The plain became rocky and broken, with pockets of soft sand lying between boulders the size of droids. The caravan's progress slowed to a crawl, the gait of the dewbacks growing slow, rhythmic, and swaying.
Han's rippling figure seemed to twist in the saddle and look back in the direction from which they had come, and Leia knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Those TIEs had to be starting their search grid by now, and when they found the caravan this time, the equipment hanging beneath their cockpits would not be sensors and cameras. They would take action to stop the caravan, and quickly.
It soon grew apparent that the dewbacks were better off picking their way without guidance from their riders. With another hour to their destination and nothing to occupy her thoughts except
worries over Han and the Imperials, Leia needed something to keep her mind occupied. She slipped her herding spear into its carrying sleeve and tied her reins to a tethering loop on the saddle, then took her grandmother's journal out of her pocket and began to view entries.
It wasn't long before Shmi reported an interesting surprise.
19:17:10
Today I came home to find a Falleen waiting on our steps. She was a very rough-looking lady, Annie, and not only because of those narrow eyes and sharp teeth. She was even taller and more beautiful than most females of her species, but her hair had been singed off, and she had a fresh burn across her nose. And there were holes in her jumpsuit that showed scarred scales and swollen bulges along her spinal ridge.
She had a plasteel box sitting beside her, so I thought she had brought some memory chips for me to clean. I told her she would have to pay in advance-I've been cheated by spacers before, even if they're usually Corellians-but she told me the box was from Coruscant. She apologized for taking so long to get it here and explained that it had been a gift from Qui-Gon Jinn.
Annie, I was so excited I forgot all about the box. Here was someone from Coruscant, who knew Qui-Gon. That meant she had to know you. But she claimed to be only an errand girl from the Jedi hangars and said she didn't know anything about Temple business. I didn't believe her. I told her I wanted to know who was taking care of my son. Finally, she said you were in good hands, and I shouldn't worry.
I don't think she was really an errand girl, though. I didn't see a lightsaber, but she could have been a Jedi-she seemed so certain of things. I so hope she told you about her visit, because then you will know how happy I am that you are following your dreams.
As the entry ended, Shmi's eyes grew glassy with tears, and Leia was surprised to find her own eyes tearing. It seemed wrong to condemn Anakin for following his dreams-yet those dreams had become a nightmare for the rest of the galaxy. If only Shmi had known what his destiny would be... would she have had the strength to deny her son's help to the Jedi, to make Anakin live out the rest of his life in bondage?
It was not a decision Leia felt certain she could have made.
19:19:11
Oh, yes-the box! Inside there was a message from Qui-Gon explaining that while he and his Padawan waited for the Jedi Council to test you, he had asked someone to start a galaxywide HoloNet search to...
The display clouded with static, and Shmi's voice faded to an inaudible scratch. Leia replayed the entry several times, and managed to make out a few more lines:
"Imagine, a Jedi like Qui-Gon taking... when there must have been so many... his attention. The galaxy is going to... fortunate he came into our lives."
Leia gave up trying to make sense of the entry and looked up to find Han slumped over, hanging half out of his saddle. She grabbed the herding spear and urged her mount to catch up, but the beast groaned in irritation and refused to move any faster over the broken ground.
Han's head rose alongside his knee and seemed to peer back at her, though it was difficult to tell in the rippling air, and he remained slumped over for several moments more. Finally his body rose upright, and a crescent of white desert light appeared between his seat and saddle as he stood to check the stirrup he had been adjusting.
Leia let out a groan of her own and returned the spear to its carrying sleeve. She forced herself to gulp some water. It was hotter and more foul tasting than ever.
18:20:12
Watto behaved very strangely today. When he sent me out to buy his nectarot, he gave me five extra truguts to buy some pallie wine for us to share-and he insisted I get it from Naduarr because "I should taste the good stuff." I hardly knew what to make of it!
It turns out he had heard about the Falleen's visit, and that she had come on a ship from Coruscant. All he wanted was to hear how you're doing-well, what he asked was "how many Podraces has the boy won." I told him the Jedi don't allow their students to enter Podraces, but that you're doing well with your training.
I'm sure I wasn't stretching the truth, Annie, and the news seemed to calm Watto. Sometimes, I think he really misses you... though of course he won't admit it. He just grumbles that if he hadn't let "that Jedi" cheat him out of you, he'd be richer than a Hutt by now.
The entry ended, leaving Leia a little perplexed about Shmi's patience with her Toydarian owner. But many relationships were complicated, and she had learned in her work that few beings could be painted without shades of gray.
As Leia continued to view entries, it quickly grew apparent that losing Anakin had indeed affected Watto profoundly. The Toydarian continued to blame others for his "bad luck." But, according to Shmi, he no longer cursed at her, and he trusted her to run the shop while he went to bid on wrecks. He even continued to give her a few truguts every week to buy Naduarr's pallie wine, though he did not always insist on having their drinks together. And while Shmi never acknowledged Watto's right to own her, she seemed to feel for the Toydarian as well, sometimes defending him to customers who insulted him behind his back.
