The Courtship Of Princess Leia Part 9

Han looked up through the viewscreen at the tall trees. "Well, this is the place." He shut down the Falcon.

"Oh, Han," Leia said. "Even if we can get parts to fix the Falcon, you've seen all that fried circuitry. How are we going to carry it back here?"

"That's what droids and Wookiees are for," Han said.

Chewbacca grumbled, shot Han a feral look.

"I quite agree," Threepio told Chewbacca. "No one would blame a Wookiee for eating a lazy pilot."

"Do you think we made it?" Leia asked. "Are you sure they didn't pick us up on their scanners?"

"I'm not sure of anything," Han said. "But if Zsinj's men follow Imperial procedure, they'll come down here to check out that slag heap of a Frigate as soon as it cools. At the very least we'll need to get out and cover our skid marks, hide the Falcon."

"Pardon me, sir," Threepio interjected, "but might I point out that Zsinj's men aren't Imperials, at least not in the strictest sense, not since the Empire has been overthrown."

"Yeah," Han grimaced, without stating the obvious fact that most of Zsinj's men had been trained by the Empire, "but look at it this way: what s.p.a.ce jockey could possibly pa.s.s up the chance to come down and look at a really neat wreck? Believe me, we've got plenty of company coming, and unless you want to throw a picnic for them, we'd better get to work."

The four of them went down into the hold and got out the camouflage nets.

The nets worked in two stages: A baffle net of thin metallic mesh went over the Falcon to hide its electronics from detection by sensors, and then a second camouflage net went over that to hide the ship from visual inspection.

Then they stepped outside. The air here was warmer than Leia had expected, the stars fiercely bright. The night felt liquid, as if it could melt the knots in the corded muscles of her back and neck. The woods were quiet. They could hear the fire from the wreck burning on the other side of the ridge, but there were no bird calls, no strangled cries of hunted animals. The smell of leaf mold and live sap came rich to her nostrils. All in all, Dathomir did not seem like a bad place.

The four quickly threw down the mesh, then took out the camouflage net.

It was a thirty-five-meter-long piece of photosensitive netting attached to an activating strip. They pulled off the activating strip, then placed the netting over the leafy soil for a minute so that it would take a picture of the ground. Then they flipped the netting right-side up and covered the Falcon. Generally, the chameleonlike quality of the netting would hide the ship from even the closest fly over. There were even cases where searchers had climbed over ships set in shallow depressions, never realizing that they were standing on top of their target.

When they finished, they raked leaves over the skid marks in the brush, cut out a few of the badly mangled bushes and hid them. By dawn Leia felt weary, stood in the brush by the small lake, looking up at the fiery stars. Steam rose from the lake, a small fog threading its way up through the woods, and a light wind began to rattle the tree leaves up on the hilltops.

She was tired, and Han came up behind her, kneaded her back.

''So, how do you like my planet so far?" Han asked.

"I think . . . I like it better than I like you," Leia said playfully.

"Then you must love it an awful lot," Han whispered in her ear.

"That's not what I meant," Leia said, pulling away. "I'm not sure whether to be furious with you for bringing me here in the first place, or if I should thank you for getting us down alive."

"So you're confused. I seem to affect a lot of women that way," Han said.

"Did you really use that tactic once before?" Leia asked, "?of crashing into a larger ship and letting the wreck drop you into a blockaded planet?"

"Well," Han admitted, "it didn't quite work as good back then as it did this time."

"You call this good?"

"It's better than the alternative." Han nodded up at the sky. "We'd better get under cover. They're coming."

Leia looked up. Four stars seemed to be falling in unison out on the horizon. They twisted in the sky and vectored toward them. The little group hid in the Falcon for the rest of the following day, unable to see how large the search party was, whether a band of stormtroopers might be surrounding the Falcon as the fugitives fed on cold rations. Han kept the automatic blaster cannon lowered, just in case. Dozens of times during the early morning they heard fighters flying over, skimming the treetops.

