Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura

by Kathy Tyers

  The hatch slid open.

  He stumbled out, saber ready, into another empty corridor. As Dev sprinted past him, he spun around and sliced into the power center. The tortured sense of tethered presence winked out.

  One more freed.

  Dev examined writing on a bulkhead. “I think this is it,” he said softly.

  “You haven’t been down here before?”

  Dev shrugged. “No.”

  “All right.” From behind another bulkhead, the half-dead Force stench wafted out. Luke was about to step under an illuminated arch when he caught a glimmer above it. He leaped backward.

  “What is it?” Dev asked.

  Luke traced power flow up a bulkhead, overhead, then down the other side. “I don’t know,” he answered, “but the life power is linked to a strong amplifier.” He sliced a flap off the breast of his tunic, dropped it onto the deck, then blew on it. It skittered forward.

  Sizzling blue energy burned it to charcoal.

  Sh’tk’ith’s blue foreclaws framed the security board. “There,” he exclaimed to the P’w’ecks behind him. “We’ve found them. Stun trap outside Engineering.”

  He flipped a coil. “Progress?” he asked Firwirrung, who was working frantically in a second lab.

  “Finished,” answered his colleague. “It won’t keep the Jedi alive as long as the original would have, but I’ll make another, better, before he deteriorates too far.”

  Although wounded, Firwirrung seemed determined to atone for his disaster. He and his P’w’eck aides had completed a secondary table from one nearly finished chair and spare parts, a fresh means to start harvesting immediately—if Sh’tk’ith could subdue the Jedi. Victory still beckoned.

  Sh’tk’ith called Admiral Ivpikkis’s lifeboat over an outside coil. “We’re about to close in on them. I left three gangs of P’w’ecks under full compulsion on Deck Sixteen. I predict we can start launching battle droids the moment we succeed.”

  “Good,” came his answer. Ssi-ruuvi picket ships still surrounded the Shriwirr, protecting it under Admiral Ivpikkis’s command. “All our other cruisers have launched their full complement,” Ivpikkis sang.

  “Firwirrung thinks he may be able to combine Sibwarra’s energies with the Jedi’s.”

  “Hold both of them alive. You may exact a pride price on Sibwarra once we take Bakura.”

  Sh’tk’ith yanked off his shoulder pouch. Hefting his beamer, he whistled at his cowering P’w’ecks. “Follow!”

  Han had his hands full getting the Millennium Falcon where Commander Thanas wanted her, and the Ssi-ruuk had moved nine picket ships into engagement vectors. The Falcon dipped and dove while he chased down droid fighters and poured energy into their miserably strong shields. They came at him so thickly that he managed to fry a few with the Falcon’s engine blast. Chewbacca was trying to fix Threepio, and Leia kept the lower turret hot. But where was Luke? “Somewhere in space,” Leia had insisted. “But not on board the Flurry,” they’d heard from Tessa Manchisco.

  Three TIE fighters swooped overhead. Han balled his fists. Those TIEs might be on his side, but he didn’t trust Commander Thanas one minute longer than the Fluties lasted. Caught in the middle of an invasion maneuver, the aliens weren’t even using their trooper scooper—no sign of tractor beams anywhere. One big Ssi-ruuvi vessel had already launched a dozen landing craft. Sluggish and underpowered, those had made a poor first ring of offense. He couldn’t tell if the Imperials’ new DEMP guns were working, but he wanted one.

  His vector took him close to a big Flutie cruiser, one of three slowly moving in on Bakura. Eerie two-tone jamming momentarily drowned out offship communications. “Any progress?” he asked Chewie over the private comlink. Chewie howled an affirmative. “Good. Hurry it up. Leia, where’s Luke?”

  “Right there! On board that big cruiser.” Leia’s voice, carried on both of Han’s headphone channels, seemed to sound between his ears. “Quick—put out word to our forces that it’s not to be attacked.”

  The cruiser they’d just passed under? Han switched extra power into rear deflectors and dodged fire from its picket ships, then blasted one picket to atoms. “What’s he doing there?”

  “I can’t tell,” Leia answered.

  “Lookit that,” someone exclaimed, once he could hear the intersquad frequency again. Shuttles and escape pods popped off the Ssi-ruuvi cruiser like snap rivets from a stressed coolant vane.

  “You were right,” Han observed to Leia. “Luke’s in there.”

