Star Wars - Tatooine Ghost Read online

  120 DEGREES.

  Han decelerated hard and saw nothing but rock ahead. Trusting to the vidmap, he swung up on the wall and rode the repulsors into what looked like the side of the canyon-then a narrow slot opened ahead, and the rest was easy. With the shadows growing ever darker and longer, and the storm looming ever nearer, he followed the vidmap through Jag Crag Gorge. By the time he reached the other end, it had grown so dark and the dust squalls so frequent that he could not see the smoke rising at the outlet. In fact, Han would not have noticed it at all had his swoop not begun to chug and choke so badly that he had to stop to clean the silt from the clogged intakes.

  But when he climbed off the swoop and raised his face mask to take a drink of water, the smell hit him like a Wookiee's fist, hard and familiar and acrid, the odor of burning power cells and efflux-blasted ground.

  The smell of a crash.

  Han followed his nose past a giant pinnacle of specklestone and out into a murky basin. The billowing black curtain of the approaching sandstorm was sweeping in across a vast expanse of level ground, but it was the half-circle scorch mark that caught his eye. Less than fifty meters away, it encompassed the twisted exhaust nacelle of a still-smoking Podracer engine. If there was anything else left of the swoop Kitster had been riding, Han could not see it. Feeling at once sorry for Tamora and her children and angry about what he felt sure would turn out to be the loss of Leia's painting, Han fetched a glow rod from his utility box and approached the crash site.

  A few more pieces of Podracer engine and a twisted control vane lay scattered across the basin floor. But the rest of the wreckage was missing, and there was a deep tread mark on the straight side of the scorch mark. A few meters beyond that was another tread mark, running parallel to the first.

  A Jawa sandcrawler.

  Han spent a few more minutes searching the area for signs of Banai's blood or the moss-painting. When he found nothing, he activated his comlink and opened a channel to Leia. "It's me."

  "Where are you?" Leia demanded. "It's after dark."

  Han glanced at the approaching storm. "Yeah, it's beginning to look that way."

  In the background, Chewbacca growled a question about Kitster and the moss-painting.

  "Not exactly. I think they're both on a sandcrawler."

  "A sandcrawler?" Tamora echoed in the background. "Yeah." Han glanced down at the scorch mark. "My guess is he hitched a ride. I don't think he's hurt-"

  "Hurt?" Tamora's voice grew louder. "Why would he be hurt?"

  "Well, uh, he sort of ran into it."

  A muffled thump sounded over the comlink.

  "Tamora, there wasn't any blood-"

  "Don't bother-she's out." This from Leia. "What about

  "Same as Kit," he said. "No sign of moss. I think it survived the impact."

  "Sounds convenient," Leia said. "Maybe he faked it?"

  "That'd be the smart thing." Han ran his glow rod over the surrounding ground, but saw no footprints leading away from the crash site. "But I don't think so. He might have had time to arrange something with Wald, but I don't think he could have known there'd be a sandcrawler passing by out here. If he was going to fake a crash, he would have done it back in the canyon."

  A sigh of exasperation came over the comlink. "So what now?"

  "I guess I catch the sandcrawler." Han ran the beam of his glow rod down the tread trail and saw that it was traveling parallel to the approaching storm front. "Look, I attracted some attention on the way through the canyon. It probably wouldn't be a good idea for me to ride back to Mos Espa on this thing, and the sand-crawler seems to be heading more or less toward Anchorhead. Why don't we meet there?"

  "When?" Leia asked.

  Han glanced at the approaching curtain of sand. "Tomorrow morning," he said. "I doubt I'll make it before then."

  Though it should have taken no more than ten minutes to overtake the slow-moving sandcrawler, four hours later Han was still struggling to catch sight of it. As the storm drew closer, the squalls-both sand and dust-grew constant, and the big swoop was as temperamental as it was fast. He could usually travel through a dust squall for three or four minutes before alarms started screeching and he had to stop to unclog the intakes. But sand stopped him after only a minute, and, as the storm drew closer, there was starting to be a lot more sand than dust. For every minute flying along the sandcrawler tracks, Han was spending three servicing the engine. He knew because he had timed it.

  To make matters worse, the swoop had no lights, and the storm had turned the evening into one of those blacker-than-a-black-hole nights found only on stormy planets. He had to travel with the glow rod fixed on the vidmap, trusting to the heading arrow to keep on the same bearing as the sandcrawler. Whenever he stopped to clean the intakes, the first and last thing he did was find the sandcrawler's tracks and make sure the Jawas were still traveling in the same direction. So far, he had suffered only one close call, when he had drifted a hundred meters off course and been forced to spend another hour meandering back and forth across the basin floor with his glow rod trained on the ground.

  It irked him to think that Banai was probably riding along in the relative comfort of a sandcrawler. As salvagers and traders, the little bright-eyed Jawas were all business, but unless you were a droid with salable parts, they were rarely hostile.

