Star Wars - Thrawn Trilogy - The Last Command 03

by Timothy Zahn

Chapter 4

  Poderis was one of that select group of worlds generally referred to in the listings as 'marginal': planets that had remained colonized not because of valuable resources or convenient location, but solely because of the stubborn spirit of its colonists. With a disorienting ten-hour rotational cycle, a lowland slough ecology that had effectively confined the colonists to a vast archipelago of tall mesas, and a nearly perpendicular axial tilt that created tremendous winds every spring and autumn, Poderis was not the sort of place wandering travelers generally bothered with. Its people were tough and independent, tolerant to visitors but with a long history of ignoring the politics of the outside galaxy.

  All of which made it an ideal transfer point for the Empire's new clone traffic. And an ideal place for that same Empire to set a trap.

  The man shadowing Luke was short and plain, the sort of person who would fade into the background almost anywhere he went. He was good at his job, too, with a skill that implied long experience in Imperial Intelligence. But that experience had naturally not extended to trailing Jedi Knights. Luke had sensed his presence almost as soon as the man had begun following him, and had been able to visually pick him out of the crowd a minute later.

  Leaving only the problem of what to do about him.

  "Artoo?" Luke called softly into the comlink he'd surreptitiously wedged into the neckband of his hooded robe. "We've got company. Probably Imperials."

  There was a soft, worried trill from the comlink, followed by something that was obviously a question. "There's nothing you can do," Luke told him, taking a guess as to the content of the question and wishing Threepio was there to translate. He could generally pick up the gist of what Artoo was saying, but in a situation like this the gist might not be enough. "Is there anyone poking around the freighter? Or around the landing field in general?"

  Artoo chirped a definite negative. "Well, they'll be there soon enough," Luke warned him, pausing to look in a shop window. The tail, he noted, moved forward a few more steps before finding an excuse of his own to stop. A professional, indeed. "Get as much of the preflight done as you can without attracting attention. We'll want to get off as soon as I get there."

  The droid warbled acknowledgment. Reaching to his neck, Luke shut off the comlink and gave the area a quick scan. The first priority was to lose the tail before the Imperials made any more overt moves against him. And to do that, he needed some kind of distraction. . . .

  Fifty meters ahead in the crowd was what looked to be his best opportunity: another man striding along the street in a robe of similar cut and color to Luke's. Cautiously picking up his pace, trying not to give the appearance of hurrying, Luke moved toward him.

  The other robed figure continued to the T-junction ahead and turned the corner to his right. Luke picked up his pace a bit more, sensing as he did so his shadower's suspicion that he'd been spotted. Resisting the urge to break into a flat-out run, Luke strolled casually around the corner.

  It was a street like most of the others he'd already seen in the city: wide, rock-paved, reasonably crowded, and lined on both sides with graystone buildings. Automatically, he reached out with the Force, scanning the area around him and as far ahead as he could sense—

  And abruptly caught his breath. Directly ahead, still distant but clearly detectable, were small pockets of darkness where his Jedi senses could read absolutely nothing. As if the Force that carried the information to him had somehow ceased to exist . . . or was being blocked.

  Which meant this was no ordinary ambush, for an ordinary New Republic spy. The Imperials knew he was here and had come to Poderis equipped with ysalamiri.

  And unless he did something fast, they were going to take him.

  He looked again at the buildings around him. Squat, two-story structures, for the most part, with textured facades and decorative roof parapets. Those to his immediate right were built in a single solid row; directly across the street to his left, the first building after the T-junction had a warped facade, leaving a narrow gap between it and its neighbor's. It wasn't much in the way of cover—and the distance itself was going to be a reach—but it was all he had. Hurrying across the street, half expecting the trap to be sprung before he got there, he slipped into the opening. Bending his knees, letting the Force flow into his muscles, he jumped.

  He almost didn't make it. The parapet directly above him was angled and smooth, and for a second he seemed to hang in midair as his fingers scrabbled for a hold. Then, he found a grip, and with a surge of effort pulled himself up and over to lie flat along the rooftop.

  Just in time. Even as he eased one eye over the edge of the parapet, he saw his tail come racing around the corner, all efforts at subtlety abandoned. Shoving aside those in his way, he said something inaudible into the comlink in his hand—

  And from the cross street a block away, a row of white-armored stormtroopers stepped into view. Blaster rifles held high against their chests, the dark elongated shapes of ysalamiri slung on backpack nutrient frames across their shoulders, they cordoned off the end of the street.

  It was a well-planned, well-executed net; and Luke had maybe three minutes to get across the roof and down before they realized their fish had slipped out of it. Easing back from the edge, he turned his head toward the other side of the roof.

  The roof didn't have another side. Barely sixty centimeters from where he lay, the roof abruptly became a blank wall that angled steeply downward for perhaps a hundred meters, extending in both directions as far as Luke could see. Beyond its lower edge, there was nothing but the distant mists in the lowlands beneath the mesa.

