THIRTY-FIVE
A pillar of orange rocket exhaust arced out of Kr’s frozen tangle of ethmane crystals, emerging from an ice-lined shaft more than a kilometer across. This column was far larger than any others Luke and Mara had seen, its heat raising a wall of steam as it bent toward the Skywalkers and streaked low over the moon’s frozen surface.
Confident they had finally found what they were looking for, Luke and Mara banked away and began to accelerate, drawing the orange column after them. Luke would have liked to make a reconnaissance pass to be certain the huge shaft was the hangar opening he believed it to be, but Kr’s tortured terrain and icy blue light neutralized the speed and camouflage of their StealthXs, and both of their starfighters had already taken too much of a beating to risk another confrontation.
Two seconds later, Luke’s R9 astromech unit-sitting in for an operationally challenged R2-D2-sounded an attack alarm. Luke felt a start from Mara as an explosion rocked her StealthX; then his own starfighter gave a sharp double buck. The R9 pointedly informed Luke they were being ambushed by Gorog dartships, and the tactical display showed half a dozen of the little craft behind them, rising from the sensor-blocking depths of the frozen ethmane jungle.
Luke continued toward the Falcon, flying low over Kr’s feathery jungle of ethmane crystals. Ideally, he would have climbed for open space where their StealthXs would have full advantage, but the tactical display showed a second swarm of dartships flying top cover, in perfect position to stop them.
The Skywalkers had traveled barely a kilometer when another column of dartships rose out of the ethmane jungle ahead.
Luke sensed Mara’s alarm almost before his own. They had stayed a little too long, and now Gorog was boxing them in. The swarm spread out before them, creating an orange wall of rocket exhaust. The Skywalkers began to pour cannon fire into the swirling mass, trying to clear a lane for their StealthXs.
It was like trying to blast a tunnel through a cloud. Every time they created a hole, it filled instantly.
As the Skywalkers drew closer, the orange wall resolved itself into a pattern of fiery whirling disks, each with the black dot of a dartship at its heart. Mara continued to fire, and Luke followed her lead. The tactic clearly had no chance of success, but Mara had a plan. Luke was almost sure of it.
Finally, when the swarm was so close that the dartships had grown into tiny cylinders, glowing streaks of missile propellant began to reach out toward the Skywalkers. Mara took the lead and pulled up, a loose wing stabilizer shuddering under the strain. The two nearest swarms-the one blocking their escape and the one pursuing from behind-nosed up to give chase.
Stick close, she warned.
Suddenly Mara dropped the nose of her StealthX. Luke followed so quickly that he almost beat her, but the Dark Nest was not fooled. The dartships simply leveled off and continued to close on the Skywalkers.
Luke expected Mara to pull up again and outclimb their pursuers, gambling that the StealthXs could withstand a barrage of Killik chemical explosives long enough to fight through the top-cover swarm. Instead, she continued to dive. The ice jungle’s feathery canopy came up rapidly. Luke began to wonder when she intended to pull up.
She did not.
A flurry of cannon bolts lanced out from Mara’s StealthX, instantly superheating the ice crystals in front of her and filling Luke’s forward view with brown steam. He switched to instrument flying and followed her through the cloud into the snarled depths of the ice jungle. Flash-frozen spires of ethmane stood at all angles, glowing translucent blue with Gyuel’s distant light, reaching out to embrace each other with delicate arms of hoarfrost.
Mara flipped her StealthX up on edge and slipped between two ethmane pillars, then crashed through a curtain of frost and sent up a glittering cloud of ice particles. Luke ducked under a frozen arch, then shot ahead of Mara into the lead.
He offered his apologies through their Force-bond, along with an image of the loose stabilizer he had seen on her wing.
Whatever, she answered.
Luke felt a sudden compulsion to swing back toward the nest and wondered if his wife had gone crazy.
Mara urged him to think. Gorog expected them to run for the Falcon.
Luke quickly brought them around. It would be safer to go in the opposite direction… and sneak a look at the nest. He focused all his attention on the frozen jungle ahead and began a Jedi breathing exercise, allowing his mind to race forward through the ethmane spires, to find its own route down the twining passages and rolling channels. Time seemed to slow. He surrendered his steering arm to the Force, and his hand began to move of its own accord, guiding the StealthX into one shimmering gap after another, bobbing over blue curtains, ducking beneath long fronds of frost, blasting holes through impassable walls of ice.