Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Part 3

Admiral Kalback nodded. "Overwhelming force. Shock and awe," he said.

Commander Thavish tilted his head consideringly. "It might actually save lives, on balance. Ours, at least. Maybe even theirs. If we never give them a chance to think they can fight their way out, they might just surrender."

"Saving lives is swell, if we can. Winning is more important," Luke said. "If we let Shadowsp.a.w.n's forces escape, they could scatter. Go on the run-break up into small, independent units. We know better than anyone in the galaxy how much damage that kind of decentralized guerrilla insurgency can do-it's how we brought down the Empire. This might be our last chance to engage Shadowsp.a.w.n force-on-force."

Luke looked around the table, meeting each commander's eyes in turn. "Every one of you needs to understand this. We hold nothing back except a small reserve force, to cover our exertion if things go bad. It's full commitment. All or nothing."

One by one, the commanders answered his stare with grim acknowledgment.

"All right," Luke said. "I want tactical readiness reports within the hour. We move in three."

CHAPTER 3.

Aeona Cantor lay flat on the jagged hilltop, squinting through electrobinoculars that had gone foggy, their front lenses scored by too much exposure to the clouds of windblown grit that pa.s.sed for atmosphere here on Mindor. The hunks of broken lava around her masked her silhouette, and she didn't have to worry about thermal imaging, because the rock around her was warmed by the noontime heat, and the jigsaw hunks of lava glued to her survival suit made perfect camouflage against visible-light sensors. All of which were necessary factors in her position, which was less than ten kilometers from a huge smoking volcanic dome.

The fact that this volcanic dome was huge and smoking was of no interest to her at all; she cared only about the double ring of planetary-defense turbolaser towers that surrounded it, and the gnat clouds of TIE fighters that streamed in and out of every visible cavern mouth on the mountainside.

Which was exactly how it had looked every time she'd gotten a glimpse.

She scowled, pus.h.i.+ng a lock of burnt-orange hair off her forehead, and dialed the electrobinoculars up to a higher magnification. "I don't get it," she said. "Tripp, is he sure about the jammers?"

From a few meters below and behind her, a man who wore a similar outfit of lava-adorned survival suit answered with a shrug. "All 1 can tell you is what Boakie tells me. Subs.p.a.ce is clear. If we wanted, we could send a signal all the way to the Trigaskian Blur."

"Why would Shadowsp.a.w.n turn off his subs.p.a.ce jammers? Right after a raid. Doesn't make sense."

"How would I know? Better you should ask him."

"If I ever get the chance," she muttered through her teeth, "we'll have other things to talk about."

"I got something!" This shout came from farther down the hill-side, within the mouth of the cave where the rest of her men waited. "Hey, Aeona! Hey, I got something!"

Aeona flattened herself into the rocks and hissed, "Tripp! Tell that idiot to keep his b.l.o.o.d.y voice down!"

"What for? It's not like there's anybody around to hear."

"You're gonna argue with me?"

"Aw, Aeona, come on..."

"The blacksh.e.l.ls could have seeded these hills with sonic probes. There might be a ground patrol. Do you know how the Melters keep finding us? Me neither. Till we do, the next guy who speaks above a whisper gets my blaster barrel across the face."

"Aeona..."

"And the next guy who argues with me is gonna get it up his..."

"All right, all right. Shee, relax, huh?" Tripp let himself half slide, half scramble down the hillside toward the cave.

Aeona jammed the electrobinoculars back against her face. She'd relax when she was long gone from this stinking ball of rock.

From behind her came the scrabble of boots on lava as Tripp worked his way back up the slope. "It was nothin'," he said.

"What kind of nothing?"

Tripp waved a hand disgustedly. "A nothing kind of nothing. Just a couple pings."

Aeona's scowl deepened. "Pings?"

"Yeah-some kind of signal, and an echo, like a transponder response..."

"I know what a ping is," she said through her teeth. "Where did the initializer come from?"

Tripp shrugged. "Outside the system, prob'ly. A HoloNet repeater or something."

"And the response came from here?"

"Well, yeah. Um . .. how'd you know that?"

She was already backing herself out of her position. She scrambled down the slope. "Up! Everybody up!"

People in the lava-glued survival suits scrambled to their feet from all around the little cave.

"Lock and load, people." Aeona started moving through them toward her scout bike. "I want every speeder, swoop, and skimmer in the air in five. No supplies except weapons, power cells, and medikits. Full alert."

