Part 9 (1/2)
A mistake and they might both die.
He focused himself. Cut hard to port, then starboard, gave his engines full power, pulled up and into an inside loop, circled down and behind Wes, almost blacking out from the G-force...
Help me, Obi-Wan.
Luke fired... ”
The beam splashed against the runaway X-wing's main engine precisely, cut through and killed it.
Rogue Six's thrusters flamed out.
Luke was close enough to see the R2 unit on Wes's s.h.i.+p try to effect repairs as he flew by, but it surely wasn't going to fix that. Rogue Six couldn't fly very well, but it could still shoot. It did shoot, tracking him and lancing out with powerful beams. Like a wounded firecat, it was still dangerous to approach.
Luke dodged, abandoned himself to the Force again, let the X-wing become an extension of his body. The little s.h.i.+p danced, hopped, slowed, sped up, and managed to avoid being speared.
Luke felt the sigh slip from him.
Steady...
Luke made another pa.s.s.
Wes's R2 blasted at him. Luke imagined he felt the heat of the beam.
Maybe it wasn't his imagination.
Come on...
”More of those TIEs coming back, Luke,” somebody said.
”Not now!” Once again he let the Force direct hisaim, gave himself to it.
Pinpointed the targeting sensors in the nose cone. Felt the Tightness of it-Fired again...
A hit!
Now Wes's guns were dead and he-or his crazed droid-couldn't fire the lasers or the torpedoes.
Luke sighed again. Thank goodness.
What in the galaxy could have caused it to malfunction that way?
”Wedge, see if you can get a magnetic line on Wes and let's get out of here, fast!”
”That's affirmative, Luke.” Bad enough when it was the enemy shooting at you; much worse when it was your own men.
”Hey, I'm sorry, Luke, I don't know what happened!” Wes said.
”Don't worry about it. We'll sort it out later. Right now, we'd better go before the Empire decides we might be worth chasing after all.”
”Copy that, Luke.”
But now that the heat-and sweaty cold-of the incident had pa.s.sed, the fear oozed back, the taste of it sour in him.
He could have been blown apart.
If not for the Force warning him, he would have been fried, would have winked out like an overloaded glowbulb, never knowing what had hit him.
Dead, gone, no more.
”Those TIE fighters are coming back, Luke.”
”Let's move it!”
Until now, that had never seemed a real possibility to him. Luke had always thought that somehow all the lasers would miss, all the missiles would sail past harmlessly, that he would live forever. It hadn't seemed real that he could actually cease being.
Now it seemed real.
Leia fired, and the quad-barrels of the Falcon's dor-sal guns pistoned, spat its hard energies at the incoming TIE fighter.
The Imperial craft flew right into the beams. Exploded.
That was three she'd gotten, and Chewie had hit some of them, too, but there were more of them swarming in.
Too many more.
”We can't land,” Lando said over the comm. ”If we put it down on the deck, we'll get blasted!”
”What are we going to do?” Leia said.
”I don't know; we can't keep flying around-uhoh.”
” 'Uh-oh' what?”
”Boba Fett's s.h.i.+p-it's taking off.”
”Follow it!”
”How? There's a wall of Imperial fighters between it and us!”
”Go around them!” She was too close to lose Han now.
”I'll try.”
The Falcon lurched, fell in a belly-twisting dive. Because they were in a gravity well and they needed the power for the s.h.i.+elds, the artificial gravity was turned off. Leia felt herself go weightless; only the safety straps kept her from floating out of the seat. Abruptly she grew heavier as the power dive bottomed out and Lando hit the throttles hard in a climbing turn.
Another TIE fighter came into view. Leia started the guns working, but the fighter zipped past, too fast. Missed it.
She felt the Falcon rock as the s.h.i.+elds were hit by enemy fire.
”I sure hope that bootleg s.h.i.+eld generator Han installed holds up,” Lando said.