by Timothy Zahn
Luke took his hand off his lightsaber, letting his breath out slowly in a silent sigh of relief. His original idea, back when he’d first borrowed this ship, had been to simply take whatever food he’d scrounged into the box with him. But that plan had felt wrong, somehow, and he and Artoo had worked out this variation instead. He was very glad now that they had.
“So get him unloaded and out of here,” Control said. “You see any sign of that SB-20 droid he said he brought? I want that one next.”
“Uh … no. Only droid box I see is an R2 unit.”
“That’s the one,” Control said. “A SB-20 is an R2 shell with espionage gear and programming tucked away inside.”
Luke’s box lurched as the pirate got his float cart underneath it. “Never heard of it.”
“They’re not exactly advertised at droid depots,” Control said acidly. “The captain’s been after Wesselman for one for years.”
Grinner grunted. “And this one just happens to show up here today, huh? Convenient.”
“Give it a rest, Grinner,” the other pirate in the hold said. “Okay, I’ve got the droid. Where do you want it?”
“Electronics shop,” Control told him. “The captain wants Pap and K’Cink to check it out.”
“Right.”
A moment later they were off, angling down the ramp and across the landing-bay floor. Luke braced himself against the droid shell, listening to the sounds around him and trying to ignore the violent shaking that was really only the small bumps and vibrations of the float cart. He had assumed he would be taken to whatever storage place the rest of the cargo was bound for, which would presumably have given him a certain amount of privacy for his exit from the box. On the other hand, the electronics shop was probably closer to the command areas of the base, which was his ultimate goal. All in all, a fair trade-off.
They passed through one of the pressure doors, and for a few minutes the only sounds were the hum of the float cart’s repulsorlifts and the pirate’s footsteps and raspy breathing. Then, gradually, more sounds began to filter in: other voices and footsteps, mostly distant but occasionally passing close by. Luke stretched out with the Force, sensing a variety of human and alien minds in the vicinity. There was an odd change of echo as they apparently left the corridor and entered a larger room; another change, this time in reverse, marked where they left the room and passed into a corridor again. The float cart turned around a corner, then another; entered another open space filled with the dull rumble of muted voices—
“Lanius?” Control’s voice said.
“Yeah, you got me,” the pirate pushing Luke’s float cart said.
“Change of plans—Pap’s got something torn apart in the shop and doesn’t have room for your droid. Go park it in the Level Four storeroom.”
“Yeah, okay.” The float cart slowed and changed direction. “Too much to ask for them to make up their minds?”
“Very funny,” Control growled. “Just hustle it, okay?”
“I’m hustling, I’m hustling,” Lanius grumped under his breath.
The cart moved on; but even as it again changed corridors, Luke began to feel an odd sensation tingling at the back of his mind. Somewhere—somehow—something had suddenly gone wrong.
He stretched out with the Force again, trying to track down the sensation. Ahead, a door hissed open and the cart again entered a large room. It seemed to be taking a long time to get across it …
And then, abruptly, the cart stopped. “What the—” the pirate spat.
“Get out of the way, Lanius,” the voice of Control boomed over a loudspeaker. “You’ve got yourself a rider.”
The pirate bit out a curse, and there was a scramble of feet as he darted away from the lift cart. “All right, whoever you are,” Control continued. “We know you’re in there—we got a clear scan from the security corridor. Come on out.”
Luke grimaced. So that’s what that tingling sensation had been: a premonition of the mess he was now in. A pity he hadn’t paid more attention to it, though offhand he couldn’t see what he could have done to change anything at that point.
And anyway, berating himself for errors in judgment would gain him nothing. Pulling out his comlink, he thumbed it on. “Artoo?” he said softly.
There was no answer, just a quiet burst of static. “Oh, and we’ve also jammed your transmissions,” Control added. “I’m afraid the only one you’re going to be able to talk to is me.”
