Hope?
“Yes ... yes. He would be a great asset,” the Emperor said. “Can it be done?”
There was the briefest of pauses. “He will join us or die, Master.”
Xizor felt the smile, though he did not allow it to show any more than he had allowed his anger play. Ah. Vader wanted Skywalker alive, that was what had been in his tone. Yes, he had said that the boy would join them or die, but this latter part was obviously meant only to placate the Emperor. Vader had no intention of killing Skywalker, his own son; that was obvious to one as skilled in reading voices as was Xizor. He had not gotten to be the Dark Prince, Underlord of Black Sun, the largest criminal organization in the galaxy, merely on his formidable good looks. Xizor didn’t truly understand the Force that sustained the Emperor and made him and Vader so powerful, save to know that it certainly worked somehow. But he did know that it was something the extinct Jedi had supposedly mastered. And now, apparently, this new player had tapped into it. Vader wanted Skywalker alive, had practically promised the Emperor that he would deliver him alive—and converted.
This was most interesting.
Most interesting indeed.
The Emperor finished his communication and turned back to face him. “Now, where were we, Prince Xizor?”
The Dark Prince smiled. He would attend to the business at hand, but he would not forget the name of Luke Skywalker.
1
Chewbacca roared his rage. A stormtrooper grabbed at him and he knocked the man flying, armor clattering as he fell into the pit. Two more guards came in, and the Wookiee battered them both aside as if they were nothing, a child tossing dolls around—
In another second one of Vader’s troops would shoot Chewie. He was big and strong, but he couldn’t win; they’d cut him down—
Han started yelling at the Wookiee, calming him.
Leia stared, unable to move, unable to believe this was happening.
Han kept talking: “Chewie, there’ll be another time! The princess, you have to take care of her. D’you hear me? Huh?”
They were in a dank chamber in the bowels of Cloud City on Bespin, where Han’s so-called friend Lando Calrissian had betrayed them to Darth Vader. The scene was bathed in a buttery golden light that made it seem even more surreal. Chewbacca blinked at Han, the half-assembled droid Threepio jutting from a sack on the Wookiee’s back. The traitor Calrissian stood off to one side like some feral creature. There were more guards, techs, bounty hunters. Vader and the stink of liquid carbonite permeated the air around them all, a smell of morgues and graves combined.
More guards moved in, to put cuffs on Chewie. The Wookiee nodded, calmer. Yes, he understood Han. He didn’t like it, but he understood. He allowed the guards to cuff him—
Han and Leia looked at each other. This can’t be happening, she thought. Not now.
The emotion took them; neither could resist it. They came together like magnets, held each other. They embraced, kissed, full of fire and hope—full of ashes and despair—
Two stormtroopers jerked Han away, backed him onto the liftplate over the makeshift freezing chamber.
The words erupted from Leia unbidden, uncontrollable, lava blasted from a volcanic explosion: “I love you!”
And Han, brave, strong Han, nodded at her. “I know.”
The Ugnaught techs, not much more than half Han’s height, moved in, unbound his hands, stepped away.
Han looked at the techs, then at Leia again. The liftplate sank, lowered him into the pit. He locked his gaze with Leia’s, held it, held it ... until the cloud of freezing vapor boiled up and blocked their view—
Chewie yelled; Leia didn’t understand his speech, but she understood his rage, his grief, his feeling of helplessness.
Han!
Stinking, acrid gas spewed up and rolled over them, an icy fog, a roiling soul-chilling smoke through which Leia saw Vader watching it all under his inscrutable mask. She heard Threepio sputter, “What—What’s going on? Turn ’round! Chewbacca, I can’t see!”
Han!
Oh, Han!
Leia sat up abruptly, her pulse racing. The sheets were sweaty and wadded around her, her night garment damp. She sighed, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and sat staring at the wall. The chronometer inset showed her it was three hours past midnight. The air in the room smelled stale. Outside, she knew, the Tatooine night would be chilly, and she considered opening a vent to allow some of that coolness inside. At the moment, it seemed too much effort to bother.