Then, after four years of routine entries, Shmi appeared in the display smiling as she had not smiled since the box had arrived from Qui-Gon.
17:06:13
A settler came into Watto's today, a great brattle of a man. Very gruff and to the point. Shmi lowered her voice and did a fair imitation of a human male. "I need a set of booster coils for a SoroSuub V-Twenty-Four," he said to Watto, "and don't try to rob me. I know your reputation."
She slid into a flawless imitation of Watto's gravelly whine. "Then you know I am only an honest business-being trying to keep his doors open in this miserable dustbin of a city. And the V-Twenty-Four is a classic. Those coils will cost you, if I have any."
I've heard Watto use that line a hundred times, but there was something about this settler that made me want to help him, a sense of desperation maybe... or maybe his proud blue eyes and the way he carried himself. I told Watto we had plenty of booster coils, that I had dusted off a whole stack that morning.
"Good," the settler said. He looked directly at me, and my knees went weak, the way Amee says hers do whenever she sees Roc or Jerm or nearly any boy. "I'll take two of 'em."
Shmi began to laugh. Watto was so angry he knocked a carton of power cells off the counter turning to yell at me.
Leia forced down some stale water and checked to see that Han was still upright in his saddle, then continued to view the journal. The next few entries were short, consisting mostly of Shmi's ritual of telling Anakin how proud she was of him and how much she loved him. There were also a few mentions of the settler, noting with obvious disappointment that Shmi had not seen him again and probably never would-but she was glad to have helped him.
Watto proved surprising philosophical about the sale, telling Shmi he had only lost a few truguts anyway, and that she could make it up to him by cleaning the memory chips of a used navicomputer. A few days later, he even seemed to grow concerned about her happiness, giving her an afternoon off and buying a bolt of cloth so she could make herself a new robe.
About two weeks later, Shmi's mood was noticeably brighter.
23:29:15
The settler came back today! He was looking for fi
fty vaporator condensers. Watto was still so angry about the booster coils that he wouldn't offer a reasonable price, so the settler left.
But when Watto sent me for his nectarot, I found the settler waiting outside. He walked with me to Naduarr's. I was a little nervous, but he has a jolly manner that makes him easy to talk to. He asked if I had been punished for helping him, then apologized when I told him about the extra work I had to do cleaning the navicomputer's memory chip-even though it was really nothing.
Then he asked me why I had helped him. I laughed and started to say I just wanted to get even with Watto for yelling at me, but there is something about this man that wouldn't let me make light. There is something about his eyes that makes you want to speak your heart-
they're blue, Annie, not quite as blue as yours, and so sincere and kind and warm.
Before I knew it, I had admitted the truth: that I had done it because I found him so handsome.
He actually blushed! Then he smiled and held his hand out to me He is a good man, Annie, and it's wonderful to have a new friend His name is Cliegg... Cliegg Lars.
Chapter 17
The droning sound came so faintly that Leia thought the sand had finally fouled the heat vents on the palm diary. Terrified the memory circuits would melt, she thumbed the POWER key and continued to hear the whine, then finally looked up to see Han's wavy figure twisted around in his saddle, his dark goggles studying the sky behind her. Leia turned as well and found Chewbacca and the Squibs and the shimmering blobs of several nearby Askajians also squinting into the sky.
The diary's heat vents were fine. It was a TIE making the noise.
Leia raised her arm, cocking it at a steep angle so she could block both suns, and still found herself staring into a rippling blue-white inferno. She searched until puddles of darkness began to swim across her vision, then closed her eyes against the pain and looked away. Wherever that TIE was, she only hoped the pilot and his instruments would be just as blinded as she was by the blistering heat of the Great Chott.
The droning faded a few moments later, and when it wasn't followed by a sonic boom, Leia knew they had escaped detection.
Had the TIE spotted them, either the sound would have continued, constantly changing directions as the pilot circled to keen them under surveillance, or it would have grown steadily louder and more shrill as he descended for a strafing run.
Once her vision cleared, Leia activated the timing function on her chronometer. Assuming the TIE was flying a search grid knowing the interval between passes would prove critical if they were to have any chance at all of evading detection. She returned the journal to its pocket and took up her herding spear and reins. There was nothing she could do to make the dewback move faster over this treacherous terrain, but she suspected the creature might find the scream and roar of a TIE blaster cannon more convincing.
Han was wobbling more noticeably in his saddle, but remained alert enough to keep drinking. Over the next ten minutes, Leia saw him tip his water bottle up twice and realized he, too, was using his chronometer alarm to remind himself to drink.
