Crucible: Star Wars Read online

  Ben reached out and found the Force presence of the second Bes’uliik pilot. He launched another missile and grasped it in the Force, gently guiding it toward its target. By then the enemy starfighters were the size of Wookiee heads, ringed by the flickering haloes of their baffled exhaust. The second Bes’uliik detected the missile coming its way and peeled away.

  Too late.

  A blinding white flash appeared ahead of the Miy’tari as Tahiri’s missile reached its target and detonated. An eyeblink later, the black delta of a half-crumpled Bes’uliik emerged from the other side of the explosion, wobbling and pouring the anguish of its badly injured crew into the Force.

  In the next instant, Ben’s missile found its target. Instead of taking the detonation on his Bes’uliik’s sturdy beskar hull armor, the second pilot had made the mistake of turning his engines to the missile as he tried to evade. The blast tore through his exhaust nozzles into the engine nacelle, and the starfighter’s entire stern vanished in a ball of flame and flotsam.

  By then the Miy’tari was past the point of initial engagement and was advancing on the surviving Bes’uliiks. Ben could feel their crews perhaps twenty kilometers directly ahead, a knot of nervous Force presences clustered in the tight diamond of a defensive formation. The Falcon was fifty kilometers to port, gliding past their flank, unmolested, silent, and blasting the area with target-locking sensor scans.

  “We need to let them know who we are,” Ben said. “Without the Force, we’re the only craft they can find.”

  “I’ve got it. You keep an eye on those Bessies.” Tahiri opened a hailing channel, then said, “This is Jedi Strike Force Beta ordering all four Mandalorian Bes’uliiks to leave the area immediately. Failure to comply will result in your swift destruction.”

  Tahiri had carefully chosen her words to reveal the size and nature of the enemy forces in the area, but that message seemed lost on whoever was flying the Falcon. The old transport immediately began to decelerate and turn toward the distress signal, as though the pilot actually believed that a Jedi strike force had miraculously arrived just in time to save him from a Mandalorian ambush.

  Or maybe that was Lando playing out their bluff.

  During the tense silence that followed, Ben took a moment to study the asteroid from which the beacon seemed to be coming. As far as he could tell from their sensors and his eyes, it was an unremarkable hunk of nickel–iron covered in a dusty silver-white regolith and pocked by impact craters. If there was any reason that a Quest Knight should have been interested in it, that reason was certainly not apparent—and that tended to confirm the idea that Ohali’s StealthX had been deliberately brought here to bait a trap.

  But for whom?

  Finally, Ben felt the Mandalorian presences beginning to move—toward the Falcon.

  “Blast,” he said to Tahiri. “They’re not buying it.”

  Tahiri dropped her chin and studied him from the top of her eyes. “Ben, we’re flying a Hapan Miy’tari,” she said. “Do we look like a Jedi strike force to you?”

  Ben shrugged. “A guy can hope.”

  He studied the tactical display for a moment, wondering how far the Falcon would push the bluff before deciding to cut their losses and abandon the wrecked StealthX. Then Ben remembered: Lando was aboard the Falcon.

  Lando Calrissian wasn’t the kind of gambler who cut his losses and ran. He was the kind who turned an opponent’s trap against him, then raked in the pot and left the other player sitting there wondering how he had lost everything he owned.

  Ben pushed the Miy’tari’s throttles forward, then swung onto a vector that would place them between the approaching Bes’uliiks and the Falcon. Tahiri’s eyes instantly grew round.

  “Uh, Ben, what did I say about trying to impress me?” She began to bring up damage and ordnance reports. “We can’t take fire to save the Falcon. Our shield generators are still cooling down, and we’ve fired half our missiles. And you know those laser cannons we’re carrying couldn’t even scratch a beskar hull.”

  “Scratching is not what I have in mind.” Confident that the Mandalorian pilots would be eavesdropping on any communications to the Falcon, Ben opened a channel and said, “Millennium Falcon, this is Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker suggesting that you run for it. And that’s an order.”

  Tahiri looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “Suggesting an order?”

  “Well, you know Lando,” Ben said, grinning. “You have to be careful how you talk to him.”

