Hin had promptly turned and handed his energy rifle to the Princess. He explained to Luke that he felt more comfortable with the enormous axe the Coway had provided for him. Kee’s attitude was more civilized, and he elected to hang onto his rifle. Or perhaps “civilized” wasn’t the right word.
He was helping with the emplacement of a net when a reverberating crackle echoed like a thunderbolt down the winding approach tunnel. According to Halla, the invaders were at present about halfway between the cavern city and the surface exit.
“E-eleven trooper rifle,” the Princess commented expertly, as the last echoes of the shot died away, “quarter-centimeter aperture, continuous fire on low-power only.” She fought to shift the heavy weapon Hin had given her to a more comfortable ready position.
While their identification of the source of that roar was somewhat less precise than the Princess’, the Coway recognized its ominousness. They embarked on a final frenzy of preparation.
A call came from a series of spread-out forward scouts. Coway started to vanish before Luke’s eyes, moving, jumping, secreting themselves where no hiding place seemed possible. They disappeared into crevices and cracks, into the ground, slipped into holes in the cave ceiling, froze behind false flowstone curtains.
Luke and the Princess hurried to join up with Halla. Both Yuzzem were moving to their predetermined positions, mingling with the less concealed Coway. The two ’droids concealed themselves out of firing range.
Halla concluded her conversation with one of the three chiefs, turned to greet them.
“How many?” was Luke’s first question.
“The scouts aren’t sure,” she told them. “For one thing, the Imperials have advance hunters out, too. That was the source of the shot we all heard. Also, they’re backed up through the cave. But if I have Coway numerology figured right, they think seventy at least.”
“All on foot?” the Princess inquired.
“Yes. They’ve no choice, which is good for us. The tunnel is too choked with rubble and too narrow in many places for even a small personnel carrier to slip through.”
“That’s something,” Luke observed, trying to bolster his own spirits as much as anyone else’s. “We won’t have to cope with mobile armor or heavy weapons.”
Halla chuckled. “Why would Grammel think they’d be needed? Not against our poor primitive Coway, certainly. Sixty, seventy Imperial troops equipped with energy weapons and personal armor ought to be sufficient to capture a few poorly armed fugitives.”
“Sarcasm aside,” Luke pointed out unarguably, “it’s going to take more than bravery and courage to keep this from turning into a massacre of our friends.”
“I’d argue with you, Luke boy,” the old woman murmured pleasantly. “Give me bravery and courage anytime.”
“Just give me one clear shot at Vader,” the Princess snarled, her hands tightening on the rifle stock. The hatred that flamed in those eyes belonged on a much less fragile face. “Save that one chance, I ask nothing of life.”
Luke looked down at her, murmured with feeling, “I hope you get it, Leia.”
“That brings up a distressing possibility,” she said later, as they climbed to take up places behind a bulwark of striped travertine. “What if Vader doesn’t come with the attacking force?”
“He’s coming,” Luke assured her.
“The Force?”
He nodded slowly. “Besides, as you pointed out before, he knows you and I are here. He’ll come along to supervise the capture,” he said, then added after a knotted swallow, “to make sure we’re taken alive.”
Sighting the heavy rifle over the edge of the wall, Leia muttered forcefully, “That’s one thing he’ll never do.” Then she relaxed slightly, her earnest gaze focusing unshakably on her companion. “If it should come to that, Luke …”
“Come to what?”
“Being taken alive.” He indicated understanding and she went on. “Promise me that out of any feeling you have for the Rebellion, out of any feeling you might have for me, that you’ll put that saber at your hip to my throat.”
Luke stared at her uncomfortably. “Leia, I …”
“Swear it!” she demanded, her voice that of a steel kitten.
Luke mumbled something that satisfied her. They became aware a Coway was calling to them softly from above. Halla looked down from her position high on the cave wall to their left.
“Don’t you two ever shut up? Hush now, children … company’s coming.”
