Luke pursed his lips. “Given time, we could work out some way to recharge the blasters. There must be a way to jury-rig a thermal unit or a light source to dump power into the blaster charge packs.”
Burrk shrugged. “If you’ve got the time and the resources and the inspiration …”
Luke rummaged around in the scrap equipment. Burrk squatted and took a more primitive approach; pulling out pipes and rods, he used instant-set epoxy to fasten on knife blades fashioned from metal shards. He made four crude spears. They were hopeless weapons against an onslaught from the ice creatures, but the former stormtrooper had no intention of giving up.
Drom Guldi cleaned and polished his blaster rifle. Sinidic sat listless beside him, fidgeting with his hands. The Baron-Administrator elbowed his aide. “We need a morale booster. Sinidic, see if you can’t find us some rations. Maybe something hot to eat and drink. There isn’t much, but we need to keep our strength up.”
“Me?” Sinidic said, blinking stupidly.
“You’re sitting there paralyzed—you need something to do. Keep yourself busy. First order of business.”
Sinidic got up, swallowed, and nodded. His grayish skin grew more flushed. He looked at Drom Guldi for confirmation of the orders, then trotted off to one of the storerooms to do his master’s bidding.
Luke and Callista sat together, holding each other for comfort. “This isn’t quite the vacation I planned,” Luke said.
Callista leaned her head against his. “Remind me never to listen to your fancy talk again.”
Burrk stood up, grasped one of his new spears, and tossed it across the room. The sharp tip plunged into the packed snow walls, and the spear hung there, quivering. “I think that’ll do,” he said.
A loud shriek erupted from the darkened storeroom, followed by a wet ripping sound and then a gurgling gasp. The five survivors in the room lunged to their feet, Drom Guldi the first among them. They had taken no more than a few steps down the ice-walled corridor before a bloodied wampa lumbered out of the storeroom, his claws dripping, his white fur drenched with fresh gore.
Drom Guldi faltered for just an instant, then he brought up his blaster rifle, firing three times in rapid succession. He hit precisely each time—the wampa’s stomach, the center of its chest, and its hideous head. With no more than a hollow cough, the monster fell to the packed floor with the sound of a crashing cargo hauler.
“Must have slipped in the open door while we were fighting outside!” Burrk said.
Drom Guldi looked toward the supply room where he had sent his aide. He didn’t bother to go inside. Instead, the Baron-Administrator reached toward Burrk and grabbed one of the stormtrooper’s newly fashioned spears. With the metal blade, Drom Guldi hacked down, chopping off one of the wampa’s curved tusks. The big-game hunter held the dripping prize in his hand and inspected it critically. “This one,” he said coldly. “This is the one I’ll take for my trophy. And for Sinidic.” He threw a second glance at the darkened storeroom, and his face grew stony. “These monsters are persistent.”
From outside, the dull echoing thuds continued as the ice creatures attempted to pummel their way inside.
Then, to make things worse, all the lights went out.
“They trashed the generator,” Burrk said, his voice coming from the emptiness of darkness.
Luke pulled out his lightsaber and pressed the power stud. The green beam crackled out with an eerie glow that illuminated the walls of ice and snow. Callista drew her blade, and the two stood side by side.
Luke tensed. He heard something … a scratching, digging sound. He wondered if other wampas lay hidden in the darkened rooms. The pounding outside the shield door redoubled, and everyone turned, though they knew the wampas could not get through.
Just then the walls crumbled on all sides, blocks of hard-packed snow showered down as more of the creatures plowed their way directly through the ice.
Luke realized that the futile pounding and scratching on the outer shield door had been a distraction, something to preoccupy the victims, while the wampas dug through the snow, burrowing their way into Echo Base. With bellows of triumph and anticipation, an army of ghostly white monsters surged into the corridors.
Nodon, finally unrestrained, yowled and threw himself upon the nearest wampa, but the others turned and fell upon him. The Cathar went down fighting, a blurry mass of fur and claws and biting teeth—and sudden, spraying blood.
