Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Part 22

"Well, what would you have done, if it was me in the meathooks of that ratbag?"

"Something worse, probably. But you're not gonna win this argument, and there's no time to try. The bad guys know we're here, and they're coming after us." Luke said, "You're sure?"

Nick flashed him a grim look and tapped the thin scar that stretched around his head from temple to temple.

"So? We should be safe enough as long as we don't try to move," Aeona said. "Who's gonna waste their time blasting a crashed s.h.i.+p?"

"Wait five seconds and you can ask 'em."

Nick barely had time to get the words out before the first explosion ripped away the Falcon's belly ramp and blasted a gout of flaming slag into the cargo hold that set the whole place on fire.

In the deep shadows of the cavern filled with half-buried dead people, away from R2's light, Han gathered Leia into his arms.

"Leia, I just-I'm sorry things went this way. I just wish you and I had more time. Together."

She smiled up at him and touched his face. "I know."

"How is it we only kiss when we're about to get killed?"

"Just lucky, I guess." She kissed him, briefly, glancingly, but even that slight contact brought a hot flush of bittersweet regret for all the kisses he was pretty sure they'd never get the chance to share.

"Aroo-oo-ergh! Herowwivougrr."

"What?" Han pulled away from her. "Are you sure?"

Chewbacca was kneeling alongside a young Mon Calamari who was buried to his armpits. "Herowwwougrr!"

Leia frowned. "What's he saying?"

Han was already rus.h.i.+ng to his copilot's side. He reached down and pressed his fingertips to the Mon Cal's face just above his left eye, checking for his sinus pulse. It was there: thin and thready but maintaining the typical syncopated three-beat rhythm. "He's right!"

"About what?"

"This one's still alive," Han said wonderingly. "Looks like some more of them might be, too. Out cold, but breathing."

"What's that insignia?" Leia joined him at the Mon Cal's side. "Artoo, aim the light over here." When he did, her eyes widened and she pointed at the posting flash next to the rank cartridge on the Mon Cal's battle-dress blouse. "Han-isn't that the Justice? The s.h.i.+p Luke was on?"

Han was already up looking at the others. It was a backward progression: the captives became less and less healthy-looking as he went deeper into the cavern. In addition to the Republic soldiers, there were a number of guys in the Lava Gear armor of the Mindorese, but most of them were stormtroopers, and nearly all of them were dead. "It's like those critters stuck them in here and just...forgot about them."

Chewie grumbled. Han nodded. "Yeah, not my favorite way to go, either."

R2 gave out a warning whistle that brought Han back to his feet. He drew his blaster. "That sounds like bad news."

"Bad enough," Leia said as she produced the holdout. In the faint light that spilled out into the tunnel, she could see wave after wave of the rock creatures crowding toward the cavern. "Time to fight."

Han turned, blaster ready. "I don't think we're getting out of this one."

"Trust in the Force, Han."

"You trust the Force," he said. "I'll trust my blaster."

Leia frowned down at the holdout's power indicator. "The Force never runs out of ammo."

"No? Then how come it's not shooting?"

"What happened to never tell me the odds?"

"That's for when there are odds. When you fall off a cliff, what are the odds you'll hit the ground?"

"Depends," she said. "How close are you and the Falcon?"

"Very funny."

Han's comlink crackled. He grabbed it and shouted, "Yeah, come in! Come in! We're in a little trouble here. Do you copy? Do you copy?" but the comlink replied only with a burst of static.

He shook it one more time, then made a face and jammed it back in his pocket. "Had me going there for a second. Come on. If we can hold the doorway, we'll slow 'em down, anyway."

But as they moved toward the cavern's mouth, the creatures started melting out of the walls.

In the deep gloom of his life-support chamber, Cronal withdrew his consciousness from the realm of Darksight, and found himself well pleased. Anyone unfamiliar with the true power of Darksight might have been astonished to find that Skywalker indeed had a sibling who had never trained as a Jedi; this hypothetical any-one would no doubt have been amazed to discover that this sibling had-seemingly of her own accord-presented herself precisely where Cronal needed her to be exactly when he needed her to be there. For Cronal, this was only what he had learned to expect. Left to its own devices, the galaxy and everything in it-from the stars themselves to the tiniest virus-served the Dark.

At least up until some blasted meddler started tricking around with the Force, upsetting the natural order of things.

This was the real problem with Jedi: the Force. Their whole concept of the Force. Always prattling about life and light and justice, as if those silly words actually meant something. He would have found those Jedi fools entirely humorous were it not lor their inexplicable ability to occasionally actually interfere with the Way of the Dark.

