by Troy Denning
“It’s okay!” Han yelled. “Just grab me!”
“Quiet, Solo!” A small voice yelled from above. “You want to live, Banai? Give me your hand.”
“Emala?” Han looked up to see the Squib dangling head-down above him, her feet tied into the wool on the bantha’s back. “How’d you get here?”
“How do you think? I jumped!” She lashed out and caught Banai’s hand in both of hers. “This would have been easier if you’d have grabbed the right bantha!”
The first two minutes of flight—before the Imperials had time to recover from the shock of having their AT-AT blown out of the Falcon’s path—had gone smoothly. Chewbacca had streaked across the Great Mesa at just under burn speed—the velocity at which the ship created a fireball in its wake—doing his best to avoid inhabited areas where his shock wave would have flattened buildings. By flying so low, C-3PO had informed him repeatedly, he was raising a dust cloud several kilometers high. So what? They were not going to take anyone by surprise. The Imperials knew where they were going. They would be waiting… in force.
The Falcon hit the first squadron at the Jundland Wastes, when Chewbacca ascended to avoid the rough terrain. The TIEs dived in from both sides, pelting the Falcon from all angles. Grees and Sligh, staffing the cannon turrets, took out three fighters before the first damage alarms began to ring in the cockpit. But that left nine. When one of the TIEs tried to sneak under the Falcon for a belly shot, Chewbacca headed for the rim of the nearest cliff and scraped him off. They did not try that game again.
The Falcon reached the undulating vastness of the Dune Sea… and found a second squadron waiting. With the shields wavering, a Bithian chorus of control alarms screeching, and the port vector plate so shot to pieces that rolling the Falcon was easier than turning it, Chewbacca knew they would never survive the next gauntlet.
So he decided to go under it.
As soon as the Falcon cleared the bluffs, he dropped her over the edge. C-3PO shrieked, but Chewbacca never listened to the droid anyway. He slipped into the trough between two of the massive dunes and leveled off at ten meters—that would leave almost three between the bottom cannon turret and the ground—and watched the TIEs dive on them.
Sligh smeared the Imperial vector with cannon fire—not aiming, just putting it up there in the way—and three TIEs erupted into fiery blossoms. The survivors passed over the Falcon, pummeling her shields with cannon fire, penetrating far too often and touching off so many alert lights the control panel looked like it was on fire.
Then, the TIEs were past, flying blind through the kilometers-high sand plume behind the Falcon, straight into the survivors of the Jundland squadron, also flying blind… and in the opposite direction. The tactical display went white with exploding TIEs.
Chewbacca howled in glee.
“Yes, that certainly will teach them to play games with a Wookiee,” C-3PO agreed. “But I’m afraid I don’t know the contest to which you’re referring, Chewbacca. What is ‘guts,’ and how is it played?”
“Chewbacca did not double-cross us.” Leia pulled a thumb-sized datachip off the back of the Killik Twilight’s moisture-control regulator and placed it in a small depression she had scooped out in the sand. “Wookiees don’t double-cross.”
“There’s a first time for everything.” Emala picked up the chip and rubbed it against her muzzle. “So this is what all the trouble’s about?”
“Mostly. I did want the painting as well.”
They were crouched atop a bluff in a small circle of boulders, with Tusken projectiles ricocheting off the rock around them and two separate squads of Imperials working into flanking positions along adjacent ridges. The banthas that had carried them into this mess were huddled in a defensive circle at the bottom of the ravine below, where they had stopped their stampede. Leia’s cooling unit had been damaged by the last slug hit, and the twin suns were beating down mercilessly, quick-baking her in her armor.
But she had the Shadowcast code key, nobody was dead yet, and they had the signal beacon up for Chewbacca. Considering everything that had gone wrong and a few things that had gone right, Leia thought it had been a pretty good trip… for Tatooine. She snatched the datachip from the Squib’s hand, checked to make sure it was still the Shadowcast code key, and returned it to the depression.
Emala plucked up the chip again, this time holding it in front of her eyes. “So what is it?”
