3

Luke stared at the little furnace, as if so doing could hurry the process. Inside, the ingredients for a lightsaber gem cooked at an incredible heat and pressure, hot enough to melt denscris, intense enough to collapse durasteel into a liquid ball. And yet from a meter away, except for the red operating diode, you couldn’t tell the thing was even on. Well, except maybe for a little bit of a smell something like a blaster bolt, a kind of ozone odor.

The furnace had been working for hours and the little yellow diode had not yet begun to blink, the signal that the process was in the final stage.

He looked around at the inside of what had been Ben Kenobi’s home. It was a small place on the edge of the Western Dune Sea, made, as so many of the local structures were, of synstone—crushed local rock mixed into a slurry with dissolvants and cast or sprayed onto frames to harden. The resulting buildings were sturdy and proof against the sandstorms. Ben’s house looked almost as if it could have been a natural rock formation, smoothed and rounded by centuries of too-hot-by-day and too-cold-by-night desert weather.

Ben. Struck down by Vader on the Death Star. The memory was equal parts grief and rage.

His teacher hadn’t left much behind, not for a man who had once been Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Jedi Knight and a general in the Clone Wars. Perhaps the most valuable thing was the old and intricately carved boa-wood trunk and its contents, including an ancient leather-bound book. A book that contained all manner of wondrous things for a would-be Jedi, such as plans for building a lightsaber. The thumbprint clasp on the volume had accepted Luke’s right thumb to unlock it, and once it was open, he saw the flashpacket rigged inside the cover. Had anybody tried to force the clasp, the book would have burst into flame.

Somehow, Ben had known Luke would find this book. Somehow, he had prepared it so that only he could open it safely.

Amazing.

According to that book, the best lightsabers used natural jewels, but there weren’t a lot of the kind he needed lying around where he could find them on Tatooine. He’d managed to collect most of the electronic and mechanical parts in Mos Eisley—power cells, controls, a high-energy reflector cup—but he had to make his own focusing jewel. Ideally, the best lightsabers also had three of those, different densities and facets, for a fully adjustable blade, but for his first attempt at building the Jedi weapon, Luke wanted to keep it as simple as possible. Even so, it was trickier than the book made it out. He was pretty sure he had the superconductor tuned right, the amplitude for the length set where it was supposed to be, and the control circuitry boards correctly installed. He couldn’t be positive until the jewel was finished, and the book didn’t mention exactly how long that took. Supposedly the furnace would shut down automatically when it was done.

If everything went right, he’d be able to cut the jewel, polish and install it, tune the photoharmonics, and then he’d only have to hit the switch to have a working lightsaber. He had followed the instructions to the letter; he was pretty good with tools and it ought to be okay, but there was a small worry that when he switched it on it might not work. That would be embarrassing. Or worse, it might work in a way it wasn’t supposed to. That would be worse than embarrassing: Luke Skywalker, up-and-coming Jedi Knight, a man who had gone one-on-one with Darth Vader and lived to tell of it, vaporized when his faulty lightsaber blew up. So far he’d been very careful constructing the thing, triple-checking each step, and to get this far had taken almost a month. The book said a Jedi Master in a hurry could construct a new lightsaber in a couple of days.

Luke sighed. Maybe after he’d built six or eight of them he might be able to speed it up, but he obviously had a long, long way to go to get there—

Suddenly he felt something.

It was like hearing and smelling and tasting and seeing somehow combined, and yet it was none of those things. Something … impending, somehow.

Could it be something coming from the Force? Ben had been able to sense events happening light-years away, and Yoda had spoken of such things, but Luke wasn’t sure. His own experiences in his X-wing and in his practice had been so limited.

He wished Ben were here to tell him.

Whatever it was grew stronger. For a moment, he had a flash of recognition: Leia?

He had been able to call to her when he was about to fall from beneath Cloud City after his encounter with Vader. She had somehow received his cry for help.

Was it Leia?

He buckled on his blaster, adjusted the belt on his hip so he could draw the weapon quickly if needed, and went outside. Normally the Tusken Raiders—the Sand People—stayed clear of Ben’s house. They were superstitious, Ben had told him, and with his control of the Force, he had shown them a few tricks, enough so they marked his place as haunted. But Ben was gone, and whatever he had done might not work forever. Luke didn’t have Ben’s control; the Raiders might not be so impressed with him picking up a few rocks with the Force. Then again, there was nothing wrong with his aim, and however inelegant it was, a blaster bolt splashing off a rock next to them would make just about anybody stop and think.

Once he got the lightsaber built and working, he hoped he could put the blaster away. A true Jedi did not need any other weapon to protect himself, Ben had told him.

He sighed. He had a way to go to get to that level, too.

A hot wind blew grit off the desert, abrading and drying his skin. In the distance, he saw a thin dust cloud. Somebody approached across the barrens from Mos Eisley, probably in a landspeeder. Since nobody else was supposed to know he was here, it was probably Leia or Chewie or Lando—if the Empire had located him, they would have dropped on him from the air, raining ships and stormtroopers. In that case, he’d be lucky to get to his camouflaged X-wing before they blasted the place to a smoking ruin—as they had blasted Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru at the farm …

Luke felt his jaw muscles go tight at the memory.

The Empire had a lot to answer for.

The protected corridors in the core of the Imperial Center were available only to those with proper identification, and admissions were, supposedly, strictly limited and enforced. Such corridors were large, well lighted, lined with fanciful botanicals, such as singing fig trees and jade roses, and often patrolled by hawk-bats, which preyed on the rock slugs that sometimes infested the granite walls. These corridors were designed to be pathways in which the rich and famous could stroll without being bothered by the rabble.