A bad dream, she thought. That’s all it was.
But—no. She couldn’t pretend it had been only a nightmare. It had been more than that. It was a memory. It had happened. The man she loved was embedded in a block of carbonite, had been hauled away like a crate of cargo by a bounty hunter. Lost to her, somewhere in the vastness of the galaxy.
She felt the emotions well, felt them threaten to spill out in tears, but she fought it. She was Leia Organa, Princess of the Royal Family of Alderaan, elected to the Imperial Senate, a worker in the Alliance to Restore the Republic. Alderaan was gone, destroyed by Vader and the Death Star; the Imperial Senate was disbanded; the Alliance was outmanned and outgunned ten thousand to one, but she was who she was. She would not cry.
She would not cry.
She would get even.
Three hours past midnight, and half the planet slept.
Luke Skywalker stood barefoot on the steelcrete platform sixty meters above the sand, looking at the taut wire. He wore plain black pants and shirt and a black leather belt. He no longer had a lightsaber, though he’d started constructing another one, using the plans he’d found in an old leather-bound book at Ben Kenobi’s. It was a traditional exercise for a Jedi, so he’d been told. It had given him something to do while his new hand had finished final bonding to his arm. It had kept him from thinking too much.
The lights under the canopy were dim; he could barely see the stranded-steel line. The carnival was done for the night, the acrobats and dewbacks and jesters long asleep. The crowds had gone home, and he was alone; alone here with the tightrope. It was quiet, the only sound the creak of the syn tent fabric as it cooled in the arms of the Tatooine summer night. The hot desert day gave up its heat quickly, and it was cold enough outside the tent to need a jacket. The smell of the dewbacks drifted up to where he perched, and mingled with that of his own sweat.
A guard whose mind had accepted Luke’s mental command to allow him inside the giant tent stood watch at the entrance, blind now to his presence. A Jedi skill, that kind of control, but another one he had only begun to learn.
Luke took a deep breath, let it out slowly. There was no net below, and a fall from this height would surely be fatal. He didn’t have to do this. Nobody was going to make him take the walk.
Nobody but himself.
He calmed his breathing, his heartbeat, and, as much as possible, his mind, using the method he had learned. First Ben, then Master Yoda had taught him the ancient arts. Yoda’s exercises had been the more rigorous and exhausting, but unfortunately, Luke had not finished his schooling. There really hadn’t been any choice at the time. Han and Leia had been in deadly danger, and he’d had to go to them. Because he had gone, they were alive, but ...
That hadn’t turned out well.
No. Not at all.
And there had been the meeting with Vader ...
He felt his face tighten, his jaw muscles dance, and he fought the anger that surged up in him like a hormonal tide as black as the clothes he wore. His wrist ached suddenly where Vader’s lightsaber had sliced through it. The new hand was as good as the old, better, maybe, but sometimes when he thought about Vader, it throbbed. Phantom limb pain, the medics had said. Not real.
“I’m your father.”
No! That couldn’t be real, either! His father had been Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi.
If only he could talk to Ben. Or to Yoda. They would confirm it. They would tell him the truth. Vader had tried to manipulate h
im, had tried to throw him off balance, that was all.
But—what if it was true ...?
No. Leave it. It wouldn’t help to dwell on that now. He wasn’t going to be able to do anybody any good unless he mastered his Jedi skills. He had to trust in the Force and move on. No matter what lies Vader had spewed. There was a war on, much to do, and while he was a good pilot, he was supposed to have more to offer to the Alliance.
It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t seem to be getting any easier. He wished he felt sure of himself, but the fact was, he didn’t. He felt as if a weight were riding on him, more than he’d ever thought possible. A few years ago, he’d been a farm boy, working with Uncle Owen, going nowhere. Now there was Han, the Empire, the Alliance, Vader—
No. Not now. That’s in the past and in the future, this wire is the now. Concentrate or you’re going to fall off it.
He reached for the energy, felt the flux begin to flow. It was bright and warm and life-giving, and he called it to himself, sought to wrap it around his form like a suit of armor.
