“There’s a huge black-market price on wampa pelts, you know,” he said, and finally a spark of pride and daring appeared in his eyes. Although Luke sensed the brooding terror surrounding them in the unheated meeting room, the gaunt former stormtrooper grew more animated as he spoke.
“So, the Cathar brothers and I decided to set up big-game expeditions. For a fee, we’d take hunters here to track down and kill the ‘biggest game in the galaxy’—a bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but that didn’t matter to rich Baron-Administrators, like him.” Burrk gestured to the tall muscular man with chiseled features, a white smile, and hardened eyes.
“Drom Guldi,” the muscular man said, introducing himself, “Baron-Administrator of the Kelrodo-Ai gelatin mines.” He swelled with pride, confident that everyone had heard of him. “We’re famous for our water sculptures,” he said. “And this is my aide.” He indicated a nervous-looking man with gray-blond hair and faint wrinkles across his skin, as if his surface layer had crumpled with a thousand pressure cracks. “Sinidic.”
Burrk the stormtrooper continued with his story, giving the rich hunter a nod of grudging admiration. “We had four customers on this run, and Drom Guldi was the only one worth having.”
“I bagged ten of those wampas myself when they attacked,” the Baron-Administrator said, “though we couldn’t go back and collect the pelts.” He ground his teeth together, and a flush rose to his bronzed cheeks. “The other monsters kept coming, and we had to retreat.”
“What happened?” Callista said. “How did you let yourself get so vulnerable?”
Burrk stared at his fingers, nervously twining and intertwining them. “This was our third run. The other two went smoothly. We would track the creatures, bag one or two, and then leave. By this time, the monsters had learned how to work together. We thought they were dumb brutes—all teeth and claws, and no brains—but we were wrong.”
The two Cathar hissed, and their fur ruffled.
“We knew about this old abandoned base. Used it as a stopping point because there isn’t much shelter on this rock,” Burrk said, and he looked up at Luke. “We went out on scouting teams: me and Nodon on one ship, Nonak and the others on another. It was just a day’s hunt. Sun was shining. Looked perfect.” His haunted eyes stared off into the shadows of the room. “We came back, and found our pilot slaughtered—and I mean slaughtered. We had all those weapons. We never thought they’d attack us.”
“We underestimated the problem,” Sinidic said in a thin nasal voice, then ducked his head, as if realizing he shouldn’t have spoken.
“When we went to investigate,” Burrk continued, “the wampas must have been waiting for us. They … erupted out of the snow and fell upon us like a meteor strike. We couldn’t see ’em. They killed one of our guides and the other three clients. Luckily we got to shelter in the base … we closed the shield doors behind us.” He swallowed, reliving the nightmare.
Drom Guldi picked up the story, businesslike and matter-of-fact. “That’s when they blew up our ship,” he said. “Must have been an accident. I can’t believe they knew what to do. They triggered it themselves.”
“We’ve been here four days,” Burrk said. “No supplies, and those things are out there waiting for us. We couldn’t even send a distress signal.”
Nodon, one of the Cathar, said, “Do you have weapons in your ship?”
Luke and Callista looked at each other. “Weapons? No,” Luke admitted.
Callista said, “We didn’t think we were coming into combat.”
“We got the two blaster cannons working,” Burrk said. “Rigged motion detectors to fire on anything approaching. But you sure took care of those.” A low bubbling growl came from the Cathar throats. “Now we got no defenses other than those doors—and we can’t stay here forever.”
“You can’t all fit in our ship, either,” Callista said, anticipating their next question. “It’s only a small yacht. But we can transmit a distress signal, get a rescue crew here within a day or so.”
“It’s getting dark,” Sinidic pointed out. “Shouldn’t we do something as soon as we can?” He looked up to Drom Guldi. “Why don’t you order them to go back to their ship and send a signal.”
“We’ll all go to their ship,” Drom Guldi said. “Otherwise, Burrk just might take them hostage and fly off and leave us here. And I don’t suppose I’d blame him.” The Cathar snarled, but from the way they looked at the former stormtrooper, Luke suspected they considered the possibility likely.
