The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  “Don’t let these things get anywhere near us,” Han warned gravely, his tone bringing Anakin back to the situation at hand, making him rub his sweaty palms across the ridged sticks. He looked at the situation unfolding in front of him, and at the wounded X-wing, hoping, as had Han, that Kyp was somehow still alive.

  “And don’t blow Kyp out of the universe!” Han added suddenly, and Anakin winced, as if that had been a direct reference to his other recent failure. He heard his father mumbling then, and perked up his ears.

  “Dammit, Chewie,” Han was saying quietly. “How am I gonna get that thing in tow without you?”

  Anakin pulled back, feeling as if he had intruded in a place where he did not belong, and tried to regain his focus on the situation at hand, though Han’s plea to his dead friend stung the boy profoundly. He took a deep breath, his wounded expression solidifying into a determined scowl. He swung the rotating cockpit around, sighted a group of incoming insectlike creatures, and locked on. Then he waited, waited, holding his shot, keeping his calm.

  “Trying to hit them as they pass?” his father cried out to him.

  Anakin ignored the sarcasm and kept his cool, waiting, waiting. They were almost on the Falcon now—Anakin could see their bulbous eyes and the absolute ferocity reflected in them.

  He let them fire, all four laser cannons, the long barrels retracting as each burst blazed out. Insect parts and flashes of light filled his screen, a wave of devastation, and the young Jedi quickly rocked the cannons about, triggers held down and barrels blasting, sweeping the insect parts away.

  But more were coming, many more, and fast! Anakin swiveled and let fly a volley, then spun back and powered off another, and then another, and when one insect zipped out of harm’s way, he followed it down and to the side, catching up and just ahead, and—whump!—blew it to little pieces.

  It wasn’t enough.

  “They’re on the hull!” Han cried.

  Anakin dropped back down the ladder into the main deck and rushed out, pushing through the crowd, then diving into the lower storage area and readying the tow cable. He heard his father call out for him, repeatedly, heard something about the shields hardly slowing them down, but he kept his calm, and as the Falcon came over the drifting X-wing, he fired the grapnel out, hooking it about one of the wings.

  Then he ran, hearing his father’s cry that the Falcon was about to be breached. Anakin didn’t go right to the bridge, though, but to the main power transfer alcove. He had been working in here after his disastrous descent to Coruscant, working with … Chewbacca, and he knew the layout pretty well.

  He flipped the main, shutting down all but the Falcon’s essential life-support systems. He heard the cries of fear from the many passengers, but put them away, locked them out of his thoughts. The insects were on the hull, his father had said, and so he pulled free the main cable and juiced the power back on, then climbed with the sparking thing in hand, up, up, to the top hatch. Gently, so gently, Anakin fed it through the tool release, more and more until it looped back down. And then he held his breath.

  The main cable touched the outer hull and sent a burst of electricity across it, firing up the Falcon like a holiday candle.

  “What’re you doing?” came Han’s cry from below. “We got no power!”

  “Just washing off the hull,” Anakin replied, and he slid back down into the alcove. “Go and see if it’s clear.”

  Han looked at him sternly, but then did go back to the bridge, and sure enough, all of his readings indicated that the insectoids had been zapped from the hull. Many floated by, not charred or blasted, but stunned at the least.

  The lights flickered; all the power came back on-line.

  “Nice move, kid,” Han whispered under his breath.

  A moment later, the laser cannons roared to life above the bridge, plucking the floating monsters out of the sky.

  Han smiled in spite of himself, checked the tow line to make sure they had Kyp’s X-wing firmly in their grasp, then headed back for the convoy, for a freighter where they could bring the X-wing aboard and see if the Jedi was alive or dead.

  Luke flew purely on instinct, on anticipation and reaction combined, a dazzling, dipping, dodging display that had the horde of enemy fighters wildly trying to keep up—and even brought a pair of them crashing together at one point—and had R2-D2 howling the whole time. For Luke was too fast for the astromech, his course changes too abrupt for the navigation instrumentation to calculate and correct.