Burrk backed against a rough rock that protruded from the carved snow. In each hand he held one of his metal spears, thrusting and jabbing, trying to intimidate the ice creatures—but though the blades were sharp and the points long, the spears were pitiful against the blood-thirsty monsters. He stabbed and lunged, making no outcry. He wore a grim, defeated look as he fought—until the mass of attacking snow monsters swallowed him up. Finally, in the last instant, he screamed.
Luke and Callista remained back-to-back, slashing with lightsabers and slaughtering the monsters that came too close, but there were too many. “Get back to the shield door!” Callista said. “We have to run to our ship. Try to fix it. That’s our only chance.”
Luke said, “I don’t have a better idea,” then swung his lightsaber. With a sizzle he sliced a towering creature in two. Luke recognized dimly that the monsters had stopped pounding outside. They must have flocked to the new openings that allowed them access into the base. The front might be clear.
Drom Guldi used his seven remaining shots, killing a wampa each time he pressed the firing button; but that drained the weapon. He tossed the blaster rifle to the ground, tucked the wampa tusk into his utility belt, as if it remained important to him, then gripped the metal spear he had taken from Burrk, sweeping it from side to side. He laughed, his eyes bright, his tanned face flushed. The wampas surrounded him, and he grinned. “Come on!” Drom Guldi said. “Get what’s coming to you!”
The wampas came.
Trying to drown out the last gurgled screams of Drom Guldi, Callista and Luke fought their way down the corridor toward the shield door. They mowed down the ice creatures who threw themselves recklessly at the glowing blades. Though Callista was unable to use the Force in her fighting, the wampas were not difficult targets, huge hulks of white fur and taut muscles. But it would take the slip of only an instant for a raking claw to slice open either Luke or Callista.
As they passed beyond where the wampas had tunneled through, the attacking monsters grew sparse, and Luke and Callista were able to run at full speed. The shield door reflected the light of their weapons, and Callista ran for the controls.
“We’ll seal ourselves in the ship and hope that within just a few minutes we can rig it to blast off,” Luke said. “Those things could rip open the hull in no time.”
The shield door heaved open. Callista turned to defend their backs as Luke made ready to run out into the night. The dark chill struck him like a sledgehammer, knocking the wind out of him with an intense freezing blast, colder than anything Luke could remember.
Directly outside, under the wan light of multiple moons, stood the one-armed wampa ice creature, the tallest of them all, blocking their escape from Echo Base.
The monster roared into the ice-bright night and raised his one enormous hand, spreading the claws. Luke felt a momentary flash of remembered fear that made him falter. He stood gripping the lightsaber. Finding no danger behind them, Callista turned back to see what the problem was.
And, with its eyes fixed on Luke, its nemesis … the one-armed monster lunged for Callista, instead.
She couldn’t react fast enough. Seeing the down-sweeping arc of the sharp claws and the blinding speed with which the wampa charged, Luke yelled, “No!” and cut sideways with his lightsaber.
Putting all the Force behind his swing, Luke cleaved the one-armed snow creature in half.
The dead monster continued to growl and gurgle as it lay smoking on the threshold of the shield door. “I thought I had done that a long time ago,” Luke whispered
.
More wampas surged from the tunnels below. Outside in the night snow creatures stood up from the outcrops, no longer bothering to hide.
“Don’t just stand there,” Callista said, shoving Luke as he stared at the dead one-armed creature. “Run!”
The two sprinted across the hard-packed snow. The cold slashed like razors at their lungs as they gasped for breath, already exhausted from the battle.
The wreckage of the poachers’ ship looked ominous in the watery light, but their own space yacht shone like their only hope. As the wampas pursued, leaping across the snow-swept rocks, Luke and Callista ran with their last surge of strength.
Reaching the ship, Luke hammered at the door controls. Callista stood behind him, her lightsaber glowing. The door slid open, and Luke pulled her inside, then sealed the door again.
