Heir To The Empire (9 page)

“I understand,” Leia said gravely, suppressing a smile at the prim tone of the droid’s voice. “Well, in that case, I suppose we might as well return to the Falcon until he feels ready to continue.”

The droid translated, and one of their escort stepped forward and sang something in reply. “He offers an alternative, Your Highness: that he would be eager to conduct you on a tour of the marketplace while you wait.”

Leia glanced at Han and Luke. “Any objections?”

The Bimm sang something else. “He further suggests that Master Luke and Captain Solo might find something to interest them in the Tower’s upper chambers,” Threepio said. “Apparently, there are relics there dating from the middle era of the Old Republic.”

A quiet alarm went off in the back of Leia’s mind. Were the Bimms trying to split them up? “Luke and Han might like the market, too,” she said cautiously.

There was another exchange of arias. “He says they would find it excessively dull,” Threepio told her. “Frankly, if it’s anything like marketplaces I’ve seen-”

“I like marketplaces,” Han cut him off brusquely, his voice dark with suspicion. “I like ‘em a lot.”

Leia looked at her brother. “What do you think?”

Luke’s eyes swept the Bimms; measuring them, she knew, with all of his Jedi insight. “I don’t see what danger they could be,” he said slowly. “I don’t sense any real duplicity in them. Nothing beyond that of normal politics, anyway.”

Leia nodded, her tension easing a little. Normal politics- yes, that was probably all it was. The Bimm probably just wanted the chance to privately bend her ear on behalf of his particular viewpoint before the talks got started in earnest. “In that case,” she said, inclining her head to the Bimm, “we accept.”

“The marketplace has been in this same spot for over two hundred years,” Threepio translated as Han and Leia followed their host up the gentle ramp between the second and third levels of the open dome structure. “Though not in this exact form, of course. The Tower of Law, in fact, was built here precisely because it was already a common crossroads.”

“Hasn’t changed much, has it?” Han commented, pressing close to Leia to keep them from getting run down by a particularly determined batch of shoppers. He’d seen a lot of marketplaces on a lot of different planets, but seldom one so crowded.

Crowded with more than just locals, too. Scattered throughout the sea of yellow-clad Bimms-don’t they ever wear any other color?-he could see several other humans, a pair of Baradas, an Ishi Tib, a group of Yuzzumi, and something that looked vaguely like a Paonnid.

“You can see why this place is worth getting into the New Republic,” Leia murmured to him.

“I guess so,” Han conceded, stepping to one of the booths and looking at the metalware displayed there. The owner/operator sang something toward him, gesturing to a set of carving knives. “No, thanks,” Han told him, moving back. The Bimm continued to jabber at him, his gestures becoming sharper- “Threepio, will you have our host tell him that we’re not interested?” he called to the droid.

There was no response. “Threepio?” he repeated, looking around.

Threepio was staring off into the crowd. “Hey, Goldenrod,” he snapped. “I’m talking to you.”

Threepio spun back. “I’m terribly sorry, Captain Solo,” he apologized. “But our host seems to have disappeared.”

“What do you mean, disappeared?” Han demanded, looking around. Their particular Bimm, he remembered, had worn a set of shiny pins on his shoulders.

Pins that were nowhere to be seen. “How could he just disappear?”

Beside him, Leia gripped his hand. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she said tightly. “Let’s get back to the Tower.”

“Yeah,” Han agreed. “Come on, Threepio. Don’t get lost.” Shifting his grip on Leia’s hand, he turned-

And froze. A few meters away, islands in the churning sea of yellow, three aliens stood facing them. Short aliens, not much taller than the Bimms, with steel-gray skin, large dark eyes, and protruding jaws.

And, held ready in their hands, stokhli sticks.

“We’ve got trouble,” he murmured to Leia, turning his head slowly to look around, hoping desperately that those three were all there were.

They weren’t. There were at least eight more, arrayed in a rough circle ten meters across. A circle with Han, Leia, and Threepio at its center.

“Han!” Leia said urgently.

“I see them,” he muttered. “We’re in trouble, sweetheart.”

He sensed her glance behind them. “Who are they?” she breathed.

