Chapter 10 Stranded...
Andromeda sat at the helm of the Redeemer
as she swiftly glided through outer space. Ever
since the incident on Locnar’s city of
During the three days, Dr. Narda happily explained all about his mission
to Karra and was happy to explain the Karrans, if anyone would listen and Gorr
got to listen to the good doctor’s spiel the entire trip.
They were of a very primitive tribal people and outsiders scared them
easily, it was explained. It was Dr.
Narda’s job to negotiate the treaty between the Karrans and the
Andromeda gently brought the Redeemer
down at the edge of a forest. In a
clearing just beyond was the Karran village, which were merely seven huts
arranged in an oval-type shape. The
entire village was standing in the center when Dr. Narda drew near in greeting.
He quietly met and shook hands with the tribal elders and disappeared
into one of the huts to start negotiating the treaty.
All that was left for the team to do now was to stand guard and
wait—over a period of three long, uneventful days.
In that time, the team was able to meet some of the Karran villagers, who
spent the first two days looking over the strange off-worlders. After the second
day, the villagers lost interest in them completely, except for the children,
who would try to play with them. They
seemed most attached to Gorr, who would engage in their games and playfully
roughhouse with them.
On the morning of the forth day, however, something finally did happen,
although it had nothing to do with the treaty.
The skies overhead was suddenly filled with smoke and fire as an Imperial
Lambda shuttle came screaming to a sickening crash nearby.
This sent the Karrans into an instant frenzy, running to their newfound
Rebel friends, crying out in deathly fear for protection from the Imperials.
“Save us! Save us from the
white-shelled oppressors!” they cried, but the chief elders put a stop to the
chaos real quick.
“Enough! We will
investigate. We will send our Rebel
friends, Dr. Narda, and six of our best warriors to make sure that the
white-shelled ones will not be a threat to us!”
The chiefs stood firm and there was a silence that suddenly fell over the
crowd. It was apparent that whatever
the chiefs decided on, it was law, and that it must be so.
Andromeda glanced over at Kosh for some kind of reaction, but saw none,
and found the whole situation almost unsettling.
Quietly, with Tolian, Kosh, and Luse leading the way, they all hiked out
to the crash sight. The shuttle had
broken up into two halves, the cockpit still intact and whatever was the back
end had disintegrated and was scattered debris all over the place.
Cautiously, they approached. There
appeared to be some kind of movement in the cockpit, and they found themselves
diving for cover as shots came from it. Andromeda
fired off a shot in return, but it glanced harmlessly off the side.
Tolian also returned fire with not much better luck.
Kosh had taken off toward it in a run as did Luse and Gorr.
Zaron hung back providing cover, while Maharet tried to sneak her way to
the shuttle. The Karrans surrounded
Dr. Narda protectively and also hung back.
Kosh had ignited his lightsaber and began to slash through the
opponents’ cover, killing two. Luse
on the other hand, decided to take the other two out by any means necessary, and
preferably his fist, with Gorr’s help. While
they had them engaged, Tolian, Andromeda and Kosh found a prisoner, who showed
no signs of injury other than bruises across his jaw from probably being smacked
around and roughed up a little.
“Who are you?” Tolian demanded.
“You don’t look Imperial to me,” he said a little stiffly.
“If anything, I should be asking you that question!”
“Wrong!” Andromeda jerked
him out of his seat by the binders he wore about his wrists.
“Now answer the question!” The
man sighed heavily. It was plain to
see that by the way he was dressed, he was an Imperial of some political
importance.
“I’m Governor Sarayn Edlam. I
was in the process of being taken back to the base because they think that
I’ve committed treason,” he snapped. “Now
would you mind letting me go? Being
in the company of Rebels is enough for instant execution!”
“Not a chance!” Andromeda snapped back as she shoved him out of the
cockpit.
“We’ll just take him back to the base and let the Imperial
authorities deal with him. After
that, he’s not out problem,” Tolian said.
