Vision of the future swhot-2

by Timothy Zahn

  "It must stretch back farther than its roof indicated," Luke agreed, wondering how such a closely packed group of ships could ever be properly serviced. A glance upward gave him his answer: the entire area beneath the high ceiling was crammed with service, monitor, and fueling equipment, all held together by metal frames and a network of catwalks. "There must be a hundred of them here."

  "At least," Mara agreed... and as she spoke, Luke could sense that secret darkness deepen within her. It was about time he asked her about it—

  There was a sudden flicker of sensation from behind him. "Look out!" Mara snapped, spinning around and firing a pair of quick shots past his shoulder through the open door. Luke turned, too, snatching up his lightsaber and igniting it. A handful of Chiss were in the intersection they'd just left, scrambling reflexively out of the way of Mara's shots. "Keep firing," Luke told her, giving the door a quick look. There was no locking wheel on the hangar side, but there was a small hole where one had apparently been removed. Experimentally, he turned the wheel a few degrees; through the hole, the central axle of the locking mechanism could be seen turning. Perfect. He turned the wheel back to full-open again and with a quick slash of his lightsaber sliced it off flush with the door. Ducking under Mara's covering shots, he pushed the door closed. But it is still unlocked, Flier Through Spikes objected. They can use the grip-rocks to open it again.

  "Not for long," Luke assured him. Crouching down, he gazed through the hole at the central axle and stretched out to the Force. Without the wheel's leverage it was much harder to turn, but the thought of armed Chiss descending on the hangar was more than enough incentive. Ten seconds later, the door was securely locked.

  "That won't hold them for long," Mara warned. "If nothing else, they can head over the roof on foot and come in the other end."

  "I know," Luke said, craning his neck to peer past the parked ships. She was right: as they'd guessed from their first look at the place, the whole front of the hangar was wide open, with only a slight overhang to protect it from rain or attack. The fortress's designers, he decided, must not have intended for their hangar to be packed this full. "But it should slow them down long enough for us to borrow a ship and get out of here."

  "Then all we'll have to worry about is whatever they've got in those towers," Mara said tartly, pushing past him and ducking between two of the ships. "We'll have to take something from the front," she called back over her shoulder. "I'll try to get one started. You make sure that door is secured, then find a way to keep the rest of that front row from taking off after us."

  "Got it," Luke said. "Artoo, take Child Of Winds and follow Mara—give her a hand figuring out the flight systems. Splitter Of Stones, you and your people had better head out while you can. Thank you for your help."

  Our part is paid, Master Walker Of Sky, the Qom Jha said, his tone just slightly ominous. It will now be your part to rid us of the Threateners as you promised.

  With that, he and the others flapped away over the parked ships. "We'll do our best," Luke murmured.

  He double-checked the door, then took another moment to stretch his thoughts back into the corridor. It was empty. Apparently, the Chiss knew better than to waste their time with the impenetrable stone.

  Particularly with such an obvious alternative available. Thirty seconds later, following the sound of Artoo's wheels across the black stone, he reached the front of the hangar. Artoo and Child Of Winds were there, the latter again scrabbling for balance on top of the droid as the dome swiveled back and forth. Luke looked along the front line of ships, noting a gap in the neat array where one was apparently missing.

  Mara, however, was nowhere to be seen. "Artoo, where's Mara?"

  The droid warbled a negative, still looking around. Luke peered out into the dim sunlight and stretched out with the Force—

  "What are you waiting for?" Mara demanded as she ran up from behind him. "We need these ships disabled."

  "We were waiting for you," Luke told her, frowning. The dark secret still loomed in her mind; but there was something new to the texture now. All tinges of uncertainty or doubt had disappeared, replaced by a heavy cloud of deep and bitter sadness. Something vitally important had just happened...

  "Well, don't," she growled, slapping a release panel on the side of the nearest ship. Above them, a hatchway swung open and a ladder unfolded to the floor.

  "One of the ships seems to be missing," Luke pointed out.

  "I know—Parck mentioned it was on its way in," Mara said, swinging herself up onto the ladder.