  Luke eyed the charred shred of fabric. “They’re none too sure of security.”

  “Stun trap,” said Dev. “It’ll put down a Ssi-ruu, right through that hide. I think it’d kill you or me.”

  Luke located the power link at shoulder height on a gray bulkhead, just out of saber reach beyond the arch. Because life created the Force, every circuit that used this unclean energy was easy to find and control—and he was getting better at it as he went. He touched this one gingerly with his mind and found a weak, exhausted will supplying power. Tired as he was, his first impulse was pity. Quickly and cautiously he showed it what he needed. Then he offered release. The will seemed to blink.…

  “Quick, Dev!” Luke jumped through the arch. Brandishing his paddle beamer, Dev followed. Blue energies singed his flapping hem.

  Luke hesitated. “Just a minute.” He must keep his promise. Carefully he flicked his lightsaber into circuitry. The pitiful will touched his mind, leaving gratitude as it fled.

  The stun traps occurred at six-meter intervals. Luke chafed at each delay, and each energy required a different persuasion. As he tired, his sense of urgency grew stronger.

  They reached a junction. Their corridor went forward, slowly curving to the right, but another narrower opening branched right sharply. A yellow light rod gleamed down the center of its arched ceiling. Across the main corridor from that junction, a wide metal hatchway loomed shut.

  Ambush, Luke’s senses shouted. Cautiously he stepped around the corner to the right, pressed against the bulkhead, then turned to listen behind the broad metal hatch. He thought he felt someone—

  Dev’s choked cry whirled Luke around in time to see the broad hatch shoot up into the ceiling. A P’w’eck leaped through, seized the boy from behind, and brandished a claw at his throat. Dev ducked and fired his paddle beamer over one shoulder. The P’w’eck collapsed, leaving a thin trail of red blood across Dev’s neck.

  Guided by his subconscious, Luke whirled and slashed behind him. Two more P’w’ecks had appeared as if from thin air. They fell wounded and shrieking, but others lurked in an opening where he’d seen no hatchway. They pelted him with diffuse blue blaster bolts. They were still shooting to stun. His saber deflected bolts onto bulkheads and alien flesh. Dev cried out and fell to the deck. Luke hadn’t seen—or felt—anything hit him. “Dev?” he shouted.

  The massive blue Ssi-ruu dove toward Luke through the broad hatch, warbling and whistling. It fired a steady silver beam. Dodging, Luke raised his saber and bent the beam toward a P’w’eck in the narrow hatchway. It collapsed, forelimbs flailing. The blue one came on across the junction, watching Luke but not the deck. From up the curving corridor, Dev crawled on elbows and knees toward the blue giant. Luke dove across the yellow-lit hall and ducked the silver beam. The blue’s will daunted him, even from a distance. It might not perceive the Force, but in Luke’s senses it cast a huge dark shape with the same savor that tainted Dev’s memory-crippling shadow.

  Dev lunged up from the deck. From behind Big Blue, he fired his paddle beamer into the base of its tail. The alien twisted its upper body toward Dev and fell limp legged. Luke dashed forward, brandishing his saber. Ducking the silvery beam, Dev pressed his paddle to Blue’s head and fired. The creature honked, then screamed. The scream ended in a gurgle. Dev zigzagged his beamer across its head. Clattering noises retreated up both curving corridors. Luke relaxed, coughing a little. Deep in his throat, something tickled.

  Dev sat down
on Big Blue’s flank and kicked it. When it didn’t move, he cradled his left hand under one arm and let his beamer dangle. “I faked that hit. It seemed safer to play dead than to go on fighting,” he rasped, panting. “I didn’t seem to be helping you at all.” The trickle across his throat was darkening. Luke touched the wound. “It’s not deep,” Dev insisted. “Just a claw mark.”

  Big Blue lay still except for a narrow black tongue that drooped, quivering, from one nostril. “Is he stunned?” Luke asked.

  “Dead.” Dev stared up into his eyes.

  Luke saw pain, guilt, and triumph. “Who was that?”

  “He … controlled me.” Dev stared at the gray deck tiles. “But Firwirrung was my master—the small brown with the V on his head, the one whose foreclaw you cut off. Firwirrung is the really dangerous one. We’re all dead if he catches you. Everyone. Everywhere.”

