Chapter 10: Dread
two days later
In the space above the globe of Dagobah, a Star Destroyer blocked out the silver spangles of the stars, and the Force reverberated through the mind of Darth Vader.
"He is here."
The woman beside Vader shifted her awareness the slightest bit, her emerald eyes never flicking from the starscape before her to the Sith at her side.
"Jade." Vader rumbled. "You will capture the Jedi and bring him to me alive."
"Yes, master."
The vornskr attached to the lead in her hand strained forwards as if it too could perceive the hunt before it, barbed tail lashing against its black flank.
When Luke returned to Yoda's home from a run the alien Jedi was standing outside leaning on his stick, and Luke knew that danger of the approaching ships weighed on Yoda's mind as on his own.
"The Empire's found me." he said, breath catching in his throat from the urgent speed of the last klick of the run.
Yoda was imperturbably calm. "Go. To the cave of the dark side."There was a fierceness in the yellow eyes. "Only Yoda will they find."
Luke was going to protest. The whine of a TIE fighter cut through the murky air, then the hiss and rumble of a larger ship, and one high howl.
Vornskrs. And a company of stormtroopers and dark Jedi.
"Take care of these I will." Yoda said. "You, they must not see."
"Yes Master." Was all Luke said, and trusted to the Force to convey the gratitude he felt. He took to the wilderness of swamps, with the baying, howling vornskrs able to be sensed as patches of hunger
and intensity.
Mara Jade moved through the swamp with Force-acuted senses, her vornskr--the leader and controller of the pack baying before them--strained at its wire lead. Darth Vader himself paced a bit behind her, seeming to always find the high ground, never marring the black shine of his dark armor.
The main force of the vornskr pack was ahead and howling for midi-chlorian-laced blood. Those loose animals were the ones the ships and ground trackers would follow; Vader, Mara and the alpha vornskr
followed their own, more exact path.
When they entered the clearing, the object of the search stood before his crude home, a tiny figure among the greater green murk.
"Master Yoda," Vader began. "You must have known we would find you someday." The alien did not react. "Mara."
She looked up as Vader began to pace along the dry ground toward Yoda.
"Follow the apprentice." Vader commanded, and Mara turned to reenter the forest. A branch fell from the canopy into her path, a crashing thick grey-skinned bole, and she leaped smoothly out of its way. The vornskr, with fleet but inferior reflexes, lashed against the leash in pain as it drug one foreleg from beneath the branch. Mara turned angrily around it and the ground itself plumed up like a soundless explosion, rocks and dust stinging her face and eyes. She stepped back the opposite way, toward Yoda, but Vader stopped her with a gesture.
The dark lord approached the tiny Jedi himself. The look in Yoda's eyes toward her though, for just a moment, told Mara that if she tried to move the response would be lethal. The vornskr bent to inspect its leg, broad shoulders flexing and back legs pacing in place with the excitement of the proximity of the powers around it. Yoda's gaze moved to Vader.
"Between you and I this is."
"So be it." The dark lord rumbled, and ignited his lightsaber. The humming blade swept toward Yoda, and the alien seemed to block and hold the red saber with his bare hands, a feat of control over energy and the Force.
Vader pulled back and struck again and Yoda caught it again. The air seemed full of the Force and Yoda's mastery of it, his intent to trap them here, to bring the forest down, so that his apprentice, the last of the Jedi, would not be found.
A tree uprooted before Mara and fell with a crash between her and the combatants. The alpha vornskr howled.
Luke moved through the darkening forest-swampland with speed borne of neccessity and familiarity. When he paused at the peak of an arching root over a still, dark pool the cave was about half a klick ahead sending out tendrils of darkness into the thoughts, and the trackers of the Empire the same distance behind. He knew Yoda was fighting; the Force rang with it.
Also, it rang with the presense of Darth Vader. Luke did not bother thinking about Darth Vader now. There was no use. Their bond, by blood and conflict, was weaker now than it had been after the revelation on Cloud City; possibly Darth Vader himself did not know that the man his forces were hunting was his son.
And for the same strange reason of seeming anachronisms, Yoda would soon die. Probably by Vader's hand.
During his short rest the forerunners of the hunters, the loose vornskr pack, had drawn closer. There was a stirring in the middle distance.
Luke jumped across the pool as the first vornskr appeared, quicker than he'd thought. They could still easily be lost, for they ran best on open ground.
Something burst out of the water--someone, someone who, when they rushed for him, drew a green-yellow lightsaber and threw the fight to the vornskrs. The first one to lunge was caught on the emerald tip of the saber and flung back into its fellows. The second was kicked in the head while the lightsaber attended to a third. Neither returned after the first attack.
In the time it took for Luke to begin to cross the bridgeway of roots the mysterious saber-wielder had finished. Ignoring the vornskrs' black bodies in a circle around him he stepped out of that circle and began to wade across to Luke, who dropped back to the land to wait.
The newcomer was Jedi, the flickering Force told Luke. His species appeared to be Nautolan, with the black-tipped tentacles that had lashed and waved during the short fight now dangling around his head and shoulders like hair. His skin was bright green, his eyes wide and black. He wore a white sleeveless shirt and long pants beneath a brown robe, and it was all worn, tattered, and soaking wet.
He stood before Luke for a moment just breathing heavily and looking around. There was the roar of a ship overhead and Luke looked up then back at the Nautolan. "We better get outta here." He said.
Without a word the Nautolan followed him into the deeper wilderness nearer the caves. When they could no longer hear their pursuers--the human trackers had rose their own calls when the bodies
of the vornskrs were discovered-the Nautolan spoke.
"Where is this place?"
"Dagobah. Where'd you come from?"
A white film flicked across the Nautolan's eyes from left to right than back. "I was on Coruscant. The clone troopers had those Jedi-hunter beasts. We were being wiped out. I thought I had been knocked out...or it was just a bad dream." Luke couldn't read emotion in the alien face, but the voice and sense became more angry and less confused. "And who are you?"
The ships were drawing near again, the TIE fighters circling around something else that sounded familiar...if only he had the time to sense the pilot. His thoughts were busy with their enemies. "Luke Skywalker."
"Kit Fisto."
There was an upheaval in the Force. Luke threw himself into the low cave entrance as the first of the TIE fighters crashed flaming into the canopy and fell a few meters away in a tangle of twisted wing struts. The Nautolan saw where Luke had gone and slid down after him, abandoning the instinctual safety of a Force shield for the more stable dark cave.
Another TIE crashed into the distance, and the whine-burp of ship's lasers echoed through the sky.
Suddenly Luke knew what familiar ship that was; it curved by overhead then flipped on its thin side and came back toward them, showing the distinct profile of a Corellian YT-1300.
The Millenium Falcon.
Firing a few warning shots into the trees where the trackers hesitantly waited, the modified freighter drifted onto repulsor power in front of the cave. The ramp lowered and Han Solo appeared, a blaster in his right hand cocked toward the swamp.
Luke whispered for the Nautolan to follow him and pulled himsel fout of the cave mouth. Quickly they crossed the thin spot of open ground between them without movement from the trackers. Han Solo muttered hello and glanced suspiciously at Kit Fisto but sealed the hatch when they were inside without question and made for the cockpit. A few seconds later they were headed for the atmosphere with ineffectual blaster bolts from the trackers pattering the Falcon's stable shields.