by James Luceno
“Where to?”
“The east gate.”
Shryne blew out his breath. “All right, we’ll get there. Just make sure you tell him to remain where he is.” Silencing the comlink, he rejoined the others.
“East gate?” Skeck said when Shryne relayed the bad news. He turned himself through a circle and pointed. “That way, I think.”
The astromech began to chitter. Shryne and the others looked to C-3PO for a translation.
“He says, sirs, that the quickest route to the east gate will involve our ascending one more level—”
“We’re supposed to be going down!” Archyr said in exasperation.
“That’s true,” C-3PO continued. “But my counterpart advises that unless we go up first, we will be forced to detour around the upper reaches of the Grand Ballroom atrium.”
“Enough,” Shryne said, ending further argument. “Let’s just get this over with.”
With the astromech leading, rolling along on its three treads, the five of them filed into a turbolift and rode it up one floor. No sooner had they arrived than R2-D2 made a sudden left into the stately corridor and hurried off.
“What, all of a sudden it’s in a rush?” Archyr said.
“Artoo, slow down!” C-3PO called, struggling to keep up.
The astromech disappeared around a bend in the corridor. Skeck muttered a curse and drew the ionizer again.
“I think it’s trying to get away!”
The three of them began to race after their quarry, dashing around the same corner only to narrowly avoid colliding with a regally dressed woman cradling a sleeping baby in her arms.
Stopping suddenly, the astromech loosed an ear-piercing screech and extended half a dozen of its interface arms, waving them about like weapons.
Confronted with the sight, the woman pulled the baby closer to her with one hand while the other reached out to slap a security alarm stud set into the wall. Rudely awakened by the astromech’s screech and the blare of alarms, the baby took a quick look at the droid and began wailing at the top of its lungs.
Exchanging the briefest of panicked looks, Shryne, Archyr, and Skeck about-faced and ran.
Bail’s assured posture in one of the reception room’s elegant chairs belied his sense of raw desperation.
A few meters away, standing at one of the tall windows, Darth Vader gazed out on crowds of demonstrators who were becoming more turbulent with every passing moment.
The cadence of his deep breathing filled the room.
This is Leia’s father, Bail told himself, certain of it now.
Anakin Skywalker. Rescued somehow on Mustafar, and returned to life, though now confined to a suit that made manifest what Skywalker had become at the end of the war: betrayer, butcher of children, apprentice of Sidious, follower of the dark side of the Force. And soon Leia would be in his presence …
When Breha had comlinked him unexpectedly, Bail had come close to telling her to flee, fully prepared to suffer whatever consequences would descend on him. To ensure Leia’s safety, he had even been ready to sacrifice Fang Zar.
Would Vader recognize Leia through the Force as his child? What would happen if he did? Would he compel Bail to reveal where Obi-Wan was; where Luke was?
No, Bail would die first.
“What’s taking Senator Zar so long?” Vader asked.
Bail had his mouth open to reply that the palace’s guest wing was some distance away when Sheltray Retrac entered the reception room, her expression alone making it clear that something was wrong. Approaching Bail, she leaned low to say in a quiet voice, “Fang Zar is not in the residence. We don’t know where he is.”
Before Bail could reply Vader swung to the two of them.
“Was Zar alerted of my coming?”
Bail came to his feet quickly. “No one was apprised beforehand of the reason for your visit.”
Vader glanced at Commander Appo. “Find him, Commander, and bring him to me.”
The words had scarcely left the black grille that concealed Vader’s mouth than security alarms began to sound throughout the palace. Captain Antilles immediately moved into the transmission field of the reception room’s holoprojector, where a half-life-size image of a security officer was already resolving.
“Sir, three unidentified beings have gained access to the palace. Their motive is unknown, but they are armed and were last seen in the residential wing, in the company of two droids.”
Two droids! Bail thought, rushing across the room in an effort to beat Vader to the holoprojector.
“Do we have images of the intruders?” Retrac asked before Bail could silence her.