  “Why? He didn’t seem to be in charge.”

  “No, but he runs the entechments.”

  “Have they always … enteched … to power their droids?”

  “They’ve enteched older P’w’ecks for centuries. But humans last longer,” Dev explained. “He means to force you to entech other humans from a distance. The Ssi-ruuk want to enslave the whole galaxy. There are … I don’t know how many more ships, waiting out there to hear when Bakura falls.”

  “This is just a scout force?” Luke asked, alarmed.

  Dev nodded, and Luke sensed his shame. “Believe me, Firwirrung’s ready for you.”

  He’d helped.… So that was the story, at last. Luke shut his eyes. No wonder Dev had tried to strangle him, rather than let the Ssi-ruuk have their way. “Well.” Luke choked another cough. “Let’s get the job done before more of them show up.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Luke coughed again. That reptilian odor irritated his nostrils and throat. “Something I’m breathing must bother me. I guess you’re used to it. Come on, let’s go.”

  Engineering was a jumble of controls and conduits, but Luke had no trouble finding the master display panel. This locus created a gargoyle imitation of life so powerful, so abominably twisted, that he flinched. A hundred intermingled energies seethed at his subliminal senses. Freshly enteched energies writhed frantically within the numb, frayed ribbons of others’ nearly spent volition.

  Luke swung his saber through the console with a deep sweep of his shoulders, then shifted his body and reversed the stroke. The gargoyle cacophony fell silent.

  He took a long slow look around, breathing deeply and cautiously. The chamber and the ship felt clean at last.

  Had he just stranded himself onboard?

  Light rods gleamed behind gray conduits along the ceiling, so emergency power existed. Now he had to trace energy flow on the boards like anyone else. “Dev? Can you read any of this?”

  After a hurried consultation, they decided that the ion drive and hyperdrive still operated—but he’d blown the linkage between Bridge and Engineering. “That’s amazing,” murmured Dev.

  Luke stared around at glowing displays. Not stranded in a dead hulk, then, but the Shriwirr was crippled. He coughed again. They had life support, weapons, and communication. No medpacks, though. Nothing for strained leg muscles, and no breath mask to filter out whatever was irritating his lungs. He’d have to tough it out till he could get off the Shriwirr. Again the thought crossed his mind that he’d just as soon not be stranded here, especially if the Ssi-ruuk lost. “Let’s get to a shuttle,” he said, pushing off from the control panel.

  Dev led him to three giant shuttle bays in turn. Every flyer port and escape pod crane lay empty. They couldn’t even find the hijacked Imperial craft they’d ridden up from Salis D’aar spaceport. “Abandon ship,” Luke muttered. “Escape the terrible Jedi and his mighty apprentice.”

  Dev swept out his arms. “Then this is our lifeboat. I’ll take you to the bridge.”

  Luke’s cough rattled phlegm in his chest. “It’ll have to do,” he said reluctantly.

  “Sorry about the DEMP guns,” Han crowed at Commander Thanas. Both had misfired, disabling the patrol craft, and he wasn’t sorry at all. Good thing he hadn’t gotten one for the Falcon.

  “Casualties of war,” Thanas answered over the command channel in Han’s left ear. “As is Commander Skywalker, it seems. I am sorry. I admired his capabilities.”

  “What’s going on?” Leia’s voice demanded.

  “Governor Nereus just sent word. The aliens kidnapped him.”

  “Don’t count Luke out,” Leia said tightly.

  Han sniffed the air. Was that hot wiring? Hold together, baby!

  Thanas’s brassy voice softened. “Your Highness, unless all the Ssi-ruuk retreat, we are now specifically ordered to destroy that cruiser.”

  “What?” exclaimed Leia.

  Prickles rose on Han’s neck. Only a quartet of Ssi-ruuvi picket ships prevented Thanas from doing it. His Dominant had plenty of firepower. “Why?” he asked.

  “Contagion, General. I wasn’t told specifics, and I don’t make a habit of questioning orders. The consequences aren’t worth it.”

  Leia broke in from the lower gun turret. “Question this one. Leave it alone for now, Commander.” Hah—she didn’t believe that contagion line any more than Han did. Governor Nereus just wanted revenge. Han spotted a thread of smoke curling out of one bulkhead and shut down the offending circuit. Crosswired like a city map, the Falcon could function with several boards out.

