Shadows of the Empire

by Steve Perry

  Wedge said, “You all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I’d sure like to know what my Artoo unit ate for breakfast, though. What could have gotten into it?”

  Luke hoped he looked better than he felt. He was still rattled, his knees a little rubbery. He took a deep breath, fought to keep his voice calm. “Why don’t we see if we can find out?” he said. He waved at the crew chief. “Get a coupler on this Artoo unit, would you?”

  As the chief hustled her crew over to do just that, Luke heard a whistle behind him.

  Luke turned. “I don’t know, Artoo. You ever heard anything like it before?”

  Artoo chirped and whistled.

  Luke took that for a negative.

  The malfunctioning R2 unit settled to the ground. The crew chief stepped in and stuck a restraining bolt on it before it could move.

  Artoo moved closer, extruded an interface, and plugged it into the other unit. Somebody plugged a translation screen into the damaged R2 unit.

  Artoo whistled frantically.

  “Uh-oh,” Luke said, looking at the translation screen.

  “What?” Wedge said.

  “Look. According to this, the droid wasn’t malfunctioning. It was programmed to shoot at me.”

  Wedge whistled, a counterpoint to Artoo’s astromechspeak. “Who would do that? Why? How?”

  The chief pulled her comlink from her belt and spoke into it, listened. Luke couldn’t hear who was on the other end of the comlink.

  “That’s Rendar coming in,” the chief said.

  “What about Leia and Lando?”

  The chief shrugged. “He didn’t say.”

  To the chief, Luke said, “Keep an eye on this droid. Don’t let anybody touch it.” To Wedge, he said, “Let’s go.”

  Luke hurried to the second hangar, where Rendar’s ship would arrive shortly.

  “We can’t get through!” Lando said. “They’ll pound us to pieces unless we get out of here! We’d better—”

  His voice shut off.

  “Lando? Lando!”

  No answer.

  “Chewie?”

  No answer from there, either.

  The Falcon seemed to be flying okay, but the comm was out.

  Leia yelled, “Threepio! Where are you?”

  “R-R-Right here,” came Threepio’s nervous voice from above her gun turret.

  “Go find out what happened to the comm. Check and see if Lando is all right.”

  “Yes, Princess Leia.”

  Another TIE shot past. Leia fired at it, missed. The blasted things were fast.

  The Falcon swung a hard turn to the left, then the right. Well, somebody was flying it.

  Threepio leaned over her turret. “Princess Leia, Master Lando says the comm unit has been damaged; we no longer have internal or external communications. Master Lando says we must leave immediately or we’ll be destroyed!” There was a tinge of hysteria in Threepio’s voice.

  “We can’t!” Leia said.

  But they were already doing so. The Falcon arced away from the shipyard and dived between two half-constructed towers, twisted so it flew sideways. The metal support struts of one tower passed so close to Leia’s guns, she could read the part numbers stamped into them.

  “No!” she yelled.

  One of the TIE fighters chasing them wasn’t so well flown. Leia saw it smash into the tower and shatter into a fireball.

  The Falcon twirled and flew parallel to the ground again, but only for a few seconds before Lando took it almost straight up.

  Leia looked, saw they were outrunning their pursuers. She unbuckled herself from the turret. Hurried to reach the control cockpit. Threepio followed her, prattling on about something she couldn’t catch.

  Lando was sweating when Leia arrived.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Saving our lives,” he said. “I used every trick in the manual, plus a few I made up, and I couldn’t get past those fighters. There were too many of them. It was just a matter of time before they knocked us down.”

  “What about Boba Fett?”

  “I lost sight of him.”

  “He’s probably trying to run to hyperspace. Luke and Rogue Squadron …” she trailed off as she realized the problem.

  “Yeah,” Lando said. “Our comm is dead. We can’t call Luke to tell him to chase Boba Fett.”

  “Maybe we can circle around,” she said.

  He shook his head. “He’ll be long gone.”

  Chewie arrived, asked a question.

