Star Wars: The Hand of Thrawn II: Vision of the Future

by Timothy Zahn

  “Look, Karrde, I don’t know what you’re up to,” Rogue Nine said. “And frankly, right now I don’t really care. But we have a job to do here.”

  “Perhaps I can make that job unnecessary,” Karrde said, a sudden edge in his voice. “You get me inside, and I may be able to stop this battle completely.”

  “Really,” Rogue Two said, his voice suddenly suspicious. “May I ask how exactly you plan to do that?”

  There was a slight pause, and Wedge could picture Karrde smiling that mysterious smile he was so fond of. “Let’s just say I’m holding the ultimate bargaining chip,” he said softly.

  “And that would be …?”

  “All wings, this is Perris,” the fighter commander’s voice came on. “Run to formation; we’re heading in.”

  Wedge took a deep breath. They were under official orders now, with no room for maneuvering or stalling or anything else.

  But General Bel Iblis’s life was on the line here …

  “Karrde, this is Antilles,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Coming up behind and above the Peregrine,” Karrde told him. “Are you starting an attack?”

  “Something like that,” Wedge said, checking his rear scanner. The Wild Karrde was there, all right, hanging a respectful distance back from the New Republic sentry line. “Stay put—we’ll be right there. Rogues; let’s go.”

  He turned the X-wing hard over and headed toward their rear. There was a click in his headset as someone keyed to his personal frequency—“Wedge, what are we doing?” Rogue Nine demanded. “We’re under orders. Look, if this is about this so-called favor I owe him—”

  “I’m not worried about favors right now, Corran,” Wedge assured him. “But you heard what Karrde said. He’s got an Imperial code for getting through the perimeter.”

  “Yes, I remember. But his having an access code won’t do us any good.”

  “Ordinarily, no,” Wedge agreed, smiling tightly. “But also remember what Rogue Twelve said about that turbolaser flutter. If we guide Karrde in under that particular bank—and if we then stay clustered real close behind him—?”

  Rogue Nine hissed thoughtfully. “That might just do it.”

  “It’s worth a try, anyway,” Wedge said. Because if they could get in behind the perimeter, they’d have a far better shot at knocking out the tractor emplacements that held the Errant Venture trapped.

  And the faster they knocked out those emplacements, the sooner Bel Iblis would be able to turn his ship around and make a run for safety.

  “Wedge?” Rogue Nine said, his voice sounding odd. “You don’t suppose Karrde really can stop the battle, do you?”

  Wedge started to shake his head; paused. This was Corran Horn, Jedi, asking the question. “Not really,” he said cautiously. “The Imperials want Bel Iblis—that much is for sure. The only reason I can think of why they’d let him go is if they got something they wanted even more.”

  “That’s what I was thinking, too,” Rogue Nine said, his voice still odd. “So why am I also thinking Karrde really does have a shot at this?”

  Wedge felt a shiver tingle the back of his neck. “I don’t know,” he said grimly. “All I know is that he’s our best chance of getting Bel Iblis and Booster out of there alive. Right now that’s all I care about.”

  They had reached the Wild Karrde now, and Wedge pulled his fighter around in a sharp turn into forward escort position. “Okay, Karrde, here we go,” he said, double-checking that the rest of the squadron was in position. “Stay close, and follow me.”

  CHAPTER

  39

  The sentinel droid continued its attack, systematically sending its fiery bolts of death in Mara’s direction. Her lightsaber leaped to meet each one, hands twisting and turning and jabbing the weapon at the guidance of the Force.

  She knew her hands were moving, just as she knew that her teeth were clenched tightly together and that there were drops of sweat rolling down her face. But she couldn’t feel them. Couldn’t feel any of it. So focused was her mind, so locked into the terrible struggle for survival, that there was nothing else in the universe that seemed able to penetrate into her consciousness. Not the rest of the chamber, not the shape of the sentinel dimly visible behind the dazzling glare of the blaster bolts, not even her own body. Nothing but the blasters and her lightsaber.

  And Luke.

  It was a strange sensation, the small part of her mind that was still free to wonder about such things realized. Standing back to back, stretched out so deeply together to the Force, it was as if their minds had literally melded together to become a single entity. She could feel his mental and physical strain as he maintained his own defense; could sense his reliance on the Force, and his desperate search for a plan to get them out of this, and his deep concern for the woman standing there with him.

  In one way it was almost like a logical extension of the brief emotional contacts they’d had throughout this trip. But in another way it was something completely new, like nothing she’d ever before experienced.

  Because within the depth of that mental rapport, she suddenly and totally knew Luke Skywalker. Knew everything about him: his hopes and fears; his successes and failures; his strengths and weaknesses; his highest joys and his deepest and most private sorrows. She saw into his innermost spirit, to the depths of his heart, to the very core of his being.

  And she knew that even as he lay open before her eyes, so also her heart and spirit were open before his.

  Yet it wasn’t frightening or humiliating as she might have expected. As she would have expected. It was instead something completely exhilarating. Never before had she experienced such a depth and closeness to another person, a person who understood her as intimately as she understood him. Never had she known such a relationship could even exist.

  And never before had she realized how badly she wanted such a relationship.

