by James Luceno
But it didn’t have anything to do with this silly man swinging his silly sword. With his strange name …
Wait, Luke thought. That strange name … Shadowspawn. Lord Shadowspawn …
He reached into the Force and opened his perception. Waves of darkness beat against his consciousness, a tidal surge of fear and malice … but the deeper he let that surge enter, the more certain he became.
This was a put-up job.
Lord Shadowspawn … His eyes widened. He got it now, as clearly as if the Force itself had whispered in his ear. Not Lord Spawn-of-the-Shadow. Not at all.
It wasn’t a name. It was a pun. Lord Shadow’s Pawn.
The crystal sword came down again, and this time Luke didn’t dodge.
The blade froze in the air, its edge a finger’s breadth from Luke’s forehead.
Luke smiled and leaned just far enough around the blade to deliver a single, very precise punch. Not to the jaw, or the temple; this was not a conventional knockout. Luke’s fist landed exactly at the point the Force had chosen for him—on Shadowspawn’s forehead, just above his right eye—and in the fraction of a second that Shadowspawn’s head snapped back and upset his balance, Luke reached out and snatched the Moon Hat right off his head. Luke had to put some real muscle into the yank; it came free only with a wet ripping sound as if he might be tearing flesh away with it.
And the great Lord Shadowspawn collapsed like a holomonster on an overloaded dejarik board.
The corpse-looking Shadowface holomask must have been projected by the headgear itself; for an instant, before it flickered and died, it looked like Luke was holding Shadowspawn’s whole head in his hand. The Moon Hat was curiously heavy—more than two kilos—and appeared on first look to be a structure of carbonite frozen over and around a complex array of some kind of mineral crystal, almost like that weird sword … crystals that extended downward into spiky filaments that were damp … with blood …
And the man who lay crumpled at his feet didn’t look like Shadowspawn at all anymore: his shaven head was streaked with blood that still leaked from the hundreds of tiny puncture wounds left by the crystal filaments inside the Moon Hat. Behind the blood, his skin was dark as stimcaf, and when he lifted his face, his eyes were a wholly extraordinary shade of vivid blue. “Kill me,” he croaked. “Skywalker, you have to kill me …”
“You don’t need to be killed,” Luke said. “You need to be rescued.”
“Too late … too late for that …” He spoke with an accent Luke hadn’t heard before, and his voice bore not the slightest resemblance to the faux-Vader rumble of Shadowspawn. “Kill me, and kill yourself … if you don’t, you’ll become me …”
“You wouldn’t be the first guy to be wrong about what I’m going to become.” Luke dropped to one knee beside him. “Who are you?”
“Call me … Nick. I thought you …” He coughed weakly, and forced an unsteady smile. “Are you related to Anakin Skywalker? He’d have … smoked me without a second thought.”
“Yeah, well,” Luke said with a slightly unsteady smile of his own, “I’m not the man he was.”
“Too bad … could use a guy like him right about now …”
“But all we’ve got is us. Can you get up?”
“Sure, kid, sure. Someday.” He twisted his head to look back down along the rock bridge to the tunnel’s mouth, where the clustered stormtroopers still stood with their blasters slung. “They’re not shooting. Why aren’t they shooting?”
Luke squinted at them consideringly for a moment, then shrugged. “Maybe it’s because I won.”
“What?”
“How much do you remember? You ordered them to serve me, if I defeated you.”
“Oh, I remember … ’s just that—” He shook his head. “Wasn’t … exactly me.”
“I figured that out,” Luke said dryly. “But if we’re lucky, they haven’t.” He stood, and pointed the blade of his lightsaber at the two closest troopers. “You and you—come out here and assist this man. That’s an order.”
Without even an instant’s hesitation or so much as an exchange of glances, the two troopers shouldered their weapons and marched out onto the rock bridge. Luke murmured, “It can’t be this easy …”
“Got that right,” the erstwhile Lord Shadowspawn—Nick—said. “Listen—that headgear. You gotta understand. It’s a device—a machine—Sith alchemy—”
“There really is such a thing as Sith alchemy? That wasn’t part of the act?”
