by James Luceno
“Leia—Leia, Luke is—” Han choked, and had to cough his voice clear. “Luke is—”
“Nonsense.”
“You—you said he was in trouble—”
“And he still is.” Even through the static on the comm, he could hear that her conviction was absolute. “Han, do you copy? He’s still in trouble.”
Han found himself grinning. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
One last rounding of a tunnel’s curve, deep within the volcanic dome, brought to sight an archway that glowed with a pulsing red-tinged light. The stormtroopers prodded Luke onward, out onto a tiny arc of ledge high above a vast lake of molten lava.
Behind him in the mouth of the tunnel, the Moon Hat sank to her knees.
Lord Shadowspawn’s throne room had been cut from the living rock: an immense vault whose ceiling and walls vanished into a shroud of sulfurous gases. The vault’s only light came from a river of white-hot lava that fell from the mists above into the lake of fire below, its killing heat restrained by force screens. From the ledge, a long, narrow rock bridge led to a platform of black granite cantilevered out above the lake. The uppermost point of the platform had been carved and polished into a gleaming black throne the size of an Imperial shuttle, positioned so that the long form of Lord Shadowspawn, lounging within it, was shadowed by the lava-fall behind and the pool below into a pall of scarlet gloom.
Luke stopped. This place could have been lifted intact from the climax of Han Solo and the Pirates of Kessel: it was so holothriller theatrical that it was almost funny … but Luke didn’t feel like laughing. In the Force, this place read like a bomb wrapped as a birthday present.
Like a Sith Lord disguised as a kid’s party clown.
Was he supposed to be impressed? Or was he supposed to dismiss all this as some kind of demented practical joke? He shot a disbelieving glance over his shoulder at his stormtrooper escort.
They stood in a shallow arc, carbines leveled at him; the Moon Hat, still on her knees, had inclined her head, his lightsaber balanced on her outstretched palms like an offering.
Luke got it: this wasn’t about him at all. This show was for them.
Looked like it was working, too.
What exactly was Blackhole up to? And was this really Blackhole at all? On Vorzyd V, Blackhole had appeared only as a holoprojection—but the figure of Lord Shadowspawn on the Shadow Throne was no projection. Luke could feel, in the Force, a dark malice of wholly human origin—glittering malevolence and nastily sniggering glee—and it came from the man before him.
The Force smoked with threat. Luke felt some danger here darker than mere death.
“Luke Skywalker.” Lord Shadowspawn’s voice boomed through the cavern, probably using concealed speakers. “Tremble before me!”
“I think you have me confused with some other Luke Skywalker.”
“Kneel, Skywalker! Pledge yourself to me, and I will spare your life, and the lives of your crew.”
Luke said nothing. The shape of Lord Shadowspawn shifted and lengthened, rising from the throne. That odd headgear of his seemed to glow with a light that cast no illumination on his expressionless face. His robes shimmered crimson as though drenched in blood, and he wore around his waist a broad belt from which hung a scabbarded sword. “Bring him to me!”
“Don’t bother,” Luke said. “I can manage on my own.”
He walked out onto the long, narrow bridge of rock, using his slow progress to breathe himself deeply into Force awareness. He could feel the trap now.
As he neared the end of the bridge, Shadowspawn raised a fist as though to hurl thunderbolts. “You are beaten, Skywalker!”
“Don’t bet your life on it.”
Shadowspawn’s fist hung in the air as if he’d forgotten he’d raised it. “I have done what the vain, arrogant Emperor and his pathetic hound Vader never could! I have defeated Luke Skywalker!”
“Not yet,” Luke said. “Or if it makes you feel better, I can say ‘Do not underestimate my power.’ ”
“I hold your fleet in the palm of my hand—my gravity weapons will destroy this entire system. Not one ship will escape!”
“That’s a problem,” Luke admitted. “But that means none of your ships will escape, either. Which is why I came to see you. Don’t you think that together we might find some, well, less-lethal solution?”
“You came here,” Shadowspawn intoned, “to kill me.”
Luke spread his hands. “I told your troopers outside that I’m hoping to end the day with nobody else dying.”
