9

“Luke …?” Wedge said over the comm.

“Right, Wedge. Rogue Squadron, this is Rogue Leader. Break off your attack, go to lightspeed—repeat, break off and jump to hyper!”

The leap into hyperspace was a trick—they weren’t going far enough to need it, and they’d reenter normal space in a few seconds. But better that the Imperial fighters thought they were going far away; maybe nobody would bother to look for them at a moon just around the bulk of the huge gas planet right in front of them. That was the hope.

Rogue Squadron peeled away from the engagement in a shallow arc.

The TIE fighters, who’d obviously been ordered to defend but not to pursue, allowed them to go. Most of them.

As the Rogues sped from the battle, Luke felt a sudden wave of something he couldn’t quite identify wash over him. Like a sense of danger that couldn’t be ignored, some kind of warning—

Luke!

Obi-Wan!

He jerked the control stick between his knees to the side without questioning further.

The beam from a laser cannon flashed past.

If he hadn’t moved it would have cooked him.

But there weren’t any TIEs behind him! Only Rogue Six. As he watched, Wes’s X-wing altered course to follow him. What—?

“Wes! What are you doing?”

Wes yelled, a short burst of expletives, then, “Luke! Something’s gone wrong with my Artoo unit! It’s taken control of my ship! My stick is dead!”

Yeah, Luke thought, I’ll be dead, too, if I don’t do something!

To complicate things, one of the TIE fighters who decided to give chase did get within range. The TIE let loose with a blast of its weapons, barely missing Luke.

Luke pulled the stick back into his belly and hit full thrust. The X-wing responded; acceleration mashed him into the seat; his face stretched and flattened as if a giant hand pressed hard fingers against the skin and muscles.

“Everybody get clear!” Luke managed to say through peeled-back lips. What was going on? He’d almost been fried, by one of his own! At the moment, he couldn’t think about it—but he couldn’t not think about it, either.

He could have died. If not for the Force, he would have died. Whatever he might have been would never have come to pass—

Behind him, Wes’s X-wing replicated Luke’s maneuver, trying to stay with him.

The TIE fighter kept shooting, too.

Blast!

This was bad, this was very bad. What was he going to do? He couldn’t fight, not one of his own people! And if all he did was run, sooner or later the out-of-control X-wing would blast him.

First things first. The TIE fighter.

Luke looped around, trying to shake Wes and lock on to the TIE at the same time.

He didn’t manage either very well. The TIE fighter zipped away, and Wes kept shooting at Luke.

Luke felt the sweat seeping from him, soaking his suit. He wasn’t prepared for this; it had never crossed his mind.

If Wes could bail out, that would solve it. Thing was, he couldn’t eject; like the others, he wore only a lightweight flight suit, not suitable for protection against the vacuum of deep space—

Another blast of laser fire stabbed out from the pursuing X-wing.

Missed, barely!

The TIE fighter swung around. Probably didn’t have any idea what was going on, but he was going to take advantage of it for sure.

Luke felt himself gripped by the fear, an icy sensation that turned the perspiration cold. What was he going to do? He had to figure it out, and he had to figure it out fast!

He had an idea. It was risky, but his choices were getting real limited.

Here goes—

At the apex of his climb, Luke killed his thrust and shoved the control stick forward. Inertia kept the craft going, but its relative speed compared to Wes’s out-of-control craft made it seem to stop as Rogue Six rocketed past before his malfunctioning R2 unit could compensate.

The TIE fighter had looped and was opposite Wes, trying to track Luke.

Luke punched in full thrust again and swung the stick hard to port, spiraling away in a left turn. He gave the little ship all it—or he—could take.

The TIE fighter ran into Wes’s fire and shattered.

That was something, at least.

Luke felt better, but it wasn’t over yet.

He jockeyed the X-wing around. Wes copied his move and fired.

Luke had never asked the X-wing for more.

Artoo shrilled, and Luke tuned it out. He had to trust the Force now; normal skill wouldn’t get him out of this.

He dodged.

Another blast cooked the vacuum.

Luke stalled and dived.

Wes’s ship hammered at him, splashing a glancing shot off the rear shields.

He had to shake him!

Come on, come on—

He knew the Force was powerful, but he wasn’t sure his control of it was enough. A mistake and a good man would die.

A mistake and they might both die.

He focused himself. Cut hard to port, then starboard, gave his engines full power, pulled up and into an inside loop, circled down and behind Wes, almost blacking out from the G-force …

Help me, Obi-Wan.

Luke fired …

The beam splashed against the runaway X-wing’s main engine precisely, cut through and killed it.

Rogue Six’s thrusters flamed out.

Luke was close enough to see the R2 unit on Wes’s ship try to effect repairs as he flew by, but it surely wasn’t going to fix that.

Rogue Six couldn’t fly very well, but it could still shoot.

It did shoot, tracking him and lancing out with powerful beams. Like a wounded firecat, it was still dangerous to approach.

Luke dodged, abandoned himself to the Force again, let the X-wing become an extension of his body. The little ship danced, hopped, slowed, sped up, and managed to avoid being speared.

Luke felt the sigh slip from him.

