Darksaber

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Chewbacca tossed a clatter of glowlights and breathmasks down before lowering his hairy body into the dim chamber. Han and Leia placed the masks over their faces, and each took a light, which they shone into the dim chambers. Chewbacca shivered and rubbed his fur-covered arms.

  "They're completely out of power," Leia said. "Life-support systems are practically dead."

  "Doesn't seem to be any engine control, either," Han said.

  Leia shook her head. "I can sense Luke, though. It's just a whisper now, but he's here."

  They found the two motionless bodies in the back chamber, the small sleeping area: Luke lay on the floor like a statue, and Callista clung to him in a tattered and failing life-support suit. Luke looked frozen solid. A rime of frost covered his eyebrows, his eyelashes, and his upper lip. His skin appeared colorless and flat, like wax.

  Callista gave a rattling groan, shifting in her slick suit. Powdery frost crumbled from the joints in her arms.

  "Her suit's almost gone. Let's get them into the Falcon," Han said. "Chewie, carry Luke. Leia and I will get Callista."

  They carried the sagging Jedi back into the warmth and the air of the Falcon, then disconnected from the ruined space yacht, letting the hulk drift into the asteroid field like discarded rubbish, where it would soon become crushed in the relentless chaos of the meteor storm.

  Callista revived first. With a change into warm clothing and generous cups of stim tea, she recovered enough to insist on helping tend Luke Skywalker as they nursed him back to health. In his deep trance he had depleted his reserves, keeping himself at the ghost edge of death when the life support had ceased to function. Only his will to survive had kept his heart beating and oxygen molecules moving through his lungs. In another few hours he would have succumbed.

  Callista's gray eyes were red-rimmed as she took a poly sponge soaked in warm water and bathed Luke's face, his forehead, his neck. She whispered to Leia, "I had to watch him as my own supplies dwindled. As he dwindled." She shuddered. "I held him, but I couldn't touch him. I told him so many things. ..." She reached out with her fingertip, gently caressing Luke's cheek.

  Suddenly his blue eyes snapped open, and he took a deep breath. He blinked, and color flooded back into his cheeks. Drawing several more slow breaths, he revived like a time-lapse exposure of a blossom unfolding. "We're safe?" he said. His voice was a hoarse croak, but it was alive--he was alive!

  Callista hugged him, and Han and Chewie and Leia gathered around, barely restraining themselves from smothering him again with their delight.

  "Yes, Luke, you're safe now," Leia said, "and we're on our way. We'll take you back to the Jedi academy, where you can relax and recover."

  CHAPTER 40

  From his personal offices on the nearly completed Darksaber battle station, Bevel Lemelisk gazed out the array of latticed windows, studying the final steps in the mammoth construction project.

  His office was unabashedly austere, with cold metal walls, little furniture, and no decoration whatsoever. He didn't waste time on frivolities like artwork or comfort. The thing that concerned him most was ensuring that he had the right equipment--and plenty of it. He was only truly happy when surrounded with technological toys.

  As Lemelisk watched the continually shifting chaos of the asteroid belt--random patterns of motion from the drifting rocks tugged by their own minimal gravities in!-plex fifth-order permutations--he noted the distant light reflected off the hull of some other ship in the asteroid belt. He squinted. Yes, it was definitely a vessel, not another asteroid.

  "Spies?" he wondered with a thrill of adrenaline; he doubted it. This huge weapon was doing nothing to conceal itself. More likely it was a group of smugglers who thought they were safe in an uncharted area of space.

  Most bothersome, though, in Lemelisk's opinion, was the fact that the Taurill had once again been thrown into a frenzy of distraction by unexpected movement. He couldn't imagine how the busy little creatures in their tiny, custom-made spacesuits could notice something so faint and far away, but the Taurill Overmind had thousands of eyes--and it took only one to notice.

  The tiny Taurill construction workers jockeyed around for better views of the moving reflected lights, leaving their positions so they could stare upward and point with multiple arms.

