Shadows of the Empire (15 page)

Okay, Luke
. Think
of something
.

The swoopers roared in, snapped off shots at him. Most of the bolts didn’t come close, and he was able to block those that did with his own unaugmented skills. He tried to let the Force fill him, but it didn’t happen. Hard to concentrate with all that racket and a dozen armed thugs taking potshots at him that way.

Two of the riders headed for him; both fired again. Neither was even close; their beams missed by a meter.

Fortunately the swoops kicked up a lot of grit. A cloud of dust surrounded them and offered a translucent tan screen.

Again a blaster beam went wide as Luke jumped and swung his glowing green blade.

Behind him there came a crash. Luke spun, saw that two of the swoops had collided. One of them angled off and smashed into a clump of rocks, the rider leaping free at the last second. The other bike settled to the ground, damaged but probably not unusable. They couldn’t shoot and they couldn’t fly. Lucky for him.

A roar to his left. Luke twisted.

A biker roared in; he had what looked like a giant ax in his hand!

Another engine screamed closer than the axman. Luke set himself, and as the second swooper came in, he swung his saber in a feint and slammed his boot into the rider.

Luke’s kick toppled the attacker from the swoop. The deadman switch in the grips immediately killed the turbine, but not the repulsor engine. Luke hopped onto the swoop, grabbed the handlebars, and twisted the start ring. The swoop’s turbine grumbled back online.

Now
the odds were better. He couldn’t keep riding his luck; better to take his chances riding one of these.

He opened the throttle a little, hit the retros, turned, put the swoop into a one-eighty and kicked up a sandwall, just like he’d done as a teen. He pointed the swoop at the axman and opened the throttle wide.

The acceleration nearly unseated him, but he managed to stay in the saddle.

Oh, boy!
He’d nearly forgotten how much fun one of these was!

The axman’s weapon shattered when it hit Luke’s saber. Luke twisted the throttle, turned, roared away.

The next rider nearest Luke was the one dressed in
puffy green. With the swoop’s turbos open wide, it didn’t take long to reach him.

Green saw him coming, and by the time he figured out Luke wasn’t one of his gang, it was too late. He tried to turn away at the last second, but Luke’s cut sheared through Green’s right thruster-control line. The right jet shut down, but the left jet did not, and the swoop immediately spun out of control. Luke was past him and safe, but the wildly twirling and gyrating little craft flew into the path of another of the gray riders. There came a crunch of metal and plastic as the two swoops smashed into each other and crashed to the ground.

Well, well. Three down, nine to go. So far, so good
.

It was too good to last.

The leader saw Luke and used hand signals to move his troops. They scattered and re-formed in a unit.

Luke swung the swoop into a wide turn and hit the throttles. If he took this baby a few hundred meters up and out of the sand and ground clutter, he could open it up to racing speed. He could be at Beggar’s Canyon in minutes. He’d explored just about every centimeter of that place in his T-16; no way they’d run him down there. He could pick them off one at a time, disable their machines—shoot, he could capture the whole gang!

There was an extra set of goggles clipped to the handlebars. Luke belted his lightsaber, pulled the goggles free, and strapped them on. He’d need them—when the afterburners kicked in on a hot swoop, it could hit a good 600 kph. A bug would put an eye out at that speed. He hoped the machine’s owner kept this rake tuned.

Beggar’s Canyon, here I come
.

B
eggar’s Canyon was actually a series of interlinked canyons. Long ago, there had been a lot of water on
Tatooine, and much of it had flowed as rivers. Beggar’s Canyon had been the confluence of at least three rivers, and, along with millions of years of wind and rain and sunlight, the flowing water had carved deep and twisted valleys into the rock.

It had been a while since Luke had flown the canyons. Then again, they hadn’t changed since his last visit. He and a few of the other local would-be star pilots had engaged in mock firefights here, using harmless light beams for lasers. Plus he’d hunted womp rats, some of them three meters long, but hard targets to hit with a low-powered sporting blaster while traveling at speed.

The pack of swooptroops was still behind him as he dropped below ground level. They hadn’t gained on him, save for one of the riders, who was only a hundred meters or so back. But the pack hadn’t lost much distance, either; it was only a few hundred meters behind the rider dressed in blue, and holding steady.