Luse had rejoined the group by this time and seemed intent on inflicting
real harm to the governor, but Tolian stopped him.
“We’re putting him under our protection until we get to the base,”
Tolian said with an edge in his voice that didn’t invite debate.
Dr. Narda was in agreement. They
began to lead the prisoner away at gun point, but when the Karrans got sight of
him and realized that the Imperial man was given a sort of sanctuary, they
became furious!
“Traitor!” they howled. “How
dare you give sanctuary to an Imperial?! I
thought you were against all Imperials! Traitor!”
They surprisingly turned on Dr. Narda, beating him unmercifully.
Andromeda almost seemed to be stunned with surprise.
“Stop! You cannot do
this!” Kosh commanded, but they ignored him.
“Wait! Listen to him!
He’s a— You don’t understand!” Gorr tried.
Luse
jumped into the middle of it all with his martial arts skills, trying to keep
them at bay and from beating Dr. Narda any further, but to no avail.
The Karrans’ fury was not to be abated.
They left Dr. Narda for dead and then turned their attention to the
Governor, also beating him to death. Maharet
and Kosh joined in with Luse to try to stop them, but soon the Karrans’
attention was turned to them and at that point, Tolian, Zaron and Andromeda
jumped into the fight with blasters blazing, having to kill the Karrans.
“So much for a nice, quiet, diplomatic mission,” Zaron said quietly
as the smoke cleared.
“Dr. Narda!” a female voice was heard.
It was his assistant, Karvinna, running up to them.
She instantly was at his side, trying to feel for a pulse and found none.
“Karvinna! Where did you
come from?” Maharet asked.
“The village. I was
watching from a distance. When they
started to make that awful howling sound, the entire village seemed to
disappear. I came running when I saw
them start to beat up on Dr. Narda,” she said, not looking up from him.
“This situation is looking pretty grim and I don’t think that it’s
salvageable, either,” Tolian said gently as he helped her to stand.
“I think it would be a good idea that we just mark this up as a loss
and get out here now while the gettin’s good.”
“No,” she stood her ground. “We
can still fix this. I can.
I was the assistant and Dr. Narda would want me to try and salvage what
we have done.” Andromeda looked at
Zaron and exchanged a look of “Yeah, right!”
“There’s nothing to fix. We
screwed up. We’ve deeply offended
them somehow. It’s too late.
Let’s just go!” Maharet said and began to hurry back to the Redeemer.
When they came upon the ship, it seemed to be a different color—a
rusted color.
“Was the Redeemer always that
color?” Luse asked.
“No,” Tolian said quietly with a puzzled expression.
Andromeda had that puzzled look too, not sure what it was.
As they drew closer, Maharet noticed that the rust wasn’t rust at all,
that it was in fact, millions of tiny little insects, no bigger than a mosquito.
They ran forward and into the ship, horrified to learn that the insects
were everywhere—in everything resembling electrical.
Desperately, Andromeda tried to fire up the ship, but the engines
wouldn’t even turn over or make the slightest sound.
Panic began to grip her from all sides as she ran to inspect the engine,
only to find that there was no engine, only a mass of insects.
After a thorough inspection, it was decided that the Redeemer
was truly lost and would never fly again. They
quickly gathered their things that thankfully weren’t affected, like extra
weapons and the like.
“Just great!” Andromeda silently fumed as they made their way off
again.
“Where are those little Karrans? I’d
like to kick their—” Luse began to rage.
“We can’t be staying here,” Tolian cut him off.
“We’ll have to march ourselves over to the Imperial base and see if
we can’t get ourselves off this planet.”
“But we have no hostage to bargain with,” Luse began to protest.
“We’ll do what we always do,” Zaron said simply.
“Get into trouble and then get out of it again.
Don’t worry. We’ll get
out of here.” Andromeda could tell
that he didn’t look quite as confident as he sounded.
