Star Wars: Thrawn Trilogy: Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn

Author:Timothy Zahn
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction:Star Wars
ISBN: 0553560719
Published: 2011-05-11T22:49:00+00:00

CHAPTER

21

Mara swore under her breath, throwing the Skipray’s control surfaces into glide mode and keying for a contour scan of the cliff face beneath the rim building. A landing up on the rim was out of the question now; putting down on the limited area up there without her repulsorlifts might be possible, but not with a Jedi Master fighting her the whole way. Alternately, she could go for the dark island beneath her, which would give her more room to operate but leave her with the problem of getting back up to the rim. Ditto if she tried to find a big enough landing area somewhere else down the mountains.

Or she could admit defeat, fire up the main drive and pull for space, and go after Karrde alone.

Gritting her teeth, she studied the contour scan. The rock storm had stopped after the fourth hit—the Jedi Master, no doubt, waiting to see if she’d crash without further encouragement on his part. With a little luck, maybe she could convince him that she was done for without actually wrecking the ship in the process. If she could just find the proper formation in that cliff face …

There it was, perhaps a third of the way down: a roughly hemispherical concavity where erosion had eaten away a layer of softer rock from the harder material surrounding it. The ledge that had been left beneath the indentation was relatively flat, and the whole thing was large enough to hold the Skipray comfortably.

Now all she had to do was get the ship there. Mentally crossing her fingers, she flipped the ship nose up and eased in the main sublight drive.

The glare of the drive trail lit up the near side of the rim mountains, throwing them into a dancing mosaic of light and shadow. The Skipray jerked up and forward, stabilized a little as Mara brought the nose a bit farther back off vertical. It threatened to overbalance, eased back as she tapped the control surfaces, twitched almost too far in the other direction, then steadied. Balancing on the drive like this was an inherently unstable operation, and Mara could feel the sweat breaking out on her forehead as she fought to keep the suddenly unwieldy craft under control. If C’baoth suspected what she was trying, it wouldn’t take much effort on his part to finish her off.

Setting her teeth together, splitting her attention between the approach scope, the airspeed indicator, and the throttle, she brought the ship in.

She nearly didn’t make it. The Skipray was still ten meters short of the ledge when its drive trail hit the cliff face below it with enough heat to ignite the rock, and an instant later the ship was sheathed in brilliantly colored fire. Mara held her course, trying to ignore the warbling of the hull warning sirens as she strained to see through the flames between her and her target. There was no time to waste with second thoughts—if she hesitated even a few seconds, the drive could easily burn away too much of the ledge for her to safely put down.

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