Leia drew her blaster. “Do you really want to know?”
“Sorry for trying to help.” Emala dropped the datachip back in the depression. “I was only thinking you should be sure you want to do this.”
“This way, I know it won’t fall into the wrong hands.” Leia checked the datachip once more, then returned it to the basin. “If you try to pick it up again, I’ll shoot you.”
“After I saved your mate’s life?” Emala huffed. “There’s no need to be rude. I only have your best interests—”
“Watch yourself,” Leia interrupted.
She pointed her blaster into the basin and squeezed the trigger. The bolt melted the chip to slag. She shot it again, and this time even the slag bubbled away.
“That ought to do it.” Leia returned the moisture regulator to Killik Twilight’s frame, then handed the painting to Emala. “It needs filling. You know how to do it?”
Emala turned the painting right-side up and pointed to the little mouth in the top of the frame. “Pour water in there. Stop when I see it.”
“Pure water.” Leia hesitated, taking one last look at the painting before she returned to battle. “That’s very important. I’m placing a lot of trust in you.”
“Consider me part Wookiee.” Emala opened her water bottle. “You won’t be sorry.”
Banai intercepted the bottle. “I’ll show her.”
Leia couldn’t bear to watch. She crawled into a small cranny where Han lay between two boulders keeping watch on the Tuskens—or at least their banthas. The warriors themselves were as difficult to find as ever. She squeezed in beside him, jostling his wounded thigh, and an electronic groan escaped his helmet voice processor.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “How bad is it?”
“Not too bad.” He glanced over his shoulder toward Banai, who was patiently explaining to Emala why she could not fill the reservoir straight from a water bottle. “You really want to trust Emala with your Killik Twilight?”
“I don’t want to, but it’s the Squibs’ painting now. A deal’s a deal.”
A trio of loud pops sounded from somewhere below, and three slugs pinged next to her head, showering her helmet with shards of sandrock. Leia studied the ravine and saw only stone, dirt, and glare.
“Where are they?” she asked.
“You tell me,” Han said. “If I knew, I’d be shooting back.”
Leia watched for a moment longer. When another round of rock shards pattered off her helmet, she began to pour blasterfire into the largest boulder in the gully.
“What do you see?” Han asked.
“Nothing. But I’m not going to just lie here—”
“Right.”
Han added his fire to hers, and the boulder shattered. An astonished Tusken Raider jumped up from where he had been kneeling and brought his slugthrower to his shoulder, so frightened that he was aiming high over their heads. Leia laid a few bolts at his feet and sent him scrambling down the ravine.
Han selected another likely-looking boulder and poured bolts into it. Leia joined him, and the stone split in two. There was no one behind it.
In the mouth of the ravine, the banthas lowed in panic and began to move deeper into the wastes. Then the staccato patter of slugs against stone suddenly tapered off, and the Tusken projectiles began to scream through the air above Leia and Han’s hiding place.
Leia tried to turn her head to see if the Sand People were shooting at what she hoped they were, but hit her helmet on a boulder before she found the sky. Han tried to look, as well, and banged his helmet into Leia
’s.
“Well, something’s spooking that herd,” he said. “It must be the Falcon.”
Leia began to glimpse white-armored figures pushing through the tangle of bantha legs. “Or those stormtroopers, maybe.”
She fired into the ground at the mouth of the ravine. The banthas broke into a run, bowling over armored figures, leaving them scattered across the canyon floor and struggling to crawl free. A flurry of brilliant beams erupted in the thickest part of the herd as the stormtroopers reacted in exactly the wrong way. The banthas trumpeted in anger and began to defend themselves, the males biting and trampling Imperials, the females butting their calves along at a near charge.
The Tusken Raiders started to emerge from behind rocks and rise from beneath dust-covered capes, each one sending a shot or two in the direction of the Solos before turning to rush after the banthas. Leia continued to pour fire into the ground near the herd, trying to sow more confusion and delay the Imperials.
