"No navigational fix as yet, sir. Stand by, data coming in.
The main lights suddenly cut back in, and an automated voice boomed out, "Warning. Warning. Artificial gravity resumes in thirty seconds. We will ramp up from zero to one hundred percent of full standard gravity over a twenty-second period. Stand by for resumption of artificial gravity."
The bridge officers who had been thrown into midair had all managed to find handholds by this time and were scrambling across the overhead bulkheads to whatever ladders or guide wires they could find.
The gravitics came on again with a low hum that vanished into the subsonic almost at once. The debris caught in midair started floating downward, thudding and clattering to the deck as weight returned.
The stars stopped pinwheeling past the viewports as the navigation crew regained attitude control. Luke could see one of the destroyerthe Defender, it looked likeme into view as it took up station keeping.
"We now have a solid navigational fix"' the flag-deck technician announced. "We are off projected course line by approximately ten million kilometers, and we are seventy-two hours from Selonia at flank speed."
"Are we capable of flank speed at this time?" Ossilege asked.
"Damage assessment still coming in, sir. Engineer reports maximum advisable acceleration is one third flank.
It was a pretty rough ride. Stand by. Sir, the Watchkeeper has just dropped out of hyperspace. Attempting to plot a navigational fix on the Watchkeeper. We are not receiving any com- or data-link from Watchkeeper. Power emissions from Watchkeeper below normal minimums.
She is tumbling badly, sir."
"Tried to ride the hyperdrive sustainer a little too long, it would appear. Very well," said Ossilege. "My compliments to the masters of Intruder, Defender, and SentineL Use laser visual signaling to order ships to get under way and rendezvous at Watchkeeper. She's the furthest toward the inner system, and we may need to render aid.
Inform me of any change in status of any ship."
"Very well, sir." Ossilege turned to Luke and Lando. "Well," he said, "it would seem we came through that in reasonably good shape.
And I expect our friends on Corellia will be more than a bit surprised to see us pop out of hyperspace a mere three days out from the inner system. I wonder if they will be in any position to respond in time?"
R2-D2 was running at capacity. There was so much to do, so many demands on his attention. There was only so much one droid could do.
He was responsible not only for the flight-readiness of Master Luke's X-wing, but for Lando Calrissian's Lady Luck as well. Handling the standard diagnostics and maintenance and navigational updates on two ships at once was not, in itself, enough to present him with any great problem. His master, Luke Skywalker, also required his attendance a fair amount of the time, and negotiating for supplies, equipment, and datalinks with the Bakuran droids was extremely time consuming. It took a great deal of background effort to make everything go smoothly.
Artoo was aboard the Lady Luck at the moment.
Lando Calrissian's ship was safely in its lockdown point on the Intruder's flight deck, right next to Luke's X-wing, in the midst of the Bakuran fighter craft. Techs and droids were swarming over all the Bakuran vehicles, making sure they had ridden out the Intruder's violent arrival. The Bakurans were using at least one human tech and two droids on each fighter check-out. Artoo was left to do the same check-job on the X-wing and the Lady Luck by himself, and both of them were far more complex spacecraft that the Bakuran fighters. He was on his own, save for the extremely marginal assistance of Threepio.
Artoo began his checks of the navigation systems. He plugged his dataport into the main navigation sensor arrays, and noted the dorsal infrared unit was slightly out of alignment. That he could fix from here by sending commands through the dataport link. He switched over and tested the navicomputer itself. The unit passed e ily, solving all of the simulated problems with high precision.
Satisfied that the navigation systems were operational, Artoo moved on to test the communications equipment. As all normal com frequencies were being jammed, rendering all the com gear useless, communication testing was at lower priority than normal, but sooner or later the jamming would be lifted. It would be prudent to at least do a cursory check.
The standard hyperwave channels all tested Out normally, with no aberrations. It was impossible to do detailed checks under jamming conditions, of course, and the laser line-of-sight communications could likewise not receive a full check until the ship was out in clear space. But all the circuits seemed functional, and the com control system was operational.