  And that was in its way the most surprising part of all: to suddenly realize after so many years how much her determination to lock herself away from others had ended up hurting her. Had stunted her own growth and life just as her stubborn refusal to accept the responsibility of her Jedi abilities had limited their growth.

  It was an amazing insight, particularly coming as it did in the midst of the fire and heat of a battle. She could only regret that the understanding hadn’t come to her sooner, instead of now.

  Now that she was about to die.

  Because her death was indeed close at hand, one way or another. Already she could feel her muscles tiring before the sentinel’s onslaught, and knew that she couldn’t maintain her defense more than a few minutes more at the most. She had to act now, while she still had the strength to do so, or Luke would die, too.

  Because while the plan she’d come up with might—might—eliminate the threat from the sentinel in front of her, there was no way she could take out both of its blasters fast enough to keep a killing shot from reaching her. Fleetingly, she thought of Corran Horn and his ability to absorb and dissipate energy; but that had never been one of her talents, and there was certainly no time for her to learn the technique now. No, she would throw her lightsaber at her chosen target, and the sentinel would shoot her, and she would die. All she could hope for was to cling to life long enough to finish what had to be done.

  No, Mara. No! Was that her thought? she wondered. Or was it Luke’s?

  I have to, Luke. That one was hers. Through her own fears and regrets she could feel his sudden surge of desperate emotion as he tried to come up with a way she would not have to die.

  But there wasn’t one. Mara had already considered every possibility, and there simply wasn’t any way Luke could hold off four blasters by himself when two of them were firing at his back this way. But if she could just live long enough to carry this through, using her body to shield him until the sentinel facing her could be eliminated …

  While I still have the strength, she reminded herself. And the time was now. She took a deep bre
ath—

  No! the emotion broke through her black determination. Wait. Look.

  She had no attention to spare to look anywhere but at the sentinel and its blasters. But she didn’t have to. Luke had already seen the critical new factor, and now the image flowed through the Force into her mind.

  Off to her right, his little electric arc welder extended ahead of him like a weapon, Artoo was rolling determinedly along the upper floor ring toward her attacker.

  Her first thought was to wonder what in blazes had taken the little droid so long to get his metal rear over to help, only then realizing how little time had actually elapsed since the battle began. Her second, somewhat irreverent thought was to note that Artoo had chosen her sentinel to attack instead of Luke’s, and to wonder if the Skywalker tendency toward overprotectiveness had rubbed off on him.

  Her third thought was that Luke was right. This might be the break she needed, the opening for her plan to succeed without her having to die in the process.

  Maybe.

  Artoo was almost to the sentinel now, a bluish spark arcing across the welder contacts. The sentinel was perfectly aware of him, of course; the only question was what it would do about it …

  And then an image flashed into Mara’s mind. A picture of her and Luke lying on the floor amid the tangle of trip cords down there.

  She felt herself gasp. Was that a vision of the future, of them lying dead together? Was her plan doomed to failure?

  You see? Luke’s emotion broke through the sudden fear. You understand?

  And then the image cleared, and she indeed saw what he meant. Not a vision of death, but a hope of life: Luke’s own last-second contribution to her plan. Got it, she sent back her understanding.

  Get ready …

  She felt her teeth clenching even harder, lightsaber still flashing against the sentinel’s attacks, and prepared herself. Artoo was almost to the sentinel, his arc welder still sparking—

  And with a casual and contemptuous ease, the sentinel swung its left arm over, placed the side of the blaster in that hand against Artoo’s dome, and shoved the little droid over to land flat on his back.

  And for that half second, only one of his blasters was firing.

  Now!

  Mara reacted instantly, letting her right leg collapse beneath her to send her toppling over onto her right side. Luke fell right along with her, his back pressed against hers the whole way down. They hit the floor—there was probably a jolt of pain in her shoulder from the impact, but Mara wasn’t aware of it—and Luke flipped over onto his back to face upward toward the ceiling.

  And with that single move suddenly there were no longer two attacks coming from totally opposite directions. Now, it was merely two attacks coming from a pair of widely spaced opponents, both of whom were effectively in front of him.

  And that was something he could handle.

  Go! his command came as the green-white of his lightsaber flashed past over her head, deflecting a shot away from her face. Mara didn’t need the prompting; already her lightsaber was spinning its way toward the sentinel. A quick slash, and the blaster in its right hand had shattered to uselessness. Its other hand was already swinging back toward her; the lightsaber changed direction and slashed again, and the sentinel’s second blaster was similarly gone.

  There was a short, rumbling roar from the big droid—apparently it had enough sentience to be annoyed at having been outmaneuvered this way. But it was also smart enough to know the disadvantage was only temporary, that her lightsaber couldn’t harm it directly, at least not fast enough to do any good.

  And its designers had also clearly prepared for such an eventuality. Two more compartments along its lower sides had popped open, and the sentinel’s hands were already digging into them for another set of replacement weapons.

  But with luck, it would never have a chance to use them. Mara had already brought her lightsaber around in front of the sentinel, turning it to point blade-first toward the big droid. Now, grunting with the effort, she drove it forward.

