The Last Command (32 page)

“That’s it, huh?” he asked Mara.

She didn’t answer. Han looked over and found her staring at the planet hanging out there in front of them. “Well, is it or isn’t it?” he prompted.

“It is,” she said, her voice strangely hollow. “We’re here.”

“Good,” Han said, still frowning at her. “Great. You going to tell us where this mountain is? Or are we just going to fly around and see where we draw fire from?”

Mara seemed to shake herself. “It’s about halfway between the equator and the north pole,” she said. “Near the eastern edge of the main continent. A single mountain, rising out of forest and grassland.”

“Okay,” Han said, feeding in the information and hoping the sensors wouldn’t loop out and fail on him. Mara had made enough snide comments about the
Falcon
as it was.

Behind him, the cockpit door slid open, and Lando and Chewbacca came in. “How about it?” Lando asked. “We there?”

“We’re there,” Mara said before Han could answer.

Chewbacca rumbled a question. “No, seems to be a real low-tech place,” Han shook his head. “No power sources or transmissions anywhere.”

“Military bases?” Lando asked.

“If they’re there, I can’t find ‘em,” Han said.

“Interesting,” Lando murmured, peering over Mara’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t have pegged the Grand Admiral as being the trusting sort.”

“The place was designed to be a private storehouse,” Mara reminded him tartly. “Not a display ad for Imperial hardware. There weren’t any garrisons or command centers scattered around for Thrawn to have moved into.”

“So whatever he’s got will be stashed inside the mountain?” Han asked.

“Plus probably a few ground patrols just outside,” Mara said. “But they won’t have any fighter squadrons or heavy weaponry to throw at us.”

“That’ll be a nice change,” Lando said wryly.

“Unless Thrawn decided to put up a couple of garrisons on his own,” Han pointed out. “You and Chewie’d better charge up the quads, just in case.”

“Right.”

The two of them left. Han shifted into a general approach vector, then keyed for a sensor search. “Trouble?” Mara asked.

“Probably not,” Han assured her, watching the displays. But there was nothing showing anywhere around them. “A couple of times on the way in I thought I spotted something hanging around back there.”

“Calrissian thought he saw something when we changed course at Obroa-skai, too,” Mara said, peering down at the display. “Could be something with a really good sensor stealth mode.”

“Or just a glitch,” Han said. “The Fabritech’s been giving us trouble lately.”

Mara craned her neck to look out to starboard. “Could someone have followed us here from Coruscant?”

“Who knew we were coming?” Han countered. No, there was nothing there. Must have been his imagination. “How much of this private storehouse did you see?”

Slowly, Mara turned back to face forward, not looking all that convinced. “Not much more than the route between the entrance and the throne room at the top,” she said. “But I know where the Spaarti cylinder chamber is.”

“How about the power generators?”

“I never actually saw them,” she said. “But I remember hearing that the cooling system pulls in water from a river flowing down the northeastern slope of the mountain. They’re probably somewhere on that side.”

Han chewed at his lip. “And the main entrance is on the southwest side.”

“The
only
entrance,” she corrected. “There’s just the one way in or out.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“This time it’s true,” she retorted.

Han shrugged. “Okay,” he said. There was no point in arguing about it. Not until they’d looked the place over, anyway.

The cockpit door slid open, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Luke come in. “We’re here, kid,” he said.

“I know,” Luke said, moving forward to stand behind Mara. “Mara told me.”

Han threw a look at Mara. Near as he could tell, she’d spent the whole trip avoiding Luke, which wasn’t all that easy on a ship the size of the
Falcon
. Luke had returned the favor by staying out of her way, which wasn’t much easier. “She did, huh?”

“It’s all right,” Luke assured him, gazing out at the planet ahead. “So that’s Wayland.”

“That’s Wayland,” Mara said shortly, unstrapping and brushing past Luke. “I’ll be in back,” she said over her shoulder, and left.

“You two work so well together,” Han commented as the cockpit door slid shut behind her.

“Actually, we do,” Luke said, sliding into the copilot’s seat Mara had just vacated. “You should have seen us aboard the
Chimaera
when we went in to rescue Karrde. She’s a good person to have at your side.”