  "Nothing we can do about that one. Go on, get busy."

  She disappeared inside. "Right," Luke murmured, reaching out with the Force to lift Artoo up and into the hatch behind her. Then, stepping to the next ship in line, he ran a quick eye over it. The fighter was three times the size of an X-wing, with a set of four TIE-fighter solar panels melding into a disturbing flow of alien lines.

  And presumably with a set of repulsorlifts on the underside...

  He ducked under the bow. There they were, one pair running longitudinally along each side of the centerline: the subtle but distinctive diamond pattern of repulsorlifts. Four quick slashes with his lightsaber, and they were no longer functional. Ducking around the landing gear, he moved on to the next ship.

  He had disabled seven of them, with another seven to go, when he caught the change in Mara's emotional texture. Slowly, with the slightly awkward movements that came of a pilot unfamiliar with her craft, the ship lifted half a meter off the floor and eased forward. His comlink beeped—"We've got company," Mara's voice announced tightly; and as Luke concentrated he could sense both wary Chiss minds and ysalamiri-created blank areas approaching over the rooftop. "Snap it up—I'll try to keep them busy."

  And she did. The interior of the hangar was flickering with reflected light from the firefight by the time Luke finished disabling the last of the fighters: soft blue flashes from the Chiss hand weapons, a sharper and brighter blue from Mara's ship. Ready, he thought toward her, sprinting across the line of disabled ships toward the end of the hangar opening where most of the brighter flashes seemed to be coming from. He reached it, eased a careful eye around the corner—

  Get ready, Mara's acknowledgment flowed into his mind; and with a sandstorm blast of backwash, the ship dropped past the overhang and bounced to a rough landing in front of him. Luke was ready. Even as the ship bounced up again, he was sprinting around its tail to its far side. The hatchway Mara had used earlier was standing open; throwing Jedi strength into his leg muscles, Luke leaped upward, catching the door and pulling himself inside to land in an undignified sprawl on the deck. "Go!" he shouted, stretching out with the Force to pull the hatch closed. Mara needed no encouragement. Already the ship was jumping toward the sky, the roar of repulsorlifts not quite drowning the pinging of Chiss shots slapping into the underside and back. Are we safe? Child Of Winds asked anxiously. He was pressed into the aft-most seat, his claws gripping the safety straps.

  "I think so," Luke soothed him, listening to the fading pings of heat-stressed metal as Mara pulled for altitude. "All they seem to have is antipersonnel weapons down there. Unless they can get their heavier stuff on line quickly—"

  "Luke, get up here," Mara's taut voice called back from the flight deck. Luke scrambled to his feet, his mind reaching out to Mara's. The dark thought was still there, lurking in the back of her mind. But it had now been superseded by something else, a tangle and mixture he couldn't decipher. He dodged past Artoo, gurgling pensively in a droid alcove, and dropped into the copilot seat beside Mara. "What is it?" he snapped.

  "Look at the fortress," Mara told him, turning the ship into a slow rotation.

  "What, the weapons towers?" Luke asked, stretching out with the Force as he looked down at the structure turning lazily into view out the canopy. He couldn't see or sense any indication they were preparing to fire. He glanced at Mara's board, searching for the sensor displays—

  "Forget the logist
ics and strategy for a minute," Mara said curtly. "Look at the fortress. Just look at it."

  Luke felt his forehead wrinkling as he gazed down through the canopy again. It was a fortress. Walls; a flat, roundish, angled roof with a hangar in the middle; four weapons towers following the curve of the roof in back, one intact tower farther down in front—

  "Look at it," Mara said again, very softly.

  And with a sudden shock, he saw it. "Stars of Alderaan," he breathed.

  "It's almost funny, isn't it?" Mara said, her voice sounding strange. "We automatically dismissed the whole idea that it could be some kind of superweapon. Thrawn never used superweapons, we all said.

  "And yet, that's exactly what it is. The only kind of superweapon someone like Thrawn ever used. The only kind he ever needed."