"Alert?" Tripp said as he scrambled after her. "What's going on?"

"You think it's a coincidence that after months, those jammers go down just now? Just in time to let through a transponder ping that's probably coming from some kind of tracker?"

Tripp frowned. "What, it's a trap?"

"Not for us. And we need to make sure we don't step into it." Aeona pulled her blaster and checked its charge, then spun it around her finger and let it slip smoothly back into her holster. For an instant, she smiled. But only for an instant. "We'll wait and watch, but we need to be ready to move."

Group Captain Klick stood stiffly at attention, flight helmet gleaming black beneath his black-armored left arm. Oblivious to the pleas and curses, sobs and occasional screams from the captives in the Sorting Center behind him, he faced a huge slab of durasteel that sealed a starfighter-sized archway carved from the wall of this volcanic cavern. Soon enough, the slab would pull aside, and a p.a.w.n would come to beckon, and Klick would be ushered into the Presence of Lord Shadowsp.a.w.n.

To suffer the consequences of his failure.

Despite the durasteel gray of his little remaining hair, the deeply weathered creases of his face, and the smear of burn scar that rumpled his check and swept upward over the remains of his left ear, when he took off that helmet anyone who knew storm troopers knew they were looking at something special. Klick was one of the original Fetts, a veteran of the Clone Wars from Geonosis to the Jedi Rebellion, and he was proud of it. This was his sole point of vanity; he never minded the slightly silly sound of his call sign, hung on him by a humor-challenged Jedi Padawan some twenty-five years ago. "Klick" was short for "kilometer," a reference to his creche identifier of TP-Trooper Pilot-1000.

The vast cavern around him had been expanded and shaped from the local meltma.s.sif stone before being fusion-formed into a vault of black gla.s.s. Its walls and roof glimmered with cold green highlights, reflected from the gently bobbing flock of repulsor lightglobes that floated ten meters above the polished floor. Scattered across this floor were clots of prisoners, standing or sitting or lounging in as much comfort as could be had on the bare cold floor.

The prisoners were a motley group, from beggars to aristocrats, thieves to Rebel officers. These prisoners were the actual targets of the raids Klick's Defender wings had been conducting throughout the Mid Rim these past months, taking three or four here, a half-dozen there, never so many that the Rebels might suspect. The loot taken on these raids-and the destruction left behind-was no more than camouflage, so that these prisoners would be written off by their families, their friends, and their respective planetary governments as missing and presumed dead in the resulting ma.s.s slaughter.

So that these prisoners could be permanently disappeared.

Disappeared here, to Mindor. To the Sorting Center of Lord Shadowsp.a.w.n.

Behind Klick, four or five of the p.a.w.ns drifted among the prisoners, hems of their long robes trailing behind them. Here and there a p.a.w.n might stop, the red-limned shadow of his broad crescent head-gear falling across this prisoner or that. These p.a.w.ns never spoke, and their expressions never changed-couldn't change, as their faces were only holomasks projected by their Crowns-but sometimes a pale hand would extend from a darkly voluminous sleeve. If the prisoner was lucky, a slicing gesture would bring a quick burst of blaster-fire to the back. If the prisoner was less lucky, a long pale linger, laid upon his head, would indicate that this prisoner had been elected to the p.a.w.ns.

From the sudden whine of a neural stunner in the cavern behind him, Klick judged that another captive had just been so elected. Sure enough: shortly a pair of p.a.w.ns approached, dragging between them an unconscious human youth of fifteen or sixteen Standard years. The slab of durasteel retreated, then slid silently aside, revealing the fusion-formed corridor beyond. Klick remained at attention, without the slightest flicker of expression, as the p.a.w.ns dragged the youth past him, through the archway and down the corridor.

He had been waiting, at attention, ever since the Defender wing of his starfighter group had limped home from its disastrous attack on the false Corellian Queen. He was fully prepared to wait all day. All the next, too. If necessary, Klick was willing to wait all week.

This was not from fear of Shadowsp.a.w.n's anger; the Lord of the Shadow Throne was no lunatic like the a.s.sa.s.sin Vader, to slaughter a loyal subordinate in a fit of pique. What held Klick in place was nothing more nor less than a pa.s.sionate desire to be worthy of the trust Shadowsp.a.w.n had placed in him. If doing so would help advance the Great Cause, Klick would stand at attention until he starved to death.

