Trapped (2 page)

Div drifted away.

S
irens blared across the Rebel Base. Luke, Leia, and Han raced toward Div's cell. The door had been torn from its hinges. Han looked inside, preparing himself for the worst. But the cell was empty. Div was gone. “How'd he manage that?” Han wondered.

Behind him, R2-D2, Luke's little astromech droid, beeped urgently.

“Captain Solo, he says he's tapped into the security holocam feed,” C-3PO, R2-D2's protocol droid counterpart, reported. “The prisoner didn't escape. He was kidnapped!”

“We need to meet with General Rieekan and decide how to proceed,” Leia said in alarm.

Han looked at her like she was crazy. “You meet with whoever you want, honey,” he told her. “I'm going to find our missing prisoner.”

They were all certain that Div was working for X-7, an Imperial assassin determined to murder Luke. Hiring Div wasn't X-7's first attempt. He'd tried to kill Luke several times—and had once set up
Han
to look like the assassin. It wasn't the kind of thing Han was ready to forget. X-7 was due for some payback. And he had disappeared. Div might be their only way of finding him.

Besides, even if Div was a hired gun for an Imperial assassin, he'd turned out to be a pretty good guy. He'd helped Han out of more than one tight situation, and Han wasn't about to let a bunch of kidnappers just carry him off into the jungle. Not without a fight.

“We need a strategy, Han!” Leia said, looking annoyed. Of course, she rarely looked any other way—at least, when she was looking at him. “We can't go rushing into the jungle without any—”

Ignoring her, Han cocked his head at Luke. “You coming, kid?”

Luke glanced back and forth between Han and Leia. He hesitated for only a second. “We can't waste time,” he told Leia apologetically. “If we lose Div, we'll never find X-7.”

Han stole a moment to shoot Leia a victorious look. Then he took off toward the exit. He hoped that once they got outside, they could spot signs of a struggle or
something
to lead them in the right direction. Without pausing, he activated his comlink. “Chewie, we've got a situation here. Meet me at the barracks, quick as you can.”

Behind him, he heard Leia ordering C-3PO to report to General Rieekan. Then she said, “Come on, Artoo. Looks like it's up to us to keep Han out of trouble.”

Han grinned.
Good luck, lady,
he thought.

It was a fool's mission. But it was always fun to watch her try.

They trooped through the trees, following a twisting path of broken branches and shallow footprints. The trail ended in a narrow clearing at the heart of the jungle. R2-D2's tracking skills had led them this far. But now he was picking up no traces of Div anywhere. Chewbacca, who had a much keener sense of smell than the humans, was also having no luck. They'd reached a dead end.

“No, we are
not
turning back,” Luke insisted angrily.

“What else can we do?” Leia asked.

“Find him,”
Luke said. “This is our fault.”

Leia shook her head. “Luke, no—”

“
We
locked him up,” Luke said. “
We
bound him. And when they came for him...” He shook his head. “We have to find him.”

“You ever think he might not want to be found?” Han said. “Maybe this whole thing's a setup. Some of his friends bust him out, make it look like a kidnapping—”

“No,” Luke retorted. “Div wouldn't—” He cut himself off. “Okay. Maybe you're right.”

Leia looked at him in surprise. She knew that Luke had come to trust and respect Div while they were trapped on Kamino together. He'd been unhappy about the need to keep Div prisoner. Obviously, a part of him considered the mysterious pilot a friend. And it wasn't like Luke to distrust his friends.

“And maybe you're wrong,” Luke continued. “But we're never going to know unless we find him.”

“That's what we've been
trying
to do,” Han reminded him.

“And we've tried everything,” Leia told him. “It's time to go back. We need reinforcements.”

“Not everything,” Luke said, his mouth set in a determined line. “Come on, Artoo.”

“Luke, where are you going?” Leia cried as Luke and R2-D2 disappeared into the jungle.

“To find Div!” Luke called back. And then he was gone.

Leia couldn't believe it. She glared at Han.

“What?” he asked.

“Why didn't you stop him?” she said.

