by Troy Denning
Chewbacca opened the throttles wide.
Unlike the overhang beneath which they had found the ambushed sandcrawler, the smuggler’s cave was a true cavern, with a mouth as large as a space slug’s and two sweeping curves that Chewbacca could fly blind. It was also hidden in the back of a sunken dead end in the bottom of Beeda Basin and visible from only one place along the rim, a feature that had made it a favorite rendezvous point for smugglers since long before the Hutts controlled Tatooine.
“You must have misunderstood me,” C-3PO said. “I said the Imperial walker was in front of us.”
Chewbacca growled his impatience.
“You will care,” C-3PO retorted. “There were two hoverscouts in position already.”
Chewbacca turned to order one of the Squibs into the blaster turret and found them both climbing onto the firing seat, Grees slipping behind the triggers and Sligh arranging grenades and thermal detonators in the stormtrooper utility belts slung across his chest.
Chewie grunted happily.
“This is not going to be fun,” C-3PO said. “In fact, I insist you let me out of this vehicle right now.”
The Wookiee ignored him and continued across the basin floor. Finally, the mirage effect lifted and he could see a shimmering line ahead where the ground dropped into the sunken dead end. He groaned a warning.
“I don’t see what good holding on will do. We’re going to be blasted to—aarraghhg!”
The droid’s complaint ended in a wail as the hoverscout reached the dead end and dropped over a five-meter escarpment. Grees chortled in delight and cut loose with the blaster cannon. Chewbacca got his bearings and saw the walker standing in the cavern mouth, its immense legs braced for firing, its cockpit swinging in their direction, and two platoons of stormtroopers rappelling to the ground on droplines. Flanked by the two hoverscouts C-3PO had mentioned, the walker was effectively blocking the entire cave entrance.
Both hoverscouts and the walker’s cockpit opened up with their blaster cannons, raising a wall of laser blossoms that left Chewbacca piloting from memory. He rumbled a command.
C-3PO turned to Grees. “Chewbacca asks that you shoot those droplines—”
“Gotcha!” Grees shifted his fire. “Can’t see a thing!”
Neither could Chewbacca, but he had a sense of the cave mouth swelling up ahead. Juking and jinking like a fighter pilot, he aimed for the center of the darkness. The hoverscout shuddered twice as its armor absorbed a couple of light cannon strikes.
The barrage ended as quickly as it had started, and Chewbacca saw the gray tree of an AT-AT leg looming in front of him. He swerved to avoid it, bounced over a pile of groaning stormtroopers, and suddenly there was nothing but dark cave ahead.
He decelerated and took a sweeping left, then heard the rapid-fire crackle of three thermal detonators and a couple of incendiary grenades going off under the AT-AT.
C-3PO’s metal fingers began to scrape blindly at the control console. “Surely this vehicle has lights!”
Chewbacca slapped the droid’s hand away and took a gradual left, where they found the underside of the Falcon illuminated by the glow of two portable lamps. In the dim light, a squad of stormtroopers was still struggling to set their E-Web repeating blaster on its tripod. Grees brought the blaster turret around and relieved them of the necessity.
After a few security shots to make sure there were no survivors lurking about, they swung around behind the Falcon and parked behind the main cargo lift. Chewbacca leapt out of the driver’s seat and ran for the main hatch, roaring instructions to C-3PO over his shoulder.
“Why do I have to wait?” the droid complained. “Sligh must be capable of keeping watch!”
“Yeah, if I wasn’t heading for a cannon turret—”
Chewbacca did not hear the rest of the exchange. He was already running up the boarding ramp, prioritizing the tasks he needed to accomplish before he could get to Han and Leia: warm the drive circuits, lower the repeating blaster, actuate the power core. It should all be doable in the next three minutes. There might still be that Imperial walker to get past, if Sligh’s thermal detonators had failed to drop it—but that was why the Falcon carried concussion missiles, wasn’t it?
