Heir To The Empire (44 page)

Aves didn’t move; but suddenly there was something in the way he crouched there that reminded Lando of a hunting predator. “I won’t forget this, Calrissian,” he said, his voice icy soft.

“I wouldn’t want you to,” Lando said. He looked out at the stormtroopers . . . and hoped that Luke did indeed know what he was doing.

The vanguard had already passed the archway, and the major was only a few steps away from it, when four of the stormtroopers abruptly blew up. Quite spectacularly, too. The simultaneous flashes of yellow-white fire lit up the landscape to almost painful intensity; the thunderclap of the multiple detonations nearly knocked Luke over.

The sound was still ringing in his ears when the blasters opened up behind them.

The stormtroopers were good, all right. There was no panic that Luke could detect; no sudden freezing in astonishment or indecision. They were moving into combat position almost before the blaster fire had begun: those already at the archway hugging close to the stone pillars to return covering fire, the rest moving quickly to join them. Above the sound of the blasters, he could hear the increased whine of the speeder bikes kicking into high speed; overhead, he caught just a glimpse of the Chariot assault vehicle swiveling around to face the unseen attackers.

And then an armored hand caught him under each armpit, and suddenly he was being hauled toward the archway. A few seconds later he was dumped unceremoniously in the narrow gap between the two pillars supporting the north side of the arch. Mara was already crouched there; a second later, two more stormtroopers tossed Han in to join them. Four of the Imperials moved into position over them, using the pillars for cover as they began returning fire. Struggling to his knees, Luke leaned out for a look.

Out in the fire zone, looking small and helpless amid the deadly horizontal hail of blaster fire, Artoo was rolling toward them as fast as his little wheels would carry him.

“I think we’re in trouble,” Han muttered in his ear. “Not to mention Lando and the others.”

“It’s not over yet,” Luke told him tightly. “Just stick close. How are you at causing distractions?”

“Terrific,” Han said; and to Luke’s surprise, he brought his hands out from behind his back, the chain and manacles he’d been wearing hanging loosely from his left wrist. “Trick cuffs,” he grunted, pulling a concealed strip of metal from the inside of the open cuff and probing at Luke’s restraints. “I hope this thing-ah.” The pressure on Luke’s wrists was suddenly gone; the cuffs opened and dropped to the ground. “You ready for your distraction?” Han asked, taking the loose end of his chain in his free hand.

“Hang on a minute,” Luke told him, looking up. Most of the speeder bikes had taken refuge under the arch, looking like some strange species of giant birds hiding from a storm as they hovered close to the stone, their laser cannon spitting toward the surrounding houses. In front of them and just below their line of fire, the Chariot had swiveled parallel to the arch and was coming down. Once it was on the ground . . .

A hand gripped Luke’s arm, fingernails digging hard into the skin. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it!” Mara hissed viciously. “If the Chariot gets down, you’ll never get them out from cover.”

“I know,” Luke nodded. “I’m counting on it.”

The Chariot settled smoothly to the ground directly in front of the arch, blocking the last of the attackers’ firing vectors. Crouched at the window, Aves swore violently. “Well, there’s your Jedi for you,” he bit out. “You got any other great ideas, Calrissian?”

Lando swallowed hard. “We’ve just got to give him-”

He never finished the sentence. From the arch a blaster bolt glanced off the window frame, and suddenly Lando’s upper arm flashed with pain. The shock sent him stumbling backward, just as a second shot blew apart that whole section of the frame, driving wooden splinters and chunks of masonry like shrapnel across his chest and arm.

He hit the floor, landing hard enough to see stars. Blinking, gritting his teeth against the pain, he looked up-

To find Aves leaning over him.

Lando looked up into the other’s face. I won’t forget this, Aves had said, no more than three minutes ago. And from the look on his face, he wasn’t anticipating any need to hold that memory for much longer. “He’ll come through,” Lando whispered through the pain. “He will.”

But he could tell that Aves wasn’t listening . . . and, down deep, Lando couldn’t blame him. Lando Calrissian, the professional gambler, had gambled one last time. And he’d lost.

And the debt from that gamble-the last in a long line of such debts-had come due.

The Chariot settled smoothly to the ground directly in front of the arch, and Luke got his feet under him. This was it. “All right, Han,” he muttered. “Go.”