“
Me?
Why didn't
you
stop him?”

Leia scowled. “Do I have to do everything?”

“Hey, maybe the kid knows what he's doing,” Han said.

“Or maybe he—”

“Shhh!” Han urged her suddenly.

Chewbacca growled softly. “Yeah, buddy, I hear it, too,” Han whispered.

A loud rustling came from the jungle. It sounded like it was only a few meters to the west. Han drew his blaster. Leia tightened her grip on her blaster pistol, still in its holster. Without speaking, they positioned themselves back to back so they could cover all sides of the clearing.

The rustling grew louder. Now it was coming from both the east and the west.

“They've got us surrounded,” Han whispered. “Stay behind me, Princess. I'll protect you.”

“Since when do I need
you
to protect me?” Leia asked irritably. The noise was close now. Close and...familiar. “Besides, I don't think—”

“Shhh!” Han hissed. “Just follow my lead and no one will—aaaaaagh!”

A flock of kitehawks erupted out of the trees. They swarmed the clearing. Han started beating them back with his blaster. But that only made them angry. The kitehawks began to emit a high keening noise, and extended their claws. Then, as one, they dive-bombed him. More and more flowed out of the jungle, all heading straight for Han. “Get 'em off me!” Han shouted, nearly vanishing in the dark cloud of kitehawks.

Leia burst into laughter. Kitehawks were harmless. Back on Alderaan, many children kept them as pets. But Han was flailing and shouting as if he were being attacked by a horde of angry clawbirds.

“All right, Chewie,” Leia said to the Wookiee, whose hairy shoulders were shaking with laughter. “Should we put him out of his misery?”

In response, Chewbacca threw back his head and let loose an echoing roar. The terrified kitehawks took off as one, vanishing into the trees.

Han's eyes were squeezed shut, his arms waving wildly in an effort to fend off his attackers. It took him a moment to realize they were gone. Finally, he dropped his arms and opened his eyes. “Told you I'd protect you, Your Worshipfulness,” he said.

Leia plucked a feather out of his scruffy hair. “Lucky me.”

Thorny branches slapped at his face and legs. Luke hacked through them with his lightsaber, forcing his way deeper and deeper into the dense jungle growth. Massassi trees towered overhead, their canopy of leaves blocking out the sun. His feet sank into a soft bed of mud and leaves, and when he passed, it sprang back into place, obliterating his footsteps—as it had obliterated any traces of Div and his captors.

This was pointless. The jungle stretched on for miles in all directions. Luke had picked up a few tracking skills back on Tatooine. But following Jawa tracks across the desert was a lot different from tracking mysterious kidnappers through a jungle. He had no idea where to start.

“What do you think, little guy?” Luke asked R2-D2. The droid beeped at him helplessly.

Luke sighed. “I know. But we
have
to find him.”

R2-D2 beeped again, pointing at Luke's lightsaber with his manipulator arm.

“I don't think this is going to help,” Luke said, confused. The astromech droid trilled a long series of beeps and whistles, obviously frustrated. Suddenly, Luke understood. “You don't mean that I should use the lightsaber, do you? You mean I should use the
Force
!”

R2-D2 beeped excitedly. His domed head spun in a circle.

Luke shook his head. “I wish I could. I know that's what Ben would have done. But I don't know how.”

The astromech droid just pointed to the lightsaber again, insistent.

“I guess I could try,” Luke agreed. “What's the worst that could happen?”

He wasn't sure how to start. So he just stood, waiting. Feeling somewhat silly, he closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind of distractions. He focused intently on Div.

Nothing happened.

Come on, Ben,
he thought.
Help me out.

It was so frustrating, knowing he had this power in himself and no way to reach it. If only there was someone to tell him what to do.

Or you could figure it out for yourself.

It wasn't Ben's voice in his head. It was his own.

Luke slowed his breathing. He relaxed his muscles. This time, he didn't try to focus his mind on Div, or on anything. He let his thoughts roam freely, as they did when he was drifting off to sleep. Instead of blocking out the world around him, he soaked it in. The soft mud beneath his boots, the chirps of the chucklucks, the rich, heavy scent of the purple Massassi bark. If the jungle had something to tell him, he was listening.

