by James Luceno
Without further hesitation, Luke pulled the mask and helmet over his head, and immediately he felt the joining. And he heard … a voice, a distant murmuring, in what sounded like the same language he had heard the membranous ball on the Jade Sabre use.
Luke fought hard to focus all of his instincts and thoughts, for while he couldn’t make out the particular words, he could discern a pattern to them.
He pulled off the mask and climbed out of the cockpit.
“You’re crazy,” Lando remarked.
“We need Threepio,” Luke replied, and he looked back at the amazing starfighter, hoping that the droid would be able to decipher the language, wanting—needing—desperately to learn all that he could about this ship, and about the people who flew it.
But even as Lando and Luke stepped into the hallway, Luke’s train of thought, his mounting excitement about the possibilities of discovery here, abruptly halted, for he saw his wife not so far away, staring at him, the look on her face telling him that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
Luke looked to Lando and understood then that the man knew, had known. “I had to show you this stuff,” Lando remarked, somewhat an apology. “I … I thought this was important. I thought that maybe you already knew, that you had picked it up on communications on your way in.”
“What is it?” Luke demanded, his anxiety escalating with each word.
“She’ll tell you,” Lando said, patting his friend on the shoulder.
It was a moment of tears and memories, a time for Luke and Mara to feel the weight of the loss of Chewbacca and to remember all their times with the Wookiee, and all the times the Wookiee had saved them and those they loved.
It was that unreal moment that inevitably followed the death of a loved one, the same impact and feeling of helplessness, of smallness, that Luke had experienced when he had watched Obi-Wan Kenobi fall to the swishing lightsaber of Darth Vader. That dreamlike moment every being experienced of loss of control, of insignificance, of sudden and stark realization of vulnerability and mortality. Both Luke and Mara called upon their understanding of the Force then, of the binding truth of life, and found comfort there. As Ben Kenobi had remained with Luke, as Yoda remained with Luke, so, too, would Chewbacca remain an integral, living being within the hearts and minds of those who so loved him.
It was a moment of grief, and one, both Luke and Mara understood, that could not last the appropriate time. And it was a moment of terror, of fears for Anakin, out there alone in the vastness of space, yet those concerns, too, could not supercede the urgency of the moment.
Something very big and very bad was going on.
They had to get to work.
“The key is that planet,” Luke explained to Lando, after the man had shown Luke two other surprises they had pulled from the downed enemy starfighter: a suit, more like a second skin, and a star-shaped creature with a sixth appendage, similar to the mask within the starfighter. Both were alive, and Luke had dared to experiment with them, even going so far as to let the suit creature slide up his body and join with him, and to put the mask-thing onto his face, resisting the urge to gag and the ultimate revulsion. Now he understood the truth of the fourth planet of the Helska system; now he knew that their enemies were living not on the frozen planet, but beneath the icy crust, in the cold watery depths.
“The ice ball?” Lando replied skeptically when Luke revealed his suspicions.
Luke nodded. “That’s the base, and I’ve got to get there.”
“You already were there,” came the reminder.
“No,” Luke said. “I’ve got to get down onto it, down into it.”
The skeptical look on Lando’s face only increased.
“They’re not on the planet, but it’s the base for all of this,” Luke explained. “I’m sure of it. And if they’re not on the planet, they’ve got to be underneath the crust.”
Lando nodded and rubbed his chin. “There is a way,” he admitted.
“You’ve mined ice planets before,” Luke reasoned.
“I’ve mined every type of planet,” came the response. “And there are ships used to get through the crust of icy planets, both for individuals and for larger expeditions.”
“Where can we find them?”
Lando nearly laughed aloud. If there was a vessel used for mining any type of planet, it was here, at Dubrillion’s sister planet, Destrillion, part of what Lando called his prototype fleet. Just to make sure that technology wouldn’t be lost or hard to locate, Lando always procured a single version, at least, of every new innovation, to keep it safe for study and, if need be, replication.