And at mid-morning, a steady barrage of missiles dropped for an hour, decimating the downed Frigate. The Falcon rocked from the explosions, and the whole group sat there stunned, amazed that Zsinj's men would go to so much trouble to demolish a wrecked ship, wondering if some of the missiles might eventually be dropped on them.

Once the bombardment stopped, the ship became quiet. But after half an hour, another group of fighters circled. Threepio ventured, "They're searching for us!"

Han sat, staring up at the ceiling, listening for the return of the fighters. Some of those craft had sensors that could hear a whisper at a thousand yards. Leia closed her eyes, straining her senses. She could no longer feel the presence of the dark beings she had felt earlier, could feel nothing at all, and she wondered if it had been a hallucination.

Early in the afternoon the fighters apparently gave up the hunt, and Leia wondered at that. If Zsinj's men believed they had made it to the planet, surely they wouldn't give up so easily. Certainly they would never have given up if they'd known that a New Republic general and an amba.s.sador were aboard the ship. So obviously they didn't know the Falcon had landed safely and they didn't know who its pa.s.sengers had been. But then a more troubling thought occurred to her: perhaps Zsinj's men weren't hunting because they didn't believe the group could survive on this wild planet.

There had to be some reason that a planet this beneficent wasn't more settled.

As the sun began to set, Han got up and stretched, put on a flak jacket and helmet, got out a blaster rifle. "I'm going to go on out and have a look around, make sure that Zsinj's men have left."

Leia, Threepio, and Chewie waited in the ship. Chewbacca began to get nervous after half an hour. The Wookiee whined plaintively.

Threepio said, "Chewbacca suggests that we go look for Han."

"Wait," Leia said. "A big Wookiee and a golden droid are too easily spotted. I'll go look for him."

She pulled on some combat fatigues, threw on a flak jacket and helmet, then went outside, blaster turned to full power. She set off down a trail toward the lake, watching for stormtroopers. At the very least, she expected some kind of patrol on speeder bikes. But she found Han only a hundred meters from the ship, standing by the muddy bank of the lake, watching the sun set in a wash of vibrant reds and yellows with muted purples.

He picked up a rock, tossed it out over the lake and watched it skip five times. Some creature called in the distance, making a whooping sound. It was all very restful.

"What are you doing out there in the open?" Leia asked, mad as h.e.l.l at finding him in such reverie.

"Oh, just looking around." He glanced down at the mud puddle by his feet, kicked over another flat stone.

"Get back here under cover!"

Han put his hands in his pockets and simply watched the sunset. "Well, I guess this is the end of our first day on Dathomir," he said. "It's been kind of uneventful. Do you love me yet? Are you ready to marry me?"

"Oh, please, get off it, Han! And get back here under cover!"

"It's all right," Han said. "I have reason to believe that Zsinj's troops have left already."

"What could possibly give you that idea?"

Han pointed down at the muddy sh.o.r.e of the lake with his toe. "They wouldn't hang around after dark with these near."

Leia stifled a cry?what she had taken to be a mud puddle was in fact a footprint nearly a meter long, something incredibly big, with five toes.

At the dinner table, Isolder sat with his mother and Luke, feeling glum, disappointed. His mother had arrived only this morning on Star Home, and in the course of a few hours she had achieved something that Isolder hadn't been able to do in a week: learn where Han had taken Leia. She had rightly reasoned that the various rewards for Solo?offered both by the New Republic, which wanted him alive, and by various warlords, who wanted him dead?made the offers far too tempting. Rather than settle for a part of the pot by releasing information, everyone with a clue as to Solo's whereabouts would hunt him down themselves. So her spies had concentrated on tracking outbound ships, following various disreputable pilots. Omogg had accidentally tipped her hand by purchasing a new heavy weapons system for her personal yacht?the kind of system someone would use only for a very dangerous mission.

Now, Isolder was waiting for his mother to revel in her victory, make some seemingly inconsequential but pointed remark designed to show the superiority of the female intellect over that of a male. The women of Hapes had an old saying: Never let a man become so deluded as to believe that he is the intellectual equal of a woman. It only leads him to evil.

