Star Wars - Tatooine Ghost

by Tatooine Ghost (by Troy Denning)

  A moment later, Han finally slipped out of his saddle.

  Leia was instantly standing in her stirrups, pulling her scarf down and yelling, "Chewie! Wait!"

  Her parched throat managed a loud croak, not much more Still, one of the bouncing Squibs turned and glanced back. Leia pointed at the spot where Han had fallen-she could no longer tell his body from the rippling stones.

  "Han's down!" Her voice cracked and fell short of a yell. "Get Chewie!"

  The Squib shouted something back that she could not understand, then one of them began to bounce up and down even higher on their saddle and wave a pair of arms, and the other two began whacking their mount's neck, trying to force it back toward Han.

  The dewback continued after its fellows.

  As long as the beasts were thrumming, Leia knew she could neither steer nor slow her dewback. She pulled her foot free of the stirrups and brought her leg around so that she was riding entirely on Han's side of the beast. The imbalance caused it to veer in his direction, and-unable to see him lying among the rocks-she began to worry about trampling him.

  Then the Squibs leapt out of their saddle, spreading their sand cloaks to catch the air as they dropped. It was no help. One after the other, they hit the ground, were overcome by their momentum, and started bouncing.

  Leia could have kissed them.

  Learning from their mistake, she watched for a sandy stretch, then kicked her remaining foot out of the stirrup, pushed off, and covered her head.

  Her feet sank to the ankle, and she slammed down on her side, the wind leaving her lungs in a single gasp.

  Normally, she might have lain there in pain trying to get her breath back, but she had jumped from the oven onto the broiler- literally. The sand was so hot it began to burn her skin through the heavy sand cloak, and she found herself rising to her feet almost before the pain registered in her shoulder.

  Leia looked down and found her arm hanging at her side. She tried to lift it and nearly sank to her knees.

  "Stang! When it rains it..." She glanced up at the sky and shook her head. "We should be so lucky."

  Emala came scrambling over, leaping from boulder to boulder. Ten meters behind her, Grees and Sligh were pulling Han to a seated position.

  "Are you crazy, jumping off a moving dewback?" Emala demanded.

  "At least I didn't try to fly." Leia flopped her limp arm toward the Squib. "Hold that. Brace yourself."

  Emala grabbed the offered arm with both hands... then pulled up her feet and let her whole weight drop on Leia's wrist.

  There was a loud pop, and this time Leia did sink to her knees.

  Emala stuck her furry little face in front of Leia and batted her long lashes. "Better?"

  Leia spoke through clenched teeth. "I'm going to... kill... you."

  "Then who will help with your mate?" Emala asked, looking distinctly unimpressed. "Besides, I was only thinking-

  "Don't say it. Don't even think it." Leia stood and tried her arm. An electric bolt of pain shot through her body, but the hand rose. "But thanks."

  She followed Emala over to the others, where Sligh and Grees each had one of Han's arms draped across their shoulders.

  "How is he?" she asked.

  "Heavy," Grees said. "Grab a leg and let's go."

  "In a minute." Leia went around and slipped her hand under

  Han's scarf and felt his pulse. It was shallow and slow. His skin was as dry as a stone, and nearly as hot. "He's stopped sweating. That's bad."

  "So, you want to leave him?" Sligh asked.

  "No!" Leia checked her chronometer. "But we don't have time to keep going. That TIE's due back in two minutes."

  The Squibs peered toward the canyon. Down this close to the ground, the mirage waters seemed closer. They could no longer see the canyon's rim, only the dark shadow that had been their first hint of its presence.

  "So what?" Grees started to pull Han forward. "It hasn't seen us before."

  "It'll be closer this time." Leia looked around for something resembling shelter, then finally pointed at the thin sliver of shade behind a large boulder. "Help me lay him over there, then find the shady side of a rock for yourselves."

  The Squibs looked doubtful, but did as she instructed, placing him in close to the boulder. Though hardly cool, the sand wasn't quite so searing without the suns beating down on it, and Leia told herself it wouldn't hurt Han to lie there for a few minutes.

  The drone of the TIE stalker arose thirty seconds later and quickly built to shrill whine. This time, it was close. Had Leia dared to raise her head above the rock, she felt certain she would have seen the solar panels streaking across the near horizon.

  Still listening to the sound, she raised Han's goggles and opened his cloak-the closures were difficult to work with one hand-then emptied her water bottle onto his face and clothes. Hot as it was, the moisture would still have a cooling effect as it evaporated.

  Han's eyes opened, glassy and unfocused, and he rasped, "Another bath already?"

  "Just a shower." Unsure whether he was joking or hallucinating, Leia cradled his head in her lap and pulled the water bottle off his belt. "Can you drink?"

  "Got a Gizer?"

  "A little warm water."

  "That'll do." Han grabbed her shoulder to pull himself up, then scowled when she winced. "What happened?"

  "Fast stop," Leia said. "I separated my shoulder-not bad. I can still lift my arm."

  Han nodded, then finally seemed to hear the whining TIE and glanced skyward. "Tell me it's not your shooting arm." "It's not."

