He gave her a sympathetic look. “Claustrophobic?”
“Just a little,” she said with a reluctant nod. “But enough.”
“Me, too. Especially today. Don’t worry. The first thing you do when you’re lost is stop somewhere and ask for directions.” He keyed the comm system and entered Leia’s comlink code. “Leia? Leia, please respond. It’s Luke.”
No response. Not even static. “Leia, come in.”
“You can forget about that,” Aeona said. She waved a hand at the rock wall outside. “See the opalescence in that black stone, how it kind of shimmers? Looks like this whole cavern runs through a vein of meltmassif—that’s a kind of rock that—”
“I know what it is.” Luke flexed his hands; he could feel that shadowy echo of his nervous system—those tiny thin hairlines of crystal that spread throughout his body. “What’s it got to do with communications?”
“It blocks comm frequencies,” she said. “You’d need the comm suite of a capital ship to even have a chance of punching through.”
“Oh, is that all?” Luke found himself wearing a half smile very much like the one he imagined he’d be seeing on Han’s face right about now. He began toggling switches and striking keys. “Give me a minute, here.”
“I’m telling you it won’t help.”
“This ship was the personal vehicle of a commanding general in the Alliance of Free Planets.” He completed the sequence, and a hatch opened in the rear bulkhead to display an enormous state-of-the-art comm unit. “He resigned his commission, but Han’s just not the type to give back upgrades, you know? This unit can punch a signal all the way to the galactic rim. It’ll draw most of the power from the reactor core, but we’re not going anywhere anyway.” He looked up at the comm unit. “Leia? Are you there?”
Still no response. Luke frowned and clicked over to Han’s setting. “Han? Han, do you read? Han, come in! It’s Luke!”
The comm channel sputtered. “General Skywalker! We heard you’re in a bit of trouble.”
Luke frowned. “Lando? What are you doing in this system?”
“Asking myself that same question about sixty times an hour. What’s your position?”
“I’m not sure. Underground somewhere. I’m trying to find Leia—I could feel her in the Force near here, but I can’t anymore.”
“We lost contact with Han and Leia only a few minutes ago. Han said something about being in a cave. That’s why we’re monitoring his comlink setting. Listen, you’re not the only ones in trouble here. We could lose the whole task force.”
“We’ll lose more than that,” Luke muttered.
“Sorry? Didn’t copy that. Can you repeat?”
“No. Never mind.”
“Luke, I’m doing the best I can, but we really need you in this fight. How soon can you resume command?”
“I—can’t. It’ll take too long to explain. You run the battle, Lando. You’re a better general than I’ll ever be, anyway.”
“Couldn’t prove it by today. Keep me apprised; you just say the word and command is yours. Listen, there’s someone here who wants to speak with you.”
“Oh, oh, Master Luke! Oh, thank goodness you’re all right!”
“All right is a bit of an overstatement,” Luke said. “But it’s good to hear your voice, Threepio.”
“Oh, Master Luke, I’m most concerned! The Princess and Captain Solo are in terrible danger—and so are you!”
“I know,” Luke said. “But how do you know?”
“I have been monitoring the communications of their attackers—despite their perfectly barbarous diction. I am fluent in over—”
“You’ve told me before. What attackers? Where are they?”
“Please hurry, Master Luke—Artoo may have already been destroyed!”
“Threepio, tell me where they are!”
“Quite nearby, actually—no more than fifteen meters away, directly outward along the planetary radius.”
“They’re right above us?”
“Oh, yes. Their attackers have located you precisely—they’ve been discussing whether to, ah—the phrase translates roughly as imprison, or sequester, but it’s clearly some form of attack—whether to attack you now, or if they should pursue the Half-One, whoever that may be.”
Luke was no longer listening; he frowned dubiously up at the ceiling of smooth black stone above the cockpit. “Fifteen meters—that’s an awful lot of rock to cut through, even with a lightsaber.”
“That’s not ordinary rock,” Aeona said. “It’s meltmassif.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Then your friends are lucky I’m around, because I do. Which is something I hope you’ll explain to them when we find them, because I have a feeling they might be a little cranky with me.”
She reached over to the antipersonnel system and triggered the hull chargers. “Take it up,” she said. “Nice and slow.”
“Oh,” Luke said, understanding as the stun charge crackled over the Falcon’s skin. “I would have figured that out. Eventually.”
“Sure, I know,” she said sympathetically. “You’ve had kind of a tough day.”
“That’s one way to put it.” The ship rose to touch the meltmassif overhead. The stone instantly liquefied, sluicing down over the hull armor to pool in the small closed-off section of tunnel below. “How long does this stuff take to reharden?”
“I’m not sure. Why?”
“TIE fighters don’t have antipersonnel systems, and laser cannons can’t be set for stun.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “So we don’t have to worry a lot about unwelcome company. How much farther?”
Luke searched the Force. “Right… about… here.”
The Falcon breached the surface of the now-liquid stone like an Aquarian demonsquid hunting a leaping gnooroop. Rivers of meltmassif drained off the hull, as well as off and around a filthy human who clung fiercely to the only part of the ship that wasn’t sparking with several thousand volts of stun charge: the cockpit window.
