Jude Watson: Jedi Quest 7: The Moment of Truth

The transfer wires from the sublight engine are fused together, which means that the fusion system is completely blown."

"Can you replace the transfer wires?"

"Sure. But then the backup from the power feeds would trigger a response."

"And that response would be.. "

"The ship would blow up."

"Not optimum," Obi-Wan said.

"I can see where Mezdec tried to improvise. But he keeps running into the same problem." Anakin tapped his finger on the shell of the ship.

"Here's what I can't figure," he said. "Why would Samdew disable the ship completely? If he killed all the crew here, how would he get off-planet?"

"Maybe he didn't need the ship," Obi-Wan said. "The Vanqors would pick him up."

"Okay," Anakin said. "But if I were a spy stuck on a remote moon, I'd want a back door, just in case. I wouldn't assume that everything would go as planned."

"Things rarely do." Obi-Wan nodded thoughtfully. "Meaning there must be a way to fix the ship."

"I just don't know what it is yet." Anakin ducked back under the ship.

"But I'll find it. Hand me that fuse-cutter, will you?"

Obi-Wan reached for the tool. For the next hour, he silently helped Anakin try one route, then another, to fix the ship. He admired Anakin's focus. It was as though the engine were an ailing organism that he was coaxing back to life.

Mezdec wandered out to help, and he and Anakin conferred. Obi-Wan lost the thread of the conversation, which skimmed over fuse switches, overrides, and surges. He knew something about engines, but not nearly as much as Anakin.

At last Anakin replaced the engine plate, entered the ship, and eased into the pilot seat. He hesitated before firing the engines.

"You might want to back up," he told Obi-Wan, who had also entered the ship.

"How far?"

"To the next star system." Anakin grinned. "Only kidding." He engaged the throttle and the engine roared to life.

Mezdec yelled from the outside, "The kid knows his stuff."

"That he does," Obi-Wan agreed as he exited.

Anakin powered down the engines and leaped out of the ship. "I can get it started, but I can't restore full power. That means no deflector shields. We had to bypass the weapons delivery system to juice up the generator, so we won't have turbolasers, either. In other words, we'll have a slow ride, and we'll be exposed if the Vanqors track us on radar. And then there's the fuel problem."

"Which is?"

"We don't have much. I ran our options through the computer. The only way to get to Typha-Dor is by the shortest route. That's going to bring us right into Vanqor airspace."

Obi-Wan grimaced. "This just keeps getting better." He looked back at the shelter, where the four crew members waited. "We'll have to risk it.

Our only chance is to slip through their surveillance. Space is big."

"Space is big?" A flash of humor made Anakin's eyes sparkle. "That's your strategy? I guess I can stop worrying."

The mischief in Anakin's eyes suddenly lightened Obi-Wan's heart. He saw the flash of a boy he'd once known, a boy who liked to fix things, a boy who had yet to understand the great gifts he had been given. A boy untroubled by those gifts who believed the galaxy would unfold for him, show him the promise of his dreams.

I can't let him lose that spirit. I can't let him lose the boy he was.

He grinned back. "Thanks," he said. "I just thought of it."

As they exchanged smiles, something changed. Something lightened, and the tension between them eased, just a bit.

But then, just as the moment passed, Obi-Wan saw sadness in Anakin's eyes. He caught the same feeling. It was no longer possible to fix things between them with a joke, a light moment. Things ran too deep for that now.

"I'll get the others," Obi-Wan said.

Shalini stood, her hands on her hips, surveying the main room.

"I sure hope you can make that thing take off," she said.

There was nothing left of the shelter. It was now an empty shell. The team's instructions were to destroy anything that could be of use to the Vanqors. Shalini and the rest had used soldering equipment and tools to fuse and destroy the comm and surveillance suites. They had destroyed all their files and everything they could not carry aboard ship.

Anakin sat behind the controls, with Mezdec next to him. "The takeoff could be bumpy," he told the others. "We don't have enough power for a smooth ride. Once we get into the upper atmosphere we should be okay."

Anakin started the engines. The retractable roof of the hangar slid back. Watching the instruments carefully, Anakin gave the engines power and they rose, too slowly for Obi-Wan's comfort. The ship shook with the effort.

Anakin's face was completely calm, but Obi-Wan noted the sheen of perspiration on his skin. The controls shook in his hands. The shuddering ship rose over the icy wasteland. It slid sideways, dangerously close to the side of the mountain. Obi-Wan saw Thik close his eyes. Shalini touched her belt, where the disk lay hidden.

Anakin gave another boost to the power, and the ship shot up into the upper atmosphere. "That was the hard part," he announced to the others.

"Next stop, Typha-Dor."

If we are lucky, Obi-Wan thought. If we are very, very lucky.

Anakin glanced at the radar. There was no traffic in the vicinity.

Most transient ships stayed clear of the Uziel system, due to the troubles there. Now that Vanqor controlled the airspace, no one was eager to tangle with it.

Safe for the moment, Anakin let Rajana take over the piloting. He needed to keep a closer eye on the instruments.

Mezdec looked up from the navigation screen. "Everything all right?"

"I just want to take a look at the stabilizer controls," Anakin said.

"Without full power, we'll be in trouble if something malfunctions. I had to reroute the cables from the left stabilizer in order to get lift. I want to make sure we didn't pull too much power on the takeoff. I'm going to run a full status check."

He set the status check in motion and watched as the computer ticked off the different indicators. Anakin decided to do a second check, this time manually. He couldn't be too careful in a ship operating at less than full power. He scanned through the warning sensors.

"That's odd," he said to Mezdec. "I'm getting an indicator green on three power feeds on the escape pod. I'm showing two anti-gray generators."

"The pod does have two anti-gray generators," Mezdec said. "It was upgraded in case it had to be used as a primary transport to get all the way back to Typha-Dor. Samdew sabotaged the pod, too."

"I saw that," Anakin said. "But there was no console indicator for an extra generator and three power feeds."

"The feed indicators are in the pod itself," Mezdec said.

"I see. I'll check them there, then." Anakin went back to the escape pod. He did a status check. Then he stopped by the small area where Obi-Wan had settled himself in the rear of the craft.

Anakin eased into a seat next to him. He leaned over casually and spoke in a low tone. "The escape pod is double-boosted. Highly unusual for this model. The indicators don't run through the sensor array in the main cabin. In other words, I found Samdew's back door. If I'd checked the pod itself, I could have fixed the problem on the transport. All that needed to be done was a rewiring job to suck power from the pod and bring it to the transport. We could have taken off with full power."

"Can you do it now?"

Anakin shook his head. "Not while we're flying. But that's not the issue. I have one question."

"Why didn't Mezdec figure it out?" Obi-Wan interjected in a low tone.

"Could it be an oversight?"

Anakin shrugged. "Sure. If he's not very bright. But he seems to know his stuff. And he had a month to try to fix the transport."