* * *
Ackbar knew that humans could not read expressions on broad Calamarian
faces. He hoped Leia did not realize how uneasy he felt flying through such
hellish weather patterns.
Leia did not know that Ackbar had volunteered to take the mission because
he trusted no other person to pilot someone as important as the Minister of
State, and he trusted no other vehicle more than his personal B-wing
fighter.
He turned both of his brown eyes forward to watch the approaching cloud
layers. The ship cut through the outer layers of atmosphere, zooming into
buffeting turbulence. The sharp wings of the starfighter sliced the air,
curling wind in a rippling wake. The wing edges glowed cherry-red from the
screaming descent.
Ackbar gripped the controls with his flipper-hands, concentrating on fast
reactions, split-second decisions, making sure everything worked just right.
In this landing there would be no room for error. He cocked his right eye
down
to scan the landing coordinates the Vor technician had transmitted.
The craft began to rattle and jitter. His stomach lurched as a sudden
updraft knocked them several hundred meters higher and then let them fall in
a
deep plunge until he managed to wrestle control back. Blurry fists of high-
rising clouds pummeled the transparisteel viewports, leaving trails of
condensed moisture that fanned out and evaporated.
Ackbar tracked from side to side across the panels with his left eye,
verifying the readouts. No red lights. His right eye cocked back to catch a
glimpse of Leia sitting rigid and silent, held in place by black restraint
cords. Her dark eyes seemed almost as wide as a Mon Calamarian's, but her
lips
were pressed together in a thin white line. She seemed afraid, but afraid to
show it, trusting in his ability. Leia said no word to distract him.
The B-wing headed down in a spiral, skirting an immense cyclonic
disturbance. The wind hooked the rattling wings of the fighter, knocking the
craft from side to side. Ackbar deployed the secondary aileron struts in an
attempt to regain stability and retracted the laser-cannon turrets to
minimize
wind resistance.
"New Republic shuttle, we show you off course," the brittle-twig voice of
the Vor controller came over the speaker, muffled by the roaring wind.
"Please
advise."
Ackbar turned his left eye to double-check the coordinate display, and
saw that the starfighter had indeed veered off course. Calm and focused, he
tried to force the craft back onto the appropriate vector. He couldn't
believe
he had gone so far astray, unless he had misread the coordinates in the
first
place.
As he yanked the B-wing toward a wall of spiraling clouds, a blast of
gale-force winds hammered them into a roll and slammed Ackbar against his
pilot seat. The fighter spun end over end, battered by the wild storm.
Leia let out a small scream before clamping her mouth shut. Ackbar hauled
with all his strength upon the levers, firing stabilizer jets in a
counterclockwise maneuver to counteract the spin.
The B-wing responded, finally slowing its crazed descent. Ackbar looked
up to see himself surrounded by a whirlwind of mist. He had no idea which
direction was up or down. He accordioned out the craft's set of
perpendicular
wings and locked them into a more stable cruising position. His craft
responded sluggishly, but the cockpit panels told him that the wings were in
place.
"New Republic shuttle, please respond." The Vor did not sound at all
concerned.
Ackbar finally got the B-wing upright and flying again, but found he had
missed his coordinates once more. He angled back into them as easily as he
could. His mouth felt desiccated as he checked the altitude panels and saw
with alarm how far the ship had dropped.
The metal hull plates smoked and glowed orange from tearing through the
atmosphere. Lightning slashed on all sides. Blue balls of discharge
electricity flared from the tips of the wings. His readouts scrambled with
racing curls of static, then came back on again. The cockpit power systems
dimmed, then brightened as reserve power kicked in.
Ackbar risked another glance at Leia and saw her fighting wide-eyed fear
and helplessness. He knew she was a woman of action and would do anything to
help him out--but there was nothing she could do. If he had to, Ackbar could
eject her to safety--but he did not dare risk losing his B-wing yet. He
could
still pull off a desperate but intact landing.
Suddenly, the clouds peeled away like a wet rag ripped from his eyes. The
wind-whipped plains of Vortex spread out below, furred with golden-brown and
purple grasses. The grasslands rippled as the wind combed invisible fingers
through the blades. Concentric circles of bunkerlike Vor shelters surrounded
the center of their civilization.
He heard Leia gasp in a deep wonder that sliced through even her terror.
The enormous Cathedral of Winds glinted with light and roiling shadows as
clouds marched overhead. The high lacy structure seemed far too delicate to
withstand the storms. Winged creatures swarmed up and down the sides of the
fluted chambers, opening passages for the wind to blow through and create
the
famous music. Faintly distant, he could hear the lilting, eerie notes.
"New Republic shuttle, you are on the wrong course. This is an emergency.
You must abort your landing."
