Unless... unless the Emperor was the other bid- der for Luke?
No. That made no sense. The Emperor had given the task to Vader; he would not enter into a bidding war against himself.
"I have already sent my agents for him," Vader tried.
"Agents are not to be trusted. Skywalker grows stronger in the Force each day. I remind you that he has within him the power to destroy us. Only you are potent enough to capture him." "Yes, my master." There was no arguing with him once he'd made his mind up.
Surely Prince Xizor's foul hand was involved in this.
It would not be wise to bring that up; the Emperor had made it quite clear that the Dark Prince was his con- cern, and it would not be a good idea to reveal that Vader had plans of his own concerning Xizor.
"There is another reason. You are aware that Prince Xizor's scheme to allow the plans for the Death Star to fall into Rebel hands has been implemented." "Yes, my master. The plan proceeds over my objec- tions." "Those objections have been noted, Lord Vader. As it happens, the plans have been transported from the freighter hijacked off Bothawui to Kothlis. Quite a co- incidence, don't you think?" That Luke and the fruits of Xizor's twisted plot were on the same planet at the same time, a coincidence?
Doubtful.
"We must appear to make an attempt to recover the plans," the Emperor continued, "to convince the Rebels that the plans are genuine and that we are dis- tressed by their loss. Therefore your trip will serve two purposes. You can fetch Skywalker, and you can de- stroy some of the local scenery so that the Rebels will be gulled into believing we are concerned over the theft." He had to at least try: "Any of our admirals could go and wave the flag and fire the guns. I have many pressing matters here." "More pressing than my commands, Lord Vader?" So much for that idea. "No, my master." "I thought not. I will have Skywalker with us or de- stroyed, the sooner the better. And the end of the Re- bellion is near. If you personally lead the attack, the Rebels will be convinced that we think these plans of great value." "Yes, my master." Vader left the chambers, and once again his simmer- ing anger threatened to bubble up and overcome him.
Xizor's touch was like a thick night fog: dark, clammy, seeping into the smallest cracks to chill and dampen.
Once again, he had maneuvered the Emperor into get- ting his rival out of the picture. With Vader on Kothlis, who knew what cloying webs that reptilian spider would spin for the Emperor?
Vader resolved to make it a fast trip. me call came from the picket line of Imperial Star Destroyers and frigates posted around the planet: "Entry code?" the bored voice said.
Inside the Stinger, Guri responded with a number.
A moment went by. "Pass. Lock into the landing grid and put it on auto." Guri operated the ship with an offhand expertise that was most impressive. She tapped controls, her hands dancing rapidly.
Leia and Chewie looked at each other.
"They will check for contraband at customs," Guri said, as if reading Leia's mind. "Black Sun has contacts there, but we cannot make it too obvious that you are under our protection. Time to go change." Chewie said something. It didn't sound happy.
"You wanted to come along," Leia said.
He didn't like it, but he left and went to the 'fresher.
Once the ship was on auto, Guri stood and walked to a locker. She removed some clothes and a full-head muzzle-mask helmet from the locker, tossed them at Leia. "Here. Put these on." The clothes stank. Leia wrinkled her nose at them.
Guri said, "They belonged to Boushh, an Ubese bounty hunter. Boushh was quite good at the trade. He did a lot of contract work for Black Sun. He... re- tired recently." "As it happens, I speak a bit of Ubese," Leia said.
"We know. The costume is not a coincidence." Leia looked at the clothes. "What happened to this Boushh? He retired?" "Quite suddenly. He tried to rascal Black Sun for more credits on a delivery for which there was an agreed-upon contract. That was... unwise." The sound of the last statement gave Leia a chill. She moved to don the clothing. She had a feeling Boushh would not be needing these smelly clothes again.
When Chewie returned in a few minutes, it was all Leia could do to keep a straight face. Where his fur had been brown and gray, it now was mottled with large patches of black. A raccoonlike mask encircled his eyes, and the fur on his head had been trimmed into a short spacer's cut. She turned to Guri, who said, "Meet Snoova, a well-known Wookiee bounty hunter." Chewie was unhappy, and that came through in whatever it was he said.
"Stop complaining," Leia said. "The dye will wash out and your fur will grow back. In a couple of weeks you'll be back to normal." Leia put her helmet on and tested the built-in vox- scrambler. When she spoke her voice was electronically altered. She knew enough Ubese to get by, and as long as she didn't run into a native of that place, she should be okay. Her speech buzzed and clicked and sounded to her own ears as if it were indeed coming from an alien throat.
Chewie gargled and moaned, and Guri nodded.
"Yes. It will do. We'll be landing soon." Leia nodded and removed the helmet. She hoped Guri knew what she was doing..
