by Steve Perry
Xizor sat up and grabbed the comlink. “My master,” he said.
“I shall be leaving the planet shortly,” the Emperor said. “To inspect portions of a certain … construction project of which you are aware. When I return, we must get together. I have a few things I would like to discuss with you.”
“Of course, my master.”
“Tales have reached me concerning one of the Rebels, Luke Skywalker. It seems you have an interest in him?”
“Skywalker? I have heard the name. I cannot say I have an interest in him.”
“We shall speak of this on my return.”
The conversation ended, the Emperor disconnected. He seldom bothered with opening or closing salutations.
Xizor put the small comlink cylinder on the edge of the tub and allowed himself to sink deeper into the tranquilizing water. Well. It was to be expected that the Emperor would find out about his plans sooner or later. It affected nothing, as long as Xizor remained cautious. Rumors were not proof.
Guri bent, picked up the comlink, and left.
As he watched her walk away, he briefly considered telling her to disrobe and join him in the water. He had made her do that a few times when he wanted company he could trust absolutely, and she had demonstrated to his satisfaction that she could pass for a woman in virtually every way during those times …
But—no. He was saving his energies for Leia. She would learn to see him in a better light, he knew. He could wait. Patience was one of the ultimate virtues.
He took a deep breath and sank beneath the water. His lung capacity was great and he could stay under for a long time, a throwback to his reptile heritage. The water warmed his face, and he luxuriated in it.
Overall, life was very good.
It was warmer in the Underground, but it smelled at least as bad as the warehouse where they’d left the Falcon. At least it did to Luke. The various humans and aliens they’d passed didn’t seem to notice the stink. It bothered Luke that in order for you to smell a thing, tiny and invisible particles of it had to be inhaled and sampled by your olfactory system. Whatever was causing that awful rotting, fetid odor, he didn’t like the idea of microscopic bits of it going up his nose.
They were in a maglev train station not far below the surface. The waiting platform was crowded, and there were Imperial stormtroopers in armor and uniformed officers circulating in the huge room.
“I think maybe it’s time we got some better disguises,” Lando said. “We wouldn’t want some surveillance cam taking note of us in these rags.”
“What did you have in mind?”
A Squid Head brushed past them, in a hurry to get somewhere. It had no regard for beggars.
“I’ve been thinking about that. Ideally, we want to look like somebody nobody’ll pay any attention to.”
“Stormtroopers?”
Lando nodded. “Yeah. Or maybe the Elite Stormtroopers would be better. Their faces are covered, and since they are so well regarded, nobody is apt to bother them.”
Luke looked around. “I see one about my size, over there by the ticket droid.”
“Yep, and there’s one about my height and weight, by the periodical dispenser. Maybe we should do our duty to the Empire and report something strange going on in one of the ‘fresher booths, you think?”
“Just as any loyal citizen would,” Luke said.
He and Lando grinned at each other.
Leia awoke, feeling groggy. There wasn’t any way to keep track of time that she could see. She had dozed for a while; Xizor had called and asked her if she wanted to take a bath with him—a bath! come on!—and she’d fallen back asleep.
She got up and moved to the computer console. “What time is it?”
The device told her.
My. She’d been asleep for almost six standard hours. Quite a nap, that.
She was also hungry.
Even as she thought this, the door slid open and Guri entered, carrying a large domed tray. She put the tray on the computer table in front of Leia. “Food,” she said. She turned and left.
Leia lifted the dome. A seven-course dinner had been artfully arranged on a series of dishes. A salad, a couple of different kinds of soypro patties, cooked vegetables, fruit, bread, containers of drinks. It looked great and smelled pretty good, too.
Leia picked up a piece of bread and tasted it. It was warm, chewy, had a slightly sour flavor. Excellent. Might as well eat. If Xizor wanted to kill her, he could have done it by now; probably he didn’t plan to poison her. Like sleeping when you could, eating was one of those things you had to do when it was available. And if it tasted as great as this stuff did, well, that was a bonus.