“Look at my head, Skywalker. That blood look like an act to you?” He shut his eyes and gathered strength with a deep breath. “There are … crystals implanted in my brain. That headgear concentrates the Dark—what you call the Force—so that Cronal … Blackhole … can use me like a puppet. He can see through my eyes, hear with my ears … the more Force-touch you have, the more he can do with you. That’s why he made me into Shadowspawn …”
Luke blinked. “Those other officers—the Moon Hats—”
“They’re none of them exactly volunteers,” Nick said. “Minor-league Force-sensitives. That’s what the raids have really been after. He kidnaps them, puts them through the surgery, slaps the headgear on ’em, and then they not only become his puppets but also his eyes and ears. And hands. And mouth.”
“They’re all innocent?”
“Most are. Some are like me.” Nick tilted his head. “It’s been a while since I was innocent of anything.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“After five years of war, you’re still not sure? Maybe you haven’t been paying attention.” He waved a hand. “Forget it. Blackhole and me—we tangled while he was … uh, recruiting … out in the Outer Rim. I chased him till he caught me.”
“You chased him?”
“Him and others. Got my own reasons … to hate dark siders.” He waved a trembling hand. “Everybody … needs a hobby, kid …”
Luke smiled, a little sadly. “No one calls me kid anymore.”
“Hey, sorry …”
Luke nodded. “Me, too.”
Nick wheezed, “Get up … on the throne.”
“What?”
“Do it! Right now!”
Luke put his hand on the arm of the Shadow Throne. It was smooth and cool as polished glass. “Why?”
“The throne’s … obsidian. This other rock, it’s all meltmassif. Like the bridge.”
“So what?”
“So that.” Where he pointed—just ahead of the approaching stormtroopers—the rock bridge had suddenly and inexplicably thinned, as though it were putty or soft clay, pinched by the fingers of an invisible giant. The stormtroopers hesitated … and the rock bridge parted, its ends recoiling from each other like severed strands of wander-kelp, and the far side, where the stormtroopers now stood uncertainly, literally yanked itself out from under them. They clutched desperately at the retreating stone; one fell, flailing helplessly in the smoky red-washed gloom, until he vanished in a splash of sudden flame at the surface of the lake of fire below. The other found a grip and clung, dangling over the molten lava, but only for an instant: a blue-sparking energy discharge of some sort flicked across the surface of the stone and the trooper’s hands sprang open.
This one didn’t flail as he fell. He just dropped, already unconscious or dead.
The rest of the troopers and the Moon Hat woman on the ledge at the tunnel’s mouth also collapsed as if shot by a bank of stunners … and the ledge sagged beneath them, spreading like hot khaddi-nut butter until their unconscious bodies slid off and tumbled the fifty meters down to fiery death.
Then the stone that had been ledge flowed back upward until it had sealed off the tunnel’s mouth.
“So much for the witnesses …” Nick said.
Luke felt a sudden surge of danger sense that gave him half a second’s warning; he tangled a fist in “Shadowspawn” ’s robe and let the Force lend wings to his heels and might to his arm as he leapt upward from the rock onto the polished o
bsidian throne just as that same electric crackle played over the stone on which he’d just been standing. “Okay, we’re up. Now what?”
“Can you use the Force to get us out of here somehow?”
“I don’t think so,” Luke said grimly. “But if he wants us dead, all he has to do is turn off the repulsorlift that’s holding up this throne. Or drop the heat screens.”
“He won’t. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Nick said. “He doesn’t want to kill you. He wants to be you.”
Before Luke could ask him what that was supposed to mean, the rock into which the throne had been set suddenly shifted and flowed and stretched into a vast hand holding them in its palm. Huge fingers of stone, each three times as long as Luke was tall, closed over them. Luke brought up his lightsaber instinctively and slashed one finger off at the knuckle … but the rock-finger simply fell beside him and melted and flowed around his feet, instantly hardening to lock him in place.
The cavern boomed with mocking laughter from those concealed speakers.