Luke grinned.
Let’s see how they like playing in my territory
.

The route called the Main Avenue went more or less straight for nearly two kilometers before it made a sharp-angled turn to the right. Dead Man’s Turn, they called it, and for good reason. Luke dropped his airspeed as he approached the intersection. Try to take it too fast and you’d turn yourself into a gooey paste on the far wall of the turn.

He hit the retros as he adjusted the turbojets for a hard arc to the right. The swoop slewed a little, drifted to the left; then the thrusters straightened it out with a heavy shove.

Easy as sneezing.

The rider behind him, apparently unfamiliar with the canyons, didn’t slow down enough.

Luke heard the crash as the swooper hit the far wall of the turn. The fuel cell let go, and a brilliant yellow-orange flash and fireball rose into the air.

No time to worry about that; another turn was upcoming, a long zigzag to the left, right, then left again, and he needed to keep to the center of the. corridor, which narrowed in the middle of the stretched-out Z.

He didn’t see the rest of the swooptroops behind him, but if they wanted to catch him, they’d have to be back there somewhere. They could stay high, but to see him they’d have to be so high they couldn’t possibly catch up. And if they got that far away, he could find an overhang and hover under it and they’d never find him.

Four down, eight to go
.

Seconds later one of the graysuits appeared in Luke’s rear viewer.

He was pretty good, to have gained so fast. Or pretty stupid.

Gray gained. He was within sixty or seventy meters now.

Time to thread the needle. There it was, just ahead.

The Eye of the Needle was a narrow slot with jagged rock teeth lining it.

Luke gunned the turbojets. Went through the slot. Close enough so he felt a shard of rock catch his jacket and tear it.
Man—!

Gray, hot on Luke’s tail, tried to follow him.

Didn’t make it.

Boom …

The rest of them were still after him. And the bad odds were still bad. It might be a long afternoon. Or a short one …

As he throttled back for a sharp turn, Luke heard a hoarse yell: “He’s got help! We ain’t gonna win this one, Spiker! Let’s burn!”

Huh? Help?

Luke looked over his shoulder.

A swoop, engines off, dropped silently in free fall. The man on the machine wore black, his head shrouded in a flight helmet and polarized shield, a
blinking blaster held in his outstretched right hand. He was shooting at the swoopers.

If that guy on the swoop didn’t light his engines real soon, he was going to turn that expensive machine and himself into a big smoking crater—

As if he’d heard Luke, the falling swoop’s engines ignited. The little craft continued to fall, but more slowly.

It didn’t look as if he’d kicked the repulsore on in time—

He kept firing as he fell, missing but making the swoopers scatter. Who—?

The swoop got to within a handspan of the ground and stopped. It hovered, dead still.

Man, that was
flying.

The swoopers took off. After a moment, the stranger eased his craft toward where Luke had put his swoop into a hovering idle.

The man pulled off his helmet and face shield.

Dash Rendar!

“What are you doing here?” Luke said.

Dash shrugged. “Saving your butt from swoop scum, it looks like.”

“You know what I mean.
Why
are you here?” Luke looked at the fallen attackers. “Well?”

“Well, here’s the thing. Leia—she’s a hot package, that one—Leia kinda wanted me to keep an eye on you until she gets back.”

“She
what?
”

“Ease up, you’ll blow a fuse. No big deal.”

“Listen, pal, I don’t need a baby-sitter!”

“Oh, yeah, you coulda taken these melloons all by yourself, right?”

“I wasn’t doing so bad.”

“No, you’re right, you weren’t. But you
were
gonna lose.”

Luke held his temper as best he could. He didn’t like this braggart, but Dash was right. It would have taken
a miracle, one he wasn’t capable of just yet, to beat the last of the swooptroop alone. Like it or not—and he didn’t like it at
all
—Dash had saved his neck.

“Thanks.” It was a mumble.

“Excuse me, I didn’t hear what you said.”

“Don’t push it, Dash.”

The older man grinned.