  A moment later, Lando’s voice came over the cockpit speaker. “You want us to run for it, Ben?”

  “That’s right,” Ben said. “And that’s an order.”

  Lando chuckled. “Sure, kid, whatever you say.”

  A fan of blue efflux flashed from the Falcon’s stern, and she shot across the face of the asteroid toward the far side. Ben slammed their own throttles past the overload stops again, shooting away in the opposite direction and drawing an immediate whistle of protest from Ninette.

  THAT VECTOR PLATE IS ALREADY WARPED, AND THE ENGINE NACELLES ARE READY TO MELT.

  “Good,” Ben said. “I want those Bessies to have trouble keeping up.”

  As he spoke, a steady stream of cannon bolts began to flash past from the Miy’tari’s port side. He rolled into an evasive helix, then glanced down at the tactical display. A pair of Bes’uliik symbols had appeared on the screen, closing in from one flank. Passing beneath the other flank was the surface of the asteroid. The last pair of Bes’uliiks had also appeared on the display, turning to pursue the Falcon in the opposite direction.

  “Ninette, are those positions based on estimates or sensor readings?” he asked.

  SENSOR READINGS. THE MANDALORIANS HAVE RETRACTED THEIR EFFLUX BAFFLES IN ORDER TO PURSUE.

  Ben smiled. “Better and better.” He glanced over at Tahiri. “You should take the turret. They’re going to be behind us any second.”

  “And do what, exactly?” Despite her question, Tahiri immediately swung her chair around and opened a deck hatch at the back of the cockpit. She slipped out of her seat and dropped into the little nose turret. “Try to dazzle them with armor deflections?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt,” Ben said.

  By then the Miy’tari had passed beyond the edge of the asteroid. The two Bes’uliiks dropped in behind them and began to hammer the rear shields with their blaster cannons. Tahiri opened up with their own weapons, pouring a constant stream of fire back past the Miy’tari’s stern—which, of course, did nothing at all to back off the Mandalorians.

  Ninette started to whistle and chirp, scrolling a constant stream of warnings and reports across the main display, informing Ben of all manner of damage that he could feel just by the way the scoutboat was shuddering and jumping. The port vector plate was dripping away in molten beads of metal, and the overheated engine nacelles were beginning to burn their own linings. The shields were flickering in and out, resulting in a sporadic serenade of clangs and bangs as Mandalorian cannon bolts gnawed through the Miy’tari’s thinly armored hull.

  Through it all, Ben kept one eye on the tactical display, watching with no small amount of envy as the Falcon’s heavier shields and more-powerful quad cannons forced her pursuers to maintain a healthier distance. Still, her pilot was no Jedi, and it was not long before she began to react a bit sluggishly.

  Then the Falcon cleared the far edge of the asteroid and went into a tight circle, swinging around toward the back side. Ben mirrored the maneuver, dropping as close to its crater-pocked surface as he dared to prevent the Bes’uliiks from trying to cut across the curve and come up beneath the Miy’tari’s belly.

  “Pull up—you’re raising a dust cloud down here!” Tahiri yelled from the nose turret. “And I’ve lost my firing angle!”

  “One … second.”

  Ben felt himself grinding his teeth, trying not to panic as a steep ridgeline appeared ahead. He had maybe three seconds before he hit it, but he had no way to know what was on the other side, and
if he happened to come up in the wrong place …

  The Falcon flashed past overhead, so close that Ben swore he glimpsed Lando Calrissian sitting in the belly turret, grinning wildly as he poured fire back toward his pursuers. The ridgeline became a towering wall of stone and dust, and still Ben held the yoke steady, for one more breath, until the Falcon’s two pursuers passed overhead in a river of flying cannon bolts and rippling efflux.

  Ben pulled the yoke back, hard, putting the Miy’tari into a steep climb—and drawing a shocked scream as Tahiri suddenly found herself staring at a stone cliff streaking past just meters from her turret.