Silence reigned supreme in the tunnel. Luke strained till the muscles in back of his eyes hurt, but the Coway concealment was perfect. Dozens were hidden within meters of him, but he could detect signs of only a few. Close by and evident were only Leia, Halla, and Kee, the muzzle of his rifle protruding like a broken stone from between a pair of huge stalagmites. Of Hin there was no sign.
So clear and still was the dead air of the tunnel that Luke heard the metallic pad-pad of the first Imperial troops before he could see them. Shortly thereafter, the familiar robot-like forms came into view. Flesh and blood beneath the armor, the distant figures carried their own rifles casually, at waist level. Obviously, they were expecting little if any resistance.
As he studied them Luke realized that the Coway were right, in such close confinement the energy armor would work against the wearer. Such armor rendered the person inside it invulnerable to most energy weapons, save at vital points like the joints and eyes where protection was necessarily weaker. More important, the armor also restricted its wearer’s vision. Not so critical in a battle on a ship, say, with its wide, unobstructed corridors. But in the jumbled tunnel, vision was more vital than an extra shot.
As if on signal, four Coway, two on either side of the narrow pathway, materialized silently from invisible hiding places. The two advance scouts were dragged from view with astonishing speed. Not so astonishing to Luke, though. He’d experienced the power of Coway muscles. In the resulting silence he thought he could hear the cracking made by limbs and bone through restrictive armor.
Nervously, he waited for something to happen. Everyone knew that if the four Coway selected for the task of eliminating the scouts bungled their assignment, if they wasted even a few seconds, one of the scouts might have time to call to the troops behind him via his helmet communicator. Surprise, the defenders’ most potent weapon, would be lost.
He was still waiting when the single Coway slipped up behind him, so quietly that Luke almost exclaimed aloud. The native made a quieting sound, performed a gesture with its facial muscles which might have been a smile, and vanished as silently as it’d come. It left behind two rifles and two pistols—the arms carried by the ambushed Imperial scouts.
Luke regarded the little arsenal joyfully. Slipping completely out of sight behind the travertine wall, he disengaged the power pack from one of the rifles and used it to bring his lightsaber up to maximum charge. Then he traded his pistol for a fresh one, resumed his place next to the vigilant Princess.
“We ought to get the other rifle to Hin,” he whispered to her, watching the tunnel.
“No time,” she disagreed reasonably. “No telling where he is now. Can’t risk it.”
“I suppose you’re right.” He glanced down at the still half-charged rifle and its fully charged duplicate, plus the pair of pistols. “At least we’ll be well armed for a while longer than I thought.”
The rhythmic tread of metal-clad feet pounding rock finally reached them. All thoughts of conversation vanished as the main body of troops hove into view. They were marching cautiously, three and four abreast, as they rounded the same narrow place the two ill-fated scouts had entered moments before. The phosphorescent blue-yellow light of the growths in the tunnel gleamed off slick armor and immaculate weaponry.
Closer, closer they came, until Luke was afraid they would march right up to his wall before Halla and the chiefs agreed on the time to attack.
A strident, powerful voice boomed out in Coway. The cavern dissolve
d into chaos. A waterfall of sound deluged the air where seconds before there had been only silence. Luke felt the noise itself, concentrated and magnified by the cave walls, would be sufficient to paralyze most men.
The soldiers caught in the maelstrom were Imperial troops. But they were not the Emperor’s palace guard. They were men and women stationed too long on a backward, desolate world where discipline and training relaxed concurrently with morale. The screams of human and Coway howled through the cave.
Bursts of intense light from energy weapons created a beserk cat’s cradle of destruction in the bottled-down tunnel. Luke found himself firing the pistol over and over. Next to him came steady, confident thrums as Leia pinched off bursts from the heavy rifle.
Higher up, Halla and Kee began pouring a murderous fire down on the mass of confused, densely packed troops. Soon they had to slacken their fire and pick targets with more care, as the Coway began erupting from beneath cloth concealed with sand to pull startled troopers into hidden pits, or coming out from behind half-stalagmites, or dropping from crevices in the ceiling.