  Luke thought about that galaxy holo in the command center, and all the planets and resources Thrawn had gathered under his control. Enough to tip the balance of power in any direction its inheritors chose. "Information," he said, a shiver running through him. Mara nodded. "Information."

  Luke nodded back, gazing down at the fortress now receding into the surrounding hills as Mara pulled the ship away again. The flat-roofed fortress with its four towers in back and one in front stretching upward toward the sky. Looking for all the world like four fingers and a thumb reaching to pluck the stars from the sky.

  The Hand of Thrawn.

  * * *

  Just under a kilometer away from the fortress, shielded from view by a craggy ridge, was a deep indentation in the cliff face. Mara maneuvered the ship carefully in beneath the overhang and eased it as far back against the wall as she could. "That's it," she said, shutting down the repulsorlifts and feeling herself slump with fatigue and released tension. For the moment, at least, they were safe. For the moment.

  From the aft seat, Child Of Winds said something. Almost intelligibly this time, but Mara was too tired to even try to decipher it. "What did he say?" she asked.

  "He asked what we're going to do now," Luke translated. "A good question, actually."

  "Well, for right now, we're just going to sit here," Mara said, running a critical eye over Luke's outfit. There were a half-dozen new scorch marks where the Chiss' charric shots had made it through his defenses, and she could sense his automatic and almost unconscious suppression of the pain.

  "Looks to me like you could use a few hours in a healing trance."

  "That can wait," Luke said, gazing through the canopy at the landscape beyond the overhang, fading into the growing darkness of evening. "My damage to their repulsorlifts won't hold them for long. We have to get back in there before they can mount an aerial search for us."

  "Actually, I don't think they'll bother," Mara said, waving at her control board. "For one thing, the sensors on these things seem to be pretty useless for close-order ground searches. My guess is that they'll move troops into the areas where they think we stashed our ships and leave it at that."

  "You don't think they'll worry we might get back inside?"

  "And do what?"

  Luke frowned. "What do you mean?"

  Mara took a deep breath. "I mean I'm not sure we should even try to interfere with what they're doing."

  Child Of Winds made a noise like a choked-off comment. Luke glanced back at him, then turned again to Mara. "But they're enemies of the New Republic," he said. "Aren't they?" Mara shook her head. "I don't know. Just because they're in Imperial uniforms..." She sighed. "Look. Baron Fel was in there. The same Baron Fel who turned his back on the Empire years ago when he finally recognized how corrupt and vicious things had become under Isard and some of Palpatine's other successors.

  "Yet here he is, wearing an Imperial uniform again. Braintwisting is useless against a man like him—you'd ruin the fine combat edge that makes him useful to you in the first place. Something must have happened to legitimately change his mind."

  "Thrawn?"

  "In a way," Mara said. "Fel said Thrawn took him to the Unknown Regions and showed him around... and that that was when he agreed to rejoin."

  She could feel Luke's emotions darken. "There's something out there, isn't there?" he said quietly.

  "Something terrible."

  "According to the Chiss, there are a hundred terrible somethings out there," Mara said. "Of course, that is only the Chiss talking. Odds are that a lot of the dangers would be pretty harmless to something with the size and resources of the New Republic. Threats we could swat without any trouble if they ever ventured in past the Outer Rim."

  She shrugged uncomfortably. "On the other hand..."

  "On the other hand, Fel knows our resources as well as we do," Luke finished for her. "And yet he's here."

  Mara nodded. "He and Parck are both here. And neither of them seems to have any interest in wasting their resources in actions against the New Republic. That says a lot right there." For a long minute the ship was silent. Then Luke stirred. "Unfortunately, there's still one more point we have to consider," he said. "Bastion and the Empire. You said Parck was going to open contact with them?"

  "Yes," Mara confirmed, the quiet ache within her deepening. "And I don't trust the current Imperial leadership to see things with the same long-term perspective that Fel does. You give them the Hand of Thrawn and they will move against Coruscant."

  Luke gazed out the canopy again. "We can't let that happen," he said quietly. "Not with the New Republic in the state it's in."

