Heir to the Jedi (17 page)

One thing I didn’t consider was how difficult it would be for them to judge distance in those conditions. I could hear them arguing about how close I was because they didn’t want to shoot too soon, and that gave us another couple of seconds. When Drusil opened the access door, however, and a square of natural light fell down and illuminated us both, they realized we were much closer than they thought—and we were about to escape.

“There they are!”

“I see them!”

“Stun ’em now!”

This might be it—I hoped Drusil would get away and give the Alliance an edge in the war, regardless of what happened to me. She was pulled bodily through the opening by Nakari, giving me a clear path up and out. I wouldn’t make it before the ISB had taken their shots, though. They raised their blasters at me and fired, expanding blue halos of energy that would disrupt my neural system and drop me unconscious—or maybe even kill me, considering I would be getting three blasts at almost the same instant. Choosing to stun instead of shoot plasma bolts at me, however, indicated that they would like an interrogation before my execution.

I held my lightsaber in front of me, blade aligned horizontally but pointing slightly toward the agents so that the tip would meet the oncoming wave first. There was no dodging to be done and no great skill with the Force required—either the lightsaber would save me or it wouldn’t. And it did, sort of. There was a
crackle as the blasts hit the blade, and a blue spiderweb of energy that shimmered outward as the blasts dissipated, leaving me conscious and the ISB agents flabbergasted. But before it dissipated, some of the energy kissed the fingers I was using to hold the hilt of the lightsaber; they went numb, and I dropped the weapon. Perhaps against a single stun blast that wouldn’t have happened, but against three, something got through. Now the agents could simply fire again and I’d be knocked out.

“Nakari! Help!” I yelled as I leapt down from the ladder, grabbed my blaster, and fired at the agents, who were slow to recognize that the tactical situation had abruptly changed. They recovered quickly after the first one cried out with a charred hole in his chest; whatever armor he was wearing wasn’t up to deflecting the heat from my blaster turned up to maximum. The second one standing in the middle fired a stun blast a split second after my shot rocked him and the charge sailed harmlessly into the ceiling. The third one, however, had a clear shot at me, and he took it, his blaster pointed down so that the center of the blast would slam into me.

One of the features of stunning someone is that you don’t have to be a very good sharpshooter thanks to the spreading footprint of the blast. But in this case that worked in my favor: The lower edge skimming the wet floor ran into the blade of my lightsaber, still glowing and lying prone on the floor, and as soon as it did, the blade dissipated the blast with the same crackle of electricity as before.

Nakari shot the last agent before I could, her bolt coming from above. I looked up and saw her head and right arm dangling down the access hatch; she’d fired accurately upside down.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem. Hold on.” She calmly fired again into the body of each agent.

“Why’d you do that?”

“Need to make sure. You’ll be vulnerable for a few seconds
while you climb up here, and if one of them is still alive we can’t have him taking a free shot at you.”

It was a valid point but not one I had considered. Even if I had thought of it, I’m not sure I would have followed through and shot them again. Something about it struck me as bloodthirsty—or simply not quite right. I’d have to think about it some more. I kept all such thoughts to myself as I holstered my blaster, retrieved my lightsaber, and returned it to my belt after turning it off. It was my first opportunity to get a good look at my left hand; there was skin missing around the knuckles and a bit off the tips, and it was still bleeding. It was also completely soiled and horrific and I needed to get it scoured and dipped in an entire vat of sanitizing solution.

But we weren’t out of trouble yet; I imagined we wouldn’t be for quite some time. I longed for time enough to make myself presentable before ascending into public, but we had to get to the ship as fast as possible. I climbed up quickly and immediately began to strip off my (formerly) white outer tunic. We had planned to change later anyway, but I couldn’t wait. The dark tunic underneath was wet and probably smelled awful, but at least it wasn’t encrusted with waste. Nakari wrinkled her nose.

“Ugh, Luke, what is that all over you? Did you slip and fall into—”

“Let’s not talk about it, okay? If we don’t say it out loud then maybe I can forget about it in a few thousand years.”

“Hey, everybody has accidents.” She was fighting hard to stifle a smile but appeared to be losing the battle. I’m sure I was blushing: I felt the heat in my face.

Nakari kicked the access door shut and we crammed into an enclosed speeder with a dark-tinted cockpit. Artoo and Drusil were already waiting inside and I shoved the repulsors to maximum thrust, heading for a parking structure at the edge of the district. Nakari and Drusil exchanged equations courteously and Drusil thanked us for the continuing rescue attempt.

“I do hope to reiterate my gratitude after a successful escape,” she added, her words emphasizing that we still had a long way to go.

We had another rented speeder waiting in the parking structure and we took the time to change clothes completely before getting out into the view of security cams. We had a cowled hood for Drusil to wear so that her face would be completely hidden, and Artoo would attempt to jam local transmissions for the few minutes we were inside the garage, since we could do little to disguise him. When we had planned the operation the day before, I’d thought this part was an excess of caution and sacrificed speed for skullduggery, but Nakari insisted; she was convinced the ISB would be scouring all security feeds in search of us, and if they picked us up before we got offplanet we’d be hard-pressed to fight off the reinforcements they could summon.

Artoo had programmed a course into the speeder’s rudimentary navigation computer that would take it out of the garage and fly a random pattern in the Lodos district. It was a ruse that wouldn’t hold up forever, but like everything else we did, it was designed to give us a bit more time—we just needed enough to jump out of the system. Let them go ahead and piece everything together, Nakari said, just as long as they did so too late to stop us.

