Star Wars - The Corellian Trilogy - Assault At Selonia
Page 29
Like Threepio, at LII" souno or LuKe's atmost noiseless tread he turned his head, aware of his presence.
"Luke?" Cray had equipped him with the most sensitive vocal modulators, and the word was calibrated to a whisper no louder than the rustle of the blueleafs massed outside the windows. He rose, and crossed to where Luke stood, the dull silver of his arms and shoulders a phantom gleam in the stray flickers of light. "What is it?
"I don't know." They retreated to the small dining area where Luke had earlier probed his mind, and Luke stretched up to pin back a corner of the lamp-sheathe, letting a slim triangle of butter-colored light fall on the purple of the vulwood tabletop. "A dream. A premonition, maybe." It was on his lips to ask, Do you dream? but he remembered the ghastly, imageless darkness in Nichos's mind, and didn't. He wasn't sure if his pupil was aware of the difference from his human perception and knowledge, aware of just exactly what he'd lost when his consciousness, his self, had been transferred.
In the morning Luke excused himself from the expedition Tomla El had organized with Nichos and Cray to the Falls of Dessiar, one of the places on Ithor most renowned for its beauty and peace. When they left he sought out Umwaw Moolis, and the tall herd leader listened gravely to his less than logical request and promised to put matters in train to fulfill it. Then Luke descended to the House of the Healers, where Drub McKumb lay, sedated far beyond pain but with all the perceptions of agony and nightmare still howling in his mind.
"Kill you!" He heaved himself at the restraints, blue eyes glaring furiously as he groped and scrabbled at Luke with his clawed hands. "It's all poison! I see you! I see the dark light all around you! You're him! You're him!" His back bent like a bow; the sound of his shrieking was like something being ground out of him by an infernal mangle.
Luke had been through the darkest places of the universe and of his own mind, had done and experienced greater evil than perhaps any man had known on the road the Force had dragged him . . . Still, it was hard not to turn away.
"We even tried yarrock on him last night," explained the Healer in charge, a slightly built Ithorian beautifully tabbystriped green and yellow under her simple tabard of purple linen. "But apparently the earlier doses that brought him sitized his system. We'll try again in four or five days."
Luke gazed down into the contorted, grimacing face.
"As you can see," the Healer said, "the internal perception of pain and fear is slowly lessening. It's down to ninetythree percent of what it was when he was first brought in. Not much, 1 know, but something."
"Him! Him! HIM!" Foam spattered the old man's stained gray beard.
mO?
"I wouldn't advise attempting any kind of mindlink until it's at least down to fifty percent, Master Skywalker."
"No," said Luke softly.
Kill you all And, Thry are gathering.
"Do you have recordings of everything he's said?"
"Oh, yes." The big coppery eyes blinked assent. "The transcript is available through the monitor cubicle down the hall. We could make nothing of tliem. Perhaps they will mean something to you."
They didn't. Luke listened to them all, the incoherent groans and screams, the chewed fragments of words that could be only guessed at, and now and again the clear disiointed cries. `Solo! Solo! Can you hear me? Children Evil - Gathering here . . . Kill you all!"
The CRYSTAL STAR by Vonda N. Mcintyre Setting Ten years after Return of the Jedi Lela's three children have been knniapped. That ho,rible fact is made worse by Lela's realization that she can no longer sense her children through the Force! While she, ArtLetoo, and Chewbacca trail the kidnappers, Luke and Han discover a planet that is suffering strange quantum effects from a nearby star. Slowty fleezing into a peffea crystal and dismpting the Force, the star is blunting Luke's power and cnppling the Millennium Falcon. These strands converge in an apocalyptic threat not onty to the fate of the New Republic, but to the universe itself Here is Luke and Han's initial approach to the crystal star Han piloted the Millennium Falcon through the strangest star system he had ever approached. An ancient, dying, crystallizing white dwart star orbited a black hole in a wildly eccentric elliptical path.
Eons ago, in this place, a small and ordinary yellow star peacefully orbited an immense blue-white supergiant. The blue star aged, and collapsed.
The blue star went supernova, blasting light and radiation and debris out into space.
Its light still traveled through the universe, a furious explosion visible from distant galaxies.
over time, the remains of the supergiant's core collapsed under the force of its own gravity. The result was degenerate mass a black hole.
The violence of the supernova disrupted the orbit of the nova's companion, the yellow star. over time, the yellow star's orbit decayed.
The yellow star fell toward the unimaginably dense body of the black hole. The black hole sucked up anything, even light, that came within its grasp. And when it captured matter yen an entire yellow star-it ripped the atoms apart into a glowing accretion disk.
Subatomic particles imploded downward into the singularity's equator, emitting great bursts of radiation. The accretion disk spun at a fantastic speed, glowing with fantastic heat, creating a funeral pyre for the destroyed yellow companion.
The plasma spiraled in a raging pinwheel, circling so fast and heating so intensely that it blasted X rays out into space.
Then, finally, the glowing gas fell toward the invisible black hole, approaching it closer and closer, appearing to fall more and more slowly as relativity influenced it.
It was lost forever to this universe.
That was the fate of the small yellow star.
The system contained a third star the dying white dwarf, which shone with ancient heat even as it froze into a quantum crystal. Now, as the Millennium Falcon entered the system, the white dwarf was falling toward the black hole, on the inward curve of its eccentric elliptical orbit.
"Will you lcok at that," Han said. "Quite a show."
"Indeed it is, Master Han," Threepio said, "but it is merely a shadow of what will occur when the black hole captures the crystal star."
Luke gazed silently into the maelstrom of the black hole.
Han waited.
"Hey, kid! Snap out of it."
Luke started. "What?"