And Ta'a Chume would never do anything that might lead her son to evil.

Still, she remained remarkably cordial over dinner. She talked with Luke Skywalker, laughed disarmingly in all the right places. She kept her veil down, yet managed to be seductive. Isolder wondered if the Jedi would sleep with her. It was obvious that she wanted him, and like all the Mothers before her, she kept her age well. She was very beautiful.

But Skywalker seemed not to notice either her beauty or her veiled attempts at seduction. Instead, his pale blue eyes seemed to scrutinize the ship, as if he wished he could take a gander at its technical readouts. The first queen mother had begun constructing Star Home nearly four thousand years earlier, basing the floor plan for the ship on her castle estate. Plasteel interior walls were all covered with a facade of dark stone, and the minarets and crenellated towers were all capped with crystal domes. The castle on Star Home perched on a great hunk of wind-sculpted basalt that the ancients had hollowed out so that they could hide the dozens of giant engines and hundreds of weapons in its a.r.s.enal.

Though Star Home was no match for one of the new Imperial Star Destroyers, it was unique, more impressive in its way, and certainly more beautiful. It tended to awe foreigners, especially at times like this, when they were dining peacefully near some planet, and the brilliant light of dancing stars refracted in the ancient crystal domes.

"It must be fascinating to do your kind of work," Ta'a Chume said to Luke as they finished the last course. "I've always been very provincial, staying close to home, but you?traveling across the galaxy, searching for records of the Jedi."

"I really haven't been doing it long," Luke said, "just the past few months. I'm afraid I haven't found anything of value. I'm beginning to suspect that I never will."

"Oh, I'm sure there are records on dozens of worlds. Why, I remember when I was younger, my mother once granted refuge to some Jedi, a group of fifty or so. They hid out in the ancient ruins of one of our worlds for a year, running a small academy." Her voice became rough. "Then Lord Vader and his Dark Knights came to the Hapes cl.u.s.ter and hunted the Jedi down.

After Vader killed the Jedi, he merely sealed them in the ruins at Reboam, I hear. Perhaps they kept some records of their doings, I don't know."

"Reboam?" Luke asked, suddenly intense. "Where is that?"

"It's a small world, harsh climate, relatively uninhabited?not unlike your own Tatooine."

Isolder could see a sudden, unreasoning hunger in Luke's eyes, as if he wanted to discuss this more. Ta'a Chume offered, "When this is all over and you've rescued Leia, come to Hapes. One of my counselors, who is getting quite old now, could show you the caves. You would be welcome to keep anything you find in them."

"Thank you, Ta'a Chume," Luke said, and he stood, obviously too excited to eat. "I think I'd better prepare to go now. But before I do, may I ask you one more small favor?"

Ta'a Chume nodded, inviting him to ask.

"May I see your face?"

"You flatter me," Ta'a Chume said, laughing lightly. Behind her golden veils, her beauty was hidden, and in all of Hapes no man would ever have been so bold as to ask. But this Luke was simply a barbarian who did not know he was asking for something that was forbidden. To Isolder's surprise, his mother pulled up her veil.

For one eternal moment, the Jedi gazed into her startlingly dark green eyes, the cascades of red hair, and held his breath. In all of Hapes, few women could vie with the Ta'a Chume for beauty. Isolder wondered if perhaps Skywalker had noticed his mother's discreet advances after all.

Then Ta'a Chume dropped her veil.

Luke bowed low, and in that moment his face seemed to go hard, as if he had peered into Ta'a Chume and did not like what he'd seen. "Now I see why your people venerate you," he offered casually, and he left.

The hair p.r.i.c.kled on the back of Isolder's neck, and he recognized that something important had just happened, something he had missed. When Isolder saw that Luke was well out of hearing range, he asked, "Why did you tell the Jedi that lie about an academy? Your mother hated the Jedi as much as the Emperor ever did, and she would have relished hunting them down."