  Han pulled the last of the sand out of the intakes, checked his bearing, and roared off through the darkness. The subtle shudder he had been noticing in the big engine was no longer subtle, no doubt because the sand was pitting the turbine blades and throwing the drive motor out of balance. There wasn't much he could do about it-at least not out here, in the face of an approaching sandstorm. Racing swoops, especially this racing swoop, were hardly meant for this kind of travel.

  But Han had to catch that sandcrawler before the Imperials- and not only because he wanted Leia to have her painting. Politics on the Provisional Council were as cutthroat as an Ord Mantell sabacc game. If it became known that Leia had allowed a Shadow-cast code key to fall into Imperial hands, there would be no shortage of Bothans and Kuatis claiming she was either incompetent or a traitor. Other councilors had been forced to resign in disgrace for less cause. And while Han was all too happy to have nothing more to do with the New Republic government, being forced out would devastate Leia-and that was not something Han would allow.

  Besides, there were the spies to think of. They were just little guys trying to do their part, and they really didn't deserve to be tortured and executed. Half of the Provisional Council, sure, but not the spies.

  A dozen small teardrops appeared in the storm ahead, hazy, white, and so faint Han could barely make out the peculiarly steady glow of thermal exhaust vents. The lights were a good three or four meters off the ground, high enough that they almost looked like a squadron of low-flying fighters, and they were growing rapidly larger as he came up behind them.

  A muffled thumping arose in the compressor area beneath the seat. Han shone the glow rod over the instrument panel, but reading status displays in this miasma was out of the question. He continued to accelerate, and the sandcrawler's anterior lights grew visible, creating a yellow-and-white halo that silhouetted the huge vessel's blocky shape against the storm ahead.

  Han stayed directly behind the crawler as the dark form swelled ø mammoth proportions. An alarm came on and the swoop began to lose power, but he continued to come up on the sandcrawler like an X-wing on an air balloon. He swung out to the leeward side- and a cacophony of alarms erupted inside his helmet.

  The swoop started to sink, and Han cut thrust and deployed the emergency braking chute. The swoop decelerated hard, hurling him against his safety restraints so ferociously he thought he might end up with a broken pelvis. Then the swoop slammed down and bounced along the smooth desert floor, rocking from side to side against the safety skids, the emergency tail-drag keeping the nose up to prevent tumbling... and still Han almost caught the sandcrawler.

  Almost.
/>   He came to a rest close enough that the sandcrawler's stern was obscured by the dust rising behind its rear treads.

  By the time Han realized he was still breathing-that the terrible pain in his body was only bruising-he was no longer in the dust cloud. He was back in the sandstorm, with the swoop rocking up on its leeward skids as the ferocious wind threatened to roll it. Han chinned his comlink and opened an emergency channel. The glow from the sandcrawler's exhaust vents was already starting to shrink.

  "Hey, you in the sandcrawler!"

  The speakers in Han's helmet remained dead and silent.

  "You Jawas, stop! You've got salvage here!"

  When the sandcrawler continued on its way, Han knew his helmet comlink was not broadcasting. He climbed out of the seat.

  A storm gust sent him tumbling across the basin floor. By the time he stopped himself and got reoriented, the sandcrawler was fifty meters gone. Han opened his helmet face mask. Seventy meters. He ripped opened a utility pocket and pulled out his personal comlink. Eighty meters.

  "Jawa sandcrawler! Wait. Stop."

  Only static in response. Ninety meters.

  Han rechecked the comlink and found it set properly on the emergency channel. How could they not be monitoring it? Jawas always monitored the emergency channels. That was how they knew where to find crashes.

  More than a hundred meters now. The glow of the exhaust vents was growing hazy. Han tried the emergency channel again. This time the static spiked, and his heart jumped into his throat- until he noticed a white flash sheeting across the sky. Sand lightning.

  The storm static was smothering the comm channels. With the comm equipment aboard the Falcon, maybe he could blast through. But not with the swoop's comm system-and certainly not with a personal comlink.

  Han activated the channel search and staggered to his swoop through the buffeting wind, one eye fixed on the comlink signal light. It did not illuminate.

  The sandcrawler had to be two hundred meters distant now, a line of exhaust vents fading into the stormy night. Han retrieved his helmet and crouched down on the sheltered side of the swoop, then opened a familiar channel.

  "Leia? Can you hear me?" A crackle of static. "Are you there?"

  Chapter 10

  A storm gust rocked the landspeeder up on edge, scouring the floater pads with sand and pushing it sideways across the desert floor. Leia leaned toward the high side, but the automatic equalizers activated, and the vehicle was level even before she realized what she was doing. Chewbacca grunted and brought them back to their original heading. If not for the heading arrow on the vidmap, it would have been impossible to tell the nose had drifted. The storm had closed in again, and two meters beyond the viewport the only thing visible was a yellow sand cloud roaring across the flat-as-a-table Great Chott salt flat. Even the twin suns made their presence felt only in a soft ambient glow that came from every direction at once.