Again, nothing happened. But when Luke opened his eyes, some impulse drove him to look toward the southwest. And he noticed something he hadn't before: a regularity, almost a pattern, in the randomness of the jungle growth. But in one spot it was broken, more branches were bent and more flowers trampled than should have been. Something had come through the trees here. Maybe an animal.

But Luke didn't think so. “Come on, Artoo.” He urged the astromech droid to hurry through the trees. “I sure hope this works.”

He didn't know if it was the Force that made everything seem sharper, made every twisted branch and shallow footprint jump out in a way they never had before. But he didn't question it. He just followed his instincts. They brought him to a clearing, where a beat-up Firespray ship was powering up its engines. Three men loaded an unconscious figure into the cargo bay. It had to be Div.

Luke was outnumbered and outgunned, with no time to wait for reinforcements. He was going to have to handle this himself.

“Go find the others and tell them I went after Div,” Luke said to R2-D2. “Tell them I'll be back.”

The droid beeped in alarm, but Luke ignored it. He crept closer to the ship, careful not to let the men see him. Two of the men climbed into the cockpit while the third climbed into the cargo bay. The doors began to slide shut.

It was his best chance. Also his last chance.

Luke ran toward the ship as fast as he could. One man caught sight of him and began to shout, but the noise was drowned out by the thundering engines. As the man fumbled for a blaster, Luke threw himself into the cargo bay. The doors shut behind him as blasterfire sprayed the bulkheads.

“What do you think you're doing?” the man shouted, taking aim at Luke.

Luke activated his lightsaber and struck out blindly. The laserfire bounced off the blue beam and slammed into a large stack of heavy crates. They toppled over, landing squarely on top of the man with the blaster. With a loud
“Oof,”
he collapsed to the floor.

Luke rushed to Div, who lay in a corner, bound and unconscious. “Come on, wake up,” he muttered. “We need to get you out of here before—” The engines flared and the ship lifted off the ground. “Before that happens.” Luke braced himself against the wall as the ship rocketed through the atmosphere.

It seemed they were going for a ride.

L
uke used his lightsaber to cut through Div's restraints. “Div, wake up!” he said again, careful to keep his voice down. But Div didn't move.

Luke was on his own.

He nudged the fallen kidnapper with his foot. The body didn't stir. But there were still two more on the other side of the bulkhead. He'd have to deal with them—preferably
before
they figured out they had a stowaway.

A narrow retractable panel separated the cargo bay from the cockpit. Luke inched it aside and peeked through the slender gap. One of the men bent over the controls, programming something into the autopilot. He ran a hand through his dark red hair, then hesitated over the control panel, as if nervous about the flight path.

“Just do it,” growled the other. Tall and muscular, he looked uncomfortable, cramped in the narrow copilot seat. “We got what he wanted. Time for our reward.”

“Never heard of him
rewarding
anyone,” the redhead muttered.

“First time for everything,” the big one said.
“Now.”

There was a rustling behind Luke. He whirled around. Div was stirring. Eyes still closed, Div lashed out with his arm, whacking the plastoid bulkhead.

“Hey, you hear that?” the copilot asked, jumping up from his seat. He opened a channel on the comlink.

Luke held his breath.

“Griff, everything okay with the prisoner?” the co-pilot asked. “Griff?”

Griff, lying unconscious on the floor of the cargo bay, did not respond.

It was now or never. Luke activated his lightsaber again. Blue blade held high, he burst into the cockpit. The copilot barreled toward him. Luke struck out with the lightsaber, but the man grabbed his arm and twisted hard. Luke swallowed a gasp of pain. He tossed the lightsaber to his other hand. The blade whipped through the air and sliced effortlessly through the man's bulging belly. He dropped to the ground, curled up and cradling the wound.

Laserfire screamed past Luke, scorching the wall behind him.