“The Karrans are not at fault. They
simply just don’t understand and see and off-worlder as a threat to their
existence,” Kosh said quietly.
“Not at fault? They just
screwed up our assignment! I just
wanna kick their—” Luse began again.
“Hey! Listen to the Rodian.
He knows what he’s talking
about!” Gorr cut him off with a warning gesture of his scaled fist.
Karvinna was silent as she also picked up her backpack and began to
follow them in the long hike to the base. She
either had nothing to say, or she was still in deep shock over Dr. Narda’s
death. She was like that the entire
day and still said nothing at the evening meal.
It was early morning when Luse was the first to stir out of sleep.
He glanced up to see that Karvinna was quickly gathering her things as
stealthily as she possibly could. With
a leap as quiet as a cat, he tackled her to the ground, which got an
ear-piercing shriek out of her, which in turn woke everyone else.
“Please! I must go back to
him! He needs me!” Karvinna
struggled to get out of Luse’s grasp.
“Karvinna, please. Calm
yourself a little. You have to
accept the fact that Dr. Narda is dead. The Karrans murdered him, remember?”
Andromeda soothed. Karvinna went
slack and broke into tremendous sobbing. There
was nothing that anybody could do. They
stepped back and averted their eyes in respect for her mourning, but unbeknownst
to them and before they even knew what was completely happening, Karvinna had
drawn a holdout blaster from her pack and fatally shot herself.
There was a stunned silence. No
one could say anything. Andromeda
looked almost angry. Tolian had
raised eyebrows in more surprise. Zaron’s
jaw actually fell open. Maharet had
completely turned away. Kosh had no
expression on his face. Gorr’s
look was one of pure shock and surprise. Luse
glanced over, shrugged as if to say “Oh, well!” and began walking away.
Everyone caught it and was looking after him in incredulous disbelief,
but still, no one said anything. The
day was spent in stunned silence as they laid Karvinna to rest and camped out
again for the night.
Andromeda awoke early on the morning of the third day since losing the Redeemer.
She looked about quietly so as not to disturb the others, but found
that Luse was already up and having breakfast.
She gently rubbed life back into her limbs and stretched back to life.
She didn’t say a word as she slipped her hand into her pack and took
out a small serving of rations.
It was going to be another hot day of hiking in the sun, she could tell
by the color of the sunrise. She
only hoped that the Karrans didn’t get a crazy idea to follow them, or
anything. Beside her, Maharet and
Tolian stirred. Gorr and Zaron
groggily sat up and took in their surroundings.
“Morning already? Finally!”
Zaron muttered and sank back down again.
“Sleep well?” Kosh asked as he sat up.
“Well enough, thank you Master Kosh,” Gorr replied almost
cheerfully—too cheerful for Andromeda, who was throwing him a sour look for
his uppity mood.
“Couldn’t sleep very well. Too
much time on my hands. Too much time
to think,” Zaron mumbled as he stretched himself.
“Hurry and eat something,” Tolian said.
“We have to get going before it gets way too hot.”
Luse led the group in their hike, rarely stopping for a rest.
He didn’t stop until they had reached the edge of the plateau they were
on. Below them in the valley they
could see the Imperial base, shining like a silver jewel under the mid-afternoon
sun. With a quick examination of the
cliff and getting their bearings, it was determined that not only was it a sheer
thousand foot drop down to the valley floor, but that the cliff face stretched
in either direction of left or right as far as the eye could see.
“Do we dare try to climb down?” Andromeda asked as she peered over
the edge, trying to get a better look.
“No. None of us have rope
long enough,” Tolian said with an edge on his voice that indicated that it was
not open for debate. Andromeda
decided not to push the subject.
“Then we should decide which way we go,” she said as she backed away
from the edge. “At any rate,
finding a way down would be most helpful. Maybe
there’s a pathway cut, or maybe there’s a place where it slopes to a more
gentle decline.”
“I’m going this way,” Luse made the choice for them.