So Luke was on his own. Tucking his lightsaber a little deeper into its hiding place, he sealed the tunic flap loosely across it. “Okay,” he shouted. “Hold your fire—I’m coming out.”
He released his Force grip on the side panel and let it swing open. Three pirates were visible, standing well back from the box, their blasters steady on him. Five others, he could sense, were spread out around the box outside his field of view.
Five others, plus a Defel skulking somewhere in the shadows as backup. Once again, they weren’t taking any chances.
“Well, well,” Control’s voice said as Luke eased his way out of the disemboweled droid and stood up. “Took a wrong turn, did you, Mensio?”
“No, I think it was Lanius who took the wrong turn,” Luke said, keeping his hands away from his blaster as he looked around. They were in a large, high-ceilinged room, with stacked boxes lining two of the walls. His box had been set down in an otherwise unoccupied corner away from the rest of the merchandise; the eight pirates were arrayed in a rough semicircle around him. He didn’t spot the Defel, but it was probably somewhere between him and the only door, across the room behind the ring of blasters. “I came to see your captain, not your inventory.”
One of the pirates facing Luke growled something unintelligible. “I think you ought to know that Hensing there really despises sarcastic jinks,” Control said.
“Really,” Luke said, sending another casual glance toward the door area. The glow panel switch was just to the side of the panel: a simple push plate that he could trigger with the Force. Perfect. “Sorry to hear that.”
“You could get a lot sorrier,” Control warned. “He has a theory that jinks get less sarcastic when they’ve had a hand or two blown off.”
Luke smiled grimly, flexing the fingers of his artificial right hand. “He’s right about that,” he said. “Take my word for it.”
“Just so we understand each other,” Control said. “Take out your blaster—I’m sure you know the routine.”
“Sure,” Luke said, pulling out his blaster with exaggerated care and lowering it to the floor in front of him. “You want the spare power packs, too?” he asked, pointing to the two small flat boxes riding the other side of his gunbelt.
“No, you’re welcome to hide behind them if you’d like,” Control said. “Just kick the blaster away from you.”
Luke complied, using the Force to make sure the weapon skidded to a halt precisely at Hensing’s feet. “Happy?”
“Happier than you’re going to be,” Control said. “I don’t think you realize how much trouble you’re in here, Mensio.”
It was time, Luke decided, to switch tacks. “Fine, no more nonsense,” he said, putting an edge into both his voice and his posture. “I’m here to talk to your captain about making a deal.”
If Control was impressed by the new Mensio, his voice didn’t show it. “Sure you are,” he said. “What, you couldn’t call for an appointment?”
“I wanted to check out your security,” Luke told him. “See if you’re the sort of people my employer would be interested in doing business with.”
“And what would this business consist of?”
“I was instructed to discuss it with your captain,” Luke said loftily. “Not underlings.”
Hensing growled again, lifting his blaster. “Then your employer is either stupid or a fool or both,” Control said. “You have five seconds to give me something solid. After that, I turn Hensing loose on you.”
“If you insist,” Luke said, crossing his
arms across his chest and looking across the room at the glow panel switch. That warning tingle had returned … “We understand that you’re using clones to crew some of your ships. We want to discuss hiring some of them from you.”
Control tsked. “Sorry—wrong answer. Take him.” The pirates lifted their blasters—
And reaching out through the Force, Luke flipped off the glow panels.
There was a snarled curse, almost drowned out by the sputtering of multiple blaster bolts cutting through the air where Luke had been standing. But Luke was no longer there. A Force-strengthened leap had sent him sailing over their heads toward the door, lightsaber ready in his hand. If they’d been overconfident enough not to leave a guard outside the door—
There was a flicker of premonition, and he had the lightsaber in guard position just as he spotted the Defel’s pale red eyes gazing down at him from the top of one of the stacks of boxes. He sensed rather than saw the weapon tracking toward him, igniting the lightsaber just as the blaster’s flash sparked from between the red eyes.
