The Courtship Of Princess Leia Part 11

In one startling moment of clarity, Isolder realized that he was much like Solo, perhaps too much. Solo had his Falcon. Isolder had Storm. Both of them had worked as pirates, both loved the same strong woman. And all through the trip to Dathomir Isolder had asked himself why he was coming.

His mother knew where Han had run to; the Hapan fleets could retrieve Leia. Isolder didn't need to risk his life in this senseless encounter.

But when Isolder considered it, he realized that part of him wanted to beat Solo senseless, yet he wanted something more. Solo had thrown down a challenge that Isolder could not refuse. There on the flight deck, Isolder suddenly realized: he'd come to steal Leia back from Han Solo, take her away at gunpoint if he had to.

Luke settled into his fighter, and Isolder shouted, "Skywalker, I'm coming with you. I'll be watching your tail!"

Luke turned to Isolder, did not take off his helmet as he gave a thumbs-up.

With a surge of adrenaline, Isolder ran across the flight deck, leaped into Storm's c.o.c.kpit and fired up the control panel. Overhead, the flight techs battened down the transparisteel bubble as Isolder activated the turbogenerators and armed his missiles and blasters. The techs were taking extra time, rechecking his systems, and Isolder revved the generators as if he would take off, sent them scrambling for cover. Then he erupted into s.p.a.ce.

He flipped his transponder settings to identify himself as a Hapan fighter, then screamed over the Song of War's top saucer.

From s.p.a.ce, he could more easily see how the battle was going: the Star Destroyers had backed off in unison and spread apart so that Astarta was forced to choose one of them as a primary target. Instead, she had taken the Battle Dragon over the docks at the s.h.i.+pyard and had begun pummeling the helpless Super Star Destroyer that waited for repairs, doing more damage to the costly machinery in one strafing run than she could ever have accomplished in a pitched battle.

Neither of the active destroyers was hurrying to stop her.

Two of the Victory-cla.s.s destroyers at the docks must have been partly operational, for TIE fighters and old Z-95 Headhunters were scrambling from their decks. The skies were littered with swarming fighters, chunks of twisted shrapnel, and scattering debris from destroyed s.h.i.+ps.

Isolder flipped a switch on his radio, let it search the Imperial frequencies until he could hear the chatter of the enemy fighters. Luke Skywalker was already circling out past the edge of the Hapan Dragon, and Isolder followed the Jedi out, closing on his tail.

"Red One to Red Two," Luke called over the radio. "There's a lot of debris falling from the s.h.i.+pyard." Just as he spoke, a kilometer-long section of scaffolding took a hit, went spinning down into the gravity well while other segments blew out of orbit. "I'm going to shut off my engines and follow some of it down in a minute. But before I do, I want to take out a couple of enemy fighters."

Isolder considered a moment. He and Luke couldn't land without being detected. He'd have to eject, then let his s.h.i.+p crash.

"I'm right with you, Red One," Isolder answered.

Luke accelerated to attack speed, spun out toward a phalanx of twenty incoming Headhunters that glowed red on the scopes like flaming gems.

Isolder followed at his right wing, put double power to the front s.h.i.+elds, listened to the Headhunters' chatter strategic codes over the Imperial bands. He hit his jammers, and the Headhunters went silent. He checked his head-up display, noticed something odd, called out, "Luke?your deflector s.h.i.+elds aren't up!"

The Headhunters' jammers shot static at him, and Isolder shouted again, "Luke, your s.h.i.+elds!"

Through the crackling static, Isolder heard Luke shout, "My s.h.i.+elds are up!"

"No," Isolder shouted. "Your s.h.i.+elds are not up!" but Luke threw a thumbs-up sign, trying to calm Isolder, and then the Zebra Headhunters were on them, blaster fire lighting up the skies. Isolder picked a target, fired simultaneously with ion guns and a homing missile, twisted his stick abruptly to the right. From the corner of his eye he watched Skywalker take a hit to the top-right wing, fall into a spin, simultaneously take a hit to the front sensor array. Skywalker's s.h.i.+p began tumbling through s.p.a.ce, breaking apart, and the astrogation droid was hurled from the vehicle. The Headhunter in front of Isolder exploded, and four or five blaster shots. .h.i.t Isolder's front deflectors. The s.h.i.+elds collapsed. Isolder couldn't take another run.

Luke rattled around in his falling s.h.i.+p, thrown against the transparisteel like a doll. Isolder silently prayed, then aimed his life-sensors at the c.o.c.kpit. Nothing. Skywalker was dead.

Isolder cursed, and knew that he could do nothing now but feign his own death. He ejected a thermal detonator out the back of his s.h.i.+p, counted to one. A brilliant explosion pierced the sky behind him, and he flipped off his transponder, powered down, and let the Storm drift and fall beside Luke's s.h.i.+p. The explosion should have fooled the enemy sensors, and with a pitched battle going on, Zsinj's men wouldn't have time to check the wreckage too closely.

