Tatooine Ghost

by Troy Denning

  Tatooine Ghost

  By Troy Denning

  Dedication

  For Hans

  Wookiee at Heart

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank everyone who helped make this book possible. Thanks are due especially to: Andria Hayday, whose suggestions and valuable insight contributed to the story in a thousand ways large and small; to special Star Wars fans Ryan Holden and Elliot Courant, whose enthusiasm for the galaxy far, far away reminds me why this is important; to Dan Wallace and James Luceno for advice and answers; to all the people at Del Rey who make writing novels such a pleasure, particularly Shelly Shapiro, Kathleen O’Shea David, Colleen Lindsay, Colette Russen, and Laura Jorstad; to Sue Rostoni, Lucy Autrey Wilson, Chris Cerasi, Leland Chee and everyone at Lucasfilm for their Star Wars guidance and keen continuity eyes.

  Corphelion Interlude

  A flight of comets hung just beyond the observation dome, their luminous heads arrayed in a ragged double arrow, their long tails striping the dark sky with silver splendor. The largest were visibly creeping across space, and one—blazing giant with a braided tail that seemed to stretch across half the system—rapidly swelling to the size of a hubba melon. The panorama was just as advertised, the perfect honeymoon view, and Han Solo could tell by the gabble of three-hundred beings packed onto the small viewing floor that everyone else thought so, too.

  At Han’s side stood Leia, dressed comfortably but fashionably in a sleeveless doublet and a pair of slinky zoosha pants that Han found especially alluring. Her brown eyes were fixed on the patio below, and on her face, she wore a cordial diplomat’s expression that was more mask than smile.

  Behind them, a swarm of droning Kubaz spilled out of the turbolift and brushed past, making pointed comments about blocking access to the viewing floor.

  “Sorry about this,” Han said to Leia. A stop to watch the Corphelion Comets had seemed a romantic way to start their honeymoon—least until they had discovered that it was the height of the season and every resort on the asteroid was badly overbooked. “I guess the private dome isn’t so private, either.”

  “I don’t care, as long as we’re here together.” Leia took Han’s hand and started down a broad set of dark, hardwood stairs. “There’s a pair of empty chaises out there in the middle. Once we settle in and order a drink, we won’t even notice the noise.”

  “Sure. A Pink Nebula sounds good.” Jostling for elbow space was hardly the romantic way Han had hoped to start their marriage, but things were bound to improve. Around Leia, they usually did. “Maybe the serving droid has earplugs or something.”

  They were halfway down the staircase when a brilliant starburst of radiance filled the sky. The Solos stopped to look and saw the giant comet splitting into a spectacular set of twins. The crowded patio fell silent.

  “Now that’s more like it,” Han said.

  The twins began to drift apart, their tails crossing as one comet angled toward the rest of the Corphelions. The other continued to swell in the darkness above the dome. Finally, when its head had grown to an apparent diameter of more than a meter, a nervous murmur began to build on the patio below.

  Leia turned back up the stairs. “Maybe we should go back to the Falcon.”

  Han caught her arm. “Not so fast.” He continued to study the approaching comet—rather, the darkness around its edges, watching to see how quickly and evenly its head was obscuring the distant stars. “I thought you wanted to see the Corphelions?” “Not this close, Han.”

  “Relax.” As he had hoped, the stars on the comet’s lower left were vanishing by the dozens; those on the upper right were disappearing only in twos and threes. “Everything’s under control.”

  “You’ve said that before,” Leia objected. “You’re sure we don’t need to go back to the Falcon?”

  “I’m sure.” Han slipped a hand down to the small of her back. “And this time I mean it. Everything’s under control, Sweetheart.”

  Leia glanced from Han to the approaching comet, then back to Han again. Her expression grew more trusting, and she smiled slyly.

  “Okay, Flyboy.” She took his arm. “My life is in your hands.”

  They descended the rest of the stairs arm in arm. The comet had doubled in size during the last few seconds, its tail becoming a fan that curved across a quarter of the dome. A portly Bothan couple rose with their fur standing on end and turned toward the stairs, and that was all it took to send the rest of the crowd scurrying for the evacuation stations inside the asteroid.

