Star Wars: The New Rebellion (22 page)

Or Han, thrusting himself into situations greater than he was, and always emerging victorious.

He might not emerge this time.

Lando stood, and paced through the cockpit. He had brought droids with him, half a dozen, all of various uses. Leia had forced credits on him as well so that he could buy information in the Run.

And he had brought a small arsenal, hidden in the secret smuggling compartments of the
Lady Luck
. The smugglers might find his weapons, and they might not. Lando hadn’t gotten where he was without gambling.

He paused, leaned forward, and looked out the cockpit transparisteel at the Run. From this distance, it looked as if an artist had swept a gutter-filled paintbrush across the blackness of space. The asteroids sparkled in the light of a nearby star. Debris formed a milky trail from asteroid to asteroid.

The Run had existed for a long, long time. The entrance was tricky to anyone who didn’t know the way. More Imperial ships had been marooned in the debris trail than any others. The Emperor had tried to find the Run several times, thinking he could recruit its denizens. Those ships that didn’t slam against rock were blasted out of space.

Smugglers didn’t work for anyone except themselves.

The Emperor had never learned that.

Lando knew that, though.

The chill that had followed him since he had first discovered
the
Spicy Lady
was more pronounced here. For the fifteenth time, he checked the environmental controls. They were working perfectly.

If he backed out now, and something happened to Han, this incident would burn in his memory worse than losing Han to the carbonite. A man couldn’t betray a friend twice. Han, despite the difficulties the two of them had had, would figure out a way into a dangerous situation to save Lando.

Lando had to do the same.

Impressions of the Run rose in him; the dank, smelly chambers in Skip 1, the gambling tables, the constant scams. The duels that had forced him to watch his back, and the friendships that he still had.

Or that he thought he still had. Nandreeson could buy anyone for the right price.

Anyone except Han.

All Lando had to do was find Han, warn him, and get out. The first two might not be difficult. The third would. But Lando’s mission would be accomplished, and that was all that mattered.

Still, a man was foolish if he didn’t allow himself a back door.

He punched in a coded message, sent it to Mara, and sent a duplicate to Leia, with instructions to forward it to Mara. That way, his back door was assured.

Then he sat back in the pilot’s chair, strapped himself in, and aimed the
Lady Luck
at Smuggler’s Run. He burned the engines high, giving the ship tremendous speed. As it headed toward the Run, he bent under his console, took his all-purpose laser wrench, and removed the panel. He pulled three chips, pocketed them, and watched as the power to all the ship’s vital areas failed.

The
Lady Luck
was disabled, and hurtling toward the Run.

He punched the communications console, and sent
the Run a copy of the
Luck
’s legitimate cargo manifold—a smuggler’s equivalent of Mayday.

Luke landed the X-wing on a wide metallic strip on the northern face of Telti. Domes rose around, metal domes on a barren, sandblasted landscape. When he had first read about Telti, he had thought it would look like Tatooine, a desert planet, but as he landed he realized he was wrong.

Tatooine was full of life. Creatures lived in the sand. Even the suns had a presence.

But Telti was a moon. It had no atmosphere and no life of its own. The dirt covering the ball floating through space was just that—dirt. And yet the moon was littered with domed buildings and metal landing strips. His computer showed him, as he landed, that a series of tunnels connected each building underground.

He was reaching for his breath mask when the landing strip started to move. He glanced over his shoulder, an old reflex, to see Artoo’s reaction.

But Artoo wasn’t there.

Luke had never felt more alone. He hadn’t spoken to a living being since he had left Brakiss’s mother. She had given him directions to Telti, all the while warning him away from her son.

Luke’s entire communication with Telti had been computer-to-computer. The metallic moon had even sent his landing coordinates directly into the navigation unit. Luke had tried to reach Brakiss, and on each instance was told that voice communication with the moon was blocked. Purposely.

Visitors seldom came to Telti, and were not welcomed.

Even though that message had been sent, however,
Luke had had no trouble with his own entry. He hadn’t really expected it. Brakiss was waiting for him.

Luke wanted to know why.

Something was going on here, something bigger than a failed student-teacher relationship. Brakiss was working for someone—the Empire, probably—and his duty was to lure Luke Skywalker into a trap.

Luke would be lured.

He wouldn’t be trapped.

The landing strip continued to move forward, conveyor-belt style, inching slowly toward a nearby building. Luke could lift off at any point. This movement was not part of the trap, but part of Telti’s day-to-day operations.

One side of the dome ahead of him rose, flattening against itself like a fan. There were no lights inside, just as there had been no lights on the landing strip.

But Luke could sense a presence.

Brakiss.

Not inside the dome, but on Telti.

Waiting.

If Luke could sense Brakiss, it would only be a matter of moments before Brakiss could sense Luke. If he didn’t already know of Luke’s arrival.

Then, perhaps, Luke would have some answers.

He certainly hadn’t received any when he had called up information on Telti. New Republic sources claimed that Telti was an abandoned mining colony, its wealth completely destroyed by Imperial exploitation. A factory remained. It apparently did some business with the New Republic.

The most information Luke had received on the moon had come from Brakiss’s mother. She had said that Brakiss finally had real work. She had been afraid that Luke’s presence would destroy any chance for Brakiss’s future.

