Jedi Search

by Kevin J. Anderson

  burn them up in the energy shield."

  Lando set course for the lumpy world of Kessel as he voiced his complaints.

  "We can't detect that energy shield either. How do you know we won't get

  disintegrated ourselves?"

  "We've got better reactions than they do."

  Lando didn't seem convinced. "I've already almost flown into an energy

  shield once during our attack on the Death Star. I'm not anxious to repeat

  the process."

  "Trust me," Luke said.

  Kessel swelled in front of them, pockmarked and wreathed in a cottony halo

  of escaping air. "We're getting close."

  Luke held the back of the pilot chair, his eyes half-closed. He breathed

  regularly, reaching out, sensing the pulsing power generated as a protective

  blanket by the garrison moon.

  "Don't fall asleep on me, Luke!"

  "Keep flying."

  The Headhunters swooped after, flanked by the remaining pair of Y-wings.

  "The aft deflector shield is starting to feel the pounding," Lando said. "If

  these guys get any closer, they're going to fly up my exhaust ports!"

  "Get ready," Luke said.

  Kessel filled their entire viewport now, boiling with its turbulent thin-air

  storms, tiny plumes from the numerous atmosphere factories tracing lines

  above the landscape.

  "I'm ready, I'm ready! Just say the word and I--''

  'Pull up, now!"

  Lando's tension helped him react like a spring-loaded catapult. He hauled up

  on the controls, ripping the Falcon straight up in a tight cartwheel. Taken

  by surprise, all four of the attacking ships splattered into clouds of

  ignited fuel and ionized metal as they slammed into the invisible energy

  shield.

  "Missed it by a couple of meters at least," Luke said. "Relax, Lando."

  Artoo bleeped, and Luke answered him after looking at the expression on

  Lando's face. "No, Artoo, I don't think he's interested in an exact

  measurement."

  They soared just above the atmosphere on a tight orbit that took them around

  Kessel's poles. The curtain of stars rolled out from the edge of the planet

  as the landscape sped beneath them; then they looped back into space in a

  mad dash to escape.

  They ran straight into the wave of fighters belching out of the garrison

  moon.

  Yelling in surprise, Lando launched a pair of Arakyd concussion missiles

  from the front tubes. The density of approaching ships was so great that

  even the wild shots scored twice, taking out a TIE fighter and a blast boat,

  while the hot debris cloud destroyed a heavily armed B-wing.

  "Let's not get cocky because we took care of a couple of ships. I've got

  only six more missiles."

  "We will not surrender now," Luke said.

  "No, I just mean we're running, not fighting. At least the engines are in

  tip-top condition," Lando said. "The Falcon hasn't been this pampered since

  I owned her."

  "How fast can we get out of here?" Luke asked.

  Jacked next to the copilot's chair, Artoo chittered and bleeped. Luke

  glanced down and saw rows of flickering red lights on the navigation panel.

  "Uh oh."

  "What is he saying?" Lando said. He flicked his gaze from the ships swarming

  by the front viewport to the little astromech droid. "What's wrong with

  him?"

  "The navicomp's not working," Luke said.

  "Well, fix it!"

  Luke had already dashed around the bend in the corridor to pry off the

  access panel to the Falcon's navicomputer. He glanced at the boards, feeling

  his heart sink into a black hole as deep as the Maw. "They've pulled the

  coordinate module. It's not here."

  Lando groaned. "Now what are we going to do?"

  In response to Lando's concussion missiles, the Kessel fighters formed into

  tighter battle groups, striking at the Falcon with a firestorm of blaster

  bolts. Luke had to shield his eyes from the blinding flashes of near misses

  and deflected hits.

  "I don't know, but we'd better do it as fast as we can."

  "They're from the New Republic!" Moruth Doole fumed in his rage, stomping up

  and down. "They'll go back and report everything!" He straightened his

  mussed yellow cravat to regain his composure, but it didn't work. He wanted

  to squash the escapees like a pair of bugs to eat. Spies and traitors! They

  had led him along, lied to him, taunted him.

  "Send out every ship we have!" he screamed into the open channel that

  broadcast to his forces. He had managed to make it to the command center on

  the garrison moon. "Surround them, crush them, smash into them. I don't care

  what it takes!"

  "Sending out every ship might not be a good strategy," responded one of the

  captains. "The pilots don't know the formations, and they'll just get in

  each other's way."

  Doole's mechanical eye lay in pieces scattered about the top of the console,

  and he could not see well enough to put it back together. With the blurry

  focus of his one half-blind eye, Doole could not identify the dissenting

  mercenary.

  "I don't care! I don't want to lose these like we lost Han Solo!" He pounded

  his soft fist on the console, jarring the pieces of his mechanical eye. The

  primary lens bounced, then slid off the edge to shatter on the floor.

