The Last Command (50 page)

The droid warbled acknowledgment, and with Lando’s help maneuvered his way across the rough ground.

“It’s not just going to open up for you,” Mara said from behind him.

“Artoo’s going to check it out,” Luke told her, peering at her face. “You all right?”

He’d expected a sarcastic comment or at least a withering glare. He wasn’t prepared for her to reach out and grip his hand. “I want you to promise me something,” she said in a low voice. “Whatever it costs, don’t let me go over to C’baoth’s side. You understand? Don’t let me join him. Even if you have to kill me.”

Luke stared at her, an eerie chill running through him. “C’baoth can’t force you to his side, Mara,” he said. “Not without your cooperation.”

“Are you sure of that?
Really
sure?”

Luke grimaced. There was so much he didn’t know yet about the Force. “No.”

“Neither am I,” Mara said. “That’s what worries me. C’baoth told me back on Jomark that I’d be joining him. He said it again here, too, the night he arrived.”

“He may have been mistaken,” Luke suggested hesitantly. “Or lying.”

“I don’t want to risk it.” She gripped Luke’s hand tighter. “I’m not going to serve him, Skywalker. I want you to promise that you’ll kill me before you let him do that to me.”

Luke swallowed hard. Even without the Force, he could hear in her voice that she meant it. But for a Jedi to promise to cut someone down in cold blood… “I’ll promise you this,” he said instead. “Whatever happens in there, you won’t have to face him alone. I’ll be there to help you.”

She turned her face away. “What if you’re already dead?”

So it was down to this: the same battle she’d been fighting with herself since the day they met. “You don’t have to do it,” he said quietly. “The Emperor’s dead. That voice you hear is just a memory he left behind inside you.”

“I know that,” she snapped, a touch of fire flickering through the cold dread. “You think that makes it any easier to ignore?”

“No,” he conceded. “But you can’t use the voice as an excuse, either. Your destiny is in your hands, Mara. Not C’baoth’s or the Emperor’s. In the end you’re the one who makes the decisions. You have that right… and that responsibility.”

From the forest came the sound of footsteps. “Fine,” Mara growled, dropping Luke’s hand and taking a step back away from him. “You spout philosophy if you want to. Just remember what I said.” Spinning around, she turned to face the approaching group. “So what’s going on, Solo?”

“We’ve picked up some allies,” he said, throwing what looked like a frown in Luke’s general direction. “Sort of allies, anyway.”

“Hey—Threepio,” Lando called, waving to him. “Come over here, will you, and tell me what Artoo’s all excited about.”

“Certainly, sir,” Threepio said, shuffling over to the computer terminal.

Luke looked back at Han. “What do you mean, sort of allies?”

“It’s kind of confusing,” Han said. “At least the way Threepio translates it. They don’t want to help us, they just want to go in and fight the Imperials. They followed us because they figured we’d find a back door they could get in through.”

Luke studied the group of silent four-armed aliens towering over the Noghri guarding them. All wore four or more long knives and carried crossbows—not exactly the sort of weapons to use against armored Imperial troops. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Hey, Han,” Lando called softly before Han could answer. “Come here. You’ll want to hear this.”

“What?” Han asked as they went over to the computer terminal.

“Tell them, Threepio,” Lando said.

“Apparently, there is an attack taking place at the main entrance to the mountain,” Threepio said in that perennially surprised manner of his. “Artoo has picked up several reports detailing perimeter-guard troop movements into the area—”

“Who’s attacking?” Han cut him off.

“Apparently, some of the Psadans from the city,” Threepio said. “According to the gate reports, they demanded the release of their Lord C’baoth before they attacked.”

Han looked at Luke. “The data pad.”

“Makes sense,” Luke agreed. A message from C’baoth, inciting them to attack. “I wonder how he managed to smuggle it out to them.”

“Confirms he’s been locked up, anyway,” Mara put in. “I hope they’ve got some good guards on his cell.”

“Pardon me, Master Luke,” Threepio said, cocking his head to one side, “but as to the data pad Captain Solo mentioned, I would suggest it arrived the same way the weapons did. According to reports—”

“What kind of weapons?” Han said.

“I was getting to that, sir,” Threepio said, sounding a bit huffy. “According to gate reports, the attackers are armed with blasters, portable missile launchers, and thermal detonators. All quite modern versions, if reports are to be believed.”

