Dark Nest_ The Joiner King Part 33

"Approximately one hundred twelve thousand to one, Princess Leia,"

C- 3PO said helpfully. "The hangar staff at the Jedi Temple are generally quite proficient."

"That's where we got our last coolant change?" Without waiting for a reply, Han turned to Leia. "Something smell bad to you?"

"Very," she said. "The Temple would know by now if it had been using bad coolant. Someone would have warned us."

"Yeah," Han said. "It's gotta be something else."

"Sabotage?"

"That'd be my bet," Han said. "Threepio, find out how Saba's doing-and have Meewalh and Cakhmaim do another sweep of the s.h.i.+p. Tell them to look for droppings and bug tracks. That may be the only way we know they're here."

"They?" C-3PO asked.

"Killiks," Han said. "Stowaways."

The droid left to obey. Han turned to find Leia staring out the viewport with a distant expression. It was the same look he'd seen a dozen times, as she reached out in the Force and tried to warn Luke about the a.s.sa.s.sin bugs Saba had found.

He waited until her attention returned to the c.o.c.kpit, then asked, "Any luck?"

"Luke's preoccupied with something about our family. I think he thought I was trying to tell him about Saba." Leia shook her head. "And I just don't have a strong enough connection with Mara."

"What about Jacen?"

"I don't know," Leia said. "I can't tell if he doesn't believe me or just doesn't understand."

"Blast," Han said. "We could us a little help here. If this is sabotage..."

Han let the sentence trail off, for a faint thread of blue had appeared ahead, stretched horizontally across the pearly void of hypers.p.a.ce.

"Leia, do you see that?"

"What?"

Han pointed at the thread, which had thickened into a line of mottled colors ranging from white to dark purple. "Colors."

"Very funny," Leia said. "I'm sorry I called you old."

"No, really." Han jabbed his finger toward the line, which was now a finger-width band darkening toward sapphire. "Look."

Leia looked, and her jaw dropped. "Should that be there?"

Fangs of blue light began to flash out from both sides of the sapphire stripe.

"No," Han said.

"Then why hasn't the proximity alarm dropped us out of hypers.p.a.ce?"

"You don't want to know."

By the time Han had a hand on the hypers.p.a.ce disengage, the sapphire stripe had thickened into a braided grimace of purple and white, and the tips of the blue fangs were flas.h.i.+ng clear up to the canopy. He pulled the control lever back to emergency override... and a m.u.f.fled bang sounded deep in the Falcon's stern.

"Han!" Leia demanded. "What don't I want to know?"

"Tell you in a minute." The entire s.h.i.+p began to buck and shudder, and an eerie chorus of whirs hummed up the access corridor. "Blast!"

Han reengaged the hyperdrive. The s.h.i.+p stopped shuddering and the whirs faded to silence, but the crimson blue ahead reached out and closed around the Falcon.

"Tell me, Han. What don't I want to know?"

"What is this?" a reedy voice asked from the back of the flight deck. "Have we flown into a nebula?"

Han was vaguely aware of Leia turning toward Juun's voice - but only vaguely. The blue teeth had become the interior of a white-veined mouth, and most of his mind was busy trying to figure out what to do next.

"You've flown into a nebula before?" Leia asked Juun.

"Of course-many times," Juun a.s.sured her. "But usually I disengage the hyperdrive and fly right back out."

"Not an option." Han eased the hyperdrive control lever back until he heard the first hint of a whir. It didn't take much. "We'll blow that bad coolant line when the shutdown temperature spikes."

"I thought you fixed that!" Juun complained.

"So did I." Han glanced up at Juun's reflection in the canopy.

"Someone unfixed it."

If Juun noticed the fear in Han's voice, he hid it well. "Well, you can't just keep going. The gas friction will distort the continuum warp."

"Distortion won't kill us," Han said. The Falcon's stabilizers would probably keep their warp within safe parameters. "It's the dust sh.e.l.l I'm worried about."

"Oh, yes." Juun's voice was forlorn. "The dust sh.e.l.l."

"How long?" Leia asked.

She was too good a copilot to need to ask what would happen when a vessel traveling through hypers.p.a.ce tried to punch its way through the striated layers of dust and debris that hung inside an expansion nebula.

"That depends on how old the nebula is," Han said. Two-meter circles of white began to flash ahead of the Falcon as the first dust particles blossomed against her forward s.h.i.+elds. "But not long enough."

"This is a young one," Juun agreed. "A very young one."

The whir finally went silent, and Han eased the control lever back until he heard it again. He was only prolonging the inevitable, but sometimes stalling was the only move you had.

"Han." There was a tremor in Leia's voice, and she was staring straight out the forward viewport. "Tell me the truth-are we going to die?"

"Can you do that fog-parting trick you used on Borao again?" Han asked. "And extend it to about twelve light-years?"

"I doubt it," Leia said.

"Then, yeah, we're probably gonna die."

"What a pity Tarfang isn't here!" Juun said.

Han scowled into the canopy reflection. "I thought you liked that mattball."

"Very much!" Juun exclaimed. "And I'm sorry his name won't be listed among those who died with Han Solo."

"Not so fast," Leia said. The dust particles were blooming fast and furious now, turning hypers.p.a.ce almost solid white with microscopic novae. "If we're going to die anyway, there's nothing left to lose."

"I hadn't thought of it that way," Juun said. "But-"

"Watch and learn," Leia said.

She activated the Falcon's att.i.tude control system, then - before Han could stop her-spun the s.h.i.+p around so that it was traveling backward through hypers.p.a.ce.

The white blossoms vanished, and for a moment, the Falcon felt as though she were simply traveling through hypers.p.a.ce backward.

Then the nebula turned red and started to spiral away from the viewport. Han's stomach turned somersaults faster than a Jedi acrobat, and the Falcon's hull began to wail and screech like a rancor in full rut.