Han nodded and surged to his feet, coming up right in the middle of the four stormtroopers standing over them. With a bellow, he swung his former shackles full across the faceplate of the nearest guard, then threw the looped chain around the neck of the next and pulled backwards, away from the pillars. The other two reacted instantly, leaping after him and taking the whole group down in a tangle.

And for the next few seconds, Luke was free.

He stood up and leaned out to look around the pillar. Artoo was still in the middle of no-man’s-land, hurrying to reach cover before he could be hit by a stray shot. He warbled plaintively as he saw Luke-

“Artoo!-now!” Luke shouted, holding out his hand and glancing across toward the southern end of the archway. Between the stone pillars and the grounded Chariot, the stormtroopers were indeed solidly entrenched. If this didn’t work, Han was right: Lando and everyone else out there were dead. Gritting his teeth, hoping fervently that his counterattack wasn’t already too late, he turned back to Artoo-

Just as, with a flicker of silver metal and perfect accuracy, his lightsaber dropped neatly into his outstretched hand.

Beside him, the guards had subdued Han’s crazy attack and were getting back to their feet, leaving Han on his knees between them. Luke took them all in a single sweep, the blazing green lightsaber blade slicing through the glistening stormtrooper armor with hardly a tug to mark its passing. “Get behind me,” he snapped to Han and Mara, stepping back to the gap between the two northern pillars and focusing on the mass of Imperials standing and crouching between him and the southern pillars. They were suddenly aware that they had an unexpected threat on their flank, and a few were already starting to bring their blasters to bear on him.

With the Force to guide his hand, he could have held out against them indefinitely, blocking their blaster shots with the lightsaber. Mara had been right, though: the ysalamiri effect did indeed extend this far outside the forest, and the Force was still silent.

But then, he’d never had any intention of fighting the stormtroopers anyway. Turning his back on the blasters tracking toward him, he slashed the lightsaber across and upward-

Neatly slicing one of the stone pillars in half.

There was a loud crack as suddenly released tension sent a shiver through the structure. Another stroke cut through the second pillar-

And the noise of the battle was abruptly drowned out by the awful grinding of stone on stone as the two fractured pillars began sliding apart.

Luke swung back around, peripherally aware of Han and Mara scrambling out from under the arch to safety behind him. The stormtroopers’ expressions were hidden behind their masks, but the look of sudden horror on the major’s face said it for all of them. Overhead, the mass of the arch creaked warningly; setting his teeth, Luke locked the lightsaber on and hurled it across the gap toward the pillars there. It cut through one of them and nicked the other-

And with a roar, the whole thing came crashing down.

Luke, standing at the edge, barely got out from under it in time. The stormtroopers, crouched in the center, didn’t.

Karrde walked around the mass of stone to where the crumpled nose of the Chariot assault vehicle poked out, a sense of slightly stunned disbelief coloring his vision. “One man,” he murmured.

“Well, we helped some,” Aves reminded him. But the sarcasm of the words faded beneath the grudging respect clearly there behind it.

“And without the Force, too,” Karrde said.

He sensed Aves shrug uncomfortably. “That’s what Mara said. Though of course Skywalker might have lied to her about it.”

“Unlikely.” A motion at the edge of the square caught his eye, and Karrde looked over to see Solo and Skywalker helping a distinctly shaky-looking Lando Calrissian to one of the airspeeders parked around the perimeter. “Took a shot, did he?”

Aves grunted. “Came close to taking one of mine, too,” he said. “I thought he’d betrayed us-figured I’d make sure he didn’t walk away from it.”

“In restrospect, it’s just as well you didn’t.” Karrde looked up, searching the skies. Wondering how long it would take the Imperials to respond to what had happened here today.

Aves looked up, too. “We might still be able to hunt down the other two Chariots before they get a chance to report,” he suggested. “I don’t think the headquarters people got any messages away before we took them out.”

Karrde shook his head, feeling a deep surge of sadness rising through the sense of urgency within him. Not until now had he truly realized just how much he’d come to love this place-his base, the forest, the planet Myrkr itself. Now, when there was no choice but to abandon it. “No,” he told Aves. “There’s no way to cover up our part in what happened here. Not from a man like Thrawn.”

“You’re probably right,” Aves said, his voice taking on a sense of urgency of its own. He understood the implications of that, all right. “You want me to head back and start the evacuation?”

