Chapter 23
I'm sorry, Han. I'm sorry we didn't make it in time. Leia sat in the pilot's seat—Han's seat—and steered the Falcon away from Cloud City, feeling as if her heart had been torn apart.
He was gone.
It's not your fault, the memory of his voice echoed in her head. She almost argued back out of habit, but then she stopped herself.
He was gone. Blaming herself wouldn't help him now, nor would it help her. And… he was right. She knew that, deep down. Vader had done it, just as he'd done so many unspeakable things before. Vader would pay when the Rebellion won. In the meantime, she would fight with everything she had for that victory.
And she would fight with everything she had for Han.
She glanced at Chewie, who was sitting silently beside her in the co-pilot's seat. "Anything on the sensors?" she said softly.
«Nothing,» he replied. «They are not chasing us yet.»
"Only a matter of time," Lando muttered from behind them.
She knew he was right. There would be at least fifteen minutes worth of atmospheric and sublight flight before they made it to a point where they could safely jump to lightspeed—maybe more. Plenty of time for the Empire to try to cut them off. At least, she told herself, they had a head start.
She guided the Falcon over the top of a particularly dense cloud, black against the slowly dwindling fire of the sky—
And then she froze; her hands mechanically guiding the Falcon forward, her mind tugged elsewhere. An image appeared: a figure hanging from a vane on the bottom of the city, nothing but endless clouds below. A voice: Luke's voice, in pain.
Leia, he was saying. Hear me, Leia.
"Luke," she whispered.
The image dissipated. But she knew without a doubt that like her dream, it was real.
"We've got to go back," she told the others.
"What?" Lando said, incredulous, Chewie echoing him.
"I know where Luke is," she said, calling on her royal voice and all its commanding influence. She looked Chewie in the eye, silently pleading for him to believe her. Luke was in danger; there was no time to spare.
"What about those fighters?" Lando questioned.
«How do you know where he is?»
"Chewie, just do it!"
"But what about Vader—" Lando had hardly started saying the words before the Wookiee turned around and gave him a threatening roar. "All right, all right!" he said.
Chewie trusted her. Warmth spread through her, even as they turned the ship back towards danger, and maybe death.
She knew what she knew; the how didn't matter right now.
They may not have been able to rescue Han, but they sure as hell weren't going to leave without Luke.
The underside of Cloud City was deep violet, faint with the last echoes of the setting sun. Leia's eyes scanned it, searching.
Maybe she was being ridiculous. Maybe the torture droid's drugs had left her hallucinating. Or maybe all the trauma was finally, truly, catching up to her, shredding what was left of her sanity. But she wasn't ready to give up hope just yet.
"Look, someone's up there!" Lando pointed.
And there he was. A little to the left and ahead, clinging onto a weather vane, just as she'd seen it in her mind.
"It's Luke," she said. "Chewie, slow down—slow down and we'll get under him. Lando, open the top hatch." She heard the cockpit door open as Lando went to follow her orders.
Luke. What had happened? Even from here she could feel the pain radiating off of him. "Easy, Chewie," she said, and together, they maneuvered the Falcon until it floated right underneath the vane. She saw the indicator light for the top hatch blinking. Suddenly, another sensor lit up. Several small ships were dropping around the rim of the city and heading their way. She looked closer; they were definitely TIE fighters. "Lando?" she called, her voice urgent.
"Okay, let's go!" he replied through the comm, and they sped off. Ahead, three more TIEs came into view.
She heard the sound of the cockpit door again, and she got to her feet, trusting Chewie to take charge of the Falcon.
Oh, Luke.
He stood there in the doorway, supported by Lando. His face was bloodied and bruised; his eyes haunted. She rushed to him and buried herself in his arms as Lando went to take her place in the cockpit.
"Leia," he whispered. He clung to her as if clinging to life itself. She held him tight, hoping that somehow through her embrace she could impart the strength, courage and comfort he needed. It felt good to hug someone, after everything. She hadn't since—
Abruptly, tears stung her eyes again.
She swallowed down her grief. She could deal with it all later; right now she needed to take care of Luke. Gently, she slipped out of the hug and eased him down the hallway to the crew quarters. Helping him onto the right-hand bunk that had been fitted with medical equipment, she quickly analyzed his wounds. The burn on his face looked painful but not threatening; she could treat it later. More immediately, he needed fluids and possibly a blood transfusion; he was clearly on the verge of collapse. Her eyes traveled down and stopped short. She gasped.
His hand. He was missing a hand. Suddenly, his symptoms of shock became very clear.
