Star Wars: The New Rebellion (47 page)

“With Leia inside? Anyone who knows me knows I’d never do that.”

Lando smiled. “I think Kid and Zeen would probably agree with that. But most of the Imperials in the Senate don’t know you. That sort of behavior was business as usual in the Empire.”

“It would take pretty strong proof to make it look like I’ve done something.”

Lando shook his head. “Strong isn’t as important as the right kind of proof. You’re lucky I brought this to Leia first.” Then he told Han about finding the
Spicy Lady
, and the message inside.

Han sighed. “Jarril’s dead, huh?”

Lando nodded. “It wasn’t pretty.”

“I think he was afraid that would happen when he came to me. I think he felt he didn’t have much time left.”

“Maybe he was part of the setup.”

Han shook his head. “He was too scared for that. He tried to ask for help a smuggler’s way, by offering me money, but I wasn’t buying. And then, he asked for it directly.”

“Maybe he had to.”

“And maybe he needed it. Maybe he knew they were coming for him. Obviously, they found him and killed him on Coruscant. He never would have sent those messages.”

Lando shook his head. “Jarril’s dead. His motives don’t really matter. What does is that someone wanted you involved.”

“Do you think the Imperials in the Senate did this so that they could get rid of Leia?”

“And bomb their own? It doesn’t seem too likely, does it, Han?”

“All these sales of old Imperial equipment tie in too,” Han said.

Lando closed his eyes. “You ever hear of Almania?”

“Not until you mentioned it,” Han said.

“Me, either,” Lando said. “That’s odd, don’t you think?”

“Odd?”

“Someone worked hard to keep a place we never heard of out of the visible spectrum. When someone works hard to keep something hidden, it’s usually something we need to find out about.”

“Exactly,” Han said. “Maybe it should be our next stop.”

“Provided we both have ships left,” Lando said.

“We will,” Han said. “I can promise you that.”

Luke slipped between the creature’s teeth, pulling his legs inside just as it bit down. Its mouth was large and had a flat, ridged top. Even with the teeth clamped, there was still room inside.

Except near the tongue. It kept slamming Luke against the roof of the mouth, as if it were trying to lick him. Each time he slid toward the throat, the tongue slammed him against the roof again. He had the sense that this creature usually swallowed its food whole.

Everything inside was slimy. There was nothing to grab on to. So the next time the tongue slammed him against the roof, he dug his fingers into the soft palate.

The creature yelped and pushed at him with its tongue. Luke let go, the jaws opened, and he was sailing through the air. He hit the metal walls and slid to the ground, the wind knocked from him.

The creature stood over him, a hurt expression on its
gigantic face. It pawed at him, claws extended, and he couldn’t roll away. It pulled him onto his back and sniffed him again, as if it couldn’t believe something so small would cause it so much pain.

Luke held his hands up, and put them on the nose, trying to push it away. The creature snuffled at him, then licked him once as if tasting him. Luke’s entire body smelled like the interior of the creature’s mouth, a combination of raw meat, dirty teeth, and saliva. He couldn’t get away.

The creature backed up, contemplated him for a moment, then batted him so hard he slid across the wood floor and slammed into the wall on the other side. Splinters the size of knives stuck out of his arms and back. He hadn’t gotten his breath back from the last time, and this second hit made him feel just as bad. He was stunned, unable to move, and soaking wet.

But he had to move. This thing couldn’t beat him. It would be a horrible way for a Jedi Knight to die. He’d fought rancors and Tusken Raiders all by himself. He could survive anything.

Anything.

The creature came toward him again. Luke eased himself to his feet, and pulled one of the splinters out of his arm. When the creature raised its paw to him, Luke shoved the splinter into the pad.

The creature yelped again, and shook its paw. Hair fell around him like snow. The creature stood on three legs and bit the base of the fourth one.

Luke wasn’t going to wait to see what happened next.

He ran as fast as his ankle would allow him around the creature’s back and toward the pallet. There was nowhere to hide. The grates were too high to reach because of his ankle, and the pallet provided the only thing for him to lie beneath, something the creature would look at first.

Luke limped into the next room to find the emptiness there just as overwhelming. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once they did, he saw that the rooms went on, deeper and deeper. The creature must have come from that direction. There might be more of its kind farther on.

One was difficult enough. Several would be a nightmare.

The creature was whimpering in the far room. Luke understood how it felt. He took the momentary respite to pull the remaining splinters from his own flesh. He set them beside him like long knives, the only weapons he had against this creature.

Except his mind.

The creature didn’t seem intent on harming him. In fact, the most harm had occurred when Luke had attacked it. The creature seemed to be trying to figure out what he was.