“We’ve got only a dozen charges left in our blaster rifles,” Burrk said, not the least bit offended by the accusation. “We won’t last long if we’re under attack.”
Drom Guldi squared his jaw. “We’ll have to make the most of what we have. Make a stand.”
Luke met Callista’s gaze. Helping people was one of the primary responsibilities of a Jedi Knight, and they could not turn down even poachers and unscrupulous hunters such as these. But Luke felt his skin crawl with the memory of his own encounter with a wampa.
Coiled and tense, the two Cathar stood from the empty storage containers they had used as seats and readied their blasters. Drom Guldi slung his rifle over his shoulder. Sinidic carried no weapon, but clung close to the Baron-Administrator. Burrk wore two blaster pistols at his hips; they looked battered and well used, repaired enough times that Luke wouldn’t count on them. He and Callista had their lightsabers.
“Let’s do this fast,” Burrk said, leading them to the outer shield doors. “We can make a dash for it … since we don’t have to worry about the motion sensors anymore.” He scowled at Luke.
“Leave the door partially open as a fallback option,” Drom Guldi suggested, “in case we need to make a hasty retreat.” Burrk nodded.
Luke sensed an interesting shift in command. Burrk was the nominal leader, but Drom Guldi—a hardened administrator—was equally proficient in making decisions under stress. The two men seemed to have formed a team for their own survival.
The shield door opened, and freezing air and snow gusted in. The sky had turned a hazy purple as the day drew to a close. Together, Luke and Callista led the five survivors in a sprint past the wreckage of the exploded poachers’ ship to their own small space yacht.
Luke focused his senses on Burrk and the others, concerned that the desperate refugees might try to blast him and Callista in the back and take their ship—but he sensed only a gnawing fear. These people were too frightened to worry about treachery.
As Luke and Callista approached their ship sitting calmly on the snow, Luke saw that the hatch stood open, like a dark mouth. Callista said, “Hey, I didn’t leave the door like that.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Luke muttered. The Cathar looked at each other and snarled.
“Bad news,” Drom Guldi said, already guessing what they would find. Luke bounded up the ramp, while Callista stayed outside to prevent the others from entering the ship.
Inside in the cockpit, Luke stared. The comm system had been torn to shreds, the panels ripped open with a silver scoring of claws. The navicomputer was gone, torn from its housing and smashed to a tangle of wires and broken chips. Severed cables dangled loose from the other controls.
It was as if the monsters knew exactly what they were doing.
A coil of fear tightened in the pit of his stomach. He turned behind him to the locker where the environment suits had hung—and found that the snow creatures had slashed both of the suits, making them unusable.
Then came a shout from outside, a panicked outcry and sudden blaster fire. Luke charged out of the cockpit, leaping down the ramp. Callista already had her lightsaber drawn, its topaz beam crackling and spitting in the cold.
Luke could barely distinguish the creatures that blended so perfectly with the snow and rock. Their white pelts made them only a blur of movement, curving horns sweeping from their heads, claws like knives extended as they boiled up, slashing and tearing and roaring.
Burrk drew bot
h of his blaster pistols and fired, leaving a huge wampa dead in the snow with smoking holes in its fur. The two Cathar snarled, waving their blaster rifles. Burrk tried to fire again, but one of his pistols had been drained dry. The wampas bellowed, setting up an odd howl that careened across the empty steppes like a tidal wave of terror.
Drom Guldi fired carefully and precisely, taking out another wampa. The remaining monsters pushed forward. One of the two Cathar shot indiscriminately, lancing the snowy distance with blaster fire until his rifle also ran out of charge.
With an echoing roar that seemed somehow familiar, Luke turned to see a huge wampa standing on a rock outcrop, larger than the others, howling into the night as if directing the battle. Luke saw that this monster had only one arm; its other ended in a cauterized stump. It slashed its single fistful of claws through the icy air when it saw the Jedi lightsabers.
In unison, the army of wampa ice creatures surged toward their victims.
