by James Luceno
“The Lord Vader served the Emperor,” Khabarakh insisted. “The Emperor would not have lied to him.”
Leia gritted her teeth. Stalemate. “Is your new lord equally honest with you?”
Khabarakh hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do—you said yourself he didn’t tell you who it was you’d been sent to capture.”
A strange sort of low moan rumbled in Khabarakh’s throat. “I am only a soldier, my lady. These matters are far beyond my authority and ability. My duty is to obey my orders. All of my orders.”
Leia frowned. Something about the way he’d said that … and abruptly, she knew what it was. For a captured commando facing interrogation, there could be only one order left to follow. “Yet you now know something none of your people are aware of,” she said quickly. “You must live, to bring this information to them.”
Khabarakh had brought his palms to face each other, as if preparing to clap them together. Now he froze, staring at her. “The Lord Vader could read the souls of the Noghri,” he said softly. “You are indeed his Mal’ary’ush.”
“Your people need you, Khabarakh,” she told him. “As do I. Your death now would only hurt those you seek to help.”
Slowly, he lowered his hands. “How is it you need me?”
“Because I need your help if I’m to do anything for your people,” she said. “You must tell me the location of your world.”
“I cannot,” he said firmly. “To do so could bring ultimate destruction upon my world. And upon me, if it were learned I had given you such information.”
Leia pursed her lips. “Then take me there.”
“I cannot!”
“Why not?”
“I … cannot.”
She fixed him with her best regal stare. “I am the daughter—the Mal’ary’ush—of the Lord Darth Vader,” she said firmly. “By your own admission, he was the hope of your world. Have matters improved since he delivered you to your new leader?”
He hesitated. “No. He has told us there is little more that he or anyone else can do.”
“I would prefer to judge that for myself,” she told him loftily. “Or would your people consider a single human to be such a threat?”
Khabarakh twitched. “You would come alone? To a people seeking your capture?”
Leia swallowed hard, a shiver running down her back. No, she hadn’t meant to imply that. But then, she hadn’t been sure of why she’d wanted to talk to Khabarakh in the first place. She could only hope that the Force was guiding her intuition in all this. “I trust your people to be honorable,” she said quietly. “I trust them to grant me a hearing.”
She turned and stepped to the door. “Consider my offer,” she told him. “Discuss it with those whose counsel you value. Then, if you choose, meet me in orbit above the world of Endor in one month’s time.”
“You will come alone?” Khabarakh asked, apparently still not believing it.
She turned and looked him straight in that nightmare face. “I will come alone. Will you?”
He faced her stare without flinching. “If I come,” he said, “I will come alone.”
She held his gaze a moment longer, then nodded. “I hope to see you there. Farewell.”
“Farewell … Lady Vader.”
He was still staring at her as the door opened and she left.
The tiny ship shot upward through the clouds, vanishing quickly from the Rwookrrorro air-control visual monitor. Beside Leia, Chewbacca growled angrily. “I can’t say I’m really happy with it, either,” she confessed. “But we can’t dodge them forever. If we have even a chance of getting them out from under Imperial control …” She shook her head.
Chewbacca growled again. “I know,” she said softly, some of his pain finding its way into her own heart. “I wasn’t as close to Salporin as you were, but he was still my friend.”
The Wookiee turned away from the monitors and stomped across the room. Leia watched him, wishing there was something she could do to help. But there wasn’t. Caught between conflicting demands of honor, he would have to work this out in the privacy of his own mind.
Behind her, someone stirred. [It is time,] Ralrra said. [The memorial period has begun. We must join the otherrs.]
Chewbacca growled an acknowledgment and went over to join him. Leia looked at Ralrra—[This period is forr Wookiees only,] he rumbled. [Laterr, you will be permitted to join us.]
“I understand,” Leia said. “If you need me, I’ll be on the landing platform, getting the Lady Luck ready to fly.”
