Heir To The Empire (15 page)

“Nothing,” she said, a guilty look flicking across her face. “Sorry-talking out of turn.”

“Leia, if you know something-”

“I don’t know anything,” she said, in a tone that warned him to drop it. “It’s just a feeling I have. A sense that Fey’lya has his eye on more than just Ackbar’s job as supreme commander. But it’s just a feeling.”

Like the feeling she had that the Empire was up to something big? “Okay,” he said soothingly. “I understand. So. You all done here?”

“As done as I can be,” she said, the tiredness back in her voice. “The rebuilding’s going to take some time, but the organization for that will have to be handled from Coruscant.” She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. “Convoys of replacement equipment, consultants and maybe extra workers-you know the sort of thing.”

“Yeah,” Han said. “And I suppose you’re anxious to get right back and start the ball rolling.”

She opened her eyes and gave him a curious look. “You sound like you’re not.”

Han gave the outside displays a thoughtful scan. “Well, it’s what everyone’s going to expect you to do,” he pointed out. “So maybe we ought to do something else.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Find somewhere no one would think to look for you, I guess.”

“And then . . . ?” she asked, her voice ominous.

Unconsciously, Han braced himself. “And then hole up there for a while.”

“You know I can’t do that,” she said, her tone just about what he’d expected. “I have commitments back on Coruscant.”

“You’ve got commitments to yourself, too,” he countered. “Not to mention to the twins.”

She glared at him. “That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

She turned away from him, an unreadable expression on her face. “I can’t be out of touch, Han,” she said quietly. “I just can’t. There’s too much happening back there for me to bury myself away.”

Han gritted his teeth. They seemed to be running over this same territory a lot lately. “Well, if all you need right now is to keep in touch, how about if we go some place that has a diplomatic station? You’d at least be able to get official Coruscant news there.”

“And how do we make sure the local ambassador doesn’t give us away?” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m talking like this,” she muttered. “It’s like we’re back being the Rebellion again, not the legitimate government.”

“Who says the ambassador has to know?” Han asked. “We’ve got a diplomatic receiver on the Falcon-we can tap into the transmission on our own.”

“Only if we can get hold of the station’s encrypt scheme,” she reminded him. “And then plug it into our receiver. That may not be possible.”

“We can find a way,” Han insisted. “At least it would buy Ackbar some time to track down the leak.”

“True.” Leia considered, slowly shook her head. “I don’t know. The New Republic’s encrypt codes are nearly impossible to break.”

Han snorted. “I hate to disillusion you, sweetheart, but there are slicers running around loose who eat government encrypt codes for breakfast. All we have to do is find one of them.”

“And pay him enormous sums of money?” Leia said dryly.

“Something like that,” Han agreed, thinking hard. “On the other hand, even slicers occasionally owe other people favors.”

“Oh?” Leia threw him a sideways look. “I don’t suppose you’d know any of them.”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Han pursed his lips. “Trouble is, if the Imperials have done their homework, they probably know all about it and have someone watching him.”

“Meaning . . . ?”

“Meaning we’re going to have to find someone who’s got his own list of slicer contacts.” He reached over to the console and tapped the Falcon’s comm switch. “Antilles, this is Solo. You copy?”

“Right here, General,” Wedge’s voice came back promptly.

“We’re leaving Bpfassh, Wedge,” Han told him. “That’s not official yet-you’re in charge of telling the rest of the delegation about it once we’re off the ground.”

“I understand,” Wedge said. “You want me to assign you an escort, or would you rather slip out quietly? I’ve got a couple of people I’d trust all the way to the end of the galaxy.”

Han sent Leia a lopsided smile. Wedge understood, all right. “Thanks, but we wouldn’t want the rest of the delegation to feel unprotected.”

“Whatever you want. I can handle anything that needs doing at this end. See you back at Coruscant.”

“Right.” Han cut off the comm. “Eventually,” he added under his breath as he keyed for intercom. “Chewie? We ready to fly?”

The Wookiee growled an affirmative. “Okay. Make sure everything’s bolted down and then come on up. Better bring Threepio, too-we might have to talk to Bpfasshi Control on the way out.”