He ran to the pilot compartment and stared at the controls, stifling the sickening despair that swept over him. The controls were smashed. The navicomputer gone. The comm system ripped out. The wampas hadn’t ruined the engines, though the cables for thrust control had been torn free.
He and Callista set to work, removing dented or slashed panels and trying to cross-wire anything, just to get them lifted off.
Outside, the wampas began to batter the hull of the space yacht with sharp rocks. If they breached the hull, Luke knew he and Callista could never leave the atmosphere of Hoth. Callista hunched beside him, working on a different panel. She sorted wires, traced connections, moving with a frantic, efficient energy that wasted not a second. “Try this,” she said, and pulled out an alternative power source, which he jacked into the thruster control.
“We can ignite the engines, lift up out of here,” Luke said.
Callista agreed. “We’ll never be able to restart the engines if we land again. We have to move now, and we have to get off this planet.”
Luke triggered the firing button, and the space yacht’s engines roared to life at full power. They had no directional control. The ship lurched up off the ground—and the last thing they heard from the wampas was a long, shrieking scrape of claws against the metal hull as the ship tore away, plunging upward into the night. The icy cracked surface dwindled below them with dizzying speed. They had no maneuverability, just a blind ballistic takeoff that hurled them into the atmosphere.
Callista worked at the other controls. Luke already knew what damage the wampas had done, but her voice faltered as she gave her own assessment.
“No comm system, no navicomputer, only five percent life support.” She sighed. “Who knows where we’ll end up? We might have been better off staying down there.”
NAL HUTTA
CHAPTER 34
Though See-Threepio was miffed that Durga the Hutt had cut short the diplomatic visit so suddenly (after offering a wealth of excuses and apologies), Leia felt an oppressive weight leave her shoulders as soon as the fat slug was off the planet.
It had become clear that Durga either had no overall authority from the Hutts or no inclination to enter into a bargain with the New Republic—as Leia had suspected. Their negotiations had gone exactly nowhere, and Durga feigned ignorance every time Leia mentioned the subject of secret weapons.
“We are businessmen, not warriors,” Durga had said. “Our battles consist of under-the-table negotiations, not blasters and detonators.”
Although Han glanced at Leia with an I-told-you-so expression, she could tell that she had managed to shake Durga. The birthmarked Hutt had hoped to stall longer, and he seemed decidedly uncomfortable throughout their “diplomatic” visit—but Leia had not given him any easy opportunity to get rid of them.
Han and Leia were both surprised, however, when even after his speedy departure, Durga did provide access to one of his private information brokers—true to his word. Before Leia and Han departed in their diplomatic ship, Korrda the emaciated Hutt ordered one of the brokers brought in to “service” them.
Gamorrean guards dragged a cart with creaking wheels into the dining hall. The carrion birds still perched on their ledges, waiting for dropped food or for a guest to stop moving long enough that they could pounce.
The cart was old and stained with clumps of decomposing refuse, as if someone had mistaken it for a garbage receptacle. A huge, spiral-shaped mollusk shell filled the cart, its ridges worn and covered with algae. The opening to the corkscrew shell was black and foul-smelling. Leia wasn’t sure she wanted to know what lurked within.
Korrda slithered forward to rap briskly on the shell with a thin stick. With a sound like a long stream of sand poured into thin mud, a fleshy appendage nudged out of the open hole in the corkscrew shell, protruding like a long tongue. The creature emerged like a worm from a piece of rotten fruit, sickly tan-gray with a cluster of five milky white eyes on its smooth rounded head. “What do you want?” the creature said in a surly voice.
Korrda reared up to glare at the shell creature. “Lord Durga commands that you provide information to these guests. They need to know about Imperial activities.” Korrda finally seemed filled with self-confidence, now that he spoke to a creature even lower in the pecking order than he was.
The information broker grumbled. “Information on Imperial activities, eh? Couldn’t narrow it down a little, I suppose? Noooo, that’s too much to hope for, isn’t it? We could at least limit ourselves to current Imperial activities, couldn’t we?”
“Yes,” Leia said. “We want to know what the remnants of the Empire are up to right now.”