"Artoo! where are you?" Artoo could hear Threepio calling from somewhere near the Lady's main hatch.
Artoo elected to complete his present task before responding. He continued the corn check, moving on to tests on the ship's lowest priority communications device, the radionics system.
All the radionics systems seemed functional. But there was one odd thing. In spite of the jamming, it seemed to be receiving a signal. But of course. The archaic electromagnetic-radiation signaling system could not be affected by jamming of hyperwave subspace frequencies anymore than poisoned human food could hurt a droid. There was no way for the radionics system to detect subspace signals, let alone be jammed by them.
Artoo began to examine the signal. It was repeating, over and over again. A beacon, perhaps, or a distress call.
"Artoo! Artoo! where are you!" Threepio's voice again, doser and more insistent this time. Artoo tried to concentrate on interpreting the signal. It was quite a simple pattern in many ways, but he was not used to dealing with nondigital signaling, or with radionics. It appeared to be an analog transmission, though he could not be sure of that withoutBLANG! Threepio's hand slapped down on the top of Artoc's sensor dome. "Artoo! Look alive, will you?
Master Luke wants you on the flag deck at once to record the tactics report. Stop running those redundant checks, unplug yourself, and come with me at once!"
Artoo ceased his analysis at once, disengaged from the Lady Luck's data port, and hurried after Threepio.
The tactical report could well provide vital data. Analysis of low-priority signals would just have to wait.
Han sat back in his flight chair, immensely restless.
Watching Salculd do a semicompetent job of flying her ship was not doing his mood much good. Han was aboard the Selonian's nameless cone-shaped ship as it lumbered across space, taking its own sweet time about the passage to Selonia. Han was starting to lose whatever slight patience he had for the situation. They were a day and a half out from Corellia with perhaps another day's travel to go. Unfortunately, the key word in all that was "perhaps." Han was starting to believe they were never going to get anywhere.
The coneship had already suffered two propulsion failures, and Han had been drafted to perform repairs both times. What he saw of the propulsion systems in the process had not put him at his ease. It seemed the whole sublight propulsion system was held together with spit and string.
Nor had Dracmus, serving as the ship's commander, shown the best judgment. Dracmus had ordered three evasive course changes in response to what seemed to be wholly imaginary threats from the handful of craft that were braving the spaceways. Given the extremely limited capacity of the coneship's sensors, there seemed very little point to any attempt at evasive maneuver. The only ships they could detect were the ones moving very slowly and not very far away. Nor could the coneship run fast if she were attacked, and she could not shoot at all. Unless they were attacked by an overburdened spacetug, they were fair game for anyone. There was, therefore, very little point in trying to stay out of sight.
Dracmus, however, was not convinced by these arguments. It was starting to sink in with Han that the Selonians might be the masters of the underworld, but they needed a little practice to get good at ship handling, to put it charitably.
Of course, there were benefits to being a passenger on a slow-moving ship. B
eing onboard any ship, even one this crude, meant getting off his hands and knees, meant a chance to take at least a sponge bath and rinse out his dothespportunities he had not had since being captured by the Human League forces. It meant a chance to rest, to recuperate, to let a full day pass without sustaining a new injury, to use the medkit to patch himself up at least a little.
Yes indeed, looked at it that way, there were benefits.
Maybe he should take a little nap. He was just on the verge of closing his eyes when the alarms blew. He was halfway out of his restraint harness, about to rush to battle stations, when it dawned on him that he had no battle station on this boat.
Dracmus materialized from her stateroom. "What is it?" she called to Salculd.
Salculd was at her pilot's station, frantically twisting dials and setting switches, and did not answer at once. It took a full fifteen seconds for her to get the alarms cut off and the flight syStem back under some sort of control. Good thing it wasn't a real emergency, Han thought.
Otherwise we'd all have been killed before she had the alaims reset.
