force of small artillery fire.
"What did you do to the synthdroids." Luke still couldn't get over the fact
that there were virtually no human guards.
"Gutted the central controller." Leia swept the whole steps before them,
floor, walls, and ceiling, as far as the landing, with a blast of fire.
They both wore goggles picked up in the hangar, but Luke still had to blink
hard to get his bearings back. The curled little black crusts that had been
drochs crunched under their boots as they ascended to the landing. Leia
fired again.
"We'll have to remember that if Loronar gets the Needles going. But any
commander worth his ammo allowance is going to have the central controller
locked up in the heart of the biggest battlemoon in the galaxy."
"Yeah, well, you were locked up in the heart of the biggest bat-tlemoon in
the galaxy, too." Luke grinned across at her as they dashed up another
installment of stairs.
"And unless we've got somebody on the inside willing to let us go again with
a homing device stuck on our tails," retorted Leia, pushing her goggles onto
her forehead, "we'd better not count on that kind of luck again." The jewels
on her gold-headed hairpins glittered incongruously through the soot and
filth. "There has to be a weakness to them.
One that doesn't involve access to the central controller."
The two halted in the doorway of the chamber, where Luke had met Dzym and
had rescued Liegeus from the life drinker. The floor was a creeping sea of
drochs. Brother and sister opened fire with the flame-throwers, swept the
whole room in a licking, roaring sheet of yellow heat. It was like sprinting
through an oven afterward, sweat rolling down their dust-streaked faces, the
burned matter left after searing the soles of their boots.
The gateway that led through to the construction compound was locked, and
Luke laid a hand on Leia's shoulder as she brought up the ion blaster again.
"It's shielded." The green column of his lightsaber hummed into existence at
the touch of a switch.
Leia glanced back over her shoulder, toward the blown-out door of the
stairway. Luke knew what it was, who it was, that she felt behind them.
He was there, Luke thought. He could almost see him, ascending each step
with a heavy, coiling loop of his great wormlike body, eyes malevolent
rubies in the dark. The dark hurricane of the Force swirled around him,
uncontrolled, while in his mind the voice of Dzym whis pered, telling him
that these humans, these pale little maggots, these defiant little
play-Jedi, needed to be stopped at all costs.
Luke ran the lightsaber into the lock's works, tested the door switch.
It vibrated, but held. "There's another lock," he said. "A hidden one,
behind a wall-hatch . . ."
"Here." She had her own blade out. Luke wondered how she had managed to keep
that with her, when Seti Ashgad had taken her from the ship.
There was no time to ask, for the floor shivered suddenly with the force of
liftoff, the amber lights all across the lintel of the door turning red.
Luke gritted, "They're off!" and far above, over the top of the wall, they
could see the square, gray shape of the Reliant spring skyward, lifters
blazing, heading up the single corridor opened in the planet's defenses by
the destruction of the Bleak Point gun station. At the same moment, Leia
thrust her lightsaber into the second lock, and the door slid open, the hot
winds of takeoff fountaining forth over the threshold in a torrent of dust.
A couple of Spook crystals lay on the permacrete, a trail from the cleared
space where the boxes had been. There were drochs, too, tiny ones, dying in
the glare of the pallid sunlight, where they had fallen out of whatever
shielded container Dzym had carried them in.
And, on the other side of the open bay, stood the Headhunter, its engine
hatch open, a gutted tangle of wires hanging down.
Luke swore, and raced across to it. Leia was already running toward the
Blastboat, which was likewise gutted but otherwise unharmed. "Can you fix
it?" she yelled, scrambling up to the canopy. "They didn't have time to
cripple the guns."
"I think so. The readouts on the central core look okay. They were in too
much of a hurry .... Get me the toolkit from the bench."
Leia sprang down, dashed to the repair bench, swung the red metal energy
cart around, and dragged it over as Luke stripped off the remains of his
shirt and began making a fast diagnostic. "Get the guns," he yelled, from
halfway within the hatch. "They just pull out once you undo the locks, but
you'll have to reattach the cores . . ."
She snatched up an extractor and core couplers and raced across
the permacrete to the Blastboat as if they were the children of the
Rebellion again, with the Imperials coming in and code scramble blazing from
every makeshift klaxon on the base.
Listening. Listening. Knowing what was coming, power and anger and the
decayed dark sludge of what had once been genuine, trained ability to use
the Force.
She had one gun pulled and dragged over to the Headhunter and was starting
on a second when she knew she could afford to wait no longer.
Luke was buried in the hatches of the Z-95the Reliant ascending like an
ash-colored plague angel to the rendezvous with the Loronar fleet . .
.
And she heard his breath. Stertorous, rasping, like the beat of gluey tides.
