Shadows of the Empire (5 page)

Luke felt his jaw muscles go tight at the memory.

The Empire had a lot to answer for.

T
he protected corridors in the core of the Imperial Center were available only to those with proper identification, and admissions were, supposedly, strictly limited
and enforced. Such corridors were large, well lighted, lined with fanciful botanicals, such as singing fig trees and jade roses, and often patrolled by hawk-bats, which preyed on the rock slugs that sometimes infested the granite walls. These corridors were designed to be pathways in which the rich and famous could stroll without being bothered by the rabble.

But as Xizor walked along one such enclosed path, his four bodyguards ahead of or behind him, an interloper appeared in front of them and started shooting at the Dark Prince with a blaster.

One of the pair of bodyguards in front took a bolt in the chest that pierced his concealed hardweave armor and dropped him. Xizor noticed the chest wound smoked as the guard groaned and rolled onto his back.

The second guard, whether through skill or luck, returned fire and scored a direct hit on the assassin’s blaster, knocking it from his hand. The threat was over.

The attacker screamed and charged at the remaining guards and Xizor barehanded.

Intrigued, Xizor watched the man come. The assassin was big, bigger than any of the guards and much larger than Xizor himself, built like a heavy-gravity weight lifter, and he was obviously crazed if he would charge three armed men without a weapon.

How interesting.

“Don’t shoot him,” Xizor said.

The running man was only twenty or so meters away and closing fast.

The Dark Prince allowed himself one of his tight smiles.

“Leave him alone,” he said. “He’s mine.”

The trio of bodyguards tucked their own blasters away and moved aside. They knew better than to question Xizor’s orders. Those who did could wind up like the still-smoking guard lying on the polished marble floor.

The assassin continued his run, screaming incoherently.

Xizor waited. When the man was nearly upon him, the Dark Prince pivoted on the balls of his feet and slapped a hard palm against the back of the man’s head as he charged past. The extra momentum of the strike was enough to off-balance the yelling man so that he overstepped and fell. He managed to turn the fall into an awkward shoulder roll. He came up, spun, faced Xizor. He was a bit more wary now. He moved in, more slowly, hands held in tight fists.

“What seems to be the problem, citizen?” Xizor asked.

“You murdering scum! You bog slime!”

The man lunged in closer, swung a roundhouse punch at Xizor’s head. Had it connected it would have shattered bone. Xizor ducked and sidestepped, kicked the attacker in the belly with the toe of his right boot and knocked the man’s wind out.

The attacker tottered back a few steps to catch his breath.

“Have we met? I have an excellent memory for faces, and I don’t recall yours.” Xizor noticed a bit of lint on the shoulder of his tunic. He reached up and brushed it off.

“You killed my father. Have you forgotten Colby Hoff?”

The man charged again, fists swinging wildly.

Xizor stepped aside and almost nonchalantly slammed a hammerfist into the man’s head, knocking him down.

“You are mistaken, Hoff. Your father committed suicide, as I recall. Stuck a blaster in his mouth and blew the back of his head off, didn’t he? Very messy.”

Hoff came up from the floor, and his rage drove him at Xizor again.

Xizor V-stepped to his right and drove his left boot
heel at Hoff’s left knee, hard. He heard the joint go with a wet snap as he connected.

Hoff fell, his left leg no longer able to support him.

“You ruined him!” He struggled up to his good knee.

“We were
business
competitors,” Xizor said matter-of-factly. “He gambled that he was smarter than I. A foolish mistake. If you cannot afford to lose, you should not play the game.”

“I’m going to kill you!”

“I think not,” Xizor said. He stepped in behind the wounded man, moving fast for one his size, and grabbed Hoff’s head with both hands. “You see, to contend with Xizor is to lose. As far as any reasonable person is concerned, attacking me will also be judged a suicide.”

With that, Xizor gave a sharp, hard twist.

The crack of vertebrae was quite loud in the corridor.

“Clean up this mess,” he said to his guards. “And inform the proper authorities of this poor young man’s fate.”

He looked down at the body. He felt no remorse. It was like stepping on a roach. It meant nothing to him at all.

