Champions of the Force

by Kevin J. Anderson

putting its gears and lenses back together; it no

  longer worked quite properly, though, and his vision winked

  out from time to time.

  Doole paced the cold stone floor of his

  cell. Everything had fallen apart. The planet

  Kessel had been abandoned, leaving only smoking

  rubble on the surface and destroyed hulks of

  ships strewn across the system all the way to the

  black hole cluster. Doole couldn't even get

  a ship of his own to escape. He didn't want

  to stay here — but what choice did he have?

  Even the blind larvae — the large — eyed creatures

  whom Doole had locked inside pitch — black

  rooms to process the mind — enhancing

  spice, glitterstim — were growing restless. He

  had cared for them, given them food (a meager

  amount, to keep their growth down, but enough for

  survival), but now they had begun to struggle.

  Doole snorted, making a squeaking sound with his

  bloated lips. The larvae were his own ungrateful

  children, immature Rybets who had not yet undergone

  their final metamorphosis. Blind and wormlike,

  almost as large as Doole himself, the larvae were

  perfect workers to wrap the spice fibers in

  opaque sheaths, since even brief exposure

  to light would spoil the product. His children could work

  in the blackness, and be happy. And what sort of

  gratitude did they show him?

  A few larvae had gotten loose, fleeing

  blindly through the winding prison passages, hiding in

  shadowy cells, waiting in darkened wings to ambush

  Doole if he came looking for them. But he was

  not going to look. He had more important things

  to do.

  To make things worse, one of the largest male

  larvae had freed all of Doole's specially

  picked females! The females had fled into the

  labyrinth of the prison, so that during this time of

  greatest terror, Doole couldn't even relieve

  his tension with an occasional visit to the harem.

  He had no choice but to remain locked inside

  his office cell, pace the floor, and be

  alternately bored out of his mind and scared out of his

  wits. When he did make his way to the

  storerooms, he emerged heavily armed, waddled

  quickly down the corridors, and came back with as

  much food as he could carry.

  He had an escape tunnel, of course.

  He had blasted a channel into the spice mines

  directly under the prison. Doole could lose

  himself for a long time in that network, but he still couldn't

  get off — planet. And lately the tunnels had

  become a far more dangerous place.

  After Daala's attack most of the spice

  miners had fled. Without guards and construction and

  loud machinery, the spiders had surged upward

  to lay down their glitterstim webs along the

  walls. Looking with specially adapted kinetic

  energy detectors, Doole had spotted swarms

  of the monsters in the deepest shafts, migrating

  closer to the surface.

  In despair Doole sat on his bunk and

  smelled the dank air of the dungeon. At

  another time he might have found it comforting and

  cool, but now he just rested his sucker — tipped

  fingers against damp jowls and stared at the

  monitors.

  He was astonished to see a ship land outside.

  And even though all humans generally looked

  alike to him, Doole was certain he recognized

  one of the three intruders pummeling his armored

  door: Han Solo, the man he hated most in

  the entire universe, the man who had caused all

  this misery!

  At the ominous prison gates Han watched

  as Ghent the slicer worked diligently on the

  problem. He jacked in all manner of

  equipment, components stolen out of other systems,

  barely functional combinations that somehow found

  loopholes around defense systems.

  Ghent raised a triumphant fist into the

  grainy sunlight. The reinforced latticework of the

  defensive portcullis rode up on invisible

  tracks. With a hollow clunking sound the shipping and

  receiving gates split apart, squealing and creaking as

  they lumbered into the thick walls. A gust of

  higher — pressure air bled out of the prison.

  The four large smugglers shouldered their weapons

  and plodded forward, crouched over and ready to fight.

  The two Mistryl guards took the lead, sliding

  along the walls. The burly Whiphid and scaly

  Trandoshan strode brashly down the middle of the

  hall.

  No attack came from the dark passageway.

  "Let's go find Moruth Doole," Han said.

  None of his options looked good, but Doole had

  to make choices. He had watched Han Solo

  and his group of commandos force their way in — and

  Kessel was supposed to be the toughest prison in

  the galaxy. Hah!

  Doole didn't know how to use the built — in

  defense systems, the external laser cannons,

  the disintegrator fields. He was helpless without

  his right — hand man, Skynxnex, but the scarecrowish

  fool had gotten himself killed chasing Solo through

  the spice tunnels, devoured by one of those energy

  spiders.

  As a desperate measure Doole had come to the

  conclusion that he must trust his own children, the blind

  larvae he kept in blackness since the moment they

  writhed out of the gelatinous egg mass in the harem

  wing's breeding pools.

