Heir to the Empire

C H A P T E R 28

It was just before noon when they began to notice the faint sounds wafting occasionally to them through the forest. It was another hour after that before they were close enough for Luke to finally identify them.

Speeder bikes.

“You’re sure that’s a military model?” Mara muttered as the whine/drone rose and fell twice more before fading again into the distance.

“I’m sure,” Luke told her grimly. “I nearly ran one of them into a tree on Endor.”

She didn’t reply, and for a moment Luke wondered if the mention of Endor might not have been a good idea. But a glance at Mara’s face relieved that fear. She was not brooding, but listening. “Sounds like they’re off to the south, too,” she said after a minute. “North … I don’t hear anything from that direction.”

Luke listened. “Neither do I,” he said. “I wonder … Artoo, can you make up an audio map for us?”

There was an acknowledging beep. A moment later the droid’s holo projector came on and a two-color map appeared, hovering a few centimeters over the matted leaves underfoot.

“I was right,” Mara said, pointing. “A few units directly ahead of us, the rest off to the south. Nothing at all north.”

“Which means we must have veered to the north,” Luke said.

Mara frowned at him. “How do you figure that?”

“Well, they must know we’ll make for Hyllyard City,” he said. “They’re bound to center their search on the direct approach.”

Mara smiled thinly. “Such wonderful Jedi naïveté,” she said. “I don’t suppose you considered the fact that just because we can’t hear them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

Luke frowned down at the holographic map. “Well, of course they could have a force lying in wait there,” he agreed. “But what would it gain them?”

“Oh, come on, Skywalker—it’s the oldest tactical trick in the book. If the perimeter looks impossible to crack, the quarry goes to ground and waits for a better opportunity. You don’t want him to do that, so you give him what looks like a possible way through.” She squatted down, ran a finger through the “quiet” section on the map. “In this case, they get a bonus: if we swing north to avoid the obvious speeder bikes, it’s instant proof that we’ve got something to hide from them.”

Luke grimaced. “Not that they really need any proof.”

Mara shrugged and straightened up again. “Some officers are more legal-minded than others. The question is, what do we do now?”

Luke looked back down at the map. By Mara’s reckoning, they were no more than four or five kilometers from the edge of the forest—two hours, more or less. If the Imperials had this much organization already set up in front of them … “They’re probably going to try to ring us,” he said slowly. “Move units around to the north and south, and eventually behind us.”

“If they haven’t done so already,” Mara said. “No reason we would have heard them—they don’t know exactly how fast we’re moving, so they’ll have made it a big circle. Probably using a wide ring of Chariot assault vehicles or hover-scouts with a group of speeder bikes working around each focal point. It’s the standard stormtrooper format for a web.”

Luke pursed his lips. But what the Imperials didn’t know was that one of the quarry knew exactly what they were up to. “So how do we break out?” he asked.

Mara hissed between her teeth. “We don’t,” she said flatly. “Not without a lot more equipment and resources than we’ve got.”

The faint whine/drone came again from somewhere ahead of them, rising and then fading as it passed by in the distance. “In that case,” Luke said, “we might as well go straight up the middle. Call to them before they see us, maybe.”

Mara snorted. “Like we were casual tourists out here with nothing to hide?”

“You have a better idea?”

She glared at him. But it was a reflexive glare, without any real argument behind it. “Not really,” she conceded at last. “I suppose you’re also going to want to do that role-switch thing Karrde suggested.”

Luke shrugged. “We’re not going to be able to blast our way through them,” he reminded her. “And if you’re right about that pincer movement, we’re not going to sneak through them, either. All that’s left is a bluff, and the better a bluff it is, the better chance we’ve got.”

Mara’s lip twisted. “I suppose so.” With only a slight hesitation, she dropped the power pack from her blaster and handed it and the forearm holster to him.

Luke took them, hefted the blaster in his hand. “They may check to see if it’s loaded,” he pointed out mildly. “I would.”

