Heir to the Empire

C H A P T E R 14

“Fifty-one,” Lando Calrissian growled, throwing a glare at Han and Leia as he paced a convoluted path around the low chairs in the lounge. “Fifty-one of my best reconditioned mole miners. Fifty-one. That’s almost half my workforce. You realize that?—half my work force.”

He dropped down into a chair, but was on his feet again almost immediately, stalking around the room, his black cloak billowing behind him like a tame storm cloud. Leia opened her mouth to offer commiseration, felt Han squeeze her hand warningly. Obviously, Han had seen Lando in this state before. Swallowing back the words, she watched as he continued his caged-animal pacing.

And without obvious warning, it was over. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly, coming to a halt in front of Leia and taking her hand. “I’m neglecting my duties as host, aren’t I? Welcome to Nkllon.” He raised her hand, kissed it, and waved his free hand toward the lounge window. “So. What do you think of my little enterprise?”

“Impressive,” Leia said, and meant it. “How did you ever come up with the idea for this place?”

“Oh, it’s been kicking around for years.” He shrugged, pulling her gently to her feet and guiding her over to the window, his hand resting against the small of her back. Ever since she and Han had gotten married, Leia had noticed a resurgence of this kind of courtly behavior toward her from Lando—behavior that harkened back to their first meeting at Cloud City. She’d puzzled over that for a while, until she’d noticed that all the attention seemed to annoy Han.

Or, at least, it normally annoyed him. Right now, he didn’t even seem to notice.

“I found plans for something similar once in the Cloud City files, dating back to when Lord Ecclessis Figg first built the place,” Lando continued, waving a hand toward the window. The horizon rolled gently as the city walked, the motion and view reminding Leia of her handful of experiences aboard sailing ships. “Most of the metal they used came from the hot inner planet, Miser, and even with Ugnaughts doing the mining they had a devil of a time with it. Figg sketched out an idea for a rolling mining center that could stay permanently out of direct sunlight on Miser’s dark side. But nothing ever came of it.”

“It wasn’t practical,” Han said, coming up behind Leia. “Miser’s terrain was too rough for something on wheels to get across easily.”

Lando looked at him in surprise. “How do you know about that?”

Han shook his head distractedly, his eyes searching the landscape and the starry sky above it. “I spent an afternoon going through the Imperial files once, back when you were trying to talk Mon Mothma into helping fund this place. Wanted to make sure someone else hadn’t already tried it and found out it didn’t work.”

“Nice of you to go to that kind of trouble.” Lando cocked an eyebrow. “So, what’s going on?”

“We should probably wait until Luke gets here to talk about it,” Leia suggested quietly before Han could answer.

Lando glanced past Han, as if only just noticing Luke’s absence. “Where is he, anyway?”

“He wanted to catch a fast shower and change,” Han told him, shifting his attention to a small ore shuttle coming in for a landing. “Those X-wings don’t have much in the way of comfort.”

“Especially over long trips,” Lando agreed, tracing Han’s gaze with his eyes. “I’ve always thought putting a hyperdrive on something that small was a poor idea.”

“I’d better see what’s keeping him,” Han decided suddenly. “You have a comm in this room?”

“It’s over there,” Lando said, pointing toward a curved wooden bar at one end of the lounge. “Key for central; they’ll track him down for you.”

“Thanks,” Han called over his shoulder, already halfway there.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Lando murmured to Leia, his eyes following Han across the room.

“Bad enough,” she admitted. “There’s a chance that that Star Destroyer came here looking for me.”

For a moment, Lando was silent. “You came here for help.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

He took a deep breath. “Well … I’ll do what I can, of course.”

“Thank you,” Leia said.

“Sure,” he said. But his eyes drifted from Han to the window and the activity beyond it, his expression hardening as he did so. Perhaps he was thinking of the last time Han and Leia had come to him for help.

And what giving that help had cost him.

Lando listened to the whole story in silence, then shook his head. “No,” he said positively. “If there was a leak, it didn’t come from Nkllon.”

“How can you be sure of that?” Leia asked.

“Because there’s been no bounty offered for you,” Lando told her. “We have our fair share of shady people here, but they’re all out for profit. None of them would turn you over to the Empire just for the fun of it. Besides, why would the Imperials steal my mole miners if they were after you?”