Palpatine had done a fair job of thinning the Force-user herd, and Skywalker himself had nearly finished the job when he'd tricked Vader and the Emperor into killing each other-because, after all, the Sith could be as troublesome as Jedi if they set their minds to it. And then that Skywalker boy himself had already been more trouble than he was worth.

This problem, however, was on the verge of solving itself, as all such problems were wont to do, when one truly adhered to the Way. He didn't need the Skywalker Jedi anymore; his sister would be an even better fit-not only had she no actual Force skills to defend her from his dominance, she also had tremendous political potential. Hero of Endor? Sole survivor of the last royal family of Alderaan?

The only difficulty he had left was to retrieve the Skywalker girl from the wild Melters and get her Darkening under way, which task was decidedly complicated by the fact that all his best p.a.w.ns were lying dead on the floor of the Election Center. Yet even this difficulty turned out to be another example of how the Dark antic.i.p.ated and provided for the every need of its most a.s.siduous servant.

He still had the prototype, the test subject upon whom he had experimented to perfect the Darkening process. This subject hadn't been entirely a.n.a.logous to Skywalker-his connection to the Force, though astonis.h.i.+ngly powerful, was innately of a far darker shade than the boy's, not to mention that he had never received Jedi training. Or any training, really, which was probably why Cronal had failed to antic.i.p.ate just how large an obstacle Skywalker's training would prove to be. He was, however, enormous and physically powerful, and his very arteries pulsed with a certain innate ferocity that Cronal found more than a bit intoxicating. And with the shadow nerve network of meltma.s.sif lacing his body, he had a connection to the fundamental power of the Dark that rivaled Cronal's own.

The initial test subject had had a number of limitations, though; he was twice Skywalker's age, and instead of a hero to the entire Rebel Alliance and now the New Republic, he'd been a hunted fugitive for longer than the boy had been alive, with a substantial bounty on his head that still stood. He was also more than a bit distinctive-looking, being over two meters tall and built like a rancor, not to mention having teeth filed sharp as a sabercat's. He also, owing to some kind of structural brain abnormality that Cronal had been unable to repair, entirely lacked the power of human speech.

All of which made him a less-than-ideal body for Cronal to spend the next few decades inhabiting, and so Cronal had never taken the final step of permanent consciousness transfer... which only made this particular test subject all the more ideal for this particular task: a remote body, through which he could exert the whole of his powers, without risk to himself.

After all, when one needed a job done properly. ..

And so Cronal closed his eyes and brought the Sunset Crown down from its resting place onto his hairless scalp. When he opened his eyes again, the eyes he opened were not his.

They were the eyes of Kar Vastor.

CHAPTER 15.

Luke hit the deck rolling. His flight suit was flame-r.e.t.a.r.dant, but that wouldn't stop the molten cinder and white-hot shards of the Falcon's armor that the explosion had blown in through the hatch from burning right through it. Rolling might not have done him much good either, except that the Falcon's automated fire suppressors were squirting supercooled extinguis.h.i.+ng foam all over the cargo hold. Luke got himself good and coated with the gunk, then struggled up to his hands and knees.

Nick and Aeona and most of the others were similarly down and rolling, but a few just stood and screamed as they burned. Luke stretched out into the Force and flattened every one of them with a single hard shove, which might not have been necessary since the ongoing explosions were bouncing the s.h.i.+p around enough that n.o.body would have been on their feet much longer anyway, but Luke wasn't about to leave that to chance.

He kicked off the wall and slid through the cascading foam over to Nick and Aeona, shouting above the blasts and screams. "Get your people secured and ready to move, and have them seal that ramp door! You'll find three or four Hatch Patch units in the rear storage compartment. Any questions?"

"Yeah-who put you in charge?" Aeona snapped.

"You did, sweetheart," Nick said. "When you marooned his sister and his best friend. Suck it up and do what you're told."

Her eyes flashed like a blaster charging to overload. "You are gonna be in so much trouble..."

"If we live through this, you can spank me."

"Don't think I won't."

"Get yourself to the c.o.c.kpit," Luke told her. "Activate as many thrusters as you can bring online, and on my order fire them full ahead."

"Ahead? That'll only drive us deeper into the ground!"

"Someday, girl," Nick said, "you and I are gonna have a talk about arguing with Jedi. He's got a plan." He turned to Luke. "Tell me you've got a plan."

"More or less." Luke got up-with a little help from the Force to keep his balance in the soapy, slippery extinguis.h.i.+ng foam-and started trotting aft.

"That's not the most rea.s.suring thing you could have said. Where are you going?"

