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| The Odds of Survival |
The Odds of Survival
Black smoke swept over the agrarian plain, an acrid shroud that obscured the tangled and broken carnage of battle. The splintered remains of sleek combat speeders lay nestled among the dented shells of repulsortanks. Walking assault vehicles resembled the crippled bodies of great, ungainly beasts that had been abandoned in a stampede. Gun towers, reduced to slag, watched over the motionless disarray of caricatures that had once been living beings, and their mechanical constructs. And, like the baleful eye of a sleepy child, the sun dipped behind the distant mountains where the sane wondered if the planet would ever recover.
Gombda had been a world with marginal ties to the weakening Empire... and the
beginnings of a burgeoning support for the infant New Republic. But, sympathizers to the
Empire, stodgy men and women who feared and resisted the political change, had put out the
word on the social misfits who were fortifying outside the major urban centers. An
Imperial Star Destroyer arrived in the system, its untried captain obviously expecting to
quell the uprising, but the Ground assault force had met with a fanatical, determined and
well prepared resistance.
A stalemate was evident. The Imperials had a trump card, and the
Star Destroyer's Captain foolishly chose to play it, much to the surprise of his more
experienced crew. It would prove to be a fatal mistake, for the strategy which should
have turned the tide of battle in the Empire's favor had unexpectedly backfired, with
dire consequences.
An Imperial Star Destroyer and its entire crew had been lost. A populace loyal to the Empire had been forced to witness an unwanted conflict on their world. An entire shipboard complement of Army personnel and equipment had been sent into battle, and then needlessly marooned. It had been, overall, a clumsy and costly attempt to subjugate a mere handful of dissidents.
Gombda would make easy pickings for the scavengers and grave
diggers of the galaxy.
With nightfall, a deadly calm fell upon the battlefield, broken by
a quiet breeze that stirred the scorched vegetation. In spite of the thick pallor of death
clinging stubbornly to the air and land, life hung on with a fierce tenacity that was marred
somewhat by the cataclysm of war, but never completely extinguished.
Luke Skywalker awoke to a chirping chorus of insects. He was lying flat on his back, roughly three meters away from the armored airspeeder he had been piloting when a volley of blaster fire from an Imperial Walker had hit the ship in mid-flight. Still groggy with his slow rise to consciousness, he dimly remembered there had been a tremendous explosion. His controls had gone dead, and then, nothing.
He slowly opened his eyes to the star-speckled sky above, noting
that it had been late afternoon when he lost consciousness. It had to have been from the
shock bow of the explosion that he blacked out. He tasted blood, and realized that he
hadn't escaped from the speeder unscathed.
Taking a deep breath, he reached inward with the Force, trying to
assess the extent of his injuries. He was bruised all over; it hadn't been one of his
softer landings. Gingerly he probed his forehead, and winced at the bloody gash he found
there. The grimace on Luke's face became a puzzled frown as he tried again to flex the
fingers of his right hand. His forearm tingled strangely where the cybernetic replacement
had been implanted, after the original hand had been severed by Darth Vader's lightsaber.
Enough time had passed since that first duel that Luke regarded the artificial hand as a
part of him. To find that the hand didn't work filled him with a sense of loss.
He sighed, accepting the fact that nothing could be done for
it now. There were other, more pressing matters to check on.
This time he directed his sense outward, taking a few moments to focus on his immediate surroundings. There were other survivors, several of them badly wounded, scattered across the battleground, but he was unable to tell which were friends and which were Imperials. Luke was left with a strong impression of numb disbelief from those others who were fit to move around on their own, but not much else.
Cautiously, Luke sat up on the ground, glancing around as his eyes adjusted to the
darkness. He gasped when he caught sight of the smoldering bulk of the AT-AT that had fired
on him. It had fallen forward to rest on its front legs, which were bent at the knees- directly
on top of the speeder he had been flying. He didn't remember whether he had jumped from his
damaged craft or had been thrown from it. Either way, he was lucky to be alive and in one
piece.
Everywhere he looked, there were other, more sobering evidences of the high cost of
the battle. By the dancing light of a few burning ship fires, and the soft, cool reflection
of the crescent moon, he could see the twisted wreckage of numerous assault craft and heavy
weapons emplacements, some of them in surprisingly good shape. Ominously - or thankfully - not
one vehicle was able to move, as far as he could tell.
Then, Luke felt the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen. Someone
was trying to sneak up from behind. He paused a moment, mentally suppressing the pain he
would feel from moving sore, unworked muscles, and spun around on one knee to come to a
crouching, combat stance. His right hand reflexively went to his belt, and instantly he
berated himself for forgetting that his hand was inoperable. Not that it mattered - his
lightsaber was missing.
