Tatooine Ghost Read online

  Leia asked Chewbacca to deal with the Squibs, then checked on Han. Finding him sound asleep, she returned to the sitting room and replayed the previous entry. An administrator on Coruscant had finally replied to Shmi’s ’Net message: Anakin was well, but the Jedi did not discuss the activities of their Padawans even with parents.

  Even that was enough to elate Shmi. Leia asked for the next entry.

  20:45:06

  Kitster is coming over tomorrow with a vidrecording he has of the Boonta. I’m not sure I want to see it again, Annie. Watching it the first time was hard enough, and now I know that when you win… that I must give you to your destiny.

  I remember when Watto bought his first Podracer and told you to fix it for him. You were barely nine, but you were so clever, getting it running all by yourself. Before I knew it, Watto had you test-driving it. I was so angry I threatened to plastiment his wings together and drop him in a solvent vat. And I would have, too, had anything happened to you.

  12:18:07

  Kitster is running late. Rarta Dal is keeping him very busy over at the Three Moons, so that holodisk he bought must be serving him well. He says he’s earning enough to buy his freedom by the time he is grown. Wald is not so patient. When he finishes building his swoop, he says he’s going to race his way to freedom. I hope he doesn’t hurt himself—but it’s wonderful to see them dreaming of such things. I think your example gives them courage.

  Even your friend Amee has a plan, though she won’t say what it is. I think she is still upset that I didn’t keep her secret when she said she was going to marry you, so she would be part of the family when you won our freedom. But how could I have? That was the first I had heard of Watto’s plans to have you race his Podracer. Toydarians!

  And you weren’t much better. When I told you the Hutts were taking bets on which lap you would crash in, that no one believed you would finish, do you remember what you said?

  “Then everybody’s going to lose their money.”

  Leia checked the time. She knew she should arrange watches with Chewbacca and try to rest. But she also knew she was too agitated to sleep. With Han recuperating and stormtroopers scouring the desert, she was afraid the Imperials would find Banai and Killik Twilight first. Then there was the risk of being discovered themselves. Less populated than a single floor of their residence tower back on Coruscant, Anchorhead would make a pretty quick and easy search.

  But most of all, Leia was frightened of how the journal entries were changing her perceptions, of how she was coming to view her father through Shmi’s eyes as well as her own. He had been Darth Vader, cruel, brutal, and ruthless. He had stood for all Leia hated about the Empire, had been one of the things she hated about the Empire. And he had been Anakin Skywalker, the nine-year-old slave boy who was the center of his mother’s world, who won a Podrace and inspired others to dream of freedom.

  Leia was reminded of the old diplomat’s paradox, that the facts often concealed the truth. She was entering into a new realm, driving out into that land of mirage and intuition where reality was never what it seemed, and the nature of an object depended on how one looked at it.

  Sighing, she requested the next entry, and young Kitster Banai’s smiling face appeared on the display and began to speak.

  13:20:08

  Hi Annie! I hope you get to see this someday. Wald and I tried to record your race off your mom’s view-screen at the arena, but all we got were the voices of your mom and a few others. Then a couple of days ago, Rarta Dal gave me a vidrecording of the whole Boonta. I thought you might like it if I patched them together and saved it for you.

  “With my voice?” Shmi asked. “Oh, Kitster, I don’t think that’s a very good—”

  The display flickered, then shifted to a view of the Mos Espa Arena in its glory days, with a hundred thousand spectators sitting in the stands and a dozen and a half Podracers waiting on the track, engines roaring.

  An odd voice said, “Mesa no watch. Dissen gonna be messy!”

  The starting light flashed green, and all but two of the Podracers roared off down the track.

  The reverberating voice of an announcer called, “Wait, little Skywalker stalled!” A moment later he added, “Looks like Quadinaros is having engine trouble also.”

  Then Anakin’s Podracer came to life and began to shoot orange flames from its engines.

  “Bloah!” The curse was in Shmi’s voice. “It started.”

  Anakin shot after the others. After that, the image switched to a view of the front of the field, where the brutal nature of the sport became immediately apparent as the leader—identified by the announcer as Sebulba—pushed a competitor into a gorge wall. Another crash followed moments later, and by then Anakin was coming up fast.

  By the end of the first lap, he was leading the rear pack and moving up on the leaders. He dodged through the flying debris of a wreck caused when a wrench flew out of Sebulba’s Pod into the engines of a competitor. Another Podracer crashed at Dune Turn, after a band of Tusken Raiders shot out an engine.

  Anakin came up behind Sebulba, and the third lap became a race only between them. Sebulba made his move in one of the canyons, repeatedly bumping Anakin’s Podracer.

  “Oh, that Dug!” Shmi sounded more worried than angry.

  Anakin was forced onto a service ramp and launched what appeared to be hundreds of meters into the air, and it seemed certain he would crash. Instead, he did a quick control thrust and returned to the track—in the lead.

  But the race was far from over. Sebulba came up hard on Anakin’s tail. Then something fell off one of Anakin’s engines. The engine started to smoke, Anakin lost power, and Sebulba took the lead.

  “Skywalker’s in trouble!” the announcer reported.