Leia continued to look at the hut with the drawbar. She had not taken her eyes off it since dropping the electrobinoculars. The sensation of pain and despair had faded back to nothingness, but the memory of it weighed more heavily on her mind than ever. This was where her grandmother had been held captive and tortured—probably where she had died. And it was where Anakin had found his mother. It had to be.
“I wonder if she was still alive.” Realizing that so far she had not voiced her thoughts to Han, Leia added, “This is where Anakin found my grandmother.”
“How can you know that?” Han glanced longingly down the slope toward the lost electrobinoculars. “Did he leave a sign?”
“Think about it.” Leia explained what Beru’s sister had told her about Shmi’s abduction from the Lars farm, and how Anakin had returned to Tatooine and recovered her body. “He found her at this encampment—in that hut.”
“So Anakin is the angry ghost?” Han asked.
Leia recalled what Herat had told them about how this place came by its name. “I suppose so. An entire tribe, hacked to pieces.”
“They sure picked the wrong woman to kidnap.” Han’s gaze wandered to the edge of the oasis, where the banthas were gathering around a gently rumbling female. “The mother of a Jedi.”
“Didn’t they?”
Leia felt no satisfaction in knowing how savagely her grandmother’s death had been avenged—quite the opposite. She was suddenly very aware of the twin suns blazing down, of the heat and the cloud-barren sky and the eye-stabbing brilliance, and she began to feel hollow and qualmish inside.
“This is where it happened,” she said. “Where he first surrendered to his anger.”
“He?” Han’s helmet turned to look at her. “Your father.”
Leia nodded.
“I can see how it might happen,” Han said.
“That doesn’t excuse it.” Even the helmet vocabulator did not blunt the sharpness in Leia’s voice. “He knew better.”
“Talk about a worrt calling a gorg slow,” Han said. “Take it easy. Maybe that’s not what happened. You’re placing a lot of faith in feelings.”
“It’s paid off so far,” Leia countered. “Or are you forgetting what would have happened if we’d come straight here?”
“I’m not forgetting,” Han said. Down in the oasis, the bantha herd was ambling toward the Tusken camp.
“And even if he did, why do they keep sacrificing more captives? Seems like that would only make the angry ghosts angrier.”
“Do I look like a Tusken?” Leia asked. “How would I know why they make their sacrifices? No one knows why Sand People do anything. That’s what makes them Sand People.”
The electronic voice of a stormtrooper sounded from the slope behind them. “Excuse me.”
Leia and Han spun toward each other and knocked helmets, then turned to find a stormtrooper standing on the slope below, his head cocked as though he could not quite believe the incompetence he was seeing. He held his blaster rifle in one hand, a pair of electrobinoculars in the other.
“Service number?” Leia demanded, assuming the offensive in an effort to keep the stormtrooper off balance. “What are you doing sneaking up on us?”
“ST-Two-Nine-Seven,” the trooper replied. “I apologize if I’m intruding on a classified conversation.”
Noting ST-297’s more confident demeanor, Leia assumed a more civil tone.
“You’re excused. What do you want?”
“I couldn’t help noticing that you had dropped your electrobinoculars.” ST-297 raised the set in his hand. “I thought you might like to borrow mine.”
“That’s very efficient of you.” Leia nodded Han down the slope. “I’ll make a note of it.”
“Thank you. I’m a g
reat admirer of Commander Quenton.” ST-297—Leia was guessing officer—passed the electrobinoculars to Han, but he kept his helmet lenses trained on Leia. “Is there anything else you need?”
Leia pretended to consider this a moment, then shook her head. “You’ve been very helpful, Captain.”
ST-297’s helmet turned slightly to the side, then he said, “That was S-T-Two-Nine-Seven. What was your service number again?”
Leia cursed herself for raising his suspicions unnecessarily.
Han was quick to salvage the situation. He stepped in front of the stormtrooper. “You don’t want to know. It’s command.”
“That will be all, Lieutenant,” Leia said. “I’ll make certain that my fath—uh—Commander Quenton hears of your efficiency.”
