Tatooine Ghost Read online

  “This was where the holocube sat?”

  “The Skywalker ’cube?” Tamora asked. “Yes. Kitster liked it there. I’d catch him staring at it sometimes, so lost in the past he wouldn’t hear me come in.”

  “Really?” It was a hard thing for Leia to imagine, someone having memories of Anakin Skywalker that he actually wanted to revisit. “So they really were close? That wasn’t a sales pitch?”

  “Anakin was his best friend. I didn’t want Kit to sell the holocube, but…” Tamora let the sentence trail and turned to wipe an eye. When she turned back, she was biting the inside of her lower lip to keep it from quivering. “After Anakin won the Boonta, the Jedi who took him sold his Podracer to a competitor. Anakin gave a few of those credits to Kit. It changed his life.”

  Behind Tamora, Han pointed to his chronometer, then made a circling motion with his finger. Speed it up; the Imperials will be coming.

  She nodded to Han, then continued to draw the woman out.

  “Changed his life?” More was required here than millions of credits. “How?”

  Tamora crouched down and began to rummage through the knickknacks that had once occupied the empty shelf. Holocubes of Tamora and the children, Kitster at the gates of a bustling mansion somewhere out in the desert, a pair of bantha tusk figurines. Finally, she found an old flimsiplast book and handed it to Leia.

  “Kitster used the credits to buy this.”

  “Par Ontham’s Guide to Etiquette?” Leia asked.

  “A classic!” C-3PO crunched over, his heavy droid feet crushing the shards on the floor into an even finer grit. “I have a recent edition in my memory banks, of course, but I’ve never recorded an original monograph. May I?”

  The grinding seemed to jar Tamora back to the present, and the trust that Leia had been working to build faded before her eyes. She pulled the book away from C-3PO’s outstretched hand. “Thank you for sharing this.” Leia passed the flimsiplast back to Tamora. “I take it Kitster put the information to good use?”

  Tamora accepted the book, but when she spoke, the wariness had returned. “He became a steward at the Three Moons and earned enough to buy his freedom. Eventually, he became the majordomo on the Rendala Estate.” She cast an uneasy look at the holocube of Kitster at the mansion gate, then seemed to recall Han and turned to face him. “But I doubt you came to talk about Kitster’s past.”

  “Not really,” Han said. “Look, we’re not out to hurt him.”

  “In fact, we’re even a little grateful to your husband for saving the painting,” Leia said. It was more or less true; the confusion that followed Killik Twilight’s “rescue” had helped her and the others avoid further Imperial entanglements. “And we’re willing to compensate Kitster very handsomely for the risk he took. But now we need it back, Tamora.”

  “Back?” Tamora echoed. “Who are you?”

  “That’s not important,” Leia said. “What is important is that we’ll pay enough that you and Kitster will never have to worry about finances again. And we’ll make sure you can enjoy it in safety.”

  “That’s very generous of you,” Tamora said. “I wish I knew what you were talking about.”

  “I think you do.” Leia picked up a child’s tunic. “You were rushing to leave when the Squibs arrived. You knew exactly what happened at the auction. Kitster commed you—or someone did.”

  Grunts’s voice came over Han’s comlink. “Stormtroopers at the base of the hill. A full squad.”

  Tamora’s face paled, and she turned to look out the large window bubble in the front wall. The view did not extend beyond the homes across the street.

  “Look, we’re talking as much money as the Imperials.” Han held out his hand and took a step toward her. “You owe it to your family to hear us out—and you don’t want anyone here when the stormtroopers arrive anyway. Kids make pretty good bargaining chips.”

  “I told you, my children aren’t here.” Tamora retreated toward the kitchen. “But nice try.”

  “Nice try?” Leia motioned Han to stay back. “He’s not kidding. They’re going to tear this place apart. When they find your children, they’ll take them hostage, and you’ll be lucky to get anything at all for the painting.”

  “And, of course, you would never do the same thing,” Tamora said.

  “Have we tried to open those pantry doors?” Leia countered. “We’re asking you to come with us, not telling.”

