Tatooine Ghost Read online

  Mon Mothma’s image finally flickered into existence over the holocomm, her hair disheveled and her eyes still heavy with sleep. “Leia? I’m sorry—”

  “It’s okay,” Leia interrupted. “But I’m transmitting hot. We have only sixty seconds before I have to shut down.”

  Mon Mothma’s expression grew suddenly more alert. “I understand. Have you recovered the painting?”

  “Not yet, but neither have the Imperials,” Leia said. “And I have news about Wraith’s mission. Local intelligence suggests that indigenous forces are already moving into position and can’t be contacted. Repeat, they cannot be contacted.”

  “Local intelligence? On Tatooine?”

  “It’s a long story, and we don’t have the time,” Leia said. “But I believe it to be reliable.”

  The worry lines around Mon Mothma’s mouth deepened. “Leia, after Luke passed along your report, I made the decision to recall the Wraiths. The order has already been coded. It goes out in thirty hours.”

  “Can you cancel?”

  Mon Mothma bit her lip, her gaze dropping in thought, then finally shook her head. “Not without the painting. We don’t know how long it would take the Imperials to start cracking the codes with an old key—”

  “But they would know about the network,” Leia finished. “And that might be enough.”

  “You know what we would be risking.”

  Leia did—a Star Destroyer battle group, complete with Wedge Antilles, the Wraiths, and probably the Rogues and several other crack squadrons as well.

  “I understand,” she said. “But give us the thirty hours.”

  “Us?” Mon Mothma asked.

  Leia nodded. “Han’s on board with this.”

  Mon Mothma smiled. “Tell him welcome back. The New Republic has missed him.”

  Leia glanced over and found Han sneering at the hologram. “He’ll be very happy to hear that. And please tell your aides to monitor all channels of communication. I don’t know how we’ll be contacting you again, but it won’t be with this unit.”

  “I will,” Mon Mothma said. “And Leia—may the Force be with you.”

  “Thanks—we’re going to need it.”

  Leia ended the transmission, then immediately shut the unit down and opened the outer case.

  “That’s what I don’t like about that woman.” Han knelt beside Leia and removed the ghost-wave encoder, then rerouted the signal feeds so the unit would operate as a normal holocomm. “She always makes the safe play.”

  “It’s the right play, Han.”

  “You see—that’s another thing I don’t like.”

  Han zipped the transmitter into a pocket, then closed the case and carried the unit over to Borno.

  “Thanks, pal.” Han passed the case up. “You be careful.”

  “And you, my friends. May the sand never melt your boot soles.”

  “May you always find shade from the suns,” Leia replied. “If there is ever anything else the New Republic government can do for you, please—”

  “Do for us?” Borno laughed. “I do not think so, Princess. Governments are what we are hiding from.”

  The Askajian turned and, waving a pudgy hand, urged his dewback into a gallop.

  Chapter Nineteen

  For a change Han felt pretty good about being on Tatooine. No price on his head, no hibernation sickness, no Jabba the Hutt—that alone made the place a sun-planet paradise. He was at the wheel of an agile hoverscout flying all-out through the heart of the Jundland Wastes, the afternoon shadows just beginning to camouflage the boulders in the canyon bottom and the prettiest woman in the galaxy clutching the crash bar beside him.

  Maybe Leia had been thinking about the same things—and about how she’d almost lost Han again—as well. She was constantly fussing over him, offering him water, checking to be certain he was cool enough, generally telling him she loved him in a thousand small ways. Not that he was complaining, but Han failed to understand why. He had been acting like a Hutt since their return from Dathomir, treating the Provisional Council as though it was a rival and all but demanding that Leia choose between them.

  Then, when she had chosen him over duty back in the cave, he had finally seen that this was one bluff he could not afford to win. Withdrawing from the council would give Leia a huge marker to call in, and sooner or later, Han would have to sacrifice something in return—maybe high-stakes sabacc, his wanderlust, or possibly even the Falcon. Whatever it was, he knew he could not surrender such a big part of himself and remain who he was, just as he knew that Leia could not give up her work on the council and remain the woman he loved.