  Leia pulled Han into a quiet corner and reached up with both hands. As jabbering humans and growling aliens continued to shove up the stairs in a near-stampede, she laced her fingers together behind his neck and stared deep into his eyes.

  Han’s heart began to beat faster.

  “How did you arrange this?” Leia asked.

  “Arrange what?” Han was genuinely confused.

  Leia gently pulled his head close to her mouth. “The comet.” She flicked her tongue along the lobe of his ear, then continued in a sultry voice. “Come on, Flyboy, you can tell me. Did Wedge help you?”

  “Wedge? You think Wedge is out there moving comets around?”

  Leia gently nibbled his earlobe. It felt warm and… well, wonderful. “Lando, then. He has that big asteroid tug, and this is just his style. Grandiose, effective.” She glanced over at the now-deserted patio. “And just a little bit devious.”

  “Lando’s busy on Nkllon.” Han was keeping one eye on the comet. “You know that.”

  “You won’t tell me?” Leia slipped her hands under the hem of his tunic and playfully ran her fingers up his back. “You’re sure?”

  “Well, I’m—”

  Leia dug her fingertips into the flesh behind his shoulders.

  “Pretty sure,” Han said. “I think.”

  The comet was the size of an Endorian moon now, and he was beginning to worry that his pilot’s eye had gone weak. The different rates at which the head was obscuring the surrounding stars suggested it was approaching at an angle, but unless the stars on the right stopped disappearing—and soon—the comet would not actually miss the resort.

  “Uh, Leia?”

  “No—I’ve changed my mind, Han.” Leia lowered her hands and, one arm still wrapped around his waist, turned to look at the sky. “I don’t want to know how you arranged this.”

  “But—”

  “Sshhh.” Leia touched a finger to his lips. “I just want to look. It makes me wish we could forget everything back on Coruscant and stay here forever.”

  “You don’t say?” The approaching comet was as large as a bantha now. Han glanced toward the empty stairs, trying to estimate how long he could keep his real secret—that he may have miscalculated the comet’s trajectory—before they would have to make a mad scramble for the evacuation shelters. “I just might be able to arrange that.”

  Leia leaned her head against his shoulder. “If only you could.”

  “Oh, I could…” The comet grew so bright that its radiance lit the whole dome and there were no stars visible around it at all. Deciding that things were starting to get dangerous, Han pulled Leia out of the corner. “In fact—”

  The white spike of an antitail finally appeared in front of the head, and the entire comet began to angle across the dome—away from the resort. Han exhaled in relief, then put on his best lopsided grin and turned to Leia.

  Leia looked puzzled. “In fact what, Han?”

  “In fact…” Han waited while the comet drifted over their heads to the other side of the dome, then said, “You’re going to be really impressed with what I’ve arranged next.”

  Leia cocked her brow. “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  Han nodded. “
I have a reason.”

  The asteroid entered the comet’s tail, and billions of tiny dust grains exploded against the resort’s particle shield. Space above erupted into a glittering veil of micro-flashes.

  “Okay, I’m impressed,” Leia said. “Really impressed.”

  “That was nothing,” Han said. “This is what I was talking about.”

  He drew Leia close and lowered his lips to hers. She pressed herself tight against him and returned the kiss passionately, and that was how they remained until a loud cheer from atop the stairs interrupted them.

  Han opened an eye and, finding an audience of two dozen comet watchers leering down at them, broke off the kiss. “Leia?”

  “Yes, Han?”

  “Maybe we should go back to the Falcon after all.”

  Leia took his hand and started for the stairs. “Han, I thought you’d never ask.”

  Prologue

  Leia Organa, newly Leia Organa Solo, sat behind Han and Chewbacca on the flight deck of the Millennium Falcon. The twin suns of the Tatoo system were hanging outside the forward viewport, a pair of white eyes blazing up from the black well of space. Like all twins, they were bound together by a tie as unpredictable as it was powerful. Sometimes, the bond boosted their luminosity far beyond that of two normal suns. At other times, it sent waves of ionic discharge pulsing across space to scramble circuits and reorient core-relative compasses. Today, the twins were assailing the Falcon with electromagnetic blasts, overloading her sensors and filling the cockpit speakers with static.

