Crucible: Star Wars Page 40

  On his way, he got his first good look at the battle damage, the swarming repair droids and tow vessels. Mon Calamari Star Cruisers were plated and shielded to withstand multiple direct hits, but he thought he remembered several more of the huge, lumpy crafts. Fighting for his life, his father, and his integrity in the Emperor’s throne room, he hadn’t even felt the gut-wrenching Force disturbances from all those deaths. He hoped he wasn’t getting used to them.

  “Wedge, do you copy?” Luke asked over the subspace radio. He vectored out among the big ships of the Fleet. Scanners indicated that the nearest heavy transport was cautiously moving away from something much smaller. Four A-wings swooped along behind Luke. “Wedge, are you out there?”

  “Sorry,” he heard faintly. “Almost out of range of my ship’s pickup. You see, I’ve got to …” Wedge trailed off, grunting. “I’ve got to keep these two crystals apart. It’s a self-destruct of some sort.”

  “Crystals?” Luke asked, to keep Wedge talking. There was pain under that voice.

  “Electrite crystal leads. Leftovers from the old ‘elegance’ days. The mechanism’s trying to push them together. Let ’em touch … poof. The whole fusion engine.”

  Tumbling slowly above the blue glimmer of Endor, Luke spotted Wedge’s X-wing. Alongside it drifted a nine-meter-long cylinder bearing Imperial markings, fully as long as the X-wing and almost all engine, a type of drone ship the Alliance still couldn’t afford. For some reason, the drone gave him an eerie foreboding. The Empire never used such antiques any more. Why hadn’t the sender been able to use standard Imperial channels?

  Luke whistled. “No, we don’t want to blow that big of an engine.” No wonder the transport was moving away.

  “Right.” Wedge clung to one end of the cylinder, wearing a pressure suit and connected to the X-wing by a life-support tether. He must have blown his cockpit air and dove for the cylinder’s master control the moment he realized he’d accidentally armed it to detonate. In a space pilot’s lightweight pressure suit and closed-face emergency helmet, he could survive vacuum for several minutes.

  “How long’ve you been out here, Wedge?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. The view’s terrific.”

  Closing in, Luke reversed engines with care. Wedge held one hand inside a hinged panel. His head swiveled to follow Luke’s X-wing as Luke used short, delicate engine bursts to match his momentum with the cylinder.

  “Sure could use another hand.” Wedge’s words sounded cocky but the tone betrayed his strain. That hand must be half crushed. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Enjoying the view.” Luke considered his options. The A-wing pilots decelerated and hung back, probably assuming Luke knew what he was doing. “Artoo,” he called, “what’s the reach on your manipulator arm? If I got in close enough, could you help him?”

  No—2.76 meters short at optimum angle, appeared on his head-up display.

  Luke frowned. Sweat trickled on his forehead. Anything small, solid, and disposable would help. If he didn’t hurry, his friend was dead. Already Wedge’s sense in the Force wobbled dizzily.

  Luke glanced at his lightsaber. He wasn’t about to dispose of that.

  Not even to save Wedge’s life? Besides, he’d be able to get it back. Cautiously he slipped the saber into the flare ejection port’s feed tube. He launched it out, then extended a hand toward it across ten meters of vacuum. He sent it gliding toward Wedge. Once near the target, he twisted his wrist.

  The green-white blade appeared, silent in the vacuum of space. Wedge’s wide brown eyes blinked behind his faceplate.

  “On my signal,” Luke said, “jump free.”

  “Luke, I’ll lose fingers.”

  “Way free,” Luke repeated. “You’ll lose more than fingers if you stay there.”

  “What’s the chance you could Jedi me a little nerve blockage? This hurts like crazy.” Wedge’s voice sounded weaker. He pulled in his knees and braced to push off.

  At moments like these, moisture farming for Uncle Owen back on Tatooine didn’t sound too bad. “I’ll try,” said Luke. “Show me the crystals. Look at them closely.”

  “Ho-kay.” Wedge pulled around to stare into the hatchway. Letting the lightsaber drift, Luke felt for Wedge’s friendly presence. He trusted Wedge not to resist this, to let him …

  Through Wedge’s eyes, and fighting the excruciating pain in Wedge’s hand, Luke glimpsed a pair of round, multifaceted jewels—one inside his palm, the other crushing inward at the end of a spring mechanism from the back of his hand. Fist-sized, they reflected pale golden sparks of saber light out the hatch onto Wedge’s orange suit. Luke didn’t think the flight glove alone would keep them apart, or he’d’ve simply told Wedge to slip out of it. Brief depressurization didn’t damage extremities much.