[If you truly feel it is safe to leave,] Ralrra said, still sounding doubtful.
“It is,” Leia told him. And even if it wasn’t, she added silently to herself, she would still have no choice. She had a species name now—Noghri—and it was vital that she return to Coruscant and get another records search underway.
[Very well. The mourning period will begin in two hourrs.]
Leia nodded, blinking back tears. “I’ll be there,” she promised.
And wondered if this war would ever truly be over.4
C H A P T E R 26
The mass of vines hung twisted around and between half a dozen trees, looking like the web of a giant spider gone berserk. Fingering Skywalker’s lightsaber, Mara studied the tangle, trying to figure out the fastest way to clear the path.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Skywalker fidgeting. “Just keep your shirt on,” she told him. “This’ll only take a minute.”
“You really don’t have to go for finesse, you know,” he offered. “It’s not like the lightsaber’s running low on power.”
“Yes, but we’re running low on forest,” she retorted. “You have any idea how far the hum of a lightsaber can carry in woods like this?”
“Not really.”
“Me, neither. I’d like to keep it that way.” She shifted her blaster to her left hand, ignited the lightsaber with her right, and made three quick cuts. The tangle of vines dropped to the ground as she closed the weapon down. “That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” she said, turning to face Skywalker and hooking the lightsaber back onto her belt. She started to turn away—
The droid’s warning squeal came a fraction of a second before the sudden rustle of leaves. She whirled back, flipping her blaster into her right hand as the vornskr leaped toward Skywalker from a branch three trees away.
Even after two long days of travel, Skywalker’s reflexes were still adequate to the task. He let go of the handles of the travois and dropped to the ground just ahead of the vornskr’s trajectory. Four sets of claws and a whip tail took a concerted swipe at him as the predator shot by overhead. Mara waited until it had landed, and as it spun back around toward its intended prey, she shot it.
Cautiously, Skywalker got back to his feet and looked warily around. “I wish you’d change your mind about giving me back my lightsaber,” he commented as he bent down to pick up the travois handles again. “You must be getting tired of shooting vornskrs off me.”
“What, you afraid I’m going to miss?” she retorted, stepping over to prod the vornskr with her foot. It was dead, all right.
“You’re an excellent shot,” he conceded, dragging the travois toward the tangle of vines she’d just cleared out. “But you’ve also gone two nights without any sleep. That’s going to catch up with you eventually.”
“You just worry about yourself,” she snapped. “Come on, get moving—we need to find someplace clear enough to send up the sonde balloon.”
Skywalker headed off, the droid strapped to the travois behind him beeping softly to itself. Mara brought up the rear, watching to make sure the travois wasn’t leaving too clear a trail and scowling hard at the back of Skywalker’s head.
The really irritating part was that he was right. That pass from left to right hand a minute ago—a technique she’d done a thousand times before—she’d come within a hair of missing the catch completely. Her heart thudded constantly now, not quieting down even during
rest. And there were long periods during their march where her mind simply drifted, instead of focusing on the task at hand.
Once, long ago, she’d gone six days without sleep. Now, after only two, she was already starting to fall apart.
She clenched her teeth and scowled a little harder. If he was hoping to see the collapse, he was going to be sorely disappointed. If for no other reason than professional pride, she was going to see this through.
Ahead, Skywalker stumbled slightly as he crossed a patch of rough ground. The right travois handle slipped out of his grip, nearly dumping the droid off the travois and eliciting a squeal of protest from the machine. “So who’s getting tired now?” Mara growled as he stooped to pick up the stick again. “That’s the third time in the past hour.”
“It’s just my hand,” he replied calmly. “It seems to be permanently numb this afternoon.”
“Sure,” she said. Ahead, a small patch of blue sky winked down through the tree branches. “There’s our hole,” she said, nodding to it. “Put the droid in the middle.”
