The Squibs' dewback stopped drinking, and Borno motioned it
away. The driver led it over to the caravan column, being careful to keep himself between the beast and the Imperials watching from
Anchorhead. Hanging in their smuggler's harness behind the long saddle blanket, the Squibs were well concealed, but it always paid to be careful when there were stormtroopers about.
Han was the next to lead his beast forward. Like Leia, he carried a long Askajian herding spear and wore a huge sand cloak over thick pads of musky-smelling tomuon wool tied to his stomach, back, and shoulders. He still seemed skinny for an Askajian herder, but too large and round to be one of the humans the Imperials were seeking. The disguise would probably work, as long as the stormtroopers remained at a distance and the morning light did not grow too revealing.
Leia was less confident of Han's ability to wear it. The battle at the inn had left his face pale and drawn, and she could tell by the weight of her own disguise that the extra padding would take a toll on his strength. Were it not for the Imperial threat-and the fact that the Squibs would pursue Killik Twilight alone-she would have insisted on taking shelter at the Darklighters' farm for another day or two.
Chewbacca was strapped beneath Han's mount, his big shoulders squeezed tight between the dewback's front legs. Though his head also sank into the water as the beast lowered its mouth to drink, he accepted the dunking with remarkably good grace- perhaps because he could sense how uncomfortable Han and Leia were in their disguises.
"I'm sure that alien officer called the rest of his company," Han said to Leia. "If we're still here when they come, it'll take more than a hundred Askajians to keep them from searching the caravan. You're sure this is a better idea?"
"Honestly, I don't know." Leia watched as their landspeeder
emerged from the vehicle storage room of the Sidi Driss, its finish flushing pink in the morning light. Behind it came a pair of stormtroopers walking the Squibs' swoop. "But had we left town in our landspeeder, how long do you think it would have taken the officer to call in a flight of TIEs?"
"Not long." Han glanced at his mount's long tongue lapping water out of the basin, then whispered, "They've figured us out Leia. They must have."
Leia nodded. "I think so." Her stomach knotted with worry__
not for herself, but for Han and Chewbacca. "I never imagined recovering the painting would lead to so much trouble. I feel terrible about the way I dragged you and Chewie into this."
"Yeah, like I'd rather be home wondering what's happened to you." Han looked at her from beneath his sand hood. His eyes were sunken and hollow. "Besides, you know I'm the only one who can get you out of this mess."
"Really?" Leia folded her arms across her wool-padded chest. "And you're certain I need someone to rescue me right now?"
Han waved a hand toward the Sidi Driss. "Yeah."
"You seem to have forgotten why we were there in the first place." Leia spoke in a deliberately even voice. "I'm not the last one who needed rescuing."
Leia's mount finished drinking, and Borno signaled her to leave. She led the beast away from the basin, freeing the spot for the last dewback in line, and went over to join the caravan column. Several Askajians were careful to remain between her and the town, filling water jugs at the clean-water spigot or walking a few steps alongside, chattering merrily in their own language. She was grateful for their caution. C-3PO's metallic finish had been smeared with a mixture of dewback saliva and dung ash as a safeguard against a saddle blanket being inadvertently drawn aside, but it never hurt to be cautious.
The caravan was forming a tight defensive column, three animals abreast with the rider in the middle leading one cargo beast to each side. Leia walked her mount into the center position at the end of the line. Two Askajians helped her into the saddle, then taught her to stop her mount by hauling upward on the reins and to turn it by tapping its head with her herding spear. Once she confirmed her understanding, they brought two cargo beasts to flank her and secured the fibrasteel reins to a pair of saddle rings behind her legs.
"Your mount should stay ahead of the pack beasts," one of the Askajians advised. "But if you feel a rein pressing the back of a leg, strike the pack animal across the nose. That will slow it." "What if I want it to go faster?" This drew a deep Askajian laugh. "You won't." A few minutes later, with Han and the last Askajian in line behind Leia, Borno opened the flush valve to send the unused water back to the recyclers, then lowered the basin's sand cover and joined the rest of the caravan.
A light hoverscout emerged from Anchorhead, one storm-trooper standing in back at the speeder's blaster cannon. Two more Imperials were visible through the front windows. The one in the passenger's seat wore the blaster-scorched shoulder pauldron of a squad leader.
Borno stopped near Leia and Han and pretended to check the cargo straps on the dewbacks they would be leading. "Do the same as everyone else," he said quietly. "I'm sorry, but if they realize we're hiding you, the deal is off. This caravan is too important to my people to risk it in a firefight."
"We understand, Borno," Leia said. "And we're sorry for putting you in any danger at all."
"A caravan is always in danger," Borno replied. "And you have nothing to be sorry about. On Askaj, we had a saying: those who wish to rid themselves of fleegs must clean the hair of their neighbors."
"A wise saying." Leia's scalp began to itch beneath the sand hood.
"And one that applies double to Imperial fleegs," Borno replied. "We will do what we can to keep our part of the bargain."