With a shock Ackbar saw that the displayed coordinates had changed again.
The B-wing did not respond as he fought the controls. The Cathedral of Winds
grew larger every second.
Cocking an eye to look through the upper rim of the domed viewport,
Ackbar saw that one of the perpendicular wings had jammed at a severe angle,
yielding maximum wind resistance. The angled wing slapped against the
turbulence and jerked the starfighter to the left.
His cockpit panels insisted that both wings had deployed properly, yet
his own vision told him otherwise.
Ackbar jabbed the controls again, trying to straighten the wing, to
regain control. The bottom half of his body felt cold and tingly as he
channeled reserves of energy into his mind and his hands on the control
levers.
"Something is very wrong here," he said.
Leia stared out the viewport. "We're heading straight for the cathedral!"
One of the aileron struts buckled and snapped from the plasteel hull,
dragging power cabl es as it tore free. Sparks flew, and more hull plates
ripped up.
Ackbar strangled an outcry. Suddenly the control lights flickered and
dimmed. He heard the grinding hum as his main cockpit panels went dead. He
hit
the second auxiliary backup he had personally designed into the B-wing.
"I don't understand it," Ackbar said, his voice guttural in the confines
of the cockpit. "This ship was just reconditioned. My own Calamarian
mechanics
were the only ones who touched it."
"New Republic shuttle," the voice on the radio insisted.
On the crystalline Cathedral of Winds, multicolored Vors scrambled down
the sides, fleeing as they saw the craft hurtling toward them. Some of the
creatures took flight, while others stared. Thousands of them were packed
into
the immense glassy structure.
Ackbar hauled the controls to the right, to the left - comanything to
make the craft swerve--but nothing responded. All the power had died.
He couldn't raise or lower the ship's wings. He was a large deadweight
falling straight toward the cathedral. Desperately he hit the full battery
reserves, knowing they could do nothing for the mechanical subsystems, but
at
least he could lock in a full-power crash shield around the B-wing.
And before that, he could break Leia free to safety.
"I'm sorry, Leia," Ackbar said. "Tell them that I am sorry." He punched a
button on the control panel that cracked open the right side of the cockpit,
splitting the hull and blasting free the tacked-on passenger seat.
As it shot Leia into the clawlike winds, Ackbar heard the wind screech at
him through the open cockpit. The crash shield hummed as he hurtled toward
the
great crystalline structure. The fighter's engine smoldered and smoked.
Ackbar stared straight ahead until the end, never blinking his huge
Calamarian eyes.
Leia found herself flying through the air. The blast of the ejection seat
had knocked the breath out of her.
She couldn't even shout as the wind caught and spun her chair. The seat's
safety repulsorlifts held her like a gentle hand and slowly lowered her
toward
the whiplike strands of pale-hued grasses below.
She looked up to see Ackbar's B-wing shuttle in the last instant before
it crashed. The starfighter smoked and whined as it plunged like a metal
filing toward a powerful magnet.
In a frozen moment she heard the loud, mournful fluting of winds
whistling through thousands of crystalline chambers. The breeze picked up
with
a gust, making the music sound like a sudden gasp of terror. The winged Vors
scrambled and attempted to flee, but most could not move quickly enough.
Ackbar's B-wing plowed into the lower levels of the Cathedral of Winds
like a meteor. The booming impact detonated the crystalline towers into a
hail
of razor-edged spears that flew in all directions. The sound of tinkling
glass, the roar of sharp broken pieces, the shriek of the wind, the screams
of
the slashed Vors--all combined into the most agonizing sound Leia had ever
heard.
The entire glasslike structure seemed to take forever to collapse. Tower
after tower fell inward.
The winds kept blowing, drawing somber notes from the hollow columns,
changing pitch. The music became a thinner and thinner wail, until only a
handful of intact wind tubes were left lying on their sides in the glassy
rubble.
As Leia wept with great sobs that seemed to tear her apart, the automatic
escape chair gently drifted to the ground and settled in the whispering
grasses.
The polar regions of Coruscant reminded Han Solo of the ice planet Hoth--
with one crucial difference. Han was here by choice with his young friend
Kyp
Durron for a vacation while Leia went off with Admiral Ackbar on yet another
diplomatic mission.
Han stood atop the crumpled blue-white ice cliffs, feeling warm in his
insulated charcoal-gray parka and red heater gloves. The ever-present
auroras
in the purplish skies sent rainbow curtains flickering and refracting off
the
ice. He drew in a deep breath of crackling cold air that seemed to curl his
nostril hairs.
He turned to Kyp beside him. "About ready to go, kid?"
For the fifth time the dark-haired eighteen-year-old bent over to adjust
the fastenings on his turbo-skis. "Uh, almost," Kyp said.