  Tamora’s mask of resolve finally melted into indecision. “Kit said to trust no one.” She was speaking more to herself than to anyone else. “He said the Imperials would try anything, and everyone else would be worse.”

  “And he was right.” Leia felt sure that, with a little patience, Tamora would turn to them for help. She had no choice, really. “Kitster has gotten himself involved in some very serious business. I don’t think he realizes how serious.”

  Tamora looked around the room, then shook her head. “I know he doesn’t. He said to throw some clothes in a bag and go. I didn’t even get to the bag.”

  “And then the Squibs were here,” Leia said. “You never had a chance.”

  Han’s comlink activated again. This time it was Chewbacca, telling them to come out the back way—and soon.

  “Time’s up.” Han stepped toward Tamora.

  Leia intercepted him and pulled him toward the courtyard door. “It’s her decision.”

  They had barely taken a step before Tamora called, “Wait.”

  “Great.” Han started toward the kitchen. “Let’s get the kids.”

  Tamora continued to block the entrance. “Show me your faces.”

  “Look, you really don’t want to know,” Han said. “It will only put us all in more danger.”

  “You mean put you in more danger,” Tamora countered. “If you want my help, you’ll have to trust me this far.”

  Leia looked at Han, then nodded. “She’s trusting us.”

  “Not yet,” Tamora pointed out.

  “Yeah—but it’s not like we have a choice.” Han pulled back his hood, revealing his handsome rogue’s face. Traces of red dye still showed where he had not applied the removing cream thickly enough along the edges of his sideburns and hairline. “Maybe you’ve seen me hanging around. I used to spend a lot of time on Tatooine.”

  The way Tamora’s jaw fell suggested that while she certainly recognized Han Solo, it was not from some seedy smuggler’s cantina.

  Leia also pulled back her hood. “I hope this will satisfy you.” She glanced out the front window bubble—no stormtroopers yet, but they could not be far away. “Because we really do have to leave.”

  “Oh, I’m satisfied.” Tamora started across the room, moving away from the kitchen. “We’ll leave the back way. It’s less noticeable.”

  “Uh—aren’t you forgetting something?” Han was scowling and looking into the kitchen at the plasteel pantry. “Like your kids, maybe?”

  “They’re in the back.” Tamora motioned Han into the adjacent dome area. “Do you really take me for the kind of mother who would lock her children in a pantry?”

  Chapter Six

  With eight beings crammed into a four-person landspeeder, Leia had to sit on Han’s lap while Chewbacca, who needed the room of the forward compartments, drove. Tamora sat on C-3PO’s lap in the front passenger seat, guiding them through a maze of dust-choked alleys deep into what looked like Mos Espa’s merchant quarter. Grunts rode in back opposite Leia and Han, grumbling to himself about Wookiee driving and holding the black-haired Banai children in his lap. Though neither one could have been more than six, they handled their fear with reserve, obeying their mother’s commands without hesitation and generally remaining as quiet and unobtrusive as children could with streams of tears pouring out of their brown eyes.

  Leia longed to comfort them, but limited her attempts to reassuring smiles and encouraging words. They did not strike her as the type of children who would react well to a stranger’s embrace, and even if they were, she knew
their mother would hardly welcome such familiarity from someone stalking their father.

  “Turn there.”

  Tamora pointed down a side lane so narrow that Chewbacca had to stop and spin the landspeeder on its repulsorlifts before entering. Leia slipped a hand beneath her sand cloak where it would be able to reach her blaster more quickly. Though Tamora had already circumvented two stormtrooper checkpoints, Leia remained nervous. From what she had seen so far, Mos Espa was a bustling dome-warren where catastrophe lurked around each blind curve and trouble sat watching from beneath every shade awning. It was no wonder that Tamora had proven so wary; anyone who lacked vigilance in this city would soon perish.

  That was something Leia would do well to keep in mind, even when dealing with Tamora. The woman had seemed duly impressed—even relieved—when she learned the Solos’ identity, and she was hardly likely to cause trouble with her children in the landspeeder. But anytime a mission involved strangers and Imperials, betrayal was always a possibility.

