Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 01_ Onslaught - Michael A. Stackpole [34]
Corran flicked a switch, lowering the freighter’s landing gear. He glanced at the altimeter and cut in the repulsorlift coils to settle the ship down easily. He got a bump four meters above where he felt the ship should have touched down, then the Dalliance continued to descend. It sank until the bottom hull pressed against the ground.
Wind-whipped sand hissed a tan curtain over the viewport. The sand slid away, providing a brief glimpse of a distant horizon, then another layer coated the transparisteel. Darker shadows loomed nearby, but the shifting sand gave Corran no chance to see what they were.
“Looks like we’ve sunk into the sand, so we’re not going out through the landing ramp.” Corran pointed a finger up toward the ceiling. “Topside hatch.”
Ganner nodded and handed Corran a pair of goggles and a rebreather that had a comlink built into it. “There are sensor readings to the west, about a hundred meters off. Probably their camp.”
“No life?”
“Life, yes. Human, no.” Ganner closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Fairly small life-forms. Nothing to worry about.”
“Thanks.” Corran rolled his eyes as he stepped past Ganner and into the companionway that gave him access to the top hatch tube. He mounted the ladder, disengaged the interlocks, and shoved up on the round hatch.
A brown curtain of sand poured down over him. Corran reflexively ducked his face away and felt a kilo of dirt stream down the back of his tunic, to be trapped at his waist by his belt. Because the rebreather filtered only the airborne sand, he could still smell the dry scent in the air. What surprised him about the wind was how cool it was. Moving away from the sun has this world cooling off, so it won’t be hot like Tatooine, just dirty. So much for Ganner’s wardrobe.
Corran glanced down to see what sort of a mess the sand had made of Ganner, but all he saw was sand around his feet, as if he was standing in a rapidly filling hole. He reached out with the Force and discovered the shield Ganner had erected with the Force to trap the sand in the tube. Oh, very cute.
He scrambled up the ladder, then watched the sand rise behind him and slide off the Force dome that rose to cap the tube. Ganner expanded it as he came up, but did not extend it to cover Corran. As he emerged, the bubble shrank, covering Ganner like a cloak. While Corran admired Ganner’s control with the Force, he found employing it like an umbrella to be almost as bad as what Valin had done to Ganner with the garnants.
Corran walked to the edge of the freighter and looked down at the sand piling up against the craft’s port hull. Beyond it, barely visible, he caught a hint of color—a small reddish pyramid—which he assumed marked the university camp. He crouched and let a handful of sand dribble out through his fingers.
Ganner stood above him. “Not that far down.”
“Be my guest.” Corran tugged his tunic from his trouser waistband and let sand pour out. “Show me how it’s done.”
The younger Jedi leapt from the ship’s hull and immediately sank to his waist in the sand. His fists clenched for a moment, then he leapt up and rose serenely from the sand and returned to the freighter’s hull. His boots and trousers were coated with dust.
“Little further down than it looks, isn’t it?”
Ganner snorted. “Shall we break out the speeder bikes?”
“Nope. Dust is too fine for the engine filters to pull out of the air, so they’ll just stall.”
“Then how do we get over there?”
“We walk.”
“But . . .”
Corran leapt out from the freighter and landed in a crouch. He sank to ankles and wrists in a trough between two little sand dunes. Rising up a bit, he started walking toward the