ST-297 seemed to grow an inch taller. “Very well, then. I’ll leave you to your observations.”
Leia watched him go, then took the electrobinoculars from Han. “With sycophants like that leading their platoons, the Empire is doomed.”
“Good—we need all the help we can get.” Han looked in the direction of Mos Espa, then checked his chronometer. “I wonder what’s taking so long? Chewbacca should have clicked us by now.”
The same question had been on Leia’s mind, but she tried not to dwell on the negative possibilities. There were just too many of them, and they had no choice but to trust Chewbacca to figure a way around any problem he encountered.
She shrugged and said, “Maybe there was unexpected traffic.”
Leia took the electrobinoculars and turned them back on the hut. Now that she was over the shock of what she had felt through the Force, she could see that the bantha rib arch was splattered with something dark. A pair of rawhide thongs dangled from the bones at just about the height of a human’s outstretched arms, leaving little doubt as to the gruesome purpose of the arch.
Three meters behind it lay a pile of sun-bleached skulls and bones. Most appeared to be human, and many of the limbs were splintered or truncated where the corpse had been hacked apart. Leia was relieved to see that none of the bones had any flesh clinging to it. Banai was, perhaps, still alive.
Leia could not bear to look longer. As horrified as she was by what Shmi had suffered—as much as it pained her to contemplate what had happened there—she was even more appalled by the ghastly cycle her father had set in motion. There had to be a hundred skulls in that pile, maybe two or three hundred. For his mother’s life, Anakin had taken the lives of dozens of Tuskens; the Sand People had responded with more killing of their own. The legacy of death he had planted that day had continued to grow, costing hundreds of beings their lives, and Leia could see no end to it.
“He should have known better.” Leia passed the electrobinoculars to Han. “He was a Jedi.”
“He was a kid with a dead mother.” Han raised the electrobinoculars, but he seemed to be looking more toward the banthas than the bones. “He vented his anger on the ones who killed her. I might have done the same thing.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Leia said.
“And it doesn’t make me a Sith monster, either,” Han retorted. “What he did wasn’t evil, it was human. Later, he became Darth Vader and did a lot of terrible things, but don’t forget that he’s the one who killed the Emperor.”
“You’re saying you forgive him?” Leia asked. “After he froze you in carbonite?”
“I’m just saying that without him, Palpatine would still be Emperor.”
“You’re saying Darth Vader saved the galaxy?”
Han shrugged. “Well, Anakin Skywalker. Think about it. If he’d have been a nice guy, do you think he’d have ever gotten that close to Palpatine?” Han continued to watch the banthas through the electrobinoculars. “Maybe that was your father’s destiny all along, to save the galaxy just like his mother thought he would—well, maybe not just like she thought. But he did save it.”
“Han…” Leia felt like her world had been turned upside down… again. Han had a way of doing that to her. “Han, sometimes you amaze me.”
That got him to put the electrobinoculars down. “Just sometimes?” He passed them over. “But our job’s not done. Take a look behind the banthas and tell me what you see.”
Leia adjusted the focus and saw a small buff-colored mass creeping across the ground, about ten meters behind the last bantha. “What is that, a womp rat?”
“Yeah, a womp rat named Emala.” Han took the electrobinoculars and began to unscrew the recharge port. “But forget about her. I think we’ve got other problems. Take a look over my shoulder.”
Leia saw a long line of stormtroopers starting to creep across the face of the dune toward them.
“Behind me, too?” she asked.
Han nodded, then pulled a small transistor out of the recharge port. Leia did not need to ask what the two little wires dangling from the end were. She had seen eavesdropping bugs often enough to recognize an antenna.
“That lieutenant was a little smarter than we thought.” Han tossed the bug over the edge of the dune, then asked, “What do you want to do—surrender, or try to blast our way out?”
The stormtroopers behind Han raised their blasters and broke into a run. Leia glanced over the side down into the oasis, where the banthas were carefully starting to pick their way through the Tusken camp.