Borno departed.
Behind Leia, Han asked softly, "What's our part of the bargain?"
"Who knows?" Leia glanced over her shoulder, more to make certain he was holding up than to make herself heard. "All I could get out of Emala was that Sligh made an excellent deal, and not to worry. They always have our interests at heart."
Han winced. "I hate it when they say that."
As the hoverscout angled toward the caravan, Borno barked a command and pulled a repeating blaster from beneath his sand cloak. The rest of the Askajians followed his lead, exchanging their herding spears for an astonishing array of weaponry ranging from sniper rifles to power blasters more than capable of piercing an infantry vehicle's armor. Leia removed her blaster from its holster and propped her elbow on her hip, so that the weapon would be in plain sight. Though Askajians were a peace-loving people, the Imperials had obviously taught them the value of intimidation.
The stormtrooper gunner started to swing the blaster cannon around, but the squad leader quickly waved him off. The speeder pilot closed to within twenty meters of the caravan and flew slowly alongside. The gunner kept his helmet lenses fixed on the cargo
line, while the squad leader studied the riders in the center. They passed Borno without incident and rounded the front of the column, then came slowly down the other side.
When the hoverscout reached the end of the column, it stopped. The squad leader leaned out of his window. "Very well. You are free to leave."
The Askajians responded with a chorus of belly laughs so deep it sounded like sand thunder. Borno took his time walking to the head of the caravan, stopping to check cargo straps and chat with drivers. Though Leia knew he was only putting on a show of contempt for the Imperials, she could not help wishing he did not have such a flair for the dramatic. Every minute they tarried brought the rest of the stormtrooper company a minute closer to Anchorhead.
Finally, Borno reached the front of the caravan and hoisted himself into his saddle. Without looking back toward the Imperials, he boomed a command in Askajian that caused his followers to hide their blasters again and take up their herding spears. Then, at last, he urged his mount forward, and the caravan left Anchorhead behind.
The dewbacks were sluggish and slow at first, plodding along barely faster than Leia could walk. But as the suns warmed the morning air, the creatures grew steadily more energetic, and it was only a few minutes before the
caravan was ambling at a swift pace. By the time the last blush of Second Dawn had faded from the air half an hour later, the purple crags of the Jundland Wastes could be seen rippling in the distance ahead.
They rode for only a quarter hour more before the Squibs began to complain about chafing. Though most Askajians could speak Basic, they paid no attention and kept up a merry prattle in their own language. Leia glanced back to check on Han and Chewbacca.
The Wookiee, barely visible in the shadows beneath the dew back's chest, was using the skirts of Han's saddle to pull his weight off the straps. He caught Leia looking and flashed a friendly snarl to show he was doing fine. Han was sitting too upright, staring straight ahead with an artificial smirk across his lips, obviously aware that Leia was checking on him and just as obviously trying to appear stronger than he was.
"Drink something," she mouthed.
Han raised a water bottle to his lips, then made a sour face and said, "You owe me some Gizer."
Then a familiar whine sounded in the sky. Leia looked toward the noise and found herself staring into the blazing white eyes of the two suns, Tatoo II quivering and flickering like something alive as it chased its twin higher into the sky. She turned away, trying to blink the blindness from her eyes. The whine grew more distinct. "Han-"
"TIEs," he confirmed. "Coming out of the suns, subsonic. They're just taking a look."
As the whine grew louder, the dewbacks broke into a nervous trot, and the Askajians were suddenly too busy slapping their herding spears across the pack beasts' noses to continue talking. Leia felt a rein against the back of her leg and turned, bringing her spear down across the nose of the offending beast. By then, the whine had grown to a shrill howl. She glimpsed an H-shaped silhouette dropping into the sky beneath Tatoo I. It swelled almost instantly into a TIE fighter-a fighter that came screaming up on the caravan from behind, flying so low that Leia and everyone else ducked instinctively.
The dewbacks bellowed and would have scattered had the fibrasteel reins not snapped the pack beasts back toward the lead mounts. As it was, the entire caravan burst into a panicked gallop and bolted across the salt flats in a column. Then the TIE's ion drives appeared in the sky ahead, and Borno's mount broke to the right leading the rest of the caravan after it in a long curving arc.
Leia nearly bounced out of the saddle before she managed to get her weight into the stirrups, and even then she came close to flying off each time the seat slammed into her from below.
The TIE went into a steep climb and did a wingover, then fell ominously silent as it began to dive back toward the caravan. The dewbacks dropped out of their gallop and began to rumble to each other in low, barely audible tones.
Then the whine started again, and the TIE swelled in the sky, now coming at the caravan from the flank.
This was too much for the dewbacks. They turned as one and fled in rank. Leia glimpsed Han beside her, a Wookiee hand hanging on to the saddle alongside his leg.