  "Especially not if those resources are needed to battle some other threat," Mara agreed, unstrapping her restraints. "Which unfortunately means we have to get back in there and pull copies of that data for ourselves. At least then we'll have a chance of blocking whatever Bastion does to pull them in on the Imperial side."

  She could sense Luke forcing the tiredness from his mind. "You're right," he said as he started unfastening his own straps. "If we can get Artoo to a computer jack so he can download everything—"

  "Hold it, hold it," Mara said, reaching over and putting a restraining hand on his arm. "I didn't mean right this minute. We're not going anywhere until you get those burns healed."

  "They're nothing," Luke protested, glancing down across the scorch marks. "I can handle them."

  "Oh, bravely said," Mara said, fatigue and her private pain adding an unintended note of scorn into her voice. "Let me rephrase that: I'm not going anywhere with you until you're healed. You were just barely able to keep ahead of that last attack—I don't want any of your attention wasted on old injuries you could have gotten rid of with a few hours' rest. Understand?" He glared at her. But behind the glare, she could sense his grudging agreement. "All right, you win," he said with a sigh, resettling himself into his seat. "But you wake me right away if anything happens. I'll set up the phrase 'welcome back' to snap me out of it." Mara nodded. "Got it."

  "And even if nothing happens, wake me up in two hours," he added, closing his eyes. "It won't take them more than a few hours to get enough of the damaged ships out of the way to free up the ones in back. We'll need to get back there before then if we're going to stop Parck from handing all this over to Bastion."

  Without waiting for a reply, he took another deep breath and leaned back against the headrest. His thoughts and emotions cleared and faded, and he was gone. "Don't worry about Bastion," Mara said softly. "I'll take care of it."

  For a moment she sat there in the silence, gazing at his sleeping face, a tangle of emotions twisting through the darkness of her private agony. Ten years now they'd known each other, years that could have been filled with camaraderie and friendship. Years Luke had effectively wasted with his own lonely and arrogantly stupid wanderings through completely unnecessary pain and doubt. She ran a fingertip gently across his forehead, brushing back a few loose strands of hair. And yet, after all that, here they were together again, and the man she'd once so highly respected and cared for was finally back on his proper path.

  Or perhaps it was the two of them together who were on their proper p
ath. Perhaps.

  Behind her came a tentative questioning warble. "It's just a healing trance," Mara assured the droid, pushing the last of her straps away and getting out of her seat. "He'll be all right. You watch over things in here, okay?"

  The droid twittered again, his tone suddenly suspicious. "I'm going outside," Mara told him, making sure her sleeve blaster and lightsaber were secure. "Don't worry, I'll be back." She slid past him, ignoring his sudden flurry of comments and questions and popped the hatch. Child Of Winds brushed past her as the ladder unfolded, chirping rapidly for a few seconds and then flapping off into the deepening darkness.

  A darkness matched by the ache deep within her.

  For a moment she looked back at the top of Luke's head, visible over the chair's headrest, wondering if he had guessed her plan. But no. She'd carefully held it secret within her, behind the mental barriers Palpatine had so long ago taught her how to create.

  The old Luke, the one obsessed with solving every problem himself, might have forced his way in through those barriers to demand the truth. The new Luke, she knew, would never do such a thing. Later, probably, he would regret not having done so. But by then it would be too late. The simple fact was that Parck and the Chiss had to be prevented from giving the Empire the secrets of this place.

  And it was up to her to stop them. However she could. Whatever the cost. The droid had run out of words and was watching her, his stance somehow reminding her of that of a frightened child. "Don't worry," she soothed him quietly. "It'll be all right. Watch over him, okay?" The droid gave a forlorn moan of agreement. Stretching out with the Force, Mara turned and headed down the ladder.

  However she could. Whatever the cost.

  CHAPTER

  30

  Even late at night the Drev'starn spaceport was a bustling hive of activity, the pedestrians and vehicles casting long shadows in the bright light of the glow lamps as they hurried about their business. The same bright light, Navett thought as he strode along, that would make the spaceport an ideal target for the warships orbiting high above them.