Bail’s heart skipped a beat. If it was C-3PO and R2-D2—
“Only of the intruders,” the security officer said.
“Show them,” Antilles ordered.
The security cam image showed three males, one human and two humanoids, dashing down one of the corridors.
“Freeze the image!” Vader said from alongside the holoprojector. “Close in on the human.”
Bail was as confused as everyone else. Did Vader know the intruders? Were they agitators dispatched by Coruscant to work the protestors into a frenzy?
“Jedi,” Vader said, mostly to himself.
Bail wasn’t sure he had heard Vader correctly.
“Jedi? That can’t be possible—”
Vader whirled on him. “They’ve come for Fang Zar.” He stared at Bail from inside the mask. “Zar is attempting to return to Sern Prime. Apparently he hoped to keep from implicating you in his flight.”
The reception room fell silent, but only for a moment. From the holoprojector appeared an image of Breha, holding a distraught Leia in her arms.
“Bail, I won’t be joining you, after all,” she said, loud enough to be heard over the infant’s crying. “We had a disturbing encounter with three trespassers and a couple of droids, who nearly frightened the baby to death. She’s in no condition to be introduced to company. I’m trying to calm her—”
“That’s probably best,” Bail said in a rush. “I’ll check back with you in a moment.” Deactivating the holoprojector, he turned slowly to Vader, arranging his features to suggest a mix of mild disappointment at his wife’s message, and deep concern for just about everything else that had occurred.
“I’m certain there’ll be another time, Lord Vader.”
“I look forward to it,” Vader said.
With that, he turned and marched away.
Bail nearly collapsed. Exhaling in guarded relief, he dropped back into his chair.
“Jedi?” Antilles said, in obvious bewilderment.
Bail shook his head from side to side. “I don’t understand, either. But that is Skywalker.” Abruptly, he stood up. “We have to find Zar before he does.”
If I ever run into that astromech again …,” Skeck said as he, Archyr, and Shryne were racing for the palace’s east entrance.
Archyr nodded in agreement. “Never a good feeling when you’re tricked by an appliance.”
His comlink enabled, Shryne was speaking with Jula.
“We’re almost there. But that’s no guarantee we can make it outside without being arrested.”
“Roan, I’m going to reposition the ship. Close to our rendezvous there’s a landing platform reserved for HoloNet correspondents.”
“What makes you think you’ll be allowed to set down?”
“No one’s going be happy about it. But the good thing about Alderaan is that no one’s going to blast us out of the sky, either.”
“Parking ticket, huh?”
“Maybe not even.”
“Then we’ll see you there,” Shryne said. “Out.”
With the ornate east entrance in sight, the three of them slowed down to survey the situation. A pair of enormous doors opened on a broad staircase; from the last step, a paved footpath led to an arched bridge that spanned a crescent of reflecting pool. On the far side of the pool, the path led directly to a gated access in
the high rampart. Perhaps a hundred meters beyond the wall was the media landing platform Jula had mentioned.
Shryne scanned the beings assembled on the narrow bridge and the green lawn between it and the rampart. Ultimately his gaze found a short, dark-complectioned man with a shock of long, white beard.
“That’s Zar,” he said, pointing out the Senator to Skeck and Archyr.
“And here comes trouble,” Skeck said, indicating four Royal Guards who were hurrying for the gate, rifles slung over their shoulders.
“We need to make our move,” Archyr said. “Before any more of them show up.”
Skeck parted his long coat, reached around to the small of his back, and drew a blaster. “So much for pulling this off without a hitch.”
Shryne placed his right hand on the weapon while Skeck was checking the power level. “You might not have to use it. Those long rifles are no match for even a hand blaster, and the guards know it. Besides, they probably haven’t fired a round since the last royal funeral.”
“Yeah, but can I quote you on that?” Skeck said.
Shryne took a step toward the doors, froze, then retreated, pressing himself to the wall.
Archyr regarded him in bafflement. “What—”
“Vader,” Shryne managed.
