"Key"s the same," Han mused. "Maybe the lock"s been changed."
"But they"re not the same ships," Jadak said a moment later. "The Envoy was rebuilt with parts taken from an old YT-Thirteen-hundred-pea."
"And she"s a couple hundred kilograms lighter," Han said. "But none of that should matter. The pea had an almost identical profile. The differences were all on the inside-cabin s.p.a.ce instead of cargo s.p.a.ce."
"Almost identical."
"I"m not about to start chopping pieces off her." I Ian pivoted the chair toward the hatch. "Threepio!"
"Coming, Captain Solo!"
By the time the droid had clattered into the c.o.c.kpit, Han had called up side-by-side schematics of the Falcon and a vintage YT-1300p.
"What"s wrong with this picture?" When C-3PO made his confusion evident, Han said: "The landing platform is only going to respond to a stock YT-Thirteen-hundred. How"s the Falcon different?"
C-3PO fixed his photoreceptors on the schematics and responded almost immediately. "The escape pods, Captain Solo."
Han, Leia, and Jadak scrutinized the schematics.
"Can"t be," Han said.
"The way they are positioned, the Millennium Falcon"s number one and number four escape pods exceed the YT-Thirteen-hundred template by three-point-two centimeters at each side. The difference is quite obvious, Captain Solo."
"He"s right," Jadak said.
"Don"t encourage him," Han muttered. But he managed to muster a grin when he looked at C-3PO. "Go below and use the manual override to drop the number one and number four pods. Activate their locators, in case there"s time to retrieve them before we leave."
"Yes, Captain."
"Go with him, Poste."
"Brother, the duties I pull."
"That droid"s a wonder," Jadak said when the two had hurried off.
"Keep it under your hat, but I don"t know what I"d do without him."
Han maneuvered the Falcon to the rear edge of the cleared area in the hope that the escape pods would land short of the thorn trees. When two telltales on the console flashed, showing that the pods had been jettisoned, he took the ship forward and hovered directly over the center of the landing zone.
Below them an array of illuminators configured to match the outline of the ship came to brilliant life.
"We"ve been recognized!" Leia said.
But Han kept the Falcon right where she was.
"This facility"s been sitting here for at least sixty years-twenty of them buried under Yuuzhan Vong foliage. We don"t know what shape the lift is in." He glanced at Leia. "I want everyone out of the Falcon while I set her down."
Chapter thirty-one.
By the time they hurried down the boarding ramp, the wind had picked up and the air was loud with the strident keening of sentinel beetles and the rumble of distant volcanic eruptions and thunder. Cinder, ash, and swollen drops of rain swirled around them as they ducked their heads and scampered to the edge of the platform. Thousands of noxious-smelling dweebit beetles ran riot at the edge of the barbed vegetation, and spark bees swarmed overhead.
Buffeted by the gales but held in place by corrective bursts from the att.i.tude jets, the Falcon descended into the illuminated outline. Racing around to the leading edge of the platform, Jadak placed himself in view of the c.o.c.kpit and began semaphoring his arms to direct Han down.
Concern rose in Leia like a tide. She had limitless faith in Han"s ability to pilot the ship to a safe landing, but conditions were rapidly deteriorating. The structure itself was trembling beneath her.
"Threepio!" When the droid turned to her, she gestured to what looked to be a safer spot at the extreme edge of the platform. "Take Amelia over there!"
The wind made off with C-3PO"s response, but he obeyed, taking Allana by the hand and leading her away.
The Falcon was just five meters from touching down when the port braking jets flared out and that side of the ship crashed down onto the platform. From inside the structure came the sound of aged machinery grinding into service. Ma.s.sive parts slid into place, cogs engaged, and the turbolift began to descend into the structure, taking with it the suddenly lopsided ship and everyone outside it. The Falcon"s repulsorlifts were still holding the starboard side of the ship aloft, a few meters above the deck of the turbolift, when all at once the lift tipped violently to the opposite side.
Leia was sliding toward the edge when she felt someone grasp her outstretched arm. Looking up, she saw Poste, flat on his back, with one hand clasped on an illuminator and the other vised around her wrist. At the same instant Leia heard Allana scream and twisted her head around in time to see the girl and C-3PO plummet over the edge of the tipped turbolift and land in foliage that had fastened itself to the pyramid"s interior walls.
"Grandma!" Allana shouted.
Giving herself over to the Force, Leia scrambled to a squatting position. Still anch.o.r.ed by Poste"s hand, she gazed down over the edge of the deck. C-3PO, who had fallen backward into the vegetation, had managed to find handholds among the branches. By landing on top of him Allana had missed being impaled on the thorns, but her grip on him was tenuous.
Scattered illuminators shone through the foliage, but their light wasn"t strong enough to penetrate the gloom beneath the turbolift. The floor could be hundreds of meters below.
"Link your arms around Threepio"s neck!" Leia said. "Threepio, don"t let her fall! Just hold on! I"m coming for you."