Han threw him a sideways look. “Except when she wants to slide a knife in it.”

“I’m willing to take my chances.” Luke smiled. “Must be one of those crazy Jedi things.”

“This isn’t funny, Luke,” Han growled. “She hasn’t given up on killing you, you know. She told Leia that back on Coruscant.”

“Which tells me that she really doesn’t want to do it,” Luke countered. “People don’t usually go around announcing murder plans in advance. Especially not to the victim’s family.”

“You willing to bet your life on that?”

Luke shrugged fractionally. “I already have.”

The
Falcon
was skimming along the outer atmosphere now, and the computer had finally identified a probable location for Mount Tantiss. “Well, if you ask me, this isn’t a good time to be running short odds,” he told Luke, giving the sensor map a quick study. A straight-in southern approach, he decided—that would give them forest cover for both the landing and the overland trip.

“You have any suggestions?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, I’ve got one,” Han said, changing course toward the distant mountain. “We leave her with the
Falcon
at the landing site.”

“Alive?”

At other times in his life, Han reflected, it wouldn’t necessarily have been a ridiculous question. “Of course alive,” he said stiffly. “There are a lot of ways to keep her from getting into trouble.”

“You really think she’d agree to stay behind?”

“No one said we had to ask her.”

Luke shook his head. “We can’t do that, Han. She needs to see this through.”

“Which part of it?” Han growled. “Hitting the clone factory, or trying to kill you?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said quietly. “Maybe both.”

Han had never liked forests very much before joining the Rebel Alliance. Which wasn’t to say he’d
dis
liked them, either. Forests were simply not something the average smuggler thought about very much. Most of the time you picked up and delivered in grimy little spaceports like Mos Eisley or Abregado-rae; and on the rare occasion where you met in a forest, you let the customer watch the forest while you watched the customer. As a result, Han had wound up with a vague sort of assumption that one forest was pretty much like another.

His stint with the Alliance had changed all that. What with Endor, Corstris, Fedje, and a dozen more, he’d learned the hard way that each forest was different, with its own array of plants, animal life, and general all-around headaches for the casual visitor. Just one of many subjects the Alliance had taught him more about than he’d really wanted to know.

Wayland’s forest fit the pattern perfectly; and the first headache proved to be how to get the
Falcon
down through the dense upper leaf canopy without leaving a hole any wandering Imperial
TIE
pilot would have to be asleep to miss. They’d first had to find a gap—in this case made by a fallen tree—and then he’d had to basically run the ship in on its side, a lot trickier maneuver in a planetary gravity well than it was out in an asteroid field. The secondary canopy, which he didn’t find out about until he was most of the way through the first, was the second headache, and he tore the tops off a line of those shorter trees before he got the
Falcon
stabilized and down, crunching a lot of underbrush in the process.

“Nice landing,” Lando commented dryly, rubbing his shoulder beneath the restraint strap as Han shut down the repulsorlifts.

“At least the sensor dish is still there,” Han said pointedly.

Lando winced. “You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

Han shrugged, keying in the life-form algorithms. Time to find out what was out there. “You said you wouldn’t get a scratch on her,” he reminded the other.

“Fine,” Lando grumped. “Next time, I’ll destroy the energy field generator and
you
can fly her down the Death Star’s throat.”

Which wasn’t all that funny. If the Empire got enough of its old resources back again, Thrawn just might try to build another of the blasted things.

“We’re ready back here,” Luke said, poking his head into the cockpit. “How’s it look?”

“Not too bad,” Han said, reading off the display. “Got a bunch of animals out there, but they’re keeping their distance.”

“How big are these animals?” Lando asked, leaning over Han’s shoulder to have a look at the display.

“And how many to a bunch?” Luke added.

“About fifteen,” Han told him. “Nothing we cant handle if we need to. Let’s go take a look.”

Mara and Chewbacca were waiting at the hatchway with Artoo and Threepio, the latter keeping his mouth shut for a change. “Chewie and me’ll go first,” Han told them, drawing his blaster. “The rest of you stay sharp up here.”