  “No,” Lando said. “Sorry, buddy.”

  Chewie expressed anger.

  “Yeah, me too,” Lando said. “But we can’t do Han any good if we get scattered all over the landscape.”

  Leia felt a great weight settle upon her. Like a blanket made of soft lead, it pressed on her; she could hardly sit there without bowing.

  Han. I’m so sorry …

  “Listen,” Lando said, “I don’t want to add rocket fuel to a burning building, but we don’t even know for sure that Han is on that ship. Boba Fett might have stashed him somewhere.”

  Leia couldn’t speak. It was too much effort.

  Chewie said something.

  “Chewbacca is right,” Threepio said. “Sooner or later Master Han will be delivered to Jabba. We can always go back to Tatooine and wait. I think that is a very good idea.”

  Nobody spoke for a moment.

  Threepio continued, “Well, at least we’re alive.”

  Luke almost took a swing at Dash; it was all he could do to restrain himself.

  Wedge saw, said, “Easy, Luke.”

  Dash, if he was worried, didn’t show it. He stood there, relaxed, and shrugged.

  “You just left them there?”

  “Hey, kid, I was paid to show them where Slave I was. I showed them. My job was done. If they’d wanted me to do anything else, they should have contracted for it up front.”

  “If anything happens to them—”

  “What, kid? You gonna shoot me? I didn’t make them go there. I was hired as a guide, so I guided, end of story.” He turned and ambled off.

  Wedge kept one hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Don’t do it, Luke. It won’t help them.”

  “Maybe not, but it’ll make me feel a lot better!”

  Even as he felt the anger flush through him, Luke also felt a coldness, a kind of … slyness within it. He knew what it was.

  Obi-Wan had warned him. He couldn’t give in to his anger. If he did, the dark side would be there to claim him. He could feel it, waiting, ready to fill him with its bleak and unclean energies. He could feel that to allow it in would give him abilities he did not have, would give him powers ordinary mortals could not withstand. He would be able to bring Dash Rendar to his knees with a gesture—

  No. Don’t even think it. To give in to the dark side would be to become like Vader, like the Emperor, to become that which he fought against.

  He took a deep breath, and when he blew it out, much of his anger flowed with it. Dash even had a point: He hadn’t forced anybody to do anything.

  One of the sensor crew ran over to where they stood. “We’ve got a ship coming in,” he said. “No Communications, but the scopes say it’s a Corellian freighter.”

  The Millennium Falcon! They were alive!

  “They’re about fifteen minutes out,” the man said.

  Luke felt a vast relief. Leia. She was all right. Even though he felt that he would have known if anything had happened to her, it was still a relief to hear that the ship was in one piece.

  “That gives us a few minutes,” Wedge said. “What say we go and see what we can dig out of that rascaled R2 unit?”

  “Good idea,” Luke said.

  But when they reached the place where the bollixed astromech droid had been, what they found was a smoldering pile of debris.

  Somebody had blasted the droid into rubble.

  Luke spun around, looking for the crew chief who was supposed to be watching the unit. H
e spotted the woman quickly enough.

  She was pointing a blaster right at him.

  10

  Luke saw Wedge reach for his blaster. He yelled, “No!”

  Too late.

  The chief saw Wedge go for his weapon, turned slightly, and shot at him. The blast sizzled between Luke and Wedge, missed Luke by centimeters. He smelled ionized and burned air as he jumped to the side—

  Wedge didn’t have any choice. His blaster beam caught her square in the center of mass and knocked her sprawling.

  The burned smell grew stronger and more unpleasant.

  By the time Luke got to her, the chief wasn’t going to be answering any questions ever again.

  “Well. I guess we know who rascaled the droid,” Luke said, his voice quiet. “I would have liked to know why.”

  Wedge shook his head. “Maybe we can find out. I’ll see what the operations computer has on her.”

  “Do that.”

  It was only a few minutes later that the Millennium Falcon put down on the moon. Once it was stowed out of sight inside the hangar, the hatch opened and the ramp came down. Lando and Chewie walked down the ramp, followed by Threepio. Where was—?