But even as she said it she knew she couldn"t reach them. Strength in the Force didn"t confer superhuman abilities; those had to be earned through practice, and the distance to Allana was simply more than she could leap with any surety. She experienced the same lack of faith in herself that she had experienced at Coruscant three years back, when she had tried to hold the Falcon together during a difficult landing.
Her blood ran cold.
Had they come this far only to lose another member of their family?
Han"s hands Hew across the instrument console with the accuracy of a concert keyboardist. Functioning intermittently, the Falcon"s front left repulsorlifts had lifted the mandible from the tilted turbolift, so that now the ship was hovering almost parallel to it. But touching down was out of the question, since the Falcon could very well slide right over the edge.
Concealed behind vegetation that had crept into the structure, banks of illuminators affixed to the interior walls had winked on, adding to the luminosity provided by the Falcon"?, running lights and floodlamps. Even so, Han couldn"t see more than twenty meters in front of him. A moment earlier, Leia, Allana, C-3PO, and Poste had been visible off to port, but they were now out of view, and Han was worried that they had been knocked off their feet the way Jadak had. Where he had been flapping his arms like a man intent on flying, he was currently spread-eagled on the slanted deck, only his fingertips and bent toes keeping him in place.
Judging by the manner in which the lift had tipped, Han suspected that it had been designed to do so for some reason, which meant that the shaft that moved the device was probably snugged into a full-tilt joint beneath the deck. He considered his options, but only briefly. If he was wrong, the starboard undercarriage of the Falcon was about to take a pounding. But if he was correct, he could put things right.
He took a steadying breath. Then, fine-tuning the repulsorlift controls, he allowed the ship to come down hard on the starboard landing gear. Struck, the platform instantly leveled out, but when it did the Falcon"s drooping mandible was walloped in turn, knocking out the already crippled maneuvering jets.
Again, the ship slammed down onto her port side, and the turbo-lift deck tipped in the same direction.
Jadak had just gotten to his feet when the Falcon"s port mandible began to drop. Prepared for just such an eventuality, he raced for the ship and used the tilting motion of the lift to propel him up onto the blunt nose of the forward viewport, where he hung as if the c.o.c.kpit had rammed into his midsection.
Han"s expression was an amalgam of amazement, anger, and admiration.
"Can you release the mandible access hatch from the c.o.c.kpit?" Jadak yelled with one cheek smooshed against the transparisteel.
Han all but crawded across the instrument panel to hear him better.
"Say again!"
"Spring the access hatch! I"ll try to fix the jets!" Han nodded, maneuvered back into the pilot"s chair, and flipped a couple of switches mounted to the rear bulkhead. Jadak waited for Han"s thumbs-up before dropping back to the tilted turbolift and allowing himself to slide beneath the belly of the ship. Arresting his motion at the forward landing gear, he clambered up onto the mandible, picked his way to the unlocked hatch, and disappeared inside.
Leia and Poste hadn"t even tried to stand up, but they had taken advantage of the deck"s brief fling with evenness to scramble to the illuminators that outlined the YT"s saucer-shaped body. Leia had a perfect vantage on Allana and C-3PO, who was now supporting the girl with one arm.
Deep in the Force, Leia fed stamina to Poste and strength to Allana and support to Han, whose fear for Leia and Allana"s safety was eroding his ability to stabilize the ship. Like Leia, he was desperate to keep Allana from harm. But buried deep under his anguish he was thinking of Jacen.
Calling to Jacen for help.
For the first time, Leia realized the full depths of Han"s pain and grief. And she seized on the source of Han"s turmoil.
"Child, listen to me," she shouted to Allana. "Your father understood the beings who transformed this world. Long before you were born we were at war with them, but your father was a force for peace, and his powers were umiulehed by those of any other Jedi. He wanted you to grow up in a galaxy free of war. He wanted to protect you at all costs. I want you to reach deep into yourself and find him. As painful as it is, you need to find your father. Stretch out with your feelings. Use the Force!"
Han tried to keep himself from worrying about Leia and Allana, but it was no use. Where only moments earlier his every action was a stroke of piloting genius, his hands were now fumbling with the repulsorlift and maneuvering jet controls. Another drop like the last one could send the Falcon over the edge, and probably take everyone with her.
Jadak was still inside the port mandible"s maintenance nacelle, but whatever repair work he was doing had yet to show any effect.
Leia . . . Allana . . . Jacen . . .
And that was all it took.
Jadak"s improvisation had borne results Han was unprepared for. The faulty pressors and jets came back online with enough vigor to seesaw the Falcon"s starboard side down against the turbolift deck. The deck dropped, as well, so far and so forcefully that it tipped past level, nearly launching Jadak from the maintenance nacelle. Recovering from his oversight, Han rocked the ship to port, sending Jadak back into the mandible and at the same time succeeding in leveling the turbolift. Quickly then, Han set the Falcon down squarely on the now horizontal deck, which resumed a smooth descent into the interior of the pyramid.