  Lemelisk scowled. Now he would have to go on another plate-by-plate inspection outside the Darksaber just to make sure they didn't mess up again. He had successfully managed to conceal the first debacle from Durga the Hutt, but he wasn't confident he could continue to trick the crime lord. He waddled down the hall, taking a turbolift to the construction access bay, and climbed inside a smelly old inspection scooter, a tiny spherical craft that held one person--and that just barely.

  Lemelisk tucked his paunch behind the crude controls and sealed himself in. The laboring air-recirculation systems did little to dampen the odor of decaying upholstery that continued to outgas even so many years after the scooter had been put into operation.

  Lemelisk raised the small vehicle off the floor and passed through the magnetic atmosphere field, then puttered along the cylindrical hull of black anodized plates. He remembered the time he had taken a similar inspection tour of the original Death Star with Grand Moff Tarkin ... and he hoped this time it wouldn't turn out to be such a disaster.

  He and Grand Moff Tarkin had departed from the Governor's palace on Eriadu, an important trading and governmental hub on the Outer Rim, where Tarkin had established his primary base of operations when he became the regional governor of the fringe worlds. With the Death Star completed, Tarkin had summoned Bevel Lemelisk back from one of his new weapons-building assignments to Eriadu so they could perform the first test flight of the battle station together.

  Tarkin took his pet Calamarian, Ackbar, to pilot them in an unmarked Lambda-class shuttle away toward the Horuz System where the Death Star hung in orbit over the penal colony of Despayre.

  Tarkin preferred to travel without a full complement of guards because it allowed him to move unhindered, to slip in where he might hear traitorous words and then crack down accordingly. He also didn't want to draw attention to the superweapon's location now that it was so nearly finished.

  "What are you waiting for, Ackbar?" Tarkin snapped from the passenger seat beside Lemelisk. "Let us go see this weapon that will crush all resistance to the Emperor's New Order."

  The Calamarian hunched over his controls and made no response, taking the Lambda shuttle away from Eriadu toward the jump point where they would enter hyperspace. Tarkin took every opportunity to taunt and harass the quiet, unflappable Calamarian slave. Ackbar was supposedly intelligent, according to Tarkin, and Lemelisk knew that the Grand Moff spent merciless time showing Ackbar the tactics he would use to defeat the Rebels, the secret plans, the tricks and feints designed to evoke despair from those who resisted Imperial rule. Ackbar seemed suitably downcast, all spark of resistance crushed ... or at least well buried.

  "Preparing to enter hyperspace," Ackbar said with a complete lack of enthusiasm, his words devoid of inflection. "Destination--Despayre in the Horuz System."

  Without warning, three Rebel Y-wings appeared out of nowhere, bearing down on Tarkin's shuttle and firing their laser cannons.

  "It's a Rebel attack!" Tarkin said. "Ackbar, take evasive action."

  The Calamarian moved with sudden efficiency-- but instead of launching them immediately into hyperspace, Ackbar shut down the shields.

  "You fool!" Tarkin shouted.

  "Er, what do you think we should do now?" Lemelisk asked.

  The Rebel Y-wings came around again, firing precision shots. Explosions erupted from the rear of the Lambda-class shuttle. The craft rocked back and forth. Flames and smoke poured from the rear compartment, and the ship reeled out of control.

  "You will die for this, Ackbar," Tarkin said.

  Then the Rebels hit again, sending the crippled shuttle spinning. Tarkin had just climbed to his feet, and the new jolt hurled him against the
far wall. He tumbled over Lemelisk, still strapped into his seat.

  "Shields are down, our engines crippled,” Ackbar said. "And now they are coming in for the kill." He looked up at the front viewport. "I just wanted you to understand that I have brought this upon you, Grand Moff Tarkin, in exchange for all the pain you have inflicted upon me and others like me."

  Lemelisk saw the Rebel ships approaching again, deadly weapons already glowing in preparation for firing. Tarkin scrambled to his feet and grabbed Lemelisk by the collar, ripping him out of his chair.

  "The escape pod," Tarkin said. "We'll leave this traitor to the fate he's earned for himself."

