He was reaching for his breath mask when the landing strip started to move. He glanced over his shoulder, an old reflex, to see Artoo’s reaction.
But Artoo wasn’t there.
Luke had never felt more alone. He hadn’t spoken to a living being since he had left Brakiss’s mother. She had given him directions to Telti, all the while warning him away from her son.
Luke’s entire communication with Telti had been computer-to-computer. The metallic moon had even sent his landing coordinates directly into the navigation unit. Luke had tried to reach Brakiss, and on each instance was told that voice communication with the moon was blocked. Purposely.
Visitors seldom came to Telti, and were not welcomed.
Even though that message had been sent, however, Luke had had no trouble with his own entry. He hadn’t really expected it. Brakiss was waiting for him.
Luke wanted to know why.
Something was going on here, something bigger than a failed student-teacher relationship. Brakiss was working for someone—the Empire, probably—and his duty was to lure Luke Skywalker into a trap.
Luke would be lured.
He wouldn’t be trapped.
The landing strip continued to move forward, conveyor-belt style, inching slowly toward a nearby building. Luke could lift off at any point. This movement was not part of the trap, but part of Telti’s day-to-day operations.
One side of the dome ahead of him rose, flattening against itself like a fan. There were no lights inside, just as there had been no lights on the landing strip.
But Luke could sense a presence.
Brakiss.
Not inside the dome, but on Telti.
Waiting.
If Luke could sense Brakiss, it would only be a matter of moments before Brakiss could sense Luke. If he didn’t already know of Luke’s arrival.
Then, perhaps, Luke would have some answers.
He certainly hadn’t received any when he had called up information on Telti. New Republic sources claimed that Telti was an abandoned mining colony, its wealth completely destroyed by Imperial exploitation. A factory remained. It apparently did some business with the New Republic.
The most information Luke had received on the moon had come from Brakiss’s mother. She had said that Brakiss finally had real work. She had been afraid that Luke’s presence would destroy any chance for Brakiss’s future.
Luke had thought she meant that he might kill Brakiss.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
He turned on the X-wing’s front running lights. They worked as a spot illuminating the interior of the dome. It was empty, but it looked like a bay big enough to house dozens of ships. Landing platforms were recessed into the floor. Beyond those was an open door.
And no movement. None at all.
The sensation of barrenness continued. Except for Brakiss, Luke felt no other life. No plant life, no animal life. Nothing. Not even insect life.
He breathed deeply, running through a few mental calming exercises he taught at the academy. Clearly his expectations had been different. Clearly he had expected more life here than just Brakiss.
That should have reassured him, but it didn’t.
The metal runway pulled the X-wing into the building, and with a loud grinding, the door closed. Luke did not look back. He had made his choice. He would continue with it.
As the door closed, lights came on all through the bay. Some illuminated the platforms from below, others from above. A bank of glow panels lit on the ceiling, and a hissing told him that the atmosphere had changed. He checked his monitors. The air was breathable now.
He pushed up the canopy of the X-wing. The air was warmer than he had expected, and smelled faintly of metal, rust, and grease. The rust surprised him. He would have expected nothing like that.
As he levered himself out, he felt as if he had been in this room before. Then he realized that he had been in one just like it on Anchorhead as a boy, back when Jabba the Hutt had tried a few legitimate businesses. He had sold landspeeders, and Luke had gone with his uncle Owen to buy one.
Jabba’s lackeys had put the landspeeders in a large room and placed display lights on them, lights that shone on the clean patches only, and hid the dents and dirt and flaws. Uncle Owen had not bought anything that day, saying that all the speeders had had their ID numbers sanded off. It was years later that Luke realized the speeders had to have been stolen.
Weeks later, Luke and his uncle had returned. Jabba’s business was gone. All that remained were the platforms and the lights.
It bothered Luke that no one approached him. A normal droid factory would have sent a sales representative by now.
Brakiss again.
