Inside the featureless Force shell he had wrapped around himself and his mind, Luke Skywalker centered his thoughts into a single projectile, a tangible shout across space and time. In his mind his words thrummed along the lines of Force that connected everything in the cosmos.
He recalled hanging on Cloud City’s lower antennas, dangling above the clouds as he held on for dear life. He had issued a similar call then, before he had known the truth about his sister … before he had realized there was a connection between them. Luke had still known whom to ask for assistance.
“Leia!” he called from the far fringes of the asteroid belt, flinging his thoughts undirected across space. “Leia … Leia …”
CHAPTER 39
Exhausted from the fraying effects of constant tension during the diplomatic mission to Durga’s fortress—compounded by the startling knowledge that Admiral Daala was still alive and gearing up for another assault against the New Republic—Leia sat in her comfortable seat in the diplomatic shuttle. Han piloted it away from Nal Hutta, avoiding the Smugglers’ Moon entirely and arrowing out to open space where Ackbar’s fleet waited.
Relieved that he no longer required stuffy diplomatic finery, Han wore his familiar old clothes again: black vest, white shirt, and dark pants that had seen better days. Leia wished she had brought along comfortable clothes herself, but she had forgotten to pack them while preparing for her surprise performance on the Hutt homeworld.
Beside her, Threepio helpfully chattered his list of all the duties waiting for her upon returning to Coruscant. His thin voice rattled off one obligation after another; some she had forgotten, some she had ignored, and some she just didn’t want to remember. As Threepio continued with unbridled enthusiasm for the safe trivialities of a governmental life, Leia found herself lulled into an uneasy doze. The smooth vibrations of the diplomatic ship hummed into her bones like an electronic massage. Her thoughts drifted. Her breathing became more regular.…
And suddenly a spear of thought lanced through her. Leia sat bolt upright as a convulsive shudder made her skin crawl. She blinked her large brown eyes and gasped. The thought came again like a bullet of ice shooting through her mind.
Leia…
Leia!
“Luke?” she whispered.
Threepio, still reciting his list, finally noticed that something was wrong. “Mistress Leia, are you all right?”
Han turned from the pilot’s seat, an expression of concern on his face. “Hey, Leia—what is it?”
Leia shivered and squeezed her eyes shut. She ran her fingertips across her forehead … and the voice continued to echo through her skull, a distant pleading call with no details, just the repeated summons.
Leia!
“It’s Luke,” she said. “He’s in trouble.”
“Do you know where he is?” Han said, his face filled with questions he did not ask. In their years together, Han had learned not to inquire about certain details of the Jedi, because he would never understand anyway. He no longer considered it a “hokey religion,” but he still didn’t comprehend it.
“No,” she said. Luke’s ethereal voice faded to the back of her mind where it remained, its insistent summons growing no worse but issuing a continuous call. “I think I can find him if I concentrate hard enough, though. We have to—”
“Hey, look!” Han pointed out the cockpit as they approached the New Republic fleet. Wedge’s escort frigate Yavaris hung in front of them like a jagged monstrosity. Connected to one of the docking ports was the familiar battered shape of the Millennium Falcon. “Chewie must be back with Artoo.” Han spun in his chair and looked at Leia. “When we get to the fleet, we’ll give them our news about the Hutts. Then we can take all these warships with us to rescue Luke—or we can just go in the Falcon.”
“All right.” Leia bit her lower lip. “I don’t think the whole fleet would help, though. We’ve got to go soon.” She swallowed, trying to ease her dry throat. “We’ll have to brief Ackbar on what we learned about Imperial activities. He’ll need time to plan strategy.”
When the diplomatic shuttle pulled into the receiving bay of the Yavaris, they sprang out of their ship with the New Republic armed escort. Before Han could get his bearings, the towering lanky form of a bellowing Wookiee rushed to greet him. Chewbacca embraced Han so hard that Leia thought she could hear bones crack.
Wedge Antilles came running up breathless. “Han, Leia! Glad you’re back. Chewie and Artoo found out something on Nar Shaddaa, but once they heard you were on your way, they insisted on waiting.”
Chewbacca barked a rapid story that Leia could not understand. Artoo also wheeled up whistling and chittering. “Wait a minute, you two,” Leia said, raising her voice.
Han held out both hands, palm outward. “Chewie,” he said, “hey, buddy—talk slower! I can’t understand you.”
It took several minutes for Han to extricate the message about Imperial General Sulamar linking up with the Hutts to build their superweapon. This—tied with the information that Admiral Daala had unified the remaining Imperial forces and was planning her assault—made the galaxy a dangerous place indeed.
Leia listened, sick with anxiety for Luke, yet knowing she had to give instructions, issue standing orders for her fleet before she went rushing off.
“General Antilles,” Leia said, “let’s go to the war room and link up with Admiral Ackbar. We’ve got to discuss strategy, but Han and I have to leave with all possible speed—my brother, Luke, is in trouble. Everything’s happening at once.”
“Luke’s in trouble?” Wedge asked. “Let’s go!”
They rushed to the sealed war room, and a coded transmission brought a holographic simulacrum of Admiral Ackbar into the room with them. Leia drummed her fingertips on the table, looking around, feeling the prodding of Luke’s mental call that hadn’t lessened.
Luke needed her. He was trapped somehow. She had to leave. She had to leave.
“The Hutts are building their own superweapon with Imperial assistance,” Leia began. “And our old friend Admiral Daala is unifying a new fleet to strike against the New Republic. All this is happening right under our noses.”
She glanced from Wedge’s square-jawed face to Ackbar’s glassy, unreadable Calamarian eyes. “I want all of our teams on yellow alert from this moment on. Make sure everyone is ready for immediate deployment to battle, wherever the Imperials may strike.” She turned toward Wedge. “But, we mustn’t tip our hand. The only advantage we have is that they don’t know we know what they’re up to. They probably realize we suspect something because we’re here snooping around … but they won’t think we’ve found anything. You will continue your maneuvers, as before.
“Right now Han, Chewie, and I will take the Falcon and go rescue Luke. We can’t let the Hutts think anything has changed. Wait for your report from General Madine’s mission and act accordingly if I haven’t returned—I trust you all.”
Leia stood with a determined look on her face. “Now I have to go save my brother.” Han took her hand as they ran to the Falcon.
Leia sat strapped into her seat, still concentrating, following Luke’s gradually fading request for assistance. Her Force abilities had been sharpened through Luke’s training, and though she couldn’t give Han any direct coordinates for his navicomputer, she could take him in the right general direction; as they approached closer, she narrowed down Luke’s location.
The battered space yacht looked like a derelict careening in a random path along the fringes of the asteroid belt. Artoo-Detoo squealed as he detected the ship on the sensors, and Chewbacca triangulated on its position as he steered the Falcon to the rescue.
With the Falcon’s tractor beam, they took the ruined yacht in tow and brought their airlocks together, sealing them so that Han, Leia, and Chewie could open the outer hatch and enter the darkened wreck. Leia had noted disturbing marks on the outer hull, not simply dents and scars from meteor impacts—but long scratches that looked as if they had been made with impossibly s
harp claws.
She couldn’t understand what he had been doing out in the Hoth system. When he and Callista departed from Coruscant, Luke had intended to go with her to the exclusive and romantic cometary resort of the Mulako Primordial Water Quarry—but something must have changed.
Panting, Han dropped down into the empty hold of Luke’s ship with a thud, and called up for breathmasks. “Almost no air left in here,” he gasped, “and it’s freezing cold. Reminds me of Kessel.”
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 Dark-saber 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 into complex 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 C
alamarian 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.
Star Wars: Darksaber Page 26
