by Timothy Zahn
“Got it,” Grave said. “What about you two?”
“We’re heading inside to find Jade,” LaRone said. “If I’m reading this right, she may be in serious trouble in there.”
“Be careful,” Brightwater said.
“Believe it,” LaRone assured him. “Come on, Marcross. Let’s see if the Emperor’s Hand needs a little help.”
“You want it?” the mustached man asked mockingly, waving the lightsaber in front of Luke. “Well, come on, Master Jedi Skywalker. You want it? Come and get it.”
Luke clenched his teeth, watching the blade weaving back and forth in front of him, fully and painfully aware that the whole thing was hopeless. With better control of the Force, he might be able to get a telekinetic grip on the handle and wrench it aside. Or he might be able to pick up one of the chairs from the tapcaf’s outdoor tables and hurl it at the man. Or he could even pick up the man himself and physically move him aside.
But he couldn’t do any of those things. He wasn’t the “Master Jedi” the other had derisively called him. He wasn’t any kind of Jedi.
And even if by some miracle he was able to get the lightsaber back, what then? There were eight other hard-looking men gathered around him, all of them big, all of them probably armed, all of them clearly intent on keeping him here until the palace guard or a stormtrooper patrol got here. Even with the lightsaber, there was no way he would be able to cut all of them down before one of them got him.
Behind the ring of thugs, a shout rang out, and the crowd suddenly surged away from them. Luke glanced over his shoulder and saw them streaming into the street, halting the landspeeder traffic that had already slowed to a crawl.
“They’re heading to the palace,” the mustached man confirmed. “They’re going to storm it.”
Luke winced. “They’ll be killed.”
“Or they’ll get in and take it over,” the mustached man said offhandedly. “Makes no difference to me. Not so long as the Rebellion gets the credit.”
“You’re not part of the Alliance,” Luke bit out.
“Yeah?” The man grinned evilly. “Good luck proving it.”
With an effort, Luke pushed back the shifting sands of despair threatening to roll over him. The Force was with him, and there was a way out of this. All he had to do was find it. The mustached man swung the lightsaber again, casually, mockingly.
And as Luke watched him wielding the clearly unfamiliar weapon, he had an idea.
He couldn’t yet call on the Force for the strength to physically attack the man. But his full-throttle flight down the Death Star trench had showed that he could call on the Force for guidance.
Maybe that would be enough.
“I don’t have to prove it,” Luke said, reaching down and unfastening his belt buckle. “All I have to do is bring you in. You can prove it.”
The mustached man frowned as he watched Luke pulling his belt free. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“Like I just said,” Luke said, sliding the belt through his hands. As he did so, he slipped the comlink free, palming it in his right hand. “Fighting with a lightsaber isn’t as easy as it looks,” he continued, finishing the belt slide with the tip in his left hand and the buckle hanging free. “Let’s see how fast a learner you are.”
The other looked down at the belt as Luke began swinging it loosely in his hand. “You’re joking,” he said flatly.
“I’ve got a friend who says that hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side,” Luke said, glancing to his right and left. The rest of the men in the circle, at least those he could see, were watching the unfolding drama with the same fascinated disbelief as the mustached man was. With luck, that would slow their reaction time when Luke made his move. “That goes for stun whips, too.”
The other snorted. “You have a stun whip in your belt?”
“You’d be surprised at what I’ve got,” Luke said, swinging the belt a little wider and adjusting his grip on the comlink. This would take both timing and accuracy. Hopefully, the Force would supply both. Stretching out as best he could, he snapped his wrist, sending the belt swinging in a wide arc toward the other man’s right knee as if trying to get the buckle past the glowing blade between them.
But the belt wasn’t long enough, and the man was far quicker than Luke’s swing. As the buckle arced toward him, he twisted his wrists, swinging the lightsaber down and to his right and slashing it across the belt.
