by Steve Perry
It didn’t matter. He was safe. For a moment, he wondered what had happened to Guri. Another loss.
Well. Life was difficult at times. The trick was to survive—and once again, the Dark Prince had done so. Survive, then make your enemies regret that you did.
Dash saw it first. “Mother of Madness!” he yelled, pointing.
Luke looked up and saw the Millennium Falcon coming in.
Coming in too fast and spinning like a demented toy gyroscope.
As they watched, the wobbly ship straightened; at least it stopped twirling, but it was still coming in too fast—
“Duck!” Lando hollered.
The five of them dropped flat.
The ship almost did a touch-and-go. It pulled up no more than a meter from the pad’s deck and veered to starboard. The wind of its passage tugged at them.
Luke glanced up in the backwash just as the Falcon’s port edge hit a Doppler sensor array and shattered it, spraying pieces every which way.
“Threepio, I’m gonna kill you!” Lando roared.
Luke came up with the others and watched the ship circle around. He pulled his comlink. “Threepio, cut your drives! Bring it on the repulsors only! And hurry!”
“I’m trying, Master Luke. The controls are somewhat sensitive.”
The ship hopped upward a hundred meters as if hurled from a sling.
Artoo was going to blow a circuit, he was whistling so fast and so loud.
The Falcon lurched, canted sideways, and fell. Righted itself just before it would have plowed into the roof, bounced upward on an invisible column of air.
Finally the ship lost speed. Seemed to float like a falling leaf on a gentle breeze, then stopped and hovered in place fifty meters above them.
Luke glanced around. Fifty meters, five thousand meters, it was too far away. They had less than a minute left.
“Bring it down, you fool droid!” Lando yelled.
“Too bad Leebo isn’t at the controls,” Dash said. “He’s a pretty good pilot.”
“While you’re wishing, wish that we were at the controls,” Leia said.
Standing next to the exit were what looked like two sets of folded wings. Abruptly Luke realized what they were: paragliders. Slip a set of those on and you could sail down to a shorter building’s top, or kilometers away to the street. If the ship didn’t get here in the next few seconds, he was going to strap Leia into one of those and throw her off the building. The other paraglider would have four passengers, one of them a Wookiee. They’d be way too heavy, but there was a chance it might work—he’d learned while fighting the walkers on Hoth that he could slow a fall considerably using the Force, and Master Yoda had taught him more—
“Here she comes!” Dash said.
The Falcon drifted down toward them. They backed up. The ship hovered over the landing pad two meters up, then dropped like a stone. The landing struts groaned but held. The belly hatch’s ramp yawned wide.
“Go, go, go!” Luke yelled.
Chewie grabbed Leia, picked her up, and ran. Dash and Lando were right behind, and Luke followed.
By the time Luke made it into the ship, the ramp was already closing.
Luke followed the others toward the cockpit.
They had maybe thirty seconds left …
Dash got to the cockpit first, Lando and Luke right behind him.
“Move!” Dash yelled at Threepio.
“I’m moving, I’m moving!”
Dash shoved Threepio and slid into the seat. His hands danced over the controls.
Threepio fell into a heap against the copilot’s seat. Artoo whistled frantically.
“You don’t need to be so rude, Master Dash—”
There came a deep rumble from underneath them. The Falcon shook.
“Come on, Dash!” Lando yelled.
Luke looked through the screen, and even though they were in grave danger, he noticed something:
One of the sets of paragliders was gone.
The ship lurched, tilted, started to slide …
… lifted …
“Go, go!”
The Millennium Falcon spun away. As it did, Luke saw the building shake and the landing pad fall away, then drop straight down, like a tower of sand with the base kicked out. Smoke rose; a terrible screech like a giant nail being pulled from wet wood came with the smoke. Blasts of fire erupted skyward. Giant electrical conduits sprayed multicolored sparks. Things exploded and hurled shrapnel at them. The ship rocked under the impacts—
Dash hit the thrusters, and the Falcon leaped upward—
Below, the castle of Xizor, Underlord of Black Sun, collapsed into a heap of flaming, smoking ruin.
For once, even Lando didn’t have a funny remark.
Leia joined the others in the crowded cockpit.
“Let’s get out of here,” Luke said. “Nothing fancy, just run as fast as we can.”
“I hear you,” Dash said.
Threepio got up from where he had fallen. “I thought I flew rather well,” he said.
Everybody turned to stare at the droid.
“But I don’t think I would like to do it again anytime soon,” he hurried to add.
Luke shook his head, smiled, and started to chuckle.
It was an unstoppable release of nervous tension. In a few seconds, they were all laughing except Threepio and Artoo.
“What is so funny?” Threepio asked, indignant.
That set them off again. They’d made it. They were safe.
Well, almost. But at least the hard part should be over.
40
Xizor was angry and, save for the death of his family, could not recall ever having been more so. His castle was gone, his valuables, much of his massive information base, all destroyed in an instant. Artifacts and records that could not be replaced because they had no duplicates anywhere else. Blackmail files, personal projects, the most central secrets of Black Sun since he had taken over, gone—just like that. It would take years to recover, and should something happen to him, his successor would never know much of what was missing because he would never know it had ever existed. He wouldn’t even know who had been responsible—all of the files on Skywalker and the princess had been in his personal computer, and it and its backups were slag.