NAR SHADDAA
CHAPTER 29
The Taurill Overmind did not pause, did not rest. So many of the little interchangeable bodies swarmed over the zero-gravity construction site that work progressed at a relentless pace.
Bevel Lemelisk was ecstatic to see that in only two days the busy creatures had managed to disassemble their erroneous work, erasing the mistakes and rebuilding the entire faulty section of the Darksaber. Lemelisk watched the efforts and prayed that the Taurill did not make an even worse mistake that might somehow escape his scrutiny.
At one time during the worst setback, when much of the superstructure remained dismantled, General Sulamar had stepped up behind him on the Orko SkyMine ship with a startling click of his bootheels. The baby-faced general stared out the observation windows. “Good work, Engineer,” he said grudgingly, as if Lemelisk had been waiting for such praise. “Carry on.”
Lemelisk had rolled his eyes and gone to find something to eat. Somehow, he had forgotten to eat lunch again.…
He chose the dead hours during the designated sleep period to continue his work with the three-dimensional crystal-lattice puzzle. It amused him with a challenge that stretched him almost—but not quite—to the limit of his mental abilities. When he had reached the critical point, focusing his entire world upon the problem and adjusting the parameters ever so delicately—he was interrupted, again.
The crystal puzzle sparkled down to random shards as Lemelisk flew into a rage at the Gamorrean guard. The brute let the insults bounce off his thick greenish skin and grunted only one word: Durga.
Lemelisk quashed his annoyance and followed the Gamorrean down the corridor to the communications center. Durga had sent a private message to him, knowing full well that it was the middle of the sleep period—but then, the Hutt had never shown much courtesy to others.
The guard left Lemelisk alone to face the flat screen projection of Durga the Hutt. Durga could have used the holoprojector, which transmitted a small three-dimensional image—but the Hutt did not like the 3-D system, because it made his enormous body look diminutive. He wanted the flatscreen, which projected his sloping, birthmarked face as a large and dominating visage. The speakers amplified his voice to a thunderous bellow.
“Lemelisk,” Durga said. “I know Sulamar is on his rest period, so I can speak to you without his interference. Those computer cores he obtained have arrived on Nar Shaddaa. I want you to come to the Smugglers’ Moon personally and check them out. No telling what sort of garbage he’s found for us. You must inspect them.”
“But—I can’t leave the construction site, not now!” Lemelisk said.
“Why?” Durga demanded. “Have there been problems?”
“No, no,” Lemelisk answered, holding his hands up. He hoped Durga couldn’t see the sudden film of cold sweat that sprang out on his skin. “Uh, everything’s going smoothly. The Taurill are hard workers, and very fast.”
“Good. I’m sending a ship to get you. You will make no contact with me. Just come to Nar Shaddaa and do your work. I am still trapped in an unpleasant diplomatic matter here.”
“When—” Lemelisk swallowed, his mind whirling, “um, when will you return to the asteroid belt, Lord Durga?”
“Soon,” the Hutt answered. “This visit of the Chief of State is tedious, but necessary. She has brought a fleet of warships, supposedly engaged in battle exercises, but I am no fool: she means to flaunt her power. That is throwing a bent hydrospanner into our talks, though I don’t believe the New Republic suspects anything.”
Durga suddenly growled and snapped back to the matter at hand. “Enough pleasantries! Get to the Smugglers’ Moon as soon as possible. Once my Darksaber is finished, I won’t need to be so disgustingly nice to these disgusting humans anymore.”
Lemelisk didn’t know the type of ship he boarded. It was a battered old craft that seemed heavily (and ineffectively) modified. It had been through numerous battles, judging from the blaster scars on its outer hull plates, and the swollen engines looked sufficient to power a craft ten times the size. It bore no registry markings.
The Twi’lek pilot said little, even to the human copilot. One of the alien’s head-tails was scarred and shriveled, as if it had been burned or partially shot off. Two Gamorrean guards accompanied Lemelisk onto the ship, saying little, throwing supplies on board, and grumbling during takeoff.
