And he’d forced those down before Rogue Squadron had joined the Falcon and they’d all set out on what turned out to be basically a running battle as they cut their way through the maze of grav projectors and swarms of TIE interceptors to get here. They came in by microjumping on a jagged course toward the planet; each time a gravity station yanked them out of hyperspace, there’d be another battle in yet another asteroid cluster, which gave them an advantage over their usually surprised enemies, because the X-wings all carried standard repulsorlifts and thus could not only maneuver undetectably through the rock fields, but could also use the Solo Slide.
When Han had outlined the plan, Wedge had said, “You want us to take on interceptors using nothing but repulsorlifts?”
“Sure,” Han had replied. “How much training you think those eyeball-jockeys get in repulsorlift combat?”
“Couldn’t guess,” Wedge had said. “But I sure know how much training we don’t have…”
“Then I guess we better hope their learning curve’s steeper than yours is, huh?”
And it had been—so much so, in fact, that even Han Solo had once or twice found himself shaking his head and giving a low whistle. Those Rogue pilots were good. Maybe as good as he was. Almost. Not that he’d ever say so out loud.
The battle—really, succession of battles—had seemed to go on for a year or two. And they’d still be up there, too, if Chewie hadn’t had a sudden brainstorm and realized that if Han could bring the Falcon close enough at the proper vector, they could take out a grav projector just by lobbing a couple of thermal detonators out the trash ejector: the projector’s own gravity well would suck the dets straight in for a direct hit.
On the downside, the Lancer’s navicomputer now estimated that the stellar flares would begin in less than twelve hours. The upside, Han figured, was that the radiation would kill him before he actually starved to death.
“Leia?” he called again. “Anything?”
“I—I’m not sure,” she called back. “Maybe—no—I think…”
“Well, you better make up your mind, sister! If the Imps decide to fly atmo patrols, this might get a little hot. Hotter.”
Han was trusting mainly in the thick dust that swirled on the winds to keep the Falcon concealed from orbital scans; Rogue Squadron was off somewhere, trying to clear a route out through the maze of gravity wells that still sealed the system. He wished them all the luck in the galaxy—he was planning to need that hypothetical route as soon as they found Luke—but he also wished they were hanging around to fly cover for his uncomfortably exposed butt.
“I think—” Leia straightened, staring past the Falcon. “I think we should probably go that way.”
“Why that way?”
“So all those people with blasters coming out of the rocks over there,” she said, raising her hands, “don’t decide to shoot us.”
Han turned, very slowly, keeping his hand well clear of his blaster. The crater’s rim had suddenly sprouted a couple of dozen people wearing patchwork armor that looked like it might have been cobbled together from the local lava. Nearly all these Lava Gear types had shoulder arms of some variety, from Imperial DC-17s to one guy who actually had an antique Dubloviann flame rifle, and they were pointing these weapons in Han’s general direction as they came forward.
Chewie grumbled and started to rise, but Han said softly, barely moving his lips, “Stay low. When the shooting starts, roll off the hull. Once you’re inside, open up with the belly gun.”
“Garooargh.”
“Forget it. I can take cover behind the sensor-dish mount. You won’t fit.”
“Hermmmingarouf roog nerhowargh.”
Han squinted at them as they picked their way toward the ship. Chewie was right: they were military. Some kind of military—deserters, mercenaries, something. They came on in skirmish lines, covering each other. “We’ve handled pros before,” he muttered. “Get ready to move.”
He walked forward to the sensor dish and rested his right hand on its rim, angling his body to make himself look like he was leaning on it even though in fact he was perfectly balanced and that hand could go from the dish’s rim to the butt of his DL-44 faster than any of them could blink.
“Got anything to eat?” he asked the Lava Gears.
A red-haired woman stepped to the front of the bunch. She was the only Lava Gear type not holding a weapon, though Han’s practiced eye instantly noted that the grip of the KYD in her tie-down thigh holster had a worn-shiny look that signified a whole lot of regular use. “Who are you, and what’s your business here?” she demanded.
“Oh, sorry—are these your rocks? We’re just borrowing them to rest my ship on. I promise they’ll still be here when we go.”
“Hey, that was funny. Do a lot of people tell you you’re funny?”
“Only ones with a sense of humor.” He also noted that she carried her weight forward, evenly balanced over the balls of her feet, and that while her left hand was thumb-hooked to her belt buckle, her right hand dangled bonelessly alongside that well-used blaster: a gunfighter’s stance. Also, against his will, he found himself thinking that she was dangerously good-looking. No redheads, he reminded himself. He’d had enough of that kind of trouble to last him two or three lifetimes. Besides, my dance card’s full. For the rest of my life, if I’m lucky.
“Let’s try a riddle,” he said in a friendly way. “What does the captain of a ship armed with a pair of quad laser turrets say to people stupid enough to point blasters at him?”
“Let me guess,” the woman said. “How about: ‘Please don’t shoot my girlfriend’?”
Han looked over his shoulder. Five more of them stood in an arc back there, covering Leia. He said, “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot.”
“Oh?” Her smile didn’t look amused. “Is that the answer to your riddle?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is. Look, I don’t know what you want with us—I don’t even know whose side you’re on.”
“We’re on our own side.”
“So you’re what, local?”
“Local enough.”
“I take it you’re not fans of the Empire, huh?” It was a fair guess, given the state of their gear and their hodgepodge of mismatched weapons.
“Not so much.”
“Well, us either. Neither. Whatever. We’re just looking for a friend.”
“Huh. Us, too. How’s that for a coincidence?” The woman’s head canted just a bit. “This friend you’re looking for wouldn’t happen to be a Jedi, would he?”
Han blinked. “What do you know about Jedi?”
Her eyes went wide. “Cover!” she shouted, as she and the others scattered and dove to the ground—which promptly erupted in flame and molten rock under a barrage of laserfire from above and behind him.
Han looked up. Down from the clouds swooped dozens of TIEs looping in for strafing runs.
“Oh, come on!” he said. “Before I even get dinner?”
Shadowspawn brought that scarlet-shining crystal sword whistling down at Luke’s head with all the subtlety and grace of a spice miner swinging a sonic hammer. Luke met the strike easily, almost without effort. A blinding flare of green and scarlet energy flashed when the blades met, and the air stank of ozone.
And about a decimeter of the end of Shadowspawn’s crystal blade, still shimmering with that bloodshine glow, clattered faintly as it fell to the stone at Luke’s feet. “Sith alchemy, huh?”
Shadowspawn snarled and chopped at him. Luke took half a step to one side, and the blade missed him by a hair and drove into the stone beside his boot. Shadowspawn yanked it free and hacked again, and again Luke shifted his weight just enough to avoid the strike. The warlord came at him, crystal blade trailing fire as he whirled it into another thundering overhead chop.
Luke circled, still not striking back; he couldn’t figure out what to make of Shadowspawn’s style. The warlord fought like someone who’d heard of swordplay but had never actually se
en it done. Luke would have found Shadowspawn’s clumsiness kind of funny, had he not been able to feel the gathering threat in the Force. The danger still grew; its shadow darkened his future.
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 tang
led 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 obsidian 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 Nine
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.
Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Page 12