“I can have one here before the morning,” he told Luke. “I don’t know what kind of condition it’ll be in.”
“But you can fix it,” Luke prodded.
Lando shrugged. “Should be able to.”
Satisfied with that, and exhausted from the trials of the last few days, both physical and emotional, Luke took his leave. He went back to his quarters, where he found Mara peacefully asleep, a sight that surely bolstered him. She needed this rest, Luke knew profoundly. Her mind and body had taken a step back in her battle with the disease that raged within her, the good fight weakened by the physical and emotional demands of their recent escapades. And now, her grief over Chewie and her fears for the missing Anakin could only be suppressing her ability to battle that disease.
Not wanting to disturb her, Luke left the room, left the building altogether, walking outside under Dubrillion’s starry night sky. He saw Destrillion rising in the east and was struck by the serenity of the sight, contrasting so greatly with the heightening tumult beneath the softness.
Luke stood calmly and stared long and hard, becoming one with the galaxy about him, feeling its rhythms, its timelessness, its seeming indifference to the events of transient mortal beings.
And in that joining, Luke heard a call, and that call, he knew, came from his nephew, from Anakin, alive and alone and reaching out.
Luke’s first instinct was to run for the Jade Sabre and blast off after Anakin, to follow the call and bring the missing young Jedi to safety.
He smiled and resisted the urge. He had heard the call, and thus, so had Leia, as she had heard his call when he hung, wounded and desperate, under Lando’s Cloud City. She would bring Anakin home.
Indeed, at that very moment, the Millennium Falcon was speeding for the drifting TIE fighter. Leia had heard the call, loud and clear, and had actually viewed the star formations through Anakin’s eyes. Using that visual image, she’d had little trouble scrolling the navigational computer and locating the sector.
Now the only fear was that they would not arrive before Anakin’s wounded TIE fighter gave out, or before some of the enemy starfighters happened upon him. So Han and Leia’s relief was palpable when they came out of hyperspace in the region and located the TIE fighter with conventional sensors, and when Leia heard the continuing telepathic call to tell her that her son was indeed alive and well.
They docked soon after, and once Anakin had boarded the Falcon and run into his mother’s waiting arms, Han put the TIE in tow and turned back for Dubrillion.
Somewhat more tentatively than he had rushed to his mother, Anakin, with Leia hovering behind, walked onto the Falcon’s bridge, where his father was waiting.
Han turned and stared hard at his son, and then his stern edge melted away and he bolted from his seat, wrapping Anakin in a bear hug. He jumped back almost at once, though, and slugged his son in the shoulder. “You ever do that to me again, kid, and I’ll kick you from here to Coruscant!”
The scolding hit Anakin’s ears like the sweetest music ever played.
They were back on Dubrillion the next morning, landing soon after the curious mining craft that Lando had spoken to Luke about was towed in. It was called an iceborer, also known as a stylus ship, Lando told Luke, because of its shape: long and narrow, with a tapered front end. The pilot would lie down along the length of this translucent cylind
er, head forward.
It didn’t look promising to Luke.
“It’s not for long-distance flight,” Lando explained. “It’ll have to be towed to the Helska system.”
“How does it get down and through the ice?”
Lando led him around to the front. “Pretty simple,” he said. “We’ve got a shaped, vaporizing heat charge up here. You fire it off just before you hit, it drills a hole in the ice before you, and you dive in before it freezes up again.”
Luke snorted. “You’re kidding, right?”
“You’ve got to be good,” Lando remarked with a sly grin. “Coming out is the same thing—you do plan to come back out, don’t you?” he asked, only half-kiddingly. “Except that the process getting off planet takes a bit longer, a slow burn and crawl until the sensors indicate the ice is thin enough for a second, less violent charge.”
They were interrupted by Jacen’s call, “They’re back,” as the young man ran into the room and to Luke’s side. “Mom and Dad, and they’ve got Anakin!”