  Mostly, though, Han really did not want the Imperials to get their hands on that code key. Whatever his feelings toward the Provisional Council—and they remained ambivalent, at least toward Mon Mothma and the others who had been so ready to condemn Leia to a loveless marriage—Han loved the New Republic, and he would have hated himself for allowing his hurt feelings to cost it one of its most effective and best-kept secrets.

  But Han was not about to admit any of this. He was enjoying the attention too much—though he was tiring of hearing Leia say, “Careful, nerf herder.”

  Almost as good as all the attention from Leia, Han had finally outsmarted the Squibs. With the sandcrawler’s initializer core hidden in the speeder’s cargo bay, Grees and his compatriots would still be in the cave, struggling to bring the reactor core on-line when Herat returned with her clanmates to bury their dead and reclaim their property.

  Even the Imperials were behaving as expected. Ten minutes after Han and the others parted ways with Borno, a trio of TIEs had begun to circle the Askajians’ position. Twenty minutes later—by which time the Solo party was seventy kilometers away—the expected assault shuttle had arrived on the scene. Han would probably never know whether the Imperials had sent a squad to capture Borno—and if so, whether they had succeeded—but the shuttle had spent only a few minutes on the ground before streaking back into the heart of the Great Chott.

  Now Herat was guiding Han and the others through a labyrinth of deep canyons and narrow gorges, where it would prove difficult—practically impossible—for any spy satellite to find them. Their goal, the Jawa had explained, was an oasis deep in Tusken territory, a sacred ghost village on the far side of the mountains. An entire tribe of Sand People had once been found dead there, hacked to pieces by an angry ghost—or so the Sand People believed. Now all Tuskens stopped there to present gifts and make sacrifices before leaving the area. Herat assured them that the Sand People intended to offer Kitster and his painting to this “ghost.” All Han and Leia need do to recover Killik Twilight was wait until the Tuskens departed, then walk down and get it.

  But if they wanted to save their friend, they would have to elude the Tusken sentries and sneak into the village without being killed. If that was their intention, Herat hoped they would understand if she waited in the hoverscout with the engines running and the blaster cannon armed.

  Assuming things went smoothly, Han thought they might be back aboard the Falcon by dawn—in plenty of time to report their success to Mon Mothma. They continued through the canyons for another hour before Herat finally guided them into a narrow, rising gulch, then climbed to a vast sandrock plateau painted in crimson and rust by the setting suns.

  Han stopped the hoverscout just within the gulch.

  “I don’t know about this,” he said. “It’d be pretty easy for an Imperial eye to spot us out there.”

  Herat babbled a ten-second reply.

  “She says it’s the only way,” C-3PO replied. “But we are a long way from the Great Chott, and there is no shortage of speeder traffic out here.”

  “Hubaduja,” Herat added.

  “At least two or three vehicles per week.”

  Han glanced over at Leia, who continued to clench the crash bar with one white-knuckled hand. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Yes, let’s go out where you can drive really fast.
” She shook her head. “Why are you asking me? I don’t know where this ‘ghost oasis’ is.”

  She finally released the crash bar and activated the hoverscout’s on-board holomap, which instantly displayed the designator SSC17 at the center. An instant later, a three-dimensional holograph of the immediate area appeared around the symbol, showing SSC17 at the edge of a small crab-shaped plateau, the maze of canyons through which they had just come delineated behind it in great detail. There were only three other designators on the map, one at the front of the display showing six buildings labeled SETTLEMENT, one on Leia’s side of the plateau reading HERMITAGE—ABANDONED, and a third, on Han’s side near the rolling sands of the Great Dune Sea, marked MONASTERY/PALACE—OCCUPANTS UNKNOWN.

  Han pushed a finger into the holograph and stopped at the settlement. “That the place, Herat?”

  The Jawa answered, and C-3PO translated, “You are certain you can guarantee that her clan’s sandcrawler will still be at the cave when she returns, Captain Solo? She is most nervous about the Squibs.”

