What’s that noise?” Droma asked suddenly.
Han whirled on him. “You said that the map showed this ditch running directly into the river?”
Droma nodded uncertainly.
“Think hard: Was it a topographical map?”
Droma tugged on his mustache in thought. “Come to think of it, it was.”
“And were there a whole bunch of parallel lines where the ditch met