  Together Tarkin and Lemelisk dived into the small escape pod intended for the comfort of only one person. Lemelisk stumbled and fell flat against the bulkhead and felt something crack in his face; blood poured out of his nose. Tarkin did not pause, but punched the automated launch button. The rear hatch of the lifepod sealed, and with an explosion seemingly greater than anything the Rebel Y-wings had inflicted upon them, the lifepod soared away from the shuttle as the Y-wings came in for their final attack.

  The universe reeled, spinning in confusion as Lemelisk tried to stanch the flow of blood from his nose. He saw the Rebel ships circle the crippled shuttle, but instead of immediately detonating it, they clustered around, connecting hatches.

  "They'll be after us in a moment," Tarkin said as he triggered the distress signal built into the escape pod. Lemelisk saw that the Grand Moff had also been injured, burned by the hot bulkhead.

  Suddenly, with a miracle of good luck, space around the Eriadu System rippled and an Imperial Star Destroyer stabbed out of hyperspace. He learned later that it was Admiral Motti's flagship; Motti had come to escort Tarkin, though the Grand Moff had not asked for it. The Star Destroyer locked onto the distress signal and came toward the would-be Rebel assassins, its turbolasers ripping through the darkness with spears of disintegrating light.

  Lemelisk looked up and saw the three attacking Y-wings fire again at the Lambda shuttle, this time destroying it utterly. As it exploded, the Y-wings split off in three different directions and vanished into the cloaking distance of space. ...

  As they spun around, dizzy inside the careening lifepod, Lemelisk felt as if he were about to be spacesick. The engineer's part of his mind wondered distantly just how much of a mess he would make if he vomited into the confined atmosphere of the craft as it whirled around like a child's toy.

  "Very strange," Lemelisk commented. "It appeared as if those Rebel ships wanted to rescue your Calamarian slave."

  Tarkin was incredulous. "Rescue Ackbar? Why should they bother with an animal?"

  Lemelisk shrugged as Admiral Motti's Star Destroyer followed the distress beacon and approached them for rescue. "I've never understood the Rebel mind," he said. ...

  Later, they recovered in the Death Star's infirmary rooms. Lemelisk nursed a broken nose, and Tarkin lay bandaged from sprains and superficial burns. They received the grim news that the assassination attempt on Tarkin had been only part of the Rebel treachery. A group of commandos had succeeded in stealing a copied set of the full Death Star blueprints, the technical readouts that specified every system, each component, all the weaponry capabilities of the great battle station, and smuggled them to the Toprawa Relay Station, from which point they had vanished.

  A young corporal with spit-polished boots, clean uniform, and neatly trimmed hair stood nervously as he delivered his message, afraid that Tarkin might fly into a rage and order the young man's execution. "Darth Vader is even now tracking down the Toprawan Rebels, sir. He anticipates capturing them before they can deliver their stolen plans."

  Lemelisk watched Tarkin and was amazed by the Grand Moff's seeming lack of concern. He gave a mysterious thin smile while his hard eyes flashed. "Seeing the full details may even increase their fear of this battle station,” Tarkin said. "They won't find a flaw." He looked over at Lemelisk, who felt foolish with the cumbersome bandage across his nose. "My Death Star is invincible."

  Lemelisk leaned back on the infirmary bed and hoped Tarkin was right.

  Now, as he cruised in the inspection scooter over the outer hull of the Darksaber, Lemelisk didn't have such confidence in the new Hutt superweapon. He would have to chastise the Taurill for their shoddy work once again, and the little creatures would scramble to perform the necessary reparations ... until the next screwup.

  But the Taurill weren't the only problem. Sulamar's antique computer cores kept crashing, no matter how carefully Lemelisk reprogrammed them and backed them up. The devices must have been defective from the time of manufacture, and now they were so outdated few people remembered how to fix them.

  Some of the thick metal sheeting purchased from low-bid contractors was found to have millions of micro holes--bad enough for structural material, but this had been intended for the engine shielding! This entire Darksaber project was one misery after another.

  The front-end girders of the kilometers-long cylinder didn't exactly match up with the aft girders in the final assembly, and if the superlaser was not perfectly aligned when Durga fired the weapon, the deadly beam could vaporize the Darksaber rather than its intended target. And there was more ...