“Harassment, maybe,” Han suggested. “I mean, why steal mole miners anyway?”

“You got me,” Lando conceded. “Maybe they’re trying to put economic pressure on one of my clients, or maybe they just want to disrupt the New Republic’s flow of raw materials generally. Anyway, that’s beside the point. The point is that they took the mole miners, and they didn’t take you.”

“How do you know there’s been no bounty offer?” Luke asked from his seat off to the right—a seat, Leia had already noted, where he and his lightsaber would be between his friends and the room’s only door. Apparently, he didn’t feel any safer here than she did.

“Because I’d have heard about it,” Lando said, sounding a little miffed. “Just because I’m respectable doesn’t mean I’m out of touch.”

“I told you he’d have contacts,” Han said with a grimly satisfied nod. “Great. So which of these contacts do you trust, Lando?”

“Well—” Lando broke off as a beep came from his wrist. “Excuse me,” he said, sliding a compact comlink from the decorative wristband and flicking it on. “Yes?”

A voice said something, inaudible from where Leia was sitting. “What kind of transmitter?” Lando asked, frowning. The voice said something else. “All right, I’ll take care of it. Continue scanning.”

He closed down the comlink and replaced it in his wristband. “That was my communications section,” he said, looking around the room. “They’ve picked up a short-range transmitter on a very unusual frequency … which appears to be sending from this lounge.”

Beside her, Leia felt Han stiffen. “What kind of transmitter?” he demanded.

“This kind, probably,” Luke said. Standing up, he pulled a flattened cylinder from his tunic and stepped over to Lando. “I thought you might be able to identify it for me.”

Lando took the cylinder, hefted it. “Interesting,” he commented, peering closely at the alien script on its surface. “I haven’t seen one of these in years. Not this style, anyway. Where’d you get it?”

“It was buried in mud in the middle of a swamp. Artoo was able to pick it up from pretty far away, but he couldn’t tell me what it was.”

“That’s our transmitter, all right.” Lando nodded. “Amazing that it’s still running.”

“What exactly is it transmitting?” Han asked, eyeing the device as if it were a dangerous snake.

“Just a carrier signal,” Lando assured him. “And the range is small—well under a planetary radius. Nobody used it to follow Luke here, if that’s what you were wondering.”

“Do you know what it is?” Luke asked.

“Sure,” Lando said, handing it back. “It’s an old beckon call.¹ Pre–Clone Wars vintage, from the looks of it.”

“A beckon call?” Luke frowned, cupping it in his hand. “You mean like a ship’s remote?”

“Right.” Lando nodded. “Only a lot more sophisticated. If you had a ship with a full-rig slave system you could tap in a single command on the call and the ship would come straight to you, automatically maneuvering around any obstacles along the way. Some of them would even fight their way through opposing ships, if necessary, with a reasonable degree of skill.” He shook his head in memory. “Which could be extremely useful at times.”

Han snorted under his breath. “Tell that to the Katana fleet.”²

“Well, of course you have to build in some safeguards,” Lando countered. “But to simply decentralize important ship’s functions into dozens or hundreds of droids just creates its own set of problems. The limited jump-slave circuits we use here between transports and shieldships are certainly safe enough.”

“Did you use jump-slave circuits on Cloud City, too?” Luke asked. “Artoo said he saw you with one of these right after we got out of there.”

“My personal ship was full-rigged,” Lando said. “I wanted something I could get at a moment’s warning, just in case.” His lip twitched. “Vader’s people must have found it and shut it down while they were waiting for you, because it sure didn’t come when I called it. You say you found it in a swamp?”

“Yes” Luke looked at Leia. “On Dagobah”

Leia stared at him. “Dagobah?” she asked. “As in the planet that Dark Jedi from Bpfassh fled to?”

Luke nodded. “That’s the place.” He fingered the beckon call, an odd expression on his face. “This must have been his.”

“It could just as easily have been lost some other time by someone else,” Lando pointed out. “Pre-Clone Wars calls could run for a century or more on standby.”