Both he and Luke knew this would be no normal visit.
Before Luke dropped to the metallic floor, he closed the X-wing’s canopy and set the safety seals. They wouldn’t do much good against a determined saboteur, but they would deter a droid.
Brakiss had other ways of tampering with Luke.
Luke patted his lightsaber, its slight weight a comfort at his hip. He wore only a loose shirt and tight military pants. His cloak remained in the X-wing. He wanted no diversions here, and with this much equipment, a flowing cloak could easily snag on a metallic edge.
His mouth was dry. He had expected a confrontation. He hadn’t expected no greeting at all.
But Brakiss was still Empire. He liked games. He always had.
Luke took a deep breath, and headed for the open door. He was probably being watched. Brakiss would note each of Luke’s movements, from the patting of the lightsaber to the sealing of the X-wing. He would know that Luke was uneasy in this place.
At the mouth of the door, Luke paused. The door’s frame should shield him from any holocams. He reached out through the Force, sending tendrils of inquiry across it, searching for Brakiss.
Brakiss’s presence was strong here, but diffuse. Luke couldn’t pinpoint it. That didn’t surprise him; Brakiss’s mother had said Brakiss was expecting Luke. Which meant Brakiss had had time to prepare.
He knew many tricks, some Luke had taught him, others that he might have learned from the Empire. Any gifted Force-sensitive being could scatter his presence through a finite area. The fact that Luke could feel Brakiss at all meant that he was close.
Luke stepped through the door and into the next room. And stopped.
Thousands of golden hands hung from the ceiling. The right hands faced palm-out, the left hands had the knuckles showing. The thumbs all went in the same direction. They gleamed in the light. More hands lay on conveyor belts. All those hands were in partial assembly. Some had open forearms revealing equipment not unlike the equipment in Luke’s right wrist. Unattached fingers lay beside the conveyor belts, and golden arm sockets waited attachment to golden shoulders.
Threepio might have started life in a place like this. Somewhere in one of these domed buildings, the domed heads of the R2 units were assembled. Hard to believe such ignoble beginnings might have led to the personalities that had become so important in Luke’s life.
The room was eerily silent. The belts were off, the atmosphere controls made no noise, and there was no movement. The hands hung like stalactites, stalactites with a hint of life.
Luke glanced at the ceiling. The arms were resting in metal runners, and were not attached to anything.
His relief was palpable.
“Hello?” he said.
His voice echoed off the metal around him, returning in tiny, tinny sounds to him.
“Hello?”
He had no idea where to go from here. He wouldn’t follow the ghosts of the false Brakiss in search of the real one. Brakiss probably wanted to lead him through room after room like this, one filled with legs, another with torsos, to make some kind of point.
A point Luke would only learn when he reached Brakiss himself.
“Hello?” Luke called again. He would remain here, near the open door to his ship, until he got a response.
<
br /> Even though it felt as if one would never come.
Nineteen
Brakiss tracked Luke four ways: with the surveillance equipment he had installed all over Telti; with the computer system; with a group of specially designed gladiator droids that silently flanked Luke; and with the Force. His Force sense was the most reliable. Luke’s presence felt as if someone had tossed a boulder into the calm pond of Brakiss’s world. Although Brakiss had known Luke was coming, he still wasn’t prepared for the strength of the disturbance.
Brakiss stood in his communication center, in the dome of the protocol-droid building. Experimental droid parts hung from the rounded ceiling: eyes that listened; hands that saw; mouths that grasped. The eyes were his favorites: They didn’t need a droid at all. They tracked everything that happened in a room, and they sent all communications forward. They also had the added benefit of spooking most creatures that used their eyes for sight. Brakiss wasn’t certain how to use the eyes yet, but he would figure something out.