Seeing friend and foe inextricably intermingled, Luke charged down the slight slope brandishing saber in one hand and pistol in the other. Despite his admonitions, Leia had discarded her rifle. Pistol in hand, she was rushing after him to join in the hand-to-hand combat.
She passed him feet first, her kick all but decapitating a dazed soldier who didn’t turn quite fast enough.
It was hellishly dangerous in the tunnel, what with energy bolts crackling wildly in all directions. Luke cut through the armored legs of one soldier before the latter could bring his pistol to bear. Without realizing it, he then swung blindly backward. The blue of his saber intersected a beam fired point-blank at him by an Imperial rifle.
Turning, he barely had time to utter a silent thanks to Ben Kenobi. The trooper was so shocked at the apparent coincidence of having his shot blocked that he didn’t react in time. Thinking something had to be wrong with his weapon, he readjusted it to compensate for the imaginary fault. As he swung it upward again Luke jabbed him through the sternum.
Turning, he plunged back into the thickest fighting. He was hunting for one figure. It finally showed itself, standing aloof near the rear of the fighting crowd.
“Vader! Darth Vader!”
A wounded trooper charged him and he had to pause to deal with the more immediate threat.
But the Dark Lord had heard him. Surprised, the giant black shape activated his own saber and strode into the mob, trying to cut his way clear to Luke.
The Princess was also trying to fight her way through the crowd. But she was not heading for Vader. Instead, she was moving toward a stalagmite shattered at the top, a she-falcon flying for her prey-perch.
Under the direction of Captain-Supervisor Grammel, about ten of the troopers climbed for high ground, intending to set up a covering fire the entire length of the tunnel. They achieved the summit of the small ridge and were lining up their weapons on the crowd below. Like hairy projectiles, Hin and several Coways dropped from hiding places above.
Roaring with delight, the huge Yuzzem grabbed two of the armored troops at once, banged them together until their armor started to crack at the joints. Meanwhile, the muscular Coway wreaked havoc among the other soldiers.
Vader paused in the midst of his fighting, angrily evaluated the way the battle was going. He shook a threatening fist in Luke’s general direction, then turned to the shaken officer nearby.
“Grammel! Re-form all survivors at the surface.”
“Yes, my Lord,” the distraught Captain-Supervisor acknowledged. Using his multiple-channel helmet unit, he signaled the retreat to his remaining troops.
Small clumps of soldiers began to break contact with the Coways, started rushing for the surface. Luke was startled to see how few remained.
The soldiers were pulling back in good order. At that point one of the Coway chiefs hiding high above rose and signaled. His order was relayed up the tunnel from one concealed native to the next. Several Coway pulled on a vine cable. Their action sent a pinned stalactite weighing several tons plunging from its eons-old growing place. It landed with a titanic crash. Half a dozen soldiers were mashed beneath it.
Further reduced in number, the troopers started to panic, to throw down their weapons and sprint up the passageway as fast as their armor would permit them. Most of them ran under the nets which waiting Coway dropped on them from above. Those same nets had held against Yuzzem. The troopers who lay flailing at the confining strands had no chance at all.
Leia Organa reached the top of the pinnacle, lay down across it and positioned the heavy rifle she’d retrieved. She fought to focus on a single, black-clad figure striding relentlessly and without panic up the tunnel. Vader was surrounded by Grammel and a few remaining soldiers. She couldn’t wait. Soon the Dark Lord would pass from sight.
As she activated the trigger, Vader turned and gestured to the several troops lagging behind. A powerful beam of energy struck him in the side, sent him spinning to the ground. Leia smiled. Her joy turned to disappointment when she looked back through the blunt telescopic sight.
Vader had rolled over and was beating at the smoke issuing from his left side. There was a gaping hole in his protective cloak and the black armor beneath had been partly melted away. But the full force of the energy bolt had missed him.
The Dark Lord got to his feet and seemed for a second to be staring straight at her. Then he was moving again, still not in panic but with considerably more energy, up toward the way out.
