24
Luke still held his lightsaber loosely in his right hand. He gripped the weapon tighter, thumb on the control as he slowly turned to face the owner of the voice behind him.
“Sorry, I thought this was the ’fresher,” Luke said. Well. It was worth a try.
The alien facing him was a Nikto, and the comment must have puzzled him, at least for a second. Then his horn-rimmed eyes went wide as he recognized Luke. He thrust the blaster out one-handed.
Luke thumbed the lightsaber control. The glowing blade added its light to the dim room.
The Nikto fired, and a red bolt speared at Luke. He let the Force flow, and the bolt ricocheted from his blade, bounced back … and hit the shooter in the foot. The Nikto dropped his weapon, grabbed at his wounded extremity, and began hopping on his other foot, yelling.
If it wasn’t so dangerous it would have been funny.
So much for sneaking out undetected.
Luke ran at the injured shooter, hit him with his shoulder in passing, and knocked him sprawling.
As the swoopers had been, the Nikto also was more adept at cursing than he was at shooting.
Doors began to open into the hallway, and armed bounty hunters, most of them dressed for sleep, emerged.
He was in for it now.
He swung the lightsaber and tried to cut a path to freedom.
Leia and Chewie worked their way to where they were to meet Guri. The place was a public park on the surface, a small dab of planted greenery surrounded by plasticrete and durasteel.
“It took you longer than expected,” Guri said when she saw them.
“We stopped to see the sights,” Leia said.
Guri glared at her, and Leia felt strongly that the woman—no, the droid—didn’t like her.
“Follow me,” Guri said.
A horizontal hail of energy bolts stabbed at Luke—
The Force let him move faster than he thought possible, and he wove a defensive tapestry with his lightsaber that turned the hard rain away. Ricocheting beams hit and pierced walls, bounty hunters, the floor, the ceiling. It was dangerous to be here, no matter where you stood.
Amazed as he was at his speed and skill, Luke knew it couldn’t continue. He had to miss only one block and he would be a goner. Sooner or later, they’d get him.
He ran forward down the hall, and the shooters ahead of him gave way against their own reflected firepower.
There was a lot of yelling going on with the blasting:
“—look out, you fool—!”
“—there he is, get him—!”
“—watch it, watch it—!”
“—I’m hit—!”
He didn’t know how far he had to go to get to the exit. He had a good idea that if it wasn’t pretty close, he wasn’t going to make it.
But Luke went with the flow of the Force, continued to cut and block, to parry bolts and flesh and bones as the bounty hunters tried to stop him. There wasn’t a lot of choice; he couldn’t exactly stop to think about things.
Ahead and to his left, the wall suddenly shattered and imploded.
Smoking debris spattered in all directions. Some of the bounty hunters were blown down by the implosion; others fled. Smoke roiled and filled the corridor; acrid vapor burned Luke’s nostrils.
The general chaos increased.
What—?
“Luke?”
He knew that voice.
“Lando? Over here!”
Yet another blaster joined the fray, only this one wasn’t aimed at Luke. Bounty hunters fell.
“Regroup!” somebody yelled. “We’re under attack!”
The confusion increased.
Luke saw Lando stride through the smoke and smelly vapor, saw him fire with offhand precision, nailing several of the confused bounty hunters.
“Like shooting snakes in a shoe box,” Lando said. He grinned. “You called for a cab?”
“Me? What makes you think I want to leave? I’m having fun here.” Luke pivoted and chopped the barrel off an outthrust blaster. The weapon began to hiss and spew sparks, and the startled owner dropped it and fled.
“Yeah, right you are. This way.”
Lando led the way, blaster working. Luke followed, blocking shots from behind.
They went through the ruptured wall and into the night.
It wouldn’t take long for the bounty hunters to pull themselves together. They had better get far away before that happened.
“I’ve got a, uh, borrowed landspeeder parked over there,” Lando said. He paused, fired at the building behind him. “What say we go for a ride?”
Somebody in the ruptured wall yelled in surprise and pain as Lando’s blaster bolt found him.
“The Falcon is in the middle of a public park five minutes away. I left Threepio watching it.”
“Threepio? Where are Leia and Chewie?”
“That’s a long story. Better we get back to the ship before I tell it.”
“How’d you know where to find me?”
“Dash gave me the planet. I got here and found out about the raid on the Bothan safe house. I know a few locals who owed me favors; they told me where these yabbos had set up shop.”
Lando ducked. A blaster beam sizzled overhead, missed by a good two meters. “Can we go now and play Question the Quarren later?”
“Good idea.”
They ran.
Behind them, the bounty hunters kept shooting.
Xizor observed with a critical eye the lower branches of his six-hundred-year-old miniature firethorn tree. The small plant had been a gift from a former rival seeking to make peace with Black Sun after a … business disagreement. Less than half a meter high, the tiny tree was a nearly perfect replica of the hundred-meter-tall firethorn trees that grew only in a single small grove of the Irugian Rain Forest on Abbaji. The dwarf tree had been in the former rival’s family for ten generations and was, to one who knew the value of such things, most precious. Were his fortunes to evaporate and leave him completely broke, Xizor would still not sell this plant, not if somebody offered him a deca-million credits.
There were those who would offer that much and more. Little trees such as this had connected to them a great deal of history.
He moved the tiny mechanical scissors in with great precision. Centered the almost hair-fine branch between the blades … cut …
Ah. Perfect. That single cut was all the trimming needed this year. Perhaps next season he would take off that obtuse-angled branchlet on the next ascending branch. He had a year to think about it. He pulled the scissors away carefully. Regarded the firethorn. Beautiful, it was. Beautiful enough to excuse the mistakes of its former owner. The man had made errors in judgment, but this gift showed he was also a man of some taste and intelligence. Errors could be forgiven if there were other mitigating reasons. Xizor was, after all, a civilized being, not a reflexive thug.
He would allow Princess Leia to find that out about him. Just as he would allow her to find out other, more intimate things about him …
“It’s so good to see that you are all right, Master Luke.”
“Good to see you, too, Threepio,” Luke said.
Lando hurried past them for the Falcon’s cockpit.
“Move it, Luke,” Lando called back. “Not only do we have the bounty hunters to worry about, there’s an Imperial convoy heading this way. They’ve just dropped out of hyperspace and into the system.”
Luke hurried. He reached the control seat and sat, strapped himself down.
“Yeah? Anybody we know?” He was already reaching for preflight switches.
“I didn’t get close enough to read nameplates, but the lead ship is a Star Destroyer.”
“Victory-class?”
“Bigger than that.”
“Imperial-class?”
“Try again.”
Luke looked away from the controls at Lando, eyes going wide. “No.”
“Yep. Super-class.”
“Is it … Executor?”
“Like I said, I didn’t get that close. But how many of those are there? They don’t crank those babies up just for fun.”
Luke stared into infinity. Was it Darth Vader? What would he be doing here?
“Let’s finish the flight check fast,” Lando said. “I don’t think we want to stick around here.”
“I hear that. Wait. Artoo is in my X-wing.”
“I know, I spotted it. I’ve got a tractor beam with his name on it. I’ll overfly the X-wing and pull it up; we’ll stow it in the hull clips.” Lando pointed at the control screen. “We’re going to slingshot out of here and hit lightspeed fast. Even if it isn’t Vader on that monster, we don’t want to tangle with it.”
Luke nodded and reached for the comm. “Where are we going?”
“Back to Tatooine. That’s where Leia wants us to go.”
“Let’s talk about that later, okay?” Lando touched controls, listened as the ship’s engines came online.
“Better sit down back there, Goldie,” Lando yelled. “We are about to be gone!”