assault boat at a rate of one per secN and ."
"Jump troops have the benefit of training and gravity.
I have modeled it with Artoo's nav processor. At best, one of us would
not make it through."
"Well--that is a problem," said Lando. "Because I have a sneaking
suspicion that when we cut a hole that size, this ship's going to get
fed up with us and try to spit us out again. I don't think we'll get a
chance to do it twice." He thought hard for a moment, then waved the
blaster in the air. "Everything off the sled. I need to make some
modifications."
The equipment sled was an uncomplicated device.
Its thick rectangular frame contained the gyros, fuel cells, and thrust
stabilizer system, and also provided cutout handholds at regular
intervals. The standard diamond-pattern metal grid that filled the
frame provided a wealth of lockdowns for gear kits and tools. Both
sides of the grid on the team's sled were heavily loaded.
"Modifications?"
"Yeah," said Lando. "I think we need a frame for our door."
Clinging to the sled with one hand and wielding the cutting blaster
with the other, Lando slashed away where the grid joined the sled
frame. When he was finished, the sled was in two pieces. Lando pushed
the wobbly, heavily loaded grid toward Artoo. "You tow that through to
the other side."
The droid's grappling clamps appeared and latched onto the grid
securely.
"Give me a hand here, Lobot?"
Lobot eased forward and grabbed a handhold at the opposite end of the
gutted sled frame. "I am remembering something I accessed earlier," he
said. "The chief designer of the Ma'aood funerary temples directed his
draftsmen that all obvious passages should be booby-trapped, and all
traps should be made as inviting as possible."
"Thank you for that uplifting thought," said Lando.
"If we get out of this, you should think about a new career as a morale
officer. Everyone ready?"
"Master Lando, what should I do?"
Lando checked his combat blaster in its holster, then slid the selector
on the cutting blaster to WiDE. "Add this to our apology," he said,
and pointed it at the bulkhead.
"Hang on."
The brilliant flare of the cutting beam momentarily dazzled the
viewscreen of Lando's contact suit, and the vaporized material from two
and a half square meters of bulkhead filled the air as a gray cloud.
Before Lando could even see clearly, the hole began to close.
"Let's go, let's go--get it lined up!" Lando shouted.
The two men maneuvered the frame into position, and the bulkhead closed
around it as though it were a tailored fit.
But as they did, they heard a deep, rumbling groan from the ship, a
sound that had no direction. Though the surroundings were alien, the
sound was familiar--the signature of a form of stress that aged large
vessels' hulls and led to the spectacular form of self-destruction
known as an exit breach. It was the exit growl, the characteristic
sound caused by portions of the ship emerging from hyperspace
nanoseconds before the rest as the jump field collapsed.
"I hate it when I'm right," Lando said, gesturing with his free hand.
"Move it, Artoo. Now!"
The little droid jetted quickly toward the opening, towing the heavily
loaded grid behind it. For a moment Lando thought the frame looked too
small for Artoo to pass through it. But the droid retracted his treads
as far as they would go, turned his body, and cleared the opening by
bare centimeters. The equipment grid smoothly passed through behind
him.
"Wait for me, Artoo!" Threepio called, flailing his arms and legs in
midair.
"Go ahead," Lando said to Lobot, passing him the cutting blaster and
waving him on. "I'll get Threepio."
Lobot didn't wait to be told twice, swinging himself feetfirst through
the improvised doorway as neatly as a gymnast taking a turn on the
parallel bar. Meanwhile, Lando clipped the safety line from the
contact suit's belt to the handhold of the frame and launched himself
toward the droid, his gloved hand extended to him.
"Oh, thank you, Master Lando," the droid said relievedly as he grabbed
hold of Lando's arm. Then Threepio saw Lando's eyes suddenly widen in
alarm.
"What is it, sir?"
Watching from the inner passage, Lobot saw the same thing Lando had
seen when he looked past Threepio toward the outer bulkhead a small
opening appearing and quickly irising into an airlock that revealed a
stark, starry blackness beyond. Moments later the external mics on the
suits picked up the hiss of out-rushing air.
Lando did not take the time to answer Threepio's concerned inquiry.
"Heads up--incoming!" he bellowed, and swung Threepio by the arms
toward the inner doorway. Bracing himself against the frame, Lobot
reached through, caught Threepio's right foot, and dragged him into the
inner passage.
