Shadows of the Empire (26 page)

Despite his anger, Vader was pleased. The boy’s skill and power were increasing. “Continue.”

“More of our men arrived. We were sure to overcome him, but then the wall blew in. We were attacked. I couldn’t tell how many there were, fifteen, maybe twenty. We were outnumbered. When the fighting was over, Skywalker was gone.”

Vader glanced up into space. And offplanet, too, he would wager. He would take his shuttle back to the
Executor;
perhaps it was not too late to catch him.

He glanced back at the bounty hunter. “I understand that someone else wanted Skywalker. Who?”

“I—I don’t know, Lord Vader—”

Vader raised his hand again, started to curl his fingers into a fist.

“Wait! Please! I don’t
know,
we—we dealt with agents.”

He looked at the bounty hunter. Felt something more there.

“You have a suspicion,” Vader said. Not a question.

“I—some of us heard rumors. I don’t know if they are true.”

“Tell me.”

“We—we heard that it was … Black Sun.”

Vader stared at the man. Of course.

“And this other … bidder wanted Skywalker alive and well?”

“N-N-No, my lord. They wanted him dead.”

Abruptly he turned away, the prisoner forgotten. Of course. He had unconsciously suspected it all along. Now that it was out, it made perfect sense. Xizor wanted to thwart Vader in any manner he could. What better way than to kill his son, and by the same act embarrass him in front of the Emperor?

“Back to the shuttle,” he said to the commander.

“What about this scum?” He waved at the building and the prisoner.

“Leave them. They are worthless.” Vader was already walking away.

T
he
Falcon
hung in high orbit, about to slingshot away. Artoo was safely on board, and Luke’s X-wing was clamped in place. Luke didn’t trust the haphazard rig that slung the fighter on the larger vessel, but it kept it out of the way of the guns, and it should hold. He hoped.

“Artoo! I didn’t think I would ever see you again!” Threepio said.

Artoo whistled at Threepio.

“Yes, we have had our share of adventures, as well. I must say I don’t like all this business the least bit. Couldn’t we find a nice quiet planet and take a vacation? Someplace warm, with a deep pool of lube?”

Luke grinned. Artoo and Threepio were always amusing.

Lando broke from orbit and headed out into interplanetary space.

“How long before we can make the jump to hyperspace, Master Lando?”

“Couple of minutes,” he replied. “And how’s this
for a change of luck—there aren’t even any Imperial vessels on our tail. About time something went our way.”

Luke nodded. While waiting for Lando to bring the hyperdrive online, he said, “How’s Dash doing? He was pretty upset after we hit that freighter.”

“Not so good. Pretty depressed. He can’t believe he actually failed at something. Had to happen sooner or later, but he isn’t used to it.”

“Stuff like that goes on in war,” Luke said. “You get disappointed.” Like he had been with Dash. Too bad.

“Yeah. What was in the computer that was so important, anyway?”

Luke shrugged. “I don’t know. The Bothans had just broken it open when the bounty hunters hit the safe house.”

“Did the bounty hunters get the computer?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think they even knew it was there. They were after me. Last I saw, one of the Bothan techs had the computer. I believe he escaped with it.”

“If he did, the Bothans will get it to the Alliance,” Lando said. “They’re pretty dependable. I guess we’ll find out what it was eventually.”

“Yeah.”

“Stand by for the jump to hyperspace.”

Lando hit the control.

Nothing happened.

Luke turned to stare at him.

“Oh, dear,” Threepio said. “There seems to be a problem.”

“It must be one of Han’s modifications!” Lando said. “My people supposedly fixed this thing on Bespin! It’s not my fault!”

“Fine. What do we do now?”

“Find a place to hide and fix it before we bump into the Imperial Navy.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Threepio said.

Artoo whistled his agreement.

G
uri led Leia and Chewie back into the Underground. They walked for hours, turning and twisting into narrower and narrower corridors. Eventually they came to a heavy, locked gate that Guri opened. She locked the gate behind them, and they moved into what looked like a small repulsor train station.

A man waited there. He was short, squat, and bald, built like a freight handler from some heavy gee world. He wore gray coveralls and had a blaster strapped on his left hip. He smiled, revealing teeth he’d had done in what looked to be black chrome.