“Look, Skywalker, if you think I’m going to give you a loaded weapon—”

“And if another vornskr finds us before the Imperials do,” Luke cut her off quietly, “you’ll never get it reloaded fast enough.”

“Maybe I don’t care,” she shot back.

Luke nodded. “Maybe you don’t.”

She glared at him again, but again, the glare lacked conviction. Teeth visibly grinding together, she slapped the power pack into his hand. “Thank you,” Luke said, reloading the blaster and fastening it to his left forearm. “Now. Artoo?”

The droid understood. One of the trapezoidal sections at the top of his upper dome, indistinguishable from all the other segments, slid open to reveal a long, deep storage compartment beneath it. Turning back to Mara, Luke held out his hand.

She looked at the open hand, then at the storage compartment. “So that’s how you did it,” she commented sourly, unhooking his lightsaber and handing it over. “I always wondered how you smuggled that thing into Jabba’s.”

Luke dropped the lightsaber in, and Artoo slid the door shut behind it. “I’ll call for it if I need it,” he told the droid.

“Don’t count on being very good with it,” Mara warned. “The ysalamiri effect is supposed to extend several kilometers past the edge of the forest—none of those little attack-anticipation tricks will work anywhere near Hyllyard City.”

“I understand,” Luke nodded. “I guess we’re ready to go, then.”

“Not quite,” Mara said, eyeing him. “There’s still that face of yours.”

Luke cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t think Artoo’s got anywhere to hide that.”

“Funny. I had something else in mind.” Mara glanced around, then headed off toward a stand of odd-looking bushes a few meters away. Reaching it, she pulled the end of her tunic sleeve down to cover her hand and carefully picked a few of the leaves. “Pull up your sleeve and hold out your arm,” she ordered as she returned with them.

He did so, and she brushed his forearm lightly with the tip of one of the leaves. “Now. Let’s see if this works.”

“What exactly is it supposed to—aah!” The last of Luke’s air came out in an explosive burst as a searing pain lanced through his forearm.

“Perfect,” Mara said with grim satisfaction. “You’re allergic as anything to them. Oh, relax—the pain will be gone in a few seconds.”

“Oh, thanks,” Luke gritted back. The pain was indeed receding. “Right. Now, what about this—mmm!—this blasted itch?”

“That’ll hang on a little longer,” she said, gesturing at his arm. “But never mind that. What do you think?”

Luke gritted his teeth. The itching was not-so-subtle torture … but she was right. Where she’d brushed the leaf the skin had turned dark and puffy, sprinkled with tiny pustules. “Looks disgusting,” he said.

“Sure does,” she agreed. “You want to do it yourself, or you want me to do it for you?”

Luke gritted his teeth. This was not going to be pleasant. “I can do it.”

It was indeed unpleasant; but by the time he finished brushing his chin with the leaves the pain had already begun to recede from his forehead. “I hope I didn’t get it too close to my eyes,” he commented between clenched teeth, throwing the leaves away into the forest and fighting hard against the urge to dig into his face with both sets of fingernails. “It’d be handy to be able to see the rest of the afternoon.”

“I think you’ll be all right,” Mara assured him, studying the result. “The rest of your face is pretty horrendous, though. You won’t look anything like whatever pictures they have, that’s for sure.”

“Glad to hear it.” Luke took a deep breath and ran through the Jedi pain suppression exercises. Without the Force they weren’t all that effective, but they seemed to help a little. “How long will I look like this?”

“The puffiness should start going down in a few hours. It won’t be completely gone until tomorrow.”

“Good enough. We ready, then?”

“As ready as we’ll ever be.” Turning her back to Artoo, she took the travois handles and started walking. “Come on.”

They made good time, despite the lingering tenderness of Mara’s ankle and the distractions inherent in a faceful of itch. To Luke’s relief, the itching began to fade after about half an hour, leaving only puffy numbness behind it.

Mara’s ankle was another story, however, and as he walked behind her and Artoo he could see clearly how she was having to favor it. The added burden of Artoo’s travois wasn’t helping, and twice he almost suggested that they give up on the role switching. But he resisted the urge. It was their best chance of getting out of this, and they both knew it.

