Star Wars - Tatooine Ghost Read online

  Banai's face was replaced by that of Anakin's mother, this time in profile as she told the pair to have a seat at the table-she just happened to have a fresh pallie tart in the oven. Once they had gone, she spoke into the journal again.

  They are so proud of you, Annie-and so am I. You have given them the courage to dream of things they could not imagine. And honestly, I don't know what I will do when they stop coming around. I see your reflection every time they smile.

  Perhaps that's why I bake so many pies.

  Leia asked the journal to mark the current entry, then lowered it and stared out into the howling sands. She had finished Silya's flatbread and hubba tea more than two hours ago, and still the storm was in full blow. She clicked her comlink for the ten thou-sandth time and, when she heard nothing but white noise in reply, refused to despair. Until the storm ended, she could do nothing but assume the best and carry on.

  She had learned that from her grandmother

  Chapter 12

  Even with a landspeeder and a swoop tied down in the rear cargo compartment and six chairs and a suite of emergency search sensors magnoclamped to the floor in the forward compartment, the Darklighters' market skiff was large enough to accommodate the search party in relative comfort. It was also heavy enough to avoid being tossed around by stray gusts, which meant that the minute the winds dropped beneath a hundred kilometers per hour, Jula had them loaded and under way.

  Jula and Silya were in the driver's cabin, pretending to be exactly what they were: a pair of moisture farmers out searching for storm survivors. Leia and everyone else sat in the forward cargo area-which was refrigerated to retard produce spoilage-shivering and watching passive search sensors. After two frigid hours of breathing musky hubba gourd scent and looking at nothing but empty desert on her optical scanner, Leia was both overwrought and mind-numbingly bored. She recalled feeling like this on some of the military assaults in which she had participated during the Rebellion. There was something about a long ride into combat that brought out the silence in soldiers, turning even the most gregarious extrovert somber and reflective.

  But they were not going into battle, and the question on everyone's mind had less to do with how they would react to the roar and the fury than with what they would find when they reached the primary search zone-a large fan of desert that Jula had calculated would be the most likely place to find Han. The Squibs had developed an insightful list of places where Han might have taken shelter during the storm and plotted a thorough grid pattern for doing a sensor sweep of the basin itself. But the truth was, they were not sure they would find anything. The search zone was based on everyone's best guess as to where Han had been when he commed to report Kitster's accident with the sandcrawler. For all they really knew, he could have been on the outskirts of Mos Eisley.

  With the storm moving away, comm traffic was starting to return to normal. Still, Leia resisted the urge to try raising Han on her comlink. Several Imperial spy craft were already flying holding patterns high above the desert, no doubt monitoring all channels and analyzing every signal for clues as to the location of Killik Twilight's thief. Han and Leia both used military-grade scramblers on their comlinks, so a transmission coming from a local market skiff was sure to bring a company of stormtroopers to investigate.

  Instead, Leia tried again to picture Han waiting in Anchorhead, sipping a Gizer ale and drumming his fingers on the table. Again, the image simply vanished. This time, the picture in her mind didn't even fade to a half-buried swoop. She simply heard a muffled whine, so distinct and tangible that she scowled and looked at the ceiling.

  Chewbacca garuumphed a question. "Don't you hear them?" Leia asked. "Hear what?" Sligh demanded, instantly suspicious.

  Leia cocked her head. There was definitely a whine. "TIEs." The Squibs looked from each other to Chewbacca. The Wookiee spread his furry hands and shrugged, then Jula's voice came over the intercom.

  "Stay off the sensors back there. We've got-" A deafening shriek reverberated through the market skiff roof a TIE flying by to take a look. There was also the rumble of something larger, muffled and in the distance ahead.

  Leia glanced at the ceiling. "You heard that, right?" The Squibs' fur was standing on end, and Chewbacca's nose was twitching in alarm.

  "I certainly did," C-3PO said.

  The market skiff began to decelerate, and Silya said, "We'd better go to Operation Bodybag, dears. It looks like an assault shuttle just dropped off a scouting patrol."

  Chewbacca released a tarp that had been furled against the ceiling, and a matte painting of a dark wall dropped down to conceal their sensor equipment. The Squibs dragged a bodybag over near the door and piled in together. Leia climbed into her own, while Chewbacca had to use two, pulling one up over his legs and another down over his shoulders. They all took their weapons, but were careful to conceal them under their hips.

  C-3PO was the last to take his position, deactivating the compartment's interior lights and plunging it into total darkness. He shut himself down and clunked up against the access door. A few minutes later, the market skiff came to a stop. Over the intercom - now muffled by the matte painting-Leia heard a stormtrooper speaking to Jula.

  "Anchorhead Volunteers?"

  That was the magnetic sign clamped to the side of the skiff.

  "Search and rescue," Jula explained. The howl of the wind-and the patter of sand grains against plastoid armor-could be heard over his voice in the background. "You have noticed the storm, right?"

  "Of course," the stormtrooper said. "State your business."