And with the mustached man’s hands now turned over and fully exposed, Luke threw his comlink as hard as he could into the man’s right thumb, the one pressing down on the activator stud. The man bellowed in pain, reflexively yanking his injured hand away from the lightsaber.
And with the usual sizzling hiss, the blade vanished.
The man recognized his mistake instantly, of course. But it was already too late to fix it. Even as he tried to get his hand back to the lightsaber’s activation stud Luke was on him, grabbing the hilt of the lightsaber with his left hand and slamming the knuckles of his right fist into the back of the man’s left hand.
With another bellow the other let go, lunged forward, and gave Luke a shove that sent him staggering two meters backward. Then, shaking his injured right hand once, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a blaster.
He wasn’t alone, either. All around the circle, there was a sudden flurry of motion as the onlookers also went for their weapons.
Clenching his teeth, Luke ignited the lightsaber, stretching out to the Force again and trying not to think about the impossibility of getting all nine of them before they took him down. The mustached man leveled his blaster.
And jerked backward as a blaster bolt from above sizzled into the ground in front of him, blowing small splinters of permacrete from the walkway.
Startled, Luke looked up. Standing on one of the nearby rooftops was an Imperial stormtrooper with a long sniper rifle pressed against his shoulder. The trooper fired again, this shot blowing more permacrete from the ground somewhere behind Luke and eliciting a yelp from one of the men in the back.
“Behind you!” the mustached man shouted, and dodged to the side as a fresh volley of blasterfire erupted from that direction.
Luke spun around, dropping into a crouch. Another stormtrooper was on the ground barely thirty meters away, charging toward them in that loping run that Luke had seen both Imperials and Rebels use when they wanted to cover ground and shoot accurately at the same time.
One of the thugs on that side of the ring opened fire, his first shot glancing off the stormtrooper’s shoulder. He didn’t get a second shot; he fell, cursing, as a pair of blaster bolts burned through his leg. Another of the thugs yelped as a bolt from the sniper on the rooftop cut through his right forearm, sending his blaster flying into the street. Behind the stormtrooper, a scout trooper on a speeder bike swung into view around the line of landspeeders that had been stopped by the rampaging mob and headed toward them.
With that, the mustached man had finally had enough. “Get out of here!” he shouted, already heading for one of the side streets leading away from the palace. “Rendezvous point three. Move it!”
With a speeder bike and its underslung blaster cannon bearing down on them, the other thugs didn’t have to be told twice. They took off, a few of them heading for the same side street down which the mustached man had disappeared, the others running into the tapcaf or nearby shops. Two of them paused long enough to shove their blasters back into concealment and grab the man with the wounded leg. Lugging him between them, they headed for the closest doorway and disappeared inside.
And now, instead of facing nine thugs, Luke was facing three armed stormtroopers. All in all, the thought occurred to him, it wasn’t much of an improvement.
So why did he feel an unnatural calmness flowing into him from the Force?
The running stormtrooper had jogged to a halt, his eyes and blaster turned away from Luke and toward the swirling mob
and the sounds of blaster- and laserfire that Luke suddenly realized were coming from that direction. Focused on the Force and his own danger, he’d completely lost track of what was happening on the far side of the street. He winced as someone screamed with pain or rage—
And jerked back as the speeder bike braked to a halt beside him. “Get on,” the trooper’s filtered voice ordered. “LaRone says you need to get out of here.”
For a second the name didn’t register. Then Luke got it, and he felt his eyes widen. LaRone, Marcross, Grave, Quiller, and—“Brightwater?” he asked.
“You were expecting Lord Vader?” Brightwater growled. “Come on.”
Luke still had no idea what was going on. But with a rampaging mob and Imperial firepower in one direction and nine armed and irate thugs in the other, this was no time to get picky. Closing down his lightsaber, he retrieved his comlink from where it had bounced off the mustached man’s hand and swung his leg over the bike’s saddle behind Brightwater. He’d barely gotten settled when the trooper hit the speeder’s throttle and took off.