Archyr’s eyes widened. “The black stormtrooper? Let me see—”
Shryne restrained him from moving. “He’s no stormtrooper.”
Skeck was staring at Shryne, openmouthed. “Why’s he here? For you?”
Shryne shook his head to clear it. “I don’t know. He answers directly to the Emperor.” He looked at Skeck. “He could be here for Zar.”
“Doesn’t really matter, does it,” Archyr said. “Point being, he’s here.”
Shryne reached under his coat for his blaster. “If he is here for Zar, he’s going to forget all about him when he sees me.”
Skeck planted his hands on Shryne’s shoulders. “You want to think this through?”
Shryne vouchsafed a thin smile. “I just did.”
Vader hunted the hallways of the palace, the suit’s array of sensors enhancing every sound and smell, every stray movement, his heavy cloak hooked around the hilt of his lightsaber.
The Emperor foresaw that this would happen, he told himself. That is why he sent me. Despite what he says, he is concerned about the Jedi.
Outside the palace, marchers continued to chant and circulate; inside, guards and others scurried about, stopping only to stare and move out of his path. Half of them were certainly in search of Fang Zar, and all of them were off course. But then, they lacked Vader’s sympathy for those who were pushed and pulled and otherwise manipulated by the Force.
There was also the fact that Vader knew how Jedi thought.
Sensing a subtle presence, he stopped. At the same time, someone behind him shouted:
“Vader!”
Igniting his lightsaber, Vader turned completely around.
Hands by his sides, Shryne stood at the intersection of two corridors, one of which led to the palace’s east portal, the other to the ballroom. Clearly, Zar had been found, was perhaps being moved out of the palace even then, or Shryne would not have shown himself.
“So you’re the bait,” Vader said after a moment. “It’s an old ploy, Shryne. A ploy I’ve used. And it won’t work this time.”
“I have a backup plan.”
Shryne flourished the blaster.
Vader focused on the weapon. “I see that you’ve abandoned your lightsaber.”
“But not my commitment to justice.” Shryne took a moment to glance down the hallway that led out of the palace. “You know how it is, Vader. Once a good guy, always a good guy. Then again, you probably don’t know anything about that.”
Vader advanced on him. “Don’t be too sure of yourself.”
“We’re just trying to help Zar get home,” Shryne said, retreating into the corridor. “Suppose we leave it at that.”
“The Emperor has his reasons for recalling Zar to Coruscant.”
“And you do whatever the Emperor tells you to do?”
In the intersection now, Vader could discern that Shryne was merely waiting for a chance to bolt through the doors. Well behind Shryne, on the far side of a footbridge that crossed a gentle curve of reflecting pool, one of Shryne’s armed accomplices was holding four Royal Guards at bay while the other was all but dragging Fang Zar toward a gated breach in the palace’s defensive wall, beyond which the conspirators surely had a getaway craft waiting.
Shryne fired a quick burst, then sprinted for the doorway. Behind him, his humanoid accomplices were also in motion, stunning the guards to unconsciousness and racing for the open gate.
Angling his blade, Vader deflected the bolts with intent, but by jinking and jagging Shryne managed to evade each parry. Vader leapt, his powerful prosthetic legs carrying him to the top of a broad but short flight of steps in time to see Shryne sprint across the bridge at Jedi speed, motioning to his accomplices to move Zar through the gate.
Vader leapt again, this time to the bridge, and to within only a few meters of Shryne, who spun about, dropping to one knee and firing repeatedly. This time Vader decided to show Shryne whom he was dealing with. Holding his lightsaber to one side, he raised his right hand to turn the blaster bolts.
Clearly astonished, Shryne remained on one knee, but only briefly. In an instant he had passed through the gate and was shouldering his way through the crowd outside the wall.
Vader’s final leap landed him just short of the rampart. Over the heads of the milling beings, at the forward edge of a landing platform, a woman with gray-laced black hair was gesturing frantically to Shryne and his cohorts, who were already hauling Fang Zar up the platform steps.