"Detector alert," Salculd said at last. "Another ship.
No, three-no, four others. They just popped out of nowhere, out of hyperspace."
"But what about the interdiction field?" Han protested.
"It's still there," Salculd said. "But the ships got through it, somehow. They're coming from starboard, moving straight for us, and for Selonia.
"Full evasive!" Dracmus ordered at once, not waiting for details.
"Wait! Hold it!" Han shouted, trying to get them to stop in time. A glance at the display boards made it clear the newcomers were at least two and a half days away at any sort of reasonable acceleration. Besides which, who would send four big ships in pursuit of this glorified gocart?
But it was too late. For all of Salculd's irreverent posturing, she had never been anything but quick off the mark in obeying Dracmus's orders. She slammed the sublight engines up to maximum and heeled the nose of the ship hard over.
"Don't throttle up so hard!" Han shouted. "Your power relay inverters can't handle too many hard power-ups!"
And the sickening thud they heard a moment later told Han he had understated the case. The inverters could not handle any more hard power-ups.
"You've blown the primary power regulator!" Han shouted.
"Throttle down before you lose the backup, too!"
Salculd looked over at Han, a wild look in her eye.
"But Dracmus ordered me tcH"
"But nothing! You can't perform evasive maneuvers if the engines blow out! Throttle down!"
Salculd needed no more convincing. She lunged for the controls and pulled the throttle back.
Nothing happened. The ship continued to accelerate wildly.
"Backup regulator's blown!" Han said. Without the regulators in place to mediate-and end-the power reactions, the ship's sublight engines would do nothing more than run flat out at maximum power, until they melted down or exploded, taking the ship with them.
Han scrambled out of his flight chair and dove for the access ladder to the lower deck. He swarmed down the ladder and rushed to the power relay inverter array. He popped the access panel open and spent a frantic moment or two searching through the mishmash of nonstandard components for the manual emergency cut-off switch. He spotted it and yanked it down hard. The sublight engines died with a sickening lurch.
The switch was already hot enough to burn his fingers. A moment's examination confirmed his worst fears. The power coupling runaway had blown out the sublight engine initiator link. No point in even checking to see if the engines had held together. Without the initiator link, there was no way to start the engines in the first place.
They were stranded but good.
Han made sure that the array had dropped into cooldown mode properly and then went back forward to the control cabin at the apex of the cone, stopping off at the head just long enough to wet down a towel and wrap it around his burnt hand.
"We're all right for the moment," he announced. "I found the cut-off in time to keep the ship from blowing out. But we're derelict."
"Derelict?"
"We can't maneuver the ship," Han said. "whatever course we had at the time I threw the cut-off is the course we're going to have, unless someone comes along and rescues us.
"Is there no way to fix it?" Dracmus asked.
"Maybe," Han said, "if we're very lucky and we don't crash into a planet or into Corell or starve to death before we can do the job. If the engines themselves haven't melted down, all we have to do is make ourselves a new initiator link-but that could take months."
The coneship made the Millennium Falcon look maintenance-free.
"Who maintains this ship for youyour worst enemy?"
"In a sense, yes," said Dracmus. "It is because our enemies have denied us access to regular spaceports and seized all our ships that we are forced to use these craft. They've been in storage for twenty standard years."
"And you just wheeled them out, pushed the `on' switch, and hoped for the best?" Han asked.
"We didn't have much choice in the matter,' Dracmus said. "We are in a fight for our lives, and the question of what is an acceptable risk suddenly has different answers."
"But why is it worth risking both of your lives and a nonreplaceable ship just to get me to Selonia?"
"Perhaps we do not put such an excessive value on our own lives, as you humans do. We are more willing to sacrifice ourselves for the good of all."
"Speak for yourself," Salculd muttered.
"Your question is still a good one," Dracmus went on, ignoring the interruption. "However, I must say no more about it."
"I had a premonition you were going to give that answer," Han growled. "Still, it doesn't exactly fill in all the blanks, if you know what I mean.
