by Timothy Zahn
“Hold it,” LaRone said as his comlink gave a double-ping signal. “They’re here. Marcross?”
Marcross nodded and keyed the supply lift. It rose to the street level, and once again there was the sound of feet and the thud of equipment from above them. LaRone’s comlink pinged again, and he gestured again to Marcross.
This time, it wasn’t a Wookiee and a bacta tank that came into view as the platform returned to the cellar. This time it was Brightwater, heavy satchels full of stormtrooper equipment from their speeder truck—
And five of the knife-making, green-scaled, badly dressed Troukree.
“Welcome,” LaRone said, his eyes flicking across the aliens and picking out Vaantaar. “We’re very grateful for your willingness to come.”
“No thanks needed,” Vaantaar said, his dark green scales and fur patches looking even darker in the cellar’s artificial light. “I regret that I could not bring more of my people. But our defenseless must not be left alone.”
“Understood,” LaRone said. “Rest assured that whatever Brightwater pledged in return for your aid, you will receive it.”
“Brightwater pledged a great deal of money,” Vaantaar said, looking at Brightwater as he and the other Troukree began lugging the bags into the cellar. “We accepted nothing, save your promise that we would be fighting against Nuso Esva’s forces.” His white-rimmed eyes looked over at Ferrouz. “This is not one we have met.”
“Not yet, no,” LaRone confirmed. “Governor, this is Vaantaar and his fellow Troukree, master knife crafters and enemies of Warlord Nuso Esva. Vaantaar, this is Governor Bidor Ferrouz, Imperial administrator of Poln Major and Candoras sector.”
“We are honored to serve with those who also stand against Nuso Esva,” Vaantaar said, bowing toward Ferrouz. “We are doubly honored to serve he who has graciously permitted us refuge on this world, we and our defenseless.”
“Glad we’re all friends here,” Quiller said, wincing as he sat down on the floor beside Grave’s bacta tank, his wounded leg stretched out awkwardly to the side. “Tell me, Vaantaar, can any of you shoot a blaster?”
Vaantaar exchanged glances with one of the other Troukree. “Our skill is with our knives,” he said, tapping the pair sheathed at his waist. “In a space so confined, that is all we shall need.”
“Maybe,” Quiller said. “But a little additional training wouldn’t hurt.”
“Agreed,” LaRone seconded. “Marcross?”
“That’s okay—I can do it,” Quiller volunteered, popping the back of his E-11 and readjusting it to practice mode. “I’m not much use with anything else at the moment. Get your people over here, Vaantaar.” He gave LaRone a humorless smile. “Let’s see how fast we can turn you into Imperial stormtroopers.”
Leia had been hanging out the side of the speeder bus for what seemed like hours, and her eyes were aching with the task of staring continuously at the gravelly tunnel rolling by beneath them, when her comlink suddenly signaled.
“Han, stop,” she ordered, pulling herself back into the bus and setting down her glow rod.
Typically, infuriatingly, he ignored her, if anything picking up his speed a little. Sending a useless glare at the side of his head, Leia pulled out her comlink and thumbed it on. “Yes; Leia.”
“Finally,” Cracken’s voice growled. “Where have you been?”
“I don’t even know where we are now, let alone where we’ve been,” Leia admitted. “At least we’re close enough to civilization to get a comlink relay. Han, can we at least stop long enough to figure out where we are?”
“Not a good idea.” Han grunted, pointing back over his shoulder. “We’ve got company.”
Leia turned to look. In the distance behind them were a set of distant headlights. Several sets, actually. “How long have they been there?” she asked.
“Maybe three minutes,” Han told her. “They came out of a couple of the cross-tunnels at that last big intersection.”
“You think they’re after us?”
“You seen any other traffic around here?” he countered.
Leia grimaced. “Not since we left.”
“Leia?” Cracken called.
“We’ve picked up some tails,” Leia told him grimly. “At least three landspeeders, maybe more behind them.”
“And you’re in what?”
