Mara stayed close on his tail, almost joining her hand to his through their Force-bond, and thirty seconds later they shot through a small icy portal into an irregular blue shaft barely broad enough for Luke to bank the StealthX into a tight inside spiral.
Stang!
Luke felt Mara’s fear through the Force, and his heart jumped into his throat. Then, as he continued his own spiral around the small shaft, he saw the jagged hole where her StealthX had bounced off the icy wall. His tactical display showed her still on his tail, but weaving badly.
Mara?
Fine! she answered.
Luke continued to bank, setting the StealthX up on one wing so that he could look up out one side of the cockpit and down out the other. He estimated they were about two kilometers deep, though that was impossible to confirm with instruments. This far down inside the frozen moon, the StealthX’s sensor range extended only as far as the walls of frozen ethmane.
Below, the shaft continued to narrow and curved back under itself, concealing the nest entrance-assuming it was down there-behind a wall of blue ice. Aside from the walls, which had been polished smooth by the heat-and-freeze cycle of countless rocket launches, there was no sign of dartships.
Mara seemed worried by how quiet it was.
Luke didn’t like it, either. Gorog would have left something to defend the nest. The hair on his neck began to rise, and he decided they had seen enough.
Mara, now directly opposite him on the other side of the shaft, agreed and started to climb. Her shields were flickering, and that loose stabilizer was flapping around beneath her wing.
Luke fell in behind her; then an attack alarm sounded and a laser cannon began to fire blue bolts up the shaft. He felt another jolt of emotion from Mara, this time anger, as her StealthX took a trio of hits. Her shields went down with the second, and the ends of both starboard wings vanished with the third.
Luke did not waste time looking at his tactical display. He simply dropped the StealthX into a dive and started firing and then saw the nose of Alema’s stolen skiff, just slipping back out of sight. He continued to fire for a second longer, pouring his rage and disbelief at her through the Force, until the bend in the shaft vanished behind a curtain of ethmane steam. He sensed no shame or sorrow in the Twi’lek, only the enormous, murky presence of the Dark Nest.
When no more cannon bolts rose out of the fog, Luke pulled up into a tight banking turn that would allow him to keep an eye on the shaft in both directions. Mara was still above him, her StealthX crawling around the shaft in a wobbling circle, both starboard engines shut down and the stumps of her starboard wings vibrating badly.
Mara?
Everything good, she reported.
It didn’t look good. Luke was about to tell her to try climbing when the mouth of the shaft-two kilometers above-began to brighten with the orange glow of dartship rockets.
Mara brought her StealthX out of its circle and fired at the icy wall, trying to punch through into the ethmane jungle beyond.
The stump of her starboard wings tumbled away in a cascade of sparks and mini-explosions. Then she slipped into a spin and flashed past Luke, vanishing into the ethmane steam below.
Luke felt her stretching out to him, clinging to their Force-bond as she fought to bring the StealthX under control. He poured reassurance into their bond, trying to let her know that he would not abandon her, that he was coming right behind her. Then he reached for Leia in the Force, pouring out his alarm and picturing a crashing starfighter, and dived after Mara.
He caught up to Mara on the other side of the fog. She was using a combination of the Force and power manipulations to keep the StealthX under control, corkscrewing down the shaft in an ever-tightening spiral, pushing the damaged craft to its limits and a little beyond to stay ahead of the approaching dartfighters.
The shaft twined its way another seven kilometers into the ice moon, growing ever smaller and more twisted. Finally the squarish, cave-like opening of a launching bay appeared at the bottom of the shaft, perhaps a kilometer away.
Luke armed a pair of proton torpedoes, then urged Mara to do the same. They would need to give the Falcon something to look for.
With pleasure!
Mara stabilized her spin just long enough to send a pair of proton torpedoes streaking toward the cavern mouth. Under other circumstances, Luke might have felt a pang of concern knowing that Alema’s skiff had entered the hangar only a short time before. But under these conditions-even understanding that she was under the control of the Dark Nest-he felt nothing. Whatever happened, the Twi’lek had brought it on herself.
A brilliant flash filled the cavern mouth as Mara’s torpedoes detonated inside, and suddenly the last five hundred meters of shaft were filled with glittering ice shards. Luke activated his targeting computer, but between Mara’s wildly gyrating StealthX and interference from the ethmane ice, he was unable to get a lock. Mara. Luke moved his finger to the torpedo trigger. Stay left.