The Luke-size lieutenant frowned as he entered the stall, Luke right behind him. “What are you talking about, I don’t see any—uh? What …?”
This last was uttered as Luke used the Force to take control of the man’s thoughts. You’d think a crack trooper in the service of the Empire would have a stronger mind than this guy did. Then again, if he did, he probably wouldn’t be in the Imperial military, he’d be working for the Alliance …
Luke ordered the man to strip, then to have a seat and a nice long nap. He shucked his own clothes and hurriedly dressed in the borrowed uniform. He kept the blaster, tucked his lightsaber into his waistband under the jacket, moved into the communal part of the refresher, and examined himself in the mirror. Not bad.
Behind him, Lando emerged from a stall, dressed in a similar uniform. Lando adjusted the belt with his new sidearm and brushed lint from the right sleeve.
“Women love a man in a uniform,” he said. He lifted his helmet and slipped it on.
“Let’s hope they don’t see the man behind the armor,” Luke said.
The two of them squared their shoulders, stuck their chests out, and affected an Imperial swagger as they exited the ’fresher.
Vader stood at the ramp leading to the Emperor’s personal shuttle, looking down at the shorter man.
“I anticipate that I shall return in three weeks,” the Emperor told him. “I trust you can keep the planet from falling apart while I am gone?”
“Yes, my master.”
“I expect no less. Any news of Skywalker?”
“Not yet. We’ll find him.”
“Perhaps sooner than you expect.”
Vader stared at the Emperor, who wore a half smile that revealed his damaged teeth. Had he foreseen something? The Emperor was still more attuned to the dark side than Vader was. Had he gleaned some new information about Luke?
If he had, he was not ready to reveal it, for he turned and allowed himself to be escorted up the ramp by a squad of the Imperial Royal Guard in their ceremonial red robes and matching armor.
The tap of the Emperor’s twisted walking stick on the ramp was quite loud in the silence.
Of all the people in the galaxy, the Emperor trusted Darth Vader most; at least that’s what Vader liked to believe. And as far as he was able to determine, the length of that trust was no farther than an outstretched arm could reach.
No matter. He was right about one thing: Sooner or later Luke would surface. A light that bright could not be hidden for long. By his nature the boy would have to burn hot enough to be visible to one who had the power and the knowledge of how to look for him. Once a Jedi began to grow in the Force, the process was not easily stopped. In Luke’s case, Vader doubted that it could be stopped.
They would meet again. A week, a month, a year—it did not really matter. It would happen.
Meanwhile, he would keep a sharp eye on the actions of an enemy all too close to home. Even now, Vader’s agents sought every scrap of information they had not already found on the Underlord of Black Sun. That, too, would simply be a matter of time. Once you knew the direction, the trip was made easier, and sooner or later, Xizor would make an error. He would stumble.
When he did, Vader would be waiting to catch him.
31
“Well,” Luke said, “this is a b
etter neighborhood than where we were before, but where exactly are we going?”
Lando pointed. “There.”
“A plant shop?”
“Don’t let it fool you. It’s run by an old Ho’Din name of Spero. He’s got a lot of connections, some Imperial, some Alliance, some criminal.”
“Let me guess: He owes you a favor.”
“Not exactly. But we’ve done some business in the past and he doesn’t mind making a few credits passing along information.”
They headed for the shop.
“We’re getting a lot of dirty looks,” Luke said.
“It’s the uniforms. The Empire doesn’t have many friends down here. Most of the locals are probably on the run, one step ahead of being arrested. They won’t bother us as long as we don’t stick our noses in the wrong place. Don’t want to bring Imperial heat and light into their hideout.”
Inside the shop there was no sign of the Ho’Din owner. Except for Luke and Lando, the place was empty.
“Nobody home,” Luke said. “That’s odd, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, odd. I—”
Somebody said something behind them. Luke didn’t understand what it was, but he recognized the language: Wookiee.