  Leia activated her comlink, tried to raise Han, and heard only white noise. Again. She had been trying to contact him since the night before, to tell him that they would be a little late to the rendezvous in Anchorhead. There were too many TIEs around to risk retrieving the Falcon from the smuggler's cave, so they would be coming via landspeeder. So far, she had been unable to reach him. She was starting to get worried. Very worried.

  "I'm quite certain it's only the storm, Princess Leia," C-3PO said. "The static discharge has been playing havoc with my circuits all morning."

  "But I've been trying to reach Han since last night."

  "Oh my," C-3PO replied. "I was unaware of that. It might still be the storm."

  Chewbacca growled a suggestion.

  "Good idea," Leia said.

  She tried to open a channel to Tamora, who had remained behind with her children in Mos Espa. The only reply was more white noise.

  "You see?" C-3PO said cheerfully. "It is the storm."

  Only the impossibility of twisting around in the tight confines to reach the seat behind her kept Leia from switching the droid off. "We weren't in the storm last night."

  "Of course not," C-3PO said, missing the point. "We were in Mos Espa."

  "And we couldn't raise Han."

  C-3PO fell silent for a moment, then said, "Oh dear. Do you think Captain Solo could have been caught in the storm?"

  Chewbacca growled darkly-not saying anything, just growling. They continued through the storm at a crawl, navigating by vidmap alone, eyes flicking between the instruments and the yellow blur outside, Leia trying to raise Han on the comlink every ten minutes. She timed the intervals carefully, not because she needed to conserve power, but because trying any more frequently would have meant she really believed Han was in trouble, and she didn't believe that. She refused to believe that. However Han Solo went, it would not be in a sandstorm. It would take more than that - a lot more.

  |

  Finally, a trio of small vaporator symbols appeared at the top of the vidmap, two in one corner and one in the other. They were still a long way from Anchorhead, but at least they were starting to pass the outlying moisture farms.

  Pass might have been an overstatement. The storm gusts started to come more frequently and more powerfully, and visibility frequently fell to nothing. The landspeeder rocked and bucked, and there were times when the strain of keeping it level made the equalizers scream like an incoming TIE. An hour later, the same three vaporator symbols remained on the vidmap, still ahead of their position and accompanied by only one additional symbol. Leia felt fairly certain she could have walked faster-save that the instant she stepped outside, the storm would have swept her into the most unnamed of Tatooine's unnamed wastes.

  Leia thought of Han out there struggling through the storm on an overpowered swoop. Immediately, she tried to replace the image with another: Han sitting in an Anchorhead tapcaf, drumming a single finger on the tabletop while he waited for her to arrive. It was not a picture she could hold. Before she knew it, she was seeing the swoop lying on its side, half buried in a dune, the pilot's cowling packed with sand.

  But this picture Leia was not imagining. She was actually seeing it, there inside the landspeeder, hanging in front of her with the same apparent reality as Vader's mask in her dream aboard the Falcon. It looked like a hologram, but even more solid, more tangible. She reached out to touch it, expecting it to dispel as soon as she did. Instead, her hand sank into the image and vanished from sight.

  Leia would not let herself believe this was a vision. It was just another waking dream, or a hallucination caused by worry and fatigue. Anything but a vision. Anything but the future.

  The image melted back into Leia's mind where it belonged. She quickly chased it away completely by trying to raise Han on the comlink-and never mind that it had only been four minutes since her last attempt.

  The reply was the same as always. White noise.

  Leia sat, shaken, trying to remember what her brother had said Yoda told him about the future, but recalling instead only what Luke had told her last night, that the Force was with her, that her fear and anger would make her what she despised.

  But not this way. Please, not by taking Han.

  The storm lifted the landspeeder on edge and held it there. The equalizers began to wail again, the pitch rising toward the inaudible as they strained against the power of the wind. Chewbacca threw himself toward the high side, leaning across the center console to smash Leia against the compartment wall.

  "We're going to roll!" C-3PO cried. "We'll be smashed to-"

  "Threepio!" Leia gasped.

  "Yes, Princess?"

  "Lean!"

  A dull clunk sounded against the compartment wall behind her, and the rising wail of the equalizers finally stabilized and began to drop. Chewbacca eased their nose ever so gently into the wind, and the landspeeder slammed down so hard the floor vibrated beneath Leia's feet as the floater pad struck ground. The Wookiee groaned in relief. He shunted extra power to the rear repulsors to keep the nose down, then continued
forward into the teeth of the storm.

  The vidmap error alarm began to beep, and Leia looked down to see they had been blown considerably off course. Now there were only two moisture farms on the display, one in the upper left corner, and one at the top of the screen. At the bottom- which meant directly behind them-was a jagged line of mountains labeled THE NEEDLES. The destination arrow was pointed toward the upper right corner, flashing red to indicate they had drifted. Chewbacca reached down, used the back of a furry finger to thump the alarm override, and continued toward the nearest moisture farm.

  It was the smart thing to do. Even if the storm didn't send them tumbling across the salt flat to smash into The Needles, it would take another day to reach Anchorhead at the rate they were traveling. They might as well sit it out in safety and continue the journey when the weather cleared.