“Where are we going?” Luke called, gripping the trooper’s utility belt as they shot past both the mob scene and the street and shops where the thugs had fled. “Brightwater?”
“Don’t know,” the other called back. “LaRone just said to get you out of there and find out what you know about this lunatic attack on the palace.”
“I don’t know anything,” Luke told him. “It’s nothing we’re doing, that’s for sure.”
“Who’s we, and what are you doing?”
Luke hesitated. When he and Han had last dealt with LaRone’s group, the former stormtroopers had renounced their Imperial connections and were working on their own for the people of the galaxy, delivering justice and aid wherever they saw a need. But now here they were, apparently fully integrated into Governor Ferrouz’s security forces. Did that mean they were back on the Empire’s side? Or were they simply on Ferrouz’s side?
And did he know anymore what Ferrouz’s side really was?
“Skywalker?” Brightwater prompted. “Come on, we’ve got our necks stretched from here to Imperial Center on this one.”
“We were invited here by Governor Ferrouz to support him against an alien warlord named Nuso Esva,” Luke said. He still didn’t fully understand what was going on, but the Force had given him a sense of calm as Brightwater came up. He would take his cue from that and assume LaRone and his group could be trusted.
“You sure that was the name?” Brightwater asked, his voice suddenly odd. “Nuso Esva?”
“Pretty sure, yes,” Luke said. “There was also some talk about Candoras sector seceding from the Empire, but I’m not so sure about that. Ferrouz might have just thrown that in to persuade us to bring a good-sized force here.”
“Anything else?”
Again, Luke hesitated. He trusted LaRone and the others, trusted them implicitly. But he had other loyalties, too, and he couldn’t betray them. “Nothing else I can tell you,” he said. “But our plans definitely don’t involve a riot at the palace. Or anywhere else.”
For a moment Brightwater was silent. Then, abruptly, he made a hard left into another of the side streets, this one lined mostly with apartment buildings. “I have to get back,” he said, bringing the vehicle to a halt. “You have someplace you can go?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said, trying to think as he climbed off the speeder. “My ship’s back at the spaceport. But our chief negotiator is still in the palace. If that riot breaks through, he may need my help getting out.”
“So you’re staying here?”
“For now, anyway,” Luke said. “I need to talk with our people. I have no idea what’s going on anymore.”
“Join the club,” Brightwater said darkly. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” Luke said. “And thanks for the rescue.”
“No problem,” Brightwater said. “Wait a second.” Reaching to his waist, he unfastened his utility belt. “There’s emergency rations and a few other items in there that you might find useful,” he said, handing the belt to Luke. “If you’re going to ground, you may need some extra gear.”
“Thanks,” Luke said.
“Good luck, and watch yourself,” Brightwater said. “Whatever’s going on, it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.” Swinging the speeder around in a tight circle, he roared down the street and headed back toward the palace.
Luke took a deep breath and glanced around. There were no vehicles and only a few pedestrians in sight, and none of them was paying him any attention, despite the fact he’d just been dropped off by a scout trooper. Apparently the citizens of Whitestone City had learned to keep their curiosity to themselves.
That was fine with Luke. Cracken needed to be brought into this right away, and Luke had no time to look for a private place from which to call him. Looping Brightwater’s utility belt over his shoulder, he pulled out his comlink.
Only to discover that it was broken.
He stared at the device, a hard knot forming in his stomach. Even granted that he’d thrown the comlink at the mustached man’s hand as hard as he could, he hadn’t thought he’d thrown it hard enough to break it. But clearly, he had.
Which meant he was alone here. Even more alone than he’d realized.
He took a deep breath.
He wasn’t alone. The Force was with him.
He looked around, getting his bearings, and set off toward a group of small shops clustered at the street corner beyond the apartment complexes. The first thing he needed to do was get some new outerwear, in case the mustached man and his gang were still on the hunt for him. Then he would find a quiet place to empty the pouches of Brightwater’s belt and find out what he had to work with.