  There she was. She looked terrible. She walked as if she were a thousand years old.

  “Leia?”

  Her face was a study in misery. Luke moved to her, hugged her, but she was limp in his arms. “What happened?”

  “Boba Fett got away,” she said.

  Behind them, Lando said, “Yeah, and we were lucky to get away ourselves. The place was thick with TIE fighters. I’m sorry, Luke. I tried.”

  Chewie nodded and said something.

  Luke nodded. He turned, one arm still around Leia. Holding her thus brought up all kinds of conflicting emotions. As if he didn’t have enough to sort out about Vader and the Force and the dark side, how he felt toward Leia was another whole unprobed universe.

  “Come on,” Luke said to her. “We’ll figure something else out.”

  Leia was depressed, but the news of the malfunctioning droid broke through the blanket of despair shrouding her. It frightened her.

  When Wedge and Lando came back from checking on the former crew chief through the opcomm, they looked grim.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Well,” Wedge said, “it seems there was a transfer for ten thousand credits into the chief’s account a few days ago, just after Rogue Squadron arrived here. Lando managed to access the account, using, uh, a borrowed command override code.”

  “And …?”

  “The money came from a dummy corporation,” Lando said. “I managed to backwalk it through two more dummy corporations. Wound up with something called Saber Enterprises. Last I heard, Saber was a front organization for the Empire’s secret undercover antiespionage operations.”

  “You think somebody paid the chief to rig the droid to shoot Luke?” Leia said.

  “Seems awfully coincidental to me otherwise,” Lando said.

  Leia nodded. “It’s got Vader’s gloveprints all over it.”

  Luke shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Why not?”

  “He wants me alive,” Luke said. “He wants me to join the Empire.”

  “Maybe he changed his mind,” Lando said.

  Leia stared off into the distance. This was bad. She’d lost Han, maybe forever—no, don’t think that—and she didn’t want to lose Luke, too. He was too important, not just to the Alliance, but to her.

  She loved Han, but she loved Luke, too. Maybe not in the same way, but she didn’t want to see him hurt. She had a feeling about this, an … intuition. This attempt on Luke’s life was just the tip of something much larger, something hidden under a great depth of murky water. She had to find out what it was and stop it.

  “There was another thing,” Lando said. “The chief’s account had a pending file of credit in it from the same dummy corporation.”

  “Meaning what?” Luke asked.

  “Meaning there was probably going to be another transfer of funds. My guess is that the ten thousand was just a down payment. If you had gotten blown up on that run, I’d also guess that a much larger amount would have wound up in the chief’s account. Sure brings up a lot of questions, doesn’t it?”

  Lando looked at Wedge.

  “She was going to shoot Luke,” Wedge said. “Second rule of self-defense is to shoot first and ask questions later.”

  Leia turned around and looked at Lando. “What is the first rule?”

  “Be somewhere else when the shooting starts.”

  They looked at each other. What did all this mean?

  Xizor knew that exercise was necessary, was essential for optimum health—and it helped keep underlings in line if they knew you were physically powerful. He practiced martial arts now and then, but he knew that wasn’t enough. And exercise bored him. He hated to do it. Thus it was that he sat in the myostim unit when Guri came to see him. The unit was simple enough, a sensor field coupled with an adjustable, computerized electromyoclonic broadcaster. Turn it on, set the level, and the myostim unit worked the muscles, forcing them to contract and relax in sequence. You could get stronger just lying there, develop powerful mass without having to do any heavy lifting. A great toy.

  Guri seemed to materialize from nowhere.

  Xizor lifted an eyebrow as his thighs clenched into hard knots, relaxed, then contracted again.

  “The first attempt on Skywalker’s life has failed. The bribed crew chief is dead.”

  Xizor nodded as his calves hardened and softened under the electrical stimulus.

  “No surprise. We knew the boy was extremely lucky.”