He punched the controls, and the hatchway slid open as the entry ramp lowered, settling into the dead leaves with a muffled crunch. Trying to watch all directions at once, Han started down.

He spotted the first of the animals before he’d reached the bottom of the ramp: gray, with a freckling of white across its back, maybe two meters from nose to tail tuft. It was crouched at the base of a tree limb, its beady little eyes following him as he walked. And if its teeth and claws were anything to go by, it was definitely a predator.

Beside him, Chewbacca rumbled softly. “Yeah, I see it,” Han muttered back. “There are another fourteen out there somewhere, too.”

The Wookiee growled again, gesturing. “You’re right,” Han agreed slowly, eyeing the predator. “It does kind of look familiar. Like those panthac things from Mantessa, maybe?”

Chewbacca considered, then growled a negative. “Well, we’ll figure it out later,” Han decided. “Luke?”

“Right here,” Luke’s voice came down from the hatchway.

“You and Mara start bringing the equipment down,” Han ordered, watching the predator closely. The sound of conversation didn’t seem to be bothering it any. “Start with the speeder bikes. Lando, you’re high cover. Stay sharp.”

“Right,” Lando said.

From above came a handful of pops and clicks as the transport restraints around the first two speeder bikes were knocked off, then the faint hum as the repulsorlifts were activated.

And with a sudden violent crackling of leaves and branches, the predator leaped.

“Chewie!” was all Han had time to shout before the animal was on top of him. He fired, the blaster bolt catching it square in the torso, and managed to duck as the carcass shot past his head. Chewbacca was roaring Wookiee battle cries, swinging his bowcaster around and firing again and again as more of the predators charged at them from out of the trees. From the hatchway someone shouted something and another shot flashed out.

And out of the corner of his eye, moving much too fast to avoid, Han saw a set of claws coming his direction.

He threw up his forearm across his face, ducking his head back as far out of the way as he could. An instant later he was knocked back off his feet as the predator slammed full-tilt into him. A moment of pressure and lancing pain as the claws dug through his camouflage jacket—

And then, suddenly, the weight was gone. He lowered his arm, just in time to see the predator bound onto the ramp and prepare for a spring into the
Falcon
. He twisted around and fired, just as a shot from inside the ship also caught it.

Chewbacca snarled a warning. Still on his back, Han swung around, to see three more of the animals bounding across the ground toward him. He dropped one with a pair of quick shots, and was trying to swing his blaster around to target the second when a pair of black-booted feet hit the ground just in front of him. The animals leaped upward into a blurred line of brilliant green and crashed to the ground.

Rolling over, Han scrambled back to his feet and looked around. Luke was standing in a half-crouch in front of him, lightsaber humming in ready position. On the other side of the ramp, Chewbacca was still on his feet with three of the speckled animals lying dead around him.

Han looked down at the dead predator beside him. Now that he had a good, close look at the thing…

“Watch out—there are three more over there,” Luke warned.

Han looked. Two of the animals were visible, crouched low down in the trees. “They won’t bother us. Any of them get into the ship?”

“Not very far into it,” Luke told him. “What did you do that set them off?”

“We didn’t do anything,” Han said, holstering his blaster. “It was you and Mara turning on the speeder bikes.”

Chewbacca rumbled with sudden recognition. “You got it, pal,” Han nodded. “That’s where we tangled with them, all right.”

“What are they?” Luke asked.

“They’re called garrals,” Mara said from the ramp. Crouching down, her own blaster still drawn, she was peering at the carcasses scattered around Chewbacca. “The Empire used to use them as watchdogs, usually near heavily wooded frontier garrisons where probe droid pickets weren’t practical. There’s something in the ultrasonic signature of a repulsorlift that’s supposed to sound like one of their prey animals. Draws them like a magnet.”

“So that’s why they were sitting here waiting for us,” Luke said, closing down his lightsaber but keeping it handy.

“They can hear a ship-sized repulsorlift coming in from kilometers away,” Mara said. Jumping down off the side of the ramp, she dropped to one knee beside one of the dead garrals and dug her free hand into the fur at its neck. “Which means that if they’ve been radiotagged, the controllers in Mount Tantiss know we’re here.”