Shadows of the Empire (32 page)

Behind him, Lando emerged from a stall, dressed in a similar uniform. Lando adjusted the belt with his new sidearm and brushed lint from the right sleeve.

“Women love a man in a uniform,” he said. He lifted his helmet and slipped it on.

“Let’s hope they don’t see the man behind the armor,” Luke said.

The two of them squared their shoulders, stuck their chests out, and affected an Imperial swagger as they exited the ’fresher.

V
ader stood at the ramp leading to the Emperor’s personal shuttle, looking down at the shorter man.

“I anticipate that I shall return in three weeks,” the Emperor told him. “I trust you can keep the planet from falling apart while I am gone?”

“Yes, my master.”

“I expect no less. Any news of Skywalker?”

“Not yet. We’ll find him.”

“Perhaps sooner than you expect.”

Vader stared at the Emperor, who wore a half smile that revealed his damaged teeth. Had he foreseen something? The Emperor was still more attuned to the dark side than Vader was. Had he gleaned some new information about Luke?

If he had, he was not ready to reveal it, for he turned and allowed himself to be escorted up the ramp by a squad of the Imperial Royal Guard in their ceremonial red robes and matching armor.

The tap of the Emperor’s twisted walking stick on the ramp was quite loud in the silence.

Of all the people in the galaxy, the Emperor trusted Darth Vader most; at least that’s what Vader liked to believe. And as far as he was able to determine, the length of that trust was no farther than an outstretched arm could reach.

No matter. He was right about one thing: Sooner or later Luke would surface. A light that bright could not be hidden for long. By his nature the boy would have to burn hot enough to be visible to one who had the power and the knowledge of how to look for him. Once a Jedi began to grow in the Force, the process was not easily stopped. In Luke’s case, Vader doubted that it
could
be stopped.

They would meet again. A week, a month, a year—it did not really matter. It would happen.

Meanwhile, he would keep a sharp eye on the actions of an enemy all too close to home. Even now, Vader’s agents sought every scrap of information they had not already found on the Underlord of Black Sun.
That, too, would simply be a matter of time. Once you knew the direction, the trip was made easier, and sooner or later, Xizor would make an error. He would stumble.

When he did, Vader would be waiting to catch him.

“W
ell,” Luke said, “this is a better neighborhood than where we were before, but where exactly are we going?”

Lando pointed. “There.”

“A
plant
shop?”

“Don’t let it fool you. It’s run by an old Ho’Din name of Spero. He’s got a lot of connections, some Imperial, some Alliance, some criminal.”

“Let me guess: He owes you a favor.”

“Not exactly. But we’ve done some business in the past and he doesn’t mind making a few credits passing along information.”

They headed for the shop.

“We’re getting a lot of dirty looks,” Luke said.

“It’s the uniforms. The Empire doesn’t have many friends down here. Most of the locals are probably on the run, one step ahead of being arrested. They won’t bother us as long as we don’t stick our noses in the
wrong place. Don’t want to bring Imperial heat and light into their hideout.”

Inside the shop there was no sign of the Ho’Din owner. Except for Luke and Lando, the place was empty.

“Nobody home,” Luke said. “That’s odd, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, odd. I—”

Somebody said something behind them. Luke didn’t understand what it was, but he recognized the language: Wookiee.

“Easy, friend,” Lando said. “Nobody is going to make any sudden moves.” He lifted his hands away from his body, told Luke to do the same.

The Wookiee speaker said something else.

Something about the voice …

“Turn around, nice and slow,” Lando told Luke.

They turned.

Sure enough, there was a Wookiee standing there. One with a bad haircut—

“Chewie!” Lando said.

Despite the helmets, Chewbacca recognized them at the same instant and lowered the blaster pistol he held.

Lando smiled as he and Luke moved forward to embrace Chewie.

“What happened? Why is your hair chopped off?”

Chewie tried to answer at the same time Lando fired more questions, and Luke didn’t get much of it. But he was glad to see the Wookiee.

Finally Lando began to translate for Luke.

“The shop owner is tied up in back; in case anybody spotted Chewie coming in, they wouldn’t think the Ho’Din was helping, right, right, and—slow down, pal!”