If Luke could figure out a way to convince it that he wasn’t food, then he might stand a chance.

The question was how.

The creature had stopped whimpering. It was snuffling its way toward Luke. It must have gotten the splinter out of its pad. Luke lined his splinters around him. All they would do was buy him time, but time was what he needed.

He wasn’t going to die at the paws of this hairy beast.

He wouldn’t give Kueller the satisfaction.

K
ueller watched the skies through the observatory. He had modified this, the Great Dome of the Je’har, into a Command Central when he was fighting his conventional war against the Je’har. After he had killed their leaders, he systematically destroyed their followers, and watched it all on the screens around him. The screens were now showing him various readings from space. The screens on his right magnified the same darkness a hundredfold. The screens to his left showed a fleet of ships coming out of hyperdrive into Almanian space.

A dozen of his best employees were scattered throughout the room. Yanne stood beside him. “Milord, I think we should send our own people up there. Those are New Republic battleships. They could destroy Almania.”

“They won’t,” Kueller said.

“Still,” Yanne said. “I think we should be cautious.”

“And let them know we’ve seen them?”

“They’re too far away. They won’t know.”

Kueller sighed. His assistants were always worried about failure first, instead of expecting success. He had
learned that preparing for both success and failure served him best.

“Fine,” he said. “Send out three Star Destroyers, and the attendant support vehicles. And Yanne?”

“Yes, milord?”

“If they fail, you will have failed also.”

Yanne’s gray skin whitened, but his voice remained calm. “Yes, milord.”

He turned and softly gave the order to one of the guards. The guard nodded, clicked his heels together, and left the room.

The New Republic’s fleet was not yet visible in the sky overhead. It wouldn’t be, until it was debris floating through space. Even then, all he would see would be an occasional flare breaking through the atmosphere.

On the screens to his left, he watched a tiny ship break away from the pack. “Bravo, President,” he said. “Soon you’ll be able to talk with your wretched brother all you want.”

“Sir?” Yanne said.

Kueller ignored him. He was concentrating, not just on the visuals around him, but on his feelings. The dark side had its strengths. He knew that the fleet was uncertain about what it would find.

He smiled.

It would find nothing.

“Yanne.”

“Yes, milord?”

“Are my plans in place?”

“Of course, milord.”

“Then you can execute them. Now.”

Yanne hurried to comply with his order. Kueller rocked back on his heels, and patted the remote under his cape. If Yanne failed to follow orders, Kueller would do the deed himself. He had been telling the truth when
he spoke to President Leia Organa Solo. He preferred elegant, refined weapons.

She would learn just how elegant, and how refined, shortly.

No one had taken anything off the
Falcon
, although the wedged-open doors, and a scorch mark from Han’s personally designed security system near the support, suggested that someone had tried. The
Lady Luck
wasn’t as fortunate. Most of its interior was gone, including some of the easy-to-remove hardware.

To say that Lando was furious was, in Han’s opinion, a bit of an understatement.

Han remained on the
Lady Luck
, repairing the engine systems with all the pieces he could find. The cockpit was already functional, but had lost all its fancy gadgetry. Lando and Chewbacca were searching Skip 1 for the rest of the equipment, and Lando’s missing droids. Han insisted that if they didn’t find enough materials to rebuild the
Luck
, they should leave within the day. He felt a sense of urgency he didn’t quite understand.

Blue had offered to help, but Han had turned her down. She had proven to be the most loyal of his old friends, but that no longer meant much. Perhaps Lando had been right. Perhaps they all had resented him. But he didn’t like recasting all those memories. They had been friends once. That time had simply passed. There was no going back, much as he wanted to.

And he wasn’t even sure he wanted to anymore. The longing for the good old days that came during moments of quiet on Coruscant seemed to be longing for romanticized versions of his past, not his real past.

Han had just reassembled the hyperdrive when the hair on the back of his neck rose. He grabbed it with his left hand, and a shudder ran down his spine. The feeling
made him nervous. It was too close to the stuff Leia and Luke described about the Force. The stuff his children experienced but he never had.

Something had happened, was about to happen, could have happened. He crawled out of the maintenance tube and into the
Luck
’s stripped corridor.

Then a series of booms echoed throughout the Skip. The
Luck
rocked, and Han slid to the other side of the corridor. More explosions occurred, and still more. He lay still, his arms over his head, but nothing happened inside the
Luck
.

Nothing at all.

Just like the moment when the Senate Hall exploded. Only panic around him, and no injuries inside the casino.

But Leia had been injured.

Han pushed to his feet. “Chewie!” he shouted. “Lando?”

Of course, there was no reply. He had been alone in the
Luck
. He grabbed his blaster and let himself out the doors and walked—