[Galaxy Of Fear] - 12(4)

“Uncle Hoole!” Tash shouted.

The small rocket hit the back of the ship and exploded. Flames and smoke blasted down the corridor and continued to pour out of the hallway. Cautiously, the bounty hunter started down the blasted hall.

Zak’s arms and legs tingled as feeling began to return to them.

“Zak,” Tash whispered, appearing beside him. “Are you okay?”

“Shhtunnd,” he slurred out of his half-frozen mouth. Tash helped him sit up.

“Where did he come from?” Tash whispered.

“He must have spotted us on Nar Shaddaa and sneaked on board the ship,” Zak guessed. “I’ll bet a Hutt’s treasure that’s his ship following us, on autopilot.”

“What do we do now?” Tash asked. They both stared down the hallway.

Zak felt his jaw start to work better as the stun bolt’s effects wore off. “Escape pod. We’ve got to get off the ship.”

“But where will we go?” Tash whispered back. “We’re in the middle of hyperspace!”

Tash had barely spoken when the ship lurched and slowed. The soft hum of the hyperdrive engines died, replaced by the sudden churning of the sublight drive. The Shroud had dropped out of hyperspace.

Tash and Zak heard someone shout from the back of the Shroud, and another explosion rocked the ship. A cloud of smoke rolled toward them from the engine room-and something rushed toward them out of the cloud.

It was Uncle Hoole.

The shoulder of his robe had been torn away and blood trickled down his sleeve.

“Uncle Hoole, you’re hurt!” Tash cried.

“We have to get off this ship before Boba Fett kills us all,” the Shi’ido said grimly.

“The escape pod!” Zak said.

“Yes,” Hoole agreed. “We just left hyperspace. We should be over the planet Koaan.”

A blaster bolt ripped through the wall above their heads. “Come!” Hoole ordered.

Together, they staggered toward the escape pod and jumped inside. Zak strapped himself into a seat, sparing a quick glance out into the hall.

Boba Fett was stalking toward them, blaster in hand.

Hoole slapped the controls, closing the emergency blast doors just as the bounty hunter fired. They heard the energy bolt slam into the heavy crash door. The Shi’ido glanced around to make sure Zak and Tash had both safely strapped themselves into their crash webbing; then he pulled a large red handle. Safety bolts exploded, and the escape pod hurled itself away from the ship.

“Look at the damage,” Zak whispered, staring at the Shroud through a viewport.

Smoke and flames poured out of the ship’s engines.

“Yes,” Hook explained. “I tried to trap Boba Fett in the engine rooms, but he was too careful to be tricked. He fired his wrist rocket into the engines to flush me out. If I had not shapeshifted into a fire-resistant Gregonian salamander, I would have been killed.”

Tash checked the escape pod’s small control panel. “According to these readings, we’re dropping into Koaan’s gravity field. We should be able to land with no trouble. Will we find help there?”

“I do not know,” Hoole replied. “But I will try to land us as close to the research center as possible.”

“And as far away from Fett as we can get,” Tash added.

“I wouldn’t worry about him,” Zak said. “It looks like the Shroud is headed for an explosion or a crash landing. Maybe it’ll take Fett with it.”

The escape pod wasn’t designed for long flights. It was programmed to find the closest planet and land there as softly as possible-which proved to be not very softly at all.

Koaan’s gravity grabbed hold of them, pulling the small pod faster and faster toward the surface. Entering the planet’s atmosphere, the pod began to heat up until the outside flamed like a meteor. The inside grew hotter, too. Hoole fired the landing rockets, trying to slow their descent, and the pod rattled and bumped through the air. Just when Zak thought he couldn’t take the heat or the rattling any longer, the pod hit the ground with an enormous thud! that jolted him from his feet to the top of his head.

They had landed on Koaan.

Hoole opened the hatch and all three of them crawled from the smoking escape pod onto sandy ground. They had landed on the edge of a lake. Zak got the impression of green hills in the distance, warm sun, and a brilliant blue sky. But like Hoole and Tash, he was exhausted and quickly collapsed facedown on the ground. He closed his eyes with a sigh.

The sound of a footstep made him look up.

Lying there, he could see a long shadow creeping along the ground. It was the shadow of a being covered in hard, smooth armor.

The shadow fell across him.