Group Captain Klick had been Squadron Leader Klick nearly a year before, on that black day when Lord Vader's treason, and his cowardly murder of Palpatine the Great, had allowed the Rebel Alliance to escape the trap at the moons of Endor. The destruction of the second Death Star had been nothing compared with the shattering dislocation Imperial forces had suffered at the loss of their beloved Emperor. Without the leaders.h.i.+p of the great man, the Imperial military had splintered into competing factions squabbling over whatever sc.r.a.ps of territory could be secured by local Moffs or regional Admiralty commanders. Conflicts had smoldered, and even some skirmishes had flared, Imperial against Imperial.

Then had come Shadowsp.a.w.n.

No one knew his real name. No one knew from whence he'd come. But it was clear to all who so much as heard his voice that this was no mere Moff, no general or admiral with delusions of Imperial grandeur. To be received into Shadowsp.a.w.n's presence was as awe-inspiring as standing before the Emperor himself.

When rumor had begun to spark throughout the Imperial regions of a new leader, a man of mystery with the cunning and charisma of a second coming of Palpatine, Klick had been promoted to wing commander in the service of Admiral Kraven, the self-styled warlord of a Mid Rim stellar cl.u.s.ter, and sent with his squadrons to destroy this upstart. But the upstart in question had received Klick's fighter wing with welcome instead of combat... and greeted him with an array of authentic command codes, even Palpatine's own secret codes that had been buried in the deep core programming Klick had received in the creche on Kamino. Shadowsp.a.w.n claimed to have been handpicked by Palpatine to be his steward, to hold the throne in trust for Palpatine's chosen heir; Palpatine had given these codes to him so that every loyal clone would know Shadowsp.a.w.n for the galaxy's rightful, if temporary, ruler.

It had been Shadowsp.a.w.n who had revealed to Klick the tale of Vader's treason, the monster's cowardly murder of his longtime friend and benefactor, a tale so dark and gruesome that even now, Klick shuddered to think of it. Why, Vader would have died years ago, without the caring and generosity of the great man he would eventually a.s.sa.s.sinate; it was well known among the clones that Darth Vader had been a charity case, his life saved free of any charge at one of Palpatine's great legacies, the Emperor Palpatine Surgical Reconstruction Center on Coruscant. Palpatine's caring and generosity had not only saved Vader's life, but had gifted him with mechanical arms and legs, remaking a helpless cripple into perhaps the most feared and powerful man the galaxy had ever known.

It was all just a small part of the greatest holothriller Klick had ever seen, the one Shadowsp.a.w.n himself had created and was now circulating among the systems still loyal to the Imperial Dream: Luke Skywalker and the Jedi's Revenge.

The holothriller had shown in vivid detail how Vader's madness had grown with his unholy ambition, how the Dark Lord had pretended to play along with Palpatine's quest to rescue the last remaining child of the Jedi hero, Anakin Skywalker, from the evil web of lies in which the Rebels had snared him. How on the day when Luke Skywalker had finally stood before Palpatine on the bridge of the second Death Star, when the Emperor had declared his great love for Skywalker's father-who, as all honest clones knew, had been the Emperor's most beloved protege until his tragic, untimely death in the Jedi Rebellion-Vader's mind had finally snapped.

It was Vader, as Luke Skywalker and the Jedi's Revenge made so painfully clear, who had always secretly dreamed of being Palpatine's successor. It was Vader, in his madness, who had believed himself to be Palpatine's beloved protege; he had even tried to bend young Skywalker's mind to evil, to recruit the virtuous young Jedi in his treasonous plans, but young Skywalker had roundly rejected Vader's insane machinations. And so, on that dark day among the moons of Endor, when Palpatine had revealed to young Skywalker that he, and he alone, the son of Palpatine's beloved companion, the child of the sole Jedi to remain loyal to the Senate and the Chancellor during the Jedi Rebellion, was to be the new Emperor, Vader could no longer control his rage. With a roar of mindless fury, he'd attacked like a blood-mad rancor.

As the innocent young Skywalker had looked on in horror, the black-armored monster had fallen upon the frail old man who had once befriended him. Only after Palpatine had been mortally wounded had young Skywalker snapped from his daze. With righteous fury, he had risen up against the most feared fighter in the galaxy, and had struck down the black-armored a.s.sa.s.sin, the murderer of his late father's greatest friend. But it was too late to save Palpatine; poor Skywalker could only avenge the great man's death.

