Trilogy (18 page)

“I can't see,” Luke muttered, turning around and forcing Kenobi to step back out of range of the dangerously wavering saber. “How can I fight?”

“With the force,” old Ben explained. “You didn't really ‘see' the seeker when it went for your legs the last time, and yet you parried its beam. Try to let that sensation flow within you again.”

“I
can't
do it,” Luke moaned. “I'll get hit again.”

“Not if you let yourself trust
you
,” Kenobi insisted, none too convincingly for Luke. “This is the only way to be certain you're relying wholly on the force.”

Noticing that the skeptical Corellian had turned to watch, Kenobi hesitated momentarily. It did Luke no good to have the self-assured pilot laugh every time a mistake was made. But coddling the boy would do him no good either, and there was no time for it anyway. Throw him in and hope he floats, Ben instructed himself firmly.

Bending over the chrome globe, he touched a control at its side. Then he tossed it straight up. It arched toward Luke. Braking in midfall, the ball plummeted stonelike toward the deck. Luke swung the saber at it. While it was a commendable try, it wasn't nearly fast enough. Once again the little antenna glowed. This time the crimson needle hit Luke square on the seat of his pants. Though it wasn't an incapacitating blow, it felt like one; and Luke let out a yelp of pain as he spun, trying to strike his invisible tormentor.

“Relax!” old Ben urged him. “Be free. You're trying to use your eyes and ears. Stop predicting and use the rest of your mind.”

Suddenly the youth stopped, wavering slightly. The seeker was still behind him. Changing direction again, it made another dive and fired.

Simultaneously the lightsaber jerked around, as accurate as it was awkward in its motion, to deflect the bolt. This time the ball didn't fall motionless to the deck. Instead it backed up three meters and remained there, hovering.

Aware that the drone of the seeker remote no longer assaulted his ears, a cautious Luke peeked out from under
the helmet. Sweat and exhaustion competed for space on his face.

“Did I—?”

“I told you you could,” Kenobi informed him with pleasure. “Once you start to trust your inner self there'll be no stopping you. I told you there was much of your father in you.”

“I'd call it luck,” snorted Solo as he concluded his examination of the readouts.

“In my experience there is no such thing as luck, my young friend—only highly favorable adjustments of multiple factors to incline events in one's favor.”

“Call it what you like,” the Corellian sniffed indifferently, “but good against a mechanical remote is one thing. Good against a living menace is another.”

As he was speaking a small telltale light on the far side of the hold had begun flashing. Chewbacca noticed it and called out to him.

Solo glanced at the board, then informed his passengers, “We're coming up on Alderaan. We'll be slowing down shortly and going back under lightspeed. Come on, Chewie.”

Rising from the game table, the Wookiee followed his partner toward the cockpit. Luke watched them depart, but his mind wasn't on their imminent arrival at Alderaan. It was burning with something else, something that seemed to grow and mature at the back of his brain as he dwelt on it.

“You know,” he murmured, “I did feel something. I could almost ‘see' the outlines of the remote.” He gestured at the hovering device behind him.

Kenobi's voice when he replied was solemn. “Luke, you've taken the first step into a larger universe.”

Dozens of humming, buzzing instruments lent the freighter's cockpit the air of a busy hive. Solo and Chewbacca had their attention locked on the most vital of those instruments.

“Steady … stand by, Chewie.” Solo adjusted several manual compensators. “Ready to go sublight … ready … cut us in, Chewie.”

The Wookiee turned something on the console before him. At the same time Solo pulled back on a comparatively large lever. Abruptly the long streaks of Doppler-distorted starlight slowed to hyphen shapes, then finally to familiar bolts of fire. A gauge on the console registered zero.

Gigantic chunks of glowing stone appeared out of the nothingness, barely shunted aside by the ship's deflectors. The strain caused the
Millennium Falcon
to begin shuddering violently.

“What the—?” a thoroughly startled Solo muttered. Next to him, Chewbacca offered no comment of his own as he flipped off several controls and activated others. Only the fact that the cautious Solo always emerged from supralight travel with his deflectors up—just in case any of many unfriendly folks might be waiting for him—had saved the freighter from instant destruction.