All too easy, Vader told himself.
Time to end it.
Bail and his two aides stood by the reception room holoprojector, awaiting some word of Fang Zar’s whereabouts. From the direction of the residence wing came Antilles and the droids.
“Go ahead, Threepio, tell him,” Antilles said when the three of them were within earshot of Bail.
“Master Organa, I hardly know where to begin,” C-3PO said. “You see, sir, my counterpart and I were about to enter the palace grounds—”
“Threepio,” Antilles said sharply. “Save the long story for another occasion.”
R2-D2 communicated something in bleating tones.
C-3PO turned to the astromech. “Verbose? Tiresome? Just you mind your enunciator, you—”
“See-Threepio!” Antilles repeated.
The protocol droid fell silent. “I’m very sorry, sirs. I’m simply unaccustomed to so much excitement.”
“That’s all right, See-Threepio,” Bail said. “Take your time.”
“Thank you, Master Organa. I only wanted to report that the three intruders who held us captive were apparently intent on collecting some sort of ‘bundle’—that was the word they used—at the palace’s east gate.”
“Quickly!” Bail said to his aides.
Aldrete bent to adjust the holoprojector’s controls. An instant later an east gate security cam captured a holoimage of Fang Zar, seized in the grip of two humanoids who were running him toward a landing platform that had been designated for HoloNet personnel.
A second cam found Vader, crimson-bladed lightsaber in hand, fending off blasterfire from a long-haired human male who was also racing for the east gate.
“Sir,” Sheltray Retrac said suddenly.
Following Asta’s worried gaze, Bail saw Sate Pestage striding into the reception room.
“Senator, I have just learned that Senator Zar is at this moment being conducted from the palace,” Pestage said, in what Bail sensed was almost theatrical spleen. “If this is your way of providing immunity—”
“We’ve only just discovered his whereabouts,” Bail cut him off, motioning to the holoimages. “In any case, it looks as if the Emperor’s ‘emissary’ has the situation well in hand.”
<
br /> Pestage dismissed Bail’s anger with a superfluous wave of his hand. “Through no help of yours, Senator. I demand that you secure the palace before it’s too late!”
Bail glanced at the holoimages of Vader, the long-haired man, Fang Zar …
“Seal it, I tell you!”
Bail took a final glance at the images, then complied.
Firing on the run, Shryne made a mad dash for the rampart gate. If his retreat struck Skeck, or Archyr, or even Fang Zar, as cowardly, then so be it. For it was clear that Vader wasn’t going to be stopped by blaster bolts, and Shryne was a long way from the nearest lightsaber.
Shryne wasn’t surprised that Vader knew him by name; that he did only reinforced the fact that Vader and the Emperor had full access to the Jedi Temple databases. For all Shryne knew, Vader had been at the Temple when Filli Bitters had sliced into the beacon.
Outside the gate now, he began to zigzag through the densely packed crowd. Catching sight of his weapon, many of the marchers hastened to open a path for him—an obvious berserker in their midst. Through gaps in the throng, Shryne could see Skeck, Archyr, Jula, and Zar on the landing platform, surrounded by what Shryne took to be irate HoloNet correspondents, yelling at them and gesticulating to the drop ship that had set down without permission.
Judging by her gestures, Jula was attempting to placate everyone, or at least assure them that the ship would soon be on its way—assuming that Vader didn’t scuttle their plans with a single leap.
Midway up the stairway that led to the landing platform, Shryne came to a halt, to take what he hoped would be a last look at Vader, who was still on the palace grounds, a couple of meters shy of the rampart gate. Of greater interest to Shryne, however, was the fact that an alloy curtain, thick as a blast shield, was descending rapidly from the head jamb of the arched entrance.
The palace was being sealed shut, and Vader was in risk of not making it through the gate in time!
Understanding as much, the Emperor’s executioner was moving faster now. A jump carried him to the rampart, just short of the lowering shield, where he did something so unexpected that it took Shryne a moment to make sense of what was happening.