  And, so far, Tamora seemed unable to explain what Banai had in mind for Killik Twilight. She insisted he hated Imperials and—contrary to Leia’s assumption—would never sell to them, but Tamora remained at a loss to provide another good reason for the theft. The only excuse she had suggested was that Banai had impulsively taken the painting to save it, and that he imagined he would eventually find a buyer from Alderaan.

  It all sounded very noble, of course, and before the auction Leia had seen enough of Banai’s collection to realize he was a fellow art lover. Yet this was also a man who had displayed a holocube of Anakin Skywalker in his home. It seemed to Leia that any decent man would have put the holocube away when he learned his friend had grown up to become Darth Vader.

  Just as disturbing was the spirited bidding for the holocube. In any given group, there were always a few beings who glorified power even in its most brutal form. But there had been dozens of local bidders. And hundreds of local spectators had seemed to think the holocube was a fine piece of memorabilia.

  Maybe it was something in the Force around here, some sort of residual presence that blinded natives of Mos Espa to the monster Anakin Skywalker had become. That might even explain the waking nightmare Leia had suffered aboard the Falcon—some awful vestige of her father’s childhood that had sensed her coming and reached out.

  And if Anakin had left a trace in the Force, then perhaps Luke had left one as well. Both were powerful in the Force, and their residues becoming mixed might explain why she had seen Luke turning to the dark side.

  Leia had no idea whether such a thing was possible, of course. But she liked that explanation a lot better than the others that kept running through her mind.

  Tamora told Chewbacca to stop in front of a dingy mud-and-sand hut near the outskirts of the merchant district. Behind the hut stood a large enclosure of opaque fencing, topped every five meters by the electrodes of an antitheft field. Jutting up behind the barricade were the assorted canopies, turrets, and engine housings for vessels ranging from cargo skiffs to heavy space freighters. A band-cut metal sign above the door read WALD’S PARTS—GOOD AS NEW AT PRICES YOU CAN PAY.

  If Tamora was telling the truth, Banai was waiting for her inside. Chewbacca opened the cowling, and they piled out into the poststorm doldrums. The dust seemed to hang here even thicker than in Espa Heights, trapping the heat and making Tatooine’s already stifling atmosphere even more searing and unbreathable. But with the first sun hanging low on the horizon, the evening colors were worthy of Ob Khaddor. Above the roofs of the city hung a thick-banded sunset of scarlet, copper, and coral, topped by wispier ribbons of pink and yellow. And, growing swiftly larger, sinking down out of the brilliant curtain of color, were a dozen H-shaped silhouettes.

  Leia pointed at the expanding shapes. “Han, are those?…” A familiar whine sounded from the direction she was pointing, growing louder and rising in pitch, and she knew the answer. “TIEs!”

  Leia had barely spoken the word before the starfighters dropped in over Espa Heights and shrieked across the city, dust billowing off rooftops in their wakes. By the time Han and the others turned to look, the TIEs were on them, so low the air crackled with discharge from their ion engines. The squadron flashed past too fast for the eye to follow, trailing a series of sonic booms that blasted the dust-laden air into roiling gray haze, then screamed out over the desert and vanished.

  “Now that’s just impolite,” Han said, trying to smooth his static-charged hair. “The spaceport ought to revoke Imperial landing rights.”

  Chewbacca, whom the ion static had rendered into a fair imitation of a two-and-a-half-meter bottle brush, groaned and pointed back over Mos Espa. A flight of five Sentinel-class landing craft was descending out of the lower sun, their noses already rising as they decelerated. At 54 stormtroopers per vessel, that would be 270 soldiers—a full assault company.

  “Oh my…” Tamora gasped. “What has Kitster gotten us into?”

  The look of panic on Tamora’s face might have been counterfeit, but not the way her cheeks paled. No one could fake that. She turned to Leia.

  “All that for a painting?”

  “Imperial commanders are accustomed to getting their way.” Leia exchanged a worried glance with Han, then gently guided the Banai children toward their mother. “Why don’t you take the children ahead.”

  “Of course… the children.” Tamora held out her hands and cast a worried look back at the approaching troop shuttles. “We’ll be inside.”