While Artoo’s jamming program operated, we clambered into another speeder, also with an opaque cockpit, and drove that out of Lodos while our decoy drove deeper into it. We saw local and Imperial law enforcement vehicles dart overhead along vectors that would place them in the neighborhood of the café, and Nakari looked faintly smug.

“Any predictions on the probability of them catching up with us, Drusil?” I asked.

“I don’t have enough data to perform the calculations,” she replied. “It would be an equation filled entirely with variables
and few real numbers at this point, resulting in little more than a guess.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Perhaps you could tell me if you have solid proof that my family is safe, or if you were speaking of probabilities?” she asked.

“Probabilities,” I admitted. “We let the Alliance know that we would be attempting to snatch you today, so a separate team should be extracting your family now.” I hoped Major Derlin had succeeded, or we would have an extremely unhappy Givin on our hands.

“Or they may have already done so,” Nakari said. “We won’t know until we get to Omereth, unfortunately.”

“Why Omereth, if I may ask?” I said to Drusil.

“It is insignificant and of little interest to either the Empire or the Alliance. Negligible infrastructure, no sentient life-forms, and poor mineral prospects have condemned the planet to a vacation destination for adventurers. It cannot support a large population or indeed many modern conveniences without significant offworld imports. No one would suspect a cryptographer would live someplace so cut off from active networks of trade and military staging areas. It is among the least probable places to find me—I have done the math, I assure you.”

Smirking, I said, “I don’t doubt it. We’ll talk more once we get out of the system.”

I guided the speeder to a soft landing on our docking platform a short distance from the
Desert Jewel
. As with the previous speeder, we sent it flying away on a preprogrammed course as soon as we disembarked. There was a chance this one wouldn’t be found right away, so Artoo had programmed it to land safely before it ran out of fuel.

“I sure hope the Imperials haven’t begun to check outbound ships,” Nakari said as the ramp descended and we boarded the craft.

“How many of my security team survived?” Drusil asked. “Two were slain next to me. Three in the sewer. That leaves three more, unless you killed them later?”

“No, that’s right,” Nakari confirmed. “Three survived and are no doubt coordinating the attempt to reacquire us.”

Artoo rolled into the starboard quarters to hook up with the
Jewel
’s nav computer. He already knew our first jump but needed to fine-tune calculations for our earliest possible exit. I headed straight for the cockpit to get the
Jewel
fired up while Nakari and Drusil continued to talk in the corridor. The Givin was listing gaps in Imperial knowledge—primarily due to taking out the security droid—that all added up to time.

“They know you and your astromech droid were involved but may not have seen Luke until he emerged from the sewer behind me. I assume by now they have discovered that site by homing in on comm units of the three slain ISB agents. They will be scouring the city and looking for that first speeder for sure. The question is not whether they’d be willing to activate their orbital resources and anger the civilian population for the chance to prevent our escape; the question is how long they’ll delay before giving that order.”

Trying to lock down traffic here would be a tall order, since Denon rested at the intersection of two of the galaxy’s most well-traveled hyperspace lanes.

“They might not realize we’re with the Alliance,” I called back as I checked the systems and was gratified by a row of green lights. “We could be mercenaries working for the Hutts or something.”

“That is true, but it will probably have no bearing on their decision making. They wish me to remain under their control and will exert themselves to ensure that happens.”

“Understood, but if they think we’re with the Hutts, they might waste time searching for us in the criminal underworld here.” Perhaps I was overthinking it; I could see how pondering
the possibilities might slow down command decisions. Up to now, I had been given little freedom to plan and execute operations on my own. Mostly I flew where the Alliance told me to fly and shot what they told me to shoot. There’s an undeniable pleasure in ruining the Empire’s day with blasters, but planning and anticipating enemy moves had a different appeal that I was beginning to appreciate. I released the brakes and said, “Better strap in somewhere. We’re taking off, and this could be an exciting trip.”

Nakari showed Drusil into the starboard living quarters and then joined me in the cockpit, taking the copilot’s seat and flipping on an intercom channel to the quarters so that both Artoo and Drusil could hear us.

The
Desert Jewel
lifted smoothly from her berth and sliced through the atmosphere without any Imperial pursuit. Once I set the course, I asked Artoo to monitor security channels as a subroutine while maintaining our hyperspace jump as his top priority. We were going to jump Coreward along the Hydian Way to Exodeen, and from there we would take a smaller hyperspace lane called the Nanth’ri Trade Route that would eventually offer several different ways to reach Omereth.

The sky burned away and stars replaced it as we left Denon’s atmosphere with no trouble. Commenting on it drew a wry chuckle from Drusil.

“You should hear of trouble soon enough,” she said. “The probability is almost certain.”

Artoo blurted an alarm and a stream of characters appeared on our heads-up holodisplay, translating his words:
EMPIRE HAS ORDERED A SYSTEMWIDE BLOCKADE TO SEIZE REBEL SPIES. INTERDICTOR CRUISERS EN ROUTE. ALL SHIPS THAT DEPART PRIOR TO IMPERIAL INSPECTION WILL BE NOTED.

Drusil’s prescience made me want to spend more time studying math. “Let them note it! Do you have the course ready? Jump if you do.”

JUMPING.

I had hoped we would get out of the system without being tagged for pursuit, but that plan was slagged now. We had to hope that our ship would move faster than any dragnet the Empire put together.

THE FIRST THING I DID
while in hyperspace was visit the bathroom to wash off my hand and take a quick shower to sluice away the filth of Denon’s tunnels—it was a public service as much as a personal wish to be clean, because I still reeked even after shedding the filth-encrusted layer of clothes outside the sewer. I took some strong antibacterials as a precaution. My cuts would scab over and heal soon enough, but they’d probably sting for a while.