  If Wedge jumped, Luke would have a second at most to slice one crystal free, and only a little longer before Wedge fainted. Wedge was tethered and he’d be able to keep breathing, but he could lose a lot of blood. The glimpse blurred at the edges.

  Luke tweaked Wedge’s pain perception.

  Too much to juggle. Luke’s own aches began to ooze up from under control. “Got it,” he grunted.

  “Got what?” Wedge asked dreamily.

  “The view,” Luke said. “Jump on the count of three. Jump hard. One.” Wedge didn’t object. Clenching his teeth, Luke eased into a closer accord with the saber. So long as he focused on the saber, he could maintain control. “Two.” Keeping up a steady count, he felt the saber, the crystals, and the critical gap, all as parts of the universe’s wholeness.

  “Three.” Nothing happened. “Jump, Wedge!” Luke cried.

  Weakly, Wedge launched himself. Luke swept in. One crystal soared free, reflecting a whirling green kaleidoscope onto the X-wing’s upper S-foil.

  “Ooh,” crooned Wedge’s voice in his ear. “Pretty.” He spun, clutching his right hand.

  “Wedge, reel in!”

  No response. Luke bit his lip. He stabilized the tumbling saber and deactivated its blade. Wedge’s tether stretched taut, high above the other X-wing. His limbs wobbled randomly.

  Luke slapped his distress beacon. “Rogue Leader to Home One. Explosives disarmed. Request medical pickup. Now!”

  From behind the A-wings, hanging back out of the danger zone, a med runner swooped into sight.

  Wedge’s body rose and sank with each breath as he floated upright in the Fleet’s clear tank of healing bacta fluid. Much to Luke’s relief, they’d saved all his fingers. Surgical droid Too-Onebee set the control board and then swiveled to face Luke. Slender, jointed limbs waved in front of his gleaming midsection. “Now you, sir. Please step behind the scanner.”

  “I’m all right.” Luke leaned his stool against the bulkhead. “Just tired.” Artoo-Detoo bleeped softly beside him, sounding concerned.

  “Please, sir. This will only take a moment.”

  Luke sighed and shuffled around a man-high rectangular panel. “Okay?” he called out through it. “May I go now?”

  “One moment more,” came the mechanical voice, then clicking sounds. “One moment,” the droid repeated. “Have you experienced double vision recently?”

  “Well …” Luke scratched his head. “Yes. But just for a minute.” Surely that little spell wasn’t significant.

  As the diagnostic panel retracted into the bulkhead, a medical flotation bed extended itself from the wall beside Too-Onebee. Luke backstepped. “What’s that for?”

  “You’re not well, sir.”

  “I’m just tired.”

  “Sir, my diagnosis is sudden and massive calcification of your skeletal structure, of the rare type brought on by severely conductive exposure to electrical and other energy fields.”

  Energy fields. Yesterday. Emperor Palpatine, leering as blue-white sparks leaped off his fingertips while Luke writhed on the deck. Luke broke a sweat, the memory was so fresh. He’d thought he was dying. He was dying.

  “The abrupt dro
p in blood minerals is causing muscular microseizures all over your body, sir.”

  So that was why he ached. Until an hour ago, he hadn’t had a chance to sit still and notice. Deflated, he stared up at Too-Onebee. “But it’s not permanent damage, is it? You don’t have to replace bones?” He shuddered at the thought.

  “The condition will become chronic unless you rest and allow me to treat you,” answered the mechanical voice. “The alternative is bacta immersion.”

  Luke glanced at the tank. Not that, again. He’d tasted bacta on his breath for a week afterward. Reluctantly he pulled off his boots and stretched out on the flotation bed.

  He awakened, squirming, some time later.

  Too-Onebee’s metal-grate face appeared at his bedside. “Painkiller, sir?”

  Luke had always read that humans had three bones in each ear. Now he believed it. He could count them. “I feel worse, not better,” he complained. “Didn’t you do anything?”