  The Falcon ran straight toward the Maw, leaving Kessel behind.

  "We'll be all right," Luke said. "I can use the Force to guide us through on

  a safe path."

  "If there is a safe path," Lando muttered.

  Sweat stood out on Luke's forehead. "What other choice do we have? We can't

  hide anyplace else, we can't outrun all those fighters, and we can't go into

  hyperspace without a navicomp."

  "What a great selection of options," Lando said.

  Finally mobilized, the capital ships came after them, firing ion cannon

  blasts powerful enough to clear a path through an asteroid field. The two

  big Lancer frigates made a deadly web in front of the Falcon with their

  twenty quad-firing laser cannons; but the Lancers were sluggish, and the

  Falcon increased its lead.

  Somehow the other capital ships anticipated their run to the black hole

  cluster and converged ahead of them as Lando pushed the Falcon's engines.

  "Come on, come on! Just squeeze a little more speed out."

  Ten system patrol craft, originally designed for maximum speed to combat

  smugglers and pirates, surged past the Falcon and lined up in a blockade.

  But in the three-dimensional vastness of space, Lando managed to slip under

  their grasp. Laser blasts erupted all around them.

  "Our shields are edging the redlines," Lando said.

  Three Carrack-class light cruisers--midway in size between the Lancer

  frigates and the larger Dreadnaughts such as the ones in Bel Iblis's lost

  Dark Force--formed a triple-pronged pincer, right, left, and top.

  In hot pursuit behind the Falcon came the jagged ovoid of a Loronar strike

  cruiser, the largest ship in the Kessel fleet. As the chase plowed through

  the net of system patrol craft, the strike cruiser harmlessly took stray

  fire meant for the Falcon.

  Lando stared out the viewport windows at the horrifying spectacle of the Maw

  and the g
iant battleships moving to meet them. Artoo bleeped something that

  even Luke could not translate.

  "Only a complete idiot would go into a place like that," Lando said. He

  squeezed his eyes shut.

  "Then let's just hope they're not idiots, too," Luke said.

  Admiral Daala stood in the bridge tower of the Star Destroyer Gorgon,

  looking out at her fleet and feeling the energy build inside her. The time

  was at hand! The Empire might have fallen, but with it went all the people

  who had squashed her. Now she could show her worth. Daala could fight her

  own battle.

  She gazed at the misty colors of the Maw and the clump of strung-together

  rocks that had spawned the weapons for her assault. In formation the Hydra,

  the Basilisk, and the Manticore powered up, waiting to spring out upon the

  galaxy with swift and deadly precision. The New Republic would fall to its

  knees.

  She had no interest in ruling the former Empire herself--Daala never had any

  such aspirations. Her main intent right now was just to cause them pain. She

  licked her lips, and her hair hung heavy down her back, serpentine like the

  demon for whom her flagship had been named. Grand Moff Tarkin would have

  been proud.

  Commander Kratas, the man who ran the subsystems of the Gorgon, spoke to her

  from a communication terminal. "Admiral Daala, I have a priority message

  from the detention level!"

  "Detention level? What is it?"

  "The prisoners Han Solo and Kyp Durron have escaped! One guard was found

  stunned in Solo's detention chamber, and another is dead in Durron's cell.

  Both were stripped of their armor. We are attempting to question the

  survivor now."

  Daala felt a jolt of anger disrupt the eagerness singing through her veins.

  She drew herself up taller, raising her eyebrows and focusing intently on

  Kratas. "Track the service numbers of the stolen uniforms. Maybe they've

  logged in somewhere." Her orders came like staccato laser blasts.

  Kratas consulted his terminal, spoke into the comlink. Daala clasped her

  hands behind her back and paced, barking orders to the bridge personnel.

  "Put together a search party immediately. We'll comb every deck of the

  Gorgon. They can't have gotten off the ship. There's no place else they

  could have gone."

  "Admiral!" Commander Kratas said. "The surviving guard claims that one of

  the scientists from the Installation came to see Solo. Qwi Xux. The guard

  insists that Dr. Xux had an authorization directly from you."

  Daala's jaw dropped; then she clamped her lips together in a bloodless, iron

  line. "Check on the Wookiee! See what's happened to him."

  Kratas queried the database. "The keeper says that the new Wookiee prisoner

  has been requisitioned and taken to a higher-priority assignment." He

  swallowed. "Qwi Xux was the one who requisitioned him. She used your

  authorization code again."

  Daala's nostrils flared, but then another thought struck her like a crashing

  asteroid. "Oh no!" she said. "They're after the Sun Crusher!"

  Alone in the guarded hangar holding the Sun Crusher, Han clambered into the

  hatch. "Can't remember the last time I had to use a ladder to get inside a

  ship! Pretty primitive for such a sophisticated weapon."

