“Sure, why not?” Han replied. “You do know that it’s a pretty tricky maneuver at full acceleration, right?”
Leia nodded. “I thought it might be.”
“And if that vector plate sticks at the wrong time, you know the crater we drill is going to be about three kilometers deep?”
“I hadn’t actually done the calculations,” Leia admitted.
“I don’t think Captain Solo has, either,” C-3PO said from the deck behind her. “At our current acceleration and mass, the crater will be closer to five kilometers deep-assuming our nacelles don’t overheat and vaporize us first, of course.”
Leia was still digesting that cheery thought when a cold prickle ran down her spine. She glanced at the tactical display and saw that the Miy’tils were swinging hard to port, trying to open a clear firing lane for the Nova. She swung the yoke in the same direction, trying to keep the starfighters behind them and banking toward the center of the moon-in the wrong direction for the Slingshot maneuver.
“Uh, honey?” Han’s voice was nervous and high.
“That’s…”
A boiling cloud of brilliance erupted to starboard, engulfing the position they had just abandoned.
“… a nice save,” Han admitted. “Probably would have done the same thing myself.”
“If you say so, dear.”
Leia glanced at the tactical display and saw that the Nova had raised a wall of turbolaser fire alongside the
Falcon,, cutting off the route she needed to follow to complete her maneuver. The Miy’tils were still close behind, steadily closing the gap. Leia cursed the competence of the enemy commander and pulled back the yoke. The number four vector plate did not respond, putting the entire ship into a dangerous, weld-cracking oscillation.
Leia reached over to back the throttles off.
“Too late!” Han warned. “Can’t let them close the distance. We’ll have to do a partial Reverse Slingshot.”
“A partial Reverse Slingshot?” Leia asked. The bright side of the moon was slipping out of view, and now there was nothing but the pitch blackness of Megos’s dark side ahead. “Never heard of it.” . ” ‘Course not,” Han answered. “It’s new.”
“New?” Leia had a sinking feeling. “Han, that vector plate is sticking again. Can’t you feel the vibration?”
“Just keep the nose up,” Han said. “You’re doing great.”
Doing great was no guarantee of survival, Leia knew, but hearing Han say it made her feel better about their odds. She continued to hold the yoke back, vibrating in her seat so hard she couldn’t even read the nacelle temperature gauge-which was probably just as well, given the coolant leak and how long they’d been flying at maximum acceleration.
Too large and cumbersome to follow the Falcon, the Nova had to break off and turn in the opposite direction. But the Miy’tils continued to close the distance, and soon they began to pound the rear shields again. Leia could do little to stop them. With the Falcon shaking like a Neimoidian under interrogation and the moon’s dark surface coming up rapidly, she had to concentrate all her efforts on simply retaining control of the ship.
Finally a sliver of star-dappled velvet appeared along the top of the Falcon’s canopy. Leia continued to hold the yoke back, her relief growing as the siiver slowly became a twenty-centimeter band of open space hanging above a dark and undulating horizon.
“Couldn’t have done it better myself!” Han exclaimed, even more relieved than Leia. “Okay, now you can level off.”
A staccato rumbling sounded from deep in the ship as the Mi’y’til laser cannons finally broke through the shields and began to hammer at the hull armor, then Megos’s horizon suddenly grew jagged and stretched toward the top of the Falcon’s canopy again.
“A mountain range!” C-3PO cried. “That will certainly complicate our escape.”
“Complicate?” Han turned to glare at the droid. “If it were me flying, you’d be back there yelling, We’re doomed, we’re doomed!”
“Quite likely,” C-3PO admitted. “But Princess Leia is a Jedi.n
Leia would have thanked the droid for his vote of confidence, except she was pretty sure it would seem misplaced in about three seconds. She continued to hold the yoke back, trying to will the Falcon to pull up faster-then noticed a jagged notch of starlight showing through the mountains ahead. She pushed the yoke to center position. The vector plate came unstuck, and the ship finally stopped vibrating.
“Uh, Leia,” Han said. “That part about leveling off? You can forget…”