“I believe the appropriate word here,” said the amplified fake-Vader voice, “is CUT!”
Then a burst of blue energy blasted up Luke’s legs and ripped away his consciousness.
CHAPTER 9
Han’s mental catalogue of preferences was as agile as any other part of him; a couple of squadrons of TIE fighters coming straight at his nose transformed, in the blink of an eye, the top of his list from “At least I’ll roast before I starve” to “I don’t want to die on an empty stomach!”
He whirled and sprinted aft. “Chewie! Go go go GO!” he shouted, heedless of the fact that the Wookiee had already scrambled to the rim and thrown himself off the hull.
Han sprinted headlong as laser blasts splashed around him. Splatters of molten titanium that once had been the Falcon’s armor burned holes in his pants and shirt, and even as he tripped over an EVA grip and belly flopped headfirst off the hull, some coolly disconnected part of his brain filed the datum that the laser bolts looked about ten times the width they normally would, and they weren’t actually penetrating the Falcon’s dorsal armor. Something in the metals-charged atmosphere must screw up laser collimation, that cool part of his brain decided, while the rest of his brain was more concerned with trying for a diver’s tuck-and-roll to keep his headfirst trajectory from resulting in a headfirst impact on the cinders around the boarding ramp.
While the result was not entirely graceful—he landed on his rear end with a thump—it was close enough for his purposes, so that when Leia sprinted up to him he was able to shove himself to his feet. “Go on!” he gasped. “I’m right behind you!”
“Any landing you can walk away from, eh, Slick?” she said as she passed him and disappeared up the boarding ramp.
“Got that right.” He staggered up the ramp and hit the autocycle to close it behind him. “Leia! Bottom turret! Chewie, take top! I’m driving!”
He scrambled forward. Chewbacca’s feet were just disappearing up the upper turret access; Wookiees could climb faster than most species could run. Leia paused before clambering down into the lower turret. “You okay? Really?”
“Mostly,” Han said. “Considering I landed on my brain.”
“As long as there’s no permanent damage.” Leia flashed a grin and gave his injured anatomy a quick pat as he squeezed by. “It’s your best feature—and that’s saying a lot.”
“You’re adorable,” he said. “Now let’s go shoot some bad guys, huh?”
The ship rocked with more cannon blasts, which were answered by an ear-shattering Wookiee war cry and the deep-throated thoom-thoom-thoom-thoom of the topside quad turret. Han finally reached the cockpit and threw himself into the pilot’s couch. While he stabbed buttons and flicked switches, he whispered a quick “Thankyouverymuch!” to whatever part of the Force might be looking after fools, scoundrels, and reformed smugglers, grateful that the Empire had never thought to arm their TIE interceptors with missiles or torps, especially since—as a searing red FAILURE indicator informed him when he tried to fire up the active defenses—the atmosphere seemed to have a similar effect on deflectors and particle shields.
Which meant, on balance, that the most effective weapons in this particular engagement just happened to be loaded in the Falcon’s forward missile array. Han muttered, “That works for me,” yanked back on the control yoke, and punched the sublights. The Falcon leapt straight up as if it had been drop-kicked by the entire planet.
The ship spun skyward through a hailstorm of cannon fire. Inboard comm crackled. “I can’t hurt them,” Leia said, her voice tight and calm with concentration. “My shots glance off the collector panels. Is something wrong with the guns?”
“No, something’s wrong with the atmosphere! Don’t complain, it’s keeping us alive right now!” Han shouted back. “Their forward viewports aren’t armored—aim for the eyeball and shoot ’em in the face when they swing in on attack runs!”
He twisted the ship through a half loop that sent it straight for a new line of TIEs as they dropped through the cloud deck in that follow-the-leader formation they favored for air-to-ground work. “Speaking of eyeballs,” he muttered under his breath, and thumbed the missile release without bothering to engage the targeting computer; at this range he didn’t need a missile lock. Twin contrails painted parallel lines from the Falcon to the lead TIE in less than a heartbeat. In the next heartbeat, the TIE had blossomed into an expanding sphere of flame and debris—which touched off the following TIE, and the one after that, while the rest of the flight broke formation and spiraled into strafing runs.