"Hold it right there," the would-be assailant grunted with a
hoarse cough. It was a portly figure in the field armor of an Imperial Army trooper, and in
the available light Luke could tell that the man was favoring one leg. He could also see
the military-issue blaster aimed at his midsection. Slowly, Luke spread his arms out to his
sides and stood straight.
"I'm unarmed," Luke said smoothly. "And you have nothing to gain by shooting me or taking me prisoner."
The trooper chuckled at that. "Is that so?"
Luke nodded at the carnage littering the cropland around them.
"I don't think either of us can be certain we have enough friends
to back us up," He stated. "Nobody's going anywhere."
"You saying you want to call an armistice?" the trooper asked
suspiciously, his blaster never straying from Luke's stomach.
"If we both want to live, I'd say that would be our best bet."
The trooper let out a weary sigh. After some hesitation, he
shuffled forward, and Luke was looking into the tired eyes of a hard-faced man, his armor
scraped and covered in dust and soot. The soldier's expression showed a pang of regret as
he holstered his weapon, but he said nothing to indicate such. Luke was about to speak when
the man pointed to the ground beside him.
"Does that belong to you?"
Luke frowned, but quickly glanced down at the spot the man was
referring to. His lightsaber was lying half-buried in the soil underfoot. Shifting his eyes
back to the Imperial soldier, he carefully stooped down to retrieve his saber and, just as
slowly, attached it to his belt and stood up. "Thanks," he said simply, wondering which
tact the soldier would take next.
"I'm Lieutenant Broma," He told Luke in a dry voice that made the
young Jedi blink. It was the voice of a man who felt betrayal, if not outright shame. "I
used to crew an AT-AT," he went on quietly. "Six years in the Army, been in a few battles.
Nothing like this."
Luke said nothing for a long time. "I'm Luke Skywalker," He finally
stated. Given their current situation, there was nothing to be gained by not revealing his
identity. If Broma had seen his lightsaber, he'd probably already figured out who he was
anyway. "Pleased to meet you," He added lamely.
The trooper shrugged. "Not the most secure place for us to meet
like this," He said with a slight smile. "Not with our being involved in a war bigger than
the two of us, unless your claim to being a Jedi is part of it."
That had taken Luke by surprise. He had been under the impression
that he had originally joined the struggling Rebel Alliance to do what he could in the
fight for galactic freedom; he certainly wasn't a bureaucrat or diplomatic advisor. No, he
was just a farm boy from an insignificant world who had been thrust into events in which,
after much introspection, he had played more than a minor role.
There had been his old mentor and friend, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who had introduced Luke to the legacy which had marked history for thousands of years. Perhaps, having foreseen the apocalyptic solidification of Imperial control over the galaxy, the spirit of the slain Jedi Knight had appeared to Luke, ordering him to seek out the Jedi Master Yoda, who would intensify his training and, by turns, leave him bewildered and anxious. "You do not yet realize your importance," Kenobi had told him before he had raced off to rescue his friends.
Darth Vader had told him the same during their confrontation on Bespin, before dropping the bombshell that he was, in fact, Luke's father, Anakin. Luke hadn't believed it, but the dying Yoda had confirmed the truth. In an effort to rekindle the light of good within Anakin Skywalker, Luke was brought before the very being who had corrupted his father; and indeed, the entire galaxy: the Emperor Palpatine, Master of the dark side of the Force.
Now the Emperor was dead, Anakin Skywalker had been redeemed, and Luke was the first in a new line of Jedi with his newly discovered twin sister, Leia Organa, former Princess of the House of Alderaan, Senator and now, a latent Force sensitive in her own right. Luke Skywalker, fighter pilot and Jedi Knight, standing here on a world ruined by battle, and making an uneasy peace with a common soldier who probably had no reason why he had been forced into a useless engagement.
Luke swallowed hard before he replied to what Broma had said.
"I don't really have a clear cut answer, but whatever rumors you
may have heard, some of them are probably true." It was the best explanation he could come
up with.Broma considered that for a long moment, then slowly nodded.
"I don't know yet how many of my fellow troops survived," He said,
changing the subject. "Have you been able to --" He stopped in mid-sentence, cocking his
head to one side.
"What is it?" Luke asked, already stretching out with the Force.
There it was, the faint whine of a repulsorlift engine. No, several engines. And the sound
was coming nearer."A rescue team?"
"No," the other breathed. "One of yours?"
Luke shrugged. 'It could be almost anyone,' he thought
anxiously as he looked up into the sky. A trio of dark box-shaped silhouettes were
descending in a triangular configuration, making ready to set down amid the rubble-filled
farm tracts. One of them would land not far from where Luke and Broma stood.
"We'd better find a place to hide," The Imperial was whispering
quickly, "Wait 'em out, maybe, until we know who they are."
Luke nodded in agreement,looking around for anything that resembled
shelter. There was the collapsed AT-AT nearby,but Luke didn't feel comfortable hiding in a vehicle that could keel over at an awkward
moment.
