Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 09_ Edge of Victory 02_ Rebirth - J. Gregory Keyes [107]
He let the images slide away, and felt again only the moment, three hearts beating, three minds becoming one.
Hi there, Luke. Glad to have you back, Mara seemed to say. And then they were expanding, extending outward in every direction, like a galaxy being born. Like anything being born. Like life itself.
FORTY-FOUR
“Wow,” Anakin said, when he saw the ship waiting for them in berth thirteen. They’d squeaked by two groups of ooglith-cloaked Yuuzhan Vong prowling the halls, apparently still searching for them, and had expected a fight when they reached the ship—if the ship was even still there. It was, and the Yuuzhan Vong weren’t.
“Maybe Nom Anor and his bunch got caught when the air went out,” Corran speculated.
“Wow,” Anakin repeated.
“Don’t gawk,” Corran said. “We don’t have time for it. It may take us some time to figure out how to work this thing. There is still a fleet out there, remember?”
“Right,” Anakin said. “Sorry.”
But it was hard not to be impressed. The Givin ship was simple, elegant, nearly all engine, about the size of a light transport. A bundle of spindly cylinders protruding from a relatively enormous engine torus made up the core of the ion drive, though three more extended on booms from the side of the main assembly. These last weren’t fixed, either, but could be maneuvered in a complete sphere. Forward of that was the hyperdrive assembly, and almost as an afterthought, it seemed, a crew section and cockpit that was nearly all transparisteel.
On board they found that only the sleeping compartment could be pressurized. The life support unit was thus commensurately underpowered, so they remained in their suits. The controls were a complete mystery until Corran pointed out they were laid out mathematically according to Ju Simma’s theorem. Once that was understood, the ship was weird to operate, but not particularly difficult.
Corran took the controls and unlocked the docking bolts.
“Here we go,” he said. “The pitiful laser this thing has won’t be of much use in a fight, so we’re just going to run, unless anyone else has a better suggestion.”
“But the station—” Tahiri began.
“Is doomed. And the best hope for the Givin is reinforcements from Coruscant.”
“I was thinking about Taan.”
“I’m sorry,” Corran said. “But the Yuuzhan Vong will probably retrieve her. If she’s lucky … Anyway, we’re out of this, just as soon as I can get us out. Let’s see, where would the inertial compensator be?”
Anakin pointed to a logarithmically scaled input. “I’m guessing that’s it.”
“We’ll see. Strap in and hang on. I hope this thing has the legs it advertises.”
It did. Anakin could barely restrain a whoop when they blew out of the dock. If he had been flying, he wouldn’t have been able to keep it in.
“An A-wing couldn’t touch this thing,” he said.
“It’s not all about speed,” Corran said.
“If you’re running, it is,” Anakin replied reasonably, as they streaked past a patrol of coralskippers. They turned late, like a herd of startled banthas, and began pursuit. Within a minute the skips must have been under top acceleration, but they looked almost as if they were standing still.
As Anakin studied the sensor readouts from the copilot’s station and began calculating a series of jumps, he began to feel less cheery.
“We’ve got some ahead of us, closing. Heavy cruiser analogs, two of them.”
“We’ll see how well the Givin build shields, then,” Corran replied.
Minutes later, Corran was juking and jinking through heavy fire. The shields held admirably well, but as predicted, the laser was useless. Corran cut the ship onto a course perpendicular to Yag’Dhul’s ecliptic plane, fighting for enough distance