“Keep the sun at my back. I’m
headed north.” He began to hike
away from them and headed to the left. Maharet
wordlessly followed. Kosh turned to
go with her, closely followed by Gorr. Tolian
looked over at Andromeda, who would have normally put up an argument just for
argument’s sake, but she was quiet. It
appeared that the heat was getting to her. They
were all too hot and tired to argue about anything, it seemed that there was no
point to arguing. Andromeda just
sighed and followed Kosh. Zaron just
put one foot in front of the other and fell in line behind Andromeda.
Tolian readjusted the pack that was over his shoulder and also fell in
line, following Luse further into the unknown.
As the afternoon wore on, the terrain became more and more lush.
The breezes were becoming somewhat cooler, and the rocky ground was
giving way to green grasslands, but still, the cliff to the right of them showed
no signs of a break to the valley below.
“Over there!” Luse pointed off in the distance.
“See them? Buildings!
Maybe we’ve stumbled onto a village, or another Imperial base.
Let’s head for the trees. This
hike would be for nothing if we were to get caught.”
They hid in the nearby trees and kept their eyes on the buildings.
There seemed to be no activity or life coming from them at all.
No noises, only the breeze blowing through the cracks in the buildings.
Blasters were drawn for cover.
“You all stay here. Kosh,
Gorr and I are going to check this out,” Luse said casually.
“I think that the place is abandoned, but you can never tell for sure.
There’s always some forgotten soul that stays behind in a place like
this.”
Actually, the rest of them were thankful for the rest and the shade.
Andromeda was digging through her pack again for something to snack on.
She had just found a last nutribar at the bottom of her pack when Luse
came back already.
“Come on! This place is
deserted!”
It looked like a complex of some sort, or maybe a crude settlement.
The buildings were all of metal, and looked like they hadn’t been
inhabited in many years. Andromeda’s
search found a locked door and bypassing the lock was no problem.
With a good, well-aimed kick, the door opened easily and she was
genuinely surprised to find that it was a workshop of some sort, all intact.
It looked as if whoever was there before had suddenly disappeared.
Luse and Gorr had found a roomful of building materials in another
building nearby. Tolian’s search
proved to be the most fruitful, since he found a room that still had computer
terminals that were still functional, so he called Zaron over and put him to
work. Maharet and Kosh were checking
out one of the larger buildings and called excitedly over their comlinks that
they had found a ship in a hangar.
Everyone rushed over to the hangar, crossing their fingers and hoping for
the best, but the enthusiasm was short lived as they boarded the strange alien
craft. With one look at the
controls, their hopes were literally shattered.
Maharet discovered the tiny skeletons of insects scattered about
everywhere in everything and anything having to do with electrical systems.
Andromeda tried the simple act of trying to turn on a light so that they
could see better, but there was no light to be had.
“I’ve got the funny feeling that whoever was here before us had run
into the same problem we had,” Andromeda sighed heavily as she turned to leave
the ship again.
“Wouldn’t happen to be the Karrans, would it?” Gorr asked.
“No, that would never happen!” Andromeda said with heavy sarcasm.
“Don’t start, you two!” Tolian cut in.
“Let’s try the workshop. Maybe
we’ll learn something of value there.”
The workshop that Andromeda had found was full of worktables that had
strange gadgets sitting upon them, and there looked as if there were unfinished
projects on another table.
Gorr walked over to one of the tables and picked up a handful of grass
that was sitting on it. It was old
and dried out, but on a whim, he fed it into the strange-looking gadget that was
sitting there, and with a strange churning sound, a rope came out the other end.
“Look at what I’ve found!” Gorr said excitedly.
“Here’s our way for getting down into the valley!”
He ran outside, grabbed some grass that was growing wild just outside the
door, came back and put it into the strange gadget.
Again, a rope came out the other end.
“If we get enough grass, we could make enough rope to get us down the
cliff safely!” Gorr was becoming more and more excited.
