CHAPTER 38

As their damaged ship limped away from Hoth, Callista worked side by side with Luke Skywalker. They desperately cross-wired systems, bypassed ruined components, and fastened vital equipment back into place, trying to repair each failure before another one occurred.

The wampa ice creatures had not actually breached the yacht’s outer hull, but they had caused a wealth of damage. The craft’s sublight engines, operating at barely half power, had lurched away from the frozen planet, reluctantly heaving them into orbit. The engines attempted to fail several times, but somehow struggled on.

Their ship’s hyperdrive was gone, their navicomputer beyond repair. They plunged headlong into the broken asteroid field at the fringes of the Hoth system with only minimal shields and virtually no control over their course. The asteroids began to grow thicker around them, battering at the tiny ship. Callista did not voice her growing dread.

Luke looked up at her with red, bleary eyes and a haggard face. Callista knew she probably looked just as bad with her malt blond hair mussed and her gray eyes bloodshot, but Luke’s pallid skin had begun to flush again with hope. “I might be able to use the Force to navigate us,” he said. “At least enough to keep us from a major collision—but I don’t know where we’re going to go.”

“I wish I could help you,” Callista said. “But I can’t. I can’t, and I’m afraid to try.”

“You fought well with the lightsaber against the snow creatures,” Luke answered reassuringly, “and I didn’t feel any glimmer from the dark side as I did on Dagobah.”

“No,” Callista said. Her words were a whisper. “I didn’t let it out.” She knew, though, that the dark side had been there like black wings hovering at the edge of her consciousness, demanding to be set free. She had refused—but, oh, the temptation had been great.…

In a shower of sparks and burned circuits, the life-support systems gasped and died. Luke and Callista pulled components from nonessential computers trying to get the systems functioning again. “It’s only at about ten percent,” Luke said. “That’s not going to help us much.”

Callista shivered. The temperature had already begun to drop in the cabin. “We’re not going to get out of this, are we?” she said with quiet, brutal honesty.

Luke stared at her for a long moment, then his face forced a smile. “Not in any obvious way,” he finally said with a sigh. “That just means we have to look for a solution that isn’t obvious.”

Luke and Callista studied the torn environment suits the wampas had shredded. Somehow, using several repair kits and other patches they found in forgotten packages left by some unknown station mechanic on Coruscant, they managed to piece together one of the suits. But only one.

Within the hour, the atmosphere began to thin noticeably, and their body heat did little to warm the cabin as the cold of space leached it away.

Luke ran his fingers along the crude, lumpy patches in the suit, and he took Callista’s hand. “You have to wear it, Callista.”

“I won’t let you sacrifice yourself,” she said. “You wouldn’t let me do it on the Eye of Palpatine.”

Luke raised her hand to his cheek. “I have no intention of sacrificing myself. I can go deep into a Jedi trance and slow down my metabolism, put myself practically in suspended animation. Then we wait, and hope.”

Callista eyed the repaired suit, still reluctant, then she gazed into Luke’s clear blue eyes, wishing she could read his thoughts and his emotions.

“Maybe I can use the Force to contact someone,” he said, “send out a message with my thoughts. I doubt anybody’ll be able to read it, but we have to try.”

Callista slowly pulled the thick fabric of the environment suit over her long legs. “Yes,” she said, defeated, “we have to try.” Before she clamped her helmet in place, she kissed Luke. “Will you be all right?” she said.

He smiled wanly at her. “As long as you’re here to watch over me.”

Luke’s blue eyes fell closed and rolled upward slightly as he sank into himself, using his Jedi techniques to enter a deep trance that walled him off from the rest of the universe.

Callista longed to join him, but her grasp on the Force had become so slippery she could not touch her abilities. She was unable even to begin the deep Jedi trance that Luke brought upon himself.

She watched him, feeling her heart ache with love as she struggled with the silence of the Force in her mind. Once again, she saw the dark shadows of possibilities in her mind, luring her with an easy way to use the Force again—

Join the dark side!

—even if it meant she had to succumb to evil influences.

“No,” she whispered to herself, though she knew she could not disturb Luke now. She fled from the dark alternative, and it frightened her that the persistent shadows had come more easily this time.

The silent cabin grew colder and colder. The environment suit crinkled around her as she curled up next to Luke, conserving energy and wanting to be next to him.

He appeared to be a statue. Frost formed on his cheeks from the faint exhalations of his breath. She desperately wished she could touch his thoughts, share in his efforts to send out a plea for help—but Luke’s mind remained closed to her.

The crippled ship drifted through the outer fringes of the asteroid belt with minimal shields and failing life support, while Callista sat alone in the darkness.

Inside the featureless Force shell he had wrapped around himself and his mind, Luke Skywalker centered his thoughts into a single projectile, a tangible shout across space and time. In his mind his words thrummed along the lines of Force that connected everything in the cosmos.

He recalled hanging on Cloud City’s lower antennas, dangling above the clouds as he held on for dear life. He had issued a similar call then, before he had known the truth about his sister … before he had realized there was a connection between them. Luke had still known whom to ask for assistance.

“Leia!” he called from the far fringes of the asteroid belt, flinging his thoughts undirected across space. “Leia … Leia …”

Star Wars: Darksaber
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