“If we do catch up with Vader,” she went on, “and we must, you’re going to need both your skill with the saber and the Force. If only I’d taken more time!”
Luke shushed her and the others. They were nearing the exit to the surface.
Dim, misty air filtered down to them. Even that dank light was intoxicating after so many days underground, traveling by the glow of unnatural vegetation. Several bodies lay scattered about, Imperial troopers too badly wounded to regain the surface.
The two Coway who’d come along directed them into a nearby crevice in the wall. Both Yuzzem grunted and had to inhale for all they were worth in order to fit through. They emerged behind a clump of thick brush at least twenty meters from the main entrance. One of the Coway pointed, indicating the location of the armored vehicle on guard. Luke saw the squat shape, its muzzle angled directly down the mouth of the tunnel they’d been standing in only moments before. He shuddered.
With soft mumbles and alien gestures, the Coway took their leave, vanishing back down the hole. Luke crawled on his belly, freeing the exit for those behind him.
When all five were once again on the surface of Mimban, Luke turned to crawl clear.
“Just a darn minute, Luke boy!” Halla whispered. “Do you think you can catch up to this Vader on foot?”
Luke paused, returned to stare at the silent crawler poised over the Coway exit. “All right, so what do we do, Halla? I agree … we have to have transportation. But that armed crawler happens to be full of Imperial troops.”
Halla studied the vehicle. “Its upper port is wide open … big enough for two men. I can see two … no, one trooper with his head exposed. Probably giving information to those below.” The head disappeared. “He’s gone now. We should get in the branches hanging over it.”
“Then what?” the Princess asked. “We jump inside?”
“Listen,” the old woman protested, “I can’t think of everything, can I? I don’t know … drop an antipersonnel charge down them, or something!”
“Wonderful,” the Princess quipped. She looked from Halla to Luke. “Now if one of you two magicians will use the Force to conjure up a convenient canister of explosive, I’ll volunteer to do the dropping.” She folded her arms, gazed questioningly at them. “Personally, I think I’m pretty safe in volunteering. Luke?”
He wasn’t looking at her. “We don’t have any explosives, true, but we have something close.” She turned, saw what he was staring at, and found she had to agree.…
The Imperial sergeant had been fortunate to escape the underground ambush with his life, and he knew it. If he’d had any voice in the matter he never would have led his men beneath the surface. On Mimban, he was acutely uncomfortable whenever he had to leave the relative familiarity of the towns and venture out into the bog-ridden countryside.
It had been a terrible battle, terrible. They’d been overwhelmed and nearly wiped out to the last trooper. So many things had gone wrong.
The outcome of the engagement was decided in the first few minutes, when total surprise had belonged to the enemy. Even when it had dawned on the detachment that they were under attack, they still hadn’t responded in the fashion Imperial troops were famous for.
There was no blaming the men, really. They were so accustomed to dealing with the subservient, pacific greenies that the concept of a fighting Mimbanite was unbelievable to most of them. They’d proven unprepared to cope with the reality.
Now, as he stared out the foreport at the ominous mouth of the cavern he’d retreated from with the rest of the survivors, he feasted on a single thought. If he knew the Captain-Supervisor at all, then as soon as he and the Dark Lord Vader returned from their journey, a retaliatory force would be organized. They would return here with heavy weapons, he mused grimly, and roast that cavern until every native male, woman, and infant had been reduced to ashes.
Idly, he wondered where Grammel and the Dark Lord had taken themselves so hastily, and shuddered. He had no desire to accompany that tall, black-armored spectral shape anywhere whatsoever. He preferred to speculate on the forthcoming massacre that would take place in the native warrens below. That favorable mental image mitigated his usually brusque call to the man posted in the open turret above.
The trooper heard the sergeant’s order, turned to call downward that he saw nothing. It was an honest answer, the last one the trooper ever made. In glancing down into the armored crawler he failed to see the bomb that fell from the large tree branch overhead.