23 A thin man brought Luke food and drink twice a day.
He had eaten worse, eaten better, too. The routine was usually the same when breakfast or supper arrived: The thin man carried a tray to the door. The guard un- locked the door, leveled his blast rifle at Luke, and backed him to the cot; the thin man put the tray on the floor just inside the door, then left, with the guard.
This time, Luke asked the thin man for the time.
"Whyddya care?" the thin man said.
"Why do you care if I care?" Luke returned.
The thin man sneered, but he told Luke what time it was and departed.
This was the evening meal, as Luke had suspected.
The reason for his question was simple. He was planning on leaving, and he wanted the cover of dark- ness. Once he got out of the building, better they were not able to spot him, that he could use the night for camouflage.
Luke ate. The liquid was sweet, brown, and fizzy; the food was bland-soypro cutlets, some kind of or- ange vegetable, something green and crunchy-but there was no point escaping on an empty stomach.
Once he got to his X-wing and lifted, there was no telling how long it would be before he had a chance to eat again.
Once he got to his X-wing.
He grinned around a mouthful of the green stuff.
Like that was going to be the easy part.
It would not be wise for them to be seen together, Guri told Leia.
"After you clear customs, meet me at these coordi- nates." Leia and Chewie agreed.
There were a few tense moments at customs.
A guard examined the holocard ID that said Leia was Boushh, tapped it against the table in front of him.
"Purpose of your visit?" "Business," Leia said in Ubese. Her voice clicked and buzzed through the mask.
"I see you are licensed to carry that weapon, but we do not take kindly to people who use them on Imperial Center." Leia said nothing.
"I think we'll have to take that helmet off," he said.
"Just to be certain you match the holograph." He tapped the card again, looked at it. "One can't be too careful." Leia said, "It will damage my lungs to breathe this air without my filters." "I can arrange an atmosphere room-" he began.
He stopped.
Chewie moved close to Leia and the guard, rumbled something.
She realized how used to him she'd gotten every time she took in his disguise. Good old Chewie, he was as dependable as sunlight, loyal to a fault.
"What is your problem?" the guard said.
Chewie babbled something that sounded angry.
"I don't care if you are late for an appointment," the guard said. But the line of people waiting to pass through customs was starting to lengthen, and the guard suddenly thrust Leia's ID card back at her.
"Move along, bounty hunter. I have others to process." Once Chewie was through, he and Leia moved quickly away fro
m the area.
"Okay, now we go and see my contact. This section of the Underground is relatively safe," she said, "but still not a place where you want to relax your guard." Chewie nodded and patted his bowcaster. Said something.
"If you just asked why we aren't going directly to see Guri, I want to see if I can't hedge our bets a little first." Aboard the Executor, Vader considered his upcom- ing meeting with Luke. Since last they'd met, the boy had had time to come to terms with what he'd been told. On some level, he must know the truth, that Va- der was his father. Of course, that had been in another lifetime, when Vader had still been Anakin Skywalker, but the fact of it remained.
He would turn him. He knew he could, because he had felt the dark side rise in Luke, had felt the power of his anger. The boy had loosed it once; he could be made to free it again. Each repetition became easier.
The dark side was a path that grew wider and deeper each time you trod upon it. Soon it would be no effort at all for Luke to allow the dark side to rule.
And the Emperor was right. Luke had much power in him. It was raw, unchanneled and untrained, but it was vast. His potential was larger than the Emperor's, larger than Vader's.
But it was still only potential and not focused en- ergy. When next they met, Vader would still be more adept, still the master. He would defeat the boy and bring him to the dark side. They would be in accord, father and son.
And when that happened, nothing in the galaxy could stop them. None would dare oppose them. All would bow before them. Worlds would tremble at their approach.
Under his mask, Vader smiled.
Luke took several cleansing breaths, as he had been taught, and tried to release his thoughts at the same time. Ben-Obi-Wan-could plant suggestions in a stormtrooper's mind without apparent effort. It was not so easy for Luke. A couple of times he had man- aged it, but it required a lot of concentration to sum- mon enough of the Force. You couldn't be worried about whether or not it was going to work, or what would happen if it failed halfway through. You pretty much couldn't have anything else on your mind-well, at least Luke couldn't-and that made it tricky, given that if it didn't work or if it quit before he was done, he might wind up dead.
No. Put those thoughts away. Remember that the Force is with you. You can do this.
He took another breath, let half of it out, and al- lowed the Force to connect him to the mind of the guard in the hall.
The sensation was strange, as it always was. It was not as if he were really in two places at once, but more as if there were a part of his own mind that was some- how not quite connected, not quite accessible. A kind of muzzy feeling.
Luke became aware that the guard's feet hurt, that he needed to visit a refresher, that he was tired of standing here holding a blast rifle, watching a meadle- blasted door when there was no way anybody could get through it, no way- "Open the door." "Huh? Who's there-?" "You must open the door." "I... must open the door." "You must put down your rifle and open the door now." "I must... put down my rifle. Open the door now." Luke watched the guard through the barred win- dow. Watched him put his rifle down.
