Star Wars, page 26
Han preened. “Noticed that, did you?”
Leia shot him a confused look. “Noticed what?”
“The jacket.”
“Yes, it was nice.”
“And Alderaanian.”
Leia blinked. “No, it wasn’t.”
Han’s eyes widened, and his jaw shifted ruefully. Lando had played him. That shiny jacket was just something from his closet, not anything special. Han couldn’t believe he’d been so easily tricked.
Leia laughed, guessing at what had happened. “Remind me to thank Lando next time I see him.”
She peered out the shuttle’s window, where the edges of the black tower of the half-submerged Imperial station were visible over the low wall of the docking bay. “Good thing that last quake broke the ice,” she said.
Han, remembering the terrifying way the cart had swerved and nearly crashed, simply said, “Yeah, good thing.”
But she was right. It didn’t take them long to reach the first areas of cracked ice when they went north. They traversed the broken sheets carefully—the quake had caused the ice to splinter, and it did indeed seem thinner in those areas, but some of the breaks were no larger than a handbreadth, and the sides of the rift too heavy for them to push apart farther.
Thinking of the surveillance droid, Han kept his eye out for spies, mechanical or otherwise. The Imperial space station may have fallen into the icy crust of the moon, but that didn’t mean it was inoperable.
Leia seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “Those ice quakes happen so regularly that I suspect some residual operations are still happening.” She paused, looking from the black tower protruding from the ice up to the cloudy sky and back again. “No one likely survived the crash, but that doesn’t mean there’s not still danger.”
She stopped in front of a wide gap between two broken ice sheets. The splintering crack stretched all the way toward the remains of the Imperial station, but it was separated enough here for them both to slip through into the water below. Without looking back, Leia took a deep breath to steady herself, then leapt into the abyss, the water splashing as she disappeared under the surface.
Han loved that about her. Just like on Endor, when she leapt on a speeder to take out the stormtroopers that had invaded the forest, leaving him behind—she didn’t hesitate. She just dived headlong toward the task she knew needed to be done, without question, confident in both Han and herself.
She knew he would follow.
And he did.
CHAPTER 40
LEIA
THERE WAS ONE BRIEF SHOCK of cold, then the thermal disks ramped up, adjusting for the abrupt change in temperature. Heat didn’t quite reach her fingers and toes, but her core was protected, and the radiant warmth would be enough, at least for an hour or so, if she kept moving. Leia gulped at air, and a thin stream of icy water trickled down her throat. Focusing, she forced herself to regulate her breathing, to allow the breather machine to filter the air to her.
A thin beam of reedy light cut through the water from the crack in the ice above; all else was shadowed. She had plunged into the water feetfirst, and she had gone deep enough to feel the pull of the currents. Han dived in as well, his brown hair floating around his head, his eyes wide and panicked as he got his bearings.
Panicked? That wasn’t like Han.
The cold, the dark, the shock of it all. Leia knew it the same way Han did.
Carbonite freezing.
It was supposed to be painless. Quick. A flash, and then nothing until thaw.
Supposed to be.
But it wasn’t.
One needed only to see the look of sheer and utter pain on Han’s gray, frozen face to know that it was neither quick nor painless. Leia would never forget the way his eyes had been scrunched in pain, the way his whole body bucked against freezing. It had been primal, a bone-deep response to pain that could not be hidden.
Han had spent close to a year in carbonite, long enough to get hibernation sickness, for his eyes to regress, for the chance for long-term damage to rear up years from now.
Long enough for the trace effects to rise within him when he was submerged in system-shocking cold water.
Leia swam over to him, blowing bubbles out of her nose with the aid of the breather. She grabbed both his hands, searching his eyes until he focused on her. He nodded tightly. He was with her again.
Swimming down, Leia checked the readout on her vest. The thermal disks adjusted temperatures based on external sensors, and, as she suspected, the closer they got to the crashed Imperial station, the warmer the water was. That would account for some of the extensive damage from the ice quakes—warm water weakened the ice. But the quakes were timed, which implied something was going off in the station, maybe the laser array that had been intended to attack the moon’s core to reach its precious carnium. If they could get closer, find a way in, and then disable the array, perhaps that would be enough to entice the prime minister into believing that the new government truly did mean to help, not exploit them.
Although she knew the water was frigid, the thermal disks enveloped her in warmth. Leia relished the freedom to swim, the silence of it, the pure simplicity in movement. A school of fish with flashing silver scales darted by, veering as one away from the warm water Leia swam through. Long-nosed spike eels flitted through the water. Leia paused to watch them. When their quivering bodies shot too close to current drifting from the sunken Imperial space station, they diverted their paths, wiggling away.
Even the fish don’t like the Imperial presence, Leia thought. Then she remembered what the prime minister had said about edonts preferring the cold. It was warmer here. The station was changing the climate under the ice.