I
n his most private chamber, the Emperor sat staring at a life-size holographic recording: Prince Xizor breaking the neck of someone who’d attacked him in a protected corridor.

The Emperor smiled and turned in his floating repulsor chair to look at Darth Vader.

“Well,” the Emperor said, “it seems that Prince Xizor has kept up his martial arts practice, does it not?”

Unseen under his armored mask, Vader frowned.
“He is a dangerous man, my master. Not to be trusted.”

The Emperor favored him with one of his unattractive, toothy smiles. “Do not trouble yourself with Xizor, Lord Vader. He is my concern.”

“As you wish.” Vader bowed.

“One wonders how that hotheaded young man managed to get into a protected corridor,” the Emperor said. But there was no wonder in the Emperor’s voice, none at all.

Vader’s face froze. He
knew
. It was not possible, for the guard who had admitted the would-be assassin into the corridor was no longer among the living, and none but that single man had known who ordered him to allow the young man access—but somehow, the Emperor knew.

The Emperor’s mastery of the dark side was great indeed.

“I will look into it, my master,” Vader said.

The Emperor waved an age-spotted hand in dismissal. “Don’t bother. There was no harm done. Prince Xizor was hardly at risk, after all, was he? He seems quite capable of taking care of himself—though I would hate to see anything happen to him as long as he is useful to us.”

Vader bowed again. As usual, the Emperor made his point in a subtle manner, but in such a way that it could not be ignored. There would be no further attempts to test Xizor’s ability to defend himself against deadly attack.

Not yet, anyway.

Meanwhile, Vader would keep a close watch on the Dark Prince. The Falleen was all too devious, and whatever his twisted mind was up to would serve the Empire only if it served Xizor himself.

Xizor was, after all, a criminal. His morals were perverse, his ethics situational, his loyalties nonexistent. He would stop at nothing to get his way, and Vader
was fairly certain in his own mind that what Xizor wanted did not include a galaxy in which there was room for Vader or the Emperor.

To contend with Xizor is to lose?

We shall see
.

A
s the landspeeder carrying them neared their destination, Leia saw Luke standing next to the house, watching. Odd, that he would somehow know of their approach.

Of course, out here in the middle of nowhere, nothing but sand and rocks and scrub, he could have seen them coming for a long way. It might not be the Force at work here but simple observation.

Chewie brought the speeder to a stop. Dust kicked up by the repulsors floated around them for a moment before the nearly constant wind swirled it away. This climate would leach you dry if you stayed out in it unprotected for too long. The dunes shifted and revealed more than a few crisp white bones of those who had thought they could move around the desert with impunity.

Luke smiled at her, and once again Leia felt that sense of confusion. She loved Han, but here was Luke, and she certainly felt a connection to him, too. Was it
possible for a woman to love two men at the same time? She returned his smile. It was not the same with Luke as with Han, but there was something there.

“Hey, Luke,” Lando said.

Chewie added what had to be a greeting.

“Master Luke, it’s so good to see you again,” Threepio said. His normally bright golden color was somewhat dimmed by a coat of dust. It seemed as if the protocol droid somehow attracted more dirt to himself than the rest of them did, though Leia felt a little gritty herself after the long ride from town.

Even Artoo whistled a happy greeting.

They all liked Luke. There was something about him that seemed so natural and so attractive. Maybe it was the Force flowing through him. Maybe it was because he seemed like such a nice person.

“We would have called,” Lando said, “but we didn’t want to risk having our com overheard. Chewie saw a couple of those new Imperial codecracker slicer droids in town; he thinks they might be monitoring local calls. No point in taking any unnecessary risks.”

Luke nodded. “Good thought. Come on inside.”

There was a faint smell of something cooking in what had been Obi-Wan’s simple home. The aroma reminded Leia of a time she’d gone camping as a girl and had sat around an open fire. She saw a small blast furnace set up on a table. Was Luke making some kind of jewelry?

They told Luke why they’d come.

He was immediately excited. He was ready to hop into his X-wing and leave right now.

“Hold on a second,” Lando said. “First we have to make sure Fett’s there. Then there’s the little matter of the Imperial Navy.”

Luke shrugged. “Hey, we can fly circles around those guys.”