  "Good. No worries." He took the water bottle and swallowed a few gulps, then made a sour face. "You call that a little warm?"

  The whine of the TIE faded. Leia put the water bottles away and called the Squibs from their hiding places, but Han didn't want them banging his head on rocks and insisted he could walk on his own. Leia found herself regretting every excuse she had ever used for not learning to use the Force to levitate stubborn husbands.

  Han lasted almost a dozen steps before his eyes rolled up and he collapsed again. Leia reached out to catch him, instinctively using both arms, and now she really regretted not learning how to levitate things. Once she had recovered from the pain, they carried him, Grees and Sligh taking the front, Leia and Emala the rear.

  Following the caravan trail across the broken terrain proved more difficult than expected. That close to the ground, the air was so superheated, and the reflection of the suns so brilliant, that when Leia tried to look for tracks all she saw was a painful shimmering radiance. She settled for traveling in the general direction of the shadow and quickly discovered that moving at even a brisk scramble was too fast. Within a minute, all four were staggering from the

  heat and exertion. Within three minutes, they had to stop to rest and drink.

  "How far... can it be?" Grees cupped his hands around his goggles and peered into the rippling air. "It didn't look that far."

  "This close to the ground, the mirage effect is more pronounced." Leia did not add what she had learned during her Rebel military training: that in a desert, distances were usually three times what they appeared. "We'll reach the canyon soon."

  The Squibs looked at her as though she had just told them it was going to rain, then put away their water bottles and picked up Han again. This time, they moved at a deliberate walk, and five minutes later, the darkness finally slid out from beneath the mirage and resolved itself into the canyon again.

  Sligh stopped and, nearly letting Han slip, pointed away at an angle. "Where's that Wookiee going?"

  Leia looked in the indicated direction and saw a wavering tower of fur loping across the desert past them. She dropped Han's leg and waved.

  "Chewbacca!" When he stopped and turned in their direction, she added less loudly, "Hurry!"

  He arrived a few moments later, glassy-eyed, roaring with joy, and staggering from the heat.

  Leia checked her chronometer. "Chewie, we have four minutes before-
"

  Chewbacca was already throwing Han over his shoulder and turning back toward the canyon. The Squibs bounced away after him, and Leia started after them at a slow jog she hoped she could maintain in this heat. Within two minutes, she was staggering and gushing sweat. But the curtain of heat shimmer had lifted to reveal the golden walls of a sandrock canyon, descending through the desert floor in a series of stony terraces and shadowy overhangs. And across the canyon, the mirage had contracted to a thin band of blue running along the furrowed slopes at the base of the brown mountains.

  Leia's pulse began to pound in her ears. She slowed to a walk. The canyon's rim lay twenty meters ahead. She had plenty of time to reach it-as long as she didn't collapse.

  Her vision began to darken at the edges. She pulled her water bottle off her belt and, finding it ominously light, recalled what she had done with the last few swallows.

  Her shoulder started to throb, then her head was spinning. Ears ringing. No, not her ears-her wrist. That chiming was the alarm on her chronometer. One minute.

  Leia's vision narrowed, and she felt like she was suffocating. She ripped the scarf off her face and raced to catch Chewbacca and the Squibs, no longer sweating, just growing steadily warmer beneath the bright Tatooine suns.

  "Chew..." She couldn't hear her own voice. "Chew..."

  No good. Chewbacca reached the rim of the canyon and began to grow shorter as he descended a steep slope; then the Squibs disappeared over the edge. The strength left Leia's legs.

  She continued to run anyway, teasing out three more steps as her knees buckled. Her vision went to black. She dived, blindly, for the canyon rim.

  The ground fell out beneath her. For a moment, Leia feared she was sinking into unconsciousness, that she was really lying out in the open on the edge of the plain where it would be easy for the TlE's sensors to pick her out.

  Then her tender shoulder erupted into pain. She felt herself tumble twice, bowling over a pair of small soft bodies before finally coming to rest against a furry tree trunk of a leg. A faint shrieking filled her ears, and she thought for a moment she had hurt one of the Squibs. Then she recognized the sound's steadily rising pitch The TIE had arrived.

  Leia lay for what seemed an eternity, wondering if she had made it into the canyon far enough, if the rim would shield her.

  The TIE's approach seemed to take forever. Her vision went from a gray blur to a golden brilliance, and the sound of its engines began to echo off the canyon's far wall. It occurred to Leia that the starfighter's search vector might bring it directly over the gorge this time. A Rebel pilot might even take it upon himself to make a pass up the chasm, but Imperial pilots did not deviate from orders. They followed procedure. Almost always.

  Leia waited, listening to the engine shriek bouncing off the golden walls. Her vision cleared, and she found herself staring down the canyon. She half expected to see the black panels and cockpit sandwich of a TIE fighter screaming around the bend.

  But this pilot continued to fly the assigned pattern. The pitch of his shrieking engines went from rising to falling, the echoes drifted away up the canyon, and finally the whine vanished altogether.

  The next sound Leia heard was Sligh's angry voice.

