“Only if we can get hold of the station’s encrypt scheme,” she reminded him. “And then plug it into our receiver. That may not be possible.”
“We can find a way,” Han insisted. “At least it would buy Ackbar some time to track down the leak.”
“True.” Leia considered, slowly shook her head. “I don’t know. The New Republic’s encrypt codes are nearly impossible to break.”
Han snorted. “I hate to disillusion you, sweetheart, but there are slicers8 running around loose who eat government encrypt codes for breakfast. All we have to do is find one of them.”
“And pay him enormous sums of money?” Leia said dryly.
“Something like that,” Han agreed, thinking hard. “On the other hand, even slicers occasionally owe other people favors.”
“Oh?” Leia threw him a sideways look. “I don’t suppose you’d know any of them.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” Han pursed his lips. “Trouble is, if the Imperials have done their homework, they probably know all about it and have someone watching him.”
“Meaning …?”
“Meaning we’re going to have to find someone who’s got his own list of slicer contacts.” He reached over to the console and tapped the Falcon’s comm switch. “Antilles, this is Solo. You copy?”
“Right here, General,” Wedge’s voice came back promptly.
“We’re leaving Bpfassh, Wedge,” Han told him. “That’s not official yet—you’re in charge of telling the rest of the delegation about it once we’re off the ground.”
“I understand,” Wedge said. “You want me to assign you an escort, or would you rather slip out quietly? I’ve got a couple of people I’d trust all the way to the end of the galaxy.”
Han sent Leia a lopsided smile. Wedge understood, all right. “Thanks, but we wouldn’t want the rest of the delegation to feel unprotected.”
“Whatever you want. I can handle anything that needs doing at this end. See you back at Coruscant.”
“Right.” Han cut off the comm. “Eventually,” he added under his breath as he keyed for intercom. “Chewie? We ready to fly?”
The Wookiee growled an affirmative. “Okay. Make sure everything’s bolted down and then come on up. Better bring Threepio, too—we might have to talk to Bpfasshi Control on the way out.”
“Do I get to know where we’re going?” Leia asked as he started the prelaunch sequence.
“I already told you,” Han said. “We need to find someone we can trust who has his own list of illegals.”
A suspicious glint came into her eye. “You don’t mean … Lando?”
“Who else?” Han said innocently. “Upstanding citizen, former war hero, honest businessman. Of course he’ll have slicer contacts.”
Leia rolled her eyes skyward. “Why,” she murmured, “do I suddenly have a bad feeling about this?”
C H A P T E R 11
“Hang on, Artoo,” Luke called as the first gusts of atmospheric turbulence began to bounce the X-wing around. “We’re coming in. Scanners all working okay?”
There was an affirmative twitter from the rear, the translation appearing across his computer scope. “Good,” Luke said, and turned his attention back to the cloud-shrouded planet rushing up to meet them. It was odd, he thought, how it had only been on that first trip in to Dagobah that the sensors had so totally failed on approach.
Or perhaps not so odd. Perhaps that had been Yoda, deliberately suppressing his instruments so as to be able to guide him unsuspectingly to the proper landing site.1
And now Yoda was gone …
Firmly, Luke put the thought out of his mind. Mourning the loss of a friend and teacher was both fitting and honorable, but to dwell unnecessarily on that loss was to give the past too much power over the present.
The X-wing dropped into the lower atmosphere, and within seconds was completely enveloped by thick white clouds. Luke watched the instruments, taking the approach slow and easy. The last time he’d come here, just before the Battle of Endor, he’d made the landing without incident; but just the same, he had no intention of pushing his luck. The landing sensors had Yoda’s old homestead pinpointed now. “Artoo?” he called. “Find me a good level spot to set down, will you?”
In response, a red rectangle appeared on the forward scope, a ways east of the house but within walking distance of it. “Thanks,” Luke told the droid, and keyed in the landing cycle. A moment later, with one last mad flurry of displaced tree branches, they were down.
Slipping off his helmet, Luke popped the canopy. The rich odors of the Dagobah swamp flooded in on him, a strange combination of sweet and decay that sent a hundred memories flashing through his mind. That slow twitch of Yoda’s ears—the strange but tasty stew he’d often made—the way that wispy hair of his had tickled Luke’s ears whenever he rode on Luke’s back during training. The training itself: the long hours, the physical and mental fatigue, the gradually increasing sense of and confidence in the Force, the cave and its dark side images—
The cave?
Abruptly, Luke stood up in the cockpit, hand going reflexively to his lightsaber as he peered through the haze. Surely he hadn’t brought his X-wing down by the cave.
He had. There, no more than fifty meters away, was the tree that grew from just above that evil place, its huge blackened shape jutting upward through the surrounding trees. Beneath and between its tangled roots, just visible through the mists and shorter vegetation, he could see the dark entrance to the cave itself.2
“Wonderful,” he muttered. “Just wonderful.”
From behind him came an interrogative set of beeps. “Never mind, Artoo,” he called over his shoulder, dropping his helmet back onto the seat. “It’s all right. Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll—”
The X-wing rocked, just a bit, and he looked back to find Artoo already out of his socket and working his way gingerly forward. “Or if you’d rather, you can come along,” he added wryly.
Artoo beeped again—not a cheerful beep, exactly, but one that definitely sounded relieved. The little droid hated being left alone. “Hang on,” Luke directed him. “I’ll get down and give you a hand.”
He jumped down. The ground felt a little squishy beneath his feet, but it was easily firm enough to support the X-wing’s weight. Satisfied, he reached out with the Force to lift Artoo from his perch and lower the droid to the ground beside him. “There you go,” he said.
From off in the distance came the long, trilling wail of one of Dagobah’s birds. Luke listened as it ran down the scale, eyes searching the swamp around him and wondering why exactly he’d come here. Back on Coruscant it had seemed important—even vital—that he do so. But now that he was actually standing here it all seemed hazy. Hazy, and more than a little silly.
Beside him, Artoo beeped questioningly. With an effort, Luke shook off the uncertainties. “I thought Yoda might have left something behind that we could use,” he told the droid, choosing the most easily verbalized of his reasons. “The house should be”—he glanced around to get his bearings—“that way. Let’s go.”
The distance wasn’t great, but the trip took longer than Luke had anticipated. Partly it was the general terrain and vegetation—he’d forgotten just how difficult it was to get from one place to another through the Dagobah swamps. But there was something else, too: a low-level but persistent pressure at the back of his mind that seemed to press inward, clouding his ability to think.
But at last they arrived … to find the house effectively gone.
For a long minute Luke just stood there, gazing at the mass of vegetation occupying the spot where the house had been, a freshly renewed sense of loss struggling against the embarrassing realization that he’d been a fool. Growing up in the deserts of Tatooine, where an abandoned structure could last for half a century or more, it had somehow never even occurred to him to consider what would happen to that same structure after five years in a swamp.