The green blade blazed into existence, startlingly bright in the darkness, deflecting the Defel’s blaster bolt harmlessly away. But even as he hit the floor beside the door, Luke realized the Defel had won this round. His shot had missed, but he had forced Luke to reveal both his location and his true identity.
The other pirates weren’t slow in picking up on either. Someone across the room swore—“It’s Skywalker!” another shouted—and suddenly a fresh volley of blaster fire was raining through the air toward him.
Luke backed to the door, letting the Force guide his defense. The door had probably been sealed; jumping sideways toward it to temporarily throw off his opponents’ aim, he slashed twice with his lightsaber. A flat dive out the opening, and he was free.
The corridor outside was deserted. Rolling back to his feet, lightsaber at the ready, he stretched out with the Force, seeking the ambush that must surely be lurking nearby. But there were no other presences that he could detect. “Giving up already?” he called.
“Hardly,” Control’s voice came from a speaker set into the ceiling a few meters away. “Rather foolish of you to give away your identity so quickly.”
“I prefer to think of it as an overabundance of confidence,” Luke countered, stretching out a little harder. Still nothing; and if he’d really caught them off guard, it wouldn’t be smart to give them time to regroup. Picking what he hoped was the direction he’d come from, he set off at a fast trot. “You ready to tell me where you’re getting your clones from?” he added toward the speaker. “I’d really rather not have to hunt down your captain and ask him personally.”
“Hunt all you like,” Control said, his voice now coming from a different speaker farther down the corridor. Clearly, they were tracking Luke’s movements. “You won’t find anyone here who knows. But thank you for confirming that was what you came here to learn.”
“You’re welcome,” Luke said, clenching his teeth as the tingle of danger again tugged at him. Ahead, the corridor curved gently to the right; and somewhere beyond the curve he could finally sense other presences waiting for him.
It was a classic bottle-squeeze setup: pin the enemy in a curve or angle where he would be trapped in a crossfire without the two ends of the crossfire shooting at each other. He could sense the pirates he’d left behind in the storeroom piling out into the corridor now; a few more heartbeats, and there would be blaster fire coming at his back.
But the pirates’ contingency plans were unlikely to have included the possibility of a Jedi running loose in their base. Just this side of the curve, a heavy blast door revealed the presence of a side corridor leading out of the trap to the left. The blaster he’d left back in the storeroom wouldn’t have made a dent in it; but he had a far more efficient way of opening doors than the pirates could have anticipated. Skidding to a stop in front of the blast door, he ignited his lightsaber and slashed through the lock mechanism. It began sliding ponderously open—
There was a flicker of warning, and Luke spun around just in time to sweep the lightsaber blade across three incoming blaster bolts. The pirates from the storeroom, seeing their bottle-squeeze about to fail, were charging full speed toward him, firing as they ran. Luke blocked two more bolts—the rest were going wide—and ducked through the still opening blast door into a wide corridor.
The corridor’s appearance was a surprise. Unlike the rough-hewn feel of the rest of the base, this area looked like it might have been transplanted straight from inside a capital starship. Smooth metal-lined walls formed a square cross section about four meters wide, the corridor itself stretching twenty meters before ending in a T-junction with another of the more typical rocky corridors.
The only light was the spillover coming from behind Luke and the similar glow from the far end. Even so, there was enough illumination to see that all the surfaces of the corridor—walls, ceiling, and floor—were covered with a decorative pattern of three-centimeter-diameter circles spaced about ten centimeters apart.
The corridor itself was deserted, and Luke could sense no one skulking around the corners ahead. Apparently, he had indeed caught them off guard.
But his danger sense was still tingling. Something about the corridor? Still, with two groups of enemies behind him, there was nowhere to go but through. Senses alert for a trap, he headed down the corridor.
He’d made it four steps when, without warning, gravity abruptly reversed itself, sending him falling toward the ceiling.