“Never mind where they got them from,” Lando said. “The point is that we’ve got a custom-cut diversion here. Let’s use it while it’s still there.”

Chewbacca rumbled suspiciously. “You’re right, pal,” Han agreed, peering into the grating. “It’s awfully convenient timing. But Lando’s right—we might as well go for it.”

Lando nodded. “Okay, Artoo. Shut it all down.”

The squat droid chirped acknowledgment, his computer arm rotating in the socket. The inflow of air across Luke’s face began to decrease, and a minute later had stopped completely.

Artoo warbled again. “Artoo reports that all operating systems for this intake have been shut down,” Threepio announced. “He warns, however, that once the duty cycle has ended, the dust barriers and driving fields may be reactivated from a central location.”

“Better get moving, then,” Luke said, igniting his lightsaber and stepping over to the intake. Four careful slices later, they had their entrance.

“Looks clear,” Han said, climbing gingerly through the opening and stepping over to the limited protection of the side wall. “Got maintenance lights showing up down the tunnel a ways. Artoo, you get us any floor plans for this place?”

The droid jabbered as he rolled through the opening. “I’m terribly sorry, sir,” Threepio said. “He has full schematics for the air-duct system itself, but he says that further information on the facility was not available at this terminal.”

“There’ll be other terminals down the line,” Lando said. “Are we leaving a rear guard?”

“One of the Noghri will stay,” Ekhrikhor mewed at Han’s elbow. “He will keep the exit clear.”

“Fine,” Han said. “Let’s go.”

They were fifty meters down the tunnel and approaching the first of the dim maintenance lights Han had spotted before Luke suddenly noticed that the silent Myneyrshi had followed them in. “Han?” he murmured, gesturing behind them.

“Yeah, I know,” Han said. “What did you want me to do, tell them to go home?”

Luke looked back again. He was right, of course. But knives and crossbows against blasters… “Ekhrikhor?”

“What is your command, son of Vader?”

“I want you to assign two of your people to go with those Myneyrshi,” he told the Noghri. “They’re to guide them and help them with their attacks.”

“But it is you we must protect, son of Vader,” Ekhrikhor objected.

“You will be protecting me,” Luke said. “Every Imperial the Myneyrshi can pin down will be one less for us to worry about. But they can’t pin any troops down if they’re killed in the first sortie.”

The Noghri made an unhappy-sounding noise in the back of his throat. “I hear and obey,” he said reluctantly. He gestured to two of the Noghri; and as Luke watched them drop back down the tunnel he caught a quick look at Mara’s face as she passed one of the lights. The dread was still there, but along with it was a grim determination. Whatever was waiting ahead for them, she was ready to face it.

He could only hope that he was, too.

“There it is,” Karrde announced, pointing ahead to the mountain rising out of the forest and the gathering shadows of twilight.

“You sure?” Leia asked, stretching out with the Force as hard as she could. Back at Bespin, during that mad escape from Lando’s Cloud City, she’d been able to sense Luke’s call from almost this far away. Here, now, there was nothing at all.

“That’s where their nav feed seems to be leading us,” Karrde told her. “Unless they’ve seen through Ghent’s little deception and are sending us to some sort of decoy spot.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Anything?”

“No.” Leia looked out at the mountain, her stomach tightening painfully. After all their hopes and effort, they were too late. “They must already be inside.”

“They’re heading into trouble, then,” Ghent spoke up from the comm station where he was still fiddling with the fine-tuning on his counterfeit Imperial ID code. “Flight control says they’ve got a riot going on at the entrance. They’re diverting us to a secondary maintenance area about ten kilometers north.”

Leia shook her head. “We’re going to have to risk contacting them.”

“Too dangerous,” Dankin, the copilot, said. “If they catch us using a non-Imperial comlink channel, we’re likely to get shot down.”

“Perhaps there is another way,” Mobvekhar said, moving to Leia’s side. “Ekhrikhor clan Bakh’tor will have left a guard at their entrance point. There is a Noghri recognition signal that can be created with landing lights.”

“Go ahead,” Karrde said. “We can always claim a malfunction if the garrison notices. Chin, Corvis—watch your scopes.”

Stepping over to Dankin’s board, the Noghri keyed the landing lights on and off a half-dozen times. Leia stared out the viewport, trying to watch the whole mountain at once. If Han and the others had gone in above the dusk line—

“Got it,” Corvis’s voice came from his turbolaser turret. “Bearing zero-zero-three mark seventeen.”

