Star Wars - Tatooine Ghost Read online

  As Leia watched, she brought Han's face to mind, hoping the image would change into a Force-vision and provide some hint that would help them find her husband. The only change was that the image kept changing: the insolent but lovable scoundrel trying to rescue her on the Death Star, the smug lover about to be frozen in carbonite, the confused suitor on Endor, offering to step aside so she could be with... her brother.

  Chewbacca came over to sit behind her, staring out over her head, and rested his paws on her shoulders. They were as heavy as a full field pack, but Leia tried not to let that show. As large as they were, they were also a comfort, and she knew the Wookiee had to be as worried as she.

  He groaned a suggestion.

  "I'm trying," Leia said. "But the Force and I aren't much use to each other right now."

  Chewbacca squeezed her shoulders and groaned softly. "It's not all right, Chewie," Leia said. "I got Han into this. I ought to be able to get him out. I owe him that."

  Leia raised the electrobinoculars to her eyes again, and they continued across the flats. Finally, the skiff turned, bringing the door around so she was looking directly toward the mountains. The wind died and the dust haze lifted, leaving her to stare across several hundred meters of desert into a shimmering labyrinth of brown canyons and craggy cliffs, pocked with the dark circles of thousands of huge caves.

  "The Bantha Burrows?" Leia asked.

  "You guessed it." Emala appeared at her side and stood on her tiptoes to push Leia's electrobinoculars away from the canyon floors. "You look for urusais or skettos circling overhead." "Okay. What are they?" "Carrion eaters and bloodsuckers." Grees made no effort to be subtle. It was probably not a concept Squibs could comprehend. "If you see them in the air, that's good." "And if I see them on the ground?" "You don't want to," Sligh said. "That's why Emala's watching the ground."

  They continued along the front of the mountain. Once, a trio of TlEs circled around to take a closer look at the market skiff. Leia mistook them for urusais for an instant, but the craft shrieked over and were gone before she could yell for Jula to stop. The search party spent the next minute wondering if the starfighters were carrying sensor equipment capable of spotting the partially opened door, but the craft never returned, and eventually everyone relaxed. It took only five minutes longer for Leia to spy a cloud of leathery-winged creatures circling in front of a cleft in a canyon wall. With huge red eyes, snaggletoothed beaks half hidden beneath folds of greenish gold hide, and fan-shaped combs rising behind their heads, they were the ugliest things she had ever seen in the air. As soon as the creatures noticed the big skiff, they dropped lower and tightened their circle.

  "Stop!" Leia lowered her arms and pointed into the canyon. Without electrobinoculars, the creatures looked like flitnats. "In the canyon."

  "Urusais," Emala reported.

  "Got 'em." Jula turned the skiff toward the canyon. "I'll swing around and bring the door as close to the cleft as I can."

  A few moments later, a terrible banging erupted from the roof of the skiff.

  "We're being bombed!" C-3PO cried. "We're doomed!"

  It's just rocks, chipbrain," Grees said. "The urusais are defending their claim."

  The Squibs readied their blasters. Leia and Chewbacca exchanged nervous glances and prepared their own weapons. The banging grew to a constant din of thunder, and dents began to appear on the inside of the ceiling. Leia had C-3PO store a reminder to send the Darklighters the credits to purchase a new market skiff.

  Finally, Jula swung the skiff around and pulled it up beside a hundred-meter fleckrock cliff. As vertical and smooth as any Coruscant wall, it was split down the center by the meter-wide cleft that Leia had spotted earlier. Even with the compartment door open only a crack, Leia could feel a breeze pouring out of the fissure-not exactly cool, but not as hot as the surrounding rock. It grew apparent that the cleft was actually a deep, twisting, sand-filled gorge that ran some distance back into the mountains. With the suns already dropping behind the horizon, it was also dark and foreboding.

  The Squibs squeezed in front of Leia and Chewbacca.

  "We'll take care of this," Grees said.