There was no chance for physical or mental preparation. His head and shoulders slammed into the metal, sending a jolt of pain arcing through him, the rest of his body tumbling down with a dull thud and more pain. He gasped for breath—the impact had knocked most of the air out of him—but before he could get more than half a lungful he was falling again, this time sideways toward one of the side walls.
He landed hard on his right side, a fresh stab of pain lancing through head and shoulder and hip as he scrabbled around for a handhold. But there was nothing to grip on the smooth metal. Stretching out to the Force, he sensed the gravitational field starting to change again; and then his new floor suddenly became the ceiling again, and he was falling toward the far wall.
But not toward flat metal this time. Twisting his head around, he saw that what he’d taken to be decorative circles drawn in the wall were in fact the heads of flat-tipped metal rods. They had extruded outward from the wall now, rising like a forest of blunted spears to meet his descent.
Clenching his teeth, Luke reached out to the Force and threw out his hands to meet the oncoming bars. With their tight spacing there was no chance for him to slide between them; but if he could grab two of them and slow his fall, he could at least keep from landing on them at full speed. He caught hold of the two pointed at his face and chest, reaching to the Force for the strength to slow himself. He succeeded, and for a brief moment held himself balanced over them in midair—
And then he was slammed onto them anyway as a corresponding set of bars from the wall behind him jabbed hard into his back and legs, driving him forward. He grunted as the wind was again knocked out of him, trying to twist around against the forest of bars digging into him.
But even as he struggled to work his left arm through the rods pinning it, two more sets of bars slid out from the floor and ceiling, slamming into his shoulders, head, and legs and pinning him even tighter in place. There was another flurry of gravity changes that did little except jam every part of his body in random turn against the various sets of bars—
And then gravity settled back to its original vector, leaving him suspended more or less upright in the room.
“Well, well,” Control’s mocking voice said into the silence. “Surprised, are we?”
“A little,” Luke conceded, fighting past the dizziness left over from the gravity changes and looking around as best he could with his head pinioned rigidly in place. The entire corridor had become a huge three-dimensional cross-hat
ch of rods, filling the whole space between the blast doors that had slid into place at both ends, sealing him inside.
“We set this up about five years ago,” Control continued. “Your Yavin academy was seeding the galaxy with cocky little would-be Jedi, and we figured it would be only a matter of time before one of them dropped in on us. So we figured to have a surprise ready for them. Never figured on having the Grand High Moffling himself show up. So, what do you think?”
“It’s inventive, I’ll give you that,” Luke said, testing the strength of the bars with his shoulders and arms. He might have saved himself the effort. “I hope you’re not expecting it to hold me for long.”
“You might be surprised,” Control said. “I take it you haven’t noticed where your lightsaber ended up?”
Luke couldn’t even remember when during all those gravity switches he’d dropped it. Now, straining out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the weapon fifteen meters away across the room, wedged just like he was within the interlocking sets of bars. “You can see it’s a tighter group of bars over at that end,” Control pointed out. “Holds the thing pretty solidly in place.”
Luke smiled. Clearly, for all his preparation, the pirate hadn’t learned enough about Jedi. Reaching out with the Force, he activated the lightsaber’s switch. With a snap-hiss the green blade flashed into existence; reaching out again, Luke attempted to twist the handle sideways.
Nothing happened.
“You see the genius of the design,” Control said conversationally. “It’s held at just the right angle so that the blade sticks out in the gap between bars, without touching any of them. Clever, eh?”
Luke didn’t answer. The lightsaber seemed to be solidly wedged in place … but if the blade wasn’t touching the bars, the handle ought to slide freely either backward or forward. Getting a Force grip on it, he slid it forward.
“Oh, it’ll go that direction, all right,” Control said as the lightsaber began to move. “Unless it gets hung up by its switch or something. But that won’t do you any good. The blade still won’t touch any of the bars—”