  “Or skillful,” Guri said.

  Xizor shrugged as his feet tightened and slackened. “Either way. I’ve had some thoughts about the matter. Allow our agents to proceed, grease bearings as necessary. Be certain it looks as if they are in the employ of the Empire, linked directly to Vader. If they get Skywalker, good. If not, I have another idea that might be even more beneficial to us.”

  “As you wish.”

  He gestured with one arm as the stim wave began to move back up his legs toward his belly.

  “This is not our only concern. We have a business to run.” He paused for a moment, and when he spoke again there was a sharp edge to his voice. “Ororo Transportation.”

  Guri nodded.

  “I do not believe the Tenloss Syndicate knows that Ororo is trying to take over our spice operations in the Baji Sector. I suppose we could make them aware of it and allow them to handle it, but that doesn’t suit me. I want you to go there and meet with Ororo. Indicate our … displeasure at their ambition.”

  Guri nodded again.

  “Before you leave, put in a comm to Darth Vader. I would like to see him at his convenience.”

  “Yes, my prince.”

  “That will be all.”

  She left, and Xizor watched his bare stomach ridge under the hard stim contraction, forming symmetrical and rounded rectangles. No fat coated those muscles.

  Sending Guri to deal with Ororo was necessary; greed never slept, and it was incumbent on Xizor to make certain that everyone knew that to cross Black Sun was to court ruin. Guri by herself would probably be enough to knock the transportation company’s leaders back into line, but Xizor never used a wrist slap when a hammer fist was called for. If you damage an enemy, you should damage him enough so that he cannot retaliate; that was a simple truth.

  He had plans for Ororo, plans that would not only chastise them for their stupidity but would also further Xizor’s aims on other fronts. Everything in the galaxy was interlinked; a spark here could become a conflagration there, if you knew how to fan it properly. He was always looking for links, always checking to see how an event on that side of the galaxy could be made to serve his ends on this side. As in a tridimensional hologame, there were small moves that would add up to larger ones; a push at precisely the right place and exactly the right time
could, in theory, topple a mountain. And it was his business to know when and where to push.

  Yes. Ororo would pay for its temerity, and in ways it could not begin to imagine.

  He leaned back and allowed the myostim machineries to make him stronger.

  Darth Vader stared at the hologram of Xizor’s human droid Guri.

  “Very well,” he said. “Tell your master I will see him. I have business on the Emperor’s skyhook. Have him meet me there in three standard hours.”

  Vader broke the connection. What did Xizor want? Whatever it was, he did not believe for a moment that it was to serve the Empire—unless it served Xizor first.

  The Dark Lord of the Sith stalked through the bowels of his castle to where his personal shuttle was kept. He could have taken the turbolift to the skyhook; most passengers and cargo were moved to the giant orbiting satellites through their tethers to the surface of the Imperial Center; but he had not stayed alive this long by taking foolish chances. Skyhook lifts seldom malfunctioned, but they were vulnerable to attack, from within and without. No, better to be in control of his own armored craft, where the dark side could be unleashed—along with laser cannon—if need be.

  As he walked through one of his spare hallways, Vader considered another problem. For now, the Emperor did not want him to hunt for Luke Skywalker, at least not personally. While the Emperor had not yet spoken of it directly, the construction of the new and more powerful Death Star was behind schedule. Those in charge offered many excuses—material, workers, constantly changing plans—and the Emperor was growing impatient. Vader was fairly certain that it would be only a matter of time before the Emperor sent him to oversee the lagging project. It was amazing how a general who would drag his feet while out of the Emperor’s sight would suddenly learn how to run when paid a visit from one who could call upon the dark side. Those Imperial officers who scoffed at the Force did so out of ignorance.

  Those who did not fear the power of Darth Vader were those who had never stood face-to-face with him.

  Vader did not agree that the Death Star was the invincible and omnipotent weapon its designers had promised the Emperor. He had heard that tale before, and the ill-equipped Rebel forces had shown just how wrong that was with the first Death Star.