Under Isolder's display console was a storage area. From it, he pulled a reflective blanket, unfolded it, and turned it so that it held his body heat in. Any sensors close enough to detect him would register that his body had cooled, show him as dead. For a moment, Isolder watched Skywalker's corpse tumbling in his s.h.i.+p, and little explosions seemed to go off in Isolder's brain. After all the help Luke had given, the Jedi was dead.

Isolder had warned Luke that his s.h.i.+elds were down, and Luke hadn't believed him. Such things didn't result from technical glitches. The X-wing fighter had to have been sabotaged somehow. Isolder did not doubt that Ta'a Chume had murdered the young Jedi.

Isolder gritted his teeth, pulled the blanket over his head like a shroud, and waited to make planetfall.

Leia pushed through a tangle of creepers under the cover of darkness, looked up the slope to the top of the plateau. In the light of the double moons, she spotted several huge rectangular slabs of black stone.

Somewhere in the midst of each rectangle, a hole had been carved in the shape of an eye, and within each eye socket, a huge round boulder served as the pupil to the eye. The rectangular slabs were jumbled, elevated at different levels, so that different eyes pointed half a dozen directions at once.

Leia halted, stared up there for a long moment, mystified. Up on the plateau in the brush beyond her line of sight, something roared, ran across the stone on slapping feet, leaped from the other side of the hill and landed in thick brush, then clambered off through the trees. Leia stopped, heart pounding.

"What was that?" Han asked, standing still to catch a breath. Chewie and Threepio had stopped just behind her.

"Something alive?about the size of the Millennium Falcon, I'd say." Leia sighed, grateful only that the thing had run off. "I'll bet it had five toes."

"At least it wasn't carrying a blaster." Han waved his blaster at the sculptures on top of the ridge. "What do you think this means?the eyes, pointing off in different directions?"

"I don't know," Leia said. She looked back downhill at Chewie and Threepio. "Any ideas?"

Chewie only whined, but Threepio looked around at the hills. "If I may say," Threepio answered, "I think it's a kind of symbolic writing used to instruct creatures of limited intelligence."

"What makes you say that?" Leia asked.

"My data files contain similar structures found on two other planets. You see, a lookout sits in a particular spot, watching in each direction indicated by an eye. In this instance, the eyes seem to point toward different valleys and mountain pa.s.ses. Using this method, creatures with superior intelligence can use inferior beings as lookouts."

"Great," Han said, "so whatever just ran off, went to tell the boss that we're here."

"It would seem so, sir," Threepio said. Han swallowed, looked back down the valley they had come from. The trees were extremely thick, and they had just hiked through a deep bed of plants with tall, thick stems and enormous round leaves. "Great. Well, I haven't heard any Imperial walkers since we went through that thick patch of jungle. I think that might have slowed them down."

"We've been running for hours," Leia said. "We've got to stop and rest, soon." She wiped the perspiration from her brow.

Chewie growled a question. "He wants to know why there aren't any speeders yet," Threepio translated.

Han nodded. "Yeah, I don't get it. If Zsinj wants us, he could send speeders through these woods pretty effectively. But so far they've just brought the walkers. That doesn't make much sense. Why just come at us with walkers?"

"Maybe Zsinj's men feel they need the armor," Leia said, "or the heavy guns."

"Or both," Han agreed. He pointed to the ridge top, the ancient stone statues of eyes that stared tiredly from the hill. "I want to go up there." He began scrambling up the steep hill, grasping roots and the trunks of small trees to pull himself along.

"Wait, Han!" Leia called, too late. Han was already a third of the way up. She ran up after him, fought her way through some heavy briars that would have sliced her hands to shreds if she had not noticed them in time.

When Leia reached the top of the moonlit ridge, Han stood on the lookout point. They were at the base of a mountain where three valleys met, and this small plateau was a single, smooth, windswept rock. A star carved into the stone marked the spot where a lookout would stand, and as Threepio had said, if Leia stood in that spot and looked out, the top of each eye marked a pa.s.s or a valley that needed to be watched. Very simple instructions?except that by triangulation Leia calculated that the lookout must have stood between twelve and fifteen meters tall. A hole gouged into the stone was filled with rainwater. Leia took a drink.

Han walked around the plateau, blaster drawn, gazing down the slopes with his infrared goggles. "Whatever was up here, it's gone. Still, in a place like this, there's not much to see. An army could walk through some of these forests and never be spotted."

"Maybe they're not so interested in watching all of the pa.s.ses," Leia said. "Maybe this valley is strategically situated, and it's more important to be right here, to watch this spot, than it is to watch those ridges."