“A speeder bus,” Leia said. “An old one, too. Once they figure out it’s us, we’re not going to be able to outrun them.”
“They have to spot us first,” Han said. “This far ahead of them, with no lights showing, they might not realize we’re here.”
“You get all that?” Leia asked into her comlink.
“Enough of it,” Cracken said. “You said you just passed an intersection. Any idea which one it was?”
“I wasn’t looking in that direction,” Leia said. “Han? Did you get a number on that intersection?”
“The biggest of the tunnels was labeled AF-two-two-seven-five,” Han said. “I didn’t catch the others.”
“We just passed AF-two-two-seven-five,” Leia told Cracken. “But I don’t know which one we’re in right—”
“There’s another tunnel coming up,” Han interrupted, pointing ahead.
Leia peered out the windscreen, tensing. The tunnel markers at each of the intersections were small, and if they shot past it with their headlights still off they probably wouldn’t be able to read it.
But if they turned the lights on now, the landspeeders behind them would instantly spot them.
It was a gamble. But she and Han had no choice but to take it. Reaching to the console, she flipped on the lights.
“No!” Han barked, lunging toward the switch.
Leia batted his hand aside, her squinting eyes on the blaze of light in front of them. The tunnel marker flashed past—“RK-oh-one-four-oh,” she called into the comlink, reaching for the light control.
And winced as Han’s hand closed around hers. “Don’t bother,” he said, pushing her hand aside. “If they didn’t already know we were here, they do now. Might as well have the light.”
“Sorry,” she said, pulling her hand free of his grip.
“Don’t tell me sorry,” he said. “Tell me Cracken’s got a roadblock on the way ready to slide in behind us.”
“I think I can do better than that,” Cracken said. “Can you hold out another five or six minutes?”
Leia looked behind them. The lights back there didn’t seem to be getting any closer. “We can try,” she said. “Tell us what to do.”
“There’s a conveyance tunnel cutting across yours about six kilometers ahead,” he said. “Turn left into it and run the best speed you can manage.”
“I think we’re already doing that,” Leia said, frowning. Why weren’t the lights back there getting closer? Surely they’d figured out this was their renegade bus by now.
“I gather that means Solo’s driving,” Cracken said. “Keep the link open, and hang on.”
The minutes ticked slowly by. Leia alternated her attention between the tunnel ahead and the lights behind. As far as she could tell, their pursuers still weren’t gaining on the bus.
Which could only mean one thing. “They must have friends up ahead,” she told Han. “They’re herding us, trying to run us into an ambush.”
“You just figure that out?” Han asked.
Leia felt her face warming. “Forgive me for not thinking like a smuggler,” she growled. “You have an actual plan? Or you just like the satisfaction of knowing in advance what’s about to hit you?”
“Of course I’ve got a plan,” Han said. “Their comlinks couldn’t have hooked up with the system any faster than ours did. That means they’ve just started putting the ambush in place. All we have to do is get there and get past it before they do.”
“Brilliant,” Leia said. “And what if they’ve got full-power comms instead of comlinks, and have been in contact with the ambush squad the whole time?”
A muscle in Han’s c
heek twitched. “In that case, the plan is to shoot our way through and hope that Cracken’s got a really good countermove in the works.”
Leia grimaced. “I thought so,” she said. “Look—there. There’s the conveyance tunnel.”
“I see it,” Han said. “Hang on. This could get a little rough.”
“Right.” Leia slipped into the seat behind him and got a two-handed grip on one of the support bars.
The bus roared up to the conveyance tunnel and careened around in a tight circle, nearly slamming into the far wall before Han got it back under control. In the distance, Leia could see a few faint glow panels in the tunnel ceiling, too far away to illuminate anything nearby. For a moment the bus fishtailed wildly, and then Han got it straightened out. He did something to the console, and Leia could hear the repulsorlifts straining as he tried to get more power out of them. She looked ahead at the distant ceiling lights, wondering if they marked another tunnel intersection—
She caught her breath, her eyes and brain abruptly registering the fact that the glow panels weren’t as far away as she’d thought, and were in fact moving toward them. She opened her mouth to shout a warning to Han.
