The Ruins of Dantooine (16 page)

Finn did not speak for some time, but stared at her with his black eyes. Dusque thought she might drown in those inky depths. When he finally did answer, his voice was hard and almost cold. “Yes,” he agreed, “it is because of the Empire.”

Dusque wondered what atrocity they had committed against him or, most likely, someone he had loved to leave him so cold and hateful now. The realization came to Dusque that while he knew so much about her, his past was shrouded in mystery. She had learned a little on Lok, but there was so much left unsaid between them.

“What happened—” she started to ask him, when the Mon Calamari returned.

“Strap yourselves back in,” he ordered, totally unaware of what he had interrupted. “We’re about to drop out of hyperspace.”

“You heard the man,” Finn told her, and she wondered if he was glad he didn’t have to answer her question.

She turned away from him and picked up the DH-17. “I think I’ll take this one,” she said, changing the subject herself. She didn’t want to force him to talk if he was unwilling to open up. She grabbed a holster from the crate and an armband with power packs. When she had added the weapon to her gear, she sat down and strapped herself in.

From the only viewport in the cargo area, Dusque could see the slashing rays of hyperspace travel streak
by, and then the stars stopped their mad dash. She breathed a sigh of relief, glad that they were almost there. But her relief was short lived. Suddenly the shuttle rocked hard to the left and then the right. Had she not been buckled up, Dusque knew she would have been slammed against the wall with the rest of the cargo. As the ship bucked, she could see laserfire from the starboard portal. They were under attack.

“What is it?” Finn shouted, struggling with his restraints.

“Imps,” the Mon Calamari yelled. The tension and fear in his voice were unmistakable.

“Blast it,” Finn hissed. “They’re never in this sector.” He freed himself just as the ship took another hit; he was thrown hard to the floor.

“Watch out!” Dusque called as a crate broke free of its moorings and slid dangerously close to him. He sidestepped the deadly object and it smashed into the far wall, goods spilling out everywhere.

She saw that he managed to struggle into the cockpit, and then she lost sight of him. She debated joining them forward, but realized she had absolutely nothing to offer them other than a distraction. She knew less about the workings of ships than she did about guns. She held on to her restraints as the ship was tossed about like a piece of driftwood at sea and hoped that Finn was as good a copilot as he had proclaimed on Lok. Between the blasts, she strained to hear what they were saying up front.

“Solo, do you copy?” the Mon Calamari shouted. “We’re under attack.”

“I’ve kind of got my hands full here at the moment,” came the
Falcon
pilot’s clipped response.

The ship took another hit, and Dusque was nearly torn from her seat by the force of it. They were in serious trouble, she realized, and she wondered if she was going to perish out in the void of space with her friend’s death unavenged and her life unremarkable.

I’ve done nothing with my life
, she mused, and the waste of it tormented her more than its imminent loss.

“Give me that comm,” she heard Finn’s rough voice demand.

“What?” Peralli cried out.

Dusque heard what she thought might be a struggle of sorts before the ship took another dangerous hit. No longer bucking, the transport started a dangerously steep descent. While Dusque held on to the arms of the seat out of useless fear, she heard a whine and an explosion. Oddly, it sounded like it had come from within the cockpit.

“
Finn!
” she screamed. She clawed at her straps, suddenly more afraid that he had perished than that her own death was close at hand. As she fumbled to find the buckles, she was momentarily relieved to hear his voice. It sounded as though he was talking to Han, saying something about their position. As she released the last strap, she realized that the ship
was plunging ominously downward at an increasing rate. The attack, however, had ceased.

She held on to the support structures and crossbeams to keep from crashing forward as she made her way toward Finn. Smoke obscured most of her view; she could see that the tiny cockpit was filled with the acrid stuff, and part of the control panel was sputtering. As she clung to the doorway, she could also see Peralli slumped forward in his pilot’s seat, his communications gear askew on his large, fishlike head, his eyes rolled back. He was dead. Finn was straining his muscles as he fought with the controls.

