With the Force to guide his hand, he could have held out against them indefinitely, blocking their blaster shots with the lightsaber. Mara had been right, though: the ysalamiri effect did indeed extend this far outside the forest, and the Force was still silent.
But then, he’d never had any intention of fighting the stormtroopers anyway. Turning his back on the blasters tracking toward him, he slashed the lightsaber across and upward—
Neatly slicing one of the stone pillars in half.
There was a loud crack as suddenly released tension sent a shiver through the structure. Another stroke cut through the second pillar—
And the noise of the battle was abruptly drowned out by the awful grinding of stone on stone as the two fractured pillars began sliding apart.
Luke swung back around, peripherally aware of Han and Mara scrambling out from under the arch to safety behind him. The stormtroopers’ expressions were hidden behind their masks, but the look of sudden horror on the major’s face said it for all of them. Overhead, the mass of the arch creaked warningly; setting his teeth, Luke locked the lightsaber on and hurled it across the gap toward the pillars there. It cut through one of them and nicked the other—
And with a roar, the whole thing came crashing down.
Luke, standing at the edge, barely got out from under it in time. The stormtroopers, crouched in the center, didn’t.
C H A P T E R 30
Karrde walked around the mass of stone to where the crumpled nose of the Chariot assault vehicle poked out, a sense of slightly stunned disbelief coloring his vision. “One man,” he murmured.
“Well, we helped some,” Aves reminded him. But the sarcasm of the words faded beneath the grudging respect clearly there behind it.
“And without the Force, too,” Karrde said.
He sensed Aves shrug uncomfortably. “That’s what Mara said. Though of course Skywalker might have lied to her about it.”
“Unlikely.” A motion at the edge of the square caught his eye, and Karrde looked over to see Solo and Skywalker helping a distinctly shaky-looking Lando Calrissian to one of the airspeeders parked around the perimeter. “Took a shot, did he?”
Aves grunted. “Came close to taking one of mine, too,” he said. “I thought he’d betrayed us—figured I’d make sure he didn’t walk away from it.”
“In retrospect, it’s just as well you didn’t.” Karrde looked up, searching the skies. Wondering how long it would take the Imperials to respond to what had happened here today.
Aves looked up, too. “We might still be able to hunt down the other two Chariots before they get a chance to report,” he suggested. “I don’t think the headquarters people got any messages away before we took them out.”
Karrde shook his head, feeling a deep surge of sadness rising through the sense of urgency within him. Not until now had he truly realized just how much he’d come to love this place—his base, the forest, the planet Myrkr itself. Now, when there was no choice but to abandon it. “No,” he told Aves. “There’s no way to cover up our part in what happened here. Not from a man like Thrawn.”
“You’re probably right,” Aves said, his voice taking on a sense of urgency of its own. He understood the implications of that, all right. “You want me to head back and start the evacuation?”
“Yes. And take Mara with you. Make sure she keeps busy—somewhere away from the Millennium Falcon and Skywalker’s X-wing.”
He felt Aves’s eyes on him. But if the other wondered, he kept his wonderings to himself. “Right. See you later.”
He hurried away. The airspeeder with Calrissian aboard was lifting off now, heading back to where the Falcon was being prepped for flight. Solo and Skywalker were heading over toward a second airspeeder; with just a moment’s hesitation, Karrde went over to intercept them.
They reached the craft at the same time, and for a moment eyed each other across its bow. “Karrde,” Solo said at last. “I owe you one.”
Karrde nodded. “Are you still going to get the Etherway out of impoundment for me?”
“I said I would,” Solo told him. “Where do you want it delivered?”
“Just leave it on Abregado. Someone will pick it up.” He turned his attention to Skywalker. “An interesting little trick,” he commented, tilting his head back toward the mass of rubble. “Unorthodox, to say the least.”
Skywalker shrugged. “It worked,” he said simply.
“That it did,” Karrde agreed. “Likely saving several of my people’s lives in the bargain.”
Skywalker looked him straight back in the eye. “Does that mean you’ve made your decision?”
Karrde gave him a slight smile. “I don’t really see as I have much choice anymore.” He looked back at Solo. “I presume you’ll be leaving immediately?”
“As soon as we can get Luke’s X-wing rigged for towing.” Solo nodded. “Lando’s doing okay, but he’s going to need more specialized medical attention than the Falcon can handle.”
“It could have been worse,” Karrde said.
Solo gave him a knowing look. “A lot worse,” he agreed, his voice hard.
“So could all of it,” Karrde reminded him, putting an edge into his own voice. He could, after all, just as easily have turned the three of them over to the Imperials in the first place.
And Solo knew it. “Yeah,” he conceded. “Well … so long.”
Karrde watched as they got into the airspeeder. “One other thing,” he said as they strapped in. “Obviously, we’re going to have to pull out of here before the Imperials figure out what’s happened. That means a lot of lifting capacity if we’re going to do it quickly. You wouldn’t happen to have any surplus cargo or stripped-down military ships lying around I could have, would you?”
Solo gave him a strange look. “We don’t have enough cargo capacity for the New Republic’s normal business,” he said. “I think I might have mentioned that to you.”
“Well, then, a loan, perhaps,” Karrde persisted. “A stripped-down Mon Calamari Star Cruiser would do nicely.”
“I’m sure it would,” Solo returned with more than a hint of sarcasm. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The canopy dropped smoothly down over them and sealed in place. Karrde stepped back, and with a whine of repulsorlifts, the airspeeder rose into the sky. Orienting itself, it shot off toward the forest.
Karrde watched it go, wondering if that last suggestion had been too little too late. But perhaps not. Solo was the type to hold debts of honor sacred—something he’d probably picked up from his Wookiee friend somewhere along the line. If he could find a spare Star Cruiser, he’d likely send it along.
And once here, it would be easy enough to steal from whatever handlers Solo sent with it. Perhaps such a gift would help assuage Grand Admiral Thrawn’s inevitable anger over what had happened here today.
But then, perhaps it wouldn’t.
Karrde looked back at the ruins of the collapsed arch, a shiver running through him. No, a warship wasn’t going to help. Not on this. Thrawn had lost too much here to simply shrug it off as the fortunes of war. He would be back … and he would be coming for blood.
And for perhaps the first time in his life, Karrde felt the unpleasant stirrings of genuine fear.
In the distance, the airspeeder disappeared over the forest canopy. Karrde turned and gave Hyllyard City one final, lingering look. One way or the other, he knew he would never see it again.1
Luke got Lando settled into one of the Falcon’s bunks while Han and a couple of Karrde’s men busied themselves outside getting a tow cable attached to the X-wing. The Falcon’s medical package was fairly primitive, but it was up to the task of cleaning and bandaging a blaster burn. A complete healing job would have to wait until they could get him to a bacta tank, but for the moment he seemed comfortable enough. Leaving Artoo and Threepio to watch over him—despite his protestations that he didn’t need watching over and, furthermore, had had enough of Threepio—Luke returned to the cockpit just as the ship lifted off.