He was good at this. Telti had brought forth his creative powers. If only Kueller had allowed Brakiss to work the factory without using his Force abilities. Kueller had promised that Brakiss would have nothing more to do with Almania. But Kueller’s promises never held, especially with Brakiss. Kueller felt that Force-experienced warriors were rare, and he aimed to use each one in his power. The most talented one he had was Brakiss.
So Brakiss got to lure Skywalker into Kueller’s trap.
Brakiss sat. The chair molded to his shape and braced him. On the screens before him, he watched ten Luke Skywalkers shout hello into an empty room. Empty except for the overstock droid hands. Even the mighty Skywalker had looked surprised at that.
He hadn’t changed. And he should have. It had been years. Brakiss had heard that Skywalker had almost died on board the Eye of Palpatine. Yet he looked the same. His scarred face still had a boyishness, his body was lean and powerful, and he had the same assurance he had always had.
The assurance he had had when he forced Brakiss to face the darkness.
Brakiss swallowed. Even thinking of that moment, alone, with only himself and the evils Skywalker had thrown at him, sent trembling explosive shivers through him. If Brakiss thought about it too much, he felt as if his brain would shatter. Brakiss had run from that test, run as fast as he could, and when he returned to his mother, he found her living in the shadow of the Empire. He had had to report, and he had, on the condition that they let him go.
His information had been valuable enough, and his mind damaged enough, that they had let him go. He had run until Kueller found him, and Kueller had put him together again.
For a price.
Skywalker.
Brakiss leaned forward and flicked the communicator. Kueller answered immediately, forming a small holo image on Brakiss’s holopad. This Kueller looked tiny enough for Brakiss to crush with his fist. Even so, the power radiating from the small image made Brakiss slide his chair back.
“He’s here,” Brakiss said.
Kueller’s death mask smiled. “Good. Send him to me.”
Brakiss licked his lips. “I was thinking … I thought … maybe I should kill him. I owe him. He—”
Kueller waved a hand. His skeletal grin grew. “By all means. Kill him.”
A chill ran down Brakiss’s back. His victory was too easy. “But I thought you said you would have to kill him.”
Kueller shrugged. “I doubt you can kill him, but if you do, my response is simple. I will have to kill you.”
Kueller spoke with such confidence and calm that Brakiss backed away even farther. “I thought we were working together,” Brakiss said.
“We are,” Kueller said. “But the person who kills the great Jedi Luke Skywalker becomes the strongest in the galaxy. If you kill Skywalker, you take that honor, and leave me no choice but to take that honor from you.”
“But the Emperor wanted Vader to kill Skywalker.”
“The Emperor has been dead a long time, Brakiss.” Kueller’s smile had faded. “It would do you good to remember that.”
Brakiss nodded.
“And remember, Brakiss,” Kueller said. “I will know if Skywalker dies.”
Kueller’s image winked out. The air around the pad glowed for a moment, then the strength of Kueller’s presence faded as well. Brakiss put his fist over the vanished image and pounded the pad. Pain shot through his palm. He was no match for Kueller yet. But someday he would be.
It would only be a matter of time.
He cupped his fist against his chest and stared at the screens. Skywalker had stopped yelling. He was looking toward the dome and frowning, his lips parted slightly, his eyes glazed like those of a man sensing only with the Force.
Had he felt Kueller’s presence?
Nonsense. No one could feel over so great a distance.
Not even Skywalker.
Could he?
Brakiss whirled. He snapped his fingers and a protocol droid strode in. This droid, C-9PO, was a newer model that Brakiss had modified for his own needs. The final memory wipe, done two months ago, combined with the language augmentation, made this droid useful in ways that went beyond language.
Skywalker might never learn that.
Then again, he might.
“See-Ninepio,” Brakiss said, “we have a guest.”
“I know, sir.” The droid stood the requisite two meters in front of him, its golden eyes radiant with inner light.
“Bring him to the assembly room, and have him wait for me.”
“But sir, guests do not go to the assembly room.”