Zaron was more interested in finding out how the other gadget that was
sitting on the table beside the rope maker worked.
After messing with it for a few minutes, he concluded that it was a heat
generator of some kind. It took the
grass and converted it into heat.
“And what of your computer you found, Uncle?” Andromeda asked.
“What did you learn off of it?”
“Well, I had Zaron working on that, but then we were pulled away when
Kosh and Maharet thought they found a ship,” Tolian said.
“That’s right! I was just
starting to get somewhere, too! Let’s
go back and see if it finished pulling up any files!” Zaron’s face lit up at
the mere mention of a computer. They
followed him back to the other building where a computer was hard at work.
“Let’s see if it will play back any journal files,” Zaron pushed a
button. The computer seemed to
flicker and the screen seemed to sputter on and off.
There was no picture, but there was text to be read, but not all of it
was readable.
It appeared to be the journal of some kind of a working alien colony.
The gist of the entries were not upbeat.
In fact they were riddled with fear of the Karrans.
There was fear that they had offended the Karrans in some way, and that
they were living in constant fear of them. This
went on for what seemed like a long time, but eventually, the Karrans did
attack, bringing on legions of bugs and insects.
There was no stopping them. There
were no entries after the so-called battle between them had started.
It was just generally assumed that the Karrans had won.
“Battle of the Creepy Crawlies. Just how are we supposed to defeat them
if they ever show up again?” Andromeda asked the question for all of them.
“Let’s worry about it in the morning,” Zaron said wearily.
“I’m too tired to care.” Indeed,
he was yawning and showing signs of fatigue.
“We’ve only been walking all day.
I’m beat,” Maharet said just as wearily.
“But we’re not safe here!” Andromeda began to argue.
“Not tonight, Llellandra! Just
find a place to bunk down. We’ll
try to get the heck out of here at first light.
Would you feel better if you had a watch shift for a little while?”
Tolian tried to soothe.
“Maybe,” Andromeda sulked a little.
“I’ll wake Luse for the midnight watch.”
The night passed uneventfully, but they had a hard time sleeping.
It was very unsettling to be camping out in the middle of nature when
there were no nature sounds.
“I know I like my peace and quiet, but this is ridiculous,” Andromeda
muttered as everyone had settled in for the night.
“At least you’ll know if something is trying to sneak up on us,”
Gorr said. “Follow Kosh’s
example. Look on the bright side
once in a while.”
“If there was a bright side, I just might,” Andromeda seemed
agitated.
“My dear lady, there’s always
a bright side,” Kosh spoke up, a little groggily.
“Good night, Kosh,” Andromeda carefully enunciated, indicating that
she no longer wished to discuss it. “At
least with the stillness we’ll hear if anything does
show up.” There was a mumbled
agreement all around as they fell asleep. Andromeda
had her gun at the ready and her eyes wide open.
Despite Luse taking over the watch at midnight, she still had a hard time
getting to sleep.
She was still awake when the sun arose again and still, the nature noises
had not returned. It was unsettling
enough for her to have the adrenaline pumping, every one of her senses strained
to their fullest, and to be completely wide awake.
She made quick work of waking everyone and hurrying them through the
morning meal. She barely said a
word, but she sensed that everyone else had picked up on her tense manner and
they too began to feel the urgency she was feeling.
“It looks like this forest is the end of the line.
It slopes down into the valley. It
shouldn’t take us more than maybe a half day of hiking if we don’t run into
any problems,” Luse offered.
“Then let’s go. The shade
of the forest should be enough to keep the sun off our backs and that should
make rest stops more infrequent,” Andromeda seemed eager to leave as she flung
her pack over her shoulder and began to walk toward the forest at rather a brisk
pace. Tolian was close behind her.
Her sense of urgency was making him nervous.
Maharet caught up with them and passed them, taking out her vibro-ax so
she could clear a trail. Gorr lent a
hand also, while Luse scouted out ahead of them.