Besides which, she had far too much pride to agree.

They’d gone perhaps another kilometer, with the whine/drone of the speeder bikes rising and falling in the distance, when suddenly they were there.

There were two of them: biker scouts in glistening white armor, swooping up to them and braking to a halt almost before Luke’s ears had registered the sound of their approach. Which meant a very short ride, with target position already known.

Which meant that the entire search party must have had them located and vectored for at least the past few minutes. It was just as well, Luke reflected, that he hadn’t tried switching roles with Mara.

“Halt!” one of the scouts called unnecessarily as they hovered there, both swivel blaster cannons trained and ready. “Identify yourselves, in the name of the Empire.”

And it was performance time. “Boy, am I glad you showed up,” Luke called back, putting as much relief into his voice as the puffy cheeks allowed. “You don’t happen to have some sort of transport handy, do you? I’m about walked off my feet.”

There was just the slightest flicker of hesitation. “Identify yourself,” the scout repeated.

“My name’s Jade,” Luke told him. He gestured at Mara. “Got a gift here for Talon Karrde. I don’t suppose he sent some transport, did he?”

There was a short pause. The scouts conferring privately between themselves, Luke decided, or else calling back to base for instructions. The fact that the prisoner was a woman did indeed seem to have thrown them. Whether it would be enough, of course, was another question entirely.

“You’ll come with us,” the scout ordered. “Our officer wants to talk to you. You—woman—put the droid down and move away from it.”

“Fine with me,” Luke said as the second scout maneuvered his speeder bike to a position in front of Artoo’s travois. “But I want both of you to witness, for the record, that I had her fair and square before you showed up. Karrde weasels his way out of these capture fees too often; he’s not going to weasel out of this one.”

“You’re a bounty hunter?” the scout asked, a clear note of disdain in his voice.

“That’s right,” Luke said, putting some professional dignity in his voice as a counter to the scout’s contempt. Not that he minded their distaste. He was, in fact, counting on it. The more firmly the Imperials had the wrong image of him set in their minds, the longer it would take them to see through the deception.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, though, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was the sort of trick a Jedi should use.

The second scout had dismounted and fastened the handles of Artoo’s travois to the rear of his speeder bike. Remounting, he headed off at about the speed of a brisk walk. “You two follow him,” the first scout ordered, swinging around to take up the rear. “Drop your blaster on the ground first, Jade.”

Luke complied, and they set off. The first scout put down just long enough to scoop up the abandoned blaster and then followed.

It took another hour to reach the edge of the forest. The two speeder bikes stayed with them the whole time; but as they traveled, the party began to grow. More speeder bikes swept in from both sides, falling into close formation on either side of Luke and Mara or else joining up with the guards to both front and rear. As they neared the forest’s edge, fully armored stormtroopers began to appear, too, moving in with blaster rifles held ready across their chests to take up positions around the two prisoners. As they did so, the scouts began drifting away, ranging farther out to form a kind of moving screen.

By the time they finally stepped out from under the forest canopy, their escort numbered no fewer than ten biker scouts and twenty stormtroopers. It was an impressive display of military power … and more even than the fact of the search itself, it drove home to Luke the seriousness with which the mysterious man in charge of the Empire was treating this incident. Even at the height of their power, the Imperials hadn’t spent stormtroopers lightly.

Three more people were waiting for them in the fifty-meter strip of open land between the forest and the nearest structures of Hyllyard City: two more stormtroopers and a hard-faced man wearing a major’s insignia on his dusty brown Imperial uniform. “About time,” the latter muttered under his breath as Mara and Luke were nudged in his direction. “Who are they?”

“The male says his name is Jade,” one of the stormtroopers in front reported in that slightly filtered voice they all seemed to have. “Bounty hunter; works for Karrde. He claims the female is his prisoner.”

“Was his prisoner,” the major corrected, looking at Mara. “What’s your name, thief?”