Blaster bolts began to bounce through the rocks behind her. Leia kept shooting and tried not to think about what she was hearing. Emala and Banai were keeping watch in that direction; unless one of them yelled for help, it was probably just stormtroopers firing from the opposite hilltop.
In the ravine below, the Imperials and the Tuskens met head-on. They exchanged a few attacks in passing, then continued on their way, the Sand People chasing after their banthas and the stormtroopers charging up the slope toward the Solos. So much for sowing confusion.
Leia and Han fired for effect, and ten troopers fell with smoking holes in their armor. Thirty more continued to come, pouring energy beams up the gully and turning the boulder field into a smoky mass of flying rock chips.
A small hand tapped Leia on her calf armor. “Time to go!” Emala yelled. “Your ride’s coming.”
Han began to inch back out of their cranny. “Right on schedule!”
Leia remained where she was. “If you call this on schedule, I see why you were always in trouble with Jabba!” She stopped aiming and, keeping the trigger down, began to sweep blasterfire back and forth across the gully. “We can’t leave—”
The rest of her sentence—until we stop those stormtroopers—was silenced by the roar of an incoming concussion missile, and the ravine erupted into an expanding sphere of tumbling stormtrooper parts and bright, blinding light.
Chapter Twenty-Five
With an aura of escaped current crackling across her metallic skin and columns of acrid smoke billowing from the perforations in her hull, the Falcon looked more like a used gunnery target than one of the fastest freighters in the galaxy. Two of her vector plates had been blasted back to the durasteel frames, she was leaking a blue glow around the rim of her drive nacelles, and one of the landing struts had lost its stabilizer pad. When the Solos returned to Coruscant, Leia was going to lose Han to the reconditioning bay for weeks. Months maybe.
Maybe she would talk to Wedge about borrowing a military repair droid. It was the least the New Republic could do—for both Leia and Han.
The landing struts had barely touched ground before a clunk sounded from beneath the ship’s belly and the rear cargo lift lowered the Falcon’s utility speeder into view. Grees was nearly hanging from the pilot’s handlebars, his short legs dangling down barely far enough to reach the foot controls. Sligh stood behind him on the small cargo bed, both hands clutching the back of the pilot’s seat.
“There’s my ride,” Emala said. She was kneeling in the boulders in front of Leia and Han, with Killik Twilight slung over her back. “If you make it out of the system alive, maybe we’ll partner up again sometime.”
“Why wait?” Han asked. “Come with us. When we get back to Coruscant, the New Republic will pay big for the painting. More than anyone else.”
“I said if you make it out alive.” Imperial blasterfire began to pour in from the adjacent ridges, ricocheting around the boulder field and bouncing off the Falcon’s scorched armor with the hollow screal of groaning metal. “And the way your ship looks, that’s a big if. Sorry, but we’ll take our chances with the Imperials.”
“Your odds aren’t so great either,” Han pointed out. “We’re surrounded by stormtroopers—or haven’t you noticed?”
“Our odds will improve, once I tell the Imperials we’re ready to sell the painting to them.”
Emala jumped up on a boulder long enough to wave her arms and yell to Grees, then dropped back into cover barely half a breath ahead of a dozen screaming bolts. The utility speeder shot out from beneath the Falcon and turned toward the boulder pile, lurching and weaving as blasterfire ricocheted around it.
“You’re going to sell Killik Twilight to the Empire?” Banai gasped. “Emala, you and your mates have always been disgusting—”
“It’s their painting.” Leia nodded to Emala. “You have my blessing to do with it as you will.”
The Falcon’s top turret spun around and began to spray suppression fire across the adjacent ridges, not hitting much but forcing the stormtroopers to keep their heads down. The enemy assault withered and grew less accurate.
Emala eyed Leia with a look of condemnation. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? I’m disappointed in you.”
Leia shrugged. “We could make it look like you’re stealing the painting,” she suggested. “That might make a session with an interrogator droid a little less likely.”
The battered utility speeder rocked to a stop next to their hiding place.