The Force: Once again, it was there for him. Yes ...
But there was something else there, too. In a place that was removed but somehow right next to him, he felt that pull he had been told about. A hard, powerful coldness, the opposite of what his teachers had presented to him. The antithesis of light. That which Vader embraced.
The dark side.
No! He pushed it away. Refused to look at it. Took another deep breath. Felt the Force permeate him, felt it attune itself to him. Or maybe it was the other way around. It didn’t matter.
When they were one, he started to walk.
The high wire suddenly seemed as wide as a public sidewalk. It was natural, the Force, but this part always felt like magic, as if he could do miracles using it. He’d seen Yoda raise the X-wing from the swamp using his mind. It was possible to do things that might look like miracles.
As he lifted his foot to take another step, he remembered other things about his time on Dagobah.
Under the soft, damp ground, in the cave ...
Darth Vader came toward him.
Vader! Here! How could that be?
Luke pulled his lightsaber, lit it, brought it up. The gleaming blue white of his blade met Vader’s reddish beam as they crossed in on-guard salute. The power hum and energy crackle grew louder.
Suddenly Vader swung, a powerful cut at Luke’s left side—
Luke jerked his blade up and over, dropped the point, blocked the slash; it hit so hard it vibrated him, nearly tore his lightsaber from his grip—
He smelled the mold around him, heard the power hum of the lightsabers, saw Vader with a crystal clarity. All his senses came to life, as sharp as they’d ever been, sharp as a warehouse full of vibro-shivs—
Vader cut again, now at Luke’s head, and Luke’s panicked overhead block barely stopped it, barely—he was so strong!
Again Vader chopped at him, a blow that would have cut Luke in half had he not jammed his own weapon out, just in time!
Vader was too strong for him, Luke knew. Only his anger could save him from being killed. He remembered Ben, remembered Vader hacking him down—
Unthinking rage drove him. Luke whipped his blade around backhanded, all of his arm and shoulder and wrists behind it, and—
The cut took Vader’s head off.
Time seemed to drag like some heavy anchor. He stared. Vader’s body dropped, oh-so-slowly ... and the severed head fell to the ground and rolled.
Rolled. Then stopped. There was no blood—
There came a bright flash, a sudden blast of light and purple smoke, and the mask covering Vader’s face shattered, shattered and vanished, revealing, revealing—
The face of Luke Skywalker.
No!
The insurgent memory had flashed by much faster than the events had actually taken. He had moved but a single step in reality. Amazing what one’s mind could do. Even so, he nearly fell from the wire as he lost contact with the Force.
Stop this! he told himself.
He took a deep breath, balanced uneasily, reached for the Force again.
There, he had it. He steadied, started walking, one with the Force again, flowing.
Halfway across the wire, he started to run. He told himself it was part of the test. He told himself that the Force was with him and he could live up to his name without fear, that anything was possible to one trained as a Jedi Knight. It was what he had been taught. He wanted to believe it.
He didn’t want to believe that he ran because he could feel the dark side walking the wire behind him, catfooted and evil, following him. Following like the memory of his face on Vader’s severed head, following and—
—and gaining ...
Xizor leaned back in his form-chair. The chair, which had a bad circuit he kept meaning to have repaired, took this move as an inquiry. Its voxchip said, “What is your wish, Prince Sheeezor?” It slurred his name, dragging out the first syllable. He shook his head. “Nothing save that you be silent,” he said.
The chair’s vox shut up. The machineries within the cloned leather seat hummed and adjusted the support to Xizor’s new position. He sighed. He was rich beyond the income of many entire planets, and he had a malfunctioning form-chair that couldn’t even pronounce his name correctly. He made a note to have it replaced, now, today, immediately, as soon as he was finished with his business here this morning.