Luke fought to keep his balance as he made his way into the cockpit. “What's going on?”

“We're back in normal space,” Solo informed him, “but we've come out in the middle of the worst asteriod storm I've ever seen. It's not on any of our charts.” He peered hard at several indicators. “According to the galactic atlas, our position is correct. Only one thing is missing: Alderaan.”

“Missing? But—that's crazy!”

“I won't argue with you,” the Corellian replied grimly, “but look for yourself.” He gestured out the port. “I've triple-checked the coordinates, and there's nothing wrong with the nav 'puter. We ought to be standing out one planetary diameter from the surface. The planet's glow should be filling the cockpit, but—there's nothing out there. Nothing but debris.” He paused. “Judging from the level of wild energy outside and the amount of solid waste, I'd guess that Alderaan's been … blown away. Totally.”

“Destroyed,” Luke whispered, overwhelmed at the specter raised by such an unimaginable disaster. “But—how?”

“The Empire,” a voice declared firmly. Ben Kenobi had come in behind Luke, and his attention was held by the emptiness ahead as well as the import behind it.

“No.” Solo was shaking his head slowly. In his own way even he was stunned by the enormity of what the old man was suggesting. That a human agency had been responsible for the annihilation of an entire population, of a planet itself …

“No … the entire Imperial fleet couldn't have done this. It would take a thousand ships massing a lot more firepower than has ever existed.”

“I wonder if we should get out of here,” Luke was murmuring, trying to see around the rims of the port. “If by some chance it was the Empire …”

“I don't know what's happened here,” an angry Solo cursed, “but I'll tell you one thing. The Empire isn't—”

Muffled alarms began humming loudly as a synchronous light flashed on the control console. Solo bent to the appropriate instrumentation.

“Another ship,” he announced. “Can't judge the type yet.”

“A survivor, maybe—someone who might know what happened,” Luke ventured hopefully.

Ben Kenobi's next words shattered more than that hope. “That's an Imperial fighter.”

Chewbacca suddenly gave an angry bark. A huge flower of destruction blossomed outside the port, battering the freighter violently. A tiny, double-winged ball raced past the cockpit port.

“It followed us!” Luke shouted.

“From Tatooine? It couldn't have,” objected a disbelieving Solo. “Not in hyperspace.”

Kenobi was studying the configuration the tracking screen displayed. “You're quite right, Han. It's the short-range TIE fighter.”

“But where did it come from?” the Corellian wanted to know. “There are no Imperial bases near here. It couldn't have been a TIE job.”

“You saw it pass.”

“I know. It looked like a TIE fighter—but what about a base?”

“It's leaving in a big hurry,” Luke noted, studying the tracker. “No matter where it's going, if it identifies us we're in big trouble.”

“Not if I can help it,” Solo declared. “Chewie, jam its transmission. Lay in a pursuit course.”

“It would be best to let it go,” Kenobi ventured thoughtfully. “It's already too far out of range.”

“Not for long.”

Several minutes followed, during which the cockpit was filled with a tense silence. All eyes were on the tracking screen and viewport.

At first the Imperial fighter tried a complex evasive course, to no avail. The surprisingly maneuverable freighter hung tight on its tail, continuing to make up the distance between them. Seeing that he couldn't shake his pursuers, the fighter pilot had obviously opened up his tiny engine all the way.

Ahead, one of the multitude of stars was becoming steadily brighter. Luke frowned. They were moving fast, but not nearly fast enough for any heavenly object to brighten so rapidly. Something here didn't make sense.

“Impossible for a fighter that small to be this deep in space on its own,” Solo observed.

“It must have gotten lost, been part of a convoy or something,” Luke hypothesized.

Solo's comment was gleeful. “Well, he won't be around long enough to tell anyone about us. We'll be on top of him in a minute or two.”

The star ahead continued to brighten, its glow evidently coming from within. It assumed a circular outline.

“He's heading for that small moon,” Luke murmured.