The wave of ammoniac reek rolled across the permacrete, and the noxious
shock wave of decayed Force. Leia dropped from the Blastboat and ran lightly
toward the door, stripping off and dropping her jacket, unhooking and
throwing aside her blaster, knowing what the Force could do to blasters.
Beldorion the Splendid moved fast. He crossed the outer court in a series of
great bounds and slithers, huge muscle rolling beneath his squamous hide.
Fluid leaked from his mouth and his eyes were twin balefires, glittering
with a single, evil obsession that he did not even recognize as being not
his own.
In the curtains of sun-glittering dust that filled the open gateway of the
launch bay a woman stood, slender and tiny in the moving aura of misty
light.
Taselda? His old rival, his old enemy, flashed to mind . . .
No.
The little Jedi woman, the woman Ashgad had brought, the woman Dzym had
wanted, a small shining figure in the shadows, with the pale glory of a
lightsaber shining like tamed starfire in her hand.
"Don't test me, little Princess." His own blade stretched forth with a
deadly thrumming, a pallid and sickly violet. "It has been years. I may be a
lazy old slug now, but I am Beldorion still."
Heart beating fast, Leia studied him, remembering how Jabba had moved,
sidelong and looping, using the center of the body as a balance point.
She recalled the one time Jabba had become displeased with someone at his
court--the fat housekeeper who danced or was it his long-suffering cook--and
had gone after her or him with a stick.
Recalled the deadly speed of even that obese and sluggish bulk.
Yet she felt
no fear.
She didn't reply and could feel that it displeased him. He was the kind, she
realized, who liked to expound before he killed.
Good.
"You were a sweet little girl. Don't make me--" Leia struck. Step, step,
thrust, as Callista had shown her, a hard clean slash like diminutive
lightning, and Beldorion, still expounding, barely got out of the way. But
his counterstrike was unbelievably fast, the strength of it nearly breaking
her wrists as she intercepted it on the blade, the doubled vibration roaring
in her head and in her bones. The blades twined, snarled, Leia twisting out
from under another descending blow and barely dodging when the descending
swerved to lateral an old trick, Callista had said, but it took practice and
left you open. Leia dodged back, shaken by the Hutt's sheer, animal
strength.
She stepped back in, pressing him, her attention narrowed to nothing but the
monstrous thing before her and the shining blades. Nothing else existed in
her mind. He had enormous striking range, flinging forward like a serpent,
so that she threw herself sidelong, rolled--Thank you for the practice,
Callista, Luke--under the paralyzing wallop of his tail and was on her feet
again and going in, the blade seeming to stream fire from her hand.
Not a second, not a moment, to lose--the plague rising up from this
dim-shining world the monster coming toward her again, rutilant eyes
staring. He struck with his tail again, hundreds of kilos flashing with the
speed of a whip. She barely dodged, wishing she had Luke's acrobatic
training, his ability to Force-lift. The blades tangled, parted, Leia
panting as she leapt sideways again, sparring for distance, watching the
tail, fighting to remain close enough to strike.
In and out, Callista had said. It's the only way for a woman to fight.
Like a huge serpent he struck, and she raised her blade to defend, her mind
open with the Force, feeling before he did so that he was going to switch to
lateral again.
He did, and she was in under the blow and slashing a long, streaming,
sidelong cut that went through the soft green body like burning
wire. She flung herself past him, away from him, fast, for the huge bulk of
him burst open, severed clean through, mammoth gouts of fluid and flesh and
organs exploding soddenly forth.
She heard him bellow with rage, once--saw the hot smoke-colored blade of his
lightsaber go whirling, end over end.
Then he was collapsing like a punctured balloon, like an empty sack, and
Leia stood panting, covered in slime, her own blade burning in her hand, as
Luke flung himself out from under the Headhunter and into its cockpit.
Dripping with filth, she saluted him with the blade, and Luke saluted back,
their eyes meeting for an instant before he slammed the cockpit shut. Luke
knew what it was that he saw.
Her first victory. The victory over the shadow of Vader. The victory of
acceptance of herself.
And, he knew who had taught her that long characteristic side cut.
He hit the lifters, and the Headhunter slammed into life and rocketed like a
falcon into the sky.
It rose faster than the Reliant, faster than most interceptors, for it had
been designed to outmaneuver the gun stations, and had done so before.
Course controls were adapted to the positions of each gun station, Liegeus's
calculations, beautifully precise. He punched in the program, to hold the
segment of sky guarded only by Bleak Point, knowing that had to be the way
the Reliant was going as well. The flashes of light returned to his mind.
Fighting, he thought. Fighting high above the surface of the planet, orbital
battle. Someone must have come in to stop them.
Would they know to open fire on a ship rising from the planet's surface?.
Blue sky darkened around him. The pale stars brightened to burning jewels.