“Do I get to know where we’re going?” Leia asked as he started the prelaunch sequence.

“I already told you,” Han said. “We need to find someone we can trust who has his own list of illegals.”

A suspicious glint came into her eye. “You don’t mean . . . Lando?”

“Who else?” Han said innocently. “Upstanding citizen, former war hero, honest businessman. Of course he’ll have slicer contacts.”

Leia rolled her eyes skyward. “Why,” she murmured, “do I suddenly have a bad feeling about this?”

“Hang on, Artoo,” Luke called as the first gusts of atmospheric turbulence began to bounce the X-wing around. “We’re coming in. Scanners all working okay?”

There was an affirmative twitter from the rear, the translation appearing across his computer scope. “Good,” Luke said, and turned his attention back to the cloud-shrouded planet rushing up to meet them. It was odd, he thought, how it had only been on that first trip in to Dagobah that the sensors had so totally failed on approach.

Or perhaps not so odd. Perhaps that had been Yoda, deliberately suppressing his instruments so as to be able to guide him unsuspectingly to the proper landing site.

And now Yoda was gone . . .

Firmly, Luke put the thought out of his mind. Mourning the loss of a friend and teacher was both fitting and honorable, but to dwell unnecessarily on that loss was to give the past too much power over the present.

The X-wing dropped into the lower atmosphere, and within seconds was completely enveloped by thick white clouds. Luke watched the instruments, taking the approach slow and easy. The last time he’d come here, just before the Battle of Endor, he’d made the landing without incident; but just the same, he had no intention of pushing his luck. The landing sensors had Yoda’s old homestead pinpointed now. “Artoo?” he called. “Find me a good level spot to set down, will you?”

In response, a red rectangle appeared on the forward scope, a ways east of the house but within walking distance of it. “Thanks,” Luke told the droid, and keyed in the landing cycle. A moment later, with one last mad flurry of displaced tree branches, they were down.

Slipping off his helmet, Luke popped the canopy. The rich odors of the Dagobah swamp flooded in on him, a strange combination of sweet and decay that sent a hundred memories flashing through his mind. That slow twitch of Yoda’s ears-the strange but tasty stew he’d often made-the way that wispy hair of his had tickled Luke’s ears whenever he rode on Luke’s back during training. The training itself: the long hours, the physical and mental fatigue, the gradually increasing sense of and confidence in the Force, the cave and its dark side images-

The cave?

Abruptly, Luke stood up in the cockpit, hand going reflexively to his lightsaber as he peered through the haze. Surely he hadn’t brought his X-wing down by the cave.

He had. There, no more than fifty meters away, was the tree that grew from just above that evil place, its huge blackened shape jutting upward through the surrounding trees. Beneath and between its tangled roots, just visible through the mists and shorter vegetation, he could see the dark entrance to the cave itself.

“Wonderful,” he muttered. “Just wonderful.” From behind him came an interrogative set of beeps. “Never mind, Artoo,” he called over his shoulder, dropping his helmet back onto the seat. “It’s all right. Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll-”

The X-wing rocked, just a bit, and he looked back to find Artoo already out of his socket and working his way gingerly forward. “Or if you’d rather, you can come along,” he added wryly.

Artoo beeped again-not a cheerful beep, exactly, but one that definitely sounded relieved. The little droid hated being left alone. “Hang on,” Luke directed him. “I’ll get down and give you a hand.”

He jumped down. The ground felt a little squishy beneath his feet, but it was easily firm enough to support the X-wing’s weight. Satisfied, he reached out with the Force to lift Artoo from his perch and lower the droid to the ground beside him. “There you go,” he said.

From off in the distance came the long, trilling wail of one of Dagobah’s birds. Luke listened as it ran down the scale, eyes searching the swamp around him and wondering why exactly he’d come here. Back on Coruscant it had seemed important-even vital-that he do so. But now that he was actually standing here it all seemed hazy. Hazy, and more than a little silly.

Beside him, Artoo beeped questioningly. With an effort, Luke shook off the uncertainties. “I thought Yoda might have left something behind that we could use,” he told the droid, choosing the most easily verbalized of his reasons. “The house should be-” he glanced around to get his bearings “-that way. Let’s go.”