Without warning, the surrounding plain was bathed in intense
white light as floodlamps mounted underneath the descending ships kicked on. Luke could see
four or five figures dash for cover as the brilliant beams washed over the field, most
likely survivors of the battle. Broma had suddenly grabbed Luke's arm and was pointing to
the walker with his free hand.
"Let's go!" He hissed, already hobbling toward it. Luke gave
the ships a last glance and wordlessly followed.
There had been some difficulty in boarding the crippled walker,
with Luke's unusable right hand and Broma's injured leg, but soon they were crouching in
the cockpit, trying to ignore the bodies of the crew slumped over their controls. A
cursory inspection of the vehicle had yielded only the three dead pilots, a handful of
weapons, and no power whatsoever.
"The troop complement probably disembarked before the artillery
phalanx crossed over enemy lines," Broma was whispering as he watched the ship land some
fifteen meters away. "No telling where they are now."
Luke bit his lip nervously.
"That's a bulk freighter," He murmured. "Too heavily armed to be
carrying simple goods." And then it hit him. These weren't Imperial or New Republic ships,
or even honest traders.
"They're scavengers," Broma said tersely. "Black marketers, most
likely." He let out a harsh breath. "This isn't going to be easy."
Luke turned on him. "The Star Destroyer that brought you here
could easily take care of them," He countered warily, though he couldn't sense any
deception from his new ally.
"I know, but whether the Destroyer is still in orbit is something
else." Broma shrugged. "The captain might've decided to leave us here when he realized what
he'd done. Or what I think he's done."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean - uh-oh." He gestured at the freighter outside the cracked
window. A group of figures was leaving the ship's hatch, most of them armed and guiding a
pair of cargo skiffs out onto the ground. Luke counted twenty-five in the first group,
maybe another forty or fifty on the other two ships, if they were freighters of similar
configurations. He swore under his breath.
"We've got problems," Broma grunted.
Luke sucked in his breath and grew completely still, as if he
were listening for a pin to drop. Broma threw a look at him. "What is it?" he asked
cautiously.
"We've got company, too," Luke replied.
"Where?"
"Two men are at the boarding ramp, getting ready to come inside."
Luke was picking his way aft, deeper into the AT-AT's hull. Broma stared after him, his
eyes wide with anxiety, but he silently drew his blaster and watched the commotion outside.
The salvage team from the ship in front of him was spreading out, brandishing weaponry or
sensory equipment. Broma tightened his grip on his blaster and waited.
Crouching beneath a bench in the walker's hold, Luke watched as a
pair of silhouetted figures peeked inside, waving a handheld spotbeam as if determining
the amount of damage sustained when the walker collapsed. He reached out with the
Force.The intruders clearly weren't expecting trouble, but if he and Broma were found,
there would be little chance of anyone surviving a fight in such cramped quarters - and
caught hold of some abandoned piece of machinery somewhere outside and caused it to clatter
noisily to the ground. The two figures promptly went off to see what it was, and Luke
exhaled slowly.
He had to abandon the walker, but he knew he was only delaying
he inevitable.
"Broma, are you fit to move around?" He called.
The Imperial soldier's face appeared, silhouetted against the
control cabin's windscreen. "I don't think so," He hissed. "My leg's bleeding again. You go
on; I'll be fine here."
"I'd rather not ---" Luke started.
"I mean it!" Broma shot back. "It's the only way. I'll catch up
with you later, if I can."
Luke opened his mouth to reply, but the man was right. With luck,
he might be able to grab a skiff and make his way to the nearest town. But with armed
scavengers outside and thousands of disgruntled natives back in the city.
"Okay, then," Luke gave in, clearly not in agreement with Broma's
reasoning. "Be careful." Luke slipped into the night, leaving his ally to an uncertain fate.
"Will ya just look at this stuff?" Hurdi muttered around his
cigar. He panned the spotlight mounted on the skiff and waved at the wreckage strewn over
the ground before him, a veritable diamond field of salvage material, arms and equipment,
and who knew what else.
The shaggy faced human guiding the skiff nodded at him.
"Yeah, no foolin'," He replied. His dark eyes gleamed with
excitement. "This is better'n cleanin' up after an Impy jump-dump. Not only that, we got
the ship that sent all this stuff down here, as well."
Hurdi cackled furiously at the thought of the profit the company
could make from refitting and selling the Star Destroyer.
"I'll never go home," He wheezed, rubbing the two short horns atop
his head for emphasis.
"Aw, c'mon, Hurdi," The bearded man chided him. "Don'tcha want to
see the look on your wife's face -"
"I don't wanna see any look on her face," The Devaronian cut in.
"Bad enough I gotta listen to you, Tovvik."
Tovvik chuckled good-naturedly. Their friendly banter was
shortly interrupted by the electronic signal on the open comlink channel. One of the probe
droids had encountered a lifeform. Tovvik regarded the mapscreen sitting on the dashboard.