He saw the gray ship, rising far ahead, making for the flurry of explosions
and lights. There was a Republic corsair, hanging in space, far away to his
left, being torn to pieces by tiny, darting CCIR Needles of black and
bronze. The things the Empire wanted. The things Loronar was going to give
them.
Beyond, at the farthest range of his vision, he saw the fleet.
Imperials. Two, three Republic vessels--Was that the Falcon?.
Dodging, twisting, like durkii maddened by parasitic kleex, trying to fire
at the Imperial ships that were surrounding them. A thousand tiny flashes of
fire as the Needles tore and swirled around them. He was out of signal range
still, but coming into firing range on the square, awkward gray ship that
contained Dzym and Ashgad, the monstrous life drinker and his pitiful pawn
and the dark boxes of death that would consume the lives of all the galaxy,
and relay that life back to him.
Only for that. Destruction, death, ruin stretching over planet after planet,
only so that Dzym could drink of the lives of everything he touched, without
fear.
Luke's thumb hit the firing button. White light lanced forth.
The next second a terrible concussion ripped his ship, tossed it spinning.
He glimpsed the Reliant still going its way untouched, glimpsed something
small and fast and black pass over him .... Another shot, and his whole
console went red. He scratched and twisted at the joystick, trying to drag
the Headhunter to stability, but he was spinning out of control, falling
into Nam Chorios's gravitational pull.
As the Z-95 rolled, he pulled her straight and got off a wing laser shot at
the Reliant, saw yellow fire explode from her aft engines.
But she didn't go up. Only drifted, swinging off course, and his long-range
pickups brought in the faint crackle of Seti Ashgad's voice, calling for an
intercept.
As the Headhunter began its long fall, Luke saw a small carrack detach from
the Imperial fleet, begin to make its way toward the drifting craft.
And before the Imperials knew what they had loosed, the Death Seed would
grow across the stars.
Then he was falling.
Cabin gray was out. Against the sickening sensation of freefall, Luke worked
to reroute switches, to shuttle power from the now-unneeded shields, trying
to summon enough pickup to at least take him in alive.
The heat in the cockpit was unbearable, suffocating, the ground a vast lake
of molten reflection, rushing to smash him to powder. Hot spiky mountains,
black shadow. The crystalline needles of the tsils. He felt the jolt and
pull as one of the engines caught, dragged on the joystick, trying to even
out into a long, sweeping curve. The retros fired, cutting his speed. He
seemed to be descending in a column of fire, falling he knew' not where. A
laser bolt hissed near him and he thought, Oh, thanks . . Presumably he had
passed into the range of some other gun station.
Or they'd got Bleak Point fixed.
Flatten the curve. Hold the retros. Cut in the antigravs.
Callista . . . he thought, wanting more than he had ever wanted anything
that he had been able to speak to her again. Callista . . .
He was above a plain. An enormous sea bed, blinding
with the fire of
diamonds to the horizon. Snaking lines of tsils, marching away into the
distance. The Ten Cousins. Other circles, other lines, pointing toward the
great glittering outcrops of Spooks in the hills.
There was a pattern to them, visible only when coming in from above like
this. A pattern that tugged at his consciousness, reminded him of
half-forgotten dreams.
He pulled back on the joystick as hard as he could, threw his mind open to
the Force because the ground was flashing by so fast he couldn't see
anything of the terrain below--and brought her in.
Afterward he didn't remember getting out of the Headhunter before it
exploded. He knew he'd probably used the Force to damp the physical
reactions involved until he'd crawled to more-or-less safety. He had no idea
where he was or how close might be his chances of rescue, and somehow that
didn't matter.
If the Imperial Fleet picked up Dzym--Dzym with his enslaved front man Seti
Ashgad, with his little dark boxes of crawling life, with his promises of
controllable, invisible plague and limitless access to the crystals they
needed for those tiny death dealers--there was going to be nothing left of
the Republic, of the fragments of the Empire, of any space-going
civilization whatever.
Only Dzym, fat and sated and looking around for more.
Luke lay on the spines of the crystal, eyes shut, the smoke of the burning
Headhunter in his nostrils, knowing he should get up and knowing that he
could not.
Feeling them standing around him again.
Silent, unseen.
if-you're going to attack me, attack me, he thought, his mind slipping into
a darkness and dreams of stormtroopers and Jawas again. If you're going to
have me, go ahead.
And then, on the borderlands of consciousness, he remembered the pattern of
the tsils, coming in from high above remembered his dreams when they'd
loomed in the background. remembered the voices that spoke to him in those
dreams, like the Listeners said the rocks spoke to them.
You're alive, he said, enormously surprised--more surprised than he'd been
about anything in his life.
Assent flowed out over him, colors in his mind, as blue as the crystalline
core of the tsils, the green of the Spook clusters high on the rocks. Alive
alive alive alive . . . like an echo.
And his dream of the Jawas came back.
Planet of Twilight Page 38