“Oh, good—that’s much easier, isn’t it?” the shell creature said sarcastically. “I suppose you require a specific listing of every individual’s activities—I have records of five billion or so, and that’s without even looking hard—or would generalizations be good enough, hmmm?”
“Generalizations would be sufficient,” Leia answered tightly.
Without a word, the smooth head slipped back into the dark opening with a wet pop.
Leia heard muffled rummaging sounds as the creature stirred about, as if it were searching through a labyrinth inside the enormous shell. She wondered what the creature could be doing in there; then the damp head popped up again and turned its eye cluster toward Leia.
“You’re in luck, aren’t you?—plenty of schemes afoot. Imperial forces have been unified, squabbling warlords executed. Starship construction increased tenfold, new soldiers appearing by the tens of thousands—that the sort of thing you’re looking for? Imperial military forces have clustered around a single commander, and it would appear that even women and aliens are allowed to serve to the extent of their abilities—a vast change from the Emperor’s way of thinking, wouldn’t you say? Charming to see an enlightened Imperial commander, isn’t it?”
Han looked over at her, and Leia sat up straight. The alien information broker had piqued her interest, despite her initial resistance. Could it actually be telling the truth? Leia suspected this entire charade was still part of Durga’s scheme, a distraction to keep them concerned about one threat while the Hutts completed another one. But even Durga’s ulterior motives did not preclude an actual Imperial plot.
Leia said, “Do you know what their plans are? Has the Empire formed some sort of strategy?”
The information broker wavered in the air. “Scattered Imperial fleets have come together with such a buildup of weapons they are almost certainly planning a major assault against the New Republic, wouldn’t you think? Specific target unknown, so it’s no use asking, is it?”
The information broker swiveled its eye cluster toward Korrda. “May I go now? I have a lot of work to do—you can see how busy I am, can’t you?”
“Wait,” Han interrupted. “Who is this new Imperial commander? I need to know.”
The information broker rumbled deep inside its body. “Oh, that’s all you want, is it? Why not ask for the number of sand grains on the beaches of Pil-Diller, or ask me to count the leaves in the forests of Ithor, eh?”
Korrda rapped the shell with his gnarled stick a
gain. “Shut up and answer the question.”
“All right, all right, I was just getting to that, wasn’t I?” the information broker said, and slithered back into the shell, where it rummaged around for an interminable time before it finally popped out again. “Daala,” the creature said. “The admiral in charge of the Imperial forces is named Daala, you see? But that’s all—I’ve scraped the walls, haven’t I? Since I have no more information, good night!”
With that, the fleshy head popped back into the shell, leaving Leia and Han to gape at each other in amazement. Leia had expected nothing like this.
Han looked sickened. He blinked his eyes uncomprehendingly. “But how could it be Daala?” he mumbled. “She’s … dead.”
Leia met his eyes and decided she didn’t want or need an explanation right now. “Apparently not,” she said. “This puts a whole new spin on things—doesn’t it?”
CORE SYSTEMS
CHAPTER 35
In Admiral Daala’s hands, the remnants of the Empire became a machine, a massive cohesive engine being tuned to peak performance.
Cogs spun. Components fit together. Armament factories processed resources into additional weapons: TIE fighters, blastboats, AT-STs, and structural components of new Star Destroyers. Hyperdrives were mass-produced and installed in ship after ship. Weapons’ cores were charged with tibanna gas. Formerly downtrodden workers—even aliens and females—were given responsibilities and put to work for the glory of the Empire.
Daala reveled in the progress reports she received. Now aboard her great black ship, the Night Hammer, she progressed from system to system, knitting together once-scattered allegiances, cementing loyalties, and squeezing more work out of subjects who had been lax for too long, drawing tight the Imperial net.
Accompanied by awesome red Imperial Guards, she spoke at armaments factories and shipyards, raising her voice and building morale, making herself visible so that all could see a charismatic leader who was there to do something against the enemy, fostering hope in the future once more.
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