• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Camie gasped. Someone put a hand on Leia's shoulder. She shook it off.

"He's fine," she said, aware that she sounded like a droid, flat and empty.

Fixer had grabbed the electrobinoculars and was peering intently at the crash site. "We've got to get out there," he said. "If they're going to have any chance at all."

"He's fine," Leia insisted again.

She felt numb.

Numbly, she piled into a rusted landspeeder with Windy, Deak, and the droids. Luke's droids. Fixer and Camie rode behind them. Numbly, she took the controls and steered toward the smoke. And numbly, she finally arrived at the crash site.

Two sites, really. Two scarred holes in the ground, strewn with smoldering wreckage. Twisted pieces of durasteel, broken shards of transparisteel. Smoke and fire. But no Jaxson. No Luke.

"Their bodies—" Fixer choked on the word. "A fire like that, it could have burned 'em up." Windy and Deak were identically pale, identically slack-jawed.

Leia shook her head and wiped a bead of sweat from her cheek. She gazed out at the desert. The sunburnt landscape was motionless. Nothing but kilometers of empty sand. Where are you, Luke? she thought. Where did you go?

"He's out there somewhere," she said.

"Where would they go?" Fixer asked skeptically. "And after a crash like that, how could they—"

He didn't finish the thought. He didn't have to. Leia understood: You saw the crash. You saw the explosion. How could they be in any shape to walk away?

"He's fine," she said. "If…if he wasn't, I would know."

"How?" Fixer challenged.

I don't know, she thought. But she allowed herself no doubts. Luke was alive.

Somehow.

Somewhere.

CHAPTER TEN

Luke opened his eyes, squinting against the bright sun. He was lying on his side, his right cheek planted against the ground. The arid, empty landscape stretched to the horizon. The Stone Needle was nowhere to be seen. Nor was his skyhopper. There was nothing in sight but sand.

He remembered the crash.

Uncle Owen's going to kill me! he thought ruefully.

And then he remembered everything else.

This is not a good time for me to be piloting anything.

Luke tried to sit up, but something was stopping him. Binders, around his wrists, around his ankles. And around his chest and knees, thick cords binding him to another person. Luke craned his neck around as far as it would go.

"Jaxson!" he hissed. "Jaxson!" Louder this time. But the body attached to him didn't move.

Something else did.

"Awake already?" snarled the massive green creature hulking over him. Luke recognized the distinctive scaled face, clawed hands; and razor sharp jaws of a Trandoshan, a race of aggressive reptilian warriors. This one was taller than average, his scaly limbs bursting from a bright orange flight suit that had clearly been designed for a creature much smaller than him. Luke wondered what had happened to the suit's original owner. He suspected that the blast rifle slung around the Trandoshan's neck might have had something to do with it. The Trandoshan flicked his long tongue at Luke. "You've got a pretty hard head. For a human."

Luke struggled to move, but Jaxson's immobile body held him in place.

"You did something to our skyhoppers," Luke accused the Trandoshan.

Bossk widened his jaws in a smile. "The pulse generator wiped out every electrical system in a forty kilometer radius. Namely: yours."

"Why?" Luke said. "We're not your enemy. I don't even know who you are!"

"But I know who you are," the Trandoshan said. "Luke Skywalker. Friend to that galactic scourge Han Solo. And he's got plenty of enemies." The Trandoshan straightened up, smoothing out his flight suit. "I'm surprised none of them came to me sooner. You want a job done right, Bossk is the one to do it."

He was a bounty hunter, Luke realized. Which meant there was no point in trying to talk him out of it. Hunters were notoriously merciless and single-minded when it came to pursuing their bounty. But there was no reason Jaxson had to pay.

If he could only reach his lightsaber…

That was a useless wish. The Trandoshan, perhaps not realizing