Got him. Luke grinned. A mistake.
"What-?" Lost him. Concentrate, Luke!
"Open the door." Luke put the thoughts of victory and loss out of his mind. The only thing that mattered was the guard.
"Open the door." "Yes. Open... the... door..." The guard's keycard slipped into the slot. The lock clicked.
One of the sweetest sounds Luke had ever heard. He didn't dwell on it.
"You're very tired. You need to come in and lie on the cot and take a nice nap." "Cot. Take a nap..." The guard moved into the cell, walked past Luke.
Luke took the keycard from the guard's hand. He glanced out into the corridor. Nobody else around. He stepped out of the cell, shut the door carefully, dropped the keycard on the floor, and picked up the blast rifle.
He looked back. The guard snored on the cot.
Now. This was more like it.
He started down the corridor. He felt pretty confi- dent. This guard had been easier than the one at the carnival where he had practiced walking on the tight- rope. He ought to be able to take care of any others he ran into, either with the Force or the rifle. He also ought to head straight for the nearest exit and leave.
With any luck it would be hours before anybody even knew he was gone.
But he wanted to see if he could find his lightsaber first. He'd spent a lot of time building it, and since the escape had been so easy, he was pretty sure he could retrieve his Jedi weapon and leave just as easily. The Force was with him. He could do it.
He was sure of it.
As Leia and Chewie made their way down a dark and twisted passage into the heart of the Southern Un- derground, she shook her head. The casino complex on Rodia made Mos Eisley look good. But it seemed that no matter how awful a place was, there was always another spot that was worse.
The Southern Underground made the casino com- plex look like a vacation paradise.
Beggars were everywhere, dressed in rags, gaunt and demanding. Whatever had driven them underground must be terrible if this was their only option.
All manner of illicit offerings were made as she and Chewie moved farther into the maze of underground tunnels. Corridor dwellers would sell them whatever they wanted, and the particulars made Leia's stomach roil.
Yes, there had always been such people, but the Em- pire had caused their numbers to rise tremendously.
That which had been a small stain on the joy of the Republic was a blight on the bloated body of the Em- pire.
Chewie growled at a partially clad woman who smiled as she approached them. The woman hastily backed off.
The corridor in which they walked was ill lit, splotched with graffiti in half a dozen common lan- guages and pictographies, the walls themselves beaded with liquid as if they had sweated.
A planet whose surface was completely built over must have a big foundation. In places, the vast complex of tunnels and artificial caverns was a kilometer deep and continuing to go deeper. Here were locales where the sun's rays never came, where blue-gray mold some- times grew ten centimeters thick on walls and ceiling, where the dank and fecund air stank permanently of fungal rot-and worse.
A black-hooded and robed figure moved out from the darkness under a shattered glowstick, a green four- fingered hand extended for alms.
Chewie said something, and the figure moved away.
A wave of the unwashed creature's body odor joined the other smells.
Chewie wrinkled his nose.
The stench was worse than the garbage compactor in which she and Han and Chewie and Luke had found themselves at first meeting.
Fortunately for her, her bounty hunter's disguise filtered out the worst of the odors. Poor Chewie. She hoped where they were going had a good filtration sys- tem for its air, ozone generators or air fresheners, at least.
Ahead, a glowstick sputtered, painting the dim corri- dor with flashes of faltering light before it blinked out.
Somewhere in the corridor behind them, somebody -or something-screamed. The cry dwindled into a liquidy gargle at the end.
Leia kept her hand on her blaster.
How long until we leave hyperspace?" Vader asked.
"A few hours, my lord," his captain said.
"I will be in my chambers. Send someone to tell me when we arrive at the system." "Yes, my lord." I will be there soon, my son.
This was almost too easy, Luke thought as he picked his lightsaber up from the table. The little storage room was empty; no one seemed to be awake or about, and there was his comlink right there on the table. He would call Artoo, have him warm up the X-wing and send Luke a homing signal. Once he got into his ship, these cloobs would never catch him again.
Luke put the blaster rifle on the table and reached for his comlink.
"Who's there? Move and I'll shoot!" Uh-oh- Deep in the Southern Underground the corridor opened up into a huge hemispherical chamb
er, as big as a city square, with a high roof, good lighting, and a circle of shops around the perimeter. Here the thick smells thinned. People and aliens moved about, pro- tected by armed guards in some kind of uniform who were obviously here to maintain some semblance of or- der. It could have been a small-town shopping area al- most anywhere on any civilized planet.
Around part of the circle where they stood were a bakery, a weapon shop, a shoe store, a clothing kiosk, an electronics market. Here a restaurant, there a can- tina, and there, a plant store. Leia sighed, relieved. The place had changed since she'd been here, but their des- tination was still here.
Star Wars - Shadows of the Empire Page 19