The brown wall of the distant mountains continued to hang on the horizon, and the blue sweep of a mirage still hovered at their base like a floating lake. Below the mirage, there lay a new desert apparition, a writhing stripe of darkness that appeared to have no worldly source. This was the first Leia had seen of it. The last time she had looked up to check on Han, the line had not been there. Noticing that it was a little thicker and blacker at one end than the other, she wondered if it might be the Chimaera's shadow, cast from orbit above the Great Chott. It was not ordinarily Imperial procedure to bring a Star Destroyer so close to a planet unless they intended to bombard it-the Empire had lost capital ships to turbo-laser ambushes before-but so far this new admiral had proven anything but ordinary.
The droning sound returned, this time loudly enough that Leia had no doubt about its nature. She checked her chronometer and discovered the last pass had come fourteen minutes ago, then shielded her eyes and turned to look. It took a few moments of searching, but she finally found a blue flicker of ion discharge bouncing along low on the horizon, blinking in and out of sight as it was obscured by curtains of rising air. The caravan had one more pass, if they were lucky, before the TIE was close enough to see them.
Leia glanced around, trying to distinguish Borno from all the other wavering blobs ahead. He had warned her that if it came to a fight, he would have no choice except to surrender them to the Imperials, and Leia failed to see how they could escape being caught in the open. And leaving the caravan had its advantages. Without the dewbacks, she and her companions could burrow under the boulders and hide from even a close-range sensor sweep. Besides, if the Askajians continued without them, perhaps the Imperials could be persuaded there had been nothing unusual in the caravan's sudden change of direction.
But Borno, wherever he was, did not seem interested in leaving them behind. Perhaps he saw the same weakness in Leia's plan that she did: without the Askajians, she and her companions would survive no more than a day in this desert. He probably thought they had a better chance of survival in Imperial hands. The scattered caravan continued at its same rolling pace, the TIE droning across the sky behind it, Han swaying in his saddle as he stared back toward the horizon.
Leia tried to urge her dewback close enough to see how he was holding up. Her mount broke into a trot for all of two paces, then nearly dumped her when one of the cargo beasts it was leading misplaced a foot and stumbled. After that, the creatures refused to move any faster, no matter how often she struck them with the herding spear.
The distant whine of the TIE faded to silence, and Leia reset the timer on her chronometer. Fourteen minutes if they were lucky It wasn't much time. Unless she and the other non-Askajians left the caravan now, they would have no time to dig in and hide. But how could she explain her plan to the others without risking the use of a comlink? The caravan continued to amble onward at the same slow pace for another two minutes, then she heard-almost felt-a low thrumming similar to the sound that had recalled the stampeding dewbacks earlier.
Han's dewback, and the ones carrying Chewbacca and the Squibs, broke into a clumsy gallop and rushed forward, staggering and stumbling. Leia's mount started after the others, but stopped when it discovered it was still tethered to the pack beasts. It began to groan angrily and toss its head. The Askajians began to free their cargo animals, and more dewbacks lurched after Han and the others. Puzzled-and hoping Borno had some plan other than headlong flight-Leia twisted around to release the pack beasts tethered to her own saddle. She had barely undone the second knot before all three creatures broke into a clumsy trot.
The herding spear caught behind a rock and flew out of her grasp, and Leia spent the next few moments bent over backward, struggling to keep her feet in the stirrups and grabbing for a tethering loop. The heat made a difficult task nearly impossible, and by the time she finally caught the knot, her goggles were so steamy she couldn't see.
Leia barely had the strength to drag herself upright, and when she did, her head was spinning with heat fatigue. She lifted her goggles and allowed the steam to dissipate into Tatooine's arid air,
then lowered them and saw that the shadowy line ahead had widened into an immense wedge of darkness. She turned and looked over her shoulder, convinced she would find the Chimaera eclipsing the suns.
Nothing above her but two blazing orbs.
Leia looked forward again to find the caravan converging ahead, the pack beasts outpacing the mounts. The Askajians weren't far behind, with Chewbacca close on their tails. But Han and the Squibs were rapidly losing ground, the Squibs remaining on their mount only through acrobatic grace. Han was slumped forward with both arms wrapped around his dewback's neck. Leia kicked her heels into her mount's flanks and slapped the side of its neck, trying to urge it toward Han. The creature didn't even seem to feel the blows.
Then the other dewbacks started to disappear.
> At first, Leia thought they were just pulling far enough ahead to vanish behind a shimmering curtain of heat. But as she continued forward, she noticed that they were becoming larger and less wavy when she lost sight of them. The shadow beneath the mirage was rapidly growing wider and steadier, and the dewbacks all seemed to be disappearing about the same distance from it.
Not disappearing, but descending. The dewbacks' legs would vanish first, then their bodies, and finally their heads and-as the first Askajians reached the brink-their riders. Then the shadow slid out from beneath the mirage and resolved itself into a broad deep canyon. Chewbacca reached the rim and followed the Askajians out of sight.
Star Wars - Tatooine Ghost Page 24