“Yes. And take Mara with you. Make sure she keeps busy-somewhere away from the Millennium Falcon and Skywalker’s X-wing.”

He felt Aves’s eyes on him. But if the other wondered, he kept his wonderings to himself. “Right. See you later.”

He hurried away. The airspeeder with Calrissian aboard was lifting off now, heading back to where the Falcon was being prepped for flight. Solo and Skywalker were heading over toward a second airspeeder; with just a moment’s hesitation, Karrde went over to intercept them.

They reached the craft at the same time, and for a moment eyed each other across its bow. “Karrde,” Solo said at last. “I owe you one.”

Karrde nodded. “Are you still going to get the Etherway out of impoundment for me?”

“I said I would,” Solo told him. “Where do you want it delivered?”

“Just leave it on Abregado. Someone will pick it up.” He turned his attention to Skywalker. “An interesting little trick,” he commented, tilting his head back toward the mass of rubble. “Unorthodox, to say the least.”

Skywalker shrugged. “It worked,” he said simply.

“That it did,” Karrde agreed. “Likely saving several of my people’s lives in the bargain.”

Skywalker looked him straight back in the eye. “Does that mean you’ve made your decision?”

Karrde gave him a slight smile. “I don’t really see as I have much choice anymore.” He looked back at Solo. “I presume you’ll be leaving immediately?”

“As soon as we can get Luke’s X-wing rigged for towing,” Solo nodded, “Lando’s doing okay, but he’s going to need more specialized medical attention than the Falcon can handle.”

“It could have been worse,” Karrde said.

Solo gave him a knowing look. “A lot worse,” he agreed, his voice hard.

“So could all of it,” Karrde reminded him, putting an edge into his own voice. He could, after all, just as easily have turned the three of them over to the Imperials in the first place.

And Solo knew it. “Yeah,” he conceded. “Well . . . so long.”

Karrde watched as they got into the airspeeder. “One other thing,” he said as they strapped in. “Obviously, we’re going to have to pull out of here before the Imperials figure out what’s happened. That means a lot of lifting capacity if we’re going to do it quickly. You wouldn’t happen to have any surplus cargo or stripped-down military ships lying around I could have, would you?”

Solo gave him a strange look. “We don’t have enough cargo capacity for the New Republic’s normal business,” he said. “I think I might have mentioned that to you.”

“Well, then, a loan, perhaps,” Karrde persisted. “A stripped-down Mon Calamari Star Cruiser would do nicely.”

“I’m sure it would,” Solo returned with more than a hint of sarcasm. “I’ll see what I can do.”

The canopy dropped smoothly down over them and sealed in place. Karrde stepped back, and with a whine of repulsorlifts, the airspeeder rose into the sky. Orienting itself, it shot off toward the forest.

Karrde watched it go, wondering if that last suggestion had been too little too late. But perhaps not. Solo was the type to hold debts of honor sacred-something he’d probably picked up from his Wookiee friend somewhere along the line. If he could find a spare Star Cruiser, he’d likely send it along.

And once here, it would be easy enough to steal from whatever handlers Solo sent with it. Perhaps such a gift would help assuage Grand Admiral Thrawn’s inevitable anger over what had happened here today.

But then, perhaps it wouldn’t.

Karrde looked back at the ruins of the collapsed arch, a shiver running through him. No, a warship wasn’t going to help. Not on this. Thrawn had lost too much here to simply shrug it off as the fortunes of war. He would be back . . . and he would be coming for blood.

And for perhaps the first time in his life, Karrde felt the unpleasant stirrings of genuine fear.

In the distance, the airspeeder disappeared over the forest canopy. Karrde turned and gave Hyllyard City one final, lingering look. One way or the other, he knew he would never see it again.

Luke got Lando settled into one of the Falcon’s bunks while Han and a couple of Karrde’s men busied themselves outside getting a tow cable attached to the X-wing. The Falcon’s medical package was fairly primitive, but it was up to the task of cleaning and bandaging a blaster burn. A complete healing job would have to wait until they could get him to a bacta tank, but for the moment he seemed comfortable enough. Leaving Artoo and Threepio to watch over him-despite his protestations that he didn’t need watching over and, furthermore, had had enough of Threepio-Luke returned to the cockpit just as the ship lifted off.