He glared at See-Ninepio. See-Ninepio continued to give him an implacable stare. Some things remained the same in protocol droids no matter how many memory wipes they had.
“This one is not a buyer.”
“Then what is he, sir, that I may learn who goes to the assembly room?”
What is he? Brakiss smiled, but the smile had no amusement behind it. Skywalker was impossible to fit into a category that the protocol droid would understand.
“He is a Jedi Master, Ninepio. He is not here on factory business.”
“Ah,” See-Ninepio said. “Then it is personal. I understand.” He turned and minced out of the room. The small feet on the C-9’s were not an improvement over the normal-sized feet of the C-1’s through C-8’s. Not an improvement at all.
He would have to remember that.
But even focusing on the droids was not enough for him. It usually cleared his mind, and it did no longer. Skywalker’s presence surrounded him.
The sooner he got Skywalker off Telti, the better.
They took the Millennium Falcon to Skip 5. Seluss wanted to take one of the Skippers, but Han reminded him that Han was in charge of making the plans.
Han wasn’t going to go ten meters without the Falcon.
He had decided that he needed to see this outrageous operation for himself. Something felt wrong. Smugglers always moved valuable products. Now they were getting paid ten times more than usual for junk—junk any resourceful crime lord could find on dozens of worlds.
The Empire, or what was left of it, was no longer making equipment. The New Republic had seen to that by shutting down each factory it could find. The prototypes and designs were taken and destroyed. If any factories remained, then this crime lord had to be paying them, too, in order to get modern Imperial equipment.
Or was there something about the old stuff? Something different?
Han felt that if he looked at the stuff the smugglers were selling, he might discover it. For the first time in a long time, he missed having Threepio at his side. The Professor could tell him about the differences in Imperial equipment, and if Threepio didn’t know, Artoo did.
It felt odd to travel without his resources.
When Han had been a regular at the Run, Skip 5 had been abandoned. The caves of Skip 5, while huge, were lined with sunstone, and the ambient temperature inside was about forty degrees Celsius, un
bearable for humans most of the time, deadly for many of the larger species that inhabited the Run. A decade before Han arrived, a gang of human smugglers had lived in the caverns for months. They ended up killing each other in a fight some said was sparked by the heat.
Han had never been to Skip 5. He had only heard about it.
He was unprepared for its size, and for its level of development.
The landing pad in the caverns at the edge of Skip 5 was large enough for six luxury liners to rest comfortably. Han hadn’t seen a landing pad that big outside of Coruscant in years. The Falcon looked small next to the dozens of freighters that waited, their cargo doors open, for the binary load lifters to finish placing boxes inside. Some of the boxes were as large as the Falcon’s cockpit.
Han glanced at Chewie, who moaned in astonishment. Seluss, who had been sitting behind them, chittered excitedly.
“Boxes could carry anything, Seluss,” Han said. “I want to see what’s inside.”
Seluss chittered again.
Han ignored him. He knew that no one would voluntarily open a box for him, especially now that he was perceived as legitimate. But he wanted to see the packing rooms and the work stations. He still didn’t entirely believe that smugglers had voluntarily pooled their efforts to supply this mysterious customer. He had a hunch that only a few worked together. The rest made a play at it, and delivered the real goods personally. He would discover who was working Skip 5, and who wasn’t. Then he and Chewie would follow the ones who were conspicuously absent. He hoped one of those smugglers owed him an old debt. Then he could solve the mystery of the client without a personal meeting.
“You two stay here,” Han said to Chewie. “I’ll be back.”
Chewie growled.
“We’ve been through this,” Han said. “I’m not going to leave the Falcon unguarded here. And I’m not going into the Skip with Seluss alone.”
Seluss chirped.
“Just because your explanation’s plausible doesn’t mean that I should trust you,” Han said. He slipped out of the pilot’s chair. “If I’m not back soon, Chewie, get out of here.”
Star Wars: The New Rebellion Page 16