Guri said, “Go with him.”

“Where are you going?”

“Not your business. Just do as you are told and you will see Prince Xizor soon enough.”

She turned and walked away without another word.

The bald man came over to stand in front of Leia. “This way,” he said.

Baldy led the way to a small motorized cart parked outside. There was barely enough room in it for the three of them. Fortunately, there was a convertible roof on the thing, so with the top down, Chewie could sit up without bumping his head. They drove into a tunnel halfway around the circle of shops. Baldy touched a control on the cart, and a heavy metal grate covering the mouth of the corridor slid into the ceiling. Inside, the tunnel was clean, well lighted, no mold or graffiti on the walls, the floor free of dirt.

They drove for a long time; they probably covered ten or twelve kilometers. Finally the tunnel opened out into a large chamber, in the middle of which sat a bullet car floating on magnetic repulsors over a single rail track.

Wherever they were going, it must be a way off;
maglev cars could cover long distances in a hurry, three, four hundred kilometers an hour, especially in a complete tunnel such as this one was. It didn’t pay to get them up to speed for anything less than a fairly long run.

Chewie and Leia followed Baldy into the car.

When they were seated and strapped in, Baldy said, “Go.”

The bullet car moved smoothly away from the chamber and into a dark tunnel. It picked up velocity fast. A row of small yellow service lamps ringed the tunnel every few hundred meters, and it wasn’t long before the yellow circle seemed to be flashing over them continuously.

Wherever they were going, they were going to get there pretty soon, even if it was halfway around the planet.

Leia looked at Chewie and wished she could read his expressions better. He looked calm. Calmer than she felt.

She hoped she was doing the right thing, though it was a little late to worry about that now, wasn’t it?

“W
hat’s the problem?” Luke said.

From the service well below him, Lando’s reply was more than a bit irritated: “The
problem
is that Han and Chewie have completely reset, rewired, and screwed up this whole ship! I’m looking at a serpent’s nest of
wires
where there is supposed to be a pop-out circuit board! The schematics don’t apply to anything here!”

“Well, can you fix it?”

“I’m
trying
to fix it! Pass me that jumper bypass.”

Luke picked up the JB, which looked like a bar with two sharp fingers making the V sign on one end. He had to lie on his belly to reach Lando.

Lando submitted, in a colorful fashion, that Han’s
ancestry was in question and that his personal habits left much to be desired.

Despite the danger of their situation, Luke grinned.

“Get Artoo to peek over the edge; maybe he knows what this blue wire is supposed to do.”

Artoo heard. He rolled to the lip of the service well, “leaned” forward, and peered down into it. Whistled and chirred for a moment.

“Yeeowch!” Lando yelled.

“Probably you’d better not touch that one.”

“Now you tell me. What about this yellow one?”

Artoo whistled.

It looked as if they were going to be there a while, Luke figured.

They had managed to find the remains of a small moon or maybe a large asteroid in a big parabolic orbit around the planet and had nestled the
Falcon
in among the larger rocks and matched their velocity. From a distance, with most of its power shut down, the ship should be just another one of the cluster of big boulders. Not enough gravity here to clump them back together; they’d be a known hazard for ships and probably avoided. Even a
Super-
class Star Destroyer didn’t want a bunch of building-size rocks smacking into its shields at speed; that would be a lot of kinetic energy to have to bleed off all at once.

At least that was what Luke and Lando hoped.

“Pass me those needle-head pliers,” Lando said.

Luke complied. “You need me down there to help? I’m pretty good with tools.”

“I used to own this ship,” Lando said. “I’ll figure out a way around what Han has done to her. The man ought to be ashamed of himself.”

“I’ll mention that to him when we get him out of the carbonite,” Luke said.

“So will I. High, loud, and repeatedly.”

T
he bullet car slowed. The bands of yellow blinked around them at longer intervals. When the car came to a stop, it was inside a vast chamber, as big as a state ballroom. The platform at which it stopped had six large guards on it, each dressed in gray armor and armed with a blast rifle. Baldy stepped out and grinned his shiny black smile. “This way,” he said.