  "You keep the urusais off us," Sligh added.

  Chewbacca growled, and Leia shook her head.

  "No way we're staying behind," Leia said. "That's my husband out there."

  "We're thinking of you," Emala retorted. "The Wookiee will get stuck in three steps, and don't expect us to wait for you if Han was dragged back there by a baby krayt dragon."

  "Let the Squibs do it, dear," Silya said over the intercom. "They'll be faster-and speed might be important."

  Reluctantly, Chewbacca growled in agreement-and caught Leia by the arm to make sure she didn't do anything foolish.

  Grees hit the slap pad, and the Squibs launched themselves into the fissure, scrambling along the sides of the gorge, leaping back and forth between the two walls, sometimes bounding off a boulder rising up from the floor.

  A loud clatter arose as the urusais swooped over, dropping fist sized stones into the crevice. Leia and Chewbacca opened fire from he door, blasting three of the creatures out of the air in as many seconds, and the bombardment ceased. After that, it was only a matter of firing the occasional bolt when one of the creatures swooped by to see what was happening.

  A couple of minutes later, a strange croaking arose in the back of the gorge. Then the Squibs started to argue in angry voices.

  "Han?" Leia started into the crevice, but Chewbacca held her back-and the firmness of his grasp made clear there was no arguing the point. "What's happening?"

  Again, there was a strange croaking, and more Squib voices. "Grees? Sligh?" Leia called. "Someone answer me!" Chewbacca added a roar of his own, and Sligh finally came scampering back, bouncing from wall to wall, his ears flattened and his fur caked with wet sand. This time, not even a Wookiee could hold Leia back. She leapt out of the market skiff and began to slog into the sandy gorge.

  "What is it?" she demanded. "What's wrong?" "Wrong?" Sligh echoed. "Your mate's as bad as a Hutt, that's what's wrong! Are credits all he ever thinks about?" "Credits?"

  Leia stopped short, trying to puzzle out what Sligh was saying, then realized what he was telling her. If Han was arguing about money, he was alive-better than alive. He was awake; he was awake and determined not to be cheated.

  Her fears of the last twenty-four hours left in a rush, leaving a void into which poured all the other emotions she had been struggling to contain-the confusion, the guilt, the anger. Like a run-iway reactor core, she reached the flashpoint in a single instant of uncontrolled fusion and exploded with a speed and fury that surprised even her.

  "Listen!" Leia snatched Sligh off the crevice wall and, paying no attention to the sharp fangs concealed in his cute little snout, lifted the Squib to her face. "I'll pay whatever you want! Just get my husband into that skiff! Now!"

  But it was impossible to intimidate a Squib, even for Leia. Sligh simply stared back at her, then calmly reached over and began to pry her grasp open, finger by finger.

  "You... humans... and... your... money!" He peeled her thumb back and dropped into the sand. "How can you think I'd take a credit? I'm insulted."

  Leia scowled in confusion. "Then this isn't about- "Money? Only a Jawa would charge for saving a partner's life." Sligh took her hand and started into the cleft. "He's afraid we sold him out. He won't move until he sees you."

  They clambered through fifty meters of sandy, boulder-choked gorge, then there Han lay, his head in Emala's lap, Grees slowly dribbling water onto his cracked lips. He looked absolutely terrible, with heat blisters all over his face and hollow cheeks and sunken, closed eyes. Leia dropped at his side.

  "Han?" She took his hand and found it was as rough and hot as the cleft's stone walls. "Han, wake up."

  Han opened his eyes. "Leia? Is that you?" "Yes, Han. I'm here." "You're sure?" "I'm sure, Han."

  "Good." He let his head drop back into Emala's lap and motioned
Leia nearer. " 'Cause I gotta tell you something." Leia leaned closer. "What?"

  He pulled her down, bringing her ear close to his mouth, and whispered, "Killik Twilight." "Han, don't worry about-"

  "Listen! Don't tell the Squibs. It's going to..." His eyes closed, then opened a moment later. "It's..."

