Heir to the Jedi (30 page)

And she was, because she successfully distracted me from the countdown, and the hyperdrive shot us out of that sector into a region of space more accurately charted by Drusil’s equations than any existing star charts.

“Hey. Did we just get away?” I asked.

“Yep. For the moment, anyway. Good job, pilot.”

I sighed in relief and knew that Nakari was teasing me again.
I’d had very little to do with it—this part of the trip was all made possible by math and physics and brains that could process it far faster and more accurately than I ever could. It wasn’t without its own tension, however. Without traveling established lanes, there was a chance we’d never come back into realspace again. But if we did, we’d have a view of the galaxy no one else had ever enjoyed before.

Over the next eight hours, we wound up spending more time in realspace than hyperspace. Drusil’s short jumps dumped us into new systems, and she spent time with Artoo taking readings, scanning the stars, and then tweaking her calculations for the next jump. I encouraged her to take all the time she needed.

Most of the systems we encountered were full of barren rocks and gas giants, but one had a habitable planet with life on it. We lingered there awhile longer, noted the coordinates and the path to get there, and took some preliminary scans of the planet to be analyzed later.

“This might yield something useful for my father,” Nakari said. “A consolation prize for losing his advantage on Fex.”

“It might also work as a base for the Alliance,” I said, making sure Artoo noted weather patterns and took some atmospheric readings. “If the water’s okay and it doesn’t have predators like Fex, it could be the kind of place Admiral Ackbar is looking for.”

The worry of being lost in space got replaced by the worry of running into Imperials again once Drusil and Artoo announced that we were back on established routes, skirting the far side of Hutt Space and traveling to the galactic north, dropping into a deserted system, and then plotting our course from there into Omereth.

Our eventual arrival into the Omereth system was an anticlimax. I didn’t realize how tense my shoulders were until I saw no threats on the scanners and hardly any ships at all in orbit around the planet. They were small personal yachts with few weapons.

“Oh,” I said, consciously relaxing. “No one’s gunning for us. That’s a nice change. Kind of the galaxy I want to live in, honestly.”

“I’ll take it,” Nakari said, and then brought up a current view of the planet on the holo. “Whoa. Are we sure there’s land on that thing? It looks like a solid blue marble with some clouds swirling above it.”

“I assure you that dry land exists,” Drusil said over the comm. “I have provided the rendezvous coordinates to your outstanding droid.”

“Thanks,” I replied, grinning over the fact that Artoo had now been upgraded to
outstanding
in Drusil’s eyes. He’d climbed so high so fast. “Artoo, go ahead and put them in and set our course. I’ll take back manual control if necessary.” His acknowledging chirp provoked a happy sigh from me. I looked over at Nakari and smiled. “Almost through with this mission.”

“I know. Part of me can’t believe we made it.”

My smile faltered and I tensed up again. Destiny sometimes finds it amusing to strike at people who believe they’re safe. I rechecked the scanners for threats and made sure the shields were still up and working.

“What?” Nakari said. “Luke?”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “I have a part of me that can’t believe it, either. The war’s made me believe that nothing is ever easy. But maybe we really did fake out the Empire with those uncharted hyperspace jumps.”

Turned out we did fool the Empire and Drusil was right—they’d never look for her on Omereth. But that’s not who was waiting for us to enter the atmosphere.

WHEN THE
DESERT JEWEL
bit into the atmosphere of Omereth, a starboard drag on the stick evolved that was much more severe than when we’d left Kupoh. It got noticeably worse as we descended, until we were flying with blue above and blue below. I didn’t see any smoke trail behind us but I almost felt there should be one—I definitely felt tremors in the ship.

