Tenel Ka growled, “Because we’re lost in the jungle. This is a fact.”
“Oh, dear—is that all that’s bothering you?” Em Teedee said. “Why didn’t you say so? After all, I am fluent in six forms of communication and I am equipped with all manner of sensors: photo-optical, olfactory, directional, auditory—”
“Directional?” Tenel Ka broke in. “You mean you know where we are?”
“Oh, most assuredly, Mistress Tenel Ka. Didn’t I just say so?”
She groaned and shook her head. “All right, Em Teedee, let’s go. Lead on.”
Tenel Ka’s spirits were brighter than the twin beams that shone from Em Teedee’s eyes and lit her way along the forest floor. As annoying as the little droid could be, she was glad of his company. Em Teedee seemed genuinely interested in hearing all that had happened to her since the TIE fighter pilot had tried to capture them that afternoon. In turn, she found herself enjoying his descriptions of the T-23 crash and his adventures with the woolamanders. She wondered what had happened to Lowbacca, and to the twins.
They stopped only a few times, so that she could drink or check the dressing on her minor wounds. Using rudimentary first-aid supplies she kept in her belt, she had bound up the claw scratches on her arm and the gash on her leg. The wounds throbbed and burned, but did not slow her down. She jogged much of the way, and kept to a fast-paced march even when she needed to rest.
The distant white sun of the Yavin system was bright in the morning sky when Tenel Ka and Em Teedee finally broke through the last stand of trees into the cleared landing area. The sun-warmed stone of the Great Temple glowed like a welcome beacon in the distance.
“Oh, we made it!” Em Teedee said joyfully. Tenel Ka looked around and saw in the center of the clearing a ship that she recognized welclass="underline" the Millennium Falcon.
Running toward the modified light freighter at full speed were two Wookiees, one large and one smaller, and Jacen and Jaina’s father, Han Solo. She guessed immediately what mission they were on and changed her course toward the Falcon, waving and shouting as she ran.
Overhead, she heard the bone-chilling howl of a fast-approaching TIE fighter. She put on another burst of speed toward the ship.
But Solo and the Wookiees did not see her. In their hurry to rescue Jacen and Jaina, the three scrambled up the ramp of the Falcon. They must have kept the engines idling to keep them warm, she figured, for she could hear their whine.
Tenel Ka wanted to help rescue the twins; she couldn’t let them down again. “Call them, Em Teedee,” she said, pouring on a last burst of speed, though her legs already trembled with exhaustion.
Em Teedee mused, “Am I to take it that you wish to communicate with them?”
“This is a fact.”
“Certainly, Mistress. I would be delighted, but what shall—”
“Just do it!” She gritted her teeth and sprinted as fast as she could.
Suddenly Em Teedee’s voice boomed at top volume through the clearing. “Attention, Millennium Falcon. Please delay departure momentarily to take on two additional passengers.”
Tenel Ka didn’t even mind the ringing in her ears when she saw the ramp of the Millennium Falcon lower. At full tilt, she ran up the ramp.
“Okay,” she gasped, collapsing to the floor in the crew compartment. “Let’s go!”
Han Solo and the two Wookiees looked at her in amazement for an instant, but no one needed any further urging. Even as she spoke, the hatches sealed, and with a surge of defiance the Millennium Falcon took off.
20
Qorl flew his single fighter at top speed over the thick jungle canopy. The rushing air of Yavin 4 screamed around the TIE fighter’s rounded pilot compartment and the rectangular solar arrays. He remembered his days as a trainee. He had been an excellent pilot—one of the best in his squadron—soaring through mock battles and enforcing the Emperor’s unbending will.
Air currents buffeted him, and the pilot reveled in the sensation of flight. He had not forgotten, not even after so many years. The vibrating power that pulsed through the fighter’s engines, along with a sense of freedom and liberation after so long an exile, buoyed him.
Qorl watched the knotted green crowns of Massassi trees flowing beneath him in the storm of his ship’s passage. With his thickly gloved, badly healed arm, he found it difficult to control the Imperial craft—but he was a fighter pilot. He was a great pilot. He had managed to land his ship, despite grievous engine damage, under heavy enemy fire. He had survived undetected in hostile territory for two decades.
Now, flying low over the trees to avoid notice from any possible defenses at the Rebel base, Qorl felt his memories, his ingrained skill, come flooding back to him.
The Empire is my family. The Rebels wish to destroy the New Order. The Rebels must be eliminated—ELIMINATED!
His greatest advantage was surprise. This attack would come out of nowhere. The Rebels would be expecting nothing. He would streak in with all weapons blazing. He would level the Rebel base structures, blast them into rubble. He would kill all those who had conspired to blow up the Death Star, who had killed Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin. He, a single soldier, would secure vengeance for the entire Empire.
There! Qorl squinted through the scratched goggles of his blast helmet. Protruding from a clearing in the dense jungle, a towering stone temple rose up—a ziggurat, the squarish pyramid that served as the main structure of the base.
Qorl roared low over the facilities of the old Rebel stronghold. A wide, sluggish river sliced through the jungle near the site of the temples. On the opposite side of the brownish-green current lay other crumbling ruins, but they seemed uninhabited. Then he noticed a large power-generating station next to the towering ziggurat and knew for certain that he had not been, wrong: this base was still used as a military installation.
As he brought the TIE fighter in on his first attack run, Qorl saw that the jungle had been cleared to make a large landing area in front of the Great Temple. On the flat field he saw only one ship—disk-shaped, with twin prongs in front.
Qorl didn’t immediately recognize the make or model of the lone ship below. It was some kind of light freighter, not a Rebel X-wing or any of the familiar battleships he had learned about during his rigorous combat training.
On the ground, several people ran toward the ship, sprinting away from the stone pyramid. Scrambling to battle stations perhaps? His lip curled in a snarl. He would take care of them.
He flicked the buttons on his control panel, powering up the TIE fighter’s weapons systems. Before he could align the victims in his targeting cross, though, all the small figures below managed to climb aboard the light freighter. Its boarding ramp drew up, preparing for launch.
He dismissed the light freighter as a possible target—for now, at least. It was probable, Qori realized, that the Rebels kept a large force of more powerful fighters in an underground hangar bay. If so, his first task was to prevent those craft from launching—even if only by damaging the doors enough to keep the ships trapped inside.
He decided his best strategy would be to continue his straight-line course and fire with full-power laser cannons on the main structure of the Great Temple. He would blow the entire building to rubble—perhaps causing it to collapse internally, thus eliminating the Rebels and destroying all their equipment inside.
Then he could swoop around and take care of the single light freighter, even if it managed to get up off the ground. His third target would be the power-generating station.
With the Rebels completely paralyzed by his lightning attack, he would swing back for the last time. He would charge up his laser cannons again and go for the kill, mopping up anything he had missed the first time.