A little over a meter and a half tall, the bomb was covered with short, bristly fur. It exploded on top of the trooper and yanked him clear of the turret. That left the opening clear for a second bipedal projectile to drop from the mist-enshrouded tree into the vehicle. It too erupted inside the personnel area.
Luke, the ’droids, Halla and the Princess watched from nearby, concealed by thick growth. There was a dull rumble as the crawler started moving. A great deal of shouting and screaming, muffled by metal and distance, came from within.
Halla sounded worried. “They’re taking longer than I thought, Luke boy. Are you sure of this?”
Luke threw her a confident glance before turning his attention back to the crawler, which was now traveling in erratic curves and circles. “It was all I could think of,” he declared. “In several ways this, if it works, is better than using an explosive. For one thing, we won’t damage any of the crawler’s instruments. No human can stand up to a Yuzzem in close quarters. Two Yuzzem in a confined space like that,” and he indicated the fitfully twisting vehicle, “ought to be irresistible.”
Several seconds later, the crawler turned sharply to its right. Still traveling slowly, it slammed into a huge pseudo-cypress. A thick limb fell from the shaken tree. It struck the crawler with a metallic bong, tumbled to the earth.
Silence then. The crawler’s engine whined, faded, finally stopped. After a few anxious moments Hin emerged from the turret opening, straining at the tight fit, and waved to them.
“They did it,” Luke observed with quiet excitement. The three observers left their place of concealment in the underbrush and hurried across the ground-bog. Broad, hairy hands extended to help them up the metal sides.
Hin grunted something to Luke, who nodded solemnly and turned away.
“What is it?” the Princess inquired impatiently. “Why can’t we go inside?” She glanced nervously at the silent, surrounding vegetation. “There might be a few stragglers hiding out there.”
“I don’t think so,” Luke disagreed. “Hin suggests we look some other way while he and Kee clean out the crawler.”
“What for?” she demanded to know. “I’ve seen all kinds of death and plenty recently.”
As she spoke, Hin reached down and took the first bits of what remained of the crawler’s crew, rose and chucked the double handful over the side. It lay moist and glistening on the damp ground.
The Princess’ face became slightly paler and she turned away to join Luke in contemplating the nearby trees. Several minutes later the ghastly cleanup was finished. They all dropped down into the crawler.
Even with two Yuzzem, they weren’t crowded The crawler was designed to carry ten fully armored troops. Less comforting was Luke’s first inspection of the control panel. It was more complex than that of an X-wing fighter.
“Can you drive this?” Luke asked Halla, bewildered.
She grinned as she slid into the driver’s seat, ignoring the stains on the padding. “Why, Luke boy, I can operate any hunk of machine on this world.” She bent forward, studied the instrumentation and touched something on the rim of the driver’s wheel.
The engine roared, lights flickered, and the crawler promptly shot full-speed-backward to crash into a pair of entwined trees. There was a violent crackling noise and then two thunderous, reverberating booms as both boles fell on top of the idling vehicle.
When Luke’s ears stopped ringing he shot Halla an accusing stare. She smiled wanly back at him. “Of cours
e,” she explained a mite lamely, “that’s not to say a little practice wouldn’t smooth our ride.”
Once more she examined the controls, pursed her lips studiously. “Let’s see now … there, that’s what I missed!” Again she activated switches and buttons before touching the control on the wheel’s rim.
Moving in spasmodic jerks and stops, jumps and lunges, the crawler slid off into the mists. Save the pilot, all other occupants of the vehicle clung to something inflexible. Luke wondered if the trees ahead were as nervous as he was.…
“I’m sorry, my Lord, most sorry I am.” Captain-Supervisor Grammel looked up at Darth Vader from where he sat on one of the open benches of the big troop carrier. “Who was to guess they were so well armed, or that the underground abos would put up such a battle?”
“The weapons were of small consequence,” Vader growled profoundly. “A few guns, all in the hands of wanted criminals.” Grammel cringed as the grotesque breath mask dipped close. “Admit it, Captain-Supervisor. Your troops were inadequately prepared, poorly trained. Discipline and morale were both absent and you were routed by a mob of ignorant savages!”