"Hurdi, swing the spotlight to your left," He muttered, adjusting
the repulsorcraft's course. "Looks like we got us a survivor."
"Probably someone's poor little calfling," Hurdi snorted as he
complied. The snort became a sharp cry as a metal rod suddenly struck him across the
forehead, taking off the end of one horn as it arced away. To add insult to injury, the
Devaronian was thrown overboard when Tovvik abruptly halted the skiff and reached for his
rifle.
The young man in an Imperial Army uniform was bringing his
makeshift club around for another attack when Tovvik cleanly blew his head off. He spat as
the body crumpled to the ground. "Third one tonight," he grunted sourly. "Hurdi, you okay?"
"Yeah," Hurdi moaned feebly. "That flamin' hurt!"
"Could've been worse," Tovvik said, jumping out of the skiff to
assist his companion. "Ain't no one else got energy weapons but us. Funny."
Twenty meters away, Luke was crawling around the twisted hull of an armed landspeeder with New Republic markings. A hasty check had revealed the same thing as the last three vehicles he had come across: no power, no working armaments.
He'd seen the senseless attacks other stragglers from the
battle had attempted, one of them a Republic infantryman. How were they being flushed out
so easily?
A cold chill struck him, traversing up and down his spine, sending
his nerve endings quivering. The telltale tremor in the Force Luke felt didn't have the
warm echo of another living entity, but the soulless, calculating patterns of an automaton.
Luke snapped his head around, and saw the black, insect-like shadow hovering a few meters
behind. With a high-pitched whistle, the probot moved toward him.
Luke ducked behind the landspeeder, narrowly avoiding the burst from the probe droid's blaster. The droid was on top of its quarry in moments, preparing to incinerate the interloper with another blast. In the same instant, Luke brought his hands up over his face and squinted his eyes against the focused intensity of the droid's blaster burst. He grunted in pain as the blaster beam's energy burned his skin, but most of the energy was reflected back to the probot. The droid squealed again and backed away, slightly scorched and a little puzzled. Luke gulped in disbelief and hastily ran through the Jedi techniques for pain suppression, musing at the same time that the droid's armament might vaporize him in the next few seconds.
Luke jumped to his feet and turned at the sound of approaching
footfalls. Several beings, no doubt alerted by the probot's encounter, were readying
firearms. A warning bolt exploded in the ground before him. With the gunmen coming toward
him and their probe droid silently waiting behind him, there was no choice left. Bracing
himself, Luke drew his lightsaber and hefting it in his left hand, hit the activation stud
near the weapon's pommel.
Nothing happened.
Dodging two more shots, he tried to ignite the saber again, and
still nothing. Luke could scarcely believe it. First his artificial hand, then the various
vehicles and weaponry he had personally inspected, and now his lightsaber. What the hell
was going on?
Luke had to come to a decision regarding his dilemma, but a decision had just been made for him. He resolutely stepped forward to surrender - and was struck by the blue concentric rings of a pair of stun beams. Already wracked by exhaustion and barely controllable physical discomfort, Luke succumbed to unconsciousness.
They stood over the slumped, black-clad man and whistled in
disbelief. One of the salvage team was going over to the hovering probe droid to inspect
whatever damage it may have taken. The bearded man, Tovvik, shook his head disconsolately.
"They just don't learn, do they?"
But Hurdi, nursing a bruised forehead and a broken horn, had caught sight of the
device the stunned human had dropped. He knelt down to pick it up; even in the dim light,
he recognized it.
"Tovvik, ya better take a lookee here." He held the innocuous
looking object out to Tovvik.
"What is it, transmitter 'a some kind?"
Hurdi slowly shook his head. "Ain't ya heard of lightsabers?" He
frowned at the steadily breathing man at his feet. "Wonder why he didn't use it?" He asked
rhetorically. "Same thing that hit everything else here, maybe?"
"Maybe we should take him with us," one of their backup men
suggested quietly. "See if the boss knows something."
Tovvik thought about that. "I dunno..." He looked down at Hurdi.
"Why d'you stun him, 'stead of erasin' his slate?"
The Devaronian let his more assertive nature come out, where
earlier he had been as close to resembling a bumbling fool as possible without being drunk.
"Thought I'd recognized 'im. He's wearin' clothes like one 'a them
Jedi Knights in the holos."
"I still don't get it," Tovvik stammered, nonplussed at the whole
thing. He just wanted to collect salvage pay and go home.
"He's that Skywalker human!" Hurdi smiled at Tovvik, a greedy
smile. "And I'll bet he's worth a lot, if ya can put out the word to the proper authorities."
Tovvik scratched his bearded chin.