Emala studied Leia a moment, then nodded. “Make it look good, and the Empire will never hear about that little datachip you removed.”
“You’re trying to blackmail us? After we let you keep the painting?” Han swung his blaster around. “Why you little—”
With eyes growing as round as wheels and Killik Twilight still slung across her back, Emala leapt onto the nearest boulder and bounced onto the speeder’s cargo bed behind Sligh. Han managed to burn one bolt into the instrument console as the vehicle fishtailed away.
“Han!” Leia pushed his arm down. “Are you trying to kill her?”
“She said to make it look good.” He raised his blaster again and, as the Imperials continued to pour fire after the utility speeder, took another shot. “I’m just doing like she asked.”
“That’s good enough, Han.” Leia kneeled next to Kitster and slipped his arm over her sore shoulder. “Help me with Kitster, before our diversion disappears.”
Han grabbed Kitster under the other arm, and together they hobbled out of the boulders. As Leia had hoped, the stormtroopers were so focused on the fleeing Squibs that they didn’t even notice the trio until it had reached the ship.
C-3PO’s golden head popped down from the open cargo bay. “Chewbacca asks that you please hurry! There is another squadron—”
A flurry of blaster bolts ricocheted off the bottom of the Falcon and churned the ground into a dusty froth. Leia turned and, fifty meters away, saw half a dozen stormtrooper helmets peering over the crest of the hill.
“Go!”
Half dragging and half carrying Kitster, Leia and Han hurled themselves onto the cargo lift.
“Up, Threepio!” Han began to fire in the same direction as Leia.
“But, Captain Solo, you’re not properly secured—”
“Now, Threepio!”
The cargo lift began to rise. So did the Falcon itself, and an instant later, the blaster bolts stopped ricocheting past the trio. They remained lying on the floor, grasping the nonslip grate, until the lift thunked into place.
“Is everybody all right?” Leia asked.
“Fine.” Han was already up, removing his helmet and gloves. “I’ll head to the belly turret. See-Threepio, go tell Chewbacca we need to take a pass over the Squibs. Leia, can you—”
“Yes, Han—go.” Leia was already helping Kitster to his feet. “I’ll handle things back here. Just don’t—”
“Hit anything,” he said. “I know!”
Han followed C-3PO out of the
hold, hobbling off toward the cannon turrets. Leia guided Kitster into an escape pod, then retrieved the Quaxcon diagnostics kit they had promised Herat.
“You understand the risk you’re taking?” She passed the kit to him. “We can’t be certain Herat will retrieve the pod, and you’ll be landing a long way from civilization.”
The Falcon shuddered as Han opened fire on the Squibs—Leia had to trust that he was just trying to make it look good—then Chewbacca brought them around for another pass, and something groaned in the superstructure.
Kitster cast a nervous glance at the ceiling. “Yes, I’m very sure. I’d like to live to see Tamora and my children again.”
Leia laughed. “We’ll hold together, but it’s your choice.”
“Thank you,” Kitster said. “And thank you for coming after me. I doubt the Imperials would have troubled themselves.”
“You might be underestimating them,” Leia said. “I’m sure their new admiral is as eager as I am to know why you took the painting.”
Kitster raised his brow. “You haven’t figured that out?”
“Not really,” Leia said. “At first I thought it was for the money, but when Wald told us you refused to sell to the Imperials—”
“It was for you,” Kitster said. “Well, for your father, really. But since he’s gone, I wanted to do something kind for his daughter. You see, when Anakin and I were children—”
“Stop.” Leia raised her hand. “That’s all you need to say. I know all about the credits he gave you—and a lot of other things he did here, too.”
Kitster’s face grew solemn. “Including what happened at the oasis?”
Leia raised her brow in surprise. “I had a hint from the Force—but how do you know what happened there?”
“The Tuskens had a story dance the night we arrived,” Kitster explained. “I already knew that Anakin had returned with Shmi’s body, so when they dropped into sword stances and started to leap around making buzzing sounds, it was obvious whom they were imitating.”