Luke… Though inaudible, the words were clear on Han’s lips. He took her, Luke. She’s gone.
Cronal paused in the archway of the Cavern of the Shadow Throne. His Throne still hovered on its platform of meltmassif, all dark and sinister in the bloody glow of the lava-fall behind it. Looking upon the cavern through Kar Vastor’s eyes, he felt a bit melancholy; it truly was a pity that his magnificently staged reality holodrama would never reach the broad audience it deserved.
But such were the vicissitudes of life and art; rather than mourning his spoiled masterpiece, he resolved to focus entirely upon the truly important task of permanently securing a new and healthy body. Not to mention killing everyone who might know, or even suspect, that this young and lovely girl was in fact an old and ugly man.
He shifted the unconscious Skywalker girl from the massive shoulder of his stolen body and set her gently down.
He could not help taking a moment to contemplate her, as she lay upon the stone, lovely and graceful even in unconsciousness. He could not help recalling how he had watched her, through his years in Imperial Intelligence; he’d monitored her anti-Imperial activities for a considerable span prior to her open break and alleged treason at the time of the Alderaan affair. Young Senator Organa, he mused. Princess Leia Skywalker, hiding in plain sight for all those years. Who’d have thought it?
She was a superior choice to her brother in almost every way. After all, she was no Jedi; in her body, no one would expect him to go gallivanting across the galaxy, risking his life to save strangers. No, after the traumatic experience of surviving the Imperial trap that had taken the lives of her brother, her raffish paramour, and so many of her friends and allies, she would reluctantly retire from her life of adventure and devote herself full-time to politics.
She was perfect.
He closed his eyes and let his mind slip partially back into the ancient decrepit body that lay in its life-support chamber. From within that skull
, he could send forth his mind into the rock from which the cavern had been shaped, and seize once more the wills of the creatures that used it as their physical forms.
The bridge that had connected the cavern’s ledge to the Throne grew once more, carrying the Skywalker girl and Kar Vastor’s bulk out to the platform of the Shadow Throne before once more shrinking away. The stone of the platform itself rippled and spread and curved upward to entomb the unconscious girl and the immobile man in a seamless rocky shell that hovered far out above the lake of molten lava.
Cronal decided that this should very likely be sufficient to prevent unwelcome interruption.
Now all that remained was to ensure that his new body would not be consumed in the stellar conflagration that was already beginning. A palsied hand groped through the darkness to the chamber’s voice modulator, which would transform his creaky wheeze into Shadowspawn’s liquid basso, then he keyed a preset secure comm channel.
“Yes, my lord? Is it time?”
“It is,” Cronal said simply. “Engage.”
Then again he closed his eyes and returned his consciousness to the Vastor body. He didn’t bother to open that stolen body’s stolen eyes, for within the tomb of stone was only darkness. He had no need for eyes.
He tuned his stolen brain to the proper frequency for control and pushed, and the stone of their tomb responded. Ultrafine hairlines of crystal began to thread themselves in through the Skywalker girl’s pores, and in with the crystals came the full power of his will.
Sleep. This is the end of everything. Nothing left but sleep.
Sleep forever.
As soon as the cavern floor had rehardened enough to support the Falcon’s weight, Luke set her down and lowered the freight lift in the engineering bay. He unstrapped himself from the pilot’s couch and got up. “Come with me.”
Aeona stared out through the cockpit’s transparisteel. “I—can’t. I can’t go out there.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No—no, I mean it, Jedi. You don’t know what this place is.”
“Then tell me.”
“It’s a Melter crypt.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “Melters are—I don’t know what they are. You heard your friend on the comm. The attackers he was talking about, they have to be Melters. They… just come out of the walls. Or up from the ground. Anywhere there’s meltmassif. If they touch you it’s like a stun blast. Then they carry you to a crypt and stick you into the rock.”
She looked at Luke with haunted eyes. “And they leave you there.”
Luke nodded out toward the people partially entombed around the walls and in the floor. “So I see.”
“I’ve been marooned on this planet for weeks, trying to get Nick back. That’s why I’m hooked up with the Mindorese. They needed a leader. I needed troops. But the Melters…” She shook her head. “They’d hit us without any warning at all. Sometimes we could hold ’em off long enough to get away… sometimes people got left behind. We found a few. A couple were even still alive. But they were never the same. Not after their time in the dark.”
“I can imagine.”
“Can you imagine being trapped like that? Alone in the dark? Darker than dark. Darker than empty space.”
“Yes,” Luke said. “I can.”
“That’s how I got a little claustrophobic, you know? There’s nothing darker than the inside of a cave.”
Luke could have told her different. “If you say so.”
“So you understand why I can’t go out into a Melter crypt.”
“I understand why you don’t want to. But you’re going anyway.”
“What, you’re going to make me?”
Luke tilted his head. “It’s the only way I can think of to stop Han from killing you on sight.”
Her hand drifted near her tied-down holster. “I’m not so easy to kill.”
“You don’t understand. Han’s my best friend.” Luke said gently. “If one of you has to die, it’ll be you.”
Aeona said, “Uh.”