"If you ask me," said Salculd, "it's time that we-" Suddenly another alarm squawked. Salculd turned back toward her controls.
"What have we got left that's not shut down-" She checked the displays.
"Uh-oh," she said. "More bad news. The navicomputer just crashed."
"That's not bad news anymore. With the engines down, who cares about the navicomputer?" Han said.
"Look on the bright side. If we can't navigate, it doesn't matter if the propulsion system is melted down to slag." The Jade's Fire was farther sunward from Selonia, but she had far better detectors-and a far better stealth ability than the coneship. The Jade's Fu could see the coneshithough they had no reason to pay her any mind. However, the coneship could not see the Fire.
Beyond that, the Jade's Fire also had a far superior shiptype database. The coneship had spotted the sudden arrival of four large incoming blips. The Jade's Fire had them nailed as Bakuran warships-three destroyers and a cruiser-the moment they came into range.
And there was one other difference. Those aboard the Jade's Fl'e reacted somewhat more calmly to the Bakurans' arival.
"what the hell are they doing here?" Mara asked.
"And how did they beat the interdiction field? And who's aboard?"
"I don't know how they got here," leia replied. "But I'm glad to see them. And as for who is aboard, I think I have a very good idea."
She reached out with her Force sense and closed her eyes. But no, the range was too great. Maybe Luke could reach out that far, but she could not. She hadn't really expected to sense from here. She would try again later. But even so, she knew.
"who?" Mara asked. "who is it you think is aboard those ships?"
"Luke," she said. "Luke is there. He came to the rescue. He brought the ships in. I knew that when I saw they were Bakuran. The Bakurans owed a debt to Luke, and he got them to pay it. Don't ask me how, but he did.
And don't ask me how the Bakurans beat the interdiction field, but they did."
Mara looked at leia and frowned as she thought it through. "It's exactly the sort of thing he wouLd do," she conceded. "And the Bakuran connection clinches it. I think you're r
ight. Luke just arrived. But that's a battle formation out there, and communications are still down.
Luke or no Luke, I don't think it would be the smartest idea to head over that way for a little visit We keep our heads down and stay on course for Selonia."
The infuriating thing was that leia knew perfectly well that she was right.
Belindi Kalenda was delighted to be where she wasH)r, more accurately, she was glad to be anywhere where she could do something useful. She felt as if she had been lost in the shuffle since her arrival in the Coruscant system, bringing her messages from Corellia Others might have been swept up in the drama of great events, but once her task as messenger was complete, she had been promptly relegated to the background while the grownups took over.
But here they were, back on Corellia, and it would have been a gross understatement to say the Bakuran intelligence staff did not know its way around. They had a fair amount of book knowledge and database information about the planet, but nearly all of it was badly dated.
Several of their references referred to its role as an Imperial base, which was bad enough, but she had actually stumbled across several "update" reports in the Bakuran files that were clearly written during the Old Republic. They needed all the help they could get.
But she had bigger jobs than updating the historical record.
There was any amount of real-time analysis to do. Her primary job at the moment was to get the best figures possible on the size, dimensions, and intensity of the interdiction field. The Bakurans had brought along special instruments for the purpose of tracking the field -and with every reading those instruments got, it became clearer and clearer that both the jamming signals and the interdiction field were centered on the Double World system. They had suspected that right along, of course, but it was nice to get it confirmed. But Kalenda had just gone one better than that. The data she had just pulled in and processed made her all but certain that she had detected the precise position of the field generator. And while she didn't know about the others, the news certainly was enough to give her a surprise.
Kalenda checked the time and swore under her breath. She was supposed to give the tactical report in five minutes. She wouldn't have time to freshen up or change. Well, it wasn't her fault the confirming data had chosen this moment to come in. It wasn't as if the data would be any better if it came from an officer in a fresh uniform.
Star Wars - The Corellian Trilogy - Assault At Selonia Page 24