But as Xizor walked along one such enclosed path, his four bodyguards ahead of or behind him, an interloper appeared in front of them and started shooting at the Dark Prince with a blaster.

One of the pair of bodyguards in front took a bolt in the chest that pierced his concealed hardweave armor and dropped him. Xizor noticed the chest wound smoked as the guard groaned and rolled onto his back.

The second guard, whether through skill or luck, returned fire and scored a direct hit on the assassin’s blaster, knocking it from his hand. The threat was over.

The attacker screamed and charged at the remaining guards and Xizor barehanded.

Intrigued, Xizor watched the man come. The assassin was big, bigger than any of the guards and much larger than Xizor himself, built like a heavy-gravity weight lifter, and he was obviously crazed if he would charge three armed men without a weapon.

How interesting.

“Don’t shoot him,” Xizor said.

The running man was only twenty or so meters away and closing fast.

The Dark Prince allowed himself one of his tight smiles.

“Leave him alone,” he said. “He’s mine.”

The trio of bodyguards tucked their own blasters away and moved aside. They knew better than to question Xizor’s orders. Those who did could wind up like the still-smoking guard lying on the polished marble floor.

The assassin continued his run, screaming incoherently.

Xizor waited. When the man was nearly upon him, the Dark Prince pivoted on the balls of his feet and slapped a hard palm against the back of the man’s head as he charged past. The extra momentum of the strike was enough to off-balance the yelling man so that he overstepped and fell. He managed to turn the fall into an awkward shoulder roll. He came up, spun, faced Xizor. He was a bit more wary now. He moved in, more slowly, hands held in tight fists.

“What seems to be the problem, citizen?” Xizor asked.

“You murdering scum! You bog slime!”

The man lunged in closer, swung a roundhouse punch at Xizor’s head. Had it connected it would have shattered bone. Xizor ducked and sidestepped, kicked the attacker in the belly with the toe of his right boot and knocked the man’s wind out.

The attacker tottered back a few steps to catch his breath.

“Have we met? I have an excellent memory for faces, and I don’t recall yours.” Xizor noticed a bit of lint on the shoulder of his tunic. He reached up and brushed it off.

“You killed my father. Have you forgotten Colby Hoff?”

The man charged again, fists swinging wildly.

Xizor stepped aside and almost nonchalantly slammed a hammerfist into the man’s head, knocking him down.

“You are mistaken, Hoff. Your father committed suicide, as I recall. Stuck a blaster in his mouth and blew the back of his head off, didn’t he? Very messy.”

Hoff came up from the floor, and his rage drove him at Xizor again.

Xizor V-stepped to his right and drove his left boot heel at Hoff’s left knee, hard. He heard the joint go with a wet snap as he connected.

Hoff fell, his left leg no longer able to support him.

“You ruined him!” He struggled up to his good knee.

“We were business competitors,” Xizor said matter-of-factly. “He gambled that he was smarter than I. A foolish mistake. If you cannot afford to lose, you should not play the game.”

“I’m going to kill you!”

“I think not,” Xizor said. He stepped in behind the wounded man, moving fast for one his size, and grabbed Hoff’s head with both hands. “You see, to contend with Xizor is to lose. As far as any reasonable person is concerned, attacking me will also be judged a suicide.”

With that, Xizor gave a sharp, hard twist.

The crack of vertebrae was quite loud in the corridor.

“Clean up this mess,” he said to his guards. “And inform the proper authorities of this poor young man’s fate.”

He looked down at the body. He felt no remorse. It was like stepping on a roach. It meant nothing to him at all.

In his most private chamber, the Emperor sat staring at a life-size holographic recording: Prince Xizor breaking the neck of someone who’d attacked him in a protected corridor.

The Emperor smiled and turned in his floating repulsor chair to look at Darth Vader.

“Well,” the Emperor said, “it seems that Prince Xizor has kept up his martial arts practice, does it not?”

Unseen under his armored mask, Vader frowned. “He is a dangerous man, my master. Not to be trusted.”

The Emperor favored him with one of his unattractive, toothy smiles. “Do not trouble yourself with Xizor, Lord Vader. He is my concern.”

“As you wish.” Vader bowed.

“One wonders how that hotheaded young man managed to get into a protected corridor,” the Emperor said. But there was no wonder in the Emperor’s voice, none at all.

Vader’s face froze. He knew. It was not possible, for the guard who had admitted the would-be assassin into the corridor was no longer among the living, and none but that single man had known who ordered him to allow the young man access—but somehow, the Emperor knew.

The Emperor’s mastery of the dark side was great indeed.

“I will look into it, my master,” Vader said.

The Emperor waved an age-spotted hand in dismissal. “Don’t bother. There was no harm done. Prince Xizor was hardly at risk, after all, was he? He seems quite capable of taking care of himself—though I would hate to see anything happen to him as long as he is useful to us.”

Vader bowed again. As usual, the Emperor made his point in a subtle manner, but in such a way that it could not be ignored. There would be no further attempts to test Xizor’s ability to defend himself against deadly attack.

Not yet, anyway.

Meanwhile, Vader would keep a close watch on the Dark Prince. The Falleen was all too devious, and whatever his twisted mind was up to would serve the Empire only if it served Xizor himself.

Xizor was, after all, a criminal. His morals were perverse, his ethics situational, his loyalties nonexistent. He would stop at nothing to get his way, and Vader was fairly certain in his own mind that what Xizor wanted did not include a galaxy in which there was room for Vader or the Emperor.

To contend with Xizor is to lose?

We shall see.