  "Going to Anchorhead," Emala finished. She motioned the other two Squibs to take Han's feet. "Everyone knows that."

  Han opened his eyes and flashed the Squib a look of horror.

  "They do?"

  "Of course," Grees said, grabbing a foot.

  Sligh grabbed the other. "Sandcrawlers always stop in Anchorhead."

  Chapter 13

  The search party had rushed to Anchorhead not because it was close, though it was, and not because it had an emergency medcenter, though it did. They had come to Anchorhead because Jula Darklighter assured Leia that the Sidi Driss Inn would be as safe as anyplace on the Great Chott for Han to recover-and certainly the most comfortable. They had come, too, because the Squibs claimed that the only sure way to recover Kitster Banai and Killik Twilight was to intercept the Jawa sandcrawler in Anchor-head.

  But the mission could wait. For the moment, Leia was enjoying a bath in one of the Sidi Driss's huge, sunken, Hutt-sized tubs. It had fixtures of burnished verdisteel and tiles hand-painted in stylized florals of cobalt blue and cinnabar red. It had blast scrubbers, pulse kneaders, and flab ticklers, and it had a rack full of snap-on nozzle attachments whose purposes Leia could only guess at. The water cost as much as Endorian port, but it came out of the nozzles steaming hot or refreshingly cool, straight or with bubbles, pure or suffused with any of a hundred different oils and unguents-plain or perfumed with the scent of any flower on Tatooine, which meant there were at least a dozen different choices.

  And Leia was enjoying all this alone, while Han slept in the next room with a hydration drip in his arm-clean, cool, and out like a wreck. It hurt to think of all he had gone through in his chase for Kitster and the painting, but he was safe now and recovering. Leia was thankful for that.

  She was trying to sort out the rest. With the ordeal over, she was starting to feel more grateful than frightened. Still, Han had been chasing the painting for her, and Leia knew she had allowed her duty to interfere with their relationship-again. Perhaps it had not been to the same degree as during the Hapan crisis, and perhaps Han had even been a willing participant, but she could not have him risking his life for a government he no longer respected. It was tantamount to using him.

  The obvious solution was simply to avoid getting Han involved in New Republic business, but Leia knew that was about as likely as a Tatooine rainstorm. If there was trouble within a dozen parsecs, Han Solo would find it.

  Instead, Leia needed to do everything possible to protect him-just as she knew he would safeguard her in return. She was already an excellent shot with a blaster, as well as a quick thinker and a fast talker in almost any circumstance. But, having accepted that she had experienced two visions since entering the Tatoo system, she also realized she possessed more potential in the Force than she had previously been willing to admit.

  The trouble was, she could not shake the image of the twin suns glaring up at her from the black well of space. She could not forget those heartless eyes, glaring out from beneath the black cowl, nor the face that lay behind the dark mask.

  The Force was a dangerous ally, and Leia knew she was not ready to embrace it. Whenever she thought of her father, she still saw Darth Vader overseeing her torture, or standing behind her as Alderaan exploded, or ordering Han frozen in carbonite. No Leia was not yet good Jedi material, and perhaps she never would be. She was still too filled with anger... and also with fear, for whenever she thought of children, their faces belonged to Darth Vader, too.

  The temperature-control jets activated and began to shoot cooling currents into the tub, a sign that Leia had been in the bath so long the water had grown as warm as the room. She turned up her hands and, seeing ten wrinkled Darwikian climbing pads where there should have been fingertips, decided she had been soaking long enough. She rose and walked up the Hutt ramp to the dryers, selected CRISP, and watched the goose pimples rise as the air blasted her dry.