  “Annie, be careful!” Shmi cried. “Shut it down!”

  Anakin put out the fire and came up again. Sebulba resorted to old tactics and slammed into Anakin once… twice… three times…

  “That little human being is out of his mind!” the announcer called.

  The crowd gasped.

  “They’re side by side!”

  The crowd groaned.

  Anakin and Sebulba remained neck and neck, hooked together at the Pods.

  The crowd returned to silence.

  “They’ve pulled apart… they’re coming apart… no, wait, Skywalker’s regaining control… Sebulba’s the one coming—”

  Anakin crossed the finish line, leaving Sebulba spinning in the dust behind him, and the crowd broke into a tremendous, thundering cheer.

  The image shifted scales and showed Anakin’s Podracer coming to a skidding stop in the center of the track. He shut down his engines, climbed out of his cockpit, and was immediately greeted by Kitster and Wald. With the crowd converging around them, they took turns hugging him and slapping him on the back.

  Leia paused the image and spent a long time looking at the young boy with the sparkling blue eyes, thinking how happy he looked… and how innocent. Had she known him then, had she never met Darth Vader, she might have agreed with Wald: She might have believed they could not be the same person.

  Leia resumed viewing.

  The crowd converged, and the three boys were lost in a swirling mass of humanity. The display flickered; then Shmi’s face took the place of the arena, her eyes shimmering and wet.

  I was so proud of you, Annie—I am so proud of you. And I am also happy that now you are safe at the Jedi Temple… where I hope you aren’t doing such dangerous things!

  Han’s groggy voice sounded through the door, calling for Leia. She stopped the diary and rushed into the bedroom. He was propped up on his elbows, looking around the darkened room with an expression as pained as it was confused.

  Leia went to the bed and took his hand. “How are you feeling?”

  He squinted up at her for a moment, then finally flashed a cracked-lip smile. “Thirsty.”

  “I’ll get you something to drink.”

  Han nodded eagerly. “Make it
two. Gizers.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Leia fetched a glass and two canisters of bactade from the other room. She was glad to see Han awake, but she expected to see him more fully recovered after three bags of rehydration solution. He still looked weak. Dehydration could cause organ damage. If he wasn’t better by morning, she would risk a visit to the medcenter. The Darklighters had warned her that most of the staff were city-beings who probably could not keep a secret while looking down the barrel of an Imperial blaster, but Leia would rather shoot a few stormtroopers than stand idly by while Han slipped away.

  She returned to find him sleeping again. She changed the bag on his hydration drip, then checked his vital signs on the portable monitor and kissed his cracked lips. It was like kissing a Barabel.

  She returned to the sitting room couch and picked up her grandmother’s journal. For a moment, it refused to play again, but at last, after flipping through a few unintelligible data skips, it began.

  15:36:09

  I hope you will forgive some of the things I said on Kitster’s recording. I truly wanted you to win—but even more, I wanted you to survive. You know how those races always frightened me.

  I can’t tell you how I struggled with the decision to let you race for Qui-Gon that day. When you noticed his lightsaber, you were so convinced he had come to free the slaves… it crushed me to hear him tell you the truth. But as Qui-Gon himself said, you give without thinking of yourself. How could I say no when you hatched your plan to win the parts they needed to repair their ship?

  A slave boy helping a Jedi. To me, it seemed matters should have been the other way around. I would have said no, and I know you would have forgiven me. But you wouldn’t have forgotten, either. For the rest of your life, you would have remembered the Boonta Eve and how your mother wouldn’t let you help a Jedi. And that wouldn’t have been fair to you. I couldn’t deny you the chance to be the hero you dreamed of.

  Leia continued to play the journal, listening to Shmi recount how well Kitster and Anakin’s other friends were doing, and what kind of mood her master Watto was in that day. At times, she seemed genuinely concerned about the Toydarian, for he had begun to suffer bouts of melancholy. Shmi seemed to believe that Watto genuinely missed the boy. Leia had trouble accepting this, but was forced to at least allow for the possibility when Shmi reported that Watto had actually made a gift to her of the ten credits she had borrowed to help pay for her message to the Jedi Council.

  Leia was finally starting to grow tired when Han’s voice sounded from the bedchamber.

  “Leia? Are you still up?”

  “Yes, Han.” Leia hit the STOP key and tucked the journal into her pocket. “Are you ready for those drinks now?”

  “Are they Gizers?”

  “Can you sit up?”

  “Maybe you ought to come see.”

  Leia went into the room and found Han lying flat on his back. His hands were folded behind his head and he was smiling at her crookedly. And he seemed to know where he was.

  “Come here,” he said. “And take this drip out of my arm.”

  Leia went over to the side of the bed. “You’re sure?”

  Han grabbed her around the waist, then pulled her down on top of him and kissed her, very long and very deep.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” He ran his hands under her robe, and the room suddenly grew warm. “It’s gonna get in the way.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Han woke smothering in the perfumed silkiness of Leia’s long hair, her soft skin warming his side and her breath tickling his ear. Sometime during the night, she had managed to reattach his hydration drip and return to bed without disturbing him, and now even his lips no longer felt dry. The room was comfortably cool, the sky window above the bed was blushing with the pink light of first sunrise, and everything was right with the world.