  Doole rushed down the corridors, gathering

  weapons from the prison's armory. He carried

  two satchels of blaster pistols over his shoulder

  as he opened the protective vaults. Suddenly

  exposed to the light, the larvae reared back like

  caterpillars, blind eyes bulging as they

  attempted to sense the identity of the intruder.

  "It's only me, only me," Doole said.

  Bright light stabbed at them, illuminating their

  pale skin. Damp vestigial hands reached up,

  small fingers and arms short and weak, not

  completely formed. Wormlike tendrils quivered

  below their mouths as the larvae made soft burbling

  noises.

  Doole herded the oldest and strongest of the

  larvae along ramps to the lower levels. He would

  station them as guardians inside his cell. Being

  blind, they probably couldn't hit anything with the

  blasters, but he hoped they would at least fire with

  enthusiasm once he gave them the orders.

  Given enough cross fire, Doole could hide behind

  a blast — proof screen and hope the firefight would

  kill Solo's team.

  As Doole ushered them toward his cell, he

  smelled the musky wetness of their fear and

  uncertainty. The immature Rybets did not like

  change, preferring a rigid daily routine

  until eventually they molted and became adults,

  gaining intelligence and self — awareness.

  Distracted by trying to think of what other

  defenses he might bring to bear, he was startl
ed

  by a high — pitched scream echoing from three of the

  nearby chambers. Several of the freed female

  Rybets sprang out, wailing and throwing sharp

  objects at them.

  Doole ducked as broken shards of

  transparisteel, sharpened knives, and heavy

  paperweights flew at him. Doole tried

  to grab a blaster from one of the two satchels on his

  back, but a drinking mug struck him on the soft

  side of his head. He dropped one of the satchels

  and ran wildly down the corridor, waving his

  sucker — tipped hands.

  Most of the larvae followed him, but a few

  split off to stay with their mothers. Doole ran,

  wanting only to get back to the safety of his

  cell. Finally slamming the thick door behind him,

  he emptied his remaining satchel and placed

  fully charged blasters in the hands of six

  potential defenders.

  "Just point it toward whatever noise you hear,"

  he said. "When they break in, it's up to you

  to shoot. This is the firing button."

  The smooth — skinned creatures shivered and ran

  their sensitive mouth tendrils over the barrels

  of the weapons.

  "You point it, and it makes a blast."

  Doole repositioned the pistols in their

  vestigial hands, pointing them toward the door.

  Without warning the vision in his mechanical eye

  flickered again, and Doole couldn't see a thing.

  He moaned in terror. The escape tunnel was

  sounding better and better.

  With a growing dread in the pit of his stomach,

  Han Solo hurried down the prison

  corridors. The entire place was full of

  cold shadows, echoing with emptiness.

  Over the comm link Mara Jade said, "We've

  found him, Solo. He's barricaded in one of the

  dungeons. We tapped into the surveillance

  cameras. He's got some creatures standing with

  him, and they appear to be armed."

  "On my way," Han said.

  When he reached the lower corridors, Han

  saw heavy barricades thrown in place across a

  sealed door. Mara watched the operation as the two

  female Mistryl guards placed concussion

  detonators around the door seal.

  Lando paced nervously. "Don't do any more

  damage than you have to," he said. "I've got

  enough repairs to make here on Kessel as it is."

  The two women ignored him as they sprinted out

  of the way. They ducked their heads and covered their

  ears as a rapid thud thud thud echoed from the

  concussion detonators.

  They heard a volley of sudden blaster fire

  from inside the sealed chamber, a high — pitched

  shriek of energetic beams striking and ricocheting

  off the walls.

  "No, no! Not yet!" came a howling voice

  that Han recognized as Moruth Doole's.

  With a final thump the last concussion

  detonator blew the bottom off the door. The

  hairy Whiphid rushed forward to elbow the heavy

  plates aside.

  "Look out," Mara called.

  The Whiphid ducked and rolled as the soft

  larvae flailed, pointing their blasters and firing in

  every direction. Their huge glassy eyes

  spun around without seeing anything.

  "Get them!" Doole yelled. The larvae

  whirled at the sound of his voice and fired their

  blasters toward Doole himself. But he had already

  ducked behind a thick piece of wall plating.

  "Not at me!"

  Hissing, the reptilian Trandoshan shot

  inside, cutting down two of the blind larvae. He

  lumbered into the chamber, but before the other smugglers

  could rush in, another explosion came from the

  ceiling. Han, Mara, and the Mistryl guards

  used the distraction to muscle their way forward,

  ducking down and firing again. Han took out another

  of the larvae just as the ceiling collapsed in flaming

  chunks.

  Wailing for revenge, swarms of female

  Rybets dropped through the ceiling into Doole's

  private cell. Each bore a blaster of her

  own and fired repeatedly at the metal shield

  Doole hid behind until its center glowed a

  cherry — red.