The cracks in the ice grew wider the closer they got to the sunken space station. It caused beams of light to cut through the pale-green water, highlighting the few aquatic animals that ventured this close to the black metal. Far in the distance, Leia could see the shadow of some huge creature—perhaps an edont, or the many-toothed sawkill she’d read about.
Han shot forward, grabbing Leia’s arm and jerking her back. Startled, she adjusted her focus to the submerged space station.
Red lights blinked along the perimeter. Security monitors.
Why monitor a broken, defunct space station? Leia thought.
Because it wasn’t broken. She could see it now. People in the viewports, dressed in crisp Imperial uniforms. A few troopers patrolling inside. The round viewports were scattered in a pattern throughout the spiraling, conical shape of the base of the station, and through many of them, Leia could see lights, profiles of people working, droids, and more. This was very much a station in use.
But Yens had said…
He’d said that the Empire was as dead as this station.
And while he’d also said that the space station had crashed into the ice after being destroyed by Madurs, the evidence to the contrary was right before her eyes. Leia would have laughed sardonically if she wasn’t underwater. She had known all along, hadn’t she, that Madurs simply did not have the firepower to destroy an Imperial space station.
Han had said before, “Being underwater isn’t that much different from being in space.” And while other mining blasters could fire from orbit, this station was designed to be…
Her eyes squinted through the water that grew increasingly dark the farther down she peered. This station narrowed to a point, like a child’s top. Like a drill.
This station had always been designed to drive into the core of this moon. Not to orbit and blast it from afar, but to sink deep into the ice, shoot directly at the core. This station had not even remotely been destroyed.
It was fully operational.
And—
Leia watched with horror as the base started to glow red. With the quake earlier, she had been sure they would have more time before another strike.
But they’d miscalculated. It was going to fire now.
CHAPTER 41
HAN
HAN GRABBED LEIA BY THE elbow, pulling her closer to the station. He’d already been concerned about being spotted—they were two humans floating in the water right at eye level with some of those ports, and it was only by luck and chance that none of the Imperial officers or stormtroopers had glanced out one of the viewports at them, and that the ports they were closest to were empty. With the core blaster charging up, they could either try to make a run for it—a swim for it, rather—or hide closer to the station. Not knowing just what the core blaster would do, Han figured it was safest to cling to the side of the sunken station like a mynock.
The station vibrated with power as the core blaster charged. Han and Leia found stabilizer bars to hold on to, floating in the water just above a large viewport. They had warmth and air thanks to the thermal vest and breathers, but neither of them had comlinks now. Instead, Han and Leia both watched in horror as the clear, pale-green water glowed eerily beneath their feet, first with a bright-white light, then with a focused, red beam blasting straight down into the core. The burst of power was so strong that the station shifted in the ice, bouncing back into position with repulsorlifts, half a dozen of them spaced above the core blaster.
Leia tapped Han’s chest, drawing his attention from the vivid glowing water to his vest. The temperature monitor was changing sporadically, trying to adjust for the increased heat in the water.
Oh, karabast, Han thought. The water near the station had been warmer than in the frigid, icy depths farther away, but the core blaster was making the whole area as hot as the beaches of Synjax. The thermal disks couldn’t keep up with the quick change in temperature—it was designed to keep a being warm if they were thrown into the cold void of space; it had no way to do the reverse and keep a body cooler if things got hot. The disks fritzed out, turning themselves off and exposing Han to the water’s current temperatures.
Which were rising by the minute.
Hotter than any bath Han had taken, the core blaster had turned the ice-cold moon into a sauna. He cast his eyes up, squinting at the ice above them.
For several meters around the perimeter of the station, there was no ice. Han hadn’t realized that—they hadn’t gotten close enough to the station from aboveground for him to see, and the shadow of the enormous base had prevented much light from leaking through. But while the ice around the fishing base had been several meters thick, a more solid ground than most terrestrial worlds, the station was like an enormous rod of hot metal, burning away this world’s crust.
And its core.
Han looked down—the core blaster was still firing a red laser beam straight down. The water was getting hotter now. Not boiling, but not comfortable. Han glanced at Leia. Her eyes were calculating—should they flee, or should they stick it out?
The station churned and shifted like a ship with a bad catalyzer, jarringly abrupt and chugging nastily. Through the metal, Han could feel the station grinding out a different sort of vibration. If he had to guess, it was a type of tractor beam. No ice was directly holding the station upright; far too heavy to stay afloat otherwise, the station must be using gravity manipulation against the same core it was blasting, aided by the visible repulsorlifts.
Which would mean—
Han’s eyes widened, and he swooped around Leia, pushing her body against the side of the station and gripping a stabilizer bar with each hand. His feet sought desperately for a foothold, one boot tip finding a gap near a viewport and the other jammed into a third stabilizer bar. He used his full body weight to cover Leia, pressing her hard against the unforgiving metal just moments before the ice quake erupted.