  Commander Thanas’s voice hardened as he addressed someone else. “Squadrons eight through eleven, sweep up those escape pods.”

  Leia protested, “But they’re defenseless.”

  “We don’t know that,” Thanas answered coolly. “Some cultures arm their escape pods.”

  “Standard Imperial procedure?” Leia challenged him. “Kill the wounded to cut medical costs?”

  “You don’t seem concerned about the drone ships. Those are living energies.”

  “Enslaved,” Leia snapped. “Irrevocably. Killing them only frees their souls.”

  “I agree,” chimed in Captain Manchisco from the Flurry. She was helping an Imperial patrol craft harass an alien light cruiser into range of the Dominant’s tractor beam.

  “And the aliens, Your Highness?” Thanas’s voice insisted.

  Leia sounded as if she were clenching her teeth. “We are fighting for the survival of the Bakuran people—and probably others, Commander. Self-defense justifies a lot. But never a massacre of the helpless.”

  Thanas didn’t answer. On Han’s scanners, a squadron of large Ssi-ruuvi fighters converged on the Dominant. Its turbolasers blasted two away.

  “Good try, Leia,” Han muttered. He cut in the comlink override. Abruptly, a swirl of lights blinked on his computer panel and Chewie bellowed over the comlink. “Great, Chewie,” Han exclaimed. “Get to a quad gun!”

  “What?” cried Leia.

  “Threepio’s running again. Just don’t ask what happened to him. He’ll bless us with the whole story as soon as we let him. He gave the Empire a Flutie translation program, but now we’ve got one too.”

  Leia groaned.

  “How’s Luke?” Han fired into another swarm of droid ships, targeting the leader. Twice now, they’d thought they’d gotten them all. Twice, some other cruiser launched a swarm.

  “Still all right,” she murmured. “He just dealt with a major concentration of that … zombie energy.” The lower quad gun fired as she spoke.

  “Sweetheart, forget the drones. Concentrate on your brother. You’d better warn him what Thanas just said.”

  “I’m trying!”

  “Get Threepio to try transmitting on their frequencies, or something.” Han ground his teeth. Luke had walked alone into Jabba’s palace. He’d singlehandedly rescued Han, Leia, and Lando, literally out of the Sarlacc’s sandy maw. Despite those delusions of grandeur, maybe he did know what he was doing.

  What am I doing? Staggering on one good leg and one that cramped every tim
e he set weight on it, Luke finished a circuit of the Shriwirr’s bridge. Consoles curved inward from deck to ceiling, marked by unfamiliar symbols. Several freestanding displays marked crew stations, but there were no chairs, benches, or stools. One long curved panel served as a viewport. “Do you know how any of it works?”

  “I can read you the controls. That’s about all.”

  “It’s a start,” Luke muttered. Something nagged at the back of his mind. Uneasy, he stepped away from Dev and ignited his saber.

  Dev whirled around. “What is it?” he whispered loudly.

  “I don’t know.” Luke paced toward the nearest concave bulkhead, then edged toward the hatchway, ducking his head. “Probably nothing.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Dev had left the cockpit hatch open. Luke slipped forward. Behind the bulkheads, he felt—thought he felt—an alien approaching. “Dev,” he called, “take cover.”

  A P’w’eck dashed through. Luke sliced off its foreclaw, blaster and all. Then he glimpsed a pale metal gas grenade dangling by a chain from its neck. He cut the chain, thrust out a hand, and Force-flung the canister back out the hatch before whacking the bulkhead panel to slam it shut. Behind came a muffled whump. Wailing, the trapped P’w’eck backed across the bridge.

  “Talk to him.” Luke adjusted his grip on the saber and took shallow breaths to prevent the distracting cough. “Tell him I don’t want to hurt him anymore. If hell help us, we stand a better chance of using this ship.”

  Dev crept out from behind a control island and burst into chirps and trilling whistles. The P’w’eck hesitated, then dove for his blaster.

  Luke grabbed it out of the air. “Tell him nobody else is coming till that gas clears out of the corridor.”

  Dev chirped. The P’w’eck shook his head again. Luke wondered if he dared try to interrogate the alien. He wasn’t sure how. The creature didn’t think in Standard.

  Luke tossed Dev the P’w’eck’s blaster. “Is there any way to tie him up? Keep him from slowing us down any further?”