“In this—” Shadowspawn finally lowered his fist and rested it on the hilt of his scabbarded sword. “—you are doomed to disappointment.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
“Your Jedi tricks mean nothing to me!”
“No—no, I mean it.” Luke frowned. “You really don’t want to do that. I can feel that you don’t.”
He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Blackhole—that is you, isn’t it? What’s going on? Why the playacting?” He glanced around—in the Force, he could feel eyes upon him, many eyes, more than the company of stormtroopers on the ledge behind him. “Are you recording this?”
“Fool!” Shadowspawn thundered as he drew forth his sword. “Kneel, or die!”
The blade was huge, a hand wide and half again longer than Luke’s lightsaber, and it appeared to have been cut from faceted crystal, like a single vast diamond. As Shadowspawn pulled it free from the scabbard, it kindled with a scarlet glare, as though it had gathered to itself the light of the lava pool below. It was, Luke mused, the same color as Vader’s. Was that why this all felt, well, staged?
But staged or not, there was a limit to how far Luke was willing to play along.
“Listen to me, Blackhole or Shadowspawn or whoever you are,” he said quietly. “I’m a Jedi, but I never had time for all the training some of the old Jedi were supposed to get. I’ve heard they tried to end conflicts without violence … but that’s something I’m still learning. Do you understand? If you attack me, I will hurt you. If hurting you isn’t enough, I will kill you.”
“You think you can defeat me? Fool! This blade is the product of untold millennia of Sith alchemy! Against such power, your Jedi toy is but a broken reed!”
“Sith alchemy?” Luke squinted at him. “Are you kidding?”
“Come, Skywalker! Summon your blade and fight! Destroy me, and my men will instead serve you!”
Luke blinked. “What?”
“Legions of Shadow! Hear the word of your Lord!” Shadowspawn lifted his blade above his head, and the cavern shivered with the power of his voice. “If this Jedi pup can defeat the Lord of the Shadow Throne, you will be his! Obey his every word as you would my own! Thus is the command of Shadowspawn!”
“Really?” Luke frowned. “So if I beat you …”
“My legions are bred to absolute obedience. They will obey my command until their deaths, or my own … when they will serve the command of Luke Skywalker, instead.”
And from the Force, Luke got the distinct feeling that Shadowspawn was actually, inexplicably, telling the truth.
Luke extended his right hand. From far back in the cavern, on the ledge at the tunnel’s mouth, green fire crackled and spat from his lightsaber as it wrenched itself from the Moon Hat’s grip and rose into the air. It whirled and spun and soared through the gloom until it smacked precisely into the palm of his outstretched hand. He shifted his weight and settled his shoulders.
“All right, then,” he sighed. “Take your best shot.”
CHAPTER 8
Han made a face and tried to swallow the taste of the wind, bitter and stinging even through his filter mask. “Wasn’t Mindar supposed to be some kind of resort planet, or something?” He kicked loose cinder away from the foot of the Falcon’s cargo ramp and surveyed the blasted landscape of rock and sand that was the last known position of the Justice. “This place would depress a Tusken.”
From topside, Chewie re
gistered a gruff Earough.
“Oh, sure, Mindor, whatever,” Han said. “Who cares, anyway? If I want to call it Mindar, who’s gonna argue? You? How about you, Princess?”
Leia didn’t answer. She was moving slowly, as if she was feeling her way, as she followed a zigzag path up the slope of half-fused lava around the crater, which still emitted a better-than-fair amount of hard radiation.
Han sighed as he walked to the forward access ladder and clambered up onto the Falcon’s dorsal hull to join Chewbacca; he’d had to go forward to avoid the backjets of the Falcon’s sublight engines, which he’d decided to leave hot in case they needed to make a sudden exit. Up on the portside forward mandible, Chewbacca was grumbling mournfully as he sprayed the ship’s innumerable meteor punctures with patchplast. “How long till we’re space-ready?”
“Garhowerarr haroo!”
“Is it my fault they decided to have their battle in the middle of an asteroid field?”
“Meroowargh harrwharrrhf.”