“I don’t know-never seen anything like them before. But they’re not kidding around. Those things are called stokhli sticks-shoot a spraynet mist two hundred meters, with enough shockstun juice to take down a good-sized Gundark.” Abruptly, Han noticed that he and Leia had moved, instinctively backing away from the nearest part of the aliens’ circle. He glanced over his shoulder- “They’re herding us toward the down ramp,” he told her. “Must be trying to take us without stirring up the crowd.”

“We’re doomed,” Threepio moaned.

Leia gripped Han’s hand. “What are we going to do?”

“Let’s see how closely they’re paying attention.” Trying to watch all the aliens at once, Han casually reached his free hand toward the comlink attached to his collar.

The nearest alien lifted his stokhli stick warningly. Han froze, slowly lowered the hand again. “So much for that idea,” he muttered. “I think it’s time to pull in the welcome mat. Better give Luke a shout.”

“He can’t help us.”

Han glanced down at her; at her glazed eyes and pinched face. “Why not?” he demanded, stomach tightening.

She sighed, just audibly. “They’ve got him, too.”

It was more a feeling than anything approaching an actual word, but it echoed through Luke’s mind as clearly as if he’d heard it shouted.

Help!

He spun around, the ancient tapestry he’d been studying forgotten as his Jedi senses flared into combat readiness. Around him, the large top-floor Tower room was as it had been a minute earlier: deserted except for a handful of Bimms strolling among the huge wall tapestries and relic cases. No danger here, at least nothing immediate. What is it? he sent back, starting for the next room and the staircase leading down.

He caught a quick vision from Leia’s mind, a picture of alien figures and a vivid impression of a contracting noose. Hang on, he told her. I’m coming. All but running now, he ducked through the doorway to the staircase room, grabbing the jamb to help with his turn-

And braked to an abrupt halt. Standing between him and the stairway was a loose semicircle of seven silent gray figures.

Luke froze, his hand still uselessly gripping the doorjamb, half a galaxy away from the lightsaber on his belt. He had no idea what the sticks were his assailants were pointing at him, but he had no desire to find out the hard way. Not unless he absolutely had to. “What do you want?” he asked aloud.

The alien in the center of the semicircle-the leader, Luke guessed-gestured with his stick. Luke glanced over his shoulder into the room he’d just left. “You want me to go back in there?” he asked.

The leader gestured again . . . and this time Luke saw it. The small, almost insignificant tactical error. “All right,” he said, as soothingly as possible. “No problem.” Keeping his eyes on the aliens and his hands away from his lightsaber, he began to back up. They herded him steadily back across the room toward another archway and a room he hadn’t gotten to before Leia’s emergency call had come. “If you’d just tell me what you want, I’m sure we could come to some sort of agreement,” Luke suggested as he walked. Faint scuffling sounds told him that there were still some Bimms wandering around, presumably the reason the aliens hadn’t already attacked. “I would hope we could at least talk about it. There’s no particular reason why any of you has to be hurt.”

Reflexively, the leader’s left thumb moved. Not much, but Luke was watching, and it was enough. A thumb trigger, then. “If you have some business with me, I’m willing to talk,” he continued. “You don’t need my friends in the marketplace for that.”

He was almost to the archway now. A couple more steps to go. If they’d just hold off shooting him that long . . .

And then he was there, with the carved stone looming over him. “Now where?” he asked, forcing his muscles to relax. This was it.

Again, the leader gestured with his stick . . . and midway through the motion, for a single instant, the weapon was pointed not at Luke but at two of his own companions.

And reaching out through the Force, Luke triggered the thumb switch. There was a loud, sharp hiss as the stick bucked in its owner’s hands and what looked like a fine spray shot out the end.

Luke didn’t wait to see what exactly the spray did. The maneuver had bought him maybe a half second of confusion, and he couldn’t afford to waste any of it. Throwing himself back and to the side, he did a flip into the room behind him, angling to get to the slight protection afforded by the wall beside the doorway.

He just barely made it. Even as he cleared the archway there was a stuttering salvo of sharp hisses, and as he flipped back to his feet he saw that the doorjamb had grown strange semisolid tendrils of some thin, translucent material. Another tendril shot through the doorway as he hastily backed farther away, sweeping in a spiral curve that seemed to turn from fine mist to liquid stream to solid cylinder even as it curved.