Distantly, over the mountains, borne on a slight breeze, came a roaring cry that shook Leia's bones.

"It's coming back," Han said with certainty. "I'd say it's two, maybe three kilometers away."

Leia ran off the small plateau, jumped downhill in a dozen strides.

Chewie and Threepio were already backing down the hill. Han followed.

"Come on, come on, you guys!" Han said. "Let's have an organized retreat here."

"Fine," Threepio said, "you organize while I retreat." The droid took off down a valley through the brush as fast as his metal legs would move.

Chewie shot one glance back at Han and Leia, then followed Threepio.

Han rushed past Leia, and she whispered at his back, "Some hero you are!"

Han caught up with Chewie and Threepio and tried to get them to slow down, but both of them were running scared. Leia didn't want to be left behind, kept looking over her shoulder as they made their way down a hill, turned up a valley and began following a small creek through thick trees. At one point, Leia felt sure that she had heard a low grunt behind her, but the shadows under the trees were so deep that she could have imagined it.

How long is the night cycle here? she wondered, realizing that she knew nothing about the planet's rotation, its tilt, its seasons. It seemed that dawn couldn't be far off.

They were running uphill, toward two pillars of stone that pointed upward like jagged canines. Chewbacca was in the lead but he stopped, wavered in his steps. They had been running in a group for the past few minutes, so scared that none dared to take a step without the other, and that proved their undoing.

Behind the stone pillars stood four Imperial walkers.

Floodlights blinded them, freezing them in their tracks. "Halt!" a voice shouted over a loudspeaker, accompanied by the boom of blaster cannons that exploded at Chewie's feet. "All of you, drop your weapons and place your hands on your heads."

Leia dropped her blaster rifle, almost relieved to see the Imperial walkers. Chewie and Han did the same. Better a prison camp than whatever lived out in those mountains.

Two of the walkers circled the pillars. Their searchlights played through the trees, then turned back to Leia and the others. "You, droid, pick up the weapons and carry them in your arms. Dump them over the side of the trail."

Threepio took the weapons from Han, Chewie, and Leia. "I'm terribly sorry about this," he apologized, piling the guns into his arms. He carried them to the side of the trail, tossed them into the brush.

Han's eyes smoldered as he glared at the walkers. All four walkers were two-person affairs, scouting models, the only size small enough to maneuver through this mountainous terrain.

"Turn around and head back the way you came," one pilot shouted over the loudspeaker. "Move nice and easy, and don't try anything! If any of you try to run, your comrades will be shot first."

"Where are you taking us?" Han demanded. "By what right? This is my planet: I have a deed!"

"You're in warlord Zsinj's territory now, General Solo," the pilot said over his mike. "And every planet in this sector belongs to Zsinj. If you want to protest this arrangement, I'm sure Zsinj would be happy to discuss it, at your execution."

"General Solo?" Han asked. "You think I'm General Solo? Look, if I were a New Republic general, what would I be doing here?"

"We'll be very happy to pry those answers out of you?along with your toenails?during your interrogation," the pilot said, "but for now, turn around and start marching!"

A cold chill went through Leia, and they began marching downhill through the woods, the tall trees with their silver bark graceful in the moonlight. The harsh glare of the bobbing headlights on the Imperial walkers made a surreal track. The skeletal rotting leaves at their feet seemed to dance and weave.

After a while, Leia realized that Zsinj's men weren't wholly preoccupied with their prisoners. While two of the walkers kept them covered, the other two played their searchlights on the path ahead and to the sides.

From the lights of their control panels, Leia could make out the faces of the pilots and gunners, like the faces of frightened children, eyes darting back and forth, sweat dripping down their foreheads.

"These guys are more scared than I am," Han whispered in Leia's ear as they walked along.

"Maybe that's because they know something you don't," Leia shot back.

When they had been marching for two hours, Leia began to wonder in earnest when dawn would come. The night air felt cold on the back of her neck and her eyes felt gritty. The shadows of trees closed in about them like standing sentries.

Then the attack came: one second they were walking along, and the next she heard heavy footsteps rus.h.i.+ng behind. The two walkers on the flanks got tackled from behind by creatures well over their seven-meter height.

The middle walkers swiveled to fire their blaster cannons, and for a moment the gunfire flashed like lightning.

Leia spotted one of the huge beasts involved in the attack, its saberlike canines snapping the air.

Something enormous behind Leia smashed a walker using a huge club, grabbed the walker next to it and tossed all three tons of its armored hull toward a rock where it crashed in a heap of rent metal. A gunner kept firing into the air as a beast clubbed his walker, smashed it again and again?and in the gruesome blue actinic flashes, Leia saw the beast and her heart nearly stopped: it stood ten meters tall and wore a protective vest of woven ropes with bits of stormtrooper body armor tied on it. Yet in spite of its attire, there was no mistaking those oddly grotesque arms, the gaping curved fangs, the hunched stance of the warty beast with bony headplates. She had seen one before. It had been smaller than the ones here, perhaps only a juvenile, but it had seemed enormous at the time?in the prison beneath the palace of Jabba the Hutt. Rancors.