Skywalker did as he was instructed, then went and sat down against one of the trees edging the tiny clearing. Mara got the small sonde balloon filled and sent it aloft on its antenna wire, running a line from the receiver into the socket where the droid’s retrieval jack had once been. “All set,” she said, glancing over at Skywalker.
Leaning back against his tree, he was sound asleep.
Mara snorted with contempt. Jedi! she threw the epithet at him as she turned back to the droid. “Come on, let’s get going,” she told it, sitting down carefully on the ground. Her twisted ankle seemed to be largely healed, but she knew better than to push it.
The droid beeped questioningly, its dome swiveling around to look briefly at Skywalker. “I said let’s get going,” she repeated harshly.
The droid beeped again, a resigned sort of sound. The communicator’s pulse indicator flashed once as the droid requested a message dump from the distant X-wing’s computer; flashed again as the dump came back.
Abruptly the droid squealed in obvious excitement. “What?” Mara demanded, snatching out her blaster and giving the area a quick scan. Nothing seemed out of place. “What, there’s finally a message?”
The droid beeped affirmatively, its dome again turning toward Skywalker. “Well, let’s have it,” Mara growled. “Come on—if there’s anything in it he needs to hear, you can play it for him later.”
Assuming—she didn’t add—there wasn’t anything in the message that suggested she needed to come out of the forest alone. If there was …
The droid bent forward slightly, and a holographic image appeared on the matted leaves.
But not an image of Karrde, as she’d expected. It was, instead, an image of a golden-skinned protocol droid. “Good day, Master Luke,” the protocol droid said in a remarkably prissy voice. “I bring greetings to you from Captain Karrde—and, of course, to you as well, Mistress Mara,” it added, almost as an afterthought. “He and Captain Solo are most pleased to hear you are both alive and well after your accident.”
Captain Solo? Mara stared at the holograph, feeling totally stunned. What in the Empire did Karrde think he was doing?—he’d actually told Solo and Calrissian about Skywalker?
“I trust you’ll be able to decrypt this message, Artoo,” the protocol prissy continued. “Captain Karrde suggested that I be used to add a bit more confusion to the counterpart encrypt. According to him, there are Imperial stormtroopers waiting in Hyllyard City for you to make your appearance.”
Mara clenched her teeth, throwing a look at her sleeping prisoner. So Thrawn hadn’t been fooled. He knew Skywalker was here, and was waiting to take them both.
With a vicious effort, she stifled the fatigue-fed panic rising in her throat. No. Thrawn didn’t know—at least, not for sure. He only suspected. If he’d known for sure, there wouldn’t have been anyone left back at the camp to send her this message.
“The story Captain Karrde told the Imperials was that a former employee stole valuable merchandise and tried to escape, with a current employee named Jade in pursuit. He suggests that, since he never specified Jade as being a woman, that perhaps you and Mistress Mara could switch roles when you leave the forest.”
“Right,” Mara muttered under her breath. If Karrde thought she was going to cheerfully hand her blaster over for Skywalker to stick in her back, he’d better try thinking again.
“At any rate,” the protocol droid continued, “he says he and Captain Solo are working out a plan to try to intercept you before the stormtroopers do. If not, they will do their best to rescue you from them. I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can say at the moment—Captain Karrde has put a one-minute real-time limit on this message, to prevent anyone from locating the transmission point. He wishes you good luck. Take good care of Master Luke, Artoo … and yourself, too.”
The image vanished and the droid’s projector winked out. Mara shut down the communicator, setting the antenna spool to begin winding the balloon back down.
“It’s a good idea,” Skywalker murmured.
She looked sharply at him. His eyes were still closed. “I thought you were faking,” she spat, not really truthfully.
“Not faking,” he corrected her sleepily. “Drifting in and out. It’s still a good idea.”