“They took us completely by surprise, my Lord,” Grammel argued strenuously. “No native group has ever resisted the Imperial presence on Mimban before.”
“No native group previously had the benefit of human advice and aid,” Vader snapped back. “They did not employ wholly aboriginal tactics. You should have recognized the differences early and taken appropriate countermeasures.” He looked away from Grammel to gaze significantly across the bogland. “I know which parties were responsible for that. When I hold in my hand the balance of the crystal, I will mete out justice accordingly.”
“I’d hoped for that privilege myself,” a disgruntled Grammel muttered.
Vader turned a cool, metallic stare downward, announced dangerously, “You have no privileges, Captain-Supervisor Grammel. You have blundered badly. Not critically, I hope, but badly. I curse myself for being fool enough to assume that you knew what you were doing.”
“I told you, my Lord,” Grammel objected, at once angry and frightened, “their surprise was complete.”
“I’m not interested in excuses for debacles, only successful results,” declared Vader. “Grammel, your existence befouls me.”
“My Lord,” Grammel babbled desperately, rising from the bench, “if I—”
Faster than a human eye could follow, Vader’s lightsaber was up, activated and moving. Grammel’s slashed form pitched wildly, stumbled backward and tumbled over the side of the crawler. There was a lull as the stunned driver looked on in terror.
Vader whirled, glowered down at him. “We will travel faster without such dead weight to slow us, trooper. Return to your controls—now!”
“Y-yes, my Lord,” the man gulped, unable to keep from stuttering fearfully. Somehow he forced himself to turn back to the control board of the vehicle.
As they moved forward, Vader turned to glance back idly at the receding corpse of Captain-Supervisor Grammel. Already jungle scavengers were beginning to emerge from concealment to sniff hopefully at the body.
“Whoever is your lord now,” Vader murmured, “it is not I.” Removing the shard of Kaiburr crystal from a sealed pocket, he held the glowing crimson splinter before his eyes, swaying slightly.
It was there ahead, somewhere ahead. He could sense it.
He would find it.…
“Are we still traveling on the right track?” a weary Leia asked old Halla several days later. All of the crawler’s occupants were dirty, discouraged and exhausted from racing nonstop through the misty landscape.
“Certain of it,” Halla replied with disgusting cheerfulness.
“We’re getting close to something,” Luke ventured. “It’s … peculiar. I’ve never felt anything like it before, not remotely.”
“I don’t feel anything, except filthy,” countered the Princess.
“Leia,” Luke began, “all I can say is—”
“I know, I know,” she interrupted him tiredly, “ ‘if I were a Force-sensitive …’ ”
Artoo beeped from the open turret. Luke rushed to the fore viewport, announced in hushed tones, “There it is.”
Rising from the jungle growth ahead of them was a black apparition. A monstrous pyramidal ziggurat, it looked as if it were formed of cast iron. But metal it was not. Instead, the massive edifice had been built of great blocks of some volcanic stone.
For all its breadth, it was not very tall. Vines and creepers clung jealously to it in many places. As they ground nearer Luke saw that much of the stone was crumbling to fine powder. Fortunately the entrance was still visible, although the ten-meter-high curved archway was half collapsed and had filled the passageway with rubble to a height taller than two men.
“It doesn’t look as if anything here’s been disturbed for a million years,” the Princess murmured in awe. All her worries and uncertainties had been dissolved by the actual sight of the legendary temple.
Luke was moving rapidly from port to port. Now he turned to look back at her and when he did so, his eyes were shining. “You realize, Leia, that Vader isn’t here? He isn’t here! We’ve beaten him!”
“Take it easy, Luke boy,” Halla advised him cautioningly. “We can’t be certain of that.”
“I can. I’m certain.” He urged Hin out of the way, mounted the turret ladder and exited from the crawler. It slowed to a stop. When Leia emerged from the turret top he was already walking confidently toward the temple entrance.
“He’s not here!” he shouted back to her. “There’s no sign of a crawler or anything else.”
