Tales of the Bounty Hunters: Star Wars: Book 3 (Star Wars - Legends) by Kevin Anderson

Author:Kevin Anderson [Anderson, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307796264
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

What was left of passenger level one had no lights, not even dim emergency lights. Toryn shined her glowtube out the viewport in the containment shield that had crashed down to stop depressurization. The hull of the ship past that point had exploded away. She saw stars reeling as the ship turned, then Hoth itself, far away, shining so bright and white she could almost not look at it, then more stars.

Then bodies. A few bodies lying still.

The containment shield had not saved many lives on that deck. The depressurization had been quick—explosive—and it had blown most people out into space.

Toryn turned away quickly and started down the passage behind her. But after a moment she stopped and made herself go back. She looked through the viewport till Hoth reappeared, and she noted the time on her chrono. When Hoth came back around, she noted the time, again: four Standard minutes, forty-three Standard seconds. She had the beginnings of an equation on the rotation of what was left of the ship. It could come in handy. In the next few hours, any bit of information about their situation could come in handy.

She hurried down the passage. There were lights ahead, from one, maybe two, glowtubes, casting dark shadows on the walls and ceiling. She found seven people at work on the escape pods. They had torn up the deckplates in front of the pods and were working in the crawlspace there.

“Power couplings tore loose in the attack,” one told her.

“If we can reconnect them to the emergency power supplies, we can launch the pods,” someone else said.

Toryn shined her light on the escape pods. They stood in a row there. All the viewports were dark.

“Can you shine your light here?” someone called to her.

Toryn hurried to help with the work. It was cold work. Toryn could see her breath now. The tools were cold to handle.

“This should do it—” one of the men below her said.

The emergency lights snapped on around the passage edges. The small, round doors to the pods were suddenly backlit with green, and bright light shone out the viewport in each door, too bright to look at.

Then all the lights snapped off.

“Of all the—!” someone muttered in the sudden darkness. Toryn had to sit down on a stack of torn up deckplating, disappointed.

“The power cells on this level may be damaged,” someone said.

“We may have to route power up from the lower decks—Toryn, you say both decks below us are intact?”

Someone hit something, and the lights flared back on.

Everyone looked at each other and laughed.

Toryn hurried to one of the pods. Its readouts said it was functioning perfectly. They could fire it as soon as they were ready. “Pod one completely operable,” she said.

“Same here,” someone said at pod two.

“Pod three, operable status.”

Everyone looked at each other again. No one knew how to start the next part of the process. No one knew how to decide who would get the chance to go. Toryn outranked everyone there.

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