[Thrawn Trilogy] - 02(122)

And yet was walking into it anyway. Dimly, he wondered if that made him less reckless than he’d been the last time, or more so.

He reached the door and paused beside it, pretending to study a data pad that had been in one of the flight suit’s pockets until the corridor was deserted. Then, taking one last deep breath of clear air, he opened the door and stepped inside.

Even holding his breath, the stench hit him like a slap in the face. Whatever advancements the Empire might have made in the past few years, their shipboard garbage pits still smelled as bad as ever.

He let the door slide shut behind him, and as it did so he heard the faint sound of an internal relay closing. He’d cut things a little too close; Mara must already have activated the compression cycle. Breathing through his mouth, he waited:and a moment later, with a muffled clang of heavy hydraulics, the walls began moving slowly toward each other.

Luke swallowed, gripping his lightsaber tightly as he tried to keep on top of the tangle of garbage and discarded equipment that was now starting to buck and twist around his feet. Getting into the detention level this way had been his idea, and he’d had to talk long and hard before Mara had been convinced. But now that he was actually here, and the walls were closing in on him, it suddenly didn’t seem like nearly such a good idea anymore. If Mara couldn’t adequately control the walls’ movement-or if she was interrupted at her task-Or if she gave in for just a few seconds to her hatred for him :

The walls came ever closer, grinding together everything in their path. Luke struggled to keep his footing, all too aware that if Mara was planning a betrayal he wouldn’t know until it was too late to save himself. The compressor walls were too thick for him to cut a gap with his lightsaber, and already the shifting mass beneath his feet had taken him too far away from the door to escape that way. Listening to the creak of tortured metal and plastic, Luke watched as the gap between the walls closed to two meters:then one and a half:then one:

And came to a shuddering halt just under a meter apart.

Luke took a deep breath, almost not noticing the rancid smell. Mara hadn’t betrayed him, and she’d handled her end of the scheme perfectly. Now it was his turn. Moving to the back end of the chamber, he gathered his feet beneath him and jumped.

The footing was unstable, and the garbage compactor walls impressively tall, and even with Jedi enhancement behind the jump he made it only about halfway to the top. But even as he reached the top of his arc he drew his knees up and swung his feet out; and with a wrenching jolt to his legs and lower back, he wedged himself solidly between the walls. Taking a moment to catch his breath and get his bearings, he started up.

It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared it would be. He’d done a fair amount of climbing as a boy on Tatooine and had tackled rock chimneys at least half a dozen times, though never with any real enthusiasm. The smooth walls here in the compactor offered less traction than stone would have, but the evenness of the spacing and the absence of sharp rocks to dig into his back more than made up for it. Within a couple of minutes he had reached the top of the compactor’s walls and the maintenance chute that would lead-he hoped-to the detention level. If Mara’s reading of the schedule had been right, he had about five minutes before the guard shift changed up there. Setting his teeth together, he forced his way through the magnetic screen at the bottom of the chute and, in clean air again, started up.

He made it in just over five minutes, to discover that Mara’s reading had indeed been right. Through the grating that covered the chute opening he could hear the sounds of conversation and movement coming from the direction of the control room, punctuated by the regular hiss of opening turbolift doors. The guard was changing; and for the next couple of minutes both shifts would be in the control room. An ideal time, if he was quick, to slip a prisoner out from under their noses.

Hanging on to the grating by one hand, he got his lightsaber free and ignited it. Making sure not to let the tip of the blade show through into the corridor beyond, he sliced off a section of the grating and eased it into the shaft with him. He used a hook from his flight suit to hang the section to what was left of the grating, and climbed through the opening.

The corridor was deserted. Luke glanced at the nearest cell number to orient himself and set off toward the one Mara had named. The conversation in the control room seemed to be winding down, and soon now the new shift of guards would be moving out to take up their positions in the block corridors. Senses alert, Luke slipped down the cross corridor to the indicated cell and, mentally crossing his fingers, punched the lock release.