  His groan echoed inside the inspection scooter. He had overseen repairs to each of these problems, but finding so many instances of ineptitude made him wonder about the many problems he had not yet found.

  CHAPTER 41

  Crix Madine and Trandia locked down their A-wing fighters in the dense shadows of rocky outcrop bristling from the rugged surface of a small asteroid.

  "All systems on standby and powered up,” Madine said. "Even if everything goes as planned, we need to be ready to leave here fast."

  Trandia responded with the grim fatalism she had shown since the death of Korenn, the third member of their team. "Are we going to return from this mission, sir?" she said.

  Madine thought of responding with a reassuring answer, then decided she deserved something more honest. "We must remain optimists," he said. "There's a chance we'll get back home eventually."

  Trandia said, "Good enough for me, sir."

  Madine and Trandia wore heavily padded, single-mission spacesuits, walking outfits of armor like self-contained mobile ships. They stood on the crumbly surface of the asteroid, checking their complement of detonators, life-support packs, and surveillance systems.

  "Ready to go, sir," Trandia said.

  Madine stood beside her, bulky in the hardened survival suit. They looked out at the enormous structure taking shape as it hung at a stable point in the asteroid belt. "Launch,” Madine said.

  He and Trandia leaped upward, tearing themselves free of the asteroid's negligible gravity. Momentum carried them across the gulf of space toward the superweapon under construction. As he and Trandia drifted like tiny pieces of rubble toward the giant cylindrical assembly, Madine had a good deal of time to stare at the Hutt project through his faceplate.

  The design concerned him. He was aware that the Hutts had copied the Death Star plans from the Imperial Information Center --but this was no Death Star. It appeared instead to be no more than the superlaser, a straight cylinder that would serve as a destructive offensive weapon. If this weapon were completed, the Hutts would show little reluctance to use it against any system that failed to pay them for protection. And the construction seemed nearly finished.

  The two suited figures floated in, specks against the kilometers-long assembly. Madine spoke in a focused line-of-sight beam at Trandia. "We may be able to cripple the weapon if we can get inside and place our detonators in appropriate spots."

  "From the looks of it, we'd better not wait too long, sir," Trandia said. "Seems like the Hutts are ready to go."

  At last, their magnetic boots made contact with the armor plates, black metal that reflected little starlight. Using his adhesive gloves, Madine clambered like an insect along the hull. The Hutt weapon was so vast that the curvature of the cylinder wa
s unnoticeable beneath him.

  He and Trandia worked their way along the metal plates, and Madine was surprised to see that many of the hull segments were mismatched and loose, welded together but leaving gaps and uneven seams. Such a construction couldn't possibly hold an atmosphere. He was appalled by the reprehensible workmanship. At least it would be easy to get inside.

  They came upon one particularly loose plate, and Madine removed a crude crowbar from the tool compartment of his bulky suit. With it he was able to peel free some of the crumbling welds. The sheet of metal drifted away, tumbling end over end. The missing plate left an opening large enough for Trandia and Madine to crawl through even in their cumbersome suits.

  They entered a darkened, half-completed corridor, little more than an access space between the shoddy outer hull and a not-much-better inner wall. Bright beams from their helmets lit the way as they pulled themselves along. Finally they reached a bulkhead door that allowed them to pass deeper inside the construction and work their way toward the aft interior chambers. They cycled one at a time through a cramped airlock.

  Clomping in his heavy boots, Madine entered another dimly lit passageway and stood waiting for Trandia. When she joined him, Madine removed his helmet. "There's atmosphere here. Let's take off our suits," he said. "We'll need the freedom of movement. We might have to hide on a moment's notice, and I can hardly move inside this contraption."

  Trandia disassembled the heavy components, piling her armor beside his in an unused storage alcove. The empty suits looked like enough metal to be the shrapnel from an Imperial scout walker. Trandia's braid had come loose, and strands of hair swam around her face. Perspiration dampened her neck, and her skin was flushed--but her eyes were flinty.

  Madine and Trandia removed the tools and the detonators from their packs. He scratched his beard and held a clenched fist in the air. "To the success of our mission."