"I still say we shoulda killed him," He sighed, but he was already
reaching for a length of molecularly bonded twine at his ship. Damned if he knew what a
lightsaber was, or a Jedi Knight, for that matter. But, if Hurdi was right about the
possibility of collecting a bounty on this youngster - and for a nonhuman Hurdi was
one of the more trustworthy people he knew - Tovvik might be able to leave this salvage
run with an extra bonus.
The stale, musty redolence of close quarters assailed his
nostrils as, for the second time in a standard day, Luke came to awareness in the dark. He
tried to gauge his surroundings, but felt pretty sure that he had been dumped
unceremoniously in a little used supply locker that was now serving as a holding cell. When
he tried to stretch his sore limbs, he met with resistance. His arms and legs had been
bound tightly, with his wrists and ankles forming part of a knot behind his back. He lay on
his side on the cool, dust-laden metal floor.When he groped for a knot to work on, he found
none. He forced out a sigh and relaxed. He was still numb from the stun beams.
Luke was more than a little perplexed that the scavengers had
chosen to capture him. Anyone left alive when the scavs came to pick through the remains
was usually killed, since stragglers and survivors of catastrophe rated little profit in
the surplus market. Then again, someone had probably recognized him and figured they could
probably auction him off to whoever might be shortsighted enough to try keeping a Jedi in
a dungeon.
He shivered at the memory of his friend Han Solo, encased in
carbonite and displayed prominently as a trophy in Jabba the Hutt's desert palace. A
similar fate had nearly befallen Luke while dueling Vader in the carbon-freezing facility
on Cloud City. He easily could have been the Emperor's laurel - another commendation medal
in another trophy case.
The scavengers were doing a good job, with their more
'conventional' resources, at keeping the young Jedi confined, and pondering an uncertain
future. Luke let out another sigh and hoped someone, anyone, would come gloating and
providing answers, but he doubted that it would do him much good.
Pluja Vairn drained the whiskey in one gulp and slapped the
glass down on her scratch-covered metal desk. The alcohol was taking the edge off her
hunger, but there were more important things to look after. She swiveled the computer
screen toward her and frowned at the standby cursor blinking incessantly at her. A running
inventory of the salvage take should have been scrolling across the screen. Pluja slapped
the intercom toggled irritably.
"Hey, what's holding things up?" she barked moodily, her throat
still scratchy and raw from the whiskey.
An equally dry voice came from the speaker grille beside her.
"Still pickin' up interference from them cluster frags around the
field. It's affectin' the shipboard mainframe, but we got a few handhelds doin' the job
good enough." The man's optimism was .it turned out,only partially contagious.
"Well, don't lose anything, Gev," the stout gray-headed woman
snapped. "Unless you want to do inventory and jump calculations in that thick head of
yours. What about setting up a dampening screen around our perimeter?"
She could imagine Gev rubbing his chin and flicking his one good
eye around the cargo hold below.
"I'll have Kesh and Muwan over at the Break of Dai check on that,
but that magnepulse cluster the Impies dropped on this place earlier are puttin' out some
killer heavy waves. We're lucky it ain't wipin' our slates as well."
"Do what you can," Pluja conceded, already pouring another drink
for herself. "I want a complete report of Planetside Ops by local sunrise."
"That's about an hour from now," Gev complained.
"Like I said, Gev. By local sunrise."
"Aye, then."
Pluja broke the connection and swore under her breath. She
knew that her operation, seven ships in all with the others going over the dead Star
Destroyer in orbit, might easily and unexpectedly come to a halt if the emissions from
the cluster bombs suddenly fried every last micron of circuitry. Magnepulse ordnance didn't
merely scramble electrical systems like an ion cannon would; it rendered it completely
useless. She smiled at the thought of the Star Destroyer commander's ineptitude in not
foreseeing the possibility that the magnepulse spread might inadvertently affect his own
ship.
'Damn stupid Imperials,' she thought. 'Ever since Endor,
they were getting more and more careless.' She figured the so-called New Republic might
ventually brush aside the Empire, maybe even take Coruscant as its seat of power. Not that
she cared much. As long as there was war, there would be a salvaging market, prosperous
and stable for even the fledgling companies scouring battle zones and broken societies.
Still, a little extra cash on the side never hurt anyone. She
picked up the lightsaber that Hurdi had left on her desk, looked over its intricate
workings with a practiced eye. She found it hard to believe that the ancient weapons could
be in use in this day and age, although she had never actually seen one in working
condition. Only charred splinters and casings, like many of her crew had discovered among
the shipwrecks in the Korteen Asteroid Belt.
Unbelievable, too, that Hurdi and Tovvik had stumbled across, and
captured without a fight, the outlaw Jedi Skywalker. If she hadn't heard from reliable
sources that the youngster was for real, she might have dismissed the survey team's story
as a foolish attempt at pocketing a little glory. Hurdi she could trust, but Tovvik... she
could tell when one of her employees was contemplating undermining the operation she had
worked so hard to build over the last fourteen years.
