The R2 warbled acknowledgment, and a course layout appeared on the computer display. “Got it,” Mara said. “Let’s go.”
Faughn turned back to the helm, still obviously less than enthusiastic about risking her ship this way. There was a brief surge of acceleration, and the Starry Ice began moving forward. “The path doesn’t look too bad,” Mara told her, studying the display.
“It didn’t,” the captain said, tapping her nav display. “There’s just one slight problem: the asteroids aren’t in the same relative positions anymore.”
Mara shifted her attention to her own nay display. Faughn was right. “Blast-they’ve scrambled it,” she said, getting out of her chair and heading for the door. “We’ll have to bantha-roll our way in. I’ll take Number One; get Elkin and Torve to the others.”
She had reached her turbolaser station and was strapping in when Faughn signaled. “We’ve just tripped an automatic beacon warning us away,” the captain reported. “Ought to be hitting the first wave of trouble anytime.”
“Understood,” Mara said, kicking the turbolaser into emergency warm-up and wishing for about the twentieth time this trip that the Jade’s Fire wasn’t stuck on Duroon getting its nay systems refitted. Karrde had done a good job of arming his freighters, but the Fire had as much sheer laser power as the Starry Ice and a lot more maneuverability on top of it.
But it wasn’t here, and there was nothing she could do about it. Rubbing her palms briefly on her jumpsuit to dry them, she got a firm grip on the controls and stretched out to the Force. She might not be as glorious and powerful a Jedi as the great Luke Skywalker, but she’d be willing to match her finely honed danger sense against his any day.
The problem was that the danger sense wasn’t particularly directional. And there were a lot of different directions out there for trouble to come from.
“Here we come, Luke,” she called into her headset. “Last chance for you to wave your hand and sweep all the traps away.”
The instant the words were out of her mouth she was sorry she’d said them. Luke was too far away for her to fully touch his mind; but even so, she could sense him wincing from her remark. She opened her mouth to apologize&mdash
And suddenly her danger sense flared, an asteroid drifting along nearby catching her full attention. She spotted a circle of unnatural smoothness on its edge-the faint glint of metal&mdash
Her turbolaser flashed, shattering the suspect asteroid into rocks and rubble. From the expanding dust cloud came a single reflexive burst of answering turbolaser fire: too little, too late, and well wide of its target.
“Good shooting, Mara,” Elkin’s voice came in her ear.
Mara nodded, too preoccupied with her task and her guilt over that snide remark to reply. Her guilt, and a growing annoyance at herself for feeling guilty in the first place. After all, it was Skywalker and his apprentice Jedi, not her, who were playing fast and casual with their power. If having someone point it out bothered him, that was his problem, not hers.
There was another flicker of warning; but before she could identify the source of the danger, multiple shots of red fire lanced out from Tone’s turbolaser and a string of small boulders exploded prematurely into clouds of knife-edged shrapnel bursts
Mara winced as a few stray shredders bounced off the Starry Ice’s deflector shield in front of her canopy; and then the ship was past that trap and on its way to the next. Resettling her fingers on the controls, Mara again stretched out to the Force.
Among the three of them they had blasted eight more traps by the time the Starry Ice reached the main base. “We’re here,” Faughn’s voice announced in Mara’s ear. “Skywalker? Where are you?”
“I’m at my landing bay,” Luke replied. “Artoo, fire a few blasts at the rim to mark it.”
The droid beeped, and a shadow between two rocky ridges flickered with laser fire. “Okay, we’ve got you,” Faughn said. “Coming in.”
The laser flashes stopped; and as they did, another of the muted explosions flickered on the asteroid surface, uncomfortably close to the target bay. “There goes another blast,” Mara said.
“You’ve been missing most of the performance out there,” Luke said. “I’ve been hearing one go off every ten seconds or so.’ They seem to be working their way my direction.”
Another explosion flashed, this one even closer to the landing; bay. “Too close, if you ask me,” Faughn grunted. “You sure you, want to risk putting down there, Jade?”
“Not especially,” Mara conceded, “but we don’t seem to have a lot of choice. You’re going to owe us big for this one, Luke.”