  Chewbacca asked if there was a spare initializer on board.

  “No,” came the answer.

  “Then it’ll be there. What would the Imperials want with a rolling recycling factory?” Han wiggled his finger in the holograph. “Is this the place or not? We can’t leave this holomap on all evening. We didn’t have time to deactivate the transponder.”

  “You didn’t?” Leia gasped. “You might have mentioned that before you let me turn it on.”

  “Relax,” Han said. “It’s an Imperial transponder. Even if the operator notices the signal, he’s not going to get too worked up about it.”

  Herat chiddled doubtfully, then continued.

  “She says the oasis is beyond Wayfar, and more toward the old Kenobi place. Your bearing should be about a third—”

  “Kenobi?” Leia repeated. “Obi-Wan Kenobi’s?” She hadn’t realized they were so close.

  The Jawa shook her head and explained that it belonged to old Ben Kenobi.

  “She says he has been gone for quite some time,” C-3PO added. “But I’m sure it’s the same place. Master Luke made the same mistake when—”

  “We get it, Goldenrod.” Han moved his finger to the indicated place. “That about right?”

  Herat chiddled that it was. Han set a waypoint on the compass, then shut off the holomap and started across the plateau, Leia muttering something to herself about Luke, Obi-Wan, and thinking things through.

  A stop at Obi-Wan’s was out of the question. Leia knew that. With the Imperials searching for them, Kitster bound for sacrifice at the ghost village, and Wraith Squadron on the verge of being recalled from the Askaj mission, they had no time for side trips. But she could not stop thinking about the hermitage. Luke’s journey as a Jedi had begun there, and he had told her once that he found it a good place to go to think matters through.

  The few times Leia had been there, she’d felt the same—and thinking matters through was something she was feeling an increasing need to do. The encounters with her father’s old friends, her grandmother’s diary, the visions—or hallucinations, or whatever they were—it was all too much to ignore. The Force was touching her in a way it never had before. Perhaps it was only her father, reaching out to her as he had at Bakura, seeking the forgiveness she had refused to grant him then. Perhaps it was a response to all the transitions she had been going through during the last few years—from hero of the Rebellion to public servant, from Princess to ambassador of a lost world, from single woman to wife. Or perhaps it was the Tatoo system itself—the twin suns exerting some peculiar influence on her Skywalker bloodline, just as they sometimes grew impossibly luminous or played electromagnetic sabacc with starship sensor systems. She was not fool enough to pretend she knew.

  What Leia did know was that she could not ask Han to take her to Obi-Wan’s. Every hour of delay in reaching the oasis increased the likelihood that Kitster Banai would be sacrificed to the ghost-spirit and that the Imperials would find them again, and she would not endanger others while she tried to sort out her own jumbled feelings. No matter how powerfully she was beginning to feel she should.

  Besides, Leia had another way to explore her connection to this place and to her past. With Han finally steering a straight course and three more hours before they reached the oasis, now seemed a good time to resume viewing her grandmother’s journal. It might even keep her mind off Han’s piloting.

  21:18:16

  Today, I came home to find Cliegg Lars waiting on my stairs with a huge carton of produce from his farm—pallies, a hubba gourd, bloddles, podpoppers, even a bristlemelon. He said prices were down in Mos Eisley so he decided to try his luck up here, but I think he had another reason for coming… at least I hope so. He showed me how to burn the spines off the bristlemelon, and we shared it for dinner. I don’t know if I have ever tasted anything so sweet before.

  “What are you listening to?” Han asked. Leia was glad to see that he kept his eyes focused through the windscreen, for night was falling and they were flying along at a speed that only Han Solo could think was safe. “That voice sounds vaguely familiar.”

  “It should,” Leia answered. “It belongs to Shmi Skywalker—my grandmother.”

  Han peered over into Leia’s lap. “Your what?”

  The Jawa erupted into panicked jabbering.