Leaning as far as he could into the viewport, Han watched Jadak clamber out of the maintenance access and pick his way to the tip of the mandible. Hooking his hands around the floodlamp bracket, he lowered himself over the edge and dropped to the deck.
Han scanned the area in front of the ship for Leia, Allana, C-3PO, or Poste, but saw no sign of them.
Clinging to separate illuminators, Leia and Poste found themselves rescued from a plunge into the abyss by a sudden lurching of the lift deck that came close to catapulting them clear over the seesawing Falcon. The deck had leveled out and was beginning to move steadily downward. But now Allana and C-3PO, still entwined in the spiked vegetation, were suddenly above the ship.
Racing to the edge of the turbolift, Leia stretched her arms toward Allana.
But it was Jacen she saw; not with her eyes, but in her mind"s eye. Jacen, living on in his daughter. Leia"s heart swelled, and tears streamed from her eyes.
Drooping away from the structure"s inner wall, the exotic foliage seemed to reach out for her and for the Falcon. At the same time, Allana and C-3PO extricated themselves from the thorns and all but walked through the air to the front area of the deck, carried there by the Force. Leia raced for her granddaughter and gathered her up in her arms.
Allana"s voice was tiny and tentative when she spoke. "I shouldn"t have been able to do that, right?"
"Wrong," Leia said, wiping tears from her cheeks. "You were born to do that."
With Poste, Jadak, and C-3PO in tow, Leia and Allana were just rounding the starboard mandible when Han came barreling down the boarding ramp, eyes wide and mouth ajar in apprehension. On seeing them, his entire expression changed. He rushed forward to hug them, and they remained in an embrace for the rest of the time it took the turbolift to descend.
Additional illuminators had flared, filling the air with electrical static and bathing the cavernous landing bay in eerie light. The keening of sentinel beetles was distant, but sparkbees bombinated overhead and the barbed undergrowth that had infiltrated the structure was crawling with larval insects and newts the color of arterial blood. Worse, the ancient floor was shaking in concert with Tandun III itself.
Already formulating an escape plan, Han gazed up at the opening in the roof. "We can"t stay down there. This whole place could collapse."
"Just a quick look around," Jadak said.
Allana stopped gnawing at her fingernails long enough to give Han a fervent nod.
Stepping from the lift, the six of them headed for a corbeled archway that marked the entrance to an even more brightly lighted chamber. Last in line, C-3PO slowed his pace, c.o.c.king his head to one side, as if in response to something his audio pickups had monitored, then hastening to catch up with the others.
"I recognize this," Leia said loudly enough to be heard over the thunderclaps reverberating in the vast chamber. "It was the emblem of the Republic."
Hung on brackets affixed to the ancient block wall, the gleaming three-meter-tall by three-meter-wide emblem was an eight-rayed stellar symbol, centered in a circle whose circ.u.mference was made up of dashed lines. Other than a stack of empty storage crates, it was the only thing in the room.
Leia reached out to caress the luminous metal. "An emblem identical to this hung in the Hall of Justice on Alderaan-up until Palpatine"s declaration..."
"But this is not that one," a voice said from behind them.
Han had his blaster out even before he completed his turn; Leia, her lightsaber, its shimmering blade raised in front of her. Approaching them were Lestra Oxic and his a.s.sistant Koi Quire, surrounded by a quartet of armed bodyguards, two of whom were the ship thieves from Vaced.
"Lestra!" Leia said. "You tracked us."
"Actually, my dear, it was the owner of the rental shop on Vaced. He has already reported the theft of his slicer droid to the authorities."
"So you"re here to see whether we want a lawyer," Jadak said.
Oxic motioned for his henchmen to holster their blasters, then inclined his head to Jadak. "A pleasure to finally meet you, Captain, after all these years."
"Don"t expect me to say the same."
Oxic"s eyebrows arched. "No. Well, perhaps you"ll change your mind once you know the full story."
Jadak looked at Koi Quire. "What happened, insurance game didn"t pay enough?"
"Lovely to see you again, as well," Quire said, smiling lightly. "Does your offer to show me around still stand?"
"It might."
Leia deactivated her lightsaber and hooked it to her belt. "Let"s see if you can change all our minds, Lestra."
Oxic grinned and gestured to the emblem. "You"re gazing on a piece of history that hasn"t been seen for eighty standard years. Princess Leia was correct in recognizing this as the emblem of the Republic, but this one"-he stepped toward it, raising his hand reverently to touch it..."this one once adorned the podium of the Senate Rotunda. Cast of pure aurodium, orichalum, and Coruscanthium, and detailed with half a dozen equally precious metals and alloys, it was known as the Insignia of Unity. But seven years into the reign of then-Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, it was stolen from the Senate during a much-needed renovation of the Rotunda and replaced with a counterfeit."
Oxic cast a glance at Jadak. "Stolen, Captain Jadak, by members of the Republic Group, which had it shipped here for safe storage until such time as it would be needed to..."