"Ke... b... ff!"

Han could not understand Leia above the terrible clamor, but it was easy to guess what she was yelling. He eased the lever back another centimeter. There was no question of listening for the humming coolant line, so he decided to count to thirty and do it again. What did it matter? They were going to die anyway.

Then Leia did something really foolish... she fired the sub-light drives.

The shrieking and wailing stopped at once, and suddenly it was the Falcon spinning instead of s.p.a.ce. Han felt as though his heart were going to fly out between his ribs, and he lost his last three meals.

But incredibly, he was still alive to know how bad he was feeling.

He realized he had lost his count and eased the control lever back some more.

The whir returned. It occurred to him that the Falcon had fallen otherwise silent-which meant they weren't being pelted by dust particles, which meant the sublight drives were blasting a hole through the dust sh.e.l.l. Han looked over to congratulate Leia. Her face was a meter wide and five centimeters tall.

Nice try, he said. It came out yiiiiirt eeeeeciiiiN in his own head. He doubted he would ever know how it sounded to Leia.

The whir vanished. He eased the control lever back. Leia's face went to a meter tall and ten centimeters wide. Something big exploded against the Falcon's rear s.h.i.+elds and the s.h.i.+p shook so violently that Juun-who had not strapped himself in - ended up splayed against the forward viewport.

Han eased the control lever back and took a long deep sniff, smelled only the sour barf of five different species-maybe a hint of verbobrain actuating gas-and eased the lever farther.

Leia's face shrank to half a meter on the diagonal, and Han said, I love you, Princess, even if you drive like a...

He didn't finish. The words came out Eeeyyyyeeee wooooobe ooooooo, which wasn't half bad, considering.

Han eased the control lever back again, and Juun slid down the canopy and disappeared behind the instrument console.

Then the proximity alarm went off, and the color outside the canopy went from blue to red to blue to whirling stripes of silver. Suddenly, Leia's face was the proper size and shape-still far too green, but at least oval and no more than twenty-five centimeters from chin to hairline-and Han felt even sicker than before.

That was when C-3PO came tumbling up the access corridor. "Doomed!"

He crashed to a halt behind the navigator's chair, then fell to the deck, flailing. "We're doomed for sure!"

Han immediately knew they were going to make it. He took control of the Falcon and began to fire att.i.tude thrusters, slowly bringing their spin under control. There was just a hint of coolant sweetness in the recycled air-enough to mean they would have to decontaminate the s.h.i.+p, but not so much they would die before they had a chance.

A pair of small hands appeared at the top edge of the control panel, and Juun pulled himself up to peer over the edge. "Real s.p.a.ce?"

"Yeah." Han glanced out the viewport and saw nothing but the veined, red sky of a still-cooling nebula. "I think."

"It is," Leia said. "The proximity alarm dropped us out of hypers.p.a.ce. "

"And we survived?" Juun sounded almost disappointed. His sunken eyes swung toward Han. "That wasn't in any of the history vids. Did you teach her that?"

"No," Leia said. "And it hasn't worked yet. There's still one tiny problem."

"As long as it's tiny," Han said, eyeing the white static on his sensor screen.

"Well-not really tiny." Leia used the att.i.tude thrusters to spin the Falcon around, bringing into view the green, rapidly swelling disk of the planet they were about to crash into. "It was big enough to drop us out of hypers.p.a.ce."

TWENTY-THREE.

Jacen dropped out of the tik tree to discover that even here, in the muggy heart of her private jungle garden, Queen Mother Tenel Ka was not alone. Seated in a small sunken courtyard with her rust-colored braids hanging down the back of her sleeveless frock, she was surrounded by twenty courtiers-mostly male and attractive, all attired in absurd, hand-tailored imitations of the Queen Mother's rustic fas.h.i.+on. Tenel Ka could have that effect on people.

Jacen crept up silently behind a camouflaged sentry who was patrolling the musky foliage along the garden wall-the last of the palace's many layers of security-and grasped the man's neck. The fellow tried to spin and yell the alarm, but went limp as Jacen sent a paralyzing jolt of Force energy through his spine.

Still alert to her Jedi instincts, Tenel Ka felt the disturbance and turned on her bench, revealing a cla.s.sic profile even more stunning than the one in Jacen's memory. He expanded his presence in the Force so she would not be alarmed, then lowered the unconscious sentry to the ground and stepped out of the shrubbery.

Several courtiers cried out and sprang forward to s.h.i.+eld Tenel Ka, and three more sentries emerged from the foliage along the garden wall.

The two guards with clear angles zipped blasterfire in the intruder's direction, while the third called for help. Jacen deflected the bolts with his palms, then reached out with the Force and jerked the blaster rifles from their hands.

"Cease fire!" Tenel Ka ordered, a bit late. "Stand down!"

The guards, already rus.h.i.+ng Jacen with their hand blasters half free of their holsters, reluctantly obeyed. The n.o.bles complied far less reluctantly.

Once Tenel Ka was satisfied her orders were being followed, she leapt onto the courtyard wall and, smiling warmly, opened her arms. Jacen was not surprised to see that the right one still ended at the elbow.

After the sparring accident that had claimed the limb, Tenel Ka had refused an artificial replacement, keeping the stump as a reminder of the arrogance that had led to the mishap.

"Jacen!" she cried. "Welcome!"

"Thank you." It warmed Jacen's heart to find such an enthusiastic reception. "It's good to see you again, Queen Mother."

As Jacen stepped forward to receive her embrace, half a dozen burly Hapans blocked his way. One of them, an icy-eyed n.o.ble with neck-length blond hair and no left hand, glanced back at Tenel Ka. "This man is a friend of yours, Queen Mother?"