His lightsaber was in his hand now, igniting with a snap-hiss of its own. They’d be through that doorway in seconds, he knew, all efforts at subtlety abandoned. And when they came-

He clenched his teeth, a memory of his brief skiff-battle encounter with Boba Fett flashing through his mind. Wrapped in the bounty hunter’s smart-rope, he’d escaped only by snapping the cable with a deflected blaster shot. But here there would be no blasters to try that trick with.

For that matter, he wasn’t absolutely sure what his lightsaber could do directly against the sprays. It would be like trying to cut through a rope that was continually re-creating itself.

Or rather, like trying to cut seven such ropes.

He could hear their footsteps now, sprinting toward his room even as the spiraling tendril sweeping the doorway made sure he stayed too far back to ambush them as they came through it. A standard military technique, played out with the kind of precision that showed he wasn’t dealing with amateurs.

He raised the lightsaber to en garde position, risking a quick look around. The room was decorated like all the others he’d seen on this floor, with ancient wall tapestries and other relics- no real cover anywhere. His eyes flicked across the walls, searching for the exit that by implication had to be here somewhere. But the action was so much useless reflex. Wherever the exit was, it was almost certainly too far away to do him any good.

The hiss of the spray stopped; and he turned back just in time to see the aliens charge into the room. They spotted him, spun around to bring their weapons to bear-

And reaching up with the Force, Luke ripped one of the tapestries from the wall beside him and brought it down on top of them.

It was a trick that only a Jedi could have pulled off, and it was a trick that, by all rights, ought to have worked. All seven of the aliens were in the room by the time he got the tapestry loose, and all seven were beneath it as it began its fall. But by the time it landed in a huge wrinkled pile on the floor, all seven had somehow managed to back completely out of its way.

From behind the heap came the sharp hiss of their weapons, and Luke ducked back involuntarily before he realized the webbing sprays weren’t coming anywhere near him. Instead, the misty tendrils were sweeping outward, shooting around and past the downed tapestry to crisscross the walls.

His first thought was that the weapons must have gone off accidentally, jostled or bumped as the aliens tried to get out from under the falling tapestry. But a split second later he realized the truth: that they were deliberately webbing the other tapestries into place on the walls to prevent him from trying the same trick twice. Belatedly, Luke tugged at the heaped tapestry, hoping to sweep them back with it, and found that it, too, was now solidly webbed in place.

The spraying ceased, and a single dark eye poked cautiously around the tapestry mountain . . . and with a strange sort of sadness, Luke realized that he no longer had any choices left. There was, now, only one way to end this if Han and Leia were to be saved.

He locked his lightsaber on and let his mind relax, reaching out with Jedi senses toward the seven figures, forming their image in his mind’s eye. The alien watching him brought his weapon around the edge of the tapestry-

And, reaching back over his left shoulder, Luke hurled his lightsaber with all his strength.

The blade scythed toward the edge of the tapestry, spinning through the air like some strange and fiery predator. The alien saw it, reflexively ducked back-

And died as the lightsaber sliced through the tapestry and cut him in half.

The others must have realized in that instant that they, too, were dead; but even then they didn’t give up. Howling a strangely chilling wail, they attacked: four throwing themselves around the sides of the barrier, the other two actually leaping straight up to try to shoot over it.

It made no difference. Guided by the Force, the spinning lightsaber cut through their ranks in a twisting curve, striking each of them in turn.

A heartbeat later, it was all over.

Luke took a shuddering breath. He’d done it. Not the way he’d wanted to, but he’d done it. Now, he could only hope he’d done it in time. Calling the lightsaber back to his hand on a dead run, he sprinted past the crumpled alien bodies and stretched out again through the Force. Leia?

The decorative columns flanking the downward ramp were visible just beyond the next row of booths when, beside him, Han felt Leia twitch. “He’s free,” she said. “He’s on his way.”

“Great,” Han muttered. “Great. Let’s hope our pals don’t find out before he gets here.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when, in what looked like complete unison, the circle of aliens raised their stokhli sticks and started pushing their way through the milling crowd of Bimms. “Too late,” Han gritted. “Here they come.”