Han yelled, turned to run, and tripped. Chewbacca took off leaping through the woods, and one rancor chased him three steps and threw a weighted net. The net caught the Wookiee, knocked him to the ground.

Chewbacca roared in pain and remained on the ground, holding his ribs.

Leia stood, heart drumming, frozen with fear. Yet the sight of the enormous beasts attacking in their wrath was not what frightened her.

In less than ten seconds, the blasters of the Imperial walkers were all silenced; the machines lay in smoldering ruins at their feet. Leia looked up at the three giant rancors, each more than ten meters in height. On the creatures' necks sat human riders.

One of the riders bent low, her dark hair s.h.i.+mmering in the light of the burning walkers. She wore a high-collared tunic of glittering red scales, and over it a supple robe made of leather or heavy material. On her head she wore a helm with fanlike wings, and each wing was decorated with ornaments that bobbled as she moved. She held a very ancient Force pike, its vibroblade rattling and in need of adjustment, the handle carved and decorated with white stones.

If the costume and mount were not impressive enough, the woman's very presence struck Leia like a blaster bolt to the ribs. The woman seemed to radiate power, as if her physical body were a mere sh.e.l.l, and beneath it hid a being of terrible light. Leia knew she was in the presence of someone strong in the Force. The woman swung her pike overhead, motioning for Leia and the others to stay, cried out in an alien tongue.

"Who are you?" Leia asked.

The woman bent low in the shadows and sang softly in her own language, then spoke cautiously, as if listening to her own voice, trying to catch the meaning.

"Is this how you form your words, offworlder?" Leia nodded, realized that the woman was somehow using the Force to communicate.

She spoke brief orders to the other two women. One of them scurried down from her rancor and began gathering weapons from the corpses of Zsinj's troops, while the other urged her rancor over to Chewie. The rancor unwrapped the injured Wookiee and carried him in one hand. Chewbacca cried out and tried to bite the rancor, but Han yelled, "It's okay, Chewie. They're friends, I hope."

The woman with the Force pike leaned over Leia, pointed at Han and Threepio. "Keep your slaves marching, offworlder. We will take you to the sisters for judgment."

Chapter 13.

Isolder gritted his teeth, watched the desert swell toward him as Storm plunged toward the planet. There was nothing he could do to save his s.h.i.+p. Firing his engines would ensure that Zsinj's forces would detect him, so Isolder only hoped that he could eject at the last possible second, let his parachute open briefly and carry him down, hoping it would slow his fall enough so that he wouldn't break any bones.

Off in the distance, eighty kilometers to the west, a small city lit the darkness. Other than that, there were no bright spots in the desert, not even the headlights of a speeder to show a sign of habitation.

Isolder reached under the control panel to his fighter, pulled out a survival kit. Above him the parachute bolted onto Artoo's ejection seat opened, and the droid jerked upward. Luke's demolished X-wing tumbled through the atmosphere. Isolder cracked the transparisteel bubble of his fighter, let the wind catch it and fling it open. He unbuckled his safety harness, checked the small pack that held his parachute to make sure it was strapped tight, slapped his blaster, then leaped from the s.h.i.+p, soaring in freefall.

The wind whistled through the crenellations in his oxygen mask, and he watched as the ground rushed toward him. The ample light of two small moons let him see every rock, every wind-twisted tree, every gully and switchback. He waited until he could wait no more, flipped the release to ignite the explosive charges that would send up his parachute.

Nothing happened. He yanked the emergency cord, kept tumbling. He flailed his arms, shouting?and miraculously, some type of repulsorlift field hit him, slowed him so that he dropped as softly as a feather. For one wild moment he imagined that the flailing of his arms was somehow carrying him, and he dared not stop flapping till he hit the ground. The broken hull of the X-wing fighter dropped past him, several hundred meters off, crashed into the ground in a fireball.

When Isolder's feet hit rock, his knees shook so badly that he could hardly stand, and his heart raced. Isolder threw off his helmet, gasped the warm night air, looked around at the rocks and spa.r.s.e trees of the desert.

Storm had also settled quietly to the ground, but nowhere could Isolder see a sign of the repulsorlift mechanism, no generators, no antigravity dishes aimed into the air. He looked all around, then saw something above: Luke Skywalker sitting with his legs crossed, eyes closed in concentration, and arms folded, floating to the ground. Skywalker, Isolder thought. Perhaps that is how his ancestors got their name.

When the Jedi had floated within inches of the rock, he opened his eyes and jumped, as if dropping from a ledge.