  "It works." Qwi hauled herself up the rungs behind him. "The sophistication

  is inside. All the rest is just window dressing."

  Han sat down in the pilot's chair in the cockpit and looked at the controls.

  "Everything seems to be labeled the way it should be, though the placement

  is a little odd. What's this for? Wait a minute, I'll figure it out."

  Kyp reached the top of the ladder, paused, then pulled off his stormtrooper

  helmet. "Those mask filters stink!" he said, then with obvious pleasure

  tossed the skull-like helmet to the floor of the chamber. It clattered and

  bounced like a severed head. Kyp's dark hair was curled with sweat and

  mussed from the confining helmet, but his face shone with a grin.

  Chewbacca swung into the compartment, ducking his head and squeezing through

  the narrow hatch. He looked at the skylights in the chamber's ceiling, then

  growled at the shape of a Star Destroyer orbiting overhead.

  Han dropped his own helmet to the floor of the cockpit. Kyp kicked it under

  the seat and out of the way. Han touched the Sun Crusher's navicomp,

  switching it on. "This thing is in better shape than the Imperial shuttle we

  stole. Are all the coordinates burned into the database, Doc?"

  Qwi nodded, sitting down primly and strapping herself into her seat. "The

  Sun Crusher has been ready to go for years. We've just been waiting for

  orders from the Empire. Good thing nobody came back, right?"

  Han pursed his lips, scanning the controls. "Everything here looks pretty

  standard," he said. "I won't have much time for practice."

  Chewbacca gave an ear-splitting Wookiee bellow of challenge. Below, Han

  heard the heavy armored door grind open and then clattering footsteps as a

  squad of stormtroopers charged into the chamber.

  Standing at the door, Kyp stuck his head out of the narrow hatch. "Here they

  come!"

  "Seal that hatch, kid," Han shouted. "We're in here for the duration now!

  Chewie, have you found the weapons controls yet?"

  In the copilot's chair, Chewbacca ran his huge hands over the buttons and

  dials. Finally finding what he wanted, he let out a yowl. Defensive laser

  cannons mounted at different targeting angles swiveled as he tested the

  aiming mechanisms.

  Small thuds banged against the Sun Crusher's hull as the stormtroopers fired

  their blaster rifles, causing no damage. Han looked at Qwi. "We don't even

  have the shields on!"

  "This armor will hold against anything they can throw against us," she said

  with a smug smile. "It was designed to."

  Han grinned and cracked his knuckles. "Well, in that case let's take an

  extra few seconds and do this right!" He worked the controls, activating the

  repulsorlift engines. The interior of the Sun Crusher wobbled as the entire

  craft rose into the air, floating on its repulsor cushion. Outside they

  could hear the faint screeching of an alarm.

  "Chewie, point those laser cannons straight up. Let's give ourselves a

  twenty-one-gun salute--right through the roof!"

  The Wookiee roared to himself; then, without waiting for Han to give the

  order, he fired all of the Sun Crusher's weaponry at once. Kyp scrambled for

  his seat, strapping himself in. Qwi stared at the roof of the cockpit with

  wide eyes.

  The ceiling of the hangar chamber blasted outward under the barrage of laser

  energy. Some of the larger chunks of rubble fell downward, clanging against

  the Sun Crusher's hull, but most of the skylights burst into space with the

  outrushing of contained air that spewed into the Maw.

  Stormtroopers, flailing their arms and legs, were sucked out through the

  breach, flotsam among the rock and transparisteel debris in low orbit around

  the clustered rocks. Their armor might protect them against massive

  decompression for a few minutes, but every one of them was doomed.

  Han raised the Sun Crusher up, accelerating through
the escape hole they had

  blown through the top of the chamber. They shot into open space, and Han

  felt an exhilaration he had not felt since they had first arrived at Kessel.

  "Here goes nothing!" he said. "Now for the fun part."

  Staring down at the Installation from the Gorgon's bridge, Admiral Daala

  felt her stomach knot. For years her entire duty had been to protect that

  small clump of planetoids, to pamper the scientists. Grand Moff Tarkin had

  said these people held the future security of the Empire, and she had

  believed him.

  Daala had been stepped on, abused, taken advantage of at the Caridan

  military academy. Tarkin had rescued her from that. He had given her the

  responsibility and the power she had earned through her own abilities. She

  owed Tarkin everything.

  She would avenge him by destroying the New Republic as she caused their star

  systems to go supernova one by one. They could hide nowhere. At the same

  time, she would make her mark on the history of the galaxy, a warlord who

  had succeeded where an entire Empire had failed. The thought made Daala's

  pale lips curl upward in a grim smile.

  As she watched, Daala saw the puff of an explosion on one of the rocks of

  Maw Installation. Then the tiny form of the Sun Crusher streaked by, a