“Not good,” I murmured. Perhaps I’d pushed the engine too hard in our race to outrun the Empire, or perhaps there was a problem with the aerodynamics—the modifications we’d made to the chassis back there might have degraded in the turbulence of leaving Kupoh and worsened upon entering atmosphere here, introducing a worrisome tug on that side. It significantly reduced the ship’s maneuverability, and I doubted that we would find convenient repair facilities on this planet. Banking left was a chore, and banking right was now the ship’s default on a dead
stick. If I pulled the stick to starboard we’d probably spin out of control.

Nakari grimaced when I explained that to her. “Well, I suppose the engine served its purpose, right? It was always going to be temporary anyway. Can we make it back to the fleet with just one engine?”

“Sure. It’ll be a bit slower, but we’ll make it. There’s nothing wrong with the hyperdrive. I’m thinking of just killing the engine now. I might get some maneuverability back if it’s the engine shaking loose on that side causing the trouble.”

I powered down the starboard engine and some of the shaking and drag eased, which was a relief. The stick became more responsive, too, though it still wished to drag us to starboard a little. We lost quite a bit of speed, of course, but I was just thinking we didn’t need much anymore when an alarm blatted.

“Luke,” Nakari said, “there’s something on the scanner. Two somethings. Ships inbound from our rendezvous coordinates.”

Drusil heard this over the comm and ventured with a hopeful note in her voice, “Perhaps my family is coming to meet me.”

I didn’t reply at first, instead studying the data scrolling across the scanner readout. I’d have to tell Drusil that her guess was highly improbable. “I don’t think so. Those aren’t personal shuttles. They’re custom ships like this one, moving very fast. And whoa—they just threw up their deflector shields. Definitely not friendly.”

I raised our own shields, and my heart sank as I considered our options. Those ships were much faster than us right now, and might still be faster even if I turned on the starboard engine again. And turning it on would mean I’d lose what little agility I currently had for a speed gain that wouldn’t be enough. There were no canyons or other land features for me to exploit, either: We were over open water for kilometers.

“Who are these guys?” Nakari asked.

“Bounty hunters,” I grated. Patient ones. And the only way they could have been here waiting for us was if they had followed Drusil’s family here. Major Derlin’s half of the operation, as I’d feared, had to have been compromised. It was no wonder we’d never gotten any news about it. I hoped the Givin’s family was still safe; there was no bounty on them as far as I knew, so maybe the bounty hunters had merely been staking them out, waiting for our arrival. And I hoped the major was all right if he was still on the planet.

Drusil had no comment to make over the comm. She was brilliant, and now that she had new information she could see the probabilities much more clearly than I could.

“Nakari,” I said, my voice pitched low. “No matter what I do, we’re at a severe disadvantage here. We’d better prepare for an emergency water landing.”

“Oh. Right.” She nodded and began to unbuckle. “What about your droid?”

“His electrical systems are watertight so he can survive a dunking, but he’s not a good swimmer. We’ll have to help him get out.”

“Got it.” She bent to kiss the top of my head as she exited. “Fly well, my pilot.”

The bounty hunter ships were designed with narrow silhouettes like the
Desert Jewel
to make them difficult to target. One was dark, flat, and chunky, like a malevolent piece of armed and flying toast, and the other sailed like a vertical needle, similar to a B-wing, cockpit at the top and a rectangular battery of lasers below that fired in sequence and repeated, a barrage of blasts almost impossible to dodge.

Only the needle ship fired, and while I managed to avoid many of the bolts and landed a couple of hits myself, we still got pounded so many times on the first pass that our shields were reduced to dangerous lows. We probably wouldn’t survive the next pass.

But a strange situation developed. An angry voice berated the needle ship over an open channel, demanding that it stop firing or be destroyed. Since there were no other ships around, the voice could only belong to the pilot of the flying toast. He took issue with the pilot of the needle attempting to destroy us, since we represented a sizable bounty and they could hardly collect if we disappeared into the ocean. I took advantage by searching for a way out. There was an island ahead and slightly to port, maybe only two or three dozen square kilometers in size, sporting forested hills above a sheltered lagoon with a sandy beach. If we could land on the beach and run for cover that would be best, but I remembered Admiral Ackbar’s warnings about the planet’s seas, and in case we were forced down before we reached that island, I wanted us to have as little water to cross as possible.