And right at the top edge of the bus’s headlight glow, three airspeeders appeared and shot past over their heads.
Leia spun around, catching another view as they reappeared behind the bus, heading toward the corridor she and Han had just left. Only with that longer view she realized now that the vehicles weren’t just airspeeders.
They were X-wing fighters.
Taking a deep breath, she raised the comlink to her lips. “You could have told us what you were planning,” she said as calmly as she could.
“They there already?” Cracken asked. “Great. That’s Antilles for you—flies as crazy as Solo does.”
“Good thing, too,” Leia said. “What now?”
“Just keep going,” Cracken told her. “He’ll have left one of the X-wings ahead to guide you back.”
“I see him,” Han called over his shoulder. “About half a kilometer ahead.”
“You should be only about twenty minutes away,” Cracken went on. “Get here as fast as you can.”
“We will,” Leia said. “In the meantime, get all the crew chiefs together. We’ve got some bad news.”
“They’re already assembled,” Cracken said grimly. “Because whatever your bad news is, I guarantee mine is worse.”
It had been a long, hard day, and Mara was dozing lightly behind the guard foyer hardpoint when the soft click of the lock release snapped her fully awake. By the time the door swung open she had shifted from a sitting position into a crouch, lightsaber in hand.
She’d expected Pakrie to be the cautious, thorough type and send a small army of thugs or mercenaries, like the group who’d attacked Ferrouz’s office earlier. But she could hear only a single set of footsteps coming through the door on the other side of the hardpoint. Midway through the foyer the steps paused, as if their owner was listening, then resumed their path toward the door leading into the suite.
Could Pakrie really have come alone? Or was her visitor someone else? General Ularno, maybe, whose rigidly simplistic mind had decided he should drop in and check on her? The footsteps passed Mara’s hiding place, and she leaned a few centimeters out for a look.
Fortunately for Ularno, it wasn’t him. It was indeed Pakrie, a blaster in his hand and a grimly determined look on his face.
Yet he was still alone. Why was he still alone?
It was, Mara decided, a question worth asking. Shifting her lightsaber from her right hand to her left, she reached out with the Force and tapped the outside edge of Pakrie’s right boot, as if something alive had brushed against him.
Pakrie reacted instantly, leaping to his left as he spun around to see what was down there. Silently, Mara rose to her feet, took a long step up behind him, and tapped him gently on the right shoulder.
Pakrie twitched violently and again spun around. But a second sudden movement right on top of the first was too much for his coordination. Even as he flailed for balance, Mara caught his hand, deftly wrenched the blaster from his grip, and turned it around to point at him. At the same time she jabbed the hilt end of her lightsaber into his stomach, then turned the weapon sideways and pressed it against his stomach, shoving him backward.
An instant later she had him pinned to the foyer wall by the safe room door, lightsaber hilt still pressed against his stomach, his own blaster jammed up under his chin. “Now,” she said conversationally. “You’ve got ten seconds to tell me why I shouldn’t execute you for treason.”
For another two seconds he just stared at her from wide, panicky eyes. Then, suddenly his mental gears seemed to catch, and Mara sensed his fear change into an almost righteous indignation. “Me?” he countered. “I’m not the traitor—Ferrouz is. He’s made a deal with the Rebels—”
“Yes, I know,” Mara interrupted. “How does any of that give you the authority to kidnap his wife and daughter?”
“They weren’t kidnapped, they’re in protective custody,” Pakrie said stiffly. “It was for their own good.”
“Their good?” Mara asked. “Or yours?”
Pakrie’s throat worked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Let me tell you what I think,” Mara said, stretching out toward him with the Force, sifting through every nuance of thought and emotion. “I think someone came and dangled the chance to be a hero in front of you. They told you Ferrouz was a traitor, and that with your help they could prove it, and your career would take off like a Star Destroyer out of dry dock. Any of this sounding familiar?”