“The Empire must have an outpost there,” Solo admitted. “Although, according to the atlas, Alderaan had no moons.” He shrugged it off. “Galactic topography was never one of my best subjects. I'm only interested in worlds and moons with customers on them. But I think I can get him before he gets there; he's almost in range.”

They drew steadily nearer. Gradually craters and mountains on the moon became visible. Yet there was something extremely odd about them. The craters were far too regular in outline, the mountains far too vertical, canyons and valleys impossibly straight and regularized. Nothing as capricious as volcanic action had formed those features.

“That's no moon,” Kenobi breathed softly. “That's a space station.”

“But it's too big to be a space station,” Solo objected. “The size of it! It can't be artificial—it can't!”

“I have a very strange feeling about this,” was Luke's comment.

Abruptly the usually calm Kenobi was shouting. “Turn the ship around! Let's get out of here!”

“Yes, I think you're right, old man. Full reverse, Chewie.”

The Wookiee started adjusting controls, and the freighter seemed to slow, arcing around in a broad curve. The tiny fighter leaped instantly toward the monstrous station until it was swallowed up by its overpowering bulk.

Chewbacca chattered something at Solo as the ship shook and strained against unseen forces.

“Lock in auxiliary power!” Solo ordered.

Gauges began to whine in protest, and by ones and twos every instrument on the control console sequentially went berserk. Try as he might, Solo couldn't keep the surface of the gargantuan station from looming steadily larger, larger—until it became the heavens.

Luke stared wildly at secondary installations as big as mountains, dish antennae larger than all of Mos Eisley. “Why are we still moving toward it?”

“Too late,” Kenobi whispered softly. A glance at Solo confirmed his concern.

“We're caught in a tractor beam—strongest one I ever saw. It's dragging us in,” the pilot muttered.

“You mean, there's nothing you can do?” Luke asked, feeling unbelievably helpless.

Solo studied the overloaded sensor readouts and shook
his head. “Not against this kind of power. I'm on full power myself, kid, and it's not shifting out of course a fraction of a degree. It's no use. I'm going to have to shut down or we'll melt our engines. But they're not going to suck me up like so much dust without a fight!”

He started to vacate the pilot's chair, but was restrained by an aged yet powerful hand on his shoulder. An expression of concern was on the old man's face—and yet, a suggestion of something somewhat less funereal.

“If it's a fight you cannot win—well, my boy, there are always alternatives to fighting …”

The true size of the battle station became apparent as the freighter was pulled closer and closer. Running around the station's equator was an artificial cluster of metal mountains, docking ports stretching beckoning fingers nearly two kilometers above the surface.

Now only a miniscule speck against the gray bulk of the station, the
Millennium Falcon
was sucked toward one of those steel pseudopods and finally swallowed by it. A lake of metal closed off the entryway, and the freighter vanished as if it had never existed.

V
ader stared at the motley array of stars displayed on the conference-room map while Tarkin and Admiral Motti conferred nearby. Interestingly, the first use of the most powerful destructive machine ever constructed had seemingly had no influence at all on that map, which in itself represented only a tiny fraction of this section of one modest-sized galaxy.

It would take a microbreakdown of a portion of this map to reveal a slight reduction in spatial mass, caused by the disappearance of Alderaan. Alderaan, with its
many cities, farms, factories, and towns—and traitors, Vader reminded himself.

Despite his advances and intricate technological methods of annihilation, the actions of mankind remained unnoticeable to an uncaring, unimaginably vast universe. If Vader's grandest plans ever came to pass, all that would change.

He was well aware that despite all their intelligence and drive, the vastness and wonder were lost on the two men who continued to chatter monkeylike behind him. Tarkin and Motti were talented and ambitious, but they saw things only on the scale of human pettiness. It was a pity, Vader thought, that they did not possess the scope to match their abilities.

Still, neither man was a Dark Lord. As such, little more could be expected of them. These two were useful now, and dangerous, but someday they, like Alderaan, would have to be swept aside. For now he could not afford to ignore them. And while he would have preferred the company of equals, he had to admit reluctantly that at this point, he
had
no equals.