• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Equipped with primitive retros, the capsule hadn’t even buried itself in the twinkling gravel. A percussion rifle crackled somewhere far off, and Luke sensed the distant presence of more riders. He wondered, as Caslo scrambled down the side of the smoking impact crater a hundred meters from the nearest tsil, how Ashgad managed to pay for weapons for his followers. Had Palpatine left revenues in the hands of his rival? When rocks dance. But the weapons Ashgad was buying were all new or near new, the most modern, the most expensive that bore the Loronar double-moon logo. “All the finest—all the first.” The man had money from somewhere.

Had Callista entered his house? Learned from Taselda, perhaps, where the money came from and where it was being sent? Was that why she’d fled Hweg Shul?

Men were handing crates up out of the pit, passing them to the drivers. A flurry of shots in the flat distance told Luke of approaching Therans, held off by the ragged perimeter of guards. Someone gave Luke a bale of blaster rifles, which he stowed in the back of his Theran speeder; a crudely tied together bunch of spare energy cores.

So they were getting at least some secondhand, thought Luke, turning the sleek black-and-red cylinders over in his hand before stashing them in a corner. Even at smuggler’s prices, those would be cheaper than new, and Ashgad was clearly out to arm every man and woman of the Rationalist Party. They were passing rifles up singly now. He caught one thrown to him, held it briefly in the dim glow of the speeder’s console lights to see the make. His mind went back to the gun station, to the embattled, dirty Therans ducking through the shadows of the crazy superstructure, the gawky, dancerlike figure in red swinging down on the cable to throw the grenade.

The gun was a white-and-silver BlasTech, this year’s model, small, solid, and familiar in Luke’s hands. He knew it well. They were the type of guns with which the entire Honor Guard of the New Republic had been newly outfitted only last month. He’d practiced with them, to while away time, on board the Borealis.

Luke turned it over, and his blood went cold in his veins.

On the butt was the silver coding plate of the Honor Guards, marking the weapon as the property of the New Republic, assigned to the flagship itself.

The gun had come off the Borealis.

“Yo, Lars!” somebody called from the ground. “Asleep at the switch?”

Luke stashed the weapon quickly, caught another handed up to him. He didn’t need to hold this one to the console lights, his fingers found the coding plate by themselves. When he carried the next several guns to the back of his speeder he flicked on the glowrod to check the others.

There were a couple from the Adamantine, but most of these had come off Leia’s flagship.

There was one—a Flash-4 with a custom grip and a lanyard ring—that he recognized as the one Han had given Leia herself.

I have to escape.

From the corner of her balcony that overlooked the dawn-colored crystal flatlands far below, Leia watched the luxurious black landspeeder that bore Seti Ashgad and his two bodyguards dwindle and perish with the distance. He had avoided her since the kidnapping—probably, she thought, because he knew himself unable to sustain the masquerade of being his own son before someone who had studied holos of him as she had—but she had always been conscious of his presence and protection. His plan, whatever it was, was clear in his mind, and at least for the moment he had to keep her alive.

But Dzym and Beldorion had plans of their own.

Three days. If she lasted that long.

For the first time in days, she had awakened with her mind clear. The water Liegeus had brought her last night had been clean. Whether that had been an oversight or some kind of gift to her, she knew she had to take advantage of it without delay.

On the threshold of her room she paused, blanket wrapped around her over the thin white nightshirt she wore, long