Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 06_ Balance Point - Kathy Tyers [106]
The cargo hauler should be underneath. Droma reached the pile and burrowed in without hesitating. Han followed, depending on his breath mask to keep out hay dust. Within moments, he was buried so thickly that his worst fear was suffocation. He flailed deeper, then even deeper. It’d better be here!
His left hand hit something hard. On a hunch, he ducked down and crawled forward, pushing hay away in front of him, kicking it out behind him. It reminded him of swimming.
Moments later, the debris thinned out. He emerged into a square, metal-roofed cavern.
“Droma!” he shouted. Down here, his voice took on a slight metallic twang. He could see the Ryn’s silhouette, a darker smudge against grass-filtered light. “Get down here!”
The air actually smelled good through his mask. In such a toxic environment, there probably weren’t many bacteria of the right kind to rot clippings.
“Come on!” he called again. “Move your fuzzy tail!”
Finally the Ryn flailed down into the low cavern. He crab-crawled sideways to where Han lay. By then, Han had taken a good look.
“If I’ve got my guess,” he said, “it’s an old TaggeCo WQ 445. A big box-shaped scow. Sitting flink.”
“Not my first choice for a getaway ship,” Droma said.
“Mine either. But it’s all they’ve got.” Han frowned. Leia hadn’t said whether she had anyone to fly this bucket, and he was itching to get to the Falcon. “The engine ought to be about there,” he said, pointing past his left foot. “And the service hatch should be …” He scooted three meters to the right. “Not much farther this way.”
It took Droma a few moment’s deft work, using the dead razorbug, to pry open the access hatch. After that, Han was in his element. He found an emergency cache next to the hatch, pulled out a pair of pocket lights, tossed one down to Droma, then started for the cockpit. First things first: Run the diagnostics, see if this beast really could be trusted with a couple thousand lives.
Remembering the captive mob outside the research building, and the pit into which machinery was being flung, and the monsters at the construction shed, he swallowed hard. There wouldn’t be many lives to save if he didn’t hurry. “Come on, Bristle-face. Move.”
A rasping Duros voice guided Mara to dock the Jade Shadow in slip 16-F, back on Bburru’s familiar Port Duggan arm. The same voice instructed her to power down all onboard systems.
“If they’re scanning for life-forms, you might be in trouble,” she said quietly.
Luke crouched beside R2-D2, finishing a few final programming details. Normally, Shadow’s onboard computer handled security. With the ship powered down, R2-D2 would fill that gap.
“I don’t think so,” Luke murmured, straightening. “Just hurry back.”
“You don’t need to say that twice.” She hesitated, getting a good look into his eyes, checking his emotional state.
He raised one eyebrow. “Take care …” he began.
She frowned.
“… of the little one.”
Her mouth quirked sideways. “I’ll accept that as a polite way of saying, ‘Get here on the double, mother-of-my-child.’ ”
Luke touched her shoulder with one hand. She also felt a more subtle caress. She returned it.
Then she hustled out through the hatch, slapped the external hatch control for the sake of Bburru’s visual monitors, and strode up the Port Duggan arm.
No more figures in CorDuro brown patrolled. She saw only a Rodian, hurrying inbound like herself. Then she passed a security post, manned by two of the CorDuro guards that Luke and Anakin had encountered.
“Where you docked?” the skinny Rodian demanded.
“Sixteen F,” Mara said sharply.
Another guard slipped out of the post, headed back the way she’d come.
She smiled grimly. That hatch release had peculiar camouflage. They could go at it with a laser torch and still not get on board.
When she stepped off the shipyard corridor’s rideway,