Luke nodded, not surprised. “And Threepio,” he said eagerly to Lando. “Let’s get some more answers.”
“It’s not a difficult language at all, Master Luke,” C-3PO announced a short while later to Han and Luke, as they sat discussing plans. Off to the side in the small room, R2-D2 beeped and clicked, adding his own interpretations to that which C-3PO had just heard. “Somewhat like the Janguine tongue of the jungle barbarians of—”
“What’d it say?” an obviously impatient Han interrupted.
C-3PO turned to regard him.
“The message to Yomin Carr,” Luke pressed.
“It was indeed,” C-3PO said to Luke. “And might I comment on your sharp hearing in catching that name amidst the fast-talking jumble of—”
“What’d it say?” Han pressed again, his tone even more forceful.
“The movement of the Praetorite Vong is under way. Your part, for now, is done. Good work,” C-3PO obediently recited.
“Praetorite Vong?” both Han and Luke said together.
“I heard that before,” Luke added.
“Some sort of mercenary band?” Han asked him.
“A big one, if that’s what it is.”
“From Janguine?” Han asked skeptically, looking to the droid.
“Oh, I’d hardly think that likely,” the droid responded. “The jungle barbarians have not been around for more than three hundred years. Their language was long ago absorbed by the mountain Mooloolian tribes—”
“Then from where?” Han demanded. “Where in the galaxy do they speak such language?”
“Maybe nowhere,” Luke answered ominously, turning all eyes to him. “Come on, Threepio,” he bade the droid. “I’m not done with you yet.”
The four went out then, moving along the corridors to Lando’s research chambers. They came to the side of the enemy starfighter unhindered by Lando’s technicians—one even offered a polite bow to Luke and Han and skittered away from the ship as they approached.
“Up you go,” Luke said to C-3PO.
“What? In there, Master Luke?” C-3PO started to protest, but the droid was already rising, the emanations of Luke’s projected Force power moving him as surely as any tractor beam. “Master Luke!” he cried several times, and then he was gently put down in the cockpit.
Luke climbed up beside him, reached in, and brought forth the mask. “Put it over your head,” he bade the droid.
“Master Luke!”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Luke promised, flashing that still-boyish smile, and he helped C-3PO to get the thing on. “Now listen to it,” he explained. “Hear it carefully and remember every word.”
“They call it a coralskipper,” C-3PO, fidgeting in the cockpit, soon informed them. “They breed it to serve as starships, both fighter and larger.”
“What powers it?” Luke asked, and the droid relayed the question through the mask, and in the strange language.
C-3PO found, and reported, two answers, one conventional, the other far beyond their comprehension—which gave both Luke and Han pause. First, the coralskipper could move along much as it fired its guns, using the opposing force of that “spitting.” And it could refuel and rearm by eating rocks. The simplicity and the efficiency stunned Luke.
“How do you know that?” Han interjected.
“Because it is telling me that it is hungry,” the droid replied, his tone rising dramatically at the end of his statement, becoming little more than a wail.
“It can’t eat you,” Luke promised the droid, patting his shoulder. “Come on, Threepio. We really need you here.”
C-3PO conversed with the ship a while longer, then explained that the second propulsion system was tied back to that thumb-sized creature in the nose and had something to do with focusing gravity fields.
Luke thought back to his fight in the Helska system, to the loss of his shields. Might it be that this same creature was able to so accurately focus its gravitational grasp that it could tear the shields off a starfighter?
He leaned hard against the side of the coralskipper, taking many deep breaths. This whole thing was mounting ominously; it was apparent to him now that this was indeed an extragalactic intelligence at work, an obviously hostile one, employing methods and organic technology far different from, and perhaps superior to, anything the New Republic could use to counter.
Belkadan, the Helska system, Dubrillion, and Sernpidal were not unrelated events.
Soon after, the four rejoined their companions and Lando in the central control room with their grim information.