  Leia slipped into a robe and changed Han's hydration drip bag. She ached to lie down and curl up around him, but she was too unsettled to sleep and would only disturb him. And the deeper he rested now, the safer he and everyone else would be tomorrow. With so many Imperials around, the longer they remained in one place, the greater the chance they would be discovered and captured. She settled for kissing his unshaven cheek, then left the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

  The sitting room had a complete entertainment center, but Leia was not interested. Her eyes went to the journal sitting on the table with her blaster, the portable holocomm, spare power packs, and some of the other essentials they did not dare risk leaving in the landspeeder. She had not looked at the journal since the search. There had been no time-but now, with the sitting room to herself, she could not resist.

  Leia took a chair and asked the journal to play the next entry.

  Immediately, the image of her grandmother filled the display and began to speak - the dark, tan woman whose name Leia did not even know.

  18:15:05

  Still no word from the Jedi Council about what happened at the Battle of Naboo. Watto is beside himself with fury, complaining that if I can spend a hundred credits to send a message, then the Jedi can spend a hundred credits to answer. It worries me that it's taking them so long. Three days should be long enough to figure out whether you at Naboo, and whether you're still alive.

  As Leia asked for the next entry, the door buzzed for attention. She paused the journal and, leaving her grandmother's image frozen on the display, went to the entrance. The security screen showed a round-faced woman with dust-colored hair and a desert-scrubbed complexion. She was holding a tray of sliced fruit and iced friz.

  Leia opened the door and stepped aside. "Dama, you're too kind. Thank you."

  Dama was the proprietress of the Sidi Driss and younger sister to Luke's Aunt Beru. Jula Darklighter had assured Leia that Dama could be counted on to keep a secret - especially from Imperials, whom she hated for killing her sister and Owen Lars. From what Leia had gathered, the Sidi Driss had been just another farm on the outskirts of Anchorhead when Dama met her husband while accompanying Beru on a trip to meet Owen. They were married a few months later, and the slow transformation from a failing moisture farm to an elegant inn and watering stop had begun.

  Dama slipped into the room and set the tray on the table next to the journal. "It's no trouble. I'm sure you're famished."

  "Now that I'm clean, yes." Leia took a slice of pallie. "Any sign of the sandcrawler?"

  "Not yet, but I'm sure it will come in tonight. There's a caravan waiting on a vaporator shipment, and it's not like Jawas to keep customers waiting."

  "Did Jula and Silya leave safely?"

  Dama nodded. "They disassembled the search sensors and removed the rescue signs. Even if the Imperials stop them, it'll be as if they never met you. And Jula said he'll send word to Tamora tomorrow, though I don't know how frank he'll be. If she starts running around Mos Espa looking to hire a party of rescue hunters, it won't take the Imperials long to figure out who she's looking for."

  As Dama spoke, her gaze dropped to the journal and lingered there a moment, then she blushed and looked away. "I'm sorry," she said. "You must think I'm snooping."

  "It's okay," Leia said. "It's hardly a council secret-just a journal Silya Darklighter asked me to give Luke."

  Dama's brow rose. "Silya gave that to you?"

  Leia nodded. "She said her daughter found it buried under a vaporator. I've certainly noticed enough data skips to support that."

  Dama's expression grew more relaxed. "Of course. That makes sense."

  Now it was Leia's turn to be confused. "How so?"

  Dama studied the image a moment, then
nodded.

  "That's Shmi."

  "Shmi?" Leia asked.

  Dama looked up. "Shmi Skywalker."

  Leia turned to face Dama. "You knew this woman?"

  "Well, I wouldn't say knew. But I met her a few times, when I vent with Beru to visit Owen before they were married." The memory caused Dama to blush for some reason, but she smiled and did not turn away. "I was supposed to be her chaperone, but the truth is I spent more time in Anchorhead with my own beau than at the farm."

  Leia frowned. "I don't understand."

  "Shmi was Owen's mother-his stepmother, really. Owen's real mother died when he was younger."

  "Now I'm really confused. This woman is-was-a slave in Mos Espa." Leia paused, then asked, "She was Anakin Skywalker's mother, right?"