The Twi’lek pilot launched them from the expeditionary vessel, away from the Darksaber site, and out of the asteroid field before Lemelisk managed to strap his crash webbing into place. He craned his neck and tried to look out the rear viewports toward the dwindling construction lights.
Lemelisk hated to leave, especially at a time like this. He never knew what was liable to happen if he was not there to supervise personally.…
Darth Vader had come aboard the first Death Star while it was still under construction. “I’m here to supervise personally,” he said, his deep voice echoing through his impenetrable black mask. His breath, drawn through pumps on his chest, sounded like a hissing serpent.
Lemelisk stared in awe at the Emperor’s greatest warrior, the black-caped Dark Lord of the Sith, who already had the blood of billions on his gloved hands, and still had a long career ahead of him.
Grand Moff Tarkin had insisted that a small section of the Death Star’s living quarters be completed posthaste so he could move his offices aboard the battle station. He had set up a large armed reception for Vader’s arrival, with an honor guard of stormtroopers, waves of warriors ready to die at the Emperor’s command.
Lemelisk had forgotten to shave, and was afraid his personal appearance might be less than adequate as Vader towered over him. The Dark Lord stared through impenetrable eye goggles and hissed through the respirator. “I am here to … motivate your workers,” he said, looking from Tarkin to Lemelisk.
Lemelisk rubbed his pudgy hands together, smearing grease stains into the cracks on his knuckles. He wiped his hands on his thighs. “Good, Lord Vader! They need some motivation. The Wookiee work crews are strong and competent, but they take every opportunity to stall progress.” Tarkin looked at Lemelisk, astonished, and the engineer wondered if he had said something he shouldn’t have.
“Then perhaps the construction foremen need to exercise a tighter grip,” Vader said. “Or perhaps I need to demonstrate the limits of discipline.”
Lemelisk found Vader terrifying. Yes, a pep talk from the Emperor’s right-hand man would make even the most recalcitrant Wookiees work harder and faster.
But Vader did not have a pep talk in mind. Looming over terminals, he scanned through the computer records and work activity reports and selected the Imperial crew bosses who supervised the construction teams with the poorest performance.
Grand Moff Tarkin summoned all supervisors to sit around a big table in the largest briefing room in the completed portion of the Death Star.
“I am most displeased with your progress,” Vader said after he had singled out the two least effective construction foremen. As the others wa
tched, trembling with terror around the table, Vader raised his black leather glove. No one could read any expression through his skull-like plasteel helmet.
The two unfortunate foremen gasped and choked, clawing as if an invisible, iron-hard fist had wrapped itself around their windpipes. They kicked and thrashed, spasming, choking. Drool ran from their mouths—then there came a crunching sound, and the spittle ran a thick red. Their eyes nearly popped out of their sockets like spoiled fruit.
Then Vader lowered his arm, and the two dead bosses crumpled across the table. Vader looked at the sweating construction foremen who remained at the table. “I expect the rest of you to do better from now on,” he said.
Vader ordered Tarkin’s stormtroopers to take the pair of dead bodies out to the space construction site, where they wired the vacuum-frozen corpses to crossbeams on the outer shell of the half-finished Death Star.
Lemelisk was surprised and appalled at Vader’s tactics, but he changed his mind when he noticed that the crews did redouble their efforts. Tarkin was also very pleased. His own future seemed bright indeed.
* * *
Now, Lemelisk didn’t know how he had gotten into such a mess. He rode in a surly silence with the other pilots of the smugglers’ ship approaching Nar Shaddaa. Space traffic around the Smugglers’ Moon was subdued, illegal ship activity hampered by the presence of the nearby New Republic fleet.
As Lemelisk watched Nar Shaddaa, anxiety gnawed at the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to be around so many people, didn’t want to walk willingly into that nest of vermin. The crew accompanying him was unpleasant enough—and they were on his side. Lemelisk had no way of knowing what sort of scum he would encounter in the rundown streets of Nar Shaddaa.
He hoped to be in and out as soon as possible, and he hoped—though he didn’t expect it—that General Sulamar had actually obtained acceptable computer components for the Darksaber.
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