Pakrie didn’t answer. But he didn’t have to. The rigidity of his face and the unpleasant swirling of his emotions were all the evidence Mara needed. “Of course, they didn’t mention that you were going to have to commit high crimes to do it,” she went on. “And by the time you realized that you were already in too deep to get out.”
“Ferrouz is still a traitor,” Pakrie insisted, an edge of desperation in his voice. “I’m a security officer. I can do whatever is necessary to find and expose treason.”
“So can I,” Mara said, suddenly thoroughly disgusted with the man. “Only I don’t have to answer to anyone afterward. You do. Tell me where Ferrouz’s wife and daughter are.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw the door to the suite inexplicably slide open.
And from inside the suite came a thunderous burst of blasterfire.
Mara reacted instantly, shoving hard off Pakrie’s stomach with her left hand as she hurled herself to the floor, firing a couple of random shots back at her unknown attackers to try to throw off their aim. She could see a group of figures moving back there, silhouetted against the light streaming through the door from inside, and caught a glimpse of rainbow-tinted skin, flowing black hair, and glittering yellow eyes.
And then her back hit the floor, and as she fired off a couple more shots she turned her momentum into a flat somersault that carried her to temporary safety behind the far side of the hardpoint where she’d been hiding a few minutes earlier. The incoming fire shifted in response, some of the bolts cutting through the air behind her back, the rest splattering off the metal or else finding its way through the observation and firing slits. Through the screaming of the barrage she could hear her attackers moving single-file through the door and spreading out to both sides of the foyer in an attempt to flank her.
Reaching up, she wedged the muzzle of Pakrie’s blaster into the firing slit, flipping it to full automatic as she did so. She squeezed the trigger, sending a spitting firestorm back at her attackers, and jammed her comlink into the trigger guard to keep the fire coming. Then, using the Force to sweep the weapon back and forth, she slipped around the far side of the hardpoint.
Coming from a lighted suite into the relative darkness of the guard foyer, with their attention focused on the gyrating blaster spitting its arc of death toward them, they probably never saw the black-suited fi
gure come around toward the end of their flanking line. The first hint that their ambush had failed was most likely the sudden blaze of light at the side of the room as Mara ignited her lightsaber.
The battle was short and sharp, the attackers hampered by the fact that the very flanking line they’d been setting up left them in position to interfere with one another’s fire. Quickly, systematically, Mara walked down their line, alternating between cutting down the attackers within reach and blocking the blasterfire from those were weren’t. Somewhere along the way the blaster she’d set to automatic fire ran out of power and went quiet, still hanging by its muzzle from the firing slit.
Eight bodies later, it was over.
For a moment Mara stood in the center of the carnage, her lightsaber humming in her ears, confirming to herself that they were all dead. Then, stepping to the wall beside the open door, she closed down the weapon and used the Force to enhance her hearing. If the attackers had left a second wave in reserve, now was the time for them to show themselves.
But there was no second wave. There was nothing. The suite was empty.
It was only then, as Mara returned her hearing to normal, that she realized Pakrie was gone.
Sprinting to the outer door, she pulled it open and stepped out into the tunnel. But he was nowhere in sight. Nor was there any sound of footsteps, even with enhanced hearing.
Cursing under her breath, she returned to the guard foyer, closing the heavy door behind her. Even preoccupied with her defense, she should have seen Pakrie making his break. Only she hadn’t, and now it was too late.
Or maybe not. Crossing to the hardpoint, she retrieved her comlink from the drained blaster’s trigger guard and keyed for LaRone. “Status?” she asked.
“All quiet,” he reported. “Grave is being treated, the governor is recovering, and Quiller and Brightwater are running our new recruits through some quick training. Yours?”
“Not as good,” Mara said. “Pakrie got into the safe room, along with a bunch of aliens who fit the description of Nuso Esva you gave me. Best guess is that these are his personal shock troops, sent to make sure the job was done right this time.”