Though Klick knew that what he'd seen was only a dramatic reenactment, there was something so real about it, so powerful-a truth greater than any mere facts.

It was Luke Skywalker's grief and guilt at his failure to save the Emperor, Shadowsp.a.w.n had explained, that had driven him back into the grasp of the Rebels. Skywalker believed that he deserved no better than to be just another outlaw among the thieves, pirates, and murderers of the Rebel Alliance.

"And this is what I ask of you, Wing Commander," Lord Shadow-sp.a.w.n had said to Klick on that day. "That you join me in my quest to fulfill the dying wish of our Beloved Emperor: to heal the broken heart of the son of the last true Jedi hero, and to put Luke Skywalker, Palpatine's chosen heir, in his rightful place as the absolute ruler of our Galactic Empire. "

Klick had been proud to surrender his forces to the great Lord Shadowsp.a.w.n's epic struggle to bring the shattered galaxy together again; there was no greater honor he could imagine than to lay down his life for Palpatine's chosen heir, and Lord Shadowsp.a.w.n had rewarded his devotion with promotion and command of his own fighter group. He only hoped that he could somehow survive the coming struggle, that someday he might have the privilege to kneel and pledge his service in person to the newly anointed emperor.

Now, far beyond the archway along the fusion-formed corridor of stone, one of the p.a.w.ns paused and turned, as though he had somehow sensed Klick's thought. A pale hand came up and beckoned. Klick followed them into the Election Center. This was not Klick's first visit to the Election Center; he knew what to expect. He'd tried to train himself not to look at the Elect. He'd tried to school himself not to hear them. He'd tried to discipline his mind to think of the Elect as the privileged, the chosen, the luckiest of the lucky, yanked from despair into this once-in-a-millennium opportunity to serve the Great Cause. Tried, and failed.

Every time he entered this place, the Elect were not invisible, nor inaudible, and he'd never be able to think of them as lucky. They were always, and would always be, terrified victims, helplessly screaming or sobbing or pleading for their lives, sentient sacrifices tragically necessary to Shadowsp.a.w.n's plan for Skywalker's eventual victory.

The p.a.w.ns ahead of him dragged the stunned prisoner to a vacant p.a.w.ning Table: a slab-like pedestal of stone, molded from the local meltma.s.sif. They let the prisoner slump over its edge as they drew their neural stunners; a short burst from each into the surface of the p.a.w.ning Table altered the electrocrystalline structure of the meltma.s.sif, liquefying a coffin-sized area in the smooth stone into a fluid that had the consistency of cold barkmeal. Then the p.a.w.ns lifted the prisoner onto the table, pressing his limp body into the liquid stone, which flowed around his limbs until only his head was exposed. They carefully supported his chin as the stone resolidified around him, molding the hardening rock up along his neck and around his jaw.

Then a burst of precisely calibrated radiation flash-burned off all the hair on his head and face, and the p.a.w.ns produced a pair of self-cauterizing laser bone saws and began to cut away the top of his skull.

This was not what produced the screaming, sobbing, and pleading that characterized the p.a.w.ning process; the Elect were never even awake enough to experience the messy details of having the upper hemispheres of their skulls removed. The screaming, sobbing, and pleading would begin after a particular Elect had awakened, as a series of neural probes selectively stimulated differing nerve cl.u.s.ters of their exposed brains. The anguish, however, was short-lived; soon the neural probes would identify the precise location of, say, the tickle reflex, and the screams would instantly be replaced by giggling. Shortly, stimulation of olfactory neurons would have the giggling Elect asking for a slice of the grilled bantha steak he believed himself to be smelling, and perhaps a mug of that delightfully rich hot chocolate that he was quite certain someone must have been brewing just out of sight.

And at each and every point, from the nerves that registered the color blue to the nerves that controlled the curl of the Elect's toes, the p.a.w.ns would place a tiny crystal of meltma.s.sif, the same stone as the Table. The same stone as the entire Election Center, and the vault outside. And after the skull was replaced, these crystals would grow into a gem-like latticework spreading throughout the Elect's brain cavity.

Every p.a.w.n had a head full of diamonds.