  As Chewbacca worked to raise the proper filters, the static faded from a roar to a crackle, then softened to a hiss, which rose and fell in a sharp rhythm. Puzzled by the odd snickering sound, Leia glanced over at the master comm console and found the reception indicator still scanning for signals. She leaned forward against her crash webbing.

  “Han, do you hear…”

  No sound came from her mouth. The snicker became a deep chuckle, and a nebula of black gas began to gather in front of the Falcon. Han showed no reaction to it. Neither did Chewbacca, even when it coalesced into the cowl of a Jedi cloak.

  “Han! Don’t you see…”

  Again, her voice made no sound. Glaring out from beneath the cowl, the twin suns looked more than ever like eyes—heartless eyes, full of malice and power lust. Where the cloud was thin, crooked streaks of purple radiance created the impression of a twisted mouth and wrinkled face.

  The mouth rose at the corners. “Mine.”

  The voice was cruel and distinct and rife with dark side power. Leia gasped—silently—and tried to raise an arm that had suddenly grown as heavy as the Falcon.

  The smile became a sneer. “Mine.”

  Still, neither Han nor Chewbacca seemed to notice what was happening. Leia would have screamed, had her mouth been willing to obey.

  The nebula began to thicken, and the purple wrinkles faded behind its inky veil. The twin suns dimmed to darkness, and the black cloud assumed the shape of a familiar mask—a mask of harsh angles and obsidian sheen, framed by the long, flaring neck apron of an equally black helmet.

  Vader’s helmet.

  A chill wave of nausea washed over Leia. The curved eye lenses grew transparent, but instead of the blazing brightness of Tatooine’s twin suns—or the angry red-rimmed gaze of Darth Vader—she found herself looking into her brother’s soft blue eyes.

  “Luke! What are you…”

  Her question remained as silent as the others she had asked. Luke’s eyes grew hollow and hard and haunted, and the helmet moved slowly from side to side. Blue flickers of electricity snaked across the speech circuits behind the respiratory screen, but his words were rendered nearly inaudible by static crackling. Leia made out something about not following and staying out of darkness; then Luke fell silent again. She tried to tell him that his equipment was malfunctioning, that his voice had been obscured, but before she could find a way to make herself heard, the helmet stopped moving.

  Luke locked gazes and held her transfixed for what might have been seconds… or minutes… his eyes now the lifeless blue of ice. Leia grew cold, and frightened, and the mask dissolved back into the black nothingness of space, leaving her to stare out once again into the mind-stabbing brilliance of the Tatoo system’s twin suns.

  Chapter One

  Instead of bed, where she usually awoke from her dreams, Leia found herself slumped forward in her crash webbing, ears hissing with static and eyes aching from the glare of two G-class suns. Han and Chewbacca were still busy at their stations, Han plotting approach vectors and Chewbacca setting sensor filters. The planet Tatooine was just drifting into view, its yellow sodium-rich sands glowing so brightly it resembled a small sibling star in orbit around the big twins.

  A metallic hand tapped Leia’s shoulder. She turned to see C-3PO’s photoreceptors shining at her from the adjacent passenger seat.

  “Pardon me for asking, Princess Leia, but are you well?”

  “Don’t I look well?”

  “Oh dear,” C-3PO replied, a diplomatic subroutine activating in response to her tone of voice. “Why yes, you do look as splendid as ever, but it seemed for a moment as though you might have overloaded your primary circuits.”

  “My circuits are fine.”

  “I’ll need to confirm that later.” Han twisted around and glanced over his seat with the same crooked smile that had alternately charmed and worried Leia since their first meeting on the Death Star. “Princess.”

  “Oh, really?” Leia straightened herself in her chair without fully realizing she was doing it. With his tough-guy good looks and eyes sparkling with trouble, Han still made her sit up and take notice. “And you think you can read my schematics?”