The TIE shrieked past overhead, trailing panic and the harsh smell of ozone. Leia's dewback broke right, dragging the pack beasts along and slamming hard into Han's trio. All six creatures nearly went down, but the lead mounts pushed off each other at the last minute and dragged their followers back to their feet. Leia spied a pebbled flank ahead and frantically slapped her spear into her dewback's head, barely turning it in time to avoid another collision.
The caravan dispersed, galloping across the plain in a hundred different directions, and Leia thought for a minute it would scatter to the far corners of the mesa. But once the whine of the TIE had faded, a low thrumming almost too deep to hear began to roll across the plain behind her. Her mount and the pack beasts turned toward the sound immediately and continued at a dead run.
Leia hauled back on the reins, trying to slow down until she
could see what was causing the sound, but the effort was useles When her mount slowed, the pack beasts charged forward their fibrasteel leads pinning her legs against the saddle skirts. When she slapped the herding spear across their snouts, her mount charged ahead. She finally began to feel vibrations in her stomach and realized her dewbacks were thrumming in reply, and she gave up trying to slow them. A few moments later, she began to see other riders charging toward the same spot she was, converging on Borno and his mount.
As Leia arrived at the edge of the throng, Sligh was complaining, "How can you leave us under here? We won't have a hair left on our bodies!"
Borno ignored the Squib and his fellows, issuing a series of commands in his own language. His drivers quickly arranged the dewbacks into a giant outward-facing circle and linked each creature to the two adjacent, connecting the whole caravan together via the sturdy fibrasteel reins.
Leia was impressed with Borno's foresight. After making his initial pass, a good reconnaissance pilot would return a few minutes later to record a second set of pictures and data that would show how the subject had reacted to his first pass. Often, the differences between the two were more telling than the data itself.
As they waited for the TIE to return, Leia glanced over and found Han waiting with his herding spear leaning against his leg and both hands braced on his saddle pommel. The muscles on the backs of his hands were trembling visibly.
"Drink some water," Leia said.
"Just did." Han straightened his back and patted the water bottle hanging beneath his cloak, then seemed to wobble in the saddle. "Why do you keep saying that?"
"Because you're looking a little shaky," Leia said. "You shouldn't he out in this heat, not so soon after yesterday."
"I don't think the Imperials are giving us a choice," Han said. "Except maybe a nice climate-controlled berth on the Chimaera."
Chewbacca groaned an opinion about that possibility.
"I don't care for how it would end, either." Leia reached into her satchel and removed the vidmap Han had taken off his borrowed swoop before abandoning it, then called up a schematic of the area. "But the Darklighter Farm isn't far."
"Not far at all," Emala agreed from beneath her dewback. "You could be there in half a day at most, even by dewback."
"So?" Han demanded.
"So you shouldn't be out in this heat," Leia said. "You haven't recovered. I'm sure the Darklighters will hide you for a day or two."
"Us," Han corrected. "I'm not going anywhere without you."
"Han, you know I can't," Leia said.
"Sure you can," Emala said. "Your partners will recover Killik Twilight."
"You?" Leia glanced in the Squibs' direction. Her view of them was completely blocked by the adjacent dewbacks, but she shook her head anyway. "You're the biggest reason I need to go."
"You don't trust us?" Sligh gasped. "When have we ever given you reason to be so rude?"
"Trust is earned," Leia said. "You have a little work to do."
"And you'd rather let your mate die than take a chance on us?" Grees demanded. "Some heartless jillie you are."
"That's enough out of you three," Han said. "I'm not going anywhere without Leia, understand?"
Leia shook her head in frustration. "You're impossible."
"Yeah? I'm not the only one."
An uneasy silence fell over the area as nearby Askajians politely averted their gazes and tried to pretend they had not overheard the argument.
Leia sighed, then turned to Han and ordered, "Drink some water."
Han glanced over, not quite scowling, and said, "You, too."
They pulled their water bottles from beneath their cloaks, then tipped the necks toward each other in a silent toast. They drank together, the mystified Askajians watching and murmuring as they puzzled over erratic human behavior.
After Han finished drinking, his gaze remained fixed on the blazing sky. "That didn't take long."
A familiar whine rose from the direction of the sun. Leia barely had time to put away the vidmap and her water bottle before the TIE was on them, screaming over the caravan so low that she was sure a lucky Askajian could ha
ve planted a spear into one of its solar panels. The dewbacks bellowed wildly and tried to scatter, but found themselves pulling against their fellows and went nowhere. The circle simply undulated until the starfighter was past, then settled back into stillness as the craft climbed into the sky.
Borno shouted a command, and the Askajians began to draw their blasters from beneath their sand cloaks. The TIE did a wingover and approached on a vector perpendicular to its first pass. Again, the alarmed dewbacks attempted to flee and found themselves restrained by their neighbors. The Askajians added to the panic by shooting into the air, clearly trying to send a message by firing directly at the starfighter. Leia doubted they really meant to bring it down; Borno struck her as a competent enough warrior to know that the best way to bring down a low-flying craft was to put a wall of fire up in front of it.
Star Wars - Tatooine Ghost Page 22