Pluja keyed the private channel comlink and entered a
predetermined signal code. The proper coded response was quick and obedient; the Devaronian
was free to speak. Pluja keyed again for audio. "How's the injury, Hurdi?" she whispered
huskily.
"Have to file down the crowning glory now," Hurdi snorted sadly.
"Otherwise, I'll live."
"Good," Pluja nodded. "Get a couple of the backups out of bed. I
want you to find Tovvik, take him for a ride, be his friend;and then kill him."
There was only the slightest hesitation before Hurdi replied. "You
bet. Anything special?"
The woman smiled tightly.
"He'll know about it at the end. Surely no one can pretend not to
know what a Jedi is, especially since he's the one who tied Skywalker with a molecular
rope, correct?"
"Read you," Hurdi came back. "He's already as good as pushin' up
silvercups."
"When that's done, bring Skywalker to my office. Think you can rig
a superconducting cage to put him in?"
"I'll have a couple of repair droids gimmick something up."
"Good," Pluja repeated. "I want him in my office in two hours."
"Right," Hurdi answered, ending the transmission.
Pluja felt a grim satisfaction every time she thought of the
Devaronian team chief. Hurdi was gifted with an unswerving loyalty and a keen, finely
honed instinct for sniffing out both the serendipitous and the refutable, which had
alternately led the company to greater wealth and weeding out the flotsam in Pluja's
organization. She would have to see about making him a lieutenant, perhaps even a senior
partner.
This Jedi they had discovered rummaging through the battlefield
was a stroke of luck, to her way of thinking. If they could keep him subdued until a more
efficient method of safer transport could be found, Pluja might be able to contact a few
interested parties who would be willing to pay handsomely for Skywalker's life. A living
Jedi was infinitely more valuable than a smoking corpse.
Pluja savored her next glass of whiskey, relishing in the warm
glow it brought to her face like a supernova.
The floating cage was a crude, hastily modified construct of impervium struts and plates, a slapdash metal box that shimmered with a faint, sickly bluish light put out by the superconducting coils criss-crossing its interior. But, it made an effective deterrent for any trick the still-bound Jedi Knight might conjure up. A variation on the technology developed to imprison and transport Jedi during the Purge, the random energy fields generated by the superconductor network interfered somehow with the Force, rendering Luke as impotent as any other captive.
He had caught glimpses of several beings as they had transferred him from the storage locker into the cage. Any questions he had ventured forth had been studiously ignored as he was taken through the ship's corridors and compartments. Luke could only lie helplessly; but at least he could be certain that the scavengers weren't going to kill him outright.
Another door swished open, and at last they came to a halt
in what appeared to be a ship's office or ready room. There was a brief exchange of words,
and the guards moved out of view. Through the grill work Luke could see a short, heavy set
woman clad in faded coveralls standing before him, or leaning up against a table; it was
difficult to tell. She sipped at a steaming cup, and appeared quite relaxed, even with the
blaster carbine slung at her shoulder. Nothing was said for a time, and then the woman
cleared her throat and set the mug down.
"I had to see you for myself before I made any judgement," She said
quietly, with just a hint of arrogance in her voice. The woman coolly passed her dark eyes
over him and nodded to herself. "I've reached a conclusion about you, Jedi. Your life isn't
worth a damn, to me, at any rate. I'm sure there are others who would spare you from
whatever grievous harm I might inflict upon you, especially in your current position."
Luke kept his peace. Goading the woman or probing for answers would
almost certainly be the wrong course of action, and it might get him killed, anyway. Best
if she revealed anything useful on her own, in her tirade against him.
"Of course, there are those who might deal out much more damage
than would I," She continued. "Personally, I have little to gain by killing you. On the
other hand, I have everything to gain by keeping you caged up like a wild dinko." A corner
of her mouth curled upward in amusement. She was rather enjoying seeing him reduced to this
state.
"You know, you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Wonder
what went wrong for everyone down there?"
Luke shrugged with some difficulty, but at least he had learned they were lifting away from Gombda. Probably finished their sweep of the region and were re-grouping with other members of the operation before departing the system. No consolation for the victims of the battle, nor those survivors they had killed for sport. Just take whatever was lying around and leave. He suddenly thought of Broma, the Imperial soldier he had allied himself with down below, and experienced a slight tug of sadness at his heart. Neither Imperials nor the Republic were spared when war scavengers caught scent of a credit windfall.
"Magnepulse cluster bombs," The woman stated, and waited for
Luke's reaction.
Luke swallowed hard. It explained everything: the disabled
machinery, his cybernetic hand, his lightsaber. He'd heard reports about what such custom
ordnance could accomplish, but obviously experience was a far better source of knowledge
than any data-file.
"The Imperials made a mess of everything," The woman went on,
pausing to sip at her mug. "They didn't count on it backfiring on their own ship. Imagine
those thousands, dead because of one man's vanity." She paused again. "Lucky for us."