  “Sweetheart, I know your schematics by heart.” Han’s smile faded, and his expression grew concerned. “Threepio’s right. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Something like that. A bad dream.”

  Han looked doubtful. “I’ve sat in that chair. That chair isn’t comfortable enough for dreams—good or bad.”

  “It’s been a long trip,” Leia said, perhaps a little too quickly. “I must have nodded off.”

  Han regarded her a moment longer, then shrugged. “Well, see if you can stay awake.” He looked forward again, to where the twin suns were slowly being eclipsed by Tatooine’s steadily swelling disk. “Until the sensors come up, we need to keep an eye out for other traffic.”

  Leia gazed out the canopy and began to search for the rapidly swelling silhouette of blocked starlight that would mean an approaching vessel. Her thoughts remained focused on the strange dream. It had a similar feel to the Force-vision she had experienced nearly five years earlier at Bakura, when her father had sent an apparition begging for the forgiveness she would never—could never—grant. But that had been his doing, not hers.

  Han’s hand rose into view between the pilot and copilot’s seats, pointing toward a blocky silhouette floating some distance to one side of Tatooine’s yellow disk. The twin suns were now completely hidden behind the planet, and Leia could see that the tiny silhouette was growing larger as they approached. It seemed to be staying in the same place relative to Tatooine, deliberately hanging in the shadow of the planet.

  “That’s too square to be a moon,” Han said.

  “And it’s no asteroid, not hanging in one place like that,” Leia added. “But at least it doesn’t seem to be coming our way.”

  “Yet,” Han replied. “How about those filters, Chewie?”

  An impatient rumble suggested that the Wookiee was still struggling with the filters. Anyone else might have been frightened, but Leia found the groan reassuring, a touch of the familiar in a time of shifting alliances and random annihilation. When she had married Han six months ago, she had known Chewbacca would be an honorary member of their family, and that was fine with her. Over the years she had come to think of the Wookiee as something of a furry big brother, always loyal to Han and protective of her, and now she c
ould not hear him growl without feeling that she lived in a safer place, that with Chewbacca and Luke and Han—when he was in the mood—and millions of others like them, the New Republic would beat back the Empire’s latest onslaught and one day bring peace to the galaxy.

  That, and she liked how Wookiee fur always smelled of trillium soap.

  The comm hiss finally fell silent as Chewbacca found the right combination of filters. He brought the sensors up, fiddled a moment longer, then let out a startled ruumph.

  “The mass calibration is off,” Han said. “That reads like a Star Destroyer.”

  Chewbacca oowralled indignantly, then sent the data readout to the auxiliary display beside Leia’s seat and glanced back for her affirmation. She had to look only a second to see that he was correct.

  “Sixteen hundred meters, six comm bands in use, and a TIE squadron circling on station,” Leia said, feeling a little sick and worried. When the Millennium Falcon came across a Star Destroyer these days, it was usually because one was stalking the other. “I don’t know, Han. The mass calibration looks fine to me.”

  As she spoke, the Falcon’s computer found a profile match in its military data banks and displayed the schematic of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer. Below the image appeared the vessel’s name.

  “The Chimaera,” Han read. “Isn’t she still in service to the Empire?”

  “As of two months ago, she was one of their most efficient Destroyers.” Leia did not need to look up the information. The death of Warlord Zsinj eight months earlier had emboldened the Imperial fleet, and the Provisional Council had been mired in war minutiae ever since. “Admiral Ackbar has been wondering what became of her.”

  “Deserters?” Han caught her eye in the canopy reflection. “Another captain wanting to set himself up as a warlord?”

  “Please, no! The situation out here is already too confused.” With the New Republic battling the Imperials over the scraps of Zsinj’s empire and the surviving warlords exploiting the war to enlarge their own territories, confused was an understatement. Several times, the New Republic Navy had moved against one enemy to find itself engaging another, and sometimes two or three at once. “And the Chimaera’s commander isn’t the type. By all accounts, Gilad Pellaeon is both loyal and competent.”