Klick did not know what criteria might be used to choose the Elect. Nor did he comprehend the subtle gradations of rank among the p.a.w.ns, why and how some seemed to be in charge at some times, and at other times seemed to take the orders of those they had recently commanded. All he knew was that once an Elect had been fitted with his crescent Crown and released as a full p.a.w.n, he was instantly the superior of any trooper or pilot or officer. His slightest gesture was to be obeyed as though it had proceeded from Lord Shadowsp.a.w.n himself. Very few of the p.a.w.ns ever spoke, but some peculiar eloquence in their gestures could make their orders instantly clear to even the dimmest nat-born trooper; Klick suspected it was some arcane use of the Force.

He'd never understood the Force, though he did not doubt its existence; he'd seen the Force used in action by countless Jedi during the Clone Wars. He had no interest in understanding. He'd been bred not for insight, but for obedience. He was content to allow the Force to remain a convenient mystery: one he could use to explain whatever he might find otherwise inexplicable.

Like, for example, how Lord Shadowsp.a.w.n was able to shape meltma.s.sif seemingly with the power of his will alone. A simple electromagnetic burst was enough to temporarily break down the curious crystalline structure of the rock, but that could not explain how, when Shadowsp.a.w.n was near and set his will upon it, the meltma.s.sif seemed almost alive. Klick had witnessed it more than once: Shadowsp.a.w.n would stretch forth his hand, and the stone would flow and shape itself into whatever fantastical form might suit the Lord's wildest desire.

Ahead, another p.a.w.n beckoned. This p.a.w.n stood at a blank slate-gray wall of meltma.s.sif, but as Klick marched toward it, the p.a.w.n swept a hand as though to usher him on, and the stone dimpled, drawing away from him in a bubble that became a shaft a few meters long. Klick entered the shaft without hesitation, and didn't even blink as the stone flowed together to seal itself behind him, cutting off all light along with the possibility of retreat. He kept marching through the absolute darkness without breaking stride, trusting that the stone would continue to open before him and close behind.

And if the stone should fail to part before him, should Lord Shadowsp.a.w.n see fit to entomb him alive as a punishment for his failure, he would stand and wait until his air ran out, and then he would go to sleep forever. No clone sp.a.w.ned in Kaminoan pods and raised in creche school could even comprehend the concept of claustrophobia, much less suffer from it.

The faintest of breezes stirred his hair, and the sound of his boot heels on the stone took on added resonance, a multiplicity of echoes: though he could not see it, the stone had opened before him into a chamber of perfect night.

"Hold, Croup Captain." In the lightless void, Lord Shadowsp.a.w.n's voice came from every direction and from none at all, as though the darkness itself spoke these words. "Stand and report."

"My lord." Klick inclined his head. "I regret to inform my lord that..."

"Do not regret, Klick. Only inform."

"The s.h.i.+p you ordered us-ah, that we were ordered to strike, my lord, along the Corellian Run. It was a Rebel ambush. The Corellian Queen was not even a s.h.i.+p at all, only a sh.e.l.l-a mock-up, really, full of Rebel starfighters. Somehow..." Klick swallowed, hard. His next words would be someone's death sentence. Possibly his own. "Somehow they knew we were coming."

"Did they?"

"They must have, my lord. Not only were they lying in wait, they had a new weapon, a torpedo of a type I've never seen, that seemed to be specifically designed to engage our superior Defenders. My starfighters were forced to retreat with almost thirty percent casualties. My lord..." Klick swallowed again. "My lord, there must be a Rebel spy. Here, on Mindor."

"Must there? Can you conceive no alternate explanation?"

"I-I can't imagine, my lord."

"I can. But continue. There is more, is there not?"

"Yes, my lord. We have detected a signal. Some sort of subs.p.a.ce transponder. We've traced it to the Defenders damaged in the engagement on the Corellian Run. We detected it when..." Klick swallowed hard, as if he was trying to down a mouthful of rocks. "When the subs.p.a.ce jamming system was deactivated."

"Ah."

"It's the work of this Rebel spy, my lord. It must be."

"It was not. The jammers were deactivated by my order."

"My lord?" Klick blinked rapidly as he tried to take this in. Would Shadowsp.a.w.n betray his very own Great Cause? "My lord-I fear those torpedoes were used to plant some sort of tracking device..."

"At last!"

"My lord?"

"Klick, you have done well. Very well indeed."

"My lord, I believe the Rebels have found us! According to the most recent intelligence reports, they have an entire task force on constant ready alert-my lord, a fleet could be on its way here right nowl"