Luke took a deep breath. "So what do you plan to do with me?" He
asked her easily.
The woman threw back her head and laughed dryly. There were a
couple of chuckles from behind Luke; it seemed then that the woman did not feel entirely
confident in the abilities of the tech crew to keep him restrained.
"That's the question, isn't it?" She snorted, her face twisted in
a gleaming smile. "How much do you think you're worth?"
Luke, of course, had no immediate answer for that. And suddenly, no
opportunity, as everything went dark and lifeless. He grunted as his transport cage
flickered and crashed to the deck. In the stifling darkness, he could sense the flashes of
unease and frustration from souls throughout the ship, gasps of surprise from those in the
room around him.
"Power surge?" Someone muttered hopefully.
But the woman's strained outbursts confirmed a chilling
possibility that had now become a serious, potentially fatal situation.
"There must still be an active mag-cluster in orbit - I can't
fraggin' believe this! Bridge, status! Auxiliary or batteries, now! What the hell's
going on?"
If indeed the cargo hauler had entered the sphere of influence
of a wayward magnepulse cluster bomb, Luke realized, death for the entire shipboard
complement - and himself - would only be a matter of waiting as life support and climate
control failed. Already the ship was a darkened metal labyrinth of corridors and chambers,
haunted by the realization that they were, in a sense, faced with being buried alive.
For several moments, Luke shut out the confusion and terror, and
focused his senses inward, outward, stifling all emotion and gauging only the tangibilities
of a universe defined by matter- and directed by the Force. The restraints, the cage, the
ship, the body and the mind, became dim representations of the prisons which limited and
hampered the light.
In the moments of greatest darkness... something Obi-Wan Kenobi
had mentioned once. But, Luke had since outgrown the tendency to solicit aid or suggestion
from his dead mentor. He was a Jedi now. He would rely upon his own knowledge of and faith
in the Force.
The next words Luke heard as he became acutely conscious of his
surroundings were hoarse and unintelligible, several voices crashing against his ears.
Something about a collision.
He was shrugging out of his bonds with renewed vigor, oblivious to the chaos around him. There was much scraping and banging, shouting and rustling. It all reminded him of the times on Tatooine he and his friends had spirited off into the night, running around in the darkened Jundland Wastes, playing good guys-bad guys with weapons made from kitchen utensils and starfighters constructed out of shipping crates. More often than not, Luke was the only survivor of those mock gun battles, and several youngsters had stopped associating with little Wormie out of jealousy or disgust or boredom. Once, they had kidnapped him, tossed him into a box and left him kicking and shouting for help behind the power station in Anchorhead, until an old retired couple on their way to the general store had found and released him. Luke wouldn't speak to the other neighborhood kids for weeks after that.
With muscles and limbs still sore, Luke nonetheless felt the
bars of his cramped prison, looking for a latch, a hinge, anything that indicated an exit.
He didn't find one, though someone else had. A pair of rough hands were pulling at his arms,
and for a second Luke felt a twinge of panic, even as he was kicking against the bars of
the cage, following the lead of whoever was pulling him free. There was no time to worry
about who it was; as long as he was being rescued from the cage. He wouldn't be any less
grateful, whoever it was at any rate. Still.
"Wait a minute, where are we going?" Luke hissed over the din of
confusion.
"Escape pod bays," A familiar voice grunted in his ear. "Power
may be slim, we may have to launch manually, but any place is better than this death trap.
"Broma! How did --" Luke could scarcely believe his ears.
"No time!" The Imperial soldier was hauling Luke to his feet and
pushing him ahead, still holding on to one arm. "Out and straight down the corridor, right
turn after ten meters. Go!"
Several minutes later, gasping for breath and with aching
bodies, they had reached a lifepod bay, as pitch black as the rest of the ship. Gulping
air, his throat dry, Luke asked hurriedly: "What happened? How did you get on the ship
without being spotted?"
"Scavs took the walker onboard, didn't check the contents," Broma
panted. He was feeling the bulkhead, trying to find the manual door release for the escape
pod. "Guess they were too busy with inventory and lift-off. They're in such a big hurry,
they ran smack into a magnepulse bomb. Serves the nasty bastards right," he muttered.
"I heard someone mention a collision earlier --"
"This freighter's heading straight for the Star Destroyer," The
soldier confirmed. "Which is why we need to move. Ah, got it!" There was a snap and a
hiss of released air, and the hatch into the escape pod moved aside on its own.
"You first, Skywalker," Broma urged him, pressing something into
Luke's hand. Luke's eyebrows shot upward in surprise. "You'll need this, even if it doesn't
work," The Imperial finished.
Luke hefted the comforting weight of his lightsaber, then clipped
the weapon onto his belt. He reached out and grasped Broma's shoulder, and then ducked
into the escape pod.