Kosh stayed back with Zaron, Tolian and Andromeda.
The forest was dark and creepy. The
only sounds audible was the ringing of Maharet’s ax and the rustling of the
foliage as they passed by. It was
hard to discern which was more scary—a dark creepy forest with the sounds or
without. It made the forest seem
surreal. The ground wasn’t normal,
either. With further examination of
the ground, it was found that they weren’t walking on the ground at all but
the actual trees themselves. Going
was somewhat slow.
Just when they were ready to quit for the midday meal, they were able to
see brighter light that indicated the edge of the forest.
With a little scouting ahead, Luse was happy to announce that he could
see the Imperial base in the distance. Forget
lunch! With a kind of strength
renewed, they pressed onward to the edge of the forest until they had the base
in their sights.
“Finally,” Tolian breathed. “Let’s
locate a hanger bay and get us the heck off this planet!”
“Shh!” Maharet silenced them. “Do
you hear what I hear?” Everyone
held their breath and strained their ears.
“Nature noises,” Zaron said brightly.
“And lots of blaster fire.”
“No wonder we haven’t been able to hear all the noises!
All the nature’s been sent to attack the Imperial base by the Karrans!”
Gorr said with certainty. “I
wonder why they didn’t just wipe out those Imps themselves long before this.
They sure don’t need Rebel assistance by the sounds of that!”
“But we can’t just saunter up and take a ship, either.
The Karrans think that we’re Imperial, too.
They think that any off-worlder is a threat,” Maharet pointed out.
“But we do need to sneak in there and get us a ship.
We also need to keep a hope that those bug-things haven’t taken over,
either.”
“Then we don’t have any time to waste!” Kosh was the one showing
the sense of urgency now, and Gorr quickly picked up on it, showing signs of
nervousness himself as he followed Kosh closely.
They had barely gotten out of the forest when a small patrol of Karrans
and a couple of oversized bugs overtook them.
“There they are! We knew
you’d turn up sooner or later!” a Karran proclaimed.
They began to attack with their spears and the big bugs began to advance,
making a blood-chilling noise that was reminiscent of nails going over a
chalkboard.
Maharet ran forward and chopped off one bug’s legs.
Andromeda fired her blaster at a Karran, who fell lifeless to the ground.
Tolian also fired and succeeded in killing another Karran, who screamed
piteously as he fell. Kosh had
ignited his lightsaber and also advanced on the bugs, cleanly slicing the other
in two.
“Looks like they were guarding that warehouse,” Zaron pointed out.
No one had really recognized it before, but there was a warehouse, and
the forest foliage had grown over the exterior of the building, successfully
hiding it from plain sight.
“Next question would be how to get into it?” Gorr asked.
“We find a door,” Zaron gave him a strange look, but Gorr never
picked up on it.
“I just knew there was a reason we had an engineer along!” Gorr
seemed to relax slightly. Zaron and
Andromeda exchanged a look between them.
Maybe about a half an hour passed before they were able to find an
entrance which was on the far side of the warehouse.
The nature noises were much louder than before, almost at an
ear-shattering level, and the blaster fire continued.
The warehouse was looking deserted, and if there was any guards on duty,
they were away from their posts to join in the battle.
Gaining access was the easy part. Inside
the warehouse, there was a captured Corellian stock light freighter.
Andromeda was suddenly feeling much more at ease and ran forward to try
and lower the ramp.
“Llellandra, wait!” Tolian cried out in warning.
She stopped on command and turned around with a questioning look on her
face. There was a distinct buzzing
sound heard. As they looked in the
direction it was coming from, they all ran for cover.
It was a swarm of what looked like giant flies about their size flying
in. By the sound of the buzzing,
they were very battle-frenzied.
The giant flies saw them and began to attack, lashing out with legs and
wings. Tolian tried to take one on
in a fistfight, but the fly succeeded in knocking him silly.