We were functionally on the deck, skimming only thirty meters above the surface of the water and moving slowly. The scanner showed additional ships coming from the rendezvous coordinates to the east—slower and bulkier than the first two but no doubt also piloted by bounty hunters. Regardless of whether they wanted to destroy us or capture us, I began to feel like we were being followed by a flock of carrion birds.

The needle ship fired at me again from its dense battery of cannons, and as it did the flying toast unloaded on the needle, and I thought perhaps I understood why. The needle pilot didn’t want to capture us so much as deny our capture to all the others—but especially to the pilot of the toast. There was an internecine rivalry there, and the needle pilot was not playing to win but rather playing to make everyone lose.

We would lose the most. Though I avoided the majority of the bolts, a few landed and overwhelmed our shields, and after that another one struck and damaged our port engine. The ship rocked, and the smoke trail I thought should have been there earlier finally appeared.

I thought that would be the end of us, but the needle’s shields dissolved under withering bombardment from the other bounty hunter, and then it was shot down, trailing fiery wreckage into the water. It was a welcome if temporary reprieve, for we looked to share a similar fate. Most of our speed had leached away, and all I could do was fight to keep the nose up and minimize the angle of our dive. I thought of restarting the starboard engine but didn’t want the fire to spread there, as well.

“We’re going down!” I said.

“Coming!” Nakari said.

I didn’t know why she’d be coming forward if the landing ramp was behind the cockpit, but there was no time to argue. I fought the stick and the failing engine as much as possible so that we skipped across the surface once before plowing into the still green waters of the lagoon. Cries of alarm erupted from Nakari, Artoo, and Drusil as they all pitched forward from the impact and joined me in the cockpit. Nakari was carrying in front of her the Kelen Biolabs Emergency Aquatic Something Something—I couldn’t catch it all—and it saved her from cracking her head against the dome of the cockpit. She grunted at the collision but then told me to unbuckle as we began to sink into the dark waters of the lagoon that now appeared to be quite deep, even though it was a sheltered cove.

“Don’t touch the landing ramp!” she said, tossing me a water filter for my nostrils. She had her slugthrower strapped to her back and her jacket zipped up tight. “We’re getting out this way, but we have to do it before we sink too deep.”

“How?”

“Manual release and mechanical ejection of the viewport. It’ll slide up and away, water will pour in, we grab Artoo and clear the ship, deploy the raft underneath him, ride it to the surface.” She twisted black dials and pulled levers in sequence at three points along the outside edge of the cockpit on the copilot’s side.
“You gotta turn these right and then pull down on your side, too,” she said.

I hadn’t noticed them before, but the dials and levers were there, blending into the trim of the window. Presumably they released the airtight—and watertight—seal. The atmosphere in the ship had given it a modicum of buoyancy, but we’d be ruining that in a moment and we’d sink faster. I flipped and pulled until a trickle of water began to seep through the edges.

“Ready? Got your breather in? Crouch down by Artoo and we’ll do this. Drusil?”

“Ready,” the Givin said. She didn’t have a breathing apparatus attached to her nose, but any being that could survive in vacuum for a day could survive the water for a few minutes. She was braced against the bulkhead, anticipating the incoming rush of water. Her slicing hardware was slipped into her carry-sack, presumably waterproof, which she slung over her shoulders. I squatted next to Artoo, feet planted wide to brace myself, and Nakari yanked down on a larger lever located above the viewport in the center. The ship shuddered, a metallic clang reverberated around us, and then a loud hiss and
foosh
announced the ejection of the transparisteel from its casing and the concomitant deluge of seawater into the ship. Artoo bleeped in alarm, and I gasped at the shock of cold and threw my arms around the droid to steady both of us.