“No,” Luke said, shaking his head slowly. “It was his, all right. The cave where I found it absolutely tingles with the dark side. I think it must have been the place where he died.”³

For a long moment they all sat in silence. Leia studied her brother closely, sensing the new tension lying just beneath the surface of his thoughts. Something else, besides the beckon call, must have happened to him on Dagobah. Something that tied in with the new sense of urgency she’d felt on the way in toward Nkllon …

Luke looked up sharply, as if sensing the flow of Leia’s thoughts. “We were talking about Lando’s smuggler contacts,” he said. The message was clear: this was not the time to ask him about it.

“Right,” Han said quickly. Apparently, he’d gotten the hint, too. “I need to know which of your marginally legal friends you can trust.”

The other shrugged. “Depends on what you need to trust them with.”

Han looked him straight in the eye. “Leia’s life.”

Seated on Han’s other side, Chewbacca growled something that sounded startled. Lando’s mouth fell open, just slightly. “You’re not serious.”

Han nodded, his eyes still locked on Lando’s face. “You saw how close the Imperials are breathing down our necks. We need a place to hide her until Ackbar can find out how they’re getting their information. She needs to stay in touch with what’s happening on Coruscant, which means a diplomatic station we can quietly tap into.”

“And a diplomatic station means encrypt codes,” Lando said heavily. “And quietly tapping into encrypt codes means finding a slicer.”

“A slicer you can trust.”

Lando hissed softly between his teeth and slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry, Han, but I don’t know any slicers I trust that far.”

“Do you know any smuggler groups that have one or two on retainer?” Han persisted.

“That I trust?” Lando pondered. “Not really. The only one who might even come close is a smuggler chief named Talon Karrde—everyone I’ve talked to says he’s extremely honest in his trade dealings.”

“Have you ever met him?” Luke asked.

“Once,” Lando said. “He struck me as a pretty cold fish—calculating and highly mercenary.”

“I’ve heard of Karrde,” Han said. “Been trying for months to contact him, in fact. Dravis—you remember Dravis?—he told me Karrde’s group was probably the biggest one around these days.”

“Could be.” Lando shrugged. “Unlike Jabba, Karrde doesn’t go around flaunting his power and influence. I’m not even sure where his base is, let alone what his loyalties are.”

“If he has any loyalties,” Han grunted; and in his eyes Leia could see the echoes of all those fruitless contacts with smuggling groups who preferred to sit on the political fence. “A lot of them out there don’t.”

“It’s an occupational hazard.” Lando rubbed his chin, forehead wrinkled in thought. “I don’t know, Han. I’d offer to put the two of you up here, but we just don’t have the defenses to stop a really serious attack.” He frowned into the distance. “Unless … we do something clever.”

“Such as?”

“Such as taking a shuttle or living module and burying it underground,” Lando said, a gleam coming into his eye. “We put it right by the dawn line, and within a few hours you’d be under direct sunlight. The Imperials wouldn’t even be able to find you there, let alone get to you.”

Han shook his head. “Too risky. If we ran into any problems, there also wouldn’t be any way for anyone to get help to us.” Chewbacca pawed at his arm, grunting softly, and Han turned to face the Wookiee.

“It wouldn’t be as risky as it looks,” Lando said, shifting his attention to Leia. “We should be able to make the capsule itself foolproof—we’ve done similar things with delicate survey instrument packs without damaging them.”

“How long is Nkllon’s rotation?” Leia asked. Chewbacca’s grunting was getting insistent, but it still wasn’t loud enough for her to make out what the discussion was all about.

“Just over ninety standard days,” Lando told her.

“Which means we’d be completely out of touch with Coruscant for a minimum of forty-five. Unless you’ve got a transmitter that would operate on the sunside.”

Lando shook his head. “The best we’ve got would be fried in minutes.”

“In that case, I’m afraid—”

She broke off as, beside her, Han cleared his throat. “Chewie has a suggestion,” he said, his face and voice a study in mixed feelings.

They all looked at him. “Well?” Leia prompted.

Han’s lip twitched. “He says that if you want, he’s willing to take you to Kashyyyk.”⁴

Leia looked past him to Chewbacca, a strange and not entirely pleasant thrill running through her. “I was under the impression,” she said carefully, “that Wookiees discouraged human visitors to their world.”