  He'd miscalculated, possibly fatally. Preoccupied with the man shadowing him, he'd completely missed the fact that his path had taken him to the outer edge of the mesa. The slanting wall beside him was one of the massive shield-barriers designed to deflect the planet's vicious seasonal winds harmlessly over the city.

  Luke had escaped the Imperial net . . . only to discover that there was literally nowhere else for him to go.

  "Great," he muttered under his breath, easing back to the parapet and looking down into the street. More stormtroopers had joined the first squad now and were beginning to sift through the stunned crowd of people caught in the trap; behind them, two squads from the other direction of the T-junction had moved in to seal off the rear of the street. Luke's erstwhile shadow, a blaster now gripped his hand, was pushing his way through the crowd, making for the other robed figure Luke had noticed earlier.

  The other robed figure . . .

  Luke bit at his lip. It would be a rather unfriendly trick to play on a totally innocent bystander. But on the other hand, the Imperials obviously knew who they were looking for and just as obviously wanted him alive. Putting the man down there in deadly danger, he knew, would be unacceptable behavior for a Jedi. Luke could only hope that inconveniencing him wouldn't fall under the same heading.

  Gritting his teeth, he reached out with the Force and plucked the blaster from the shadow's hand. Spinning it low over the heads of the crowd, he dropped it squarely into the other robed figure's hand.

  The shadow shouted to the stormtroopers; but what had begun as a call of triumph quickly became a screech of warning. Focusing the Force with all the control he could manage, Luke turned the blaster back toward its former owner and fired.

  Fired safely over the crowd, of course—there was no possible way for him to aim accurately enough to hit the Imperial, even if he'd wanted to. But even a clean miss was enough to jolt the stormtroopers into action. The Imperials who'd been checking faces and IDs abandoned their task to push through the crowd toward the man in the robe, while those guarding the ends of the street hurried forward into backup positions.

  It was, not surprisingly, too much for the man in the robe. Shaking away the blaster that had inexplicably become attached to his hand, he slipped past the frozen onlookers beside him and disappeared into a narrow alleyway.

  Luke didn't wait to see any more. The minute
anyone got a good look at the fleeing man's face, the diversion would be over, and he had to be off this roof and on his way to the landing field before that happened. Sidling to the edge of his narrow ledge, he looked down.

  It didn't look promising. Built to withstand two-hundred-kilometer winds, it was perfectly smooth, with no protuberances that could get caught in eddy currents. Nor were there any windows, service doors, or other openings visible. That, at least, shouldn't be a problem; he could cut himself a makeshift doorway with his lightsaber if it came to that. The real question was how to get out of range of the Imperials' trap before they started hunting him in earnest.

  He glanced back. And he had to do it fast. From the direction of the official landing area at the far end of the city, the distant specks of airspeeders had begun to appear over the squat city buildings.

  He couldn't drop back down on the street side without attracting unwelcome attention. He couldn't crawl along the narrow upper edge of the shield-barrier, at least not fast enough to get out of sight before the airspeeders got here. Which left him only one direction. Down.

  But not necessarily straight down . . .

  He squinted into the sky. Poderis's sun was nearly to the horizon, moving almost visibly through its ten-hour circuit. Right now its light was shining straight into the eyes of the approaching airspeeder pilots, but within five minutes it would be completely below the horizon. Giving the searchers a clear view again, and leaving behind a dusk where a lightsaber blade would be instantly visible.

  It was now or never.

  Pulling his lightsaber from beneath his robe, Luke ignited it, making sure to keep the glowing green blade out of sight of the approaching airspeeders. Using the tip, he carefully made a shallow cut to the right and a few degrees down across the slanting shield-barrier. His robe was made of relatively flimsy material, and it took only a second to tear off the left sleeve and wrap it around the fingertips of his left hand. The padded fingers slipped easily into the groove he'd just made, with enough room to slide freely along it. Getting a firm grip, he set the tip of his lightsaber blade into the end of the groove and rolled off the ledge. Supported by his fingertips, the lightsaber held outstretched in his right hand carving out his path for him as he went, he slid swiftly across and down the shield-barrier.

  It was at the same time exhilarating and terrifying. Memories flooded back: the wind whipping past him as he fell through the center core of the Cloud City of Bespin; hanging literally by his fingertips barely minutes later beneath the city; lying exhausted on the floor in the second Death Star, sensing through his pain the enraged helplessness of the Emperor as Vader hurled him to his death. Beneath his chest and legs, the smooth surface of the shield-barrier slid past, marking his rapid approach to the edge and the empty space beyond. . . .

  Lifting his head, blinking against the wind slapping into his face, he looked over his shoulder. The lethal edge was visible now, racing upward toward him at what felt like breakneck speed. Closer and closer it came . . . and then, at the last second, he changed the angle of his lightsaber. The downward path of his fingerguide shifted toward horizontal, and a few seconds later he slid smoothly to a halt.