  Luke came out of one sweeping arc with a pair of enemies on his tail. He gently twisted and turned, and avoided the firing projectiles—just barely, with one grazing the underside of his upped right wing. “Please give me this,” he asked his ship, and he throttled up as fast as she would go.

  The enemy fighters paced him, closing.

  Luke reversed the throttle, the wounded ion drive roaring in protest. He sensed a collision and dived down to the side at the last possible second, and both enemy fighters flashed past.

  The X-wing’s four laser cannons let loose, scattering the two rocklike fighters all across the sector.

  But there was no time to stop and cheer, for more were on him fast, from every conceivable angle. Luke growled and went through every twist and turn, cannons blasting away, reacting with lightning precision.

  It wouldn’t be enough, he knew, not this time, not against this many opponents.

  An explosion to the left caught his eye, and then another, and then the Jade Sabre appeared, blasting through the enemy line.

  “Flying catch!” came Mara’s cry.

  Luke swerved that way, and the Jade Sabre swished past him, and he could see her tail compartment opened wide. He took the X-wing straight in, as fast as he dared, screeching in and firing his repulsors as he entered the hold, then the instant his momentum broke, shutting down everything so that the X-wing literally dropped to the floor with a resounding thud.

  “I’m in! I’m in!” he cried, and he looked back to see the fishtail sliding closed.

  He felt the rocking as the Jade Sabre took a few hits, but she was built to take them, Luke realized. He scrambled out of his starfighter and ran along the corridors, getting tossed with every evasive turn. By the time he got to the bridge, Mara had things in hand, rocketing around the system’s fifth planet just enough to get a boost from the gravitational pull, and then tearing off into deep space, the enemy fighters quickly losing ground.

  “Something bad’s happening here,” Mara remarked.

  “Something connected to Belkadan and that warrior,” Luke agreed. “I feel sure of it.”

  “And there were a thousand ships coming up to get you,” Mara explained.

  Luke considered the situation carefully for a long moment. “Back to Lando’s,” he said at last. But Mara was already feeding in that course, acting on the same thought: If there were this many of the strange fighter craft around this planet, how many others might be out wandering the sector? How many might have been at Belkadan, and how many were now at Sernpidal?

  Or Dubrillion?

  Kyp Durron walked into the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon a couple of hours later, having come across on a walking dock, a tube extending from the freighter that had collected his X-wing to hard-dock with the Falcon’s upper hatch.

  “Elfour’s gone,” he said quietly, obviously wounded deeply by the loss.

  Anakin could sympathize with his grief, understanding that his own grief at losing either R2-D2 or C-3PO would be considerable indeed, perhaps rivaling the pain he felt for Chewie’s loss. Han, though, shrugged, and even snorted a bit, as if the loss of a droid was hardly comparable to that which he was now feeling.

  “What were those things?” Han asked a moment later.

  Kyp shrugged. “We followed a ship from Belkadan to the fourth planet of the Helska system,” he explained. “And there we got—” He paused and swallowed hard several times, and both Han and Anakin looked back at him curiously.

  “A
ll thirteen of the others?” Han asked, catching on, and now his visage did soften to an expression of sincere sympathy.

  Kyp nodded grimly.

  “By those bug things?” Han asked.

  “They came after,” Kyp explained, and he went on to detail the rocky starfighters, telling how his buddies had their shields torn away one by one. “The bug things chased me and one of my pilots out when we jumped to lightspeed.”

  “They can go to hyperspace?” Anakin asked incredulously.

  Kyp shrugged, for the answer seemed self-evident.

  Han started to reply, but he paused, staring intently at his console screen.

  “What?” both Anakin and Kyp said together, Anakin leaning over and Kyp moving closer to see. Scores of signals were appearing, and then more and more and more. Large signals, stronger than any the insectoid creatures might show.

  “Tell me about these starfighter things again,” Han insisted.