“You do not do all the shipwork! Haven’t I been sweeping out the holds ever since we landed? A lot of that dust is radioactive, too.” Before Chewie could reply, Han turned and waved at Leia. “Getting anything?” he called.
“He was here!” she replied, her voice muffled by her own filter mask. “I mean, I think he was here. I’m pretty sure—well, mostly sure …”
“Got any, y’know, feelings about which way he went?” Han didn’t really care what the answer was, so long as it was in the general direction of food. And drink.
He’d been planning to restock the Falcon’s galley back at the asteroid base, but that had been one more thing forgotten during their hasty exit. And back during the negotiations, Leia had sternly informed him that it would be a serious breach of Mandalorian diplomatic etiquette to break his fast while the central issues were still unresolved, which meant that it had been more than a day since Han had had anything more substantial to eat than the remnants he’d been able to scavenge from the Falcon’s deep freeze, namely some reconstituted pukkha broth and stewed stickli root. Not his favorites, to say the least, which was why they’d still been in the freezer after roughly five years.
And he’d forced those down before Rogue Squadron had joined the Falcon and they’d all set out on what turned out to be basically a running battle as they cut their way through the maze of grav projectors and swarms of TIE interceptors to get here. They came in by microjumping on a jagged course toward the planet; each time a gravity station yanked them out of hyperspace, there’d be another battle in yet another asteroid cluster, which gave them an advantage over their usually surprised enemies, because the X-wings all carried standard repulsorlifts and thus could not only maneuver undetectably through the rock fields, but could also use the Solo Slide.
When Han had outlined the plan, Wedge had said, “You want us to take on interceptors using nothing but repulsorlifts?”
“Sure,” Han had replied. “How much training you think those eyeball-jockeys get in repulsorlift combat?”
“Couldn’t guess,” Wedge had said. “But I sure know how much training we don’t have …”
“Then I guess we better hope their learning curve’s steeper than yours is, huh?”
And it had been—so much so, in fact, that even Han Solo had once or twice found himself shaking his head and giving a low whistle. Those Rogue pilots were good. Maybe as good as he was. Almost. Not that he’d ever say so out loud.
The battle—really, succession of battles—had seemed to go on for a year or two. And they’d still be up there, too, if Chewie hadn’t had a sudden brainstorm and realized that if Han could bring the Falcon close enough at the proper vector, they could take out a grav projector just by lobbing a couple of thermal detonators out the trash ejector: the projector’s own gravity well would suck the dets straight in for a direct hit.
On the downside, the Lancer’s navicomputer now estimated that the stellar flares would begin in less than twelve hours. The upside, Han figured, was that the radiation would kill him before he actually starved to death.
“Leia?” he called again. “Anything?”
“I—I’m not sure,” she called back. “Maybe—no—I think …”
“Well, you better make up your mind, sister! If the Imps decide to fly atmo patrols, this might get a little hot. Hotter.”
Han was trusting mainly in the thick dust that swirled on the winds to keep the Falcon concealed from orbital scans; Rogue Squadron was off somewhere, trying to clear a route out through the maze of gravity wells that still sealed the system. He wished them all the luck in the galaxy—he was planning to need that hypothetical route as soon as they found Luke—but he also wished they were hanging around to fly cover for his uncomfortably exposed butt.
“I think—” Leia straightened, staring past the Falcon. “I think we should probably go that way.”
“Why that way?”
“So all those people with blasters coming out of the rocks over there,” she said, raising her hands, “don’t decide to shoot us.”
Han turned, very slowly, keeping his hand well clear of his blaster. The crater’s rim had suddenly sprouted a couple of dozen people wearing patchwork armor that looked like it might have been cobbled together from the local lava. Nearly all these Lava Gear types had shoulder arms of some variety, from Imperial DC-17s to one guy who actually had an antique Dubloviann flame rifle, and they were pointing these weapons in Han’s general direction as they came forward.
Chewie grumbled and started to rise, but Han said softly, barely moving his lips, “Stay low. When the shooting starts, roll off the hull. Once you’re inside, open up with the belly gun.”
“Garooargh.”