Lando and Leia exchanged glances. Whatever else
Luke was, he was not lacking in self-confidence when it came to his piloting.

Chewie spoke up.

Threepio translated: “Ah, Chewbacca wonders if perhaps the Rebel Alliance might not be willing to help, given Master Han’s services to them.”

Luke grinned like a child seeing a new toy. “Sure they would. Wedge is in command of Rogue Squadron now, and he told me if I ever needed them they’d come running.”

“They can drop whatever they are doing, just like that?” Lando asked.

Leia nodded. “I don’t see why not. The Alliance’s chain of command is a lot looser than the Empire’s. We have to be more flexible, given the numbers. The Rogues don’t have any permanent assignment, and I’m sure I can convince the Alliance that Captain Solo is worth rescuing. He was instrumental in the destruction of the Death Star; plus we need all the good pilots we can get.”

Leia glanced at the others quickly, to see if her somewhat shaky reasoning covered her true feelings.

Luke didn’t seem to see past what she said, eager to fly as he was; Lando’s small grin could mean anything; the droids and Chewie were unreadable.

“Great,” Luke said. “Let’s do it!”

“Not so fast,” Lando said. “First what say we wait for the confirmation that Fett is actually
on
Gall before we take off? That’s a long trip to make for nothing.”

Leia could see that Luke didn’t want to wait—patience didn’t seem to be his strongest virtue—but he could see the wisdom of what Lando said. “Okay. But in the meantime, let’s contact Wedge and have the Rogues standing by.”

“I’ll speak to the leadership,” Leia said.

She hoped that Lando’s informant—what was his name? Dash somebody?—would get the information to
them quickly. And she hoped that the rumor was true. Nobody wanted Han back more than she did.

X
izor sat at the head of the long table in his private meeting room, watching the nervous faces of his lieutenants. Guri stood behind him at a modified parade rest, her hands out of sight at the small of her back.

They had reason to be nervous, his lieutenants. By ascending to this level in Black Sun, they had each earned the honorific “Vigo,” from the old Tionese for “nephew.” It fostered the illusion that the top managers of the organization were family and thus made them appear stronger to outsiders.

Unfortunately, the appearance was not always the truth.

One of them at the table was a spy.

Xizor did not know for whom the spy worked—could be the Empire, the Rebel Alliance, even a rival criminal organization—and he did not particularly care. Everybody spied on everybody in this business, it was a given, but the fact that it was normal did not mean that you let it pass when you found it.

Now, at the beginning of this meeting, he had nine lieutenants at this table, each of whom was responsible for several stellar systems.

At the end of this meeting, he would have eight lieutenants.

But first, the normal business of Black Sun must be attended to and properly settled.

“I will have your reports,” Xizor said. “Vigo Lonay?”

Lonay was a Twi’lek, sly, clever, and cowardly. He wore his prehensile head-tails wrapped and draped over one shoulder, his usual garish jewelry and decorative coloration toned down for this meeting. “My prince, the spice trade is up twenty-one percent in our sector, the gambling casino ships have increased their
business by eight percent, and the arms dealers are doing a brisk business; current estimates indicate a thirty-one percent increase. Unfortunately, slave revenues are down fifty-three percent. Several planets have fallen under the sway of the Rebel Alliance and passed local laws forbidding slavery. Until the Empire chooses to intercede, I am afraid revenues in this area will remain depressed.”

Xizor nodded. Lonay would always be too much a coward to risk death by betraying his “uncle.” His whole species was that way.

The Dark Prince said, “Vigo Sprax?”

Sprax, a Nalroni whose dark fur had begun to gray, though he dyed it to try to appear younger, began to rattle off his statistics. Xizor watched him, listened with half his attention—he already knew all of what was being officially delivered.

Sprax was too smart to try to cross Xizor.

The Nalroni finished his report.

“Vigo Vekker?”

Vekker, a Quarren, flashed a nervous smile and started his recitation.

The Squid Head had no ambition to rise any higher, was content with his job and the status quo.

One by one Xizor called for the Vigos to speak, and one by one the rest of them did: Durga the Hutt, Kreet’ah the Kian’thar, Clezo the Rodian, Wumdi the Etti, Perit the Mon Calamari, Green the Human.