“We still have to find the crystal,” Halla called out to him as she followed Leia to the ground. But Luke’s enthusiasm was contagious. She found herself forgetting the Dark Lord, forgetting her own fears and last-minute trepidations.
Here was the temple of Pomojema, the temple she’d been trying to reach for years. Hin and Kee flanked her as they moved toward the entranceway. Threepio and Artoo remained to guard the crawler.
Despite Luke’s assurance that they were alone here, everyone kept a worried eye on the drifting fog. Anything imaginable and many things unimaginable could spring out of that cloaking haze at any minute.
Luke was waiting impatiently, standing on the topmost block of the rubble in the entrance. “It’s light inside,” he told them, after peering inside. His gaze went higher and he squinted. “Part of the roof’s caved in, too, but it looks solid enough.”
“Go ahead, boy,” Halla urged him, “but quietly quiet.”
“That’s all right,” he said. Now that they had actually gained the temple, he wasn’t about to steal the old woman’s dream. This was her right as much as his. So he waited until the others had joined him. In a few moments all were standing silently inside the ancient structure.
There were two places above where the soaring, domed roof had fallen in. They admitted sufficient light to illuminate the temple’s interior. Piles of broken stone lay splattered beneath each ragged hole.
Jungle growth had penetrated inside. Lianas and other parasitic plants lay everywhere, extending their tenacious embrace into all corners of the building. They spiraled skyward on the cylindrical bodies of towering obsidian pillars. These unyielding supports boasted intricate carved patterns and designs, whose meaning none now alive could properly appreciate.
Each swimming in his or her own thoughts, the five walked across the spacious floor toward the far side of the temple. A colossal statue was seated there against the dark wall. It represented a vaguely humanoid being seated on a carved throne. Leathery wings which might have been vestigial swept out in two awesome arcs to either side of the figure. Enormous claws thrust from feet and arms, the latter clinging to the ends of armrests on the throne. It had no face below slanted, accusing eyes—only a mass of Medusian, carved tentacles.
“Pomojema, god of the Kaiburr,” Halla whispered, without knowing why she was bothering to whisper.
“It almost seems familiar, somehow.” She chuckled nervously. “That’s crazy, of course.”
Then she was pointing excitedly, voice and hand trembling alike with the wonder of it. “It’s there … I knew it, I knew it!”
In the center of the gray stone chest of the statue lay a dimly pulsing light the hue of vanadinite.
“The crystal,” breathed the Princess softly.
Halla did not hear her. Mind and gaze remained focused on an obsession become attainable.
Luke stopped, his eyes on the movement to the left of the leering stone figure. It was dark back there, and there was no telling how far the darkness stretched.
Then they all began backing away slowly. Halla’s pistol was the first to be aimed.
The creature moving out from behind the statue had a wide, wide mouth fringed with short sharp teeth now open in a batrachian grin. Small yellow eyes blinked dumbly at them. It moved on ponderous, warty legs like thick tree stumps.
Halla fired. The beam of energy had no visible effect on the creature, which continued lumbering toward them. Luke had his own pistol out, as did Leia. All three of them fired. If the joint barrage had any effect it was to irritate the sluggish beast. It blinked blood, continued its bowlegged walk toward them at a faster pace.
They continued retreating toward the entrance. “Hin, Kee,” Luke called to the Yuzzem. “Go back to the crawler … get the rifles!”
Hin chittered a reply, then both Yuzzem were racing for the exit. Luke considered the crystal, receding behind the protective bulk of the monster. Taking his lightsaber from his belt, he activated the powerful blue beam and started cautiously forward.
“Luke, have you lost your mind?” the Princess shouted.
He reflected briefly that it wasn’t impossible, and then dismissed the thought. If he paused to do much thinking, the steadily advancing carnivore would have him for a snack.
It hesitated within snapping distance, slightly hypnotized by the weaving beam of the saber. Luke lunged forward. The saber contacted the creature’s chin. Intense energy punctured a small hole in the wide lower jaw.