  “Switch targets!” Ben rolled the Miy’tari around so the nose turret was facing the stern of the Falcon and her two pursuers. “Switch, switch—”

  He did not need to give the command a fourth time. The Miy’tari’s little laser cannons began to chug again, and a Bes’uliik erupted in blue flame as the bolts burned through its drive engines. Another fireball erupted below as one of their pursuers slammed into the ridgeline. Tahiri whooped for joy, then fired again, this time for much longer. Finally she let out a second whoop as her bolts found their way into another Bes’uliik drive engine.

  Ben dropped the Miy’tari’s nose and was dismayed to see the last Bes’uliik still chewing on their tail. Tahiri began to pour fire at its cockpit, gouging divots into its tough beskar hull and doing little else.

  Then, suddenly, the Bes’uliik pulled up. Ben thought the pilot had decided to break off and head for home—until the long bright lines of two of the Falcon’s concussion missiles appeared on the tactical display. They merged with the target a heartbeat later, and the last Mandalorian starfighter vanished in a spray of static and light.

  Ben yelled in triumph—then realized that his own cockpit was filled with shrieking damage alarms and the control yoke was shaking so hard he could barely hold on. He eased back on the throttles and glanced down to find his entire control board blinking and flashing with emergency alerts. He activated the hailing channel.

  “Uh, Millennium Falcon, this is Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker requesting assistance,” he said. “I think we’re going to need a ride.”

  “On our way,” Lando said. “And thanks, Ben. I haven’t seen flying like that since … well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen flying like that.”

  Thirteen

  All in all, Han found the room a pretty convincing stand-in for a sabacc parlor. Mirta Gev sat in the dealer’s seat, looking resentful and uncomfortable in a tight black vest over a long white tunic. A pair of Nargon thugs stood by the door, taking the place of the security team that usually watched over play in high-stakes sabacc salons. A crooked-nosed Mandalorian named Thorsteg had been assigned to serve as the table butler, fetching drinks, snacks, and anything else one of the players might need. Even the scene beyond the viewport reminded Han of something that might be found at one of the galaxy’s finest gaming houses, with clouds of blue plasma rolling across a dark stone plain that dropped away to the void about seven hundred meters out.

  Only the chairs were wrong. The Qrephs sat in their powerbodies at opposite ends of the long table, tucked in low and close so they could look at their hands without lifting the chip-cards too high. Han was seated in a modified examination chair across from Gev, with electrodes and probe needles stuck all over his bruised and half-naked body. It was how he had awakened, just a short time earlier, with a headache that would drop a rancor and no idea where he was—or how long he had been there.

  Gev flicked her wrist and sent a chip-card spinning across the table to land atop the pair that already lay in front of each player. Before peeking at his hand, Han looked from one Columi to the other and found both of their gazes fixed on him—no doubt searching for micro-expressions that would betray whether he was happy with his hand.

  Instead of reaching for his chip-cards, Han asked, “So, what game are we playing here?”

  Craitheus’s eyes shone with spite. “The game is standard sabacc, Captain Solo. We have made that very clear.”

  “You know what I’m asking.” Han glanced around the room, which had originally been some sort of reading parlor, then waved at himself and his chair. “What’s all this? You didn’t have Mirta and her canheads snatch me just so we could play a game of strip sabacc on some rock in the middle of the Rift. This is the Rift, right?”

  “Is that your wager, Captain Solo?” Marvid asked.

  Han scowled. “It’s a question, not a bet.”

  “A question that will be answered—if you win the hand,” Craitheus replied.

  “And if I don’t win?”

  “Then you answer our question,” Marvid replied.

  “That should be obvious even to you, Captain Solo,” said Craitheus. “If you wish to bet, ask a question. The winner of each hand earns the answer to his question.”

  “If we ask a question you are unwilling to answer, you can always fold,” Marvid said. His voice grew wispy and menacing. “But there will be no lying and no withholding. When you answer, we will be monitoring your biometrics. If you accept the bet and lose, you must be entirely truthful—or die.”

  Han looked from one huge pulsing head to the other, desperately searching for some hint about the angle they were working. A couple of geniuses like Marvid and Craitheus had to know what it meant to have Luke and Leia coming after them. Yet here they sat, more interested in challenging Han to a game of truth-or-die than in preparing for the imminent arrival of two Jedi legends.