Chewbacca’s reply was as mixed as Han’s expression. Mixed, but solidly confident. “The Wookiees were friendly enough to humans before the Empire came in and started enslaving them,” Han said. “Anyway, it ought to be possible to keep the visit pretty quiet: you, Chewie, the New Republic rep, and a couple of others.”

“Except that we’re back to the New Republic rep knowing about me,” Leia pointed out.

“Yes, but he’ll be a Wookiee,” Lando pointed out. “If he accepts you under his personal protection, he won’t betray you. Period.”

Leia studied Han’s face. “Sounds good. So tell me why you don’t like it.”

A muscle in Han’s cheek twitched. “Kashyyyk isn’t exactly the safest place in the galaxy,” he said bluntly. “Especially for non-Wookiees. You’ll be living in trees, hundreds of meters above the ground—”

“I’ll be with Chewie,” she reminded him firmly, suppressing a shiver. She’d heard stories about Kashyyyk’s lethal ecology, too. “You’ve trusted your own life to him often enough.”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “This is different.”

“Why don’t you go with them?” Luke suggested. “Then she’ll be doubly protected.”

“Right,” Han said sourly. “I was planning to; except that Chewie thinks it’ll gain us more time if Leia and I split up. He takes her to Kashyyyk; I fly around in the Falcon, pretending she’s still with me. Somehow.”

Lando nodded. “Makes sense to me.”

Leia looked at Luke, the obvious suggestion coming to her lips … and dying there unsaid. Something in his face warned her not to ask him to come with them. “Chewie and I will be fine,” she said, squeezing Han’s hand. “Don’t worry.”

“I guess that’s settled, then,” Lando said. “You can use my ship, of course, Chewie. In fact”—he looked thoughtful—“if you want company, Han, maybe I’ll come along with you.”

Han shrugged, clearly still unhappy with the arrangement. “If you want to, sure.”

“Good,” Lando said. “We should probably fly out of Nkllon together—I’ve been planning an offworld purchasing trip for a couple of weeks now, so I’ve got an excuse to leave. Once we’re past the shieldship depot, Chewie and Leia can take my ship and no one’ll be the wiser.”

“And then Han sends some messages to Coruscant pretending Leia’s aboard?” Luke asked.

Lando smiled slyly. “Actually, I think we can do a little bit better than that. You still have Threepio with you?”

“He’s helping Artoo run a damage check on the Falcon,” Leia told him. “Why?”

“You’ll see,” Lando said, getting to his feet. “This’ll take a little time, but I think it’ll be worth it. Come on—let’s go talk to my chief programmer.”

The chief programmer was a little man with dreamy blue eyes, a thin swath of hair arcing like a gray rainbow from just over his eyebrows to the nape of his neck, and a shiny borg⁵ implant wrapped around the back of his head. Luke listened as Lando outlined the procedure and watched long enough to make sure it was all going smoothly. Then, quietly, he slipped out, returning to the quarters Lando’s people had assigned him.

He was still there an hour later, poring uselessly over what seemed to be an endless stream of star charts, when Leia found him.

“There you are,” she said, coming in and glancing at the charts on his display. “We were starting to wonder where you went.”

“I had some things to check on,” Luke said. “You finished already?”

“My part is,” Leia said, pulling a chair over to him and sitting down. “They’re working on tailoring the program now. After that it’ll be Threepio’s turn.”

Luke shook his head. “Seems to me the whole thing ought to be simpler than all that.”

“Oh, the basic technique is,” Leia agreed. “Apparently, the hard part is slipping it past the relevant part of Threepio’s watchdog programming without changing his personality in the process.” She looked again at the screen. “I was going to ask you if you’d be interested in coming to Kashyyyk with me,” she said, her voice trying hard to be casual. “But it looks like you’ve got somewhere else to go.”

Luke winced. “I’m not running out on you, Leia,” he insisted, wishing he could truly believe that. “Really I’m not. This is something that in the long run could mean more for you and the twins than anything I could do on Kashyyyk.”

“All right,” she said, calmly accepting the statement. “Can you at least tell me where you’re going?”