Swallowing, she forced back the familiar crescendo of panic regarding needles and hooked him up to the fluids generator, trying to stall the shaking in her hands. Next, she turned to rummage through the med cabinet. Finding what she was looking for, she knelt beside his bunk. That put her a little low, but she needed to be steady—right now, with the beating the ship was taking from the TIEs, the gravity emulators weren't exactly at top performance. She examined his wound again. It was completely cauterized, she realized, so there would be no need for a coagulant. As gently as she could, she daubed the stump of his wrist with an antiseptic. He tensed, moaning. "I'm sorry," she whispered. Carefully, she placed a bacta patch over the wound, then she wrapped the whole lower arm in a protective bandage.
When she was finished and satisfied that there were no further injuries that demanded her immediate attention, she pulled a blanket over him and grabbed a compress, soaking it with cold water in the 'fresher. Coming back to his side, she dabbed at his forehead.
The ship lurched; a particularly bad one. She looked up, concerned. Glancing back at Luke, she leaned down and kissed him lightly. The gesture felt instinctual and familial, meant to comfort, and she did it without much forethought. But immediately she felt a twinge of guilt as she remembered the last, awkward kiss she'd given him to spite Han, and his strange attempt to kiss her before that. She hoped he wouldn't mistake this one for anything more than it was, if he remembered it later.
Right now, though, the pilots needed her help. "I'll be back," she murmured. Setting down the compress, she rushed back to the cockpit. They'd emerged from Bespin's atmosphere and were finally approaching a suitable hyperspace jump point. Unfortunately, Chewie and Lando were busy turning the ship in barrel rolls to avoid TIE fighter fire. In the distance, a massive ship came into view. "Star Destroyer," she said, pointing. Executor-class, no less. She cursed under her breath. The grav emulators trembled once again, and her stomach lurched. If they continued to get worse, Luke could be even more seriously injured.
Chewie growled at her to set the lightspeed coordinates, and after a brief moment's thought she reached up to enter them. The Kaliida Nebula would be a fairly easy sequence of jumps from here. She'd rendezvoused with members of the Alliance there after Mako-Ta; perhaps there'd be a scout there for her to make contact with now. At the very least, it was a good place to hide and plot their next course, provided that they stopped along the way to check that they weren't being tracked.
"All right, Chewie," Lando said. "Ready for lightspeed."
"If your people fixed the hyperdrive," she muttered half-sardonically.
«It was fixed when Han checked,» Chewie assured her.
She saw a light flash green on the panel, and she sat down. "All the coordinates are set. It's now or never."
"Punch it," said Lando.
The stars remained tiny, frozen points of light. They sat in stunned silence as the whine of the failed hyperdrive filled the cockpit.
Leia and Chewie looked at each other, then over at Lando. At that moment, another blast rocked the ship. Chewie exploded with curses. Leia fell back in her seat, her head in her hands.
Of course it's not working, she thought. How could they have expected anything else?
"They told me they fixed it!" Lando seemed even more shocked than the rest of them. "I trusted them to fix it!" he shouted. "It's not my fault!" She heard banging noises as he charged around the cockpit, looking for something, anything, that he could do to help. Chewie brushed past her on his way out; to dig in the bowels of the ship, she presumed. He nearly knocked Lando over in the process.
Sighing, she moved forward to take charge of the controls.
It was a trick out of Han's book, pulling the ship in close to the Star Destroyer at an angle where the tractor beams couldn't lock onto them (she hoped). The TIEs were following them still, but they were free, for the moment.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a chill ran down her back. She heard the door open and looked up to see Luke wandering in, staring out the viewport at the Destroyer. "It's Vader," he whispered. The familiar clench of anxiety came at his name. She felt cold.
Luke sat down beside her, muttering deliriously. "Why didn't you tell me?" she heard him say. Frowning, she tried to ignore him for now and focus on flying the ship, avoiding the TIEs and keeping out of the tractor beam's range. She knew she was unlikely to succeed. Executor-class Destroyers had particularly powerful tractor beams that would be hard to evade; more likely, the Imperials simply hadn't finished readying them yet. She felt as though a hand were tightening on her throat. Vader, in that ship, and them, stranded here….
All of a sudden, she was thrown back in her seat. From the back, she heard Artoo screech, and a light started blinking furiously on the panel in front of her. Hardly believing her eyes, she reached forward, breathless, and grabbed the hyperspace lever, pushing it forward.
The stars outside the viewpoint lengthened, coalescing into woven light.