Andromeda saw what happened and rushed over in her uncle’s defense,
taking the fly on herself. It lashed
out with its legs and wings, but Andromeda knocked it to its knees with a
well-aimed kick. Gorr seemed to come
out of nowhere, knocking the fly unconscious and onto its back.
Gorr let out a cry for the fight and with Andromeda’s help, began to
fight the flies as the rest of the team ran for the cover of the ship, taking
the wounded Tolian with them.
Gorr and Andromeda stood back to back, fighting off the flies and even
enjoying themselves in the process. Andromeda
was simply loving a good brawl-fest as was Gorr.
Zaron in the meantime had bypassed the lock on the freighter and let the
others in. Tolian dragged himself
into the cockpit to prep the ship and was over relieved to find that the Karrans
had not gotten to this ship.
Andromeda and Gorr were knocking flies silly right and left when
suddenly, the buzzing stopped and the flies were suddenly gone.
They looked over in the direction of the far side of the warehouse and
were nearly frozen to the spot to see that there was a huge bug—perhaps some
kind of spider that was making its way over.
It was black, shiny and about the same size of the ship.
“Bug!” Gorr cried and opened fire upon it.
Andromeda joined him in firing upon it.
The thing seemed to not be affected by the blaster fire and it kept
slowly advancing.
“Say, Uncle. How is the
ship prep coming? Can we leave
yet?” Andromeda asked casually into her comlink.
“Not yet. I’ll have her
ready to leave in about five minutes,” came Tolian’s reply.
“Try to make it faster. There’s
a huge bug that you don’t want to see. Blaster
fire is only making this thing really mad! And
by the way, Gorr and I are on our way up!” Andromeda grabbed Gorr’s arm and
they ran on board, closing the ramp behind them.
Andromeda ran to the gun turret to try heavy artillery on the bug.
“What the heck is that thing?” Zaron asked for all of them as they
got a good look at it from the cockpit window.
“Big bug. Ugly. Very big. Black.
Scary. Big.
Very big bug,” Gorr answered. A
blast was heard from the gun turret and the bug seemed to stagger back for a
moment, but then it seemed to get more upset than it already was, but that
stopped its advance.
“Llellandra, don’t do that! It’s
using up too much energy. We’ll
never get off the ground if you keep doing that!” Tolian called up.
“Then someone better do
something! I’m out of ideas!”
Andromeda called back.
“Anybody got a thermal detonator?” Luse asked.
“Maybe we should just blow it up. That would stop it cold.”
“Hear that?” she paused. “No!
That’s the sound of no one disagreeing with you.
Hurry up!” Andromeda said as she came out of the gun turret.
A smile had come over Luse’s face and he dug through his pack and
pulled out a small, shiny orb. He
headed for the top hatch, intending to throw it, but realized that the bug was
too far away for the detonator to do any good.
The smile had quickly left his face.
“Big Ugly Bug is getting really mad.
It looks like he’s getting ready to move again,” Gorr said from his
seat in the cockpit. Tolian suddenly
got up from his seat and pulled Andromeda into it.
“Here. Fire her up.
I’ll be right back,” he said, leaving abruptly.
“Just where do you think your going?” Maharet asked.
“To get rid of that bug!” Tolian went for his pack.
He pulled out his jetpack and strapped it on.
“Luse! Where’s that
detonator?”
Andromeda dutifully did as she was told, but her eyes weren’t leaving
the bug. Suddenly, Tolian came into
view, riding his jetpack, trying to maneuver over the giant bug.
“By Alderaan! What is he
doing?” she breathed. She saw him
drop the thermal detonator and jet back out of sight.
There was a frenzied call of “I’m
in!” and she punched the engine, which responded with a tremendous roar and
they blasted away in to outer space, leaving the planet Karra far, far behind.
It wasn’t until the planet was far behind them and they had made the
jump to hyperspace did they breathe easy again.