But the rush of air through the inner passage and out through the wound
kept building, and it was all Lobot could do to keep himself from being
sucked through.
Nor was he the only one in trouble. Artoo's thrusters could not hold
against the screaming wind, and he squawked loudly as he was dragged
inexorably back down the inner passage toward the opening, clinging
determinedly to the equipment grid.
Meanwhile, Lando dangled helplessly at the end of his safety line, his
feet banging against the edge of the outer airlock as the air grabbed
at him on its way into the vacuum beyond.
Only Threepio was relatively secure, his metal body braced across one
end of the sled frame, blocking part of the opening. But he was waving
his arms wildly like a shell-spined mud crawler that'd been flipped on
its back.
"Oh, Artoo, we're doomed!" he cried. "I never did like space
travel.
Look where your adventuring has led us--" "You have to cut the frame,"
Lando was shouting into the comlink. "Cut the frame and it'll pull
out--the rest of the hole will close. Do it!"
"Not with you on that side," Lobot said, climbing across Threepio to
where the safety line was attached.
"There's a take-up crank on that belt line. See if you can pull
yourself up that way."
"No good," said Lando. "Too much load. Just cut the frame, will
you?"
Lobot glanced sideways down the corridor to see if he and Threepio were
in danger of being knocked through the hole by an out-of-control Artoo
and his cargo. But to Lobot's relief, he saw that Artoo had made his
way to the edge of the passage, burned a small hole with his arc
welder, and let the hole close around a repair arm. So far, the anchor
was holding against the current--which seemed to Lobot to be
weakening.
"Forget it," Lobot directed, reaching down between his braced legs and
catching hold of the thin safety line.
He began hauling on the line hand over hand, reeling Lando in like a
great white fish. The cyborg's wiry body concealed surprising
strength, and soon he had hold of the tow ring on Lando's suit, at the
back of the neck.
"Use your thrusters now--full vertical."
"Full vertical," Lando echoed.
With one smooth, powerful motion, Lobot pulled Lando up between his
widely spaced knees, lying straight back to drag Lando's legs clear and
hurl him free down the passage.
Quickly sitting back up, Lobot pulled out the cutting blaster and
slashed the frame in two places. There was a shower of sparks each
time, then a puff of D20 propellant from the broken lines as he kicked
out the section between the cuts. It spun free and tumbled out through
the airlock on the breeze.
The bulkhead groaned under Lobot, and the rest of the frame began to
collapse, twisting sideways as it did, until it, too, was carried
away.
Seconds later the hole had closed under them, the pitch of the roaring
air rising to a shrill note before it cut off entirely, leaving them in
silence.
"I guess we only get to use that doorway trick once," Lando said. The
inside of his faceplate was fogged with sweat. "Where'd you learn
that?"
"I learned it wild-water rafting on Oko E," Lobot said. "It is the
preferred method for getting a raftmate out of the river before the
sulfur ice pulls him under.
That was my last vacation," he added.
"You have unexpected depth, Lobot," said Lando.
"Is everyone all right?"
"I am certain that several of my circuits are overheated," Threepio
pronounced. "With your permission, Master Lando, I would like to
perform a self-diagnos-tic."
"Go ahead," Lando said. "While you're doing that, we'll get Artoo
free. And then we can start figuring out what to do next."
"That should not prove too taxing," said Lobot.
"The choices appear to be to go that way"--he crossed his arms over his
chest, pointing a finger in each direction"or that way."
"Shhh," Lando said, craning his head. "Wait. Listen."
They listened in silence, with sinking hearts. In the mysterious
hollow spaces of the vagabond, the fading rumble of the entry growl
echoed for a long time.
"Blast." Lando sighed. "She's jumped again."
"Something interesting here," said Josala Krenn.
ner. The false-color image mapped the undulations of a great glacier
as it crawled its way along a widening, steep-sided valley toward a
frozen sea. "Where?"
"Here," said Josala, pointing out a string of small blue blotches
scattered along the northeast edge of the glacier. "The side-scanning
radar pulled these up--they're sitting anywhere from eleven to nineteen
meters down in the ice."
"Rock from the lateral moraine?"
"No, for two reasons. First, they're awfully regular in size, oblong,
between one-point-five and two meters in the long axis. And second--do
you know anything about the flow lines in the accumulation zone of a
glacier?"
"Not a thing."