Han leaned forward to peer down the steep turbo-ski run of rippled ice,
feeling a lump form in his throat but unwilling to show it.
Blue and white glaciers shone in dim light from the months-long twilight.
Below, ice-boring machines had chewed deep tunnels into the thick ice caps;
other excavators had chopped broad terraces on the cliffs as they mined
centuries-old snowpack, melting it with fusion furnaces to be delivered via
titanic water pipelines to the dense metropolitan areas in the temperate
zones.
"You really think I can do this?" Kyp said, straightening and gripping
his deflector poles.
Han laughed. "Kid, if you can pilot us single-handed through a black hole
cluster, I think you can handle a turbo-ski slope on the most civilized
planet
in the galaxy."
Kyp looked at Han with a smile in his dark eyes. The boy reminded Han of
a young Luke Skywalker. Ever since Han had rescued Kyp from his slavery in
the
spice mines of Kessel, the young man had clung to him. After years of
wrongful
Imperial imprisonment, Kyp had missed the best years of his life. Han vowed
to
make up for that.
"Come on, kid," he said, leaning forward and igniting the motors of his
turbo-skis. With thickly gloved hands Han held on to the deflector poles and
flicked them on. He felt the cushioning repulsorfield emanating from each
point, making the poles bob in the air to keep his balance.
"You're on," Kyp said, and fired up his own skis. "But not the kiddie
slope." He turned from the wide ice pathway and pointed instead to a side
run
that branched off over several treacherous ledges, across the scabby ice of
rotten glacier, and finally over a frozen waterfall to a
receiving-and-rescue
area. Winking red laser beacons clearly marked the dangerous path.
"No way, Kyp! It's much too--was But Kyp launched himself forward and
blasted down the slope.
"Hey!" Han said. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach, sure he would
have to pick up Kyp's broken body somewhere along the path. But now he had
no
choice but to blast after the boy. "Kid, this is really a stupid thing to
do."
Crystals of powdery snow sprayed behind Kyp's turbo-skis as he bent
forward, touching the ground at occasional intervals with his deflector
poles.
He kept his balance like an expert, intuitively knowing what to do. After
only
a second of the thundering descent, Han realized that Kyp might be more
likely
to survive this ride than he was.
As Han rocketed down the slope, the snow and ice hissed beneath him like
a jet of compressed air. Han hit a frozen outcropping that sent him flying,
and he somersaulted through the air, flailing with his deflector poles.
Stabilizer jets on his belt righted him just in time as he slammed into the
snow again. He continued down the slope with the speed of a stampeding
bantha.
He squinted behind ice goggles, concentrating intensely on keeping
himself upright. The lan
dscape seemed too sharp--every razor-edged drift of
snow, the glittering sheared-off face of ice--as if every single detail
might
be his last.
Kyp let out a loud whoop of delight as he slewed left onto the dangerous
offshoot turbo-ski path. The whoop echoed three times around the sharp-edged
cliffs.
Han began cursing the young man's recklessness, then experienced a sudden
inner warmth as he realized he had expected little else from Kyp. Making the
best of it, Han let out an answering whoop of his own and turned to follow.
Red laser beacons flared, warning and guiding the foolish turbo-skiers
along the path. The rippled surface whispered beneath the soft cushioning
fields of his turbo-skis.
Ahead, the icy roadway seemed foreshortened and continued at a different
elevation. Han realized the danger an instant before he reached the
precipice.
"Cliff!"
Kyp bent low, as if he had simply become another component of his turbo-
skis. He tucked his deflector poles close to his sides, then fired up the
rear
jets of his skis. He rocketed over the edge of the cliff, arcing down in a
long smooth curve to the resumption of the trail.
Barely in time, Han activated his own jets and launched himself over
empty space. His stomach dropped even faster than gravity could tug him
down.
Wind ruffled the edges of his parka hood.
In front of him Kyp landed smoothly without so much as a wobble and shot
downslope.
Han had time to take only one gulping breath as the plateau of ice rushed
up to meet his turbo-skis with a loud crack. He gripped his deflector poles,
desperate to maintain his balance.
A powdery ribbon of drifted snow curled across their path. Kyp jammed
down with his deflector poles, hopping up into the air and cleanly missing
the
drift--but Han plowed straight through.
Snow flew into his goggles, blinding him. He wobbled and jabbed from side
to side with his poles. He managed to swipe a gloved hand across his goggles
just in time to swerve left and avoid smashing into a monolithic ice
outcropping.
Before he had recovered his balance, Han launched over a yawning chasm in
the rotten glacier that fell out beneath him. For a timeless instant he
stared
down at a drop of about a million kilometers, and then he landed on the far
side. Behind him, he heard a whump as a block of age-old snow lost its