“I have a better plan. Follow me.” Leia tucked her blaster rifle under one arm and plucked the handheld comlink from her utility belt, then jumped over the side and began to slide down the steep face of the dune. “Chewie, we need a lift, and fast!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Han didn’t even know when the Tuskens opened fire. He was about halfway down the dune, lying on his back sliding down the steep slope with his legs held high, trying to keep Leia in sight between his feet, listening to the almost subliminal rumble of avalanching sand.
Then ST-297’s voice came over his helmet speaker.
“The impostors are to be taken alive! Lay fire on the Tuskens. Repeat, Tuskens only! Suppress all indigenous fire on the Rebels!”
A sheet of blasterfire erupted from not too many meters up the slope behind Han, flashing down over his head, shredding desert brush Tusken huts, lacing the oasis with strands of smoke and light. The banthas bugled and began to cluster together in a defensive circle, and that was the end of the Sand People’s camp.
Leia craned her neck to look up at Han. “The Tuskens are shooting at us?”
“Who knows? I still haven’t seen any—”
Leia let her feet catch and flipped head over heels, and her blaster went flying. Han caught it in one hand, then watched in frightened panic as she continued to accelerate, descending the dune’s face in a crazy tumble not even a Tusken could hit.
Not wanting to be left behind, Han cradled both blaster rifles to his chest, tucked his chin, and planted his feet.
At the speed he was traveling already, it was like being launched from a missile tube. He pitched forward and sailed into the air, and then the world became a kaleidoscope of sand, sky, and blaster flash.
Han was dimly aware of several voices inside his helmet demanding to know what was happening—the lieutenant shouting, “Have they been hit?” and someone else demanding, “Why are you breaking comm silence?” just before he crashed through a thicket of bushes and slammed into a boulder. He tried to sit up, only to fall over again when something struck his helmet with a deafening crack. A blaster bolt sizzled past overhead, then a heavy body landed across his midsection.
“ST-Two-Nine-Seven, what’s happening down there?” a voice demanded in his ear. “Report!”
“It’s the Rebels,” the lieutenant answered. “We have them in sight. They’re fleeing into the Tusken encampment.”
“What?” A different voice this time, the same one that had chastised Company A’s captain for questioning orders. “Repeat.”
“They’re fleeing into the Tusken camp, sir. We’re pursuing, but manpower is limited.”
“Purs
uing, Lieutenant? Set blasters to stun and stop them.”
There was a pause, then the lieutenant said, “Stunning may not be possible, sir. They’re wearing captured armor.”
“Thus the impostors,” the voice said.
“I have sharpshooters covering them.”
“As well you should. May we then assume that they are listening to our current comm channel?”
“It, uh, seems likely.”
“Indeed. All units to adopt nonsecure communications protocol until further notice. And Lieutenant?”
“Sir?”
“Why am I not speaking with the captain of Company A?”
“Tuskens, sir.”
“Ah, of course. Carry on, Lieutenant. Reinforcements are coming.” Then, in a more reflective tone, the voice added, “Interesting.”
“Han!”
It took Han a moment to realize this voice was coming from outside his helmet. He rolled over and found himself looking into the goggles of the Tusken Raider lying atop him—the first one he had seen in the oasis so far.
“Leia?”
A pair of white-armored gloves grabbed the dead Tusken by the collar and pulled him off, then took one of the blaster rifles Han was holding. “We’ve got work to do.”
Head still spinning from the blow to his helmet, Han staggered to his feet and followed Leia into the oasis proper. It was much larger than it had looked from above, probably twenty meters across and a hundred long. They were on the side nearest the dune—and the stormtroopers—about halfway down its length. Leia turned and raced for the main hut, laying suppression fire into the Tusken camp. Han turned his blaster in the opposite direction, shooting toward the dune.
“Leia, do you have any idea where we’re going?”
“Of course,” Leia replied. “If you were a Tusken with a painting worth fifteen million credits, where would you put it?”