Steady …

Luke made another pass.

Wes’s R2 blasted at him. Luke imagined he felt the heat of the beam.

Maybe it wasn’t his imagination.

Come on …

“More of those TIEs coming back, Luke,” somebody said.

“Not now!” Once again he let the Force direct his aim, gave himself to it. Pinpointed the targeting sensors in the nose cone. Felt the rightness of it—

Fired again …

A hit!

Now Wes’s guns were dead and he—or his crazed droid—couldn’t fire the lasers or the torpedoes.

Luke sighed again. Thank goodness.

What in the galaxy could have caused it to malfunction that way?

“Wedge, see if you can get a magnetic line on Wes and let’s get out of here, fast!”

“That’s affirmative, Luke.”

Bad enough when it was the enemy shooting at you; much worse when it was your own men.

“Hey, I’m sorry, Luke, I don’t know what happened!” Wes said.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll sort it out later. Right now, we’d better go before the Empire decides we might be worth chasing after all.”

“Copy that, Luke.”

But now that the heat—and sweaty cold—of the incident had passed, the fear oozed back, the taste of it sour in him.

He could have been blown apart.

If not for the Force warning him, he would have been fried, would have winked out like an overloaded glowbulb, never knowing what had hit him. Dead, gone, no more.

“Those TIE fighters are coming back, Luke.”

“Let’s move it!”

Until now, that had never seemed a real possibility to him. Luke had always thought that somehow all the lasers would miss, all the missiles would sail past harmlessly, that he would live forever. It hadn’t seemed real that he could actually cease being.

Now it seemed real.

Leia fired, and the quad-barrels of the Falcon’s dorsal guns pistoned, spat its hard energies at the incoming TIE fighter.

The Imperial craft flew right into the beams. Exploded.

That was three she’d gotten, and Chewie had hit some of them, too, but there were more of them swarming in.

Too many more.

“We can’t land,” Lando said over the comm. “If we put it down on the deck, we’ll get blasted!”

“What are we going to do?” Leia said.

“I don’t know; we can’t keep flying around—uh-oh.”

“ ‘Uh-oh’ what?”

“Boba Fett’s ship—it’s taking off.”

“Follow it!”

“How? There’s a wall of Imperial fighters between it and us!”

“Go around them!”

She was too close to lose Han now.

“I’ll try.”

The Falcon lurched, fell in a belly-twisting dive. Because they were in a gravity well and they needed the power for the shields, the artificial gravity was turned off. Leia felt herself go weightless; only the safety straps kept her from floating out of the seat. Abruptly she grew heavier as the power dive bottomed out and Lando hit the throttles hard in a climbing turn.

Another TIE fighter came into view. Leia started the guns working, but the fighter zipped past, too fast. Missed it.

She felt the Falcon rock as the shields were hit by enemy fire.

“I sure hope that bootleg shield generator Han installed holds up,” Lando said.

Leia didn’t answer; she was too busy trying to shoot down the next pair of TIE fighters coming at her.

Her gun beams lanced out and pierced one of the fighters, sent it spinning away, control surfaces riddled with holes.

She missed the other one.

She heard Chewie yelling something, and she wished she could understand him other than from context.

“I hate to be the one to say it,” Lando said, “but I have a bad feeling about this.”

Back at Rogue Squadron’s secret moonbase, Luke and Wedge hurried from their fighters to where Wes’s X-wing had been towed. Wes stood there staring at his ruined ship.

Wedge said, “You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’d sure like to know what my Artoo unit ate for breakfast, though. What could have gotten into it?”

Luke hoped he looked better than he felt. He was still rattled, his knees a little rubbery. He took a deep breath, fought to keep his voice calm. “Why don’t we see if we can find out?” he said. He waved at the crew chief. “Get a coupler on this Artoo unit, would you?”

As the chief hustled her crew over to do just that, Luke heard a whistle behind him.

Luke turned. “I don’t know, Artoo. You ever heard anything like it before?”

Artoo chirped and whistled.

Luke took that for a negative.

The malfunctioning R2 unit settled to the ground. The crew chief stepped in and stuck a restraining bolt on it before it could move.

Artoo moved closer, extruded an interface, and plugged it into the other unit. Somebody plugged a translation screen into the damaged R2 unit.

Artoo whistled frantically.

“Uh-oh,” Luke said, looking at the translation screen.

“What?” Wedge said.

“Look. According to this, the droid wasn’t malfunctioning. It was programmed to shoot at me.”

Wedge whistled, a counterpoint to Artoo’s astromechspeak. “Who would do that? Why? How?”

The chief pulled her comlink from her belt and spoke into it, listened. Luke couldn’t hear who was on the other end of the comlink.

“That’s Rendar coming in,” the chief said.

“What about Leia and Lando?”

The chief shrugged. “He didn’t say.”

To the chief, Luke said, “Keep an eye on this droid. Don’t let anybody touch it.” To Wedge, he said, “Let’s go.”

Luke hurried to the second hangar, where Rendar’s ship would arrive shortly.

“We can’t get through!” Lando said. “They’ll pound us to pieces unless we get out of here! We’d better—”

His voice shut off.

