• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“The lift programs aren’t installed.”

“Any competent engineer can do that.” She looked up quickly as Liegeus emerged from the Chariot, dodged through the milling men and women, the angrily stirring cables and beams, the lawless Force winds. “Liegeus …!”

She flung her arms around him, and he held her tight, graying head pressed to hers. “My dear child, I’m so glad to see you safe! I never, never in my life thought you’d try to escape …”

“Then you didn’t know me very well.” She grinned at him and a moment later he grinned back.

“Well—I suppose I did know you’d try it.” He shook his head.

“Listen, Liegeus, how much does Ashgad know about the software on that vessel?” demanded Luke. “How much of an education has he had? Can he install it? Can he get the thing off the ground?”

“Of course he can,” said Leia impatiently. “Seti Ashgad was one of the top hyperdrive engineers of the Old Republic. The original Z-95s were his design!”

“His design?” Luke stared at her blankly. “They were making Z-95s fifty years ago!”

“Seti Ashgad is the original Seti Ashgad!” said Leia. “Dzym’s been keeping him alive all these years.”

There was a rising clamor, men and women jostling and shoving aside Gerney Caslo’s heated protests of Ashgad’s good intent. Sheets and streamers of hardcopy were flourished in dust-covered, blood-covered hands, though Luke noticed that Umolly Darm and Aunt Gin were collecting the documents and tucking them into the safety of their pockets.

The Theran cultists had come down from their defensive positions on the gun shielding to join in the fray. With a yell of fury, Caslo broke from the mob and, with a nimbleness Luke wouldn’t have given him credit for, seized a belt of grenades and sprang to the top of a broken girder, scrambled up another one toward the muzzle of the cannon.

Leia yelled, “Stop him!” but it was too late. Someone fired a blaster rifle just as Gerney hurled the grenades. A dozen lines of cold light stitched the man like deadly needles, but no one had thought to fire at the grenades he threw. They went over the stained black rim of the shielding. A moment later a deep, shuddering concussion shook the building, jarring everyone from their feet. White smoke belched from the cannon mouth. Gerney’s body was trampled as people scrambled up the sides of the shielding to look.

Around them, there was sudden stillness as the Force storm relaxed its grip.

Leia swore. Luke’s hand stole to the red, swollen marks the drochs had left on his flesh, and he shivered.

“Can you fix it?” he asked Liegeus softly.

“I don’t know. I don’t have tools.”

“Umolly and Aunt Gin’ll have some …”

“It won’t be in time,” said Leia. “There’s an armored Headhunter in the same hangar and an old Blastboat. You can mount the main turret guns in the Headhunter; that’ll give you enough firepower to bring him down.”

“The place’ll be guarded …”

“The synthdroids are gone. Dead. I put them out of commission before I escaped and I don’t think Ashgad’s had time to get them back online. Come on.”

Luke bolted back to the Chariot. Aunt Gin and Arvid were already tearing loose the antigravs from the two lifter platforms that had gotten the Rationalists to the top of the tower, affixing them to the black assault speeder’s sides.

Only when the Mobquet had disappeared over the parapet did the battered metal doors of the stairway into the tower itself open, and Callista step forth.

“Liegeus?” She held out her hand to the philosopher. The earpiece of the ancient intercom system still hung around her neck. “We’ve got tools down here.”

“And they’ll be about as much good as those silly arrows,” stated Aunt Gin fiercely, bustling over with her toolkit. She shoved the enormous, rusty box into Liegeus’s hands. “Take this, son. I for one haven’t spent ten years on this crummy rock to see it get taken over by those cheats at Loronar.”

She led the way into the tower. Liegeus paused on the top step, studying Callista’s face. Comparing