Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy I: Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn

Author:Timothy Zahn [Zahn, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307796103
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-03T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

18

The trilling code, coming from somewhere far behind him, startled Luke up out of his dreamless sleep. “Okay, Artoo, I’m awake,” he said groggily, reaching up to rub at his eyes. His knuckles bumped into the visor of his flight helmet, and the impact did a bit to dissipate the fog still swirling through his mind. He couldn’t remember exactly the circumstances under which he’d gone into hibernation, but he had the distinct feeling that Artoo had brought him out too soon. “Is anything wrong?” he asked, trying to track down exactly what it was the droid was supposed to be doing.

The trilling changed to an anxious-sounding warble. Still fighting to get his eyes properly focused, Luke searched out the computer scope for the translation. To his mild surprise, it was dark. As were all the rest of his instruments; and then it came back to him. He was trapped in deep space, with all the X-wing’s systems shut down except power for Artoo and minimal life support for himself.

And Artoo was supposed to be winding a new subspace radio antenna. Twisting a slightly stiff neck, he turned halfway around to look back at the droid, wondering what the problem was—

And felt his muscles twitch with surprise. There, bearing rapidly down on them, was another ship.

He spun back around, fully awake now, hands jabbing for the bank of power switches and slapping them all on. But it was so much useless reflex. Even with shortcuts, it would still take nearly fifteen minutes to bring the X-wing’s engines from a cold start to any serious possibility of flight, let alone combat. If the intruder was unfriendly . . .

Using the emergency maneuvering jets, he got the X-wing turning slowly around to face the approaching ship. The scopes and sensors were starting to come back on line again, confirming what his eyes had already told him: his visitor was a midsized, slightly dilapidated-looking Corellian bulk freighter. Not the sort of ship the Imperials usually used, and there were certainly no Imperial markings on its hull.

But under the circumstances, it was just as unlikely that it was an innocent freight handler, either. A pirate, perhaps? Luke reached out with the Force, trying to get a sense of the crew . . .

Artoo warbled, and Luke glanced down at the computer scope. “Yes, I noticed that, too,” Luke told him. “But a normal bulk freighter might be able to pull that kind of deceleration if it was empty. Why don’t you do a quick analysis of the sensor readings, see if you can spot any weapons emplacements.”

The droid beeped an acknowledgment, and Luke gave the other instruments a quick scan. The primary laser cannon capacitors were at half charge now, with the main sublight drive about halfway through its preflight sequence.

And the flashing radio signal indicated that he was being hailed.

Bracing himself, Luke flipped on the receiver. “—need assistance?” a cool female voice said. “Repeating: unidentified starfighter, this is the freighter Wild Karrde. Do

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