  "Just did," Jula said, sounding sincerely angry. "Look at the side of the wagon. Search and rescue. We're looking for survivors."

  "You won't find any here," the stormtrooper said.

  "What about that big swoop?" Jula demanded. "Someone must've driven that thing out here."

  "The swoop is not your concern," the stormtrooper said. "How many survivors have you found?"

  "Same as usual," Jula answered nonchalantly. "None."

  "None?"

  "We do it for the salvage," Silya said, her voice sweet and brittle. "Rescue's just a euphemism."

  "A what?" the stormtrooper demanded. "Never mind. Open your skiff for inspection."

  The intercom went silent. Leia cursed under her breath, then pushed her hand through the zipper and popped one of the odor capsules moisture farmers used to empty profogg warrens when the pesky creatures started to burrow near their hydroponics chambers. The reek didn't smell all that much like a human corpse, but it was awful enough to discourage a close inspection of the compartment. She closed the bodybag again and held her breath. She wished she could hold it forever.

  The compartment door hissed open, and C-3PO fell into the stormtrooper. The man cursed through his voice filter, and the droid thunked down across the doorway-as planned. Leia's bodybag immediately began to warm as the hot desert air rolled into the compartment.

  "Sorry," Jula said. "Load must have shifted. We're still getting some pretty good gusts."

  "That smell." No helmet-mounted air scrubber was powerful enough to completely eliminate the stench in the compartment and the Imperial sounded like he was making a sour face. "What is it?"

  "What do you think?" Jula countered. "We found a few folks... They were pretty far gone."

  "I thought you were looking for salvage." "We are-and we find a lot of bodies," Silya said. "Do you expect us to just leave them where they dropped?"

  "Besides," Jula added. "Sometimes there's a reward." The stormtrooper was silent for a moment. Leia had to take a breath and was grateful for the antigagging tonic Silya had spooned into their mouths before departing the moisture farm. It did not make the smell any less vile, but at least she was not fighting her own body to remain quiet.

  "Any humans?" the stormtrooper asked.

  "A few," Jula said. "If you're looking for someone in particular, feel free to climb in-"

  "That won't be necessary," the stormtrooper said quickly
. "We're looking for a man named Kitster Banai. Here's a holo-"

  "Don't need it," Jula said. "I know Kitster. What makes you think you'll find him out here? He's not the type to-"

  "I'll ask the questions," the stormtrooper said.

  "Sure, if that's the way you want it." Jula launched into his next question without pause. "What about the fella who was flying that rocket swoop over there?"

  Leia's pulse started to pound so ferociously she nearly missed the start of Jula's next question.

  "... take him off your hands? A body starts to stink awfully fast in this heat."

  Body! Leia had to remind herself not to sit up. If the Imperials still looking for Banai and there was a body, it could only... she could not even bring herself to think it. But if it was, she was not leaving here without it. She would not leave her dead husband in the hands of a squad of-

  "There isn't a body," the stormtrooper said. "Did you find any of these corpses around here?"

  "Not close enough to be your swoop pilot," Jula said.

  Leia started to breathe again. There was still hope. Han was on foot in the Tatooine desert with a wing of TIEs and company of stormtroopers looking for him, but those weren't bad odds. Not for Han Solo.

  Outside the skiff, Jula continued, "These all came from up near the main speeder corridor. So... you have any plans for that swoop wreck?"

  "The Empire's plans are not your concern, farmer. What about Squibs?"

  Jula's voice turned resentful. "What about 'em?"

  "Did you pick up any?"

  "Squibs? Bloah, no-they never bring a reward."

  The stormtrooper was silent for a moment, then asked, "You're sure you don't have Squibs?"

  "I know what a Squib looks like," Jula said. "You don't believe me, climb in and have a look. Nobody back there's going to mind."

  The stormtrooper's voice grew muffled as he turned and started to crunch across the ground toward the rear of the market skiff. "What's in the rear compartment?"

  "Salvage." Leaving the skiff door open, Jula started after him. How many Squibs did you say there were?"

  "I didn't." The voices continued to fade. "Why?" "Because I did find a swoop you might be interested in," Jula said. "It had three small seats that might have been..."

  The voices grew too muted to understand, and Leia could no longer stand not being able to see outside. She lowered the body-bag seal just far enough to look. Outside the doorway, in the gauzy dust haze of a relatively mild forty-kilometer-per-hour wind, five stormtroopers were standing guard around the rocket swoop Han had been using. The vehicle lay on its side, half buried in a dune, the pilot's cowling packed with sand.

  The swoop lay on the same side at the same angle as in the image that had appeared to her in the landspeeder. The dune covered the engine housing to the same height. Sand spilled out of the exhaust nacelle in the same fan-shaped pile and covered the pilot's cowling up to the same edge. The same worn corner was all she could see of the seat. Not close. Exact. There could no longer be any denying it-she had not imagined this, nor hallucinated it. Leia had experienced a Force-vision.