  Not uselessly into the sentinel and its cortosis-ore shell, but straight past it, burying the blue-white blade in the water-stained wall behind it.

  The jet of water that burst out around the handle was instant and violent, some of the spray reaching all the way to where she and Luke lay on the floor thirty meters away. Mara felt a sudden twinge of uneasiness at the force of the flow; but it was too late to stop now. Holding the weapon in against the pressure, she spun it around in a ten-centimeter-diameter circle, the hilt more than once nearly vanishing from her view behind the widening spray of water coming out through the crack she was cutting. The sentinel turned its head to see what was happening; lifted its blasters toward the lightsaber—

  And with a last burst of effort, Mara finished the cut.

  The stone plug came blasting out of the wall with the speed of a proton torpedo, slamming directly into the sentinel’s thick torso with armor-crushing force and knocking the big droid helplessly off the upper ring down onto the main floor. Mara caught a glimpse of crumpled metal; saw that the stream of water that had driven the plug was now shooting across the room over her head—

  And suddenly a foam-crested wave slammed into and over her from the opposite direction.

  With her mind still in the tunnel vision of Jedi defense mode, the wave caught her completely off-guard. She felt herself being lifted and thrown by the wild surf as her feet were somehow pushed clear of the tangling trip cords, and scrabbled madly for something to hang on to. Her left hand caught another bunch of the cords, and she hung on grimly, trying to orient herself. Another wave washed over her, tearing her grip away, and once again she found herself being spun around in the turbulence. She clawed her way to the surface, caught a breath that seemed to be half air and half foam, shook the water out of her eyes to see another wave surging toward her—

  And then a pair of hands caught her under the arms, and with a tug that felt like it was going to tear her in half she was suddenly arcing upward through the air. There was a jolt as her back slammed into something hard—one of the two hands holding her fell away as the other tightened its grip—

  “Here—hold on,” Luke shouted in her ear.

  She half turned in his single-handed grip, saw the railing to the upper equipment balcony there beside her, and grabbed on to it. “Got it.”

  “Hang on—I’m going back for Artoo.” Letting go of the railing, he dropped back into the water.

  With an effort, Mara pulled herself up the railing and over onto the balcony floor. Below her, she could see, the room had become a surging mass of frothing water.

  And it was filling up fast. Much faster than it should have, she realized uneasily.

  And suddenly she saw why. The small, neat hole she’d cut in the wall was no longer either small or neat. Four or five square meters of the water-stained section had given way around it, and the Lake of Small Fish was pouring in through the opening. Already it was halfway up the wall to the ledge where she sat …

  A movement across the room caught her eye: Luke, hanging on to some protrusion in the wall, waving toward her. “I’m here,” she shouted over the roar of the water. “What do you need?”

  In answer, the top of Artoo’s dome rose a few centimeters over the waves. Bracing herself, Mara stretched out with the Force and lifted the droid toward her.

  It was harder than she’d expected it to be. Far harder than it ought to have been. The droid rose over the water with agonizing slowness, and twice during the procedure she nearly lost her grip entirely. Clearly, the battle with the sentinel droids had taken more out of her than she’d realized.

  But finally she made it, and the droid settled down with a pensive gurgle beside her. He’d been battered around by the water and had lost the datapad they’d rigged to him for translation, but otherwise he seemed all right. She looked back down, searching for Luke—

  A hand slapped up to a grip on the bottom rail. “You get Artoo up?”
Luke gasped, pulling himself laboriously up the railing.

  “He’s right here,” Mara confirmed, reaching over the railing to give him a hand. “You okay?”

  “Just fine,” he panted as he made it over the railing and collapsed onto the balcony beside her. “Lesson number one,” he added between breaths. “A Jedi needs air to function properly.”

  “I’ll make a note,” Mara said, peering down through the railing again. “What about that second sentinel?”

  “I took care of him,” Luke said. Already he was breathing easier. “Here’s your lightsaber,” he added, pulling both weapons from inside his tunic and handing hers over. “Good job with the wall, by the way.”

  “Oh, sure—great job,” Mara retorted. “There’s nothing so brilliant as a plan that ends up almost drowning you. Speaking of which, shouldn’t we be getting out of here before it gets any deeper?”

  There was a brief pause. “Well, actually …”

  She looked at him, a sudden flicker of fear touching her heart. “What’s the matter?”

  He reached over and took her hand. “I’m sorry, Mara,” he said. “The water’s already above the level of the tunnel. It’s already filling that underground room back there.”

  Mara stared at him—she’d had no idea the water was coming in that fast. “All right,” she said, forcing her voice to stay calm. Forcing her mind to stay calm. “All right. So the room’s filling up. If we can make it across to the stairway, we can at least climb up into the fortress, right?”

  A muscle in his cheek twitched. “You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s already above the level of the tunnel. That means traveling that whole hundred meters without air, plus probably having to get the whole way across the underground room, too.”

  “What about a hibernation trance?” Mara suggested. “Like the one you used to cold-shirt it across to the Starry Ice from the pirate base?”

  Luke shook his head. “With the underground room filling up, or maybe already mostly full, the water won’t be flowing fast enough through the tunnel to push us through in time.”