The distance wasn’t great, but the trip took longer than Luke had anticipated. Partly it was the general terrain and vegetation-he’d forgotten just how difficult it was to get from one place to another through the Dagobah swamps. But there was something else, too: a low-level but persistent pressure at the back of his mind that seemed to press inward, clouding his ability to think.

But at last they arrived . . . to find the house effectively gone.

For a long minute Luke just stood there, gazing at the mass of vegetation occupying the spot where the house had been, a freshly renewed sense of loss struggling against the embarrassing realization that he’d been a fool. Growing up in the deserts of Tatooine, where an abandoned structure could last for half a century or more, it had somehow never even occurred to him to consider what would happen to that same structure after five years in a swamp. Beside him, Artoo twittered a question. “I thought Yoda might have left some tapes or books behind,” Luke explained. “Something that would tell me more about the methods of Jedi training. Not much left, though, is there?”

In response, Artoo extended his little sensor plate. “Never mind,” Luke told him, starting forward. “As long as we’re here, I guess we might as well take a look.”

It took only a few minutes to cut a path through the bushes and vines with his lightsaber and to reach what was left of the house’s outer walls. For the most part they were rubble, reaching only to his waist at their highest, and covered with a crisscrossing of tiny vines. Inside was more vegetation, pushing up against, and in some places through, the old stone hearth. Half buried in the mud were Yoda’s old iron pots, covered with a strange-looking moss.

Behind him, Artoo gave a quiet whistle. “No, I don’t think we’re going to find anything useful,” Luke agreed, squatting down to pull one of the pots out of the ground. A small lizard darted out as he did so, and disappeared into the reedy grass. “Artoo, see if you can find anything electronic around here, will you? I never saw him use anything like that, but . . .” He shrugged.

The droid obediently raised his sensor plate again. Luke watched as it tracked back and forth . . . and suddenly stopped. “Find something?” Luke asked.

Artoo twittered excitedly, his dome swiveling to look back the way they’d come. “Back that way?” Luke frowned. He looked down at the debris around him. “Not here?”

Artoo beeped again and turned around, rolling with some difficulty across the uneven surface. Pausing, he swiveled his dome back toward Luke and made a series of sounds that could only have been a question. “Okay, I’m coming,” Luke sighed, forcing back the odd sense of dread that had suddenly seized him. “Lead the way.”

The sunlight filtering through the leafy canopy overhead had become noticeably dimmer by the time they came within sight of the X-wing. “Now where?” Luke asked Artoo. “I hope you’re not going to tell me that all you were picking up was our own ship.”

Artoo swiveled his dome back around, trilling a decidedly indignant denial. His sensor plate turned slightly-

To point directly at the cave.

Luke swallowed hard. “You’re sure?”

The droid trilled again. “You’re sure,” Luke said.

For a minute he just looked across through the mists at the cave, indecision swirling through his mind. There was no genuine need for him to go in there-of that much he was certain. Whatever it was Artoo had detected, it would not be anything Yoda had left behind. Not in there.

But then what was it? Leia had referred to a Bpfasshi Dark Jedi who’d come here. Could it be something of his?

Luke gritted his teeth. “Stay here, Artoo,” he instructed the droid as he started across to the cave. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Fear and anger, Yoda had often warned him, were the slaves of the dark side. Vaguely, Luke wondered which side curiosity served.

Up close, the tree straddling the cave looked as evil as he remembered it: twisted, dark, and vaguely brooding, as if it was itself alive with the dark side of the Force. Perhaps it was. Luke couldn’t tell for sure, not with the overwhelming emanations of the cave flooding his senses. It was, clearly, the source of the low-level pressure he’d felt ever since his arrival on Dagobah, and for a moment he wondered why the effect had never been this strong before.

Perhaps because Yoda had always been here before, his presence shielding Luke from the true strength of the cave’s power. But now Yoda was gone . . . and Luke was facing the cave alone.

He took a deep breath. I am a Jedi, he reminded himself firmly. Slipping his comlink from his belt, he thumbed it on. “Artoo? You copy?”

The comlink trilled back. “Okay. I’m starting in. Give me a signal when I get close to whatever it is you’re picking up.”