“I don’t know yet,” he confessed. “There’s someone out there I have to find, but I’m not sure yet even where to start looking.” He hesitated, suddenly aware of how strange and maybe even crazy this was going to sound. But he was going to have to tell them eventually. “He’s another Jedi.”

She stared at him. “You’re not serious.”

“Why not?” Luke asked, frowning at her. Her reaction seemed vaguely wrong, somehow. “It’s a big galaxy, you know.”

“A galaxy in which you were supposedly the last of the Jedi,” she countered. “Isn’t that what you said Yoda told you before he died?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “But I’m beginning to think he might have been mistaken.”

Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “Mistaken? A Jedi Master?”

A memory flashed through Luke’s mind: a ghostly Obi-Wan, in the middle of the Dagobah swamp, trying to explain his earlier statements about Darth Vader. “Jedi sometimes say things that are misleading,” he told her. “And even Jedi Masters aren’t omniscient.”

He paused, gazing at his sister, wondering how much of this he should tell her. The Empire was far from defeated, and the mysterious Jedi’s life might depend on his defense remaining a secret. Leia waited in silence, that concerned expression on her face …

“You’ll have to keep this to yourself,” Luke said at last. “I mean really to yourself. I don’t even want you to tell Han or Lando, unless it becomes absolutely necessary. They don’t have the resistance to interrogation that you do.”

Leia shuddered, but her eyes stayed clear. “I understand,” she said evenly.

“All right. Did it ever occur to you to wonder why Master Yoda was able to stay hidden from the Emperor and Vader all those years?”

She shrugged. “I suppose I assumed they didn’t know he existed.”

“Yes, but they should have,” Luke pointed out. “They knew I existed by my effect on the Force. Why not Yoda?”

“Some kind of mental shielding?”

“Maybe. But I think it’s more likely it was because of where he chose to live. Or maybe,” he amended, “where events chose for him to live.”

A faint smile brushed Leia’s lips. “Is this where I finally get to find out where this secret training center of yours was?”

“I didn’t want anyone else to know,” Luke said, moved by some obscure impulse to try to justify that decision to her. “He was so perfectly hidden—and even after his death I was afraid the Empire might be able to do something—”

He broke off. “Anyway, I can’t see that it matters now. Yoda’s home was on Dagobah. Practically next door to the dark-side cave where I found that beckon call.”

Her eyes widened in surprise, a surprise that faded into understanding. “Dagobah,” she murmured, nodding slowly as if a private and long-standing problem had just been resolved. “I’ve always wondered how that renegade Dark Jedi was finally defeated. It must have been Yoda who …” She grimaced.

“Who stopped him,” Luke finished for her, a shiver running up his back. His own skirmishes with Darth Vader had been bad enough; a full-scale Force war between Jedi Masters would be terrifying. “And he probably didn’t stop him with a lot of time to spare.”

“The beckon call was already on standby,” Leia remembered. “He must have been getting ready to call his ship.”

Luke nodded. “All of which could explain why the cave was so heavy with the dark side. What it doesn’t explain is why Yoda decided to stay there.”

He paused, watching her closely; and a moment later, the understanding came. “The cave shielded him,” she breathed. “Just like a pair of positive and negative electric charges close enough together—to a distant observer they look almost like no charge at all.”

“I think that’s it,” Luke nodded again. “And if that’s really how Master Yoda stayed hidden, there’s no reason why another Jedi couldn’t have pulled the same trick.”

“I’m sure another Jedi could have,” Leia agreed, sounding reluctant. “But I don’t think this C’baoth rumor is anywhere near solid enough to chase after.”

Luke frowned. “What C’baoth rumor?”

It was Leia’s turn to frown. “The story that a Jedi Master named Joruus C’baoth has reemerged from wherever it was he’s spent the past few decades.” She stared at him. “You hadn’t heard it?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“But then, how—?”

“Someone called to me, Leia, during the battle this afternoon. In my mind. The way another Jedi would.”

For a long moment they just looked at each other. “I don’t believe it,” Leia said. “I just don’t. Where could someone with C’baoth’s power and history have hidden for so long? And why?”

“The why I don’t know,” Luke admitted. “As to the where—” He nodded toward the display. “That’s what I’ve been looking for. Someplace where a Dark Jedi might once have died.” He looked at Leia again. “Do the rumors say where C’baoth is supposed to be?”