"The Jedi's weapon is his mind," Ta'a Chume warned. "When a Jedi is distracted, when he loses his focus, he becomes vulnerable."

"So you plan to kill him?"

Ta'a Chume rested her folded hands on the table. "He represents the last of the Jedi. Listen to him talk of his precious records. We don't really want to see the Jedi rise from their graves, do we? The first band was troublesome enough. I won't have our descendants bowing to his, ruled by an oligarchy of spoon benders and readers of auras. I have nothing against the boy personally. But we must make certain that those of us who are best trained to rule, continue to rule." She shot Isolder a glare, as if daring him to challenge her reasoning.

Isolder nodded. "Thank you, Mother. I think I had best get ready for my journey." He rose from his chair, hugged his mother and kissed her through the veil.

He knew that he should have left Star Home immediately, headed for his own ship. Instead he hurried down to the guest docking bay, found Skywalker at his X-wing fighter, preparing to disembark. "Prince Isolder," Luke said. "I was just getting ready to leave, but I can't find my astromech droid. Have you seen it?"

"No," Isolder said, glancing about nervously. A technician came in from a side corridor with the droid.

"Your droid started throwing sparks," the technician said. "We found a shorting circuit to his motivator."

"Are you all right, Artoo?" Luke asked.

Artoo whistled the affirmative.

"Mr. Skywalker," Isolder said, "I . . . wanted to ask you something.

Dathomir is what, sixty, seventy pa.r.s.ecs?"

"About sixty-four pa.r.s.ecs," Luke answered.

"The Millennium Falcon will have to travel a twisted course through hypers.p.a.ce to make that kind of jump," Isolder said. "What kind of man is Solo? Will he take the most direct route?"

Computing a jump in hypers.p.a.ce was a laborious task. The nav computers tended to take "safe" routes, routes where the black holes, asteroid belts, and star systems were well charted. But such routes were often long, tediously twisted. Still, a long route was far better than a short, dangerous trip through uncharted s.p.a.ce. "If it were just him," Luke said, "yeah, Han might take a shorter route. But he wouldn't put Leia at risk, not knowingly, anyway."

Luke had an odd tone to his voice, as if he were not saying all that he knew. "Do you think Leia is in danger?" Isolder pressed.

"Yes," Luke said huskily.

"I heard of the Jedi Knights when I was a child," Isolder said. "I was told that you had magical powers. I have even heard that you can pilot starships through hypers.p.a.ce without the aid of a nav computer, and that you can take the shortest routes. But I have never believed in magic."

"There's no magic to what I do," Luke said. "The only power that I have is what I draw from the life Force around us. Even in hypers.p.a.ce I can feel the energy inherent in suns and worlds and moons."

"Do you know that Leia is in danger?" Isolder asked.

"Yes. I've felt a sense of urgency for her. That's why I came."

Isolder made up his mind. "I think you are a good man. Will you take me to Leia? Perhaps you could shave a few pa.r.s.ecs off our trip. We might even be able to reach Dathomir before Solo."

Luke studied the prince, said doubtfully, "I don't know. He's got a big head start."

"Still, if we could reach Han Solo first . . ."

"First?"

Isolder shrugged, gestured to the fleet of Star Destroyers and Battle Dragons just outside the energy field. "If my mother reaches Solo before we do, she will kill him."

"I suspect you're right, and she does not wish me well, either, though she seems friendly enough," Luke said, surprising Isolder. So the Jedi had sensed his mother's intent.

"Take care of yourself, Jedi, and meet me on my ship," Isolder whispered, knowing that in all probability his mother would hear of his betrayal of her within the hour.

"I'll be careful," Luke said, and he patted his R2 droid lovingly and stared at it, as if gazing through its metal exterior.

Chapter 11.

Leia stormed up into the Millennium Falcon, threw her helmet to the floor so that it bounced and clattered into a corner. Han followed her up the ramp, around to the lounge where Chewbacca and Threepio were playing games on the holo board.