فصل 35

Chapter Thirty-Five

Elphrona System.

Bell couldn’t believe what he was seeing—a hatch along the hull of the Nihil ship had opened…and a small figure had been tossed out.

Just…thrown, like nothing.

He gasped. Loden, ahead of him in the pilot’s seat, put the Vector into a steep dive.

“Padawan,” his master said. “You will save the child. I will continue on and save the others. Do not fear. I am so proud to have been your teacher.

“I believe in you.”

The Vector’s cockpit levered open, the wind rushing past, so loud that speech was impossible.

But what more was there to say?

Bell unclipped his safety harness and leapt out.

Immediately gravity took him, and he fell into a spin. That didn’t matter. They were kilometers above the surface of Elphrona, which meant he had some time, but not much. If he was going to save the little girl—and he was sure it was the little girl, a child, tossed away by the Nihil like garbage—he needed to focus.

He pushed away his awareness of Loden’s Vector shooting back up into the sky, continuing the chase alongside Indeera in her own ship.

He forgot about the ground, the sky, everything but the Force, and searched for a tiny spot of light within it, the sense of a lost child who needed to be saved.

There.

Bell could barely open his eyes against the rushing wind. He wished he had a pair of goggles…but truthfully, he didn’t need them, or his eyes, either. He had the Force.

He wrapped his arms and legs tight to himself and angled his body down, feeling himself shoot forward as he became more aerodynamic.

Bell reached out to the Force, asking it to push him even faster. The little girl was flailing, and that surely created some wind resistance, but they would both reach terminal velocity soon enough, and then he wouldn’t be able to catch her. The second or so of fall before Bell had leapt from the Vector had undoubtedly given her a significant lead.

But the Force answered, and perhaps the sleekness of his Jedi leathers let him shoot forward more quickly than he otherwise might.

All he knew was that he was getting closer. The Blythe child’s terror was looming in his senses, rising, her fear overwhelming.

He put it aside.

As he approached, he reached out and used the Force to pull the little girl to him. He enfolded her in his arms. She struggled—of course she did—who wouldn’t?

He pulled part of his tunic over their heads, enough to block some of the wind, then looked at the child. He didn’t know that he’d ever seen someone so frightened.

Bell pointed to the Jedi insignia on his chest. Miraculously, she calmed. She knew what he was, and she thought she was saved.

Not yet, Bell thought.

He pulled her close, cupped his hand over her ear to block the wind, and spoke.

“Close your eyes,” he said. “I’m with you now. You’re not alone.” He had no idea if she had heard, but he’d done what he could to calm her. Now he had to focus.

Bell glanced down, squinting against the wind. He was looking for a soft spot—water, maybe, even a slow slope they might be able to roll down—anything to ease their landing.

There was nothing. Just the rough landscape of the planet—the swirls of the magnetic mountain ranges, and rust plains between.

Elphrona was not a soft world.

They were falling, from a height a hundred times higher than anything he’d ever tried in training, and even then he’d never landed successfully. For a moment, he hoped against hope that perhaps Porter Engle could miraculously appear at the last minute—but the Ikkrukki was far away by then, and in any case, he had his own Blythe to save.

No one was coming to save him, or the girl. He had to do it all, and he had to do it alone.

Bell opened himself to the Force. He did not think about the ground. He thought about the child in his arms, and how unfair it was that these things had happened to her.

He knew he had the power to save her, to let her continue living in the light. Why would the cosmic Force have given him his abilities, if not for this very purpose?

The wind was not his enemy, nor gravity itself. They were both part of the Force, just as he was, just as the child was. If he fought them, he was fighting himself.

He should not try to fight. He should try to understand.

Bell Zettifar relaxed.

He came to know something profound—perhaps something about the Force. Perhaps something about himself, something he would try to understand more clearly later. He thought it was the reason that he had been so bad at saving himself from falls, despite his master’s best efforts to teach him.

Being a Jedi was not about saving oneself.

It was about saving others.

The roar of the wind past Bell’s ears lessened, becoming no stronger than a powerful breeze. He could hear the little Blythe. She was praying, or chanting. He couldn’t understand the words, but it was the same short phrase, over and over.

The wind quieted further, to silence. Bell opened his eyes. They were barely ten meters from the ground, and they drifted downward, slow as a leaf, to land gently on the slate-colored ground. He could understand what the girl was saying now.

“I’m not alone.”

He sat up. The girl clung to him.

“We’re okay now,” he said. “What’s your name?”

She looked at him, eyes wide.

“I’m Bee,” she said. “But that’s just what people call me. My big name is Bailen.”

“That’s a little like mine,” he said. “I’m Bell. We’re safe now, Bailen.

Everything’s going to be all right.”

The child gave him a dubious look, the look of a kid who knew she was being told something untrue by an adult, no matter how much she wanted to believe it. Her face cracked, and she burst into tears.

Bell just held her. He looked up at the sky, searching for the Vectors or the Nihil ship. Nothing. Not even an exhaust trail.

Everything’s going to be all right, he thought.

He didn’t believe it, either.