“What—” was all Dusque managed to stutter.

Without looking up, Finn said through gritted teeth, “Too late to save the ship. Too late.”

“What about the
Falcon
?” she asked.

“Han managed to clear the fighters,” he replied.

There were no longer any in sight, she noted, and she wondered why the fighters hadn’t stayed to finish them off. Filling the clear canopy of the cockpit was the planet Corellia. It looked so peaceful, Dusque thought, blue-green and white against a velvet background. But as it grew larger and larger, she realized that they were accelerating.

“Get yourself strapped back in,” he shouted to her, “and brace yourself for planetfall.”

Dusque swung around. She climbed over boxes and loose gear, fighting to regain her seat. There was too much in the way—too many items that had not been properly strapped down—and the ship
rocked and swayed as gravity pulled it through the atmosphere. She slipped and fell back. On her hands and knees, vaguely aware that she was crawling
up
, she reached out for the seat. Her fingertips touched it, then the ship shuddered, and she stumbled. With a great push, she lurched to her feet, intending to launch herself at her seat. And then she heard Finn scream out, “
This is it
!”

The ship slammed to a shattering halt and Dusque felt herself falling, suddenly airborne. She hit something hard and then she felt nothing more.

Somewhere in the blackness, Dusque could feel herself floating. She was warm and comfortable and felt quite free. There was, however, a persistent tugging and a voice somewhere deep in the void. She tried to ignore it, preferring the cool darkness to the sounds and sensations calling to her. She moved away from it and when she did, she felt a sharp, stabbing pain. Suddenly colors blinked and swirled around her, shattering the peaceful darkness. And from somewhere, she heard a moan. Then she realized the sound was coming from her. She blinked hard several times and slowly opened her eyes completely. It took some time before she was able to focus, and when she did, she was amazed.

She was lying in a heap in what remained of the cockpit, her limbs askew, covered by bits of crates and other debris. She could feel wetness behind her and tasted blood. She tried to move and winced
again. She realized it was the sharp stab in her side that had roused her to consciousness—that and the voice that still called out to her frantically.

“Dusque!”

“Here,” she answered weakly and then tried again. “Here!”

Debris started to fly off her, and Dusque realized that she was less injured than she had originally thought. She was mostly pinned. As a large piece of equipment was lifted from her chest and shoulders, she could see Finn standing above her. Worry and concern were etched on his face. Blood seeped down his forehead; he was frightening to behold. But Dusque was grateful to see him alive.

Without saying a word, he reached down and removed the last bit of wreckage off her legs. He leaned down and scooped her up into his arms. She stifled a cry of pain and, as he carried her up toward the main cabin, she realized why he had moved her without checking for other injuries first. Over his shoulder, she could see that the cockpit was slowly flooding with water. The body of the pilot lay there, partially submerged.

“Peralli,” she said weakly.

“He’s dead,” Finn stated flatly, a grim expression fixed on his stony visage. He maneuvered them over to the workbench, which was only slightly tilted. He laid her down with surprising tenderness and ran his hands over her legs and arms, checking for injuries. When he moved up to her waist and left side, she winced in pain.

“Feels broken,” he told her, referring to at least one of her ribs.

“No argument there,” she agreed.

“I’m not sure what else might be injured,” he told her, worry softening his voice.

Dusque propped herself up on one elbow and moved to sit up. Finn tried to restrain her initially, but she shook her head and waved his hands away.

“No time for that,” she replied and clenched her jaw. “What about you?”

“Nothing, just a few scratches,” he said, dismissing her concern. He left her side and started to search the piles of gear that had been thrown about the cabin.

“What are you doing?” she asked him, keeping one eye on the water that had now filled the cockpit. At least, she thought, the Mon Calamari had been returned to the water in the end.

“Looking for a medkit to fix you up,” he explained angrily. “We are going to have to get out of here soon.”

“Forget about it.” She winced. “Grab the straps from that chair. They’ll do.”