“Easy, friend,” Lando said. “Nobody is going to make any sudden moves.” He lifted his hands away from his body, told Luke to do the same.
The Wookiee speaker said something else.
Something about the voice …
“Turn around, nice and slow,” Lando told Luke.
They turned.
Sure enough, there was a Wookiee standing there. One with a bad haircut—
“Chewie!” Lando said.
Despite the helmets, Chewbacca recognized them at the same instant and lowered the blaster pistol he held.
Lando smiled as he and Luke moved forward to embrace Chewie.
“What happened? Why is your hair chopped off?”
Chewie tried to answer at the same time Lando fired more questions, and Luke didn’t get much of it. But he was glad to see the Wookiee.
Finally Lando began to translate for Luke.
“The shop owner is tied up in back; in case anybody spotted Chewie coming in, they wouldn’t think the Ho’Din was helping, right, right, and—slow down, pal!”
Chewie kept talking a keening, harning noise.
“Okay, okay, Leia thinks it’s Black Sun that wants you dead, Luke, they’re behind the assassination attempts, not the Empire. Huh? Well, I don’t know how, there’s just the three of us, how can we get inside the place, that won’t help her if we get caught, will it—?”
The dialogue ended abruptly as a blaster bolt lanced through the shop’s open door and shattered a flowerpot hanging from the ceiling. Shards of the ceramic pattered against Luke’s back, and clumps of moist dirt and humus fell around him. The junglelike smell inside the shop increased.
“Hey!”
Outside the shop, four men with blasters loosed more shots. They weren’t wearing uniforms, whoever they were.
The three inside the plant store dropped to the floor. Chewie raised his blaster and blindly fired several rounds back at the shooters.
“Who are those guys? Why are they shooting at us?”
Lando said, “Who knows?” He pulled his borrowed blaster and added to Chewie’s return fire. It didn’t look as if they hit anybody, from the torrent of light that came back at them.
“Is there another way out of here?” Luke asked.
Chewie growled a reply. Luke thought it meant “Yes.”
“In the back!” Lando yelled.
He and Chewie cooked off several more shots, and the three of them crawled toward the back of the shop.
They passed an old Ho’Din bound and gagged in a corner.
“Sorry about this,” Lando said to the Ho’Din. “Send the Alliance a bill, they’ll pay for it!”
Chewie reached the back exit and shoved the sliding door open.
Another high-energy bolt zipped through the door at chest height and burned a hole in an inner wall. Fortunately, they were all still stretched out on the floor, and the hole was well above their heads.
Lando cursed. “They’ve got us boxed!”
Before they could think about what they were going to do, somebody outside the back exit screamed. There came the sound of several blaster discharges—but no fresh beams poked into the shop.
“What the—?” Lando began.
Luke looked up from where he lay prone on the floor, plant dirt ground into the chest and belly of his stolen uniform, and saw a figure walking across an alley. Well, not walking so much as … swaggering.
Luke recognized the man.
Dash Rendar! Oh, man. Here he was saving Luke again. Luke hated this.
“Howdy, boys. Having a little trouble?” He spun his blaster on his forefinger and blew across the end of the barrel. It made a slight hooting noise.
Luke came up, saw Lando and Chewie do the same. He started to speak, but Lando beat him to it. “Rendar! What are you doing here?”
“Saving your butts, looks like. Seems to be my specialty. Better come on, we can talk as we move. Follow me.”
Luke shook his head. He really didn’t like this, but there wasn’t much he could say about it. Rendar was, unfortunately, right.
In a conference room in his castle, Darth Vader stared at the small man who stood in front of him. “You are certain of this?”
“Yes, my lord, I am certain.”
Vader felt a flash of triumph. It was not enough, not by itself, but it went a long way toward the proof he needed. “And you have the tape and documentation.”
“Already in your files, Lord Vader.” The little man smiled.