  “Dear oh dear!” C-3PO yelled. “We’ll be smashed—”

  Chewbacca let out a scolding growl, and Leia looked up to see a plume of dust ahead rapidly swelling into a cloud.

  “All right, don’t get your fur all matted,” Han said.

  He casually steered into the thickest part of the dust plume, and, through Han’s window, Leia glimpsed the flailing club-tails of a dozen wild galoomps. The hoverscout emerged on the other side of the cloud and continued on its way.

  “Your grandmother?” Han asked, this time keeping his eyes forward.

  Leia explained the journal’s significance and how she had come by it.

  Han shook his head in amazement. “That must be something, knowing who your grandmother is.”

  “Only if I don’t end up plastered to the backside of a bantha.” Leia turned the journal so he would not be able to see the display. “Keep your eyes on the… well, whatever’s out there.”

  “Just keep the volume up. I’m interested, too.”

  Leia did not miss the envy in Han’s voice. He had no idea who either of his own grandmothers might be; he had been raised aboard a tramp freighter with no knowledge of his real parents, and the closest thing he had ever known to a grandmother was Dewlanna. That was another thing they had in common, she supposed—and it was probably part of the motivation behind his desire to have a family.

  20:08:17

  Cliegg brought his son, Owen, up to help load some vaporators he was buying—though I suspect the vaporators were an excuse to introduce us. He could have bought them in Mos Eisley more easily. Owen’s about your age, Annie, with his father’s square face and blue eyes. He doesn’t resemble the way I picture you, but it was impossible to look at him without thinking of you, and how you must be changing from the little boy I knew.

  After that day, all hint of resentment seemed to vanish from Shmi’s attitude toward her master. She cheerfully did everything Watto asked, sometimes even anticipating his requests or tending to tasks he had not thought of himself. This only served to make the Toydarian more clinging and possessive, often to the point at which he found excuses to keep Shmi at the junkyard until well after dark. Shmi never complained, even when Watto kept her so busy she had no time to do more than point the diary camera at the stars and whisper to herself that she knew Annie was happy and doing well. And this entry she never failed to make, for Anakin remained at the center of her thoughts—even when it became obvious that Cliegg had fallen as much in love with her as she had with him.

  At least once a week, Shmi would return home to find Cliegg waiting on her steps with a box of produce f
rom his moisture farm, occasionally even with a bouquet of hubba blossoms. It wasn’t long before she gave him the security codes.

  20:51:18

  While I was having my weekly drink with Watto today, he told me that my “suitor” had tried to buy me for a landspeeder. Watto seemed to think I would be insulted that Cliegg had not offered more, but I’m not. Watto doesn’t understand how much a landspeeder is worth to a moisture farmer.

  The next months went by quickly. Cliegg tried several more times to buy Shmi, eventually offering much more than a slave of her age could be expected to bring. Instead of being angry with Watto for taking advantage of Cliegg’s feelings to drive up the price, Shmi seemed to accept the Toydarian’s refusals with amused patience, as though she knew he would eventually yield.

  It seemed to Leia that Watto’s behavior was closer to that of a jealous beau than an owner. He began to keep Shmi closer to him than ever, occasionally closing shop so he could take her on journeys to bid on wrecks. Twice, he even made a side trip to show her the sights, once taking her to Mos Eisley and another time to see the magnificent alabaster pinnacles of the Rock Palace. The whole time, according to Shmi’s diary, he talked about nothing but how hard the life on a moisture farm was, and he even stopped at a couple to show her.

  Shmi told Watto that she wanted him to sell her to Cliegg for a fair price. Watto told Shmi not to see Cliegg anymore.

  Shmi reported that she laughed in his face.

  Soon after, she came home late to discover Cliegg waiting in her hut for the second time in a week.

  06:22:19

  I poured us some pallie wine and made a light dinner, then Cliegg announced he had talked “it” over with Owen. They had decided to sell the moisture farm so they could buy me from Watto. And if Watto refused, they were going to swat him and use the money to buy us all passage offplanet.