“I want you to be absolutely clear on this. There should be no doubt in your mind. None at all.”
“No,” she said. “I read you. I do.”
“Then let’s go.”
They took the main corridor aft, avoiding the cargo holds that were still filled with Aeona’s troopers. When they got to the engineering bay, Luke motioned to Aeona to wait at the hatch while he went in. Han, arms and legs caked with shards of hardened meltmassif, was already standing on the freight lift, jittering with impatience. “Luke! Come on, we have to go! We have to go after her. Bring me up!”
Luke sighed. “You didn’t see who was with me in the cockpit.”
“There was somebody with you? How did you get the Falcon back from those pirates? Please tell me you killed them all. Especially that redheaded piece of—”
“Not exactly.” He beckoned to Aeona. “She’s here to apologize.”
Her face darkened. “Apologize?” she snapped. “You didn’t say anything about—”
“I’m saying it now.”
Han jumped back, his hand full of blaster and his face full of murder. “You! You stole my ship!”
She ducked and took cover on the far side of the hatchway. “Brought it back, didn’t I?”
“Han. Put your blaster away.” Maybe being a general for a few months was paying off; Luke’s tone of authority stopped Han cold. “I mean it.”
“Ah, whatever,” Han said with a disgusted shrug. He spun the blaster around his finger. “It’s empty anyway.”
Luke nodded. “Aeona?”
She reluctantly came back through the hatch. “Uh, hey, Solo. Sorry. Really.”
“Sorry?” Han flushed. “Sorry?”
“Hey, what do you want from me? He said apologize. I’m apologizing.”
“Aeona,” Luke said quietly. “Tell him why you did it.”
“Huh? What does that have to do with anything?”
“It might make a difference. To him.”
She sighed. “I needed your ship, Solo. My—uh, there’s this guy, and we’re kind of together—”
Han’s eyes narrowed, and his lips compressed. “You’re in love with this guy, and he’s in trouble.”
“Actually, he’s in your quad turret.”
Han waved this off. “But you’re in love with him.”
She looked away. “I figured this assault would be my only chance to get him back alive. I couldn’t even make a try without a ship, and I just didn’t have time to play nice about it, okay?”
“You could have asked,” Han growled.
“And if you said no, we’d still have had to fight you—and fight you without having the drop on you. Which, from what I’ve heard about you, isn’t exactly a good idea.”
Han’s flush deepened. “Well…”
“Easier to get forgiveness than permission, right? Isn’t that how you do it when someone you love is in danger? I seem to recall a couple stories…”
“All right, all right,” he said. “Drop it.”
“I’m not asking you two to like each other,” Luke said. “But you have to at least tolerate each other. Any problems between you will have to wait until we all live through this. Understood?”
“Wow,” Han said. “Who put you in charge?”
Aeona snorted. “I asked him the same thing.”
“Let me put it another way,” Luke said patiently. “Every second I have to waste worrying if you two will shoot each other is another second we’re not using to rescue Leia and get us all off this planet and out of this system before the whole thing burns.”
He jumped down to the lift platform. “Aeona, muster your Mindorese and start helping the survivors. Han, you look after Chewie. Make sure he doesn’t kill anybody when he wakes up, huh?”
“Yeah, he’s grumpy in the morning,” Han said. “What are you gonna do now?”
“Me?”
Luke stared down at his left hand, the flesh one. He flexed it int
o a fist and straightened it again, feeling the unfamiliar energy that trickled through the crystalline shadow web that mirrored his nerves. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed himself into a deeper, more intimate connection with the Force; with the Force to guide him, he touched the shadow web with his mind and bent it to his will. When he opened his eyes again, his hand had sprouted a thin thatch of glistening black crystal threads, finer than human hair.
Han flinched and made a face. “What is that?”
Luke moved off the freight lift and knelt, lowering his palm to the floor. “That,” he said, “is how I’m going to talk with the Melters.”
Making contact with the Melters wasn’t the had hard part. Luke simply laid his left hand on the shimmering black stone of the crypt wall. His hand’s sprouted thatch of shadow web melded instantly with the stone’s crystalline structure…
And they were there. He could feel them.
It was an unfamiliar sensation, vaguely analogous to sight—he sensed them in the stone the way one human might see another from a distance.
Getting their attention wasn’t hard, either. They became aware of him in the same instant that he perceived them—and they knew he perceived them. He sensed their instant curiosity and puzzlement, and felt the interchange of lightning-fast pulses of energy between them like a conversation in a language he could not understand.
The hard part was actually talking to them.
They sent tentative, questing pulses toward him in what could have been a cautious hello, and he felt his own shadow web respond, but not like an answer. More like an echo, or a harmonic overtone—as though the dark mirror of his nervous system was warping into some kind of resonance with their signal. To communicate with them, he would have to send his mind fully into the shadow web alongside his nerves, into his internal void that swallowed even the memory of light. He’d have to join them in the dark.
In the Dark.
To bring his consciousness into resonance with the Melters would require that he not only stare into that abyss, but dive into it headfirst. To drown himself in the void. To let the dark close over his face and seep into his ears and eyes and down his throat and entomb him in the empty, meaningless end of all things.
Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Page 26