  "Is that the way you repay our help?" he demanded. "Trying to kill us?"

  "The deal's off!" Grees declared. "You can't be trusted."

  Leia pushed herself into a sitting position, then had to lie back down when her head began to spin.

  Chewbacca's face appeared over her, grumphing.

  "I'm fine." Leia pushed herself to her elbows. "I just need water."

  Chewbacca snatched a water bottle out of Emala's hands and passed it to Leia. She drank greedily. Then, once her head stopped spinning, she sat up and saw the reason the Squibs were trying to cancel the deal again. In the bottom of the canyon, hidden in the cool shadows beneath a sandrock overhang and barely visible, was the rear tread of a Jawa sandcrawler.

  Chapter 18

  Fifty meters from the overhang, Leia knew something was terribly wrong. The Askajians had stopped just inside the shadows and were milling about on foot, holding their dewback reins in one hand and their weapons in the other, clearly ready to fight or flee, and possibly both, on short notice. From deeper in the recess-it was really a huge disk-shaped erosion cave-came the raucous squawling of a flock of urusais; as more of the sandcrawler grew visible, the ground around it seemed to be squirming with their wings and serpentine necks.

  But it was the smell that told the story. Though it was easily ten degrees cooler in the bottom of the canyon than it had been up on the plain-and another ten degrees cooler in the cave's shadows- Tatooine's temperature always remained formidable. And no smell in the galaxy was more unforgettable than that of battle casualties decaying in the heat.

  Chewbacca groaned at the stench.

  "Me, too," Leia said. "But I can stand a little retching if it gets Han some shade."

  As sapped by the heat as Leia and Chewbacca, the Squibs did their best to trot ahead and get the first look at the sandcrawler. Leia still could not understand what-aside from profit-truly motivated this trio. Hutts-and Threkin Horm-aside, they had to be the most selfish beings she had ever met, yet twice now they had not hesitated to risk their own lives to save Han's. Perhaps they saw some advantage in keeping him alive. Leia thought it more likely they simply operated by a code of conduct no one else understood. They clearly placed great significance on partnerships and adhering to bargains, yet their interpretations of the terms were so fluid that any agreement was rendered useless. They were the ultimate spokesbeings for the Lando Calrissian philosophy: anything to help a friend-as long as your interests converged. After that, it was everyone for himself.

  The Squibs reached the cave a dozen paces ahead of Leia and Chewbacca. They shouldered their way through a tangle of plump thighs to the Askajians' front rank-then promptly stopped and yielded their lead. Leia saw why a minute later, when she and Chewbacca joined the group.

  The floor of the huge cavern was carpeted with snarling urusais. They were crouching over the bodies of murdered Jawas or-in a handful of cases-slain stormtroopers, hissing and beating their scaly wings at the encroaching Askajians. Scattered among the scavengers was all manner of smashed equipment: speeder parts, dismembered droids, broken vaporators-most still in the crate-and a pair of Imperial hoverscouts, one lying on its side near the front of the sandcrawler, the other on its top near the back.

  "So now we know why the Jawas did not keep their appointment," Borno said, joining Leia and the others. "The Imperials found them."

  "Not really," Leia replied. "A patrol found them."

  "I fail to see the difference."

  Chewbacca groaned an explanation.

  "That's right," Leia said. "The Imperials didn't find the sandcrawler-they lost a patrol. If the Chimaera knew about this there would already be an intelligence squad down here tearing the sandcrawler apart."

  Chewbacca growled another possibility.

  Leia shook her head. "If the Imperials were going to ambush us, we'd be under attack already." She checked her chronometer. Less than ten minutes until the next pass. "And if they knew where we were going, why would they be flying a search grid?"

  Chewbacca grunted.

  "Let me guess," Borno said. "That means, 'Good point'?"

  Chewbacca nodded, and C-3PO emerged from between two dewbacks.

  "What a crime!" the droid cried. "Jawas are certainly no friends of mine, but what those storm troopers did to them violates war accords as old as the Old Republic itself. And what they did to the droids... why they find it necessary to kill prisoners is beyond me!"

  "Because they don't understand droids," Borno said. "Or technology in general."

  C-3PO turned to face the Askajian. "I beg your pardon, sir, but in my experience the Empire has proven quite fond of technology."

  "He's not talking about the Imperials, Threepio." Leia looked over the droid's shoulder to Borno. "A
re you thinking Sand People?"

  "I believe so. They must have attacked while the stormtroopers were searching the sandcrawler." He pointed a thick hand toward the sandcrawler's boarding ramp, which was surrounded by a random spray of metal dimples. "Those holes were made by slugthrowers."

  Leia nodded. "Borno, I don't want to be disrespectful to your trading partners, but we have only nine minutes before the next pass. There's a good chance he'll be directly over the canyon, and I could see-"

  "The tread, of course. I saw it too." Borno issued a rapid series of orders in Askajian. Then, as the dewback drivers leapt into action, he translated for Leia and Chewbacca. "We will bring rocks to hide the tread. I doubt the dead will mind if they must wait a few minutes longer before we see to them."