Star Wars_ Young Jedi Knights 13_ Trouble on Cloud City - Kevin J. Anderson [36]
She had no one to blame but herself. Her chest began heaving, and deep, wordless sobs wrenched from her throat.
She had lied. She had lied to Czethros. She had lied to herself.
Jacen had been her friend. Why should he be dead now?
An icy knife of anguish plunged deep into Anja's heart. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks. She stumbled backward into the refresher unit and shut the door tightly behind her. Racking sobs shook her as she scrambled in the corner for what she needed-what she had to have.
There was no choice.... The spice would help her.
A minute later, when the emergency medical team arrived at the door to her quarters, Anja came out of the refresher unit and let them in. She was controlled now, full of energy.
But nothing, nothing, could dull the pain....
Jacen fell.
And he kept on falling.
As he plunged down from Cloud City, the giant hanging metropolis seemed to shoot up and away from him like a spacecraft rocketing toward orbit.
In the first several seconds he let out a panicked cry for help. But he kept dropping... dropping, with no bottom in sight. A cold wind rushed past his face, roaring in his ears, rippling his clothes, making it hard for him even to draw a breath. He quickly realized that screaming only wasted his precious energy.
Jacen concentrated, trying to use what Jedi powers he possessed to help him stop his endless fall. He had to think of a way. With the Force he could make himself lighter, perhaps slow his descent... for all the good that would do him-it would only prolong the inevitable.
He felt as if he were floating and envisioned the Force as an invisible hand cradling him, lifting him up... but he knew that was only an illusion. No matter how hard he concentrated, how much he tried to use his Jedi skills, he could not push himself back up to the now-distant Cloud City.
Worse, Bespin was a gas giant, a huge ball of atmospheric mixes, with no true surface, only a superdense liquid core hidden under thousands of kilometers of clouds. Jacen would keep falling into denser and denser gases, but he would be crushed long before he ever reached the central sphere. He would just fall forever into the gas giant, until the pressure squashed him flat.
The clouds swirled below, streaming in spirals like a whirlpool far, far beneath him. With each instant he fell closer and closer to oblivion.
In his mind he tried to call out to his sister Jaina or to Tenel Ka, but he couldn't seem to make contact. In any case, there was nothing they could do... at least, not in time.
He did use his Jedi training to keep himself calm, remembering the techniques that Master Skywalker had taught him. Great, he thought with a flash of griryi humor, at least I'll die calm.
But he was not ready to give up yet. He lay back and continued to fall and fall and fall, sending out a silent cry for help... though he didn't know where to direct it.
The wind and gases burned his eyes. He let them drift halfway shut.
Even so, the sunlight dazzled him, creating tiny rainbows through the ice crystals high in Bespin's atmosphere, and the colors of the pink and orange airborne algae seemed painfully bright.
Then, curving out at the edge of his vision, he saw a flicker of dark wings swoop through a nst of clouds and streak away. He blinked and spun around in the air. The gusting winds caught at his clothes.
He saw the shape again. It flitted by, closer this time. Suddenly, with a burst of speed, the flying creature cruised closer still to examine him like some giant curious hawkbat with a smooth bullet-shaped body and fleshy wings.
A thranta! "Help!" Jacen shouted. The colorfully painted rider on the creature's back gently tweaked the harness, directing the thranta.
Jacen continued to drop, and the flying creature