"Quad turret," Luke said without slowing. "Skywalker, give me the other one, " Nick said. Luke stopped and looked back. "Can you shoot?" Nick made it to his feet. "I can clip the wings of a Perthrillian nightwasp at a thousand meters and never wake it up."

"That's not really an answer."

"Hey, the guys in there right now couldn't even hit me."

"Good point. Come on."

When they got to the access junction, both turrets were empty. "Looks like they bailed."

Luke moved into one of the turrets and nodded out the transparisteel at the carpet of fire that was the cinder pit. "Do you blame them?"

Nick only shrugged as he belted himself in. "It's not the worst idea these guys have had today," he called back.

Luke got himself buckled, as well. With a flick of the Force, he reinitialized the circuit that had deactivated the ventral turret. "Nice friends you have."

"She's not a bad person," Nick insisted as he twisted the control yoke back and forth, checking the turret's servo response. "She just doesn't have a lot of patience for the little things."

"Little things like laws and justice and other people's lives?" The turret's tactical screen lit up with unfriendlies. "Here they come!"

Nick hauled on the control yoke and triggered the guns even before the turret swung into line, st.i.tching a curving stream of cannon bolts up the inner wall of the caldera just as a flight of a dozen or so TIEs whipped over the rim and streaked down on strafing runs. The lead TIE flew right into Nick's fire and its c.o.c.kpit viewscreen shattered; it plowed straight on down into the cinder pit at full speed and exploded, but the rest of his shots glanced off armor and collector panels. "This is gonna be a problem," Nick said through his teeth. "Got one, though."

Luke was holding down the triggers in his own turret. "It wasn't starfighters that set this whole crater on fire. Watch out for bombers."

"Copy that."

TIEs swooped down upon them and cannon blasts rocked the s.h.i.+p; Nick caught another one right in the eyeball, then one more. He let out a whoop. "That's three! How many you drop so far, Skywalker?"

"None," Luke said tightly.

"What, I'm outshooting you?" Nick poured enough fire into another TIE's collector panel that it lost control and crashed into its wingman. "Shee, they don't make Jedi like they used to."

"Nick, be quiet."

"Hey, I'm not gloating-well, maybe a little..."

"I know. I need to concentrate."

"On what?" Nick twisted around so he could look up at Skywalker and out through the dorsal turret, which was when he understood why Skywalker hadn't shot down any s.h.i.+ps. He wasn't shooting at the s.h.i.+ps. Nick also understood why it was that no missiles or bombs or cannons were blasting the Falcon to tiny bits.

Because that's what Skywalker had been shooting: the missiles and bombs and cannon fire raining down from the swarm of enemy s.h.i.+ps.

"Oh," Nick said softly. He went back to shooting. But he couldn't stop looking at the flames licking upward from the burning cinder pit, and he couldn't help noticing that while Skywalker's blasts were intercepting the cannon bolts and missiles that would actually hit the Falcon, all the near-misses were splas.h.i.+ng so much molten rock around that it'd probably be melting through the s.h.i.+p's hull armor any second now anyway. Just as he realized this, the turret's tactical screen showed blips for six TIE bombers inbound, and when he pointed all this out to Skywalker, the young Jedi's only response was to key the c.o.c.kpit channel on the intercom. "Hey..." He glanced over at Nick. "What's her name again?"

"Aeona."

"Aeona, this is Luke. I hope you got some thrusters hot."

"We're a long way off full power..."

"We'll take what we've got. Full ahead. Angle the att.i.tude jets for extra boost."

"Skywalker?" Nick said. "You just ordered her to bury this s.h.i.+p in a river of molten fraggin' lava."

"Yes. Reset your turret to default position and fire on my order."

"Um, you do know that default is forward? Which-is down." Desperation sharpened his voice. "You do know that's the opposite of up, which is where the bad guys are coming from?"

"Nick," Luke said, "you're arguing with a Jedi again." Nick's response was a snarl of frustration that contained, as its only intelligible words, nikkle-nut Jedi ruskakk as he jabbed toggles on the turret's fire-control board.

Luke no longer looked at his own tactical screen. He didn't even glance outside the turret. He didn't need to see outside; he was paying attention to inside.

Inside his head. Inside the Force.

He felt the Falcon's quad turrets swing into line; he felt the TIE bombers whip down over the rim of the caldera, and he felt them release unguided proton bombs in a mechanically precise sequence; he felt the arc of the falling bombs, and he felt their impact points, and he felt how their blast radii would overlap precisely at the Falcon's position and crush the s.h.i.+p like a discarded ration pack.

He said, "Nick. Now."