“Forget it. I can take cover behind the sensor-dish mount. You won’t fit.”
“Hermmmingarouf roog nerhowargh.”
Han squinted at them as they picked their way toward the ship. Chewie was right: they were military. Some kind of military—deserters, mercenaries, something. They came on in skirmish lines, covering each other. “We’ve handled pros before,” he muttered. “Get ready to move.”
He walked forward to the sensor dish and rested his right hand on its rim, angling his body to make himself look like he was leaning on it even though in fact he was perfectly balanced and that hand could go from the dish’s rim to the butt of his DL-44 faster than any of them could blink.
“Got anything to eat?” he asked the Lava Gears.
A red-haired woman stepped to the front of the bunch. She was the only Lava Gear type not holding a weapon, though Han’s practiced eye instantly noted that the grip of the KYD in her tie-down thigh holster had a worn-shiny look that signified a whole lot of regular use. “Who are you, and what’s your business here?” she demanded.
“Oh, sorry—are these your rocks? We’re just borrowing them to rest my ship on. I promise they’ll still be here when we go.”
“Hey, that was funny. Do a lot of people tell you you’re funny?”
“Only ones with a sense of humor.” He also noted that she carried her weight forward, evenly balanced over the balls of her feet, and that while her left hand was thumb-hooked to her belt buckle, her right hand dangled bonelessly alongside that well-used blaster: a gunfighter’s stance. Also, against his will, he found himself thinking that she was dangerously good-looking. No redheads, he reminded himself. He’d had enough of that kind of trouble to last him two or three lifetimes. Besides, my dance card’s full. For the rest of my life, if I’m lucky.
“Let’s try a riddle,” he said in a friendly way. “What does the captain of a ship armed with a pair of quad laser turrets say to people stupid enough to point blasters at him?”
“Let me guess,” the woman said. “How about: ‘Please don’t shoot my girlfriend’?”
Han looked over his shoulder. Five more of them stood in an arc back there, covering Leia. He said, “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot.”
“Oh?” Her smile didn’t look am
used. “Is that the answer to your riddle?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is. Look, I don’t know what you want with us—I don’t even know whose side you’re on.”
“We’re on our own side.”
“So you’re what, local?”
“Local enough.”
“I take it you’re not fans of the Empire, huh?” It was a fair guess, given the state of their gear and their hodgepodge of mismatched weapons.
“Not so much.”
“Well, us either. Neither. Whatever. We’re just looking for a friend.”
“Huh. Us, too. How’s that for a coincidence?” The woman’s head canted just a bit. “This friend you’re looking for wouldn’t happen to be a Jedi, would he?”
Han blinked. “What do you know about Jedi?”
Her eyes went wide. “Cover!” she shouted, as she and the others scattered and dove to the ground—which promptly erupted in flame and molten rock under a barrage of laserfire from above and behind him.
Han looked up. Down from the clouds swooped dozens of TIEs looping in for strafing runs.
“Oh, come on!” he said. “Before I even get dinner?”
Shadowspawn brought that scarlet-shining crystal sword whistling down at Luke’s head with all the subtlety and grace of a spice miner swinging a sonic hammer. Luke met the strike easily, almost without effort. A blinding flare of green and scarlet energy flashed when the blades met, and the air stank of ozone.
And about a decimeter of the end of Shadowspawn’s crystal blade, still shimmering with that bloodshine glow, clattered faintly as it fell to the stone at Luke’s feet. “Sith alchemy, huh?”
Shadowspawn snarled and chopped at him. Luke took half a step to one side, and the blade missed him by a hair and drove into the stone beside his boot. Shadowspawn yanked it free and hacked again, and again Luke shifted his weight just enough to avoid the strike. The warlord came at him, crystal blade trailing fire as he whirled it into another thundering overhead chop.
Luke circled, still not striking back; he couldn’t figure out what to make of Shadowspawn’s style. The warlord fought like someone who’d heard of swordplay but had never actually seen it done. Luke would have found Shadowspawn’s clumsiness kind of funny, had he not been able to feel the gathering threat in the Force. The danger still grew; its shadow darkened his future.