Luke had thought she meant that he might kill Brakiss.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

He turned on the X-wing’s front running lights. They worked as a spot illuminating the interior of the dome. It was empty, but it looked like a bay big enough to house dozens of ships. Landing platforms were recessed into the floor. Beyond those was an open door.

And no movement. None at all.

The sensation of barrenness continued. Except for Brakiss, Luke felt no other life. No plant life, no animal life. Nothing. Not even insect life.

He breathed deeply, running through a few mental calming exercises he taught at the academy. Clearly his expectations had been different. Clearly he had expected more life here than just Brakiss.

That should have reassured him, but it didn’t.

The metal runway pulled the X-wing into the building, and with a loud grinding, the door closed. Luke did not look back. He had made his choice. He would continue with it.

As the door closed, lights came on all through the bay. Some illuminated the platforms from below, others from above. A bank of glow panels lit on the ceiling, and a hissing told him that the atmosphere had changed. He checked his monitors. The air was breathable now.

He pushed up the canopy of the X-wing. The air was warmer than he had expected, and smelled faintly of metal, rust, and grease. The rust surprised him. He would have expected nothing like that.

As he levered himself out, he felt as if he had been in this room before. Then he realized that he had been in one just like it on Anchorhead as a boy, back when Jabba the Hutt had tried a few legitimate businesses. He had sold landspeeders, and Luke had gone with his uncle Owen to buy one.

Jabba’s lackeys had put the landspeeders in a large room and placed display lights on them, lights that shone on the clean patches only, and hid the dents and dirt and flaws. Uncle Owen had not bought anything that day, saying that all the speeders had had their ID numbers sanded off. It was years later that Luke realized the speeders had to have been stolen.

Weeks later, Luke and his uncle had returned. Jabba’s business was gone. All that remained were the platforms and the lights.

It bothered Luke that no one approached him. A normal droid factory would have sent a sales representative by now.

Brakiss again.

Both he and Luke knew this would be no normal visit.

Before Luke dropped to the metallic floor, he closed the X-wing’s canopy and set the safety seals. They wouldn’t do much good against a determined saboteur, but they would deter a droid.

Brakiss had other ways of tampering with Luke.

Luke patted his lightsaber, its slight weight a comfort at his hip. He wore only a loose shirt and tight military pants. His cloak remained in the X-wing. He wanted no diversions here, and with this much equipment, a flowing cloak could easily snag on a metallic edge.

His mouth was dry. He had expected a confrontation. He hadn’t expected no greeting at all.

But Brakiss was still Empire. He liked games. He always had.

Luke took a deep breath, and headed for the open door. He was probably being watched. Brakiss would note each of Luke’s movements, from the patting of the lightsaber to the sealing of the X-wing. He would know that Luke was uneasy in this place.

At the mouth of the door, Luke paused. The door’s frame should shield him from any holocams. He reached
out through the Force, sending tendrils of inquiry across it, searching for Brakiss.

Brakiss’s presence was strong here, but diffuse. Luke couldn’t pinpoint it. That didn’t surprise him; Brakiss’s mother had said Brakiss was expecting Luke. Which meant Brakiss had had time to prepare.

He knew many tricks, some Luke had taught him, others that he might have learned from the Empire. Any gifted Force-sensitive being could scatter his presence through a finite area. The fact that Luke could feel Brakiss at all meant that he was close.

Luke stepped through the door and into the next room. And stopped.

Thousands of golden hands hung from the ceiling. The right hands faced palm-out, the left hands had the knuckles showing. The thumbs all went in the same direction. They gleamed in the light. More hands lay on conveyor belts. All those hands were in partial assembly. Some had open forearms revealing equipment not unlike the equipment in Luke’s right wrist. Unattached fingers lay beside the conveyor belts, and golden arm sockets waited attachment to golden shoulders.

Threepio might have started life in a place like this. Somewhere in one of these domed buildings, the domed heads of the R2 units were assembled. Hard to believe such ignoble beginnings might have led to the personalities that had become so important in Luke’s life.

The room was eerily silent. The belts were off, the atmosphere controls made no noise, and there was no movement. The hands hung like stalactites, stalactites with a hint of life.

Luke glanced at the ceiling. The arms were resting in metal runners, and were not attached to anything.

His relief was palpable.

“Hello?” he said.

His voice echoed off the metal around him, returning in tiny, tinny sounds to him.

“Hello?”

He had no idea where to go from here. He wouldn’t follow the ghosts of the false Brakiss in search of the real one. Brakiss probably wanted to lead him through room after room like this, one filled with legs, another with torsos, to make some kind of point.

A point Luke would only learn when he reached Brakiss himself.

“Hello?” Luke called again. He would remain here, near the open door to his ship, until he got a response.

Even though it felt as if one would never come.

B
rakiss tracked Luke four ways: with the surveillance equipment he had installed all over Telti; with the computer system; with a group of specially designed gladiator droids that silently flanked Luke; and with the Force. His Force sense was the most reliable. Luke’s presence felt as if someone had tossed a boulder into the calm pond of Brakiss’s world. Although Brakiss had known Luke was coming, he still wasn’t prepared for the strength of the disturbance.