“Hey, they’re going after the Mindorese!” Han crowed as he spun the ship into an escape vector. “Blow ’em a kiss for luck, kids—we’re out of here!”
“Han,” Leia began, and he clenched his teeth. He recognized the tone, and he knew what was coming next.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “We have to go back.”
“They’ll be slaughtered!” she said. “And Han—they know something about Luke!”
“Oh, sure,” he muttered through his teeth. She would bring Luke into this. “But when your bleeding heart gets us all killed, don’t come crying to me …”
He pulled the Falcon into a looping evasion curve, and this time he did engage the targeting computer—which promptly informed him, in no uncertain terms, that the Falcon was out of missiles. “Now you tell me.”
Han keyed the comm. “Rogue Leader, Rogue Leader. Wedge, you out there? If you’re in the area, we could use a little cover right about now!”
The speakers crackled. Faintly, through the bursts of static: “Negative on the cover, Falcon. Do you read? Negative cover! We are buried—there’s more TIEs than rocks out here! Do you read?”
“Loud and too damn clear,” Han muttered. “Can you pry open a window for us?”
“No joy starside, Falcon. Do not attempt! Hostiles have you under the blanket. Find a hole and pull it in after you. We’ll be back as soon as we round up some friendlies.”
“Negative that. Stick to Leia’s plan; we’ll make our own way. We’ll find Luke and meet you on the far side of the jump point.”
“Copy that. Clear skies, Falcon.”
“See you soon, Wedge.”
“Copy, Han. Take care of the pretty lady.”
“I always do,” Han said, and only after a second or two did it strike him that Wedge had been talking about Leia, not the Falcon. “Uh, yeah, her too,” he muttered, and keyed the inboard comm. “All right, kids, we have to do this the hard way. Belt up—this ride’s about to get bumpy!”
The targeting computer shrilled an alert: MISSILE LOCK DETECTED.
“Missile lock? They don’t even have—” But even as he was arguing with the computer, Han had kicked the Falcon into a high-g sideslip, and before he could finish the sentence a pair of concussion missiles screamed past so close the cockpit rattled. “Who’s shooting at us now?”
“Incoming!” Leia sang out over the s
udden thunder of the quad turrets.
“I saw them alrea—oh.” Han stared out through the forward viewport at a swarm of missiles that looped toward them from the general direction of a giant wall of billowing dust, which had been kicked up by a skirmish line of four or five dozen heavy assault gunships that skimmed the hills a few kilometers away, angling for envelopment. “You have got to be kidding me!”
“Arroowerrhowoo!”
“Sure, laugh it up,” Han snarled as he yanked the Falcon back into an intercept course with the strafing TIEs. Trust a Wookiee to find this funny. “Chewie, target the fighters! We need to break their formation. Princess—hey, wait …”
From down among the rocks at the crater’s rim, at every impact point of every laser bolt from every one of the strafing TIEs, rose a billow of reddish-black cloud: dust and smoke, thick enough to completely shroud the ground beneath.
Han found himself grinning. “Princess! Aim for the ground!”
“What?”
“Just do it! Angle the turret forward and hold down the triggers!”
“You’re the captain, Captain.” He could hear in her voice her skeptical shrug, but an instant later she opened up the belly quad and hosed the lava ahead with a nonstop stream of laserfire.
And even as Han kicked the Falcon into a dive that speared straight into the billowing wall of red-black dust kicked up by Leia’s laser blasts, he was contemplating, with mild astonishment, that for very possibly the first time in her life, Leia had just done as she was told without a word of argument. Must be the captain thing. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? His mouth quirked upward in a slight, lopsided smile.
He was still smiling when the Falcon roared up from the cloud into open sky and was instantly clipped across its starboard mandible by the collector panel of a TIE interceptor whose astonished pilot never even had a chance to blink before his starfighter was transformed by the impact into a flaming ball of wreckage tumbling toward the all-too-close lava below.
