[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(58)

There was a flicker of warning, and Luke spun around just in time to sweep the lightsaber blade across three incoming blaster bolts. The pirates from the storeroom, seeing their bottle-squeeze about to fail, were charging full speed toward him, firing as they ran. Luke blocked two more bolts-the rest were going wide-and ducked through the still opening blast door into a wide corridor.

The corridor’s appearance was a surprise. Unlike the roughhewn feel of the rest of the base, this area looked like it might have been transplanted straight from inside a capital starship. Smooth metal-lined walls formed a square cross section about four meters wide, the corridor itself stretching twenty meters before ending in a T-junction with another of the more typical rocky corridors.

The only light was the spillover coming from behind Luke and the similar glow from the far end. Even so, there was enough illumination to see that all the surfaces of the corridor-walls, ceiling, and floor-were covered with a decorative pattern of three-centimeter-diameter circles spaced about ten centimeters apart.

The corridor itself was deserted, and Luke could sense no one skulking around the corners ahead. Apparently, he had indeed caught them off guard.

But his danger sense was still tingling. Something about the corridor? Still, with two groups of enemies behind him, there was nowhere to go but through. Senses alert for a trap, he headed down the corridor.

He’d made it four steps when, without warning, gravity abruptly reversed itself, sending him falling toward the ceiling.

There was no chance for physical or mental preparation. His head and shoulders slammed into the metal, sending a jolt of pain arcing through him, the rest of his body tumbling down with a dull thud and more pain. He gasped for breath-the impact had knocked most of the air out of him-but before he could get more than half a lungful he was falling again, this time sideways toward one of the side walls.

He landed hard on his right side, a fresh stab of pain lancing through head and shoulder and hip as he scrabbled around for a handhold. But there was nothing to grip on the smooth metal. Stretching out to the force, he sensed the gravitational field starting to change again; and then his new floor suddenly became the ceiling again, and he was falling toward the far wall.

But not toward flat metal this time. Twisting his head around, he saw that what he’d taken to be decorative circles drawn in the wall were in fact the heads of flat-tipped metal rods. They had extruded outward from the wall now, rising like a forest of blunted spears to meet his descent.

Clenching his teeth, Luke reached out to the Force and threw out his hands to meet the oncoming bars. With their tight spacing there was no chance for him to slide between them; but if he could grab two of them and slow his fall, he could at least keep from landing on them at full speed. He caught hold of the two pointed at his face and chest, reaching to the Force for the strength to slow himself. He succeeded, and for a brief moment held himself balanced over them in midair&mdash

And then he was slammed onto them anyway as a corresponding set of bars from the wall behind him jabbed hard into his back and legs, driving him forward. He grunted as the wind was again knocked out of him, trying to twist around against the forest of bars digging into him.

But even as he struggled to work his left arm through the rods pinning it, two more sets of bars slid out from the floor and ceiling, slamming into his shoulders, head, and legs and pinning him even tighter in place. There was another flurry of gravity changes that did little except jam every part of his body in random turn against the various sets of bars&mdash

And then gravity settled back to its original vector, leaving him suspended more. or less upright in the room.

“Well, well,” Control’s mocking voice said into the silence. “Surprised, are we?”

“A little,” Luke conceded, fighting past the dizziness left over from the gravity changes and looking around as best he could with his head pinioned rigidly in place. The entire corridor had become a huge three-dimensional crosshatch of rods, filling the whole space between the blast doors that had slid into place at both ends, sealing him inside.

“We set this up about five years ago,” Control continued. “Your Yavin academy was seeding the galaxy with cocky little would-be Jedi, and we figured it would be only a matter of time before one of them dropped in on us. So we figured to have a surprise ready for them. Never figured on having the Grand High Moffling himself show up. So, what do you think?”

“It’s inventive, I’ll give you that,” Luke said, testing the strength of the bars with his shoulders and arms. He might have saved himself the effort. “I hope you’re not expecting it to hold me for long.”