Leia looked over Karrde’s shoulder as the coordinates came up on his nav display. There it was, faint but visible: a flickering light. “They are there,” Mobvekhar confirmed.

“Good,” Karrde said. “Ghent, acknowledge that we’re proceeding to that secondary maintenance area as ordered. Better find a seat and strap down, Councilor; we’re about to have an unexpected repulsorlift malfunction.”

Between the trees and eroded rock outcroppings it looked to Leia like an impossible place for a ship the size of the
Wild Karrde
to land. But Karrde and his crew had clearly pulled this trick before, and with a last-second sputter of precision-aimed turbolaser fire they created just enough of a gap to put down into.

“Now what?” Dankin asked as Karrde cycled back the repulsorlifts.

Karrde looked at Leia, raised an eyebrow in question. “I’m going in,” Leia told him, the vision of Luke and Mara in danger hovering before her eyes. “You don’t have to come along.”

“The Councilor and I will go look for her friends,” Karrde answered Dankin, unstrapping and getting to his feet. “Ghent, you’ll try to convince the garrison that we don’t need any assistance.”

“What about me?” Dankin asked.

Karrde smiled tightly. “You’ll stay ready in case they don’t believe him. Come on, Councilor.”

The Noghri who’d returned their signal was nowhere in sight as they stepped out onto the
Wild Karrde
‘s ramp. “Where is he?” Karrde asked, looking around.

“Waiting,” Mobvekhar said, putting a hand to the side of his mouth and giving a complex whistle. An answering whistle came, shifted into a complex warble. “Our identity is confirmed,” he said. “He bids us come quickly. The others are no more than a quarter hour ahead.”

A quarter hour. Leia stared out at the starlit darkness of the mountain. Too late to warn them, but maybe not too late to help. “Come on—we’re wasting time,” she said.

“Just a minute,” Karrde said, looking past her shoulder. “We have to wait for—ah.”

Leia turned. Coming down the corridor toward them from the aft section of the ship was a middle-aged man with a pair of long-legged quadruped animals in tow. “Here you go, Capt’,” the man said, holding out the leashes.

“Thank you, Chin,” Karrde said, taking them as he squatted down to scratch both animals briefly behind the ears. “I don’t believe you’ve met my pet vornskrs, Councilor. This one’s named Drang; the somewhat more aloof one there is Sturm. On Myrkr they use the Force to hunt their prey. Here, they’re going to use it to find Mara. Right?”

The vornskrs made a strange sound, rather like a cackling purr. “Good,” Karrde said, straightening up again. “I believe we’re ready now, Councilor. Shall we go?”

The alarms were still hooting in the distance as Han carefully leaned one eye around the corner. According to the floor plans Artoo had pulled up, this should be the major outer defense monitor station in this sector of the garrison. There were likely to be guards, and those guards were likely to be alert.

He was right on both counts. Five meters away down the entry corridor, flanking a heavy blast door, stood a pair of stormtroopers. And they were alert enough to notice the skulking stranger looking at them and to snap their blaster rifles up into firing position.

The smart thing to do—the thing any reasonably nonsuicidal person would do—would be to duck back behind the corner before the shooting started. Instead, Han gripped the corner with his free hand, using the leverage to throw himself completely across the entry corridor. He made it to the other side millimeters ahead of the tracking blaster bolts, flattening himself against the wall as the rapid fire blew out chunks of paneling metal behind him.

They were still firing as Chewbacca leaned around the corner Han had just left and ended the discussion with two quick bowcaster shots.

“Good job, Chewie,” Han grunted, throwing a quick look behind him and then slipping back around the corner. The stormtroopers were out of the fight, all right, leaving nothing in their way but a massive metal door.

Which, like the stormtroopers themselves, was no big deal. At least, not for them. “Ready?” he asked, dropping into a half-crouch at one side of the door and raising his blaster. There would be another pair of guards inside.

“Ready,” Luke confirmed. There was the
snap-hiss
of the lad’s lightsaber, and the brilliant green blade whipped past Han’s head to slice horizontally through the heavy metal of the blast door. Somewhere along the way it caught the internal release mechanism, and as Luke finished the cut the top part of the door shot up along its track into the ceiling.