“It could be an Imperial trap,” Leia warned, her voice abruptly harsh. “The person who called to you could just as easily be a Dark Jedi⁶ like Vader, with this C’baoth rumor dangled in front of us to lure you in. Don’t forget that Yoda wasn’t counting them—both Vader and the Emperor were still alive when he said you were the last Jedi.”

“That’s a possibility,” he conceded. “It could also be just a garbled rumor. But if it’s not …”

He let the sentence hang, unfinished, in the air between them. There were deep uncertainties in Leia’s face and mind, he could see, woven through by equally deep fears for his safety. But even as he watched her he could sense her gain control over both emotions. In those aspects of her training, she was making good progress. “He’s on Jomark,” she said at last, her voice quiet. “At least according to the rumor Wedge quoted for us.”

Luke turned to the display, called up the data on Jomark. There wasn’t much there. “Not very populated,” he said, glancing over the stats and the limited selection of maps. “Less than three million people, all told. Or at least back when this was compiled,” he amended, searching for the publication date. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s taken official notice of the planet in fifteen years.” He looked back at Leia. “Just the sort of place a Jedi might choose to hide from the Empire.”

“You’ll be leaving right away?”

He looked at her, swallowing the quick and obvious answer. “No, I’ll wait until you and Chewie are ready to go,” he said. “That way I can fly out with your shieldship. Give you that much protection, at least.”

“Thanks.” Taking a deep breath, she stood up. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“So do I,” he said frankly. “But whether I do or not, it’s something I have to try. That much I know for sure.”

Leia’s lip twitched. “I suppose that’s one of the things I’m going to have to get used to. Letting the Force move me around.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Luke advised her, getting to his feet and switching off the display. “It doesn’t happen all at once—you get to ease into it. Come on; let’s go see how they’re coming with Threepio.”

“At last!” Threepio cried, waving his arms in desperate relief as Luke and Leia stepped into the room. “Master Luke! Please, please tell General Calrissian that what he intends is a serious violation of my primary programming.”

“It’ll be okay, Threepio,” Luke soothed, stepping over to him. From the front the droid seemed to be just sitting there; it was only as Luke got closer that he could see the maze of wires snaking from both headpiece and dorsal junction box into the computer console behind him. “Lando and his people will be careful that nothing happens to you.” He glanced at Lando, got a confirming nod in return.

“But Master Luke—”

“Actually, Threepio,” Lando put in, “you could think of this as really just fulfilling your primary programming in a more complete way. I mean, isn’t a translation droid supposed to speak for the person he’s translating for?”

“I am primarily a protocol droid,” Threepio corrected in as frosty a tone as he could probably manage. “And I say again that this is not the sort of thing covered by any possible stretch of protocol.”

The borg looked up from the panel, nodded. “We’re ready,” Lando announced, touching a switch. “Give it a second … all right. Say something, Threepio.”

“Oh, dear,” the droid said—

In a perfect imitation of Leia’s voice.

Artoo, standing across the room, trilled softly. “That’s it,” Lando said, looking decidedly pleased with himself. “The perfect decoy”—he inclined his head to Leia—“for the perfect lady.”

“This feels decidedly strange,” Threepio continued—Leia’s voice, this time, in a thoughtful mood.

“Sounds good,” Han said, looking around at the others. “We ready to go, then?”

“Give me an hour to log some last-minute instructions,” Lando said, starting toward the door. “It’ll take our shieldship that long to get here, anyway.”

“We’ll meet you at the ship,” Han called after him, stepping over to Leia and taking her arm. “Come on—we’d better get back to the Falcon.”

She put her hand on his, smiling reassuringly up at him. “It’ll be all right, Han. Chewie and the other Wookiees will take good care of me.”

“They’d better,” Han growled, glancing to where the borg was undoing the last of the cables connecting Threepio to the console. “Let’s go, Threepio. I can hardly wait to hear what Chewie thinks of your new voice.”

“Oh, dear,” the droid murmured again. “Oh, dear.”

Leia shook her head in wonder as they headed for the door. “Do I really,” she asked, “sound like that?”