  They put the call out immediately to the convoy, to break ranks and head for Lando’s place with all possible speed. Many ships reported that they could make the jump to lightspeed, but many others, too much fallen into disrepair, simply couldn’t. They’d have to be towed with tractor beams, which would slow the convoy considerably. Han instructed several smaller, faster ships to fly on ahead, to get to Lando and tell him to get his defenses up and ready, and then the Falcon swerved in and out of the remaining fleet ships, organizing the tow, coaxing the beleaguered refugees on. The pilots of all the towing ships agreed on an acceptable speed, and they laid in their course and jumped to hyperspace.

  Anakin checked the instruments the whole time, plotting the course and speed of the enemy starfighters—if that’s what they were—and calculating the time until they were overrun.

  They all breathed a little easier a short while later, when the young Jedi announced that they would indeed make Lando’s planet ahead of the enemies.

  But not by much.

  “We’ve got more cannons than people to operate them,” Lando said with that wry grin of his. “From salvage operations, mostly. Taken from the burned-out hulks of Imperial Star Destroyers.”

  Han wasn’t surprised. Lando was among the most capable men he had ever known, and Lando was most capable of all at taking care of Lando and Lando’s interests.

  “We got your cargo unloaded,” he snapped.

  Lando stared at him, confused.

  “On Sernpidal, I mean,” Han went on. “We got your cargo off right before the moon fell. You think your business connection will be satisfied with that?”

  “Hey, buddy, it wasn’t my fault,” Lando said, patting his hands in the air.

  “It was your fault that we were there!” Han growled at him.

  “And twenty thousand people are glad that you were!” Lando retorted, pointedly reminding his friend that, though the loss of Chewbacca was a bitter price to pay, the efforts of Han, Anakin, and the Wookiee had saved thousands and thousands of people.

  Han chewed his lip, his fists clenching and opening at his sides, unsure of whether he should let this inevitable battle with Lando explode now, or put his pain and anger aside until the danger had passed.

  “We can’t look back at any one decision that brought us to this place,” Lando said quietly, shaking his head. “If I hadn’t asked you to go to Sernpidal, you wouldn’t have, and Chewie would still be here. But a lot of other people would be dead right now, probably including Kyp, and we’d have no idea of what was coming against us. In that case, all of us, Chewie included, would be in serious trouble.”

  The logic was sound, Han had to admit privately, but still, it did little to hold his broken heart together. “They’ll be coming at us in swarms,” he said. “How many fighters can you put up?”

  Lando’s expression was not so cocky at that question. “We’ve got the fighters—it’s the pilots we’re lacking.”

  “Even with your belt-running game?”

  “You know who that attracts,” Lando remarked. “You think any of them will stick around when they hear there’s an armada moving against us?”

  Han paused and considered the reasoning, and found that he could not disagree. He had dealt with smugglers all of his life, and he knew that most of them, above all else, saw to their own needs and safety first. And maybe, he mused, in this situation, that policy was right. Maybe they’d all be better off fleeing Dubrillion and running to the Core, where they could get some real firepower to back them up. He was still playing out that debate in his mind when one of Lando’s men called them over to a data screen. Lando spent a long minute reading it, his expression turning fast to a frown.

  “We might have more pilots than I expected,” he said, turning the console toward Han.

  Han hardly glanced at it, focusing on Lando instead.

  “Our enemies are already buzzing about the sector,” Lando explained. “We just got a call back from a couple of pilots who flew off planet before you arrived. They were under attack, against some kind of multicolored starfighters—they claim the things looked like flying lumps of rock.”

  “Like the ones Kyp described,” Han said somberly.

  “We might do better just sitting tight on the planet,” Lando remarked. “Give them the sky, while we bury ourselves in bunkers. I’ve got mining tools that can burrow us underground too deep for their weapons.”

  Han didn’t completely disagree, but he knew what had just happened to Sernpidal, and he deeply believed that all of these sudden catastrophes were connected. If they buried themselves behind defensive barriers, those enemy starfighters might not be able to get at them, but Dubrillion had a moon, a big one.