She snorted. “Forget it. We’ll try going a couple of kilometers north instead, circling out and back to Hyllyard from the plains.” She glanced at her chrono, then up through the trees. Dark clouds had moved in over the past few minutes, covering the blue sky that had been there. Not rain clouds, she decided, but they would still cut rather strongly into what was left of the available daylight. “We might as well save that for tomorrow,” she said, favoring her ankle again as she got back to her feet. “You want to get—oh, never mind,” she interrupted herself. If his breathing was anything to go by, he’d drifted off again.
Which left the task of putting camp together up to her. Terrific. “Stay put,” she growled to the droid. She turned back to where she’d dropped the survival kit—
The droid’s electronic shriek brought her spinning back around again, hand clawing for her blaster, eyes flicking around for the danger—
And then a heavy weight slammed full onto her shoulders and back, sending hot needles of pain into her skin and throwing her face-first to the ground.
Her last thought, before the darkness took her, was to wish desperately that she’d killed Skywalker when she’d had the chance.
Artoo’s warbling alert jerked Luke out of his doze. His eyes snapped open, just as a blur of muscle and claw launched itself through space onto Mara’s back.
He bounded to his feet, sleepiness abruptly gone. The vornskr was standing over Mara, its front claws planted on her shoulders, its head turned to the side as it prepared to sink its teeth into her neck. Mara herself lay unmoving, the back of her head toward Luke—dead or merely stunned, it was impossible to tell. Artoo, clearly too far away to reach her in time, was nevertheless moving in that direction as fast as his wheels could manage, his small electric arc welder extended as if for battle.
Taking a deep breath, Luke screamed.
Not an ordinary scream; but a shivering, booming, inhuman howl that seemed to fill the entire clearing and reverberate from the distant hills. It was the blood-freezing call of a krayt dragon, the same call Ben Kenobi had used to scare the sand people away from him all those years ago on Tatooine.
The vornskr wasn’t scared away. But it was clearly startled, its prey temporarily forgotten. Shifting its weight partially off Mara’s back, it turned, crouching, to stare toward the sound.
For a long moment Luke locked gazes with the creature, afraid to move lest he break the spell. If he could distract it long enough for Artoo to get there with his welder …
And then, still pinned to the ground, Mara twitched. Luke cupped his hands around his mouth and howled again. Again, the vornskr shifted its weight in response.
&nb
sp; And with a sound that was half grunt and half combat yell, Mara twisted around onto her back beneath the predator, her hands snaking past the front claws to grip its throat.
It was the only opening Luke was going to get; and with a vornskr against an injured human, it wasn’t going to last for long. Pushing off from the tree trunk behind him, Luke charged, aiming for the vornskr’s flank.
He never got there. Even as he braced himself for the impact, the vornskr’s whip tail whistled out of nowhere to catch him solidly along shoulder and face and send him sprawling sideways to the ground.
He was on his feet again in an instant, dimly aware of the line of fire burning across cheek and forehead. The vornskr hissed as he came toward it again, slashing razor-sharp claws at him to ward him back. Artoo reached the struggle and sent a spark into the predator’s left front paw; almost casually, the vornskr swung at the welder, snapping it off and sending the pieces flying. Simultaneously, the tail whipped around, the impact lifting Artoo up on one set of wheels. It swung again and again, each time coming closer to knocking the droid over.
Luke gritted his teeth, mind searching furiously for a plan. Shadowboxing at the creature’s head like this wasn’t anything more than a delaying tactic; but the minute the distraction ceased, Mara was as good as dead. The vornskr would either slash her arms with its claws or else simply overwhelm her grip by brute force. With the loss of his welder, Artoo had no fighting capability left; and if the vornskr kept at him with that whip tail …
The tail. “Artoo!” Luke snapped. “Next time that tail hits you, try to grab it.”
Artoo beeped a shaky acknowledgment and extended his heavy grasping arm. Luke watched out of the corner of his eye, still trying to keep the vornskr’s head and front paws busy. The tail whipped around again, and with a warble of triumph, Artoo caught it.