"Something that falls on the surface of a glacier moves down-valley
with the ice and down into the body of the glacier as more snow falls
on top of it," Josala said. "The lateral moraine running through that
part of the glacier is made up of rock coming off this cliff face."
She pointed at a side valley well back along the path of the glacier.
"So by the time that rock gets to here--" "It's fifty meters down.
These other objects, they haven't been in the ice as long as that rock
underneath them. And they would have had to come onto the ice
somewhere in here." Josala traced a circle with her finger over a flat
area up-valley.
"That's out in the middle of nothing," said Stopa.
"Right." She wrinkled her face in thought. "It's hard to be sure of
the timetables with cataclysmic climatic change, but I'd guess that
whatever these are, they've only been in the ice for fifty to a hundred
years."
His eyes widened. "Bodies. Burials on the ice."
"That was my thought."
"It makes sense. Nomadic groups, or perhaps caves somewhere
nearby--ice caves, possibly--" "It doesn't matter where they lived, so
long as we've found where they died."
"How deep is the shallowest of those bodies? Eleven meters?" When
Josala nodded, Stopa turned to the pilot.
"We're going to want our rover."
"Kroddok--" "I know, I know. But hear me out--we'll wait until the
weather's good there," Stopa said, his eyes animated by anticipation.
"We'll set the rover down right on top of the site. We leave the
engine running at idle so there's no chance for anything to freeze
up.
We work right out of the gear bay, because all we have to do is take a
core.
Our equipment ought to be able to handle that."
"You want to drill a core?" Josala said in horror.
"That'll mangle the remains."
"Yes," Stopa said. "I know it violates the usual protocols.
But we weren't sent here to recover bodies. We were sent here to
recover biological material. When our reinforcements arrive, they can
go down and excavate the other sites. But in the meantime, we'll have
something we can analyze and report back on."
Josala shook her head. "I'd really rather wait for the people who know
what they're doing."
"But we know how to take a core," Stopa said.
"Krenn, a first-year apprentice knows how to take a core. We'll be out
of there in thirty minutes. Twenty."
Josala's reluctance still showed on her face.
Kroddok drew closer and dropped his voice. "The bonus from the NRI
would be enough to fund the expedition to Stovax," he said. "But if we
wait until Penga Rift arrives, we'll have to share the bonus. We might
even end up being cut out completely."
He waited to see if that would sway her, then added, "I give you my
word that we'll withdraw at the first sign of any trouble. No, better,
I'm making you expedition boss. You say 'That's it,' and that's it."
Josala looked up at him with a frown, then past him to the pilot.
"What Dr. Stopa said. We're going to want our rover."
The archaeologists' little Mark II World Rover skimmed across the top
of snow-covered southwest range and began its descent into the glacier
valley.
"You're on the beam, eight hundred fifty meters out," said the voice of
IX-26's pilot, continuing to talk Stopa and Krenn down to their
destination. The navigation and sensor arrays of the rover were no
match for those of the ferret.
"Copy," said Stopa, who was at the controls. "I'm going from glide to
hover mode now."
"Seven hundred. Six hundred. Five fifty--" Several small shield doors
on the rover's fuselage and delta wings slid open, revealing vector
nozzles for the thrustjets. With the rover's nose stall-high and the
nozzles perpendicular to the wings, the little ship quickly lost its
forward velocity and began to settle.
Josala was peering out the starboard cockpit viewpane, studying the
ground below them. The steep inner slope of the southwest range wore a
smooth blanket of sno
w, but the surface of the glacier itself was a
field of jagged ice blocks, some as large as the rover itself.
"It looked a lot smoother on the SSR display," Josala said.
"The rover can cope with a forty-degree terrain tilt.
We'll be all right."
"It's going to be like drilling thlough rock."
"But ice won't wear the bits like rock does," said Stopa. "We'll get
through."
"Two hundred twenty," the pilot was saying into Stopa's headset. "Ease
her a hair to port."
"Copy," Stopa said. "Krenn, we have to at least give it a try--" Just
then a cloud of swirling white particles billowed up around the rover
from below, closing in around the cockpit viewpanes and cutting
visibility nearly to zero.
"It's our downblast," Stopa said quickly. He raised
Shield of Lies 35
the control handle, and the rover climbed nimbly out of the cloud,
which immediately began to dissipate beneath them. "Not a problem."
"One fifty."
Star Wars - Black Fleet Crisis - Shield Of Lies Page 4