Whatever anger he felt, it was no longer in his voice as Xizor called ahead to his skyhook. He had figured out that the small Corellian freighter that had nearly smashed into him as he leaped away from his castle was the same one his people had been searching for.
The same one that had come to rescue Skywalker and Leia and their friends.
Perhaps it had failed in that mission. Given the way things had been going of late, likely that was not so. Best to be sure.
Being the head of a shipping concern had some advantages when it came to describing ships: “There is a dilemma-saucer-style Corellian freighter leaving the planet shortly,” he told the commander of his navy over the comm. “It is a YT-Thirteen Hundred, a little over twenty-five meters long, a hundred-ton capacity. Locate it and destroy it. If you can disable it and capture the crew and passengers, that would also be acceptable.
“If, however, it gets past, you and anybody else I consider responsible will be fertilizer before the next sunrise—are we perfectly clear on that?”
“Clear, my prince.”
“Good.” He reached for the comm switch to shut off the transmission. “I’ve got you now, Skywalker.”
“I beg your pardon, Highness.”
“What? Nothing. Never mind.”
He flipped the switch and killed the transmission. Probably should not have mentioned Skywalker’s name that way, but it didn’t matter. The opchan was scrambled. It did not matter. He was so close to finishing this now.
He looked at the console’s timer. He should be at the skyhook shortly.
“My lord Vader, you asked to see anything regarding this name,” the officer said.
Vader stared at the man. Took the printout flimsy from him and sc
anned it.
“Where did this originate?”
“An encoded transmission from the ship Virago, my lord, en route to the skyhook Falleen’s Fist in high orbit. The ship is registered to—”
“I know who it is registered to,” Vader said. He crumpled the thin plastic hardcopy sheet in his hand.
And though the attending officer could not see it, Darth Vader smiled, ignoring the pain it caused.
“Prepare my shuttle,” he said.
He had warned Xizor to stay away from Luke. The criminal had chosen to ignore that order.
That was a grievous error.
As much as it was possible, Vader was delighted. They had played Xizor’s game long enough. Now they would play his.
Dash said, “Take over, would you, Luke?”
“Sure.” Luke, already in the copilot’s seat, took the controls. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. I just need to whistle up my steed.”
“What?”
Dash pulled a small black rectangular box from his belt. “Long-range shielded single-channel comlink. Time to have Leebo lift and put my ship into orbit. We can rendezvous; I can borrow one of your suits—this bucket still has vac-suits, doesn’t it?—and get back to a real ship instead of this rickety crate.”
Luke smiled. “I guess we can do that.”
“After that, you go your way, I’ll go mine. I figure the cleanup bill for that building down there ought to go a long way to balancing my account with the Empire.”
“You really ought to consider signing on with the Alliance,” Luke said. “You’re a good man and we could use you.”
“Thanks, Luke, but I don’t think so. I’m not much of a joiner.”
He tapped the command button on his specialized comlink. “Hey, Leebo, you rust bucket, get your gears meshing and meet me at the following coordinates.”
“My master is not in at the moment. Who is calling, please?”
“Very funny,” Dash said. He looked at Luke. “Never buy a droid programmed by a failed comedian.”
Xizor’s landing at the skyhook was uneventful. His navy had already deployed. Since they had all the proper clearances, the Imperial Navy didn’t bother them.
Xizor strode to his command center, a deck surrounded by transparisteel plate that allowed him an almost 360-degree unimpeded view of space around the skyhook.
He had the comm to his commander opened. A holoproj of the man appeared. “Yes, my prince?”
“Have you deployed your vessels, Commander?”
“Yes, Highness. Our sensors have been set to detect any ship matching the criteria you gave me. If it comes this way, we will spot it.”
“Good. Keep me informed.”
The image vanished, and Xizor stared out into the blackness of space. He had heard the buzz of conversation when he arrived. The rumor had reached here fast, though no one dared speak directly to him about the disaster below. Well. No matter. He had survived worse.
He would survive this; survive it and somehow turn it into a victory.
“Thanks for the ride,” Dash said over the comm.
The Outrider hung just off the Millennium Falcon’s port bow in a matching orbit. If you had a good arm, you could hit it with a rock, even in full gravity. Dash had jetted across the short gap, complaining all the while about how bad the borrowed suit smelled.
“Want to race to the jump spot?” Luke said. He now sat at the controls, taking a turn piloting. Lando sat next to him, Leia stood behind them.
Dash laughed. “You want a parsec head start?”
“No, I—”
A hard green beam of light flashed between the two ships. The sighting ray of a big ship’s cannon—you couldn’t see the laser itself in vacuum, of course, but it followed the ionized marker you could see precisely.
Somebody was shooting at them.
“Uh-oh, looks like we got company.”
More laser and charged-particle bolts blinked, none really close. Well, no closer than a couple of meters—
Luke punched it. The Falcon jumped like a startled hopperoo.
Lando said, “We’ve got an unmarked corvette coming in at two-seventy! And four fighters at three-five-nine! Those aren’t Imperial ships! Who are these guys?”
