Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [18]
And if the stone should fail to part before him, should Lord Shadowspawn see fit to entomb him alive as a punishment for his failure, he would stand and wait until his air ran out, and then he would go to sleep forever. No clone spawned in Kaminoan pods and raised in crèche school could even comprehend the concept of claustrophobia, much less suffer from it.
The faintest of breezes stirred his hair, and the sound of his boot heels on the stone took on added resonance, a multiplicity of echoes: though he could not see it, the stone had opened before him into a chamber of perfect night.
“Hold, Group Captain.” In the lightless void, Lord Shadowspawn’s voice came from every direction and from none at all, as though the darkness itself spoke these words. “Stand and report.”
“My lord.” Klick inclined his head. “I regret to inform my lord that—”
“Do not regret, Klick. Only inform.”
“The ship you ordered us—ah, that we were ordered to strike, my lord, along the Corellian Run. It was a Rebel ambush. The Corellian Queen was not even a ship at all, only a shell—a mock-up, really, full of Rebel starfighters. Somehow—” Klick swallowed, hard. His next words would be someone’s death sentence. Possibly his own. “Somehow they knew we were coming.”
“Did they?”
“They must have, my lord. Not only were they lying in wait, they had a new weapon, a torpedo of a type I’ve never seen, that seemed to be specifically designed to engage our superior defenders. My starfighters were forced to retreat with almost thirty percent casualties. My lord—” Klick swallowed again. “My lord, there must be a Rebel spy. Here, on Mindor.”
“Must there? Can you conceive no alternate explanation?”
“I—I can’t imagine, my lord.”
“I can. But continue. There is more, is there not?”
“Yes, my lord. We have detected a signal. Some sort of subspace transponder. We’ve traced it to the defenders damaged in the engagement on the Corellian Run. We detected it when—” Klick swallowed hard, as if he was trying to down a mouthful of rocks. “When the subspace jamming system was deactivated.”
“Ah.”
“It’s the work of this Rebel spy, my lord. It must be.”
“It was not. The jammers were deactivated by my order.”
“My lord?” Klick blinked rapidly as he tried to take this in. Would Shadowspawn betray his very own Great Cause? “My lord—I fear those torpedoes were used to plant some sort of tracking device—”
“At last!”
“My lord?”
“Klick, you have done well. Very well indeed.”
“My lord, I believe the Rebels have found us! According to the most recent intelligence reports, they have an entire task force on constant ready alert—my lord, a fleet could be on its way here right now!”
“Could be? No. It is.”
Klick blinked even faster. “Shall I sound general quarters, my lord?”
“Of course not. We can’t have our unexpected guests discover that we’ve been expecting them, can we? Are we so rude?”
“I, ah, well—” Klick hoped the question was only rhetorical.
“Order the Combat Space Patrol to stand down and return to their bases. But they are to stay with their craft and keep their engines hot. Also, order all the gravity crews to stand ready for initiation on my command.”
“But if they strike while our forces are grounded, our losses—my lord, it could cost us the battle!”
“We will lose this battle,” said the voice from the darkness. “We must. Losing this battle is how we will deliver the Empire to its rightful ruler: Emperor Skywalker!”
CHAPTER 4
THE LONE PASSENGER SHUTTLE GLEAMED IN TASPAN’S light as it left the atmosphere, slipping neatly through the hurtling asteroids that crowded Mindor’s low planetary orbit. As it left LPO, the shuttle traced a long, gracefully curving path, swinging wide to avoid the clouds of radioactive debris that were all that remained of Shadowspawn’s sizable force of TIE defenders.
On the battle bridge of the Justice, Lieutenant Tubrimi rolled the vast black orb of his left