  Once they were gone, Han asked, “What do you think? Did somebody recognize us at the auction?”

  “Maybe,” Leia said. “We can’t really know, but I think we should assume the worst.” She cast a pointed glance in the direction of Grunts.

  Han nodded and turned to the Weequay. “Uh, thanks for all your help, but—”

  “This isn’t my fight.” The Weequay turned to go. “No way I’m sticking around.”

  Leia knew better than to offer a Weequay money for his help, but she wanted to repay him for the risks he was taking just by keeping their secret. “Grunts, if you want a lift offplanet—”

  “Not bad enough to ride with the Wookiee.” Grunts glanced in the direction of the landing craft, which were now fanning out across the city and raising their rear wings in preparation for touchdown. “Besides, when I do make it out of here, I want to get where I’m going.”

  Chewbacca rumbled something that sounded like “good idea” but might have been “good luck.”

  Leia and Han pulled up their sand hoods and followed Tamora into Wald’s Parts. The interior was dim, relatively cool, and not all that dusty by Mos Espa standards. It was also a wreck, with repulsorlift elements, servodrives, and droid components scattered across the floor. Tamora and her children were in the rear of the hut, where the lower half of a vaporator lay diagonally across the door to the yard.

  Han turned to Chewbacca. “I thought you handled the Squibs.”

  Chewbacca groaned indignantly.

  “You left them locked inside a recycling bin?” Leia gasped. “Chewie, it must be an oven inside!”

  Chewbacca shrugged and growled.

  “I don’t care how hard they are to kill,” Leia said. “We can’t leave them to bake.”

  “Kit?” Tamora was working her way through the disarray, peering under half-toppled shelves and into the dark corners. “Kitster, where are you?”

  The children, hands firmly clasped in Tamora’s, were adding their own voices to the search.

  Han unholstered his blaster and turned to C-3PO. “Keep watch.”

  “Certainly.” C-3PO trained his photoreceptors out the door. “At present, there is nothing out there but our landspeeder.”

  “Threepio, just tell us if someone comes this way,” Leia said.

  “Oh, I see,” C-3PO said. “Certainly, Mistress Leia.”

  Han was already several steps inside, studying the room. Seeing that Chewbacca had already unslung his bowcaster and was quietly
covering Tamora, Leia motioned Han to follow and went over to the service desk. The door to the rear office was closed. She leaned across the counter and found the floor littered with datachips, credit vouchers, and expensive compact power cells.

  “Not a robbery. We aren’t that lucky.”

  Leia started to go around the counter, but Han—ever the gallant, at least when it came to her—slid over the top and beat her to the office door. He hit the OPEN key on the control pad, and nothing happened.

  “Locked.” Han stepped back and pointed his blaster at the control pad. “Watch—”

  The door opened a crack, and the muzzle of a blaster rifle appeared in front of Han’s hood. Leia started to step behind the counter to position herself next to the door, but a droning Rodian voice brought her to a halt.

  “Stay put, or his head is smoke.” The Rodian shoved the blaster into Han’s hood, forcing him back, but remained out of Leia’s line of fire. “And you there, what were you going to do to my door?”

  “Look fella, we’re just trying to find a friend.” Han was careful to keep his blaster pointed away from the Rodian, but he was also careful not to drop it. “We don’t have anything to do with this mess.”

  “I don’t believe you,” the Rodian said, still speaking through the partially opened door. “You thought your friend might be hiding in my office?”

  Chewbacca arrived at the opposite end of the counter and pointed his bowcaster through the door—apparently he could see the Rodian.

  “Wald!” Tamora appeared from behind Chewbacca. “Put that thing down and let me see Kitster.”

  Wald did not lower the weapon. “What makes you think Kit is here?”

  “Because he told me to meet him here.” Tamora’s concern sounded genuine and substantial. “He has business with these people.”

  “In my parts yard? What kind of business?”

  “She can’t tell you that,” Han said.

  “Then I guess I can’t keep my finger off this trigger.” Wald shoved Han’s head back. “My strength isn’t what it used to be.”