Chewie kept talking a keening, harning noise.

“Okay, okay, Leia thinks it’s Black Sun that wants you dead, Luke, they’re behind the assassination attempts, not the Empire. Huh? Well, I don’t know how,
there’s just the three of us, how can we get inside the place, that won’t help her if we get caught, will it—?”

The dialogue ended abruptly as a blaster bolt lanced through the shop’s open door and shattered a flowerpot hanging from the ceiling. Shards of the ceramic pattered against Luke’s back, and clumps of moist dirt and humus fell around him. The junglelike smell inside the shop increased.

“Hey!”

Outside the shop, four men with blasters loosed more shots. They weren’t wearing uniforms, whoever they were.

The three inside the plant store dropped to the floor. Chewie raised his blaster and blindly fired several rounds back at the shooters.

“Who are those guys? Why are they shooting at us?”

Lando said, “Who knows?” He pulled his borrowed blaster and added to Chewie’s return fire. It didn’t look as if they hit anybody, from the torrent of light that came back at them.

“Is there another way out of here?” Luke asked.

Chewie growled a reply. Luke thought it meant “Yes.”

“In the back!” Lando yelled.

He and Chewie cooked off several more shots, and the three of them crawled toward the back of the shop.

They passed an old Ho’Din bound and gagged in a corner.

“Sorry about this,” Lando said to the Ho’Din. “Send the Alliance a bill, they’ll pay for it!”

Chewie reached the back exit and shoved the sliding door open.

Another high-energy bolt zipped through the door at chest height and burned a hole in an inner wall. Fortunately, they were all still stretched out on the floor, and the hole was well above their heads.

Lando cursed. “They’ve got us boxed!”

Before they could think about what they were going to do, somebody outside the back exit screamed. There came the sound of several blaster discharges—but no fresh beams poked into the shop.

“What the—?” Lando began.

Luke looked up from where he lay prone on the floor, plant dirt ground into the chest and belly of his stolen uniform, and saw a figure walking across an alley. Well, not walking so much as … 
swaggering
.

Luke recognized the man.

Dash Rendar! Oh, man. Here he was saving Luke
again
. Luke hated this.

“Howdy, boys. Having a little trouble?” He spun his blaster on his forefinger and blew across the end of the barrel. It made a slight hooting noise.

Luke came up, saw Lando and Chewie do the same. He started to speak, but Lando beat him to it. “Rendar! What are you doing here?”

“Saving your butts, looks like. Seems to be my specialty. Better come on, we can talk as we move. Follow me.”

Luke shook his head. He really didn’t like this, but there wasn’t much he could say about it. Rendar was, unfortunately, right.

I
n a conference room in his castle, Darth Vader stared at the small man who stood in front of him. “You are certain of this?”

“Yes, my lord, I am certain.”

Vader felt a flash of triumph. It was not enough, not by itself, but it went a long way toward the proof he needed. “And you have the tape and documentation.”

“Already in your files, Lord Vader.” The little man smiled.

“You have served me well. I will not forget this. Continue your search.”

The little man bowed and left.

So. There existed a recording of a freelance agent speaking to an Alliance crew chief, telling her she would be made rich if she could but kill Luke Skywalker.

Of course, no direct connection to Xizor had been discovered, but Vader’s agents would find it, did it exist. The briber had talked to the crew chief, someone had talked to him. Vader’s agents would backwalk every moment of the briber’s life until they found out who had sent him. And who had sent the being who had sent
him
. And so on.

It was one more addition to the growing collection of circumstantial evidence his agents had gathered and were continuing to gather.

By itself a grain of sand was nothing, but with enough grains, one could cover a city. It would not do to tip his hand too early. As of now, he had enough sand to begin. A bit more and he’d be able to bury Xizor …

He must be removed, once and for all, and the day was coming when it would happen.

Soon.

It would be soon.

D
ash showed the way. Chewie took the point and led them into a warren of twisted corridors and tunnels that should lose any pursuers, given how fast Luke lost his own bearings.

“So how did you get here again?” Lando asked Dash.

