[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(61)

“Karrde asked me to check on you,” she said. “Seemed to think you might need a hand.”

“That I do,” he conceded. “Where are you?”

“At the moment, on the outside looking in,” Mara told him, frowning. Had that been an explosion over there on the Cavrilhu’s main asteroid? “Are you setting off bombs or something?”

“No, but somebody is-I can hear explosions in the distance. Can you see what’s happening?”

Seated at the next console, Captain Shirlee Faughn tapped Mara’s arm. “Take a look at the starboard end of the asteroid,” she murmured, pointing. “We’ve got a flotilla heading for deep space. I make it … eighteen ships.”

“Terrific,”. Mara muttered. “You’ve got trouble, Luke-your rats are staging a mass desertion. Faughn’s got readings on eighteen ships; probably more on the way. Ten to one those explosions you’re hearing are the base’s self-destruct system kicking in. You got any transport?”

“I had a Y60 freighter when I came in, with Artoo and a hidden X-wing aboard,” Luke said. “But I haven’t been able to raise him.”

“Well, don’t panic yet,” Mara advised, giving the displays a quick glance. “They’re still jamming your primary comlink frequency-we just happen to have the equipment to sneak in on a harmonic. How far are you from your landing bay?”

“I don’t know exactly-“

Faughn snapped her fingers, pointed to one of Mara’s displays. “Hold it ,” Mara cut in. “Their jamming’s just gone off. Let me release your comlink back to primary freq.”

She looked across the bridge at the comm station. “Corvus?”

“Already cleared,” the other reported. “I’ll key you back in on primary.”

Abruptly the comm speaker burst into a staccato flow of astromech droid machine language. “Slow down, Artoo,” Luke’s voice cut in through the warbles and squeals. “I can’t understand a thing you’re saying.”

“He says he and the X-wing are okay,” Mara told him, watching as the translation scrolled across her computer display. “They were coming for him, so he popped the X-wing out of its hiding place-“

She grimaced. “And chased them away by blasting the landing bay’s atmosphere shield generators.”

There was a long moment of silence. “Which I presume means the landing bay is now full of hard vacuum?” Luke asked. “Up to its brim,” Mara confirmed. “I suppose it would be too much to hope there might be a vac suit locker near the bay somewhere.”

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t want to count on it,” Luke said.

“Me, neither,” Mara agreed. “Faughn, you used to fly Y60s, didn’t. you?”

“More often than I care to remember,” the other woman said. “You thinking about him trying a cold-shirt crossing?”

“It’s the simplest way to get him out of there,” Mara said. “Can he do it?”

“I doubt it,” Faughn said. “Skywalker, is the freighter’s landing ramp up or down?”

“Down, last I knew.”

The R2 unit twittered, the droid’s confirmation scrolling across the display. “It’s still down,” Mara said.

“In that case, not a chance,” Faughn said, shaking her head. “The Y60’s ramp mechanism is a piece of junk. Getting it sealed and repressurizing the ship would take at least fifteen minutes.”

“I was afraid of that,” Mara said. “A little long for him to hold his breath.”

“What about his X-wing?” Faughn suggested. “It can’t take very long to pressurize a cockpit that size.”

“Except that most fighter canopies are pressure-locked these days,” Mara pointed out. “Opening them to vacuum without squeezing the manual override usually pops the ejector seat. It’s a safety mechanism-I don’t think the R2 can override it.”

“You’re right, he can’t,” Luke said. “I’d better hope I can find a vac suit.”

“Sure.” Mara hissed softly between her teeth, measuring the distance to the asteroid with her eyes. The chances that the pirates would have vac equipment within handy reach of potential escapees were somewhere between slim and none. “In case you can’t, we’re coming in.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Faughn turn startled eyes on her. “Jade, we don’t know the safe path in,” the other woman muttered.

“No, but Skywalker’s astromech droid does,” Mara reminded her. “Droid, how about feeding us some numbers?”