“Who cares?” Luke said. “We’ve got to move! Chewie, the guns!”
“You heard the man, furball,” Leia said. “You want dorsal or ventral?”
Chewie harned. He and Leia disappeared.
“Good luck, Dash!” Luke yelled.
“You, too, Luke.”
Luke pointed the Falcon into the deep and ran. The ship rocked as a beam found the shields and splashed from them.
They needed to get clear of this system, fast, and make the jump to hyperspace.
“Prince Xizor, we have located the Corellian freighter,” came the commander’s voice from the holoproj.
“And …?”
“We are engaging it now. It should be destroyed momentarily.”
Xizor nodded. “Don’t be too sure, Commander. They seem to be extremely lucky.”
“They’ll need more than luck, my prince. We have them completely surrounded. They’ll need a miracle.”
Xizor nodded again.
“There is a wall between us and where we need to go,” Luke said.
“So find another way,” Lando said. “You want me to fly her?”
“No.”
A beam hit them, slapped them crooked. The shields held.
Lando yelled into the comlink. “I thought you two were supposed to be shooting back!”
Both Chewie and Leia yelled at him, but Luke was too busy flying to pay attention to what they said. He put the Falcon into a power climb and turned the move into a half twist at the top of the arc, heading back the way they’d come.
“Chewie wants to know how he’s supposed to hit anything with you looping like that,” Lando said.
“How can he miss? We’re surrounded! He should hit something no matter where he shoots!”
A black shape zipped past them. The Outrider, cannons blazing.
Ahead of the Falcon a fighter exploded.
Lando said, “See how it’s done, Chewie?”
Chewie yelled something back at Lando.
“Have you stopped the ship yet, Commander?”
“Not yet, Highness. They are, ah, quite skilled. And there are two ships returning our fire. We don’t have a transponder signal on the other one, but it is heavily armed.”
“If my navy can’t defeat two ships it certainly needs another commander,” Xizor said.
“We will defeat them. Our net is closing. They are running out of room.”
The attacking ships had formed a loose hemisphere in space. There were an awful lot of civilian freighter and passenger ships going to and coming from the planet, and it was all Luke could do to avoid hitting one of them as he dodged the fighters buzzing them. The civilians tried to get out of the way, which made things worse. And sooner or later, the Imperial Navy was going to wake up and probably add to the confusion. Why they hadn’t already made Luke wonder.
As he watched, one of the aggressors fired at the Falcon. The cannon’s beam struck one of those passenger ships, punched a hole through a power converter, and caused a bright flash as the unit shorted out. Lot of damage, probably nobody hurt.
“Lousy shots,” Lando said. “Don’t care who they hit.”
Luke nodded. He had thought they might weave in and out of the thick traffic and avoid being blasted, but it seemed Lando was right: The bad guys didn’t care who got fried.
The attackers had them boxed. There didn’t seem to be any way out. Too bad he couldn’t get to his X-wing—though one more ship probably wouldn’t be much help.
Things looked bad. Really bad …
One of the attacking fighters came straight at them, cannons winking hot plasma eyes—
The attacker exploded. The Falcon blew through the cloud of debris. It pattered like hard rain against t
he shields.
“Good shot!” Luke yelled. “Who got it, was that you, Leia?”
“Not me,” her voice came back. “I’ve got plenty to worry about coming in from my side. Must have been Chewie.”
Chewie said something.
Lando said, “Chewie says he didn’t get it, either.”
Luke blinked. Then who did?
Over the comm: “Hey, Luke! Okay if we join your party?”
“Wedge! What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you. Dash’s droid sent us a distress signal. Sorry it took so long to get here.”
Another of the unmarked attackers blossomed into a fireball.
“Well, just don’t let it happen again,” Luke said. He grinned. Now that Rogue Squadron was here, the odds were a little better.
He swung the Falcon into a wide turn.
“There seems to be a slight problem, my prince,” the commander said.
Xizor, watching the flashes of weapons and exploding ships from his deck, frowned. “So I noticed. Why are your ships blowing up, Commander?”
“A squadron of X-wing fighters has joined the fray. No more than a dozen of them. It will merely … delay the inevitable.”
“Are you certain, Commander?”
“We still outnumber them twenty to one, Highness. And our frigates are standing by in case they get past the corvettes and fighters. They cannot escape.”
“Hope that you are right, Commander.”
Luke did a belly-twisting power dive at almost a ninety-degree angle to their path. A trio of fighters stayed with him, firing all the while. He was glad to see the Rogues on the one hand; on the other hand, they were losing the fight. With all the civilian traffic around, the wheelworlds and skyhooks, the power sats, the communications switching platforms and who knew what else, the space around Coruscant was anything but pure vacuum.
The comm hummed with conversations:
“I got ’em, Luke,” Wedge said.
“No, let me,” Dash said.
Another attacker blew up off the port side.
“That one was mine,” Leia said. “You figured out who these guys are?”
“Not yet,” Luke said.
“Bet you a credit they’re Xizor’s.”
Luke and Lando exchanged glances. Of course, that made sense.
Not that it made any difference—