  She was not really surprised. She had long ago come to understand-when Luke told her the truth about their father-that many of the diplomatic gifts she attributed to intuition were really the glimmerings of untrained Jedi potential. Leia thought back to her vision aboard the Falcon. She was touching the Force, just as Luke had said. But was he right about the rest? Was she in just as much danger as Han?

  Jula Darklighter walked back into view, followed by the storm-trooper leader and two escorts, and joined the rest of the squad by the rocket swoop. He circled the derelict twice, then squatted on the windward side and stared at the ground. The leader came over and stood above him, his filtered voice asking some question Leia could not hear.

  Jula shook his head. The stormtrooper demanded an answer. The farmer shrugged, then pointed at the ground and ran his finger out ahead of him, tracing a line into the wind out toward the horizon. The leader summoned five of his troopers and pointed at the ground, then pointed in the same direction. The stormtroopers nodded then mounted their speeder bikes and fanned out across the desert, traveling for the windward horizon.

  Tula turned and asked something about the swoop, to which the stormtrooper replied with a firm shake of the head. The farmer spread his hands and started back toward the market skiff, the squad leader following close behind.

  "... Empire thanks you for your help, citizen. And you will report any sightings of sandcrawlers or Jawas."

  "Sure I will." Jula's tone was cynical. "But I'd look a lot harder if you let me salvage that swoop."

  "I've said before that I have orders to hold it for inspection. You have my service number. Contact me after I've had a chance to speak with my superiors and tell them how helpful you've been. Perhaps they'll release it to you after they're done."

  Jula stopped beside the market skiff and reached for the door pad. "If that's the only way."

  "It is. The only way. And my superiors will certainly be inclined to look more favorably on your request if you have helped us locate that sandcrawler."

  Jula hit the slap pad. "I'll bet they would." The door hissed shut, and the market skiff resumed its journey. The compartment broke into a rustic as Leia and the others crawled free of the bodybags.

  "What a smell!" Emala gasped. "I wish I was dead." They reactivated the compartment light, and Leia went straight to the intercom.

  "Jula, that was Han's swoop."

  "So I figured," Jula said. "He was doing pretty well when he abandoned it, so don't you worry."

  "Sure I won't," Leia said, using the same cynical tone Jula had with the stormtrooper. "How would you know?"

  "I know" Jula said. "There was an Imperial locator beacon next to it, and he was smart enough to leave it in one piece when he left. He didn't want to be found."

  "And that means he wasn't desperate," Silya answered. "When a man gets really thirsty, he always wants to be found."

  "Okay," Leia said. "What did you find on the ground that sent the stormtroopers flying off?"

  "Nothing."

  Leia waited a moment for more explanation. When none came, she asked, "So where are they going?"

  "Nowhere."

  "I'm afraid Jula played them a bit," Silya offered. "He let them think he saw something he didn't. Then, they began to see it too, and off they went."

  "They weren't very bright, even for Imperials," Emala said. "Everyone knows thirsty men never go into the wind," Sligh added.

  "Actually, I didn't know that," Leia said. "But it makes sense. What did you find, Jula?"

  "It's what I didn't find," he reported. "You said Ulda put a vidmap on that swoop?"

  "That's right."

  "It's gone."

  Chewbacca, who was helping the Squibs roll the concealment matte back up to the ceiling, growled a concern. C-3PO, still drawling a little as his systems came up, translated.

  "Master Chewbacca doesn't see how that information is of any use. Unless we know where he intended to go-"

  "My money's on the Jawa Raceway," Sligh said.

  "How much?" Jula asked.

  "Tula!" Silya scolded. "Don't you take advantage. We're north of there, Grees."

  Both male Squibs flattened their ears, and Emala chuckled. Grees snarled at Emala, then asked, "Then you're thinking the Bantha Burrows?"

  "That's where I'd go," Jula said. "What do you think?" "We find more stuff in the Sarlacc Gardens," Sligh said. "But Han's not from Mos Espa," Silya pointed out. "He wouldn't know about Monk's Well."

  Leia looked to Chewbacca, who grunted negatively. Chewbacca had never heard of the place, so Han probably hadn't either. "The Bantha Burrows," Leia said. "Well or no well, Han's not going near anything with Sarlacc in the name."

  The skiff floor seemed to shift forward as they accelerated. "Go ahead and bring up the scanners," Jula said. "The Imperials know we're out here looking, so they're not going to get too cu
rious even if they do detect us, and we might find something that tells us one way or another."

  Chewbacca and the Squibs set to work. Leia grabbed a set of electrobinoculars, then opened the door far enough to have a clear view. Though the storm was over, the winds continued to stir up a thin dust haze, reducing visibility to a mere hundred meters close to the desert floor. But the sky was clear, so deeply blue it was almost purple. In the distance ahead, the first of the twin suns was already sinking behind a jagged spine of brown mountains, spraying the vista with a fan of golden rays. Leia adjusted her electrobinoculars to maximum view field and, trading Tatooine's stern splendor for any small chance of spying her husband, began to search the pearly gauze for any darkness or sharp-edged shadow that might be a man a piece of equipment lying on the ground.