"Hurry it up, Broma," Luke called as he strapped into an
acceleration chair. He was growing more tense, his nerves tingling with excitement. There
was a rustle of movement in the corridor, and then a muffled cry of pain. Luke started to
unstrap and head back out of the pod. "Broma --?" He caught himself short when the person
who scrambled inside wasn't his Imperial ally.
"Save your breath, Jedi," A cold female voice snarled. "We're
going for a little swim, and if you don't do as I say, we'll be swimming in your blood, you
got that?"
The hatch slammed shut, and the woman tapped at the quick-release of the pod's ejection package. Several moments later, with a deafening roar and a violent jolt, the escape pod was tumbling free of the crippled freighter. Luke and his captor were thrown mercilessly against the bulkheads as the pod hurtled on an uncertain trajectory, the interior lit up in flashes by Gombda's primary
Luke caught a brief glimpse of the freighter plunging through the
void, and beyond, the bright wedge of the Star Destroyer. His head was spinning, making it
hard to concentrate, let alone worry about the scavenger boss who had so quickly killed
the Imperial and taken the opportunity to protect her investment and her own life.
Finally, Luke did manage to finish locking himself into the
acceleration seat. When he leaned forward to assist the woman, she lashed out at him with
a sharp, wicked-looking knife. Luke recoiled instantly, sucking in his breath as the blade
sliced across his arm. He clutched at the curving laceration with his useless right hand,
closing his eyes against the hot blood gushing forth. He concentrated on suppressing the
burning pain radiating up his arm, but realized that, in order for the wound to heal
properly, he might have to place himself in a hibernation trance, if he couldn't find a
med-pac.
"Hands off, Jedi," The woman was snarling. "You just watch out
for yourself." There was a prolonged grunt, then a click as she managed to fasten the
restraints around her hefty waist.
"You know how slim our chances are now?" Luke ventured with a
grimace.
"So then why were you boarding an escape pod in the first place?"
She snorted. "And with an Imperial on your heels, yet?" She leaned forward, clutching his
soldier with one hand while pressing her blade against his throat. "You must know something,
then. Out with it, Jedi, or I'll cut you like a fish."
"There's nothing to tell, honestly," Luke replied placidly, feeling
her harsh breath whistling against his face. "I mean that. I..."
"What is it?" The woman rasped, applying more pressure to the knife
until it broke the skin. "Tell me!"
"Your freighter just collided with that Star Destroyer out there,"
Luke announced softly. "Everyone on board was killed instantly."
For along moment, the woman was silent. She sat back in her seat,
releasing her hold on Luke. She took a breath. "You're lying," she stated.
"How else would I know that your friends perished?"
"Who said they were my friends?"She countered angrily. After
several long, tense moments, she let her knife fall to the deck, just as the lifepod's
stabilizers unexpectedly kicked in. She gritted her teeth as the pod shuddered into a
somewhat gentler flight altitude, but said nothing more.
Luke noted her harsh, troubled breathing, the way her eyes seemed to grow dim as they fluttered to focus on the cheerless void beyond. He could feel the energetic flicker of her life begin to fade insubstantially. Her pain, loss, anger, mirrors of his own self, were revealed. This was yet another possibility his own path might have taken... like the Imperial soldier, Broma. Like his friend, Han Solo. Like his father. Darkness and light, fighting for the advantage. For dominance, for control. And this woman was losing control.
He could sense his own body functions struggling with the
thickening air; the escape pod's life support systems had not been spared the effect of
the magnepulse cluster anymore than his cybernetic hand or his lightsaber. But, there was
still a chance, albeit a slim one. In order to survive, he would have to trust in the Force,
and wait.
The woman's face stiffened in fear. "We'll die together," She
whispered, still gazing out he viewport. "Not quite the way I expected to die."
"It doesn't have to this way," Luke said calmly.
She threw him a look of disbelief.
"And you think you can turn back the chrono, and go on as if none
of this happened?" She gave him a grim chuckle. "We're dead, Jedi!"
"If it comes to that," Luke said with a shrug. ""Maybe we can at
least slow the inevitable. Someone may pick us up before too long."
"Then again, someone might not!" She snapped.
Taking a deep breath, Luke leaned forward. Not surprisingly, the
woman drew back into her seat. The fight was dissipating from her spirit, leaving her
susceptible to decisions she otherwise would never have considered. Luke knew that.
Time was growing short.
"You'll have to trust me," Luke stated quietly.
"Why should I?" The woman barked suddenly, and then just as quickly
lapsed back into silence. She wasn't convinced of her own stubbornness, that much was
obvious. It was also very clear to Luke that her own resources had been depleted by
this unforeseen crisis. She wanted to live; against her better judgement, she would
relent to Luke's ministrations.
"What do I have to do?"She breathed.
"Just clear your mind," Luke said, reaching for her wrist, "And trust me."
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