“Lando? Lando!”

No answer.

“Chewie?”

No answer from there, either.

The Falcon seemed to be flying okay, but the comm was out.

Leia yelled, “Threepio! Where are you?”

“R-R-Right here,” came Threepio’s nervous voice from above her gun turret.

“Go find out what happened to the comm. Check and see if Lando is all right.”

“Yes, Princess Leia.”

Another TIE shot past. Leia fired at it, missed. The blasted things were fast.

The Falcon swung a hard turn to the left, then the right. Well, somebody was flying it.

Threepio leaned over her turret. “Princess Leia, Master Lando says the comm unit has been damaged; we no longer have internal or external communications. Master Lando says we must leave immediately or we’ll be destroyed!” There was a tinge of hysteria in Threepio’s voice.

“We can’t!” Leia said.

But they were already doing so. The Falcon arced away from the shipyard and dived between two half-constructed towers, twisted so it flew sideways. The metal support struts of one tower passed so close to Leia’s guns, she could read the part numbers stamped into them.

“No!” she yelled.

One of the TIE fighters chasing them wasn’t so well flown. Leia saw it smash into the tower and shatter into a fireball.

The Falcon twirled and flew parallel to the ground again, but only for a few seconds before Lando took it almost straight up.

Leia looked, saw they were outrunning their pursuers. She unbuckled herself from the turret. Hurried to reach the control cockpit. Threepio followed her, prattling on about something she couldn’t catch.

Lando was sweating when Leia arrived.

“What are you doing?”

“Saving our lives,” he said. “I used every trick in the manual, plus a few I made up, and I couldn’t get past those fighters. There were too many of them. It was just a matter of time before they knocked us down.”

“What about Boba Fett?”

“I lost sight of him.”

“He’s probably trying to run to hyperspace. Luke and Rogue Squadron …” she trailed off as she realized the problem.

“Yeah,” Lando said. “Our comm is dead. We can’t call Luke to tell him to chase Boba Fett.”

“Maybe we can circle around,” she said.

He shook his head. “He’ll be long gone.”

Chewie arrived, asked a question.

“No,” Lando said. “Sorry, buddy.”

Chewie expressed anger.

“Yeah, me too,” Lando said. “But we can’t do Han any good if we get scattered all over the landscape.”

Leia felt a great weight settle upon her. Like a blanket made of soft lead, it pressed on her; she could hardly sit there without bowing.

Han. I’m so sorry …

“Listen,” Lando said, “I don’t want to add rocket fuel to a burning building, but we don’t even know for sure that Han is on that ship. Boba Fett might have stashed him somewhere.”

Leia couldn’t speak. It was too much effort.

Chewie said something.

“Chewbacca is right,” Threepio said. “Sooner or later Master Han will be delivered to Jabba. We can always go back to Tatooine and wait. I think that is a very good idea.”

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Threepio continued, “Well, at least we’re alive.”

Luke almost took a swing at Dash; it was all he could do to restrain himself.

Wedge saw, said, “Easy, Luke.”

Dash, if he was worried, didn’t show it. He stood there, relaxed, and shrugged.

“You just left them there?”

“Hey, kid, I was paid to show them where Slave I was. I showed them. My job was done. If they’d wanted me to do anything else, they should have contracted for it up front.”

“If anything happens to them—”

“What, kid? You gonna shoot me? I didn’t make them go there. I was hired as a guide, so I guided, end of story.” He turned and ambled off.

Wedge kept one hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Don’t do it, Luke. It won’t help them.”

“Maybe not, but it’ll make me feel a lot better!”

Even as he felt the anger flush through him, Luke also felt a coldness, a kind of … slyness within it. He knew what it was.

Obi-Wan had warned him. He couldn’t give in to his anger. If he did, the dark side would be there to claim him. He could feel it, waiting, ready to fill him with its bleak and unclean energies. He could feel that to allow it in would give him abilities he did not have, would give him powers ordinary mortals could not withstand. He would be able to bring Dash Rendar to his knees with a gesture—

No. Don’t even think it. To give in to the dark side would be to become like Vader, like the Emperor, to become that which he fought against.

He took a deep breath, and when he blew it out, much of his anger flowed with it. Dash even had a point: He hadn’t forced anybody to do anything.

One of the sensor crew ran over to where they stood. “We’ve got a ship coming in,” he said. “No Communications, but the scopes say it’s a Corellian freighter.”

The Millennium Falcon! They were alive!

“They’re about fifteen minutes out,” the man said.

Luke felt a vast relief. Leia. She was all right. Even though he felt that he would have known if anything had happened to her, it was still a relief to hear that the ship was in one piece.

“That gives us a few minutes,” Wedge said. “What say we go and see what we can dig out of that rascaled R2 unit?”

“Good idea,” Luke said.

But when they reached the place where the bollixed astromech droid had been, what they found was a smoldering pile of debris.

Somebody had blasted the droid into rubble.

Luke spun around, looking for the crew chief who was supposed to be watching the unit. He spotted the woman quickly enough.

She was pointing a blaster right at him.