Finn managed to find one of the flight chairs and cut the straps free with a knife he had tucked up his sleeve. When he had freed two of them, he stumbled back over to Dusque. She sat upright and raised her arms out to her side. The pain in that simple movement was excruciating, and she realized that she looked like Tendau had in his final moments, arms spread.

“Do it,” she told him.

He nodded to her once and placed the first restraint around her chest. As soon as he had the free end threaded through the buckle, he began to tighten it. Dusque groaned with the discomfort.

“More,” was all she managed to say.

He exhaled heavily and cinched the strap tighter. Dusque bit back on a moan and then breathed a little easier.

“Do the other one,” she told him.

As he applied the second makeshift brace, she leaned against him with her outstretched hand. “How did the pilot die?” she asked, to take her mind off the pain.

Finn was silent as he tightened the second brace. “We took a hit in the cockpit,” he finally said. “He didn’t make it.”

Dusque hazily thought that he seemed to be hiding something. She wondered if he had somehow made a mistake and that had been the reason for the pilot’s death. And if his abilities with a ship were not what he had said they were, what else, she wondered briefly, might he have lied to her about? She dismissed the thoughts as soon as he looked up at her through his tousled hair. She realized that she didn’t care about herself or anything else at that moment; she was just glad he was alive.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he said shakily. He touched her face. “I thought …”

“I did, too,” she answered him and managed a smile through her discomfort. She placed her hand
across the straps and breathed in experimentally. “It’ll do,” she pronounced.

Finn helped her up. “Grab what you can,” he told her. The water had reached the main cabin. “We’ve got to move.”

She eased herself off the table and found that the straps were holding: there was much less discomfort the more she moved around. She found her small pack and strapped it to her back. She wasn’t able to find her sword, but the blaster was poking out from under some circuitry. She wound the holster around her hips and even found an armband of ammo floating past her feet. She noticed, as she ducked below hanging wires and jagged metal, that there was little else that was salvageable.

Finn was near the back hatch. He was squatting in the water, and Dusque realized that he was placing charges around the door. The door lock must have been jammed, she deduced. She slogged through the nearly waist-deep water to stand beside him.

“Now what?” she asked.

He placed the last charge and turned to look at her. He had a worried expression on his face.

“I’ll manage,” she replied to his unasked question.

“I’m going to have to blow the door. I’ve got charges placed in the cockpit, as well. I’m going to blow that first,” he explained, “and then the door. As soon as I do, the seawater is going to rush in behind us first, and as the air escapes, hopefully it will push us out the hatch.”

Dusque nodded. “As soon as we get out,” she
told him, “and you can open your eyes, let out a little air. Your bubbles are going to head to the surface, so follow them.”

He nodded in return. “Grab on to something, okay?”

She wrapped her arm around a metal beam. “Okay,” she told him, and started to take several quick breaths to blow all the carbon dioxide out of her lungs. Then in one big breath she filled her wounded chest with as much air as she could possibly hold. She saw Finn do the same. He locked eyes with her and held out a detonating switch. He pressed down on one switch and then the other. Twin explosions rocked the doomed vessel, and Dusque found herself thrust out into the depths of the Corellian ocean. Once again, she was lost in the darkness.

Dusque was being buffeted around. She shut her eyes tightly, but could do nothing about the cold water that immediately filled her nostrils. One thing she had neglected to tell Finn was that she was absolutely terrified of deep water. And she was in the grip of that fear now. It took all that she had not to scream, though she knew it would do no good. When she finally built up enough courage, she opened her eyes.

She was swirling and tumbling about, unable to tell what was what. The water around her was frothy from the plane wreckage, and Dusque felt panic start to build within her. She momentarily forgot her advice to Finn, finding it impossible to tell where any of the bubbles were heading. Through blind luck, she managed to see the remains of the shuttle. She fixed her frightened gaze on it and realized that it was getting smaller the longer she looked at it. Her scientific mind kicked in and overrode the fear.

Of course
, she scolded herself,
gravity has taken
hold of it and it’s sinking. If it’s going that way, then I’m headed the other.