The reverberating force was enough to make Han feel as if his arms and legs were being pulled out of their sockets. As much as he’d joked about Chewie ripping a person’s arms out before, this pain made him rethink the quip. His teeth ground as he clenched his muscles. While Leia had been initially shocked by his sudden movement, she curled against him, accepting his protection in a way that made him all the more determined to not let go, even as the water seemed to be trying to rip him away.
This was an ice quake. And they were in the center of it.
The station alternated between blasting the core of this moon and then shifting to a tractor beam, creating a push-and-pull sequence that disrupted the entire environment. It wasn’t just the water movement from the blast, although that contributed—it was the use of the gravity manipulation to restabilize the station after every blast that really disrupted everything.
Straining against the pull, Han was able to blearily confirm his theory by looking up. The solid field of ice that extended from all sides past the station rippled underneath the surface as if the meters of thick sheets were nothing more than one of the gwendle drapes of Leia’s cloak. It was disorientating and plain weird to see something that was supposed to be unyielding instead bend and break. The more the ice field wavered under the force of the water and the gravity shifting, the more it strained and splintered, cracking apart.
Almost as abruptly as it started, the quake ended. The station was stable. Han relinquished his hold on the bars and yanked his foot free, shaking his stiff ankle in the water. Leia stayed close, still holding him by the arm.
The water remained too warm for his thermal disks to kick back on, but it was definitely getting cooler by the minute. Han shifted his gaze from the ice, which was resettling after the quake, to the depths below.
There was no longer any bright laser beam to make the water glow, but something shimmered in the dark water, growing closer.
A giant bubble escaped Leia’s lips, and she let go of Han’s arm to cover her mouth in horror. Silver-speckled fish—thousands of them—floated up from the seabed. Whether it had been the disrupting blast or the surge in temperature that had killed them, Han didn’t know. They had long fins with silky-thin membranes that wafted through the water like flower petals, a graveyard of gentle beauty. Rock and bits of coral were scattered between the fish corpses, gritty sand drifting in waves, swirling around it all.
Han reached out and grabbed a thin red tendril lazily twirling through the water.
Carnium.
Bubbles alerted them to an open hatch nearby, and Han and Leia pressed against the wall of the station again. Submersion droids jetted through the water, sucking up the tiny red threads of precious metal, darting around dead fish and useless rock. They were small enough that they worked on sensors, not by visuals, so Han was fairly certain the droids wouldn’t detect them.
Still, it was time to go.
CHAPTER 42
LEIA
LEIA BURST THROUGH THE ICE a moment before Han did. She grasped for leverage as the water tried to drag her back under, her fingers clawing at the snow-dusted ice. She slipped once, but then clambered up before turning to give Han her arm.
For a moment, they both sat there, shivering before the electronics in the vest kicked back on. The thermal disks struggled, the mechanics whirring. Perhaps something designed for space wasn’t perfectly functional underwater.
Han glanced at Leia, no quip at the ready. There seemed little left to be said.
Leia had known the Empire was trying to grapple back the power that had been destroyed with the second Death Star. She had seen evidence of the growing blockade in the Anoat sector, and she had listened as Lando and Mon had both confirmed that the Empire sought to seize power by controlling the energy sources. The carnium at the heart of Madurs was too valuable for the Empire to let one art-loving people protest their presence, and the little moon never stood a chance against an Imperial station.
And Leia knew firsthand how easily the Empire would destroy a world to get what it wanted.
Her head sank, hair dripping into her lap, faint steam wrapping around her thanks to the thermal disks. Madurs was breaking apart at her feet. The ice quakes happened according to the Empire’s mining schedule, and the violent shaking of the moon’s core combined with the rising temperature of the blaster drill were scarring the moon’s environment.
“The core of this moon can’t withstand constant blasts,” Han muttered, his eyes on the crack in the ice they’d escaped from.
“No,” Leia agreed hollowly. But that wouldn’t matter. The Empire would take as much as it could and then leave the shell behind, nothing more than debris.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
They’d defeated the Empire.
It was supposed to be over.
Leia stared down at her hands in her lap. She was so tired. So deeply tired of it all—every victory was met with more loss, more fight. Every attempt she made to do more, be more, was undermined by a callous universe that seemed to revel in watching her struggle. And she tried, so hard, to hold on to hope. Not just for herself, but for the whole galaxy. And what did she have to show for it?
Leia sucked in a hard breath.
Her ring, which had slowly been unraveling, was gone. The amber ring made of vine and blessed by the Ewok elders, the ring that symbolized her marriage—
Gone.
It must have broken apart in the water, the remnants slipping from her finger unnoticed. The loss of it sent a sharp pain through her. Leia knew that saving Madurs, defeating the Empire—that was all far more important than a ring made of organic material that was always doomed to break apart.
But it still hurt, the way sacrifice hunted her.
Her fingers curled into a fist, hiding the place where her ring should be.
CHAPTER 43
HAN
IT HAD BEEN TOO EASY to leave.
That was the thought that chased Han over the ice fields. The Imperials knew that Madurs couldn’t oust the station from the ice, but the Empire always expected insurgency, even from worlds that had already bent to them.