“Senni Kiffu,” Mara said, her voice surly. “And I’m not a thief. Talon Karrde owes me—he owes me big. I didn’t take any more than I had coming.”

The major looked at Luke, and Luke shrugged. “Karrde’s other dealings aren’t any of my business. He said bring her back. I brought her back.”¹

“And her theft, too, I see.” He looked at Artoo, still tied to his travois and dragging behind the speeder bike. “Get that droid off your bike,” he ordered the scout. “The ground’s flat enough here, and I want you on perimeter. Put it with the prisoners. Cuff them, too—they’re hardly likely to fall over tree roots out here.”

“Wait a minute,” Luke objected as one of the stormtroopers stepped toward him. “Me, too?”

The major raised his eyebrows slightly. “You got a problem with that, bounty hunter?” he asked, his voice challenging.

“Yeah, I got a problem with it,” Luke shot back. “She’s the prisoner here, not me.”

“For the moment you’re both prisoners,” the other countered. “So shut up.” He frowned at Luke’s face. “What in the Empire happened to you, anyway?”

So they weren’t going to be able to pass the puffiness off as Luke’s natural features. “Ran into some kind of bush while I was chasing her,” he growled as the stormtrooper roughly cuffed his hands in front of him. “It itched like blazes for a while.”

The major smiled thinly. “How very inconvenient for you,” he said dryly. “How fortunate that we have a fully qualified medic back at HQ. He should be able to bring that swelling down in no time.” He held Luke’s gaze a moment longer, then shifted his attention to the stormtrooper leader. “You disarmed him, of course.”

The stormtrooper gestured, and the first of the biker scouts swooped close to hand Mara’s blaster to the major. “Interesting weapon,” the major murmured, turning it over in his hands before sliding it into his belt. From overhead came a soft hum, and Luke looked up to see a repulsorlift craft settle into place overhead. A Chariot assault vehicle, just as Mara had predicted. “Ah,” the major said, glancing up at it. “All right, Commander. Let’s go.”

In many ways, Hyllyard City reminded Luke of Mos Eisley: small houses and commercial buildings crammed fairly tightly together, with relatively narrow streets running between them. The troop headed around the perimeter, clearly aiming for one of the wider avenues that seemed to radiate, spokelike, from the center of town. Looking into the city as they passed by the outer buildings, Luke was able to catch occasional glimpses of what seemed to be an open area a few blocks away. The town square, possibly, or else a spacecraft landing area.

The vanguard had just reached the target street when, in perfect synchronization, the stormtroopers abruptly changed formation. Those in the inner circle pulled in closer to Luke and Mara while those in the outer circle moved farther away, the whole crowd coming to a halt and gesturing to their prisoners to do the same. A moment later, the reason for the sudden maneuver came around the corner: four scruffy-looking men walking briskly toward them with a fifth man in the center of their square, his hands chained behind him.

They had barely emerged from the street when they were intercepted by a group of four stormtroopers. A short and inaudible conversation ensued, which concluded with the strangers handing their blasters over to the stormtroopers with obvious reluctance. Escorted now by the Imperials, they continued on toward the main group … and as they walked, Luke finally got a clear look at the prisoner.

It was Han Solo.

The stormtroopers opened their ranks slightly to let the newcomers through. “What do you want?” the major demanded as they stopped in front of him.

“Name’s Chin,” one of them said. “We caught this ratch snooping around the forest—maybe looking for your prisoners there. Figured you might want to have a talk with him, hee?”

“Uncommonly generous of you,” the major said sardonically, giving Han a quick, measuring glance. “You come to this conclusion all by yourself?”

Chin drew himself up. “Just because I don’t live in a big flashy city doesn’t mean I’m stupid,” he said stiffly. “What hai—you think we don’t know what it means when Imperial stormtroopers² start setting up a temporary garrison?”

The major gave him a long, cool look. “You’d best just hope that the garrison is temporary.” He glanced at the stormtrooper beside him, jerked his head toward Han. “Check him for weapons.”