The one piece of good news was the arrival of the Rejuvenator, an Imperial II-class Star Destroyer, along with a sizable and impressive task force, including a half dozen of the new Ranger-class gunships.
“It won’t work,” Mara remarked, standing with Luke and staring at the little iceborer, the stylus ship, which seemed terribly frail for the mission Luke had assigned to it.
“Lando’s used this technology before,” he replied.
“Going into a planet full of enemies?” came his wife’s curt response. She turned up her hand, extending her fingers one at a time as she counted off the drawbacks. “You’ll have no weapons, none from the ship, at least; no shields, other than the forward heat and impact protection; and not enough speed to outrun a Headhunter, never mind one of those coralskippers.”
Luke stared at her long and hard, a smile widening on his face. Ever since the return from Belkadan, Mara had been in her room, recuperating, a poignant reminder that she was very ill, and yet here she was, concerned about him.
“I should be the one to take the iceborer in,” she said.
Luke’s smile evaporated. He knew the source of that remark, knew that she was, in fact, saying that her life was more expendable because she was ill—by all other examples, terminally ill.
“No way,” he replied.
Mara looked at him hard.
“If you suffer a relapse down there, you’ll jeopardize the whole mission,” Luke stated flatly, elevating the discussion to the good of the mission and not to a condescending level that showed his concern for his wife.
“And if I have a relapse flying your carry ship?” she asked with thick sarcasm.
“You won’t,” Luke replied with all confidence, and he chuckled and started past her.
Mara just shook her head and watched him walk away for a few moments, then turned back to regard the seemingly fragile stylus ship and just sighed.
“They’re almost done with it,” Jaina told her brothers as the three watched the repairs on the strange little ship.
“Uncle Luke’s really going to take that thing in?” Anakin asked. “And he’s really going to wear that living suit and mask they found with the pilot?”
Jacen and Jaina exchanged concerned looks.
“He’s trying out the suit right now,” Jaina explained. “Why don’t you go and check it out?”
Not catching on to the pointed dismissal an
d anxious to get a glimpse of the alien artifacts, the ever curious Anakin took his leave in a hurry.
“Uncle Luke’s the wrong one to go,” Jacen said to Jaina as soon as they were alone.
“I’m more concerned about Aunt Mara,” Jaina replied. “She slept most of the day and was still exhausted when she got up to eat dinner. Did you see the dark circles under her eyes? Her disease is getting the best of her right now, mostly because she’s too preoccupied with all of this.”
They stared at each other long and hard, knowing that they were of like mind, though neither was brave enough to put the thoughts to words at that moment.
“We can’t let Mara go,” Jaina remarked.
“We can’t stop her if Uncle Luke goes,” Jacen replied.
“You think they’ll wait for the Rejuvenator and her escorts to come in before they leave?” Jaina asked.
“I think they’ll go first,” Jacen replied. “I heard Uncle Luke say as much to Dad. He doesn’t want to wait for anything, but his plan is to get the iceborer off planet just in time to meet up with the incoming fleet.”
Jaina merely nodded; she had gleaned similar information from C-3PO.
“What’s that?” Jacen asked, motioning toward a crane bringing another craft in to a scaffolding beside and above the iceborer.
“Carry ship,” Jaina explained, who had interviewed Lando’s technicians extensively on this subject. “You can’t dock the iceborer, or put it in a hold, because it’s not maneuverable enough to break away safely. They’ll load it onto the missile pod of the carry ship, and that ship will just point it in the right direction and shoot it off.”
“And the iceborer pilot has to stay in the stylus ship the whole time?” Jacen asked. “For the duration of the entire flight?”
“The whole time,” Jaina replied. “They use an air tube and a power transfer line from the carry ship to conserve all the power possible on the little iceborer, but whoever flies in that thing is going to be lying flat out and cramped the whole way to the Helska system.”
Jacen looked at her, smiled, and nodded.