“You have served me well. I will not forget this. Continue your search.”
The little man bowed and left.
So. There existed a recording of a freelance agent speaking to an Alliance crew chief, telling her she would be made rich if she could but kill Luke Skywalker.
Of course, no direct connection to Xizor had been discovered, but Vader’s agents would find it, did it exist. The briber had talked to the crew chief, someone had talked to him. Vader’s agents would backwalk every moment of the briber’s life until they found out who had sent him. And who had sent the being who had sent him. And so on.
It was one more addition to the growing collection of circumstantial evidence his agents had gathered and were continuing to gather.
By itself a grain of sand was nothing, but with enough grains, one could cover a city. It would not do to tip his hand too early. As of now, he had enough sand to begin. A bit more and he’d be able to bury Xizor …
He must be removed, once and for all, and the day was coming when it would happen.
Soon.
It would be soon.
Dash showed the way. Chewie took the point and led them into a warren of twisted corridors and tunnels that should lose any pursuers, given how fast Luke lost his own bearings.
“So how did you get here again?” Lando asked Dash.
“The usual way. Sneaked in under the belly of a freighter in the sensor shadow. A trick I learned as a boy at the Academy. A good pilot can do it in his sleep. How about you?”
Lando’s smile seemed a little sickly to Luke. He shrugged. “Yeah, we did that, too. Piece of cake. Could have done it on autopilot, it was so easy.”
“Yeah, but how did you manage to get here?” Luke asked. He pointed at the ground.
“The Ho’Din’s? Oh, everybody knows about Spero, don’t they, Lando?”
“I guess they do,” Lando said. “Okay, that’s how, but—why?”
Dash sighed. “Something to prove, I guess. I felt pretty bad after that disaster Luke and I went through. Not something I’m used to, making mistakes. But I figure, you crash your ship, you better climb into the next one you see and get it back in the air. Too much time goes by and you don’t, you get afraid to fly. I screwed up, and I’m still not over that, but you ca
n only sit and bubble in your own juices for so long. I work for money, but I figure I owe the Empire a little something. When Chewie called, I decided it was time to pay the Empire back.”
Luke nodded. “I understand how you feel.”
“I have a few contacts here,” Dash said.
“You must breakfast with me,” Xizor said.
Leia looked at him. He had come to her room early, but she had already dressed, and her costume was once again that of the bounty hunter she’d affected earlier, sans the helmet. She didn’t want to wear the clothes this scum provided.
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
“I insist.”
Even now that she knew he had tried to kill Luke, she could feel the ghost of that attraction to him. Fortunately, she was able to resist it. Anger made a good antidote.
She decided to see if Xizor would reveal anything to her. Said, “Will Chewbacca be joining us?”
“Alas, no. Your Wookiee friend has … taken his leave of us.”
“Got away and you can’t find him, huh?”
Xizor gave her a thin smile totally without humor. “You think he escaped on his own? Really, Leia. I allowed him to break free.”
“Come on.”
“I want Skywalker. Skywalker wants you. I have you. Surely I don’t need to draw you a diagram?”
She felt her belly twist and go cold. He was toying with them. The whole reason to have her come here was as bait for Luke. Oh, no.
She’d been hungry, but breakfast no longer held any appeal. This creature was evil. Twisted, brilliant, and evil.
“Where are we going?” Luke asked.
Dash said, “I know a place we can hide. We can figure out what to do from there.”
Luke felt a sudden rush of something in him. A kind of powerful knowledge that filled him, made him grin. Of a second, he had become one with the Force—and he hadn’t even tried to do it. It just happened.
“What?” Lando said, noticing.
“We’ll go to this place and make plans to rescue Leia,” Luke said.
He wasn’t sure what he expected, maybe that Lando or Dash or even Chewie would stare and shake his head, ask who had abdicated and left Luke in charge, something. But the other three exchanged glances, looked back at Luke, and when they did, it was apparent that something had changed.