I "Ull L MIUW WIl"'r" yuu weri, (xli you wereni nere.-' "Just thinking about the Jedi Academy. I hate to leave my students, even for a few days. But if I do find other trained Jedi, it'll make a big difference. Th the Academy. To the New Republic.
"1 think we're getting along pretty well already," Han said, frked. He had spent years maintaining the peace with ordinary people.
In his opinion, Jedi Knights could cause more trouble than they were worth. "And what if these are all using the dark side?"
Luke did not reply.
Han seldom admitted his nightmares, but he had nightmares about what could happen to his children if they were tempted to the dark side.
Right now they were safe, with Lela on a planetary tour of remote and peaceful worlds of the New Republic. By this time they must have reached Munto OcKirn. They would be visiting the beautiful mountahis of the world's temperate zone.
Han smiled, imagining his princess and his children being welcomed to one of Munto Codni's mysterious, ancient, fairy-tale castles.
Solar prominences flared from the white dwarf's surface.
The Falcon passed it, heading toward the more perilous region of the black hole.
The Corellian Thiogy AMBUSH AT CORELLIA ASSAULT AT SELONIA SHOWDOWN AT CENTERPOINT by Roger MacBride Mien Setting Fourteen years after R,t"n of the Jedi This ink takes us to CorellIa, Han Solo's home world, which Han has not visited in some time. A trade summit brings Han, Lela, and the childrennow developing their own clear personalities and insnncdveb learning more about their innate skills in the Thrcto the middle of a situation that m,sst closety resembles a bun-rise. The Corellian sis'tern is on the brink of civil was; the
re are New Republic intelligence agents on a mysterious mission which even Han does not understand, and worst of all, a fanatical rebel leader has his hands on a superweapon of utmnaginable powermd just wait until you find out who that leader is!
Here is an early scene from Ambush that gives you a wondel look at the growing Solo children (the twins are Jacen and Jaina, and their little brother is Anakin) Anakin plugged the board into the innards of the droid and pressed a button. The droid's black, boxy body shuddered awake, it drew in its wheels to stand up a bit taller, its status lights lit, and it made a sort of triple beep. "That's good," he said, and pushed the button again. The droid's status lights went out, and its body slumped down again. Anakin picked up the next piece, a motivation actuator. He frowned at it as he turned it over in his hands. He shook his head. "That's not goo((' he announced.
What's not good?" Jaina asked.
"This thing," Anakin said, handing her the actuator.
"Can't you tell? The insides part is all melty."
Jaina and Jacen exchanged a look. "The outside looks okay," Jaina said, giving the part to her brother. "How can he tell what the inside of it looks like? It's sealed shut when they make it."
Jacen shrugged. "How can he do any of this stuff? But we need that actuator. That was the toughest part to dig up. I must have gone around half the city looking for one that would fit this droid." He turned toward his little brother.
"Anakin, we don't have another one of these. Can you make it better? Can you make the insides less melty?"
Anakin frowned. "I can make it some better. Not all the way better. A little less melty. Maybe it'll be okay."
Jacen handed the actuator back to Anakin. "Okay, try it.
Anakin, still sitting on the floor, took the device from his brother and frowned at it again. He turned it over and over in his hands, and then held it over his head and looked at it as if he were holding it up to the light. "There," he said, pointing a chubby finger at one point on the unmarked surface. "In there is the bad part." He rearranged himself to sit cross-legged, put the actuator in his lap, and put his right index finger over the "bad" part. "Fix," he said. "Fix." The dark brown outer case of the actuator seemed to glow for a second with an odd bluered light, but then the glow sputtered out and Anakin pulled his finger away quickly and stuck it in his mouth, as if he had burned it on something.
"Better now?" Jaina asked.
"Some better," Anakin said, pulling his finger out of his mouth.
"Not all better." He took the actuator in his hand and stood up. He opened the access panel on the broken (Iroici and plugged in the actuator. He closed the door and looked expectanth, at his older brother and sister.
"Done?" Jaina asked.
"Done," Anakin agreed. "But I'm not going to push the button."
He backed well away from the droid, sat down on the floor, and folded his arms.
Jacen looked at his sister.
"Not me," she said. "This was your idea."
Jacen stepped forward to the droid, reached out to push the power button from as far away as he could, and then stepped hurriedly back.
Once again, the droid shuddered awake, rattling a bit this time as it did so. It pulled its wheels in, lit its panel lights, and made the same triple beep. But then its camera eye viewlens wobbled back and forth, and its panel lights dimmed and flared. It roiled backward just a bit, and then recovered itself.
"Good morning, young mistress and masters," it said.
"How may I surge you?"
Well, one word wrong, but so what? Jacen grinned and clapped his hands and rubbed them together eagerly. "Good day, droid," he said.
They had done it! But what to ask for first? "First tidy up this room," he said. A simple task' and one that ought to serve as a good test of what this droid could do.
Suddenly the droid's overhead access door blew off and there was a flash of light from its interior. A thin plume of smoke drifted out of the droid. Its panel lights flared again, and then the work arm sagged downward. The droid's body, F softened by heat, sagged in on itself and drooped to the floor The floor and walls and ceilings of the playroom were su pOsed to be fireproof, but nonetheless the floor under the droid darkened a bit, and the ceiimg turned black. The ventilators kicked on high automatically, and drew the smoke out of the room. After a moment they shut themselves off, and the room was silent.
The three children stood, every bit as frozen to the spot as the droid was, absolutely stunned. It was Ariakin who recovered first He walked cautiously toward the droid and looked at it carefully, being sure not to get too close or touch it.
"Realty melty now," he announced, and then wandered off to the other side of the room to play with his blocks.
The tyis looked at the droid, and then at each other.
"We're dead," Jacen announced, surveying the wreckage.
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