  “Get patrols out across the planet right away,” he said. “Look for craters, look for energy fields and beams.”

  Lando, who had just heard the story of Sernpidal’s brutal end, didn’t have to be told twice.

  “Han!” came a shout from down the corridor, and Leia came rushing out a door, C-3PO right behind her. “Oh, I heard!” she cried, running up and wrapping her husband in a tight hug. “Anakin told me.”

  Han buried his face in Leia’s dark hair, buried his expressions and let his inner turmoil remain a private thing. His frustration with Anakin and the evacuation of Sernpidal had not abated, not completely, even with his son’s quick-thinking heroics against the insect creatures. Nor had he even begun to come to terms with the loss of his closest friend, his trusted companion and copilot for decades. And he couldn’t begin to talk about it now, not without the weight of it defeating him, rendering him useless for that which was to come. His family was here, Leia’s hug pointedly reminded him, his wife and his three children. If he wasn’t sharp now, if he wasn’t at his very best, they might all be killed.

  Leia broke the hug and pushed her husband back to arm’s length. “He died saving Anakin,” she remarked quietly.

  Han nodded, his expression stern.

  “Anakin’s feeling horrible about it,” she said with concern.

  Han started to respond, sharply, that the boy deserved to feel horrible, but he bit it back. Still, that edge found its way onto his face momentarily, long enough, apparently, for perceptive Leia to catch it. “What is it?” she prodded.

  Han looked away from her, to Lando. “Hurry up with that search,” he instructed, and Lando took the cue, gave a curt bow and a wink, and rushed away.

  “What is it?” Leia prompted again, staring hard at Han, even reaching up to gently push his chin so that he was looking at her directly.

  “Just some search to secure the planet,” Han answered.

  “With Anakin, I mean,” Leia clarified. “What is it?”

  Han blew a long sigh and stared at her hard. “A disagreement over our retreat,” he explained.

  “What does that mean?”

  “He left him,” Han blurted, ending with a sputtering growl. He shook his head and gently but firmly moved Leia aside. “We’ve got to get ready for the attack,” he said.

  Leia held on to h
is arm, forced him to turn back.

  “He left him?” she echoed suspiciously.

  “Anakin left him, left Chewie,” Han spat.

  Leia, too shocked to respond, just let go, and Han stormed away, leaving her full of questions and fears.

  “There was nothing else I could do.”

  Jacen paused at the door, hearing his little brother’s words. He had learned of the disaster at Sernpidal, had caught his mother crying over Chewie’s demise, and he had suspected, though he had no proof other than one of his father’s glances at Anakin, that his brother had somehow been involved.

  “You’re sure of that?” came another voice inside the room, Jaina’s voice.

  “The moon was dropping fast,” Anakin replied. “All the air was lighting up with fire.”

  “From the compression,” Jaina reasoned.

  “We didn’t even know where the wind had taken Chewie, or if he was even still alive.”

  “But Dad said he saw him,” Jaina replied, and Jacen winced at hearing that, fearing that Anakin was lying to cover something.

  “That was too late,” Anakin admitted. “That was even as we started blasting out of there. We had, maybe, four seconds before impact. How could we get to him and get out of there in four seconds?”

  The door opened and Jacen walked in. He stared hard at his little brother, more out of sympathy than accusation, though that didn’t appear to be obvious to Jaina and Anakin, given their fearful expressions.

  “You couldn’t,” Jacen said, and Anakin looked surprised indeed to find his older brother apparently backing him up. “If the air itself was starting to burst, the Falcon wouldn’t have been able to reverse course against the rush. You’d have probably crashed right on top of Chewie, or right beside him, and then you’d all be dead.”

  Anakin blinked repeatedly, blinking back tears, Jacen knew. He could appreciate what his brother was going through. His own grief was intense and overwhelming—Chewbacca had been like an older brother, or a playful uncle, to all of them, and even closer to his father than Luke was. But he realized that Anakin’s grief, mixed as it was with such obvious guilt, likely dwarfed his own.