  For a moment he just hung there, dangling precariously by one hand as he caught his breath and got his heartbeat back under control. Above him, its edge catching the last rays of the setting sun, he could see the groove he'd just cut, angling up and to his left. Over a hundred meters to his left, he estimated. Hopefully, far enough to put him outside the Imperials' trap.

  He'd find out soon enough.

  Behind him, the sun dipped below the horizon, erasing the thin line of his passage. Moving carefully, trying not to dislodge his straining fingertips, he began to cut a hole through the shield-barrier.

  "Report from the stormtrooper commander, Admiral," Pellaeon called, grimacing as he read it off his comm display. "Skywalker does not appear to be within the cordon."

  "I'm not surprised," Thrawn said darkly, glowering at his displays. "I've warned Intelligence repeatedly about underestimating the range of Skywalker's sensing abilities. Obviously, they didn't take me seriously."

  Pellaeon swallowed hard. "Yes, sir. But we know he was there, and he couldn't have gotten very far. The stormtroopers have established a secondary cordon and begun a building-to-building search."

  Thrawn took a deep breath, then let it out. "No," he said, his voice even again. "He didn't go into any of the buildings. Not Skywalker. That little diversion with the decoy and the blaster . . ." He looked at Pellaeon. "Up, Captain. He went up onto the rooftops."

  "The spotters are already sweeping that direction," Pellaeon said. "If he's up there, they'll spot him."

  "Good." Thrawn tapped a switch on his command console, calling up a holographic map of that section of the mesa. "What about the shield-barrier on the west edge of the cordon? Can it be climbed?"

  "Our people here say no," Pellaeon shook his head. "Too smooth and too sharply angled, with no lip or other barrier at the bottom. If Skywalker went up that side of the street, he's still there. Or at the bottom of the mesa."

  "Perhaps," Thrawn said. "Assign one of the spotters to search that area anyway. What about Skywalker's ship?"

  "Intelligence is still trying to identify which one is his," Pellaeon admitted. "There's some problem with the records. We should have it in a few more minutes."

  "Minutes which we no longer have, thanks to their shadower's carelessness," Thrawn bit out. "He's to be demoted one grade."

  "Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, logging the order. A rather severe punishment, but it could have been far worse. The late Lord Vader would have summarily strangled the man. "The landing field itself is surrounded, of course."

  Thrawn rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "A probable waste of time," he said slowly. "On the other hand . . ."

  He turned his head to gaze out the viewport at the slowly rotating planet. "Pull them off, Captain," he ordered. "All except the clone troopers. Leave those on guard near the likeliest possibilities for Skywalker's ship."

  Pellaeon blinked. "Sir?"

  Thrawn turned back to face him, a fresh glint in those glowing red eyes. "The landing field cordon doesn't have nearly enough ysalamiri to stop a Jedi, Captain. So we won't bother trying. We'll let him get his ship into space, and take him with the Chimaera."

  "Yes, sir," Pellaeon said, feeling his forehead furrow. "But then . . ."

  "Why leave the clones?" Thrawn finished for him. "Because while Skywalker is valuable to us, the same is not true of his astromech droid." He smiled slightly. "Unless, of course, Skywalker's heroic efforts to escape Poderis convince it that this is indeed the main conduit for our clone traffic."

  "Ah," Pellaeon said, finally understanding. "In which case, we find a way to allow the droid to escape back to the Rebellion?"

  "Exactly," Thrawn gestured to Pellaeon's board. "Orders, Captain."

  "Yes, sir." Pellaeon turned back to his board, feeling a cautious stirring of excitement as he began issuing the Grand Admiral's commands. Maybe this time Skywalker would finally be theirs.

  Artoo was jabbering nervously when Luke finally charged through the door of their small freighter and slapped the seal behind him. "Everything ready to go?" he shouted over his shoulder to the droid as he hurried to the cockpit alcove.

  Artoo trilled back an affirmative. Luke dropped into the pilot's seat, giving the instruments a quick once-over as he strapped himself in. "Okay," he called back. "Here we go."

  Throwing power to the repulsorlifts, Luke kicked the freighter clear of the ground, wrenching it hard to starboard. A pair of Skipray blastboats rose with him, moving into tandem pursuit formation as he headed for the edge of the mesa. "Watch those Skiprays, Artoo," Luke called, splitting his own attention between the rapidly approaching city's edge and the airspace above them. The fight with those clone troopers guarding the landing field had been intense, but it had been far too brief to be realistic. Either the Empire had left someone totally incompet
ent in charge, or they'd let him get to his ship on purpose. Carefully herding him into the real trap . . .

  The edge of the mesa shot past beneath him. Luke threw a quick glance at the rear display to confirm that he was clear of the city, then punched in the main sublight drive.