“The usual way. Sneaked in under the belly of a freighter in the sensor shadow. A trick I learned as a boy at the Academy. A good pilot can do it in his sleep. How about you?”

Lando’s smile seemed a little sickly to Luke. He shrugged. “Yeah, we did that, too. Piece of cake. Could have done it on autopilot, it was so easy.”

“Yeah, but how did you manage to get
here
?” Luke asked. He pointed at the ground.

“The Ho’Din’s? Oh, everybody knows about Spero, don’t they, Lando?”

“I guess they do,” Lando said. “Okay, that’s how, but—why?”

Dash sighed. “Something to prove, I guess. I felt pretty bad after that disaster Luke and I went through. Not something I’m used to, making mistakes. But I figure, you crash your ship, you better climb into the next one you see and get it back in the air. Too much time goes by and you don’t, you get afraid to fly. I screwed up, and I’m still not over that, but you can only sit and bubble in your own juices for so long. I work for money, but I figure I owe the Empire a little something. When Chewie called, I decided it was time to pay the Empire back.”

Luke nodded. “I understand how you feel.”

“I have a few contacts here,” Dash said.

“Y
ou must breakfast with me,” Xizor said.

Leia looked at him. He had come to her room early, but she had already dressed, and her costume was once again that of the bounty hunter she’d affected earlier, sans the helmet. She didn’t want to wear the clothes this scum provided.

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

“I insist.”

Even now that she knew he had tried to kill Luke, she could feel the ghost of that attraction to him. Fortunately, she was able to resist it. Anger made a good antidote.

She decided to see if Xizor would reveal anything to her. Said, “Will Chewbacca be joining us?”

“Alas, no. Your Wookiee friend has … taken his leave of us.”

“Got away and you can’t find him, huh?”

Xizor gave her a thin smile totally without humor. “You think he escaped on his own? Really, Leia. I allowed him to break free.”

“Come on.”

“I want Skywalker. Skywalker wants you. I
have
you. Surely I don’t need to draw you a diagram?”

She felt her belly twist and go cold. He was toying with them. The whole reason to have her come here was as
bait
for Luke. Oh, no.

She’d been hungry, but breakfast no longer held any appeal. This creature was evil. Twisted, brilliant, and evil.

“W
here are we going?” Luke asked.

Dash said, “I know a place we can hide. We can figure out what to do from there.”

Luke felt a sudden rush of something in him. A kind of powerful knowledge that filled him, made him grin. Of a second, he had become one with the Force—and he hadn’t even tried to do it. It just happened.

“What?” Lando said, noticing.

“We’ll go to this place and make plans to rescue Leia,” Luke said.

He wasn’t sure what he expected, maybe that Lando or Dash or even Chewie would stare and shake his head, ask who had abdicated and left Luke in charge, something. But the other three exchanged glances, looked back at Luke, and when they did, it was apparent that something had changed.

“Right,” Lando said. “Of course.”

Chewie moaned his assent.

“What else?” Dash said.

It was simply the right thing to do, and it felt as natural as breathing. That’s what the Force was, he realized. A natural phenomenon. He had struggled so hard to attain it, and all that it required was that he relax and
allow
it, instead of trying to create it. Simple.

Too bad “simple” and “easy” didn’t mean the same things.

Never mind. Because a thing was difficult did not mean it could not be done. With the Force, many things were possible. He still had much to learn, more than he’d ever thought before. He smiled. What was it Master Yoda had said? Recognizing your ignorance is the first step to wisdom?

Yes.

G
uri stood in front of Xizor as he stripped from his breakfast outfit and began to dress for his appointments. She took no notice of his lack of clothing.

“Our agents say that a Corellian freighter answering the description of the
Millennium Falcon
is hidden somewhere in the Hasamadhi warehouse district near the South Pole.”

Xizor selected a tunic and matching pants from the closet and examined them under the artificial sunlight. “So? There are hundreds of Corellian freighters that look like that, are there not?”

“Not hidden in the Hasamadhi warehouse district.”

“Are you saying you think Skywalker and the gambler have come here? Have eluded the Imperial picket line and landed on the planet as bold as you please?”