  Except, perhaps, that muffled sound coming from the suite’s sitting room. It had the familiar drone of an electronically filtered voice and the sharp rhythm of someone giving orders. Of a squad leader assigning tasks to his stormtroopers. Alarm bringing him instantly to full wakefulness, Han looked to the side table and found his blaster resting next to Leia’s.

  The electronic voice barked a command.

  Han did not bother to detach himself from the hydration drip, or even to wake Leia. He simply tossed her blaster over the far side of the bed, then snatched his own weapon and rolled after it, grabbing her on the way. A burning line of pain shot up his arm as the hydration catheter tore free, then he landed on the floor, bringing Leia down on top of him.

  Her eyelids rose half open, and their gazes met instantly.

  “Han?” She smiled dreamily. “My, you are feeling better.”

  “Sorry, not in front of company.” He snatched her blaster off the floor and pressed it into her hand. “You know I’m not that kind of guy.”

  Leia’s eyes opened wide. “Company?”

  “Listen.”

  They fell quiet and listened to the muffled voices coming from the next room. It was too faint to understand words, but the stormtrooper drone was unmistakable. Leia pushed herself off him and started for the bedroom’s oversized door.

  Han sat up. “Hey! Don’t go out—”

  Leia stepped through the door.

  Han sprang across the bed after her. “At least put on some clothes!”

  When he peered into the sitting room, he found no stormtroopers anywhere. Leia was standing at the table, staring down at the datapad from which the electronic voices were coming.

  “Dama lent this to me so we could keep an eye on the lobby,” Leia said, picking up the borrowed datapad.

  With a blaster in one hand and her brown eyes fixed on the datapad in the other, her long hair falling in a silky cascade over her shoulders, she seemed more breathtakingly beautiful than ever. Han knew he had to be the luckiest ex-smuggler in the galaxy; if they could just get past her fear of having children, he was pretty sure that when his time came, he would leave this universe with every wish he ever had fulfilled.

  Leia looked up from the datapad and frowned. “Han, why are you just standing there?”

  Han shrugged. “Too much sun, I guess.”

  “Well, you’re bleeding all over Dama’s floor.” Leia nodded at his arm, which was oozing blood from the rip where he had torn out the catheter. “Get a towel or something and come over here.”

  Han snatched a small towel off the bar and joined her at the table. The image on the datapad showed a squad of stormtroopers standing in the ornate lobby of the Sidi Driss, the leader’s chest pressed against the counter as he addressed a Pa’lowick so frightened her thin limbs and long proboscis were quivering.

  “I can’t bring up those records,” she was saying. “I’m only the night clerk. I don’t have the password to check the day records.”

  The squad leader grabbed her proboscis and pulled her half over the counter, then pressed the nozzle of his blaster rifle against the lips at the end.

  “But you can find someone who knows it.”

  “Yefffth,” she said.

  “Then do it.” The leader released the Pa’lowick’s trunk, freeing her to stumble back against the door behind the counter. He pointed to two of his troopers. “Accompany her.”

  “What do you think?” Leia asked. “Are we in for a fight?”

  “I don’t know.” Han started toward the bedchamber. “But it wouldn’t hurt to put our clothes on. If we have to leave in a hurry, the last thing I want is an all-over Tatooine tan.”

  “I think we’re in for a fight.” Leia followed, her gaze still fixed on the borrowed datapad. “It wouldn’t hurt to make sure Chewie and the Squibs are awake.”

  “Better stay off the comlinks in case the Imps have a signal tracer in the air,” Han said. “Which wall is Chewie’s?”

  Leia pointed, then dropped the datapad on the bed where they could both see it as they dressed. Han banged on the wall with his blaster, using a two-short, tw
o-long sequence that had meant trouble nearly as long as he and Chewbacca had been flying together. Then, keeping his eye on the datapad, he reached for his trousers.

  Once the night clerk and her escort were gone, a stormtrooper came over to the squad leader.

  “You didn’t have to be so brutal, Sergeant,” the trooper said. “She was already going to cooperate.”

  “Sorry, sir.” Even through the electronic filtering, the squad leader sounded anything but apologetic. “I thought brutal was the new style.”

  “Efficient is the new style, Sergeant.” The officer’s armor betrayed no outward sign of his rank. “And brutalizing citizens who don’t need it is most definitely not efficient.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “I didn’t want to let them slip away.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The officer brought his assault rifle up and calmly smashed the butt into the sergeant’s helmet, knocking him to the floor. With the other stormtroopers looking on from behind their faceless helmets, the officer pointed his blaster rifle at his fallen subordinate.

  “Tell me, Sergeant, do you feel like doing me any favors now?” the officer asked. “And be honest. That is an order.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then the sergeant said, “No sir, I don’t.”

  “Now tell me why you believe a brutalized citizen will do anything for us but the minimum required to survive?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” the sergeant said. “She won’t, I guess.”

  “Congratulations, Sergeant. You get to live.” The officer pointed his weapon away from the squad leader.

  “When the next citizen arrives, what interrogation style will you use?”