Frantically the Princess reaimed, fired … just as Vader passed from view. The bolt exploded against the lowest part of the ceiling, annihilating rock and mineral but doing no damage to the evil figure beyond.
“Well, darn,” she said softly, irritated at herself. Picking up her pistol and leaving the rifle atop the stalagmite, she started to pick her way downward to rejoin the fight.
There wasn’t much fighting left to rejoin. Caught completely by surprise, the soldiers had been decimated. Now the remnants, helpless and dispirited, were being cut down methodically by the victorious Coway. Those who tried to break from the fighting were picked off by well-aimed bolts from Kee and Halla.
She found Luke stalking wild-eyed among the carnage, trying to dissuade the hooting, yelping Coway from reducing the wounded to small pieces. Breathing out the nausea of battle, he jerked around and glared at her when she grabbed his arm.
“Forget it, Luke,” she advised him softly. “Leave them alone.”
“They’re killing the wounded,” he cried in anguish. “Look at them … look what they’re doing!”
“Yes, it’s almost human,” she commented, “although the Imperials would have been a little neater.”
“You approve?” he said accusingly. She didn’t reply, merely stared back at him until he sagged, utterly worn out and saddened.
“I’m sorry, Luke,” she told him gently, “but there’s very little in this universe that rises above the mean and petty. Maybe the stars themselves. Come,” she urged him with a cheering smile, “let’s find Hin and Kee and Halla and the ’droids and celebrate.”
“You go,” he told her, pulling his arm free authoritatively but without rancor. “There’s nothing here I want to celebrate.”
She looked after him as he went striding off through the residue of battle, ignoring the Coway intent on their massacre, drowning in his own unknowable thoughts.…
XII
WHEN the last drop of blood had dried to a black crust on the cave floor, the refugees gathered together to decide what to do next.
Halla was talking to the Coway chiefs. “They say that those who escaped have left one of their vehicles above, to watch the exit. Probably hoping we’ll jump out into their sights.”
“Is there another way out?” Luke asked tiredly.
“Yes, close by,” One of the chiefs, ignoring its badly burnt arm, mumbled urgently at Halla: “He wants to know if there?
??s anything they can do to help us?”
“They can show us that other way out,” Luke informed her. “They’ve done enough. We have to hurry. We may have delayed too long already.”
“Too long for what?” the Princess inquired curiously. “We’ll be well away from here by the time Vader can return with reinforcements.” She looked thoughtful. “I don’t think he’ll trouble the Coway. It’s us and the crystal he wants.”
“That’s what I’m talking about, Leia,” he replied worriedly. “I don’t think Vader’s gone back to the town.” He pointed. “When he passed from my mind, or rather, when the disturbance he generates in the Force passed from my mind, he was traveling that way. Not back toward the town, but toward the temple.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Halla objected strenuously. “He has no idea where the temple of Pomojema is.”
“Vader is much more attuned to the Force, albeit its dark side, than I am, Halla. It’s likely that he can sense the crystal’s natural disturbance. It would be faint, but someone as powerful as Vader could barely detect it. And he has more than that to go on. We were traveling in as straight a line as possible. He needs merely to plot along it and hunt for the crystal’s effect when he angles off his course.
“He mustn’t reach the temple before us.” He started off up the tunnel. Leia was quickly alongside, matching him stride for anxious stride.
She beat at the dry cave air with a clenched fist. “I had him, Luke! He was standing there in my scope and I missed him.” She hiked on, brooding on the nearness of the thing. “I was too excited, too nervous. I didn’t take enough time and I made a bad shot.”
“Your shooting, what I could see of it,” he countered, a mite jealously, “was excellent. Better than I could have done.”
Leia said nothing for a moment, then added deferentially, “I couldn’t have survived that kind of intense infighting. Who taught you to use a lightsaber like that? Kenobi?”
Luke nodded. “I owe everything to that old man, and wherever he’s gone to, he knows it.” He patted the shaft of his father’s weapon reassuringly.