  The blind larvae targeted on the new noise — but

  then as if suddenly they understood, as if they could

  communicate with their own mothers, the larvae turned and

  directed their fire toward Doole as well.

  "Stop, stop!" Doole cried.

  Han crept in beside Lando, not wanting to draw

  fire in the midst of this civil war. Doole

  yelped and dropped the superheated protective

  shield. His mechanical eye popped off and

  broke into a thousand bouncing and rattling components

  on the floor. His long squishy fingers punched a

  hidden control button, and a trapdoor opened beneath

  him. With a mindless squeal Doole leaped through an

  access hatch into an escape tunnel, down into the

  cold black mines.

  "Hurry, before he gets away!" Lando said.

  "I don't want him running around in my spice

  mines."

  The surviving larvae flowed forward as if they

  wanted to plunge into the tunnels after Moruth

  Doole, either to follow him or to chase him. But the

  amphibious females grasped the larvae and

  held them back with gentle cooing sounds. Their

  wide eyes looked on the invading smugglers with

  apprehension.

  Han rushed toward the trapdoor and dropped

  to his knees, pushing his face into the darkness. He

  heard Doole's splatting footsteps diminishing

  as he ran on webbed feet deeper into the

  catacombs.

  The larvae shot several blaster bolts into the

  passages after him. Long spears of heat bounced

  along the tunnel walls, knocking boulders

  loose. The light sparked a scintillating glare

  of activated glitterstim.

  Then Han heard a new sound that turned his

  blood cold. A faint but chilling noise,

  hundreds of sharp legs like ice picks

  scrambling down the tunnel. Han could still hear

  Doole's footsteps getting fainter and fainter

  as he fled. Han heard the tik tik tik of

  multilegged creatures, attracted by the heat of a

  living body ... and Doole's gasping, ragged

  breath as the Rybet searched blindly for a way out.

  Han heard many more sets of pointed legs

  scrabbling, like a stampede from converging tunnels as

  the energy spiders found nourishment after the long

  silence in the spice mines. Han's skin

  crawled.

  At the tail end of a high — pitched and

  gut — wrenching scream, Doole's footsteps

  suddenly stopped. The scream cut off

  abruptly, as did the sound of running ice — pick

  feet. The instant silence seemed even more

  horrible than the scream, and Han quickly pulled

  up the trapdoor and secured it before the energy

  spiders could seek other prey.

  He sat back, heart pounding. The smugglers

  looked grimly satisfied at the battle they


  had won. The Whiphid leaned against a wall with

  arms crossed. "A good hunt," he growled.

  The Trandoshan glanced from side to side, as if

  seeking something to eat.

  The female Rybets hauled away the blasted

  larvae, tending the injured, mourning over the dead.

  Han sighed as Lando sank down next to him.

  "Well, Lando," he said, "now you can start

  remodeling."

  Han, Lando, and Mara rode back up to the

  garrison moon in the Falcon. Mara and Lando

  spoke more easily to each other, now that Lando

  wasn't pushing so hard to get the slightest word or

  smile from her. Mara had even stopped avoiding

  Lando's gaze or raising her chin whenever he

  spoke. She spent most of her time reassuring

  him that the Lady Luck would be just fine behind the

  security fields of the reoccupied prison.

  Lando didn't seem to believe her

  entirely, but he did not want to disagree with

  Mara Jade.

  "We've got a lot of paperwork to do," Mara

  said. "I have all the standard contracts and

  agreements up at the moonbase. We can take

  care of the formalities between us, but there are still a lot

  of forms to digitize and sign, a lot of

  records to cross — reference."

  "Whatever you say," Lando said. "I want this

  to be a long and happy partnership. You and I need

  to figure out how we can best implement production

  on Kessel. It's in the best interests of both

  of us to get the glitterstim flowing soon,

  especially since I'm going to have to sink so much of

  an investment into the mining work again."

  Han listened to them talk but devoted most of his

  thoughts to his family. "I just want to go home.

  No more side trips."

  The Falcon sped away from the wispy

  corona of escaping air toward the large moon.

  Once leaving the turbulent atmosphere of

  Kessel, they coasted smoothly in the vacuum of

  space as if on glass.

  Suddenly an alert flashed on their

  communications panel from the moonbase. "Warning!

  We've detected a large vessel approaching

  Kessel — and I mean large."

  Han reacted instantly. "Lando, check the

  scanners."

  Lando stared at the copilot station and sat up

  quickly, his eyes as big as viewports. "Not just

  large," he said.

  Han could see the globe — shaped object through the

  viewport. Spherical, but skeletal,

  crossbraced and arched with giant girders. The

  size of a miniature moon.

  "It's the Death Star."