He looked at the one-sixth-scale holoproj frozen in front of him, then up at the woman standing across the desk. She was as beautiful, if not as ethnic, as the two Epicanthix women fighters in the holograph between them. But her beauty was of a different order. She had long and silky blond hair, pale and clear blue eyes, an exquisite figure. Normal human males would find her attractive. There were no flaws in Guri’s face or form, but there was a coolness about her, and that was easily explained if you knew the reason: Guri was an HRD, a human replica droid, and unique. She could visually pass for a woman anywhere in the galaxy, could eat, drink, and perform all of the more personal functions of a woman without anybody the wiser. And she was the only one of her kind programmed to be an assassin. She could kill without raising her ersatz heartbeat, never a qualm of conscience.
She’d cost him nine million credits.
Xizor steepled his fingers and raised an eyebrow at Guri.
“The Pike sisters,” Guri said, glancing at the holo. “Genetic twins, not clones. The one on the right is Zan, the other is Zu. Zan has green eyes, Zu has one green and one blue eye, the only noticeable difference. They are masters of teräs käsi, the Bunduki art called ‘steel hands.’ Twenty-six standard years old, no political affiliations, no criminal records in any of the major systems, and, as far as we are able to determine, completely amoral. They are for hire to the highest bidder, and they have never worked for Black Sun. They have also never been defeated in open combat. This”—she nodded at the unmoving holoproj image again—“is what they do for fun when they aren’t working.” Guri’s voice was, in contrast to her appearance, warm, inviting, a rich alto. She activated the hologram.
Xizor smiled, revealing his own perfect teeth. The holo had shown the two women mopping the floor with eight Imperial stormtroopers in some rat’s nest of a spaceport bar. The soldiers had been big, strong, well trained, and armed. The women weren’t even breathing hard when they finished. “They’ll do,” he said. “Make it happen.”
Guri nodded once, turned, and left. She looked as good from behind as she did from the front.
Nine million and worth every decicred. He wished he had a dozen more like her. Unfortunately, her creator was no longer among the living. A pity.
So. Two more handpicked assassins now under his command. Assassins with no ties to Black Sun, not before and, with Guri’s expert manipulation, not ever.
Xizor glanced up at the ceiling. He’d had the pattern of the galaxy installed into the glowtiles. When the lights were dim—and they usually were—he had an edge-on view of th
e home galaxy floating holographically there, with more than a million individual glowing dust-small stars hand-drawn in it. It had taken the artist three months and had cost a warlord’s ransom, but the Dark Prince could not spend what he already had even if he tried hard, and more than that kept flowing in all the time. Credits were nothing; he had billions. A way of keeping score, that was all. Not important.
He looked at the holograph again. Beautiful and deadly, these two, a combination he enjoyed. He himself was of the Falleen, a species whose distant ancestors had been reptilian, and who had evolved into what was generally considered the most beautiful of all humanoid species. He was over a hundred years old, but he looked thirty. He was tall, had a topknot ponytail jutting up from his otherwise bald head and a hard body crafted by stim units. He also exuded natural pheromones that made most of the human-stock species feel instantly attracted to him, and his skin color, normally a dusky green, changed with the rise of those pheromones, shading from the cool into the warm spectrum. His handsomeness and appeal were tools, nothing more. He was the Dark Prince, Underlord of Black Sun, one of the three most powerful men in the galaxy. He could also kick a sunfruit off the top of a tall humanoid’s head without a warm-up stretch, and he could lift twice his own weight over his head using only his own muscles. He could claim a sound—if admittedly devious—mind in a sound body.
His galactic influence was surpassed only by the Emperor and the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader.
He smiled at the image before him again. Third—but about to become second, if his plans went as intended. It had been months since he’d overheard the Emperor and Vader talking of a threat they’d perceived, months, and now the preliminaries were done. Xizor was ready to move in earnest.
“Time?” he said.
His room computer answered and gave it to him.
Ah. Only an hour remained before his meeting. It was but a short walk through the protected corridors to Vader’s, not much beyond where the Emperor’s massive gray-green stone and mirror-crystal palace thrust itself up into the high atmosphere. A few kilometers, no more; a brisk stroll would put him there in a few minutes. No hurry. He did not want to arrive early.
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