“We already—” Chin began. The major looked at him, and he fell silent.

The frisking took only a minute, and came up empty. “Put him in the pocket with the others,” the major ordered. “All right, Chin, you and your friends can go. If he turns out to be worth anything, I’ll see you get a piece of it.”

“Uncommonly generous of you,” Chin said with an expression that was just short of a sneer. “Can we have our guns back now?”

The major’s expression hardened. “You can pick them up later at our HQ,” he said. “Hyllyard Hotel, straight across the square—but I’m sure a sophisticated citizen like yourself already knows where it is.”

For a moment Chin seemed inclined to argue the point. But a glance at the stormtroopers clustered around evidently changed his mind for him. Without a word he turned, and he and his three companions strode back toward the city.

“Move out,” the major ordered, and they started up again.

“Well,” Han muttered, falling into step beside Luke. “Together again, huh?”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Luke muttered back. “Your friends there seem in a hurry to get away.”

“Probably don’t want to miss the party,” Han told him. “A little something they threw together to celebrate my capture.”

Luke threw him a sideways look. “Shame we weren’t invited.”

“Real shame,” Han agreed with a straight face. “You never know, though.”

They had turned into the avenue now, moving toward the center of town. Just visible over the heads of the stormtroopers, he could see something gray and rounded directly ahead of them. Craning his neck for a better view, he saw that the structure was in fact a freestanding archway, rising from the ground near the far end of the open village square he had noticed earlier.

A fairly impressive archway, too, especially for a city this far outside the mainstream of the galaxy. The upper part was composed of different types of fitted stone, the crown flaring outward like a cross between an umbrella and a section of sliced mushroom. The lower part curved in and downward, to end in a pair of meter-square supporting pillars on each side. The entire arch rose a good ten meters into the sky, with the distance between the pillars perhaps half that. Lying directly in front of it was the village square, a fifteen-meter expanse of empty ground.

The perfect place for an ambush.

Luke felt his stomach tighten. The perfect place for an ambush … except that if it was obvious to him, it must be obvious to the stormtroopers, as well.

And it was. The vanguard of the party had reached the square now, and as the stormtroopers moved out of the confines of the narrow avenue, each lifted his blaster rifle a little higher and moved a little farther apart from his fellows. They were expecting an ambush, all right. And they were expecting it right here.

Gritting his teeth, Luke focused again on the archway. “Is Threepio here?” he muttered to Han.

He sensed Han’s frown, but the other didn’t waste time with unnecessary questions. “He’s with Lando, yeah.”

Luke nodded and glanced down to his right. Beside him, Artoo was rolling along the bumpy street, trying hard to keep up. Bracing himself, Luke took a step in that direction—

And with a squeal, Artoo tripped over Luke’s outstretched foot and fell flat with a crash.

Luke was crouched beside him in an instant, leaning over him as he struggled with his manacled hands to get the little droid upright again. He sensed some of the stormtroopers moving forward to assist, but for that single moment, there was no one else close enough to hear him. “Artoo, call to Threepio,” he breathed into the droid’s audio receptor. “Tell him to wait until we’re at the archway to attack.”

The droid complied instantly, its loud warble nearly deafening Luke as he crouched there beside him. Luke’s head was still ringing when rough hands grabbed him under the arms and hauled him to his feet. He regained his balance—

To find the major standing in front of him, a suspicious scowl on his face. “What was that?” the other demanded.

“He fell over,” Luke told him. “I think he tripped—”

“I meant that transmission,” the major cut him off harshly. “What did he say?”

“He was probably telling me off for tripping him,” Luke shot back. “How should I know what he said?”

For a long minute the major glared at him. “Move out, Commander,” he said at last to the stormtrooper at his side. “Everyone stay alert.”

He turned away, and they started walking again. “I hope,” Han murmured from beside him, “you know what you’re doing.”

Luke took a deep breath and fixed his eyes on the archway ahead. “So do I,” he murmured back.

In a very few minutes, he knew, they would both find out.