  “Treatment is complete, sir. Now you must rest. May I offer you a painkiller?” he repeated patiently.

  “No thanks,” Luke grunted. As a Jedi Knight, he must learn to control sensations, and better sooner than later. Pain was an occupational hazard.

  Artoo beeped a query.

  Guessing at a translation, Luke said, “All right, Artoo. You stand watch. I’ll take another nap.” He rolled over. Slowly, his weight pushed a new furrow into the bed’s flexible contour. This was the down side of being called a hero. It’d been worse when he lost his right hand.

  Come to think of it, the bionic hand didn’t ache.

  One bright spot.

  It was time to re-create the ancient Jedi art of self-healing. Yoda’s sketchy lessons left much to be imagined.

  “I’ll leave you, sir.” Too-Onebee swiveled away. “Please attempt to sleep. Call if you require assistance.”

  One last question brought Luke’s head up. “How’s Wedge?”

  “Healing well, sir. He should be ready for release within a day.”

  Luke shut his eyes and tried to remember Yoda’s lessons. Booted feet pounded rapidly past the open hatchway. Already focused deep into the Force, he felt an alarmed presence hurry up the hall. As carefully as he listened, he couldn’t recognize the individual. Yoda had said fine discernment—even of strangers—would come in time, as he learned the deep silence of self that let a Jedi distinguish others’ ripples in the Force.

  Luke rolled over, wanting to sleep. He was ordered to sleep.

  And he was still Luke Skywalker, and he had to know what had alarmed that trooper. Cautiously he sat up and gingerly slipped down onto his feet. With the ache localized at one end of his body, he could diminish it by willing his feet not to exist … or something like that. The Force wasn’t something you explained. It was something you used … when it let you. Not even Yoda had seen everything.

  Artoo whistled an alarm. Too-Onebee rolled toward him, limb-pipes flailing. “Sir, lie back down, please.”

  “In a minute.” He poked his head out into the long corridor and shouted, “Stop!”

  The Rebel trooper spun to a halt.

  “Did they decode that drone ship’s message yet?”

  “Still working on it, sir.”

  Then the war room was the place to be. Luke backed into Artoo and steadied himself with a hand on the little droid’s blue dome. “Sir,” insisted the medical droid, “please lie down. The condition will rapidly become chronic unless you rest.”

  Imagining himself pain-racked for the rest of his life, and the alternative—another spell in the sticky tank—Luke sat down on the squishy edge of the flotation bed and fidgeted.

  Then a thought struck him. “Too-Onebee, I bet you’ve got—”

  Large enough to hold a hundred, the flagship’s war room was almost empty. A service droid slid along the curve of an inner bench, passing between a light tube and glimmering while bulkheads. Down near the circular projection table that dominated the war room’s center, near a single tech on duty, Mon Mothma—the woman who’d founded and who now led the Rebel Alliance—stood with General Crix Madine. Mon Mothma’s presence gleamed visibly in her long white robes and invisibly through the Force, and the bearded Madine’s confidence had grown since the Battle of Endor.

  They both looked in Luke’s direction and frowned. Luke smiled halfheartedly and gripped the handrests of the repulsor chair he’d commandeered out of the medical suite, steering it down over the steps toward them.

  “You’ll never learn, will you?” General Madine’s frown got flatter. “You belong in sick bay. This time we’ll have Too-Onebee knock you out.”

  Luke’s cheek twitched. “What about that message? Some Imperial commander burned a quarter million credits on that antique drone.”

  Mon Mothma nodded, reprimanding Luke with her placid stare. A side console lit, this one a smaller light projection table. Above it appeared a miniature hologram of Admiral Ackbar, with huge eyes bulging at the sides of his high-domed, ruddy head. Although the Calamarian had commanded the Battle of Endor from a chair under the broad starry viewport on Luke’s left, Ackbar felt more comfortable on his own cruiser. Life support there was fine-tuned to Calamarian standards. “Commander Skywalker,” he wheezed. Whiskery tendrils wobbled under his jaw. “You need to consider the risks you take … more carefully.”

  “I will, Admiral. When I can.” Luke reclined the floating repulsor chair and steadied it against the main light table’s steel gray rim. An electronic whistle rang out from the hatchway behind him. Artoo-Detoo wasn’t letting him out of photoreceptor range for thirty seconds. The blue-domed droid had to take the long way around. Eclipsing tiny blinking instrument lights, he rolled along the upper computer bank to a drop platform. There he downloaded himself, then rolled close to Luke’s float chair before delivering a string of rebukes—probably from Too-Onebee. General Madine smirked behind his beard.