And once he’d done all that, hopefully he would be able to come up with a plan for getting Axlon out of the palace.
THE FIRST WAVE OF ATTACKERS THROUGH THE REMAINS OF FERROUZ’S office door were careless or untrained or both. They charged through the ragged gap firing blindly, most of the shots going wide but a few of them coming straight at Mara as she stood in front of the governor’s desk.
Unfortunately for the attackers, those straight shots were the ones most easily deflected directly back at them. Three of them died, and two or three more were wounded, before the rest got the message.
Unfortunately for Mara, calmer heads had taken over since that first mad rush. The remaining attackers were crouched at the edges of the opening, or behind the bodies of the fallen, shooting in coordinated volleys that were becoming increasingly difficult for her to deflect.
Worse, sooner or later it would probably dawn on them that if they stopped firing, charged in, and fanned out to both sides, they could present her with a crossfire that even she couldn’t survive.
The only thing preventing them from doing that right now, in fact, was that Ferrouz was crouching by the side of the desk with his blaster, firing carefully measured shots through the doorway. Charging in now would merely give the governor better targets, and even though he couldn’t stop a concerted rush, it didn’t seem like any of the attackers was all that eager to sacrifice himself for whatever cause it was they were fighting for.
Still, the standoff couldn’t last much longer. A fully charged DDC-16 only carried about twenty shots, and although Mara’s attention had been too focused on her own defense to keep count, she knew he had to be running low. Unless he had a spare power pack in his desk, she was soon going to be on her own.
Completely on her own, in fact. The battle had dragged on for at least five minutes now, more than long enough for Ferrouz’s security forces to have been alerted and come running to the rescue. The fact that no one had done so implied that they’d been killed, locked out, or otherwise coerced into inaction.
Which meant Mara was going to have to either get Ferrouz out of here fast or else drastically switch tactics.
There would be an emergency exit somewhere in the office, she knew. Nearly
all governors and Moffs had one, for precisely this sort of situation. But with Ferrouz pinned down by his desk, there was no way he was going to make it over to wherever his bolt-hole was and get it open.
She was just going to have to do this the hard way.
Moving toward the attackers would be dangerous, since closing the gap would shorten the time she had to react to their shots. But it was the only way to push them back. Once they were out of the doorway, she might buy herself some breathing space and Ferrouz some mobility. She took a step forward.
And then, even as the enemy gunfire increased, a new sound flicked into her straining consciousness: the deeper, heavier sound of a stormtrooper’s BlasTech E-11. The barrage coming at her faltered, then stopped completely, and for a handful of seconds the two different sounds competed with each other. Then both sets of weapons trailed off and stopped.
As Mara lifted her lightsaber back into defense position, two stormtroopers appeared, easing their way over the bodies and through the blasted doorway. “Are you all right?” one of them called.
Taking a deep breath, Mara closed down her lightsaber. Even through the vocoder’s mechanical filtering she had no trouble recognizing that voice. “Good timing, LaRone,” she said. “Yes, we’re fine.”
“No, we’re not,” Axlon called tautly from behind the desk. “I need help back here.”
They found Ferrouz lying stretched out on the floor, his head cradled in Axlon’s lap, a blackened line sliced across a mass of swelling skin on the left side of his scalp. “I think he must have caught a ricochet,” Axlon said grimly as Mara knelt down beside them. “I tried to tell you, but I don’t think you heard.”
“No, I didn’t,” Mara said, checking his vital signs and leaning closer to the wound. It looked mostly superficial, possibly scorching the cranial bone but not penetrating through to the brain. For the second time today, it seemed, Governor Ferrouz had cheated death. “Medpac?”
LaRone already had his out and open. “Doesn’t look too bad,” he said.
“No, but his heartbeat’s a little thready,” Mara said, pulling out the spray hypo and loading an anti-shock booster vial into it. She injected the dose, then put the hypo back and selected a pair of burn patches. “Any ID on our attackers?”