“Wait till you see it from the inside. It’s about time you people came to visit, I might add. Are Leia and Chewie with you?”
“We’re all here,” Leia said.
“It’s not exactly a social call,” Han warned him. “We need a little help.”
“Well, sure,” Lando said, with just the slightest bit of hesitation. “Anything I can do. Look, I’m in Project Central at the moment, supervising a difficult dig. I’ll have someone meet you on the landing platform and bring you down here. Don’t forget there’s no air here—make sure you wait for the docking tube to connect before you try popping the hatch.”5
“Right,” Han said. “Make sure your reception committee is someone you can trust.”
Another slight pause. “Oh?” Lando asked, casually. “Is there something—?”
He was cut off by a sudden electronic squeal from the transmitter. “What’s that?” Leia snapped.
“Someone’s jamming us,” Han growled, jabbing at the transmitter cutoff. The squealing vanished, leaving an unpleasant ringing in his ears as he keyed for intercom. “Chewie, we’ve got trouble,” he called. “Get up here.”
He got an acknowledgment, turned back to the transmitter. “Get us a scan of the area,” he told Leia. “See if there’s anything coming in.”
“Right,” Leia said, already working the keys. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find us a clear frequency.” He pulled the Falcon out of its approach vector, made sure they had an open field around them, then turned the transmitter back on, keeping the volume low. There were freq-scanning and mixing tricks that he’d used in the past against this kind of jamming. The question now was whether he was going to have the time to implement them.
Abruptly, much quicker than he’d expected, the squeal dissolved into a voice. “—peating: any ships who can read me, please check in.”
“Lando, it’s me,” Han called. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure,” Lando said, sounding distracted. “It could be just a solar flare scrambling our communications—that happens sometimes. But the pattern here doesn’t seem quite right for …”
His voice trailed off. “What?” Han demanded.
There was a faint hiss from the speaker, the sound of someone inhaling deeply. “Imperial Star Destroyer,” Lando said quietly. “Coming in fast toward the planetary shadow.”
Han looked at Leia, saw her face turn to stone as she looked back at him. “They’ve found us,” she whispered.6
C H A P T E R 13
“I see it, Artoo, I see it,” Luke soothed. “Let me worry about the Star Destroyer; you just keep trying to find a way through that jamming.”
The little droid warbled a nervous-sounding acknowledgment and got back to work. Ahead, the Millennium Falcon had pulled out of its landing approach and was swinging back on what looked like an intercept course for the approaching ship. Hoping Han knew what he was doing, Luke keyed the X-wing for attack status and followed. Leia? he called silently.
Her response contained no words; but the anger and frustration and quiet fear came through all too clearly. Hang on, I’m with you, he told her, putting as much reassurance and confidence into the thought as he could.
A confidence which, he had to admit, he didn’t particularly feel. The Star Destroyer itself didn’t worry him—if Lando’s descriptions of the sunlight’s intensity were right, the big ship itself was probably helpless by now, its sensors and maybe even a fair amount of its armament vaporized right off its hull.
But the TIE fighters protected in its hangars weren’t so handicapped … and as soon as the ship reached Nkllon’s shadow, those fighters would be free to launch.
Abruptly, the static cleared. “Luke?”
“I’m here,” Luke confirmed. “What’s the plan?”
“I was hoping you’d have one,” the other said dryly. “Looks like we’re a little outnumbered here.”
“Does Lando have any fighters?”
“He’s scrambling what he’s got, but he’s going to keep them close in to protect the complex. I get the feeling the crews aren’t all that experienced.”
“Looks like we’re the attack front, then,” Luke said. A stray memory flicked through his mind: walking into Jabba’s palace on Tatooine five years ago, using the Force to befuddle the Gamorrean guards. “Let’s try this,” he told Han. “I’ll run ahead of you, try to confuse or slow down their reflexes as much as I can. You follow right behind me and take them out.”
“Sounds as good as we’re going to get,” Han grunted. “Stay close to the ground; with luck, we’ll be able to run some of them into those low ridges.”
“But don’t get too low,” Leia warned. “Remember that you’re not going to be able to concentrate very much on your flying.”
“I can handle both,” Luke assured her, giving the instruments one last scan. His first space combat as a full Jedi.1 Distantly, he wondered if this was how the Jedi of the Old Republic had handled such battles. Or even if they’d fought like this at all.
“Here they come,” Han announced. “Out of the hangar and on their way. Looks like … probably only one squadron. Overconfident.”
“Maybe.” Luke frowned at his tactical scope. “What are those other ships with them?”
“I don’t know,” Han said slowly. “They’re pretty big, though. Could be troop carriers.”
“Let’s hope not.” If this was a full-scale invasion, and not just another hit-and-fade like at Bpfassh … “You’d better warn Lando.”
“Leia’s on it. You ready?”
Luke took a deep breath. The TIE fighters had formed into three four-ship groups now, sweeping directly toward them. “I’m ready,” he said.
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
The first group was coming in fast. Half closing his eyes, flying entirely on reflex, Luke reached out with the Force.
It was a strange sensation. Strange, and more than a little unpleasant. To touch another mind with the intent of communication was one thing; to touch that same mind with the intent of deliberately distorting its perception was something else entirely.
He’d had a similar feeling at Jabba’s, with those guards, but had put it down then to nervousness about his mission to rescue Han. Now, he realized that there was more to it than that. Perhaps this sort of action—even done purely in self-defense—was dangerously close to the edge of the dark areas where Jedi were forbidden to go.
He wondered why neither Yoda nor Ben had ever told him about this. Wondered what else there was about being a Jedi that he was going to have to discover on his own.
Luke?
Dimly, he felt himself being jammed into his straps as he twitched the X-wing to one side. The voice whispering into his mind … “Ben?” he called aloud. It didn’t sound like Ben Kenobi; but if it wasn’t him, then who—?
You will come to me, Luke, the voice said again. You must come to me. I will await you.
Who are you? Luke asked, focusing as much of his strength on the contact as he could without risking a crash. But the other mind was too elusive to track, skittering away like a bubble in a hurricane. Where are you?
You will find me. Even as Luke strained, he could feel the contact slipping away. You will find me … and the Jedi shall rise again. Until then, farewell.
Wait! But the call was fading into nothingness. Clenching his teeth, Luke strained … and gradually began to realize that another, more familiar voice was calling his name. “Leia?” he croaked back through a mouth that was inexplicably dry.