  Luke hadn’t understood a single whistle, but he could guess at this translation too. “All right, Artoo. Pull in your wheels. I’m sitting down. This should be interesting.”

  Young Lieutenant Matthews straightened up over the side console and turned his head. “Here it comes,” he announced.

  Madine and Mothma leaned toward the screen. Luke craned his neck for a better view.

  IMPERIAL GOVERNOR WILEK NEREUS OF THE BAKURA SYSTEM, TO HIS MOST EXCELLENT IMPERIAL MASTER PALPATINE: GREETINGS IN HASTE.

  They hadn’t heard. Months, maybe years, would pass before much of the galaxy realized that the Emperor’s reign had ended. Luke himself was having a hard time believing it.

  BAKURA IS UNDER ATTACK BY AN ALIEN INVASION FORCE FROM OUTSIDE YOUR DOMAIN. ESTIMATE FIVE CRUISERS, SEVERAL DOZEN SUPPORT SHIPS, OVER 1000 SMALL FIGHTERS. UNKNOWN TECHNOLOGY. WE HAVE LOST HALF OUR DEFENSE FORCE AND ALL OUTERSYSTEM OUTPOSTS. HOLONET TRANSMISSIONS TO IMPERIAL CENTER AND DEATH STAR TWO HAVE GONE UNANSWERED. URGENT, REPEAT URGENT, SEND STORMTROOPERS.

  Madine reached past Lieutenant Matthews and poked a touch panel. “More data,” he exclaimed. “We need more of this.”

  The voice of an intelligence droid filtered through the comlink. “There are corroborative visuals if you would care to see them, sir, as well as embedded data files coded for Imperial access.”

  “That’s more like it.” Madine touched the lieutenant’s shoulder. “Give me the visuals.”

  Over the central light table, a projection unit whirred upright. A scene appeared that brought up a fresh rush of pain-deadening adrenaline. Yoda would rap my knuckles, Luke observed soberly. Excitement … adventure … a Jedi craves not these things. He stretched toward Jedi calm. A terrified world needed help.

  At the center of the tableau hovered the image of an Imperial system-patrol craft of a sort Luke had studied but never fought, projected as a three-dimensional network of lines that gleamed reddish orange. He leaned closer to examine its laser emplacements, but before he could get a good look, it silently spewed out an explosion of yellow escape pods. A larger orange im
age swung ominously into the viewfield, dominating the scene by its bulk: far larger than the patrol craft, stubbier than the Rebels’ sleek Mon Cal cruisers—roughly ovoid, but covered with blisterlike projections.

  “Run a check on that ship’s design,” ordered Madine.

  After approximately three seconds, the intelligence droid’s monotone answered, “This design is used neither by the Alliance nor the Empire.”

  Luke held his breath. The huge attack craft loomed larger over the table. Now he could make out half a hundred gun emplacements … or were they beam antennae? It held fire until six crimson TIE fighters vectored close, then the fighters lurched simultaneously and slowed. Fighters and escape pods began to accelerate steadily toward the alien ship, evidently caught in a tractor beam. The scene shrank. Whoever recorded those visuals had left in a hurry.

  “Taking prisoners,” Madine murmured, clearly concerned.

  Mon Mothma turned to a shoulder-high droid that had stood silently nearby. “Access the embedded data files. Apply our most current Imperial codes. Locate this world, Bakura.” Luke felt relieved that even the Alliance’s knowledgeable leader had to ask for the system’s location.

  The droid rotated toward the light table and reconnected its socket arm. The battle scene faded. Star sparks appeared in a conformation Luke recognized as this end of the Rim region. “Here, Madam,” the droid announced. One speck turned red. “According to this file, its economy is based on the export of repulsorlift components and an exotic fruit candy and liqueur. Settled by a speculative mining corporation during the final years of the Clone Wars, and taken over by the Empire approximately three years ago, to absorb and control its repulsorlift production capacity.”

  “Subjugated recently enough to remember independence well.” Mon Mothma rested her slender hand on the edge of the light table. “Now show Endor. Relative position.”