Two of the guards broke away from the others and moved behind Chewie and Leia. “Take the helmet off,” Baldy said. “You won’t be needing it anymore.”

Baldy led them to a door as thick as that of a bank vault. He pressed his hand against a reader, and the door clicked and swung open. He led them inside a tall, arched corridor wide enough for a dozen men to walk through side by side. The massive door swung shut behind them. It was very cold here, cold enough for their breathing to show as vapor.

A short distance ahead was another door, another six guards in armor in front of it. Not as heavy as the door behind them, it was still thick enough and run by a print-reader, and when they’d gotten through it, there were yet more guards.

It seemed as if whoever ran this place didn’t want unexpected company.

They came to a bank of four turbolifts. Baldy punched a code into a keypad, and the door to the lift on the left opened. The three of them stepped in, leaving the two guards behind.

As the lift rose, Leia said, “Learned to trust us already?” She nodded at the guards they’d dropped off.

Baldy smiled. The lift stopped, and another pair of guards stood there.

Well. Perhaps Baldy hadn’t learned to trust them after all.

A series of corridors branched away from the turbolifts, and Baldy led them down one that linked to a maze of other hallways. Leia tried to keep track of all the twists and turns—she had a pretty good memory
for such things—but halfway through an intricate chain of left and right tacks, the lights went out. “Just keep walking,” Baldy said. “I’ll tell you when to turn.”

They walked in darkness for five minutes, Baldy calling out now and then. “Turn left.” “Turn right.” “Veer forty-five to the left for five steps, then veer right.”

When the lights went back on—how could he have seen to lead them?—Leia was thoroughly lost.

Whatever fat spider crouched in the center of this web, he truly did not want anybody just dropping by unannounced.

Eventually Baldy led them into a hallway. At the end of the hall were two tall, carved wooden doors and, standing to the sides, two more guards. These didn’t wear armor, had no rifles but wore blasters on low-slung belts. They were big men who looked as if they knew how to use their hands. One of them reached for the doorknobs and opened the doors as they approached.

Baldy said, “In there.” With that, he turned and walked away.

Leia looked at Chewie. Realized her pulse was racing and her stomach was fluttery. She took a deep breath and let part of it out.

She stepped into the room, Chewie behind her.

A tall man—no, not a man but an exotic-looking alien—rose from behind a large desk and smiled at her. “Ah,” he said, “Princess Leia Organa and Chewbacca. Welcome. I am Xizor.”

It was the voice she’d heard over the hotel’s comm.

Leia’s pulse speeded up yet more. She felt a sudden giddiness, as if her brain had fogged over. So here she was at last, facing the person in charge of the galaxy’s largest criminal organization. That was strange enough all by itself, but to make it even more so, he was absolutely … 
gorgeous!

“H
ow is it going down there?” Luke said.

“Don’t ask,” Lando said.

“I’m going to see what I can whip up in the galley, you want something?”

“Yeah, how about a beaker full of battery acid and bug poison.”

Luke shook his head, stood, and headed for the galley.

Stopped suddenly as if he’d been touched by a cold hand.

“Master Luke? Are you all right?”

Luke ignored Threepio. There was a disturbance in the Force, a dark blot on its perfection. It felt familiar somehow …

Uh-oh
.

Luke turned and hurried back to the service well. “You’d better get it fixed fast, Lando.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“I think we’re about to have company.”

Lando poked his head up over the edge of the well. “What? No way anybody could find us in here.”

“Yeah? Want to bet?”

“Oh, man. Don’t even say what you’re thinking,” Lando said.

“Huh?”

“Don’t say, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’ ”

Luke stared at him.

Lando disappeared back into the service well. “I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying!”

Luke headed for the cockpit to check the sensors. If it was who he thought it was, hiding in a clump of rocks wasn’t going to do much good. You could run, but from some things, you couldn’t hide.

X
izor was pleased. The young woman sitting across from him, backed by her furry bodyguard, was every bit as delightful as he had hoped, even more so. Thus far, they had spoken of trivial things, in generalities. He pretended to be honored that she was a high Alliance official come to call; she pretended that she wasn’t disgusted that he was a criminal. And, in fact, it didn’t really matter
what
she felt, now that she was here in his grasp.