Boy, was he going to have words with Leia when she came back. As much as he was attracted to her, as much as he thought she was the toughest, most beautiful woman he’d ever known, where did she get off sending this guy to watch him? And he knew she had to be paying Dash to do it—Dash wasn’t the kind of guy who did stuff for free.

Dash said something, and Luke blinked at him. “Huh?”

“I said, did you see their tattoos? This gang works for Jabba.”

Luke looked. That was where he recognized the insignia from. Jabba’s men.

Dash continued, “I was in Mos Eisley, kinda … hanging around, when I heard them talking. They had orders to kill you.”

Kill him, yeah, he’d figured that out. Dash kept talking, and Luke tuned back in to what he was saying. “… Vader is no longer your number one admirer.”

“He never was. If it’s him behind it.”

Was it? Luke shook his head. That still didn’t make sense.

“L
ord Vader, we are closing on the Rebel asteroid.”

Vader turned away from the viewport to behold the junior officer who had drawn the duty this time.

“Good. Have Admiral Okins meet me on the bridge.”

“At once, Lord Vader.”

Vader adjusted the controls on his armor for an increased supply of oxygen and started for the bridge. It was not his choice of chores, this surprise attack on helpless vessels, but he would do it well.

“A
h, Prince Xizor,” the Emperor said. “How good to see you again.”

Xizor nodded and bowed low. “The pleasure is mine, my Emperor.”

“Do come in. What brings you to my chambers?”

“I was just curious, my master, as to the progress of
Lord Vader’s attack upon the Rebel shipyard in the Baji Sector.”

The Emperor’s ravaged face revealed nothing, but Xizor was certain his comment had come as a surprise.

“I really must see about hiring your spies away from you,” the Emperor said. “Especially after you stole my best horticulturist. A pity the man had that fatal lift accident before he could start working for you.”

“Yes, a pity,” Xizor replied. If ever there was a poor loser, it was the Emperor. “However, it was not my spies who gave me this information.”

“Tell me, then, how did you come to know of it?”

“I’m surprised Lord Vader didn’t mention it to you, but what my spies
did
discover was the location of the Rebel shipyard. I, of course, immediately offered this information to Lord Vader.”

“Of course,” the Emperor said, his voice as smooth as lube on transparisteel plate. “I am expecting a report from the fleet shortly. Perhaps you would join in some refreshments and wait with me?”

“I would be honored.”

Xizor kept his smile in check. Vader had not told the Emperor who had given him the Rebel shipyard. No surprise. More, he had somehow gleaned the recordings from the Emperor’s own skyhook to keep him from finding out. Xizor himself would have done the same in Vader’s position. Which was, of course, why he was here. To make certain the Emperor knew whom to credit for this bit of business.

And whom to blame for his not knowing that, too.

Ah, but he was going to enjoy watching Vader become aware that his little game had gone awry.

He was going to enjoy it greatly.

“A
dmiral?”

“We will be in range shortly, Lord Vader,” Okins said.

“Good. Commence firing as soon as we reach optimum distance. I want no mistakes.”

Vader stood in front of his vessel’s main viewport, looking out at the large asteroid looming ahead of them. Big as a small moon, the rock was pocked with craters from collisions with its smaller brothers, and looked to be nickel-iron, very common in this region.

Suddenly a pair of ships came around from the opposite side of the asteroid.

“Two Nebulon-B Escort Frigates,” an officer said to his left.

Vader looked at the pair of ships. The frigates were long and lean, with control and weapons pods in the front connected to the massive drives and TIE decks at the rear by a long and relatively slender tube. “Our own ships,” he said, angry.

Nobody spoke to that.

Early in the Rebellion, a number of the frigates had been captured or had defected to the Alliance.

“At least they won’t have any operable TIE fighters,” the admiral said.

As if his words had been a signal, a dozen X-wing fighters boiled out of the frigate and began accelerating toward the Imperial fleet.

“I see they have been modified to carry X-wings,” Vader said. His tone was very dry. “It seems the shipyard will not be such an easy target after all.”

Okins turned to his TIE operations officer. “Scramble our fighters. I don’t want to waste firepower swatting these annoying … flies with our big guns.”

“At once, Admiral.”