The pilot stood before the controls, blaster aimed at Luke. “Where did you come from? What do you want? What'd you do to Tyrus? What's that sword thing? Who
are
you?”

Luke swept his gaze across the tiny cockpit. There was a chance he'd be able to block the laserfire with his lightsaber. But he'd be a lot more confident about blocking it with a chair, or a storage crate, or a nice thick durasteel bulkhead. “Which question do you want me to answer first?” he asked, stalling.

The pilot shrugged. “How about...none of them?”

He fired.

Luke ducked, closed his eyes, let the Force guide his hands.

The laserfire smacked into his lightsaber. Luke stumbled backward with the impact.

“Watch it.” A voice came from behind him. And then another shot. The pilot clutched his chest and pitched forward, tumbling to the floor. Luke spun around to see Div grinning behind him. “You're welcome,” Div said. “Now, what are you doing here?”

“Rescuing you,” Luke said.

Div raised an eyebrow. Then he raised his blaster. “Don't move!” he shouted.

Luke froze. But Div wasn't aiming at him.

Groaning with pain, the pilot hoisted himself up to the control panel. “If you want to live, don't move!” Div warned him.

But the pilot didn't stop. He reached toward the controls. Div pulled the trigger. Laserfire sailed across the cockpit, peppering the pilot's body. He tumbled forward onto the controls, his hand slapping down on a large red switch. With a weak but satisfied smile, he dropped to the floor.

And in the viewscreen, the sky exploded with light as the ship jumped into hyperspace.

Stars streamed past as the ship hurtled through space.

Moments later, the autopilot took them out of hyperspace. The ship came to rest in an empty pocket of the galaxy with no planetary systems anywhere in sight. They could have been anywhere. And they had a bigger problem: the Star Destroyer looming in their viewscreen. Hundreds of times their size, the arrow-shaped silver ship hung motionless in the sky less than twenty klicks away, as if it had been waiting for them—which, Div realized, it almost certainly was.

Div glanced at Luke. “When does the rescuing start?” he asked drily.

“Maybe we can escape before it notices us,” Luke said, fiddling with the unfamiliar hyperdrive controls.

Div jabbed a boot into the unconscious pilot, hoping the man could give them some clue as to what they were up against. But he didn't stir. Luke was muttering to himself, trying to program a new set of coordinates. “It's an old ship,” he murmured. “It's going to take at least six minutes before the drive is ready to jump again.”

“I'm not sure we have six minutes,” Div said.

The launch hangars of the Star Destroyer slid partially open. A single TIE fighter slipped through the narrow crevice.

“Just one?” Luke said. “We can take it.”

“Great,” Div said. “But who's going to take
them
?” As he spoke, the hangar doors were sliding wide open. A fleet of TIE fighters poured out, blanketing the sky.

An Imperial transmission came through from the Star Destroyer. “Identify yourselves,” a flat, tinny voice commanded. “Imperial authentication and docking codes required.”

Luke took a weapons inventory while Div again tried to rouse the pilot, shaking him and propping him on his feet. No luck.

“A few concussion missiles and a defective laser cannon,” Luke said quickly. “That's it.”

Enough to dispatch three, maybe four TIE fighters. No more.

“Identify yourselves,” the voice said again.

Div lunged for the comm. “We're here on official Imperial business,” he said quickly. “We're expected.”

The voice was unimpressed. “Identification and authorization. Now.”

“How long before the hyperdrive is ready?” Div said.

“Four minutes now.”

“Okay, we definitely don't have four minutes,” Div said. He powered up the missile launchers. It wasn't much, but it would have to do.

The comm buzzed with an incoming message. But this wasn't coming from the Star Destroyer. It was coming from one of the TIE fighters.

“That's a Rebel frequency!” Luke exclaimed. They bent their heads together over the transmission, eyes widening in surprise. The TIE fighter had sent them a set of Imperial docking codes.

That wasn't all the TIE fighter had sent them. The message also included coordinates to be input into the hyperdrive. The TIE fighter was sending them somewhere. It was the strangest rescue Div had ever seen.

Or it was a trap.