  And that puzzled Han big-time. Either they believed the Rift could hide them even from Jedi hunters, or they were more confident than they should have been in their defenses.

  Columi—especially two of them—were smarter than that.

  But there were no clues to be found in the withered faces of the Qreph brothers, only the enigmatic patience of two alien predators waiting for the opportune moment to pounce. Han turned away from them and looked across the table to Gev. A clear plastoid splint protected the nose he had smashed, and her eyes were purple and swollen.

  “You have any idea what this is all about?”

  Gev shrugged. “They want to play sabacc with Han Solo,” she said. “I suggest you make them happy.”

  “You would do well to listen to her,” Marvid said. “Otherwise, we have no reason to keep you alive.”

  “And what about after the game?” Han asked. “You going to have a reason then? Because I might need a little incentive here.”

  Marvid blinked twice, then looked down the length of the table to his brother. He said nothing audible, but Han knew that Columi could converse with each other via comm waves. That was going to make it more difficult for him to win—and not only at sabacc. Whether the Qrephs chose to believe it or not, Luke and Leia would be coming, and when they arrived, the success of their attack would depend on surprise and confusion. So, the way Han saw it, his job was to put Craitheus and Marvid on tilt, to get them so upset and angry that when the assault came, the brothers would be in too much of a rage to think clearly.

  After a few moments of silent communication with Marvid, Craitheus finally curled his lip into a thin sneer and turned to Han.

  “We accept your terms,” he said. “The one who earns the most answers wins. If that is you, you will be free to leave.”

  “But if either of us wins, you will remain here to assist us,” Marvid added.

  “Assist you in what, exactly?” Han asked.

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” Craitheus said. “But haven’t you already asked a question in this betting round?”

  “I guess you could say that,” Han replied, still not looking at his chip-cards. “You calling?”

  Craitheus extended a pincer arm and tipped his cards up to study his hand. Knowing how impossible it would be to read anything in a Columi’s enigmatic face, Han looked out the viewport and tried to appear bored as he used a silent count to measure how long it took Craitheus to make his decision.

  He was at three when Craitheus finall
y said, “Yes, I call. And if I win, my question will be this: how did you feel when Chewbacca died?”

  The question took Han by surprise. It had been nearly twenty years since the Wookiee had sacrificed himself to save the Solos’ youngest child, Anakin, during the war against the Yuuzhan Vong. The loss of his best friend was one of the most painful things Han had ever endured, and it still gnawed at him inside.

  “Is that a fold, Solo?” Gev asked.

  She started to reach for his chip-cards, but Han covered them before she could take them away.

  “The bet’s not on me yet.” Han turned to Marvid. “What about you, Marv? You still in?”

  A tiny smile came to Marvid’s small mouth. “I intend to make that decision after you look at your hand, Captain Solo.”

  “Show me a rule that says I have to,” Han replied. There was no question of outplaying a pair of Columi, either observationally or on the mathematics of the game. If he was going to beat them, it would have to be with attitude and luck. “You in or out?”

  Marvid’s furrowed brow grew even more wrinkled, and he quickly fluttered one of his powerbody’s pincer arms in Gev’s direction.

  “I’ll withdraw.”

  Han glanced across the table and locked gazes with Gev, then rolled his eyes. “That figures.”

  “It was the only prudent play on my part, Captain Solo,” Marvid said. “You may be playing blind, but I assure you Craitheus is not. If my brother is still in the hand, it’s because he has a substantial advantage over me.”

  “Sure.” Han continued to hold Gev’s eyes, trying to give the impression that they shared a secret. “I guess you’re used to that.”

  Marvid’s voice sizzled with anger. “I fail to understand your implication, Captain Solo.”

  “Then you’re not as smart as you think,” Han replied.

  He smiled at Gev and motioned for his next chip-card. She looked to Craitheus, who responded with a terse nod, then dealt another chip-card to both Han and Craitheus.

  Again without looking at his cards, Han turned to Craitheus and said, “So, how does the second round work? Do I ask another question? Or do we just check it down and see how the cards come?”