Part 9 (1/2)

But at last the moment came, and the Falcon's repulsorlifts came to life, glowing with power. Moving with a smooth and perfect grace that seemed out of character for the cantankerous old freighter, the Falcon rose smoothly into the air, did a ninety-degree turn to port, and lit her main sublight engines to move off into the dusky sky.

”There they go,” Lando said, his voice betraying a low, quiet, excitement. Luke could understand. Maybe they were only a family off on a vacation, a quick trip sandwiched in before Leia got caught up in the Corellian trade talks, but that didn't matter. They were on a s.h.i.+p, and the s.h.i.+p was already heading out between the stars. It could have been any s.h.i.+p, going anywhere. To Luke, and to Lando, too, for that matter, there could be no more powerful symbol of adventure, of possibility, of hope and freedom, than a s.h.i.+p heading out into s.p.a.ce.

Mon Mothma had told Luke that he craved adventure, and he had denied it. It hadn't taken much to show him the error of his ways. He wanted to be out there, in the thick of things.

”Come on, Luke,” said Lando. ”You and I have things to talk about.” broke down and Organa Solo returned to Coruscant, after Pharnis had done the Skywalker job, it could prove most embarra.s.sing.

No. Give them time to get well away. Tomorrow. He would do the job tomorrow.

Luke and Lando were not the only ones to watch the departure of the Millennium Falcon. Phamis Gleasry, agent of the Human League, watched as well, albeit from a discreet distance. He was several kilometers away, on an observation platform on another of Coruscant's ma.s.sive towers. The platform was crowded with tourists who took him for one of their own and paid him no mind. It was far enough away that he was obliged to use macrobinoculars to see much of anything. The constant jostling he suffered from the tourists did not make it any easier to keep the macrobinoculars steady.

But he could see the s.h.i.+p take off for all of that. And he could see two tiny figures, still on the hard stand. He could see them watch the Falcon vanish, see them turn away and head back inside. Pharnis was all but certain that the one on the left was Skywalker. The other was definitely Lando Calrissian. Good. Good. Pharnis was pleased to get visual confirmation that his target was on-planet. With Organa Solo safely on her way, it was time for Skywalker.

But Pharnis had done his homework. He knew that the Millennium Falcon was not the most reliable of craft. Best to give her time to get out of the system. If the Falcon

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Proposal Accepted So what is this project you want my help with, Lando?” Luke asked as they made their way back from the landing bay.

Lando Calrissian smiled at Luke as they walked, and there was more than a bit of mischief in his expression. ”A whole new approach to the way I do business,” he said.

r it might be more accurate to call it an investment opportunity.

Anyway, I want your help to get it off the ground.”

Investment opportunity? Luke thought. He glanced at his companion. Lando had always been one to go after highstakes, large-scale projects, but he had never been one to invite his friends to join the wild schemes. Even Lando knew there were limits-or at least he had, up until now.

Not that it mattered, of course. Lando could hit up Luke for money all day long, but it wouldn't do any good. You needed to have money before you could give it to someone-and Lando ought to have known that a Jedi Master was not the sort of person likely to have a stack of spare credits lying around. To put it rather crudely, saving the universe didn't pay very well.

But Lando had to know Luke was not rich. Was it something worse still? Was he hoping to trade on Luke's good name, get him to endorse the scheme so Lando could get others to invest'? ”Ah, Lando, I don't think I can help you.

I really don't have the sort of big-stakes money you're after.

And I don't think I'd be much good trying to sell it to others-”

Lando burst out laughing. ”Is that what you thought I was after?

Calrissian's Fly-by-Night Investments, as endorsed by Luke Skywalker, Hero of the Galaxy? No, no, Ithat's not it. That kind of gall would be beyond even me.”

”Well, that's a relief,” Luke said. ”I was scared you were about to ask me to go on some sort of promotional tour.

Lando gave him a funny look and smiled. ”In a sense,” he said, ”I am. But not for the sort of product you've got in mind.”

”Lando, so far you're not making sense.”

”No, I suppose not.” Lando stopped walking for a moment, and Luke did as well. Lando turned toward Luke, took him by the arm, and seemed about to say more. But then he glanced around, as if he were trying to judge the likelihood of unwelcome eavesdroppers. ”loook,” he said at last. ”There's something I've been meaning to show you.

A new project of mine. Let's head there. We can sit down quietly, in private, and I can explain the whole thing.”

all right, I suppose,” Luke said, more than a little doubfful.

”What sort of project?” he asked.

”My new home,” Lando said. ”Something kind of special. ' ”Special in what way?” Luke asked.

”You'll see,” said Lando, slapping Luke on the shoulder. ”Come on.

We'll take the scenic route.”

Luke had thought he knew Coruscant fairly well. but Lando led him through a labyrinth of pa.s.sages and tunnels and lifts and moving walkways Luke had never seen or heard of before. All of the pa.s.sageways seemed to lead off in every direction at once, but it soon became clear that they were going deeper and deeper into the bowels of the city.

By the time Lando had gotten to the level he wanted, Luke guessed they were at least one or two hundred meters below ground level-if Coruscant could be said to have a ground level. The planet-wide city of towers and monolithic structures had been built and rebuilt and overbuilt and dug up and reburied so many times that no one really knew where the original surface was anymore. Virtually all of the land surface had been built over. Here and there were hummocks of dirt where scruffy plant life had managed to secure a foothold. But hardly any of these were truly at ”ground” level. They were just sheltered spots where the winds and rains had been able to deposit enough dust and dirt and detritus to form a soil of sorts, places where a stray seed or two from one of the lush indoor gardens had found its way.

But for all of that, Luke knew they were unquestionably underground. Half the tunnels were just bare, raw rock, solid granite.

In places the tunnel walls were bone-dry. In others, they were clammy and wet, with riverlets of moisture oozing down the walls and pooling here and there.

If this was where Lando lived now, Luke could not help thinking that Lando had, quite literally, gone down' in the world. An underground address was considered a mark of very low status on Coruscant.

That worried Luke. He had always known Lando to be very concerned with appearances. There had been times he had seen Lando quite literally threadbare-but even in the worst of times, Lando had made a determined and successful effort to seem prosperous. Part of it was vanity and ego.

Lando had plenty of those in stock. But there was a more practical side to it as well. Lando was, among other things, a salesman, and a salesman who didn't look prosperous was not going to get far.

Except that Lando did look prosperous-if anything, better than he had in years. But if he was doing so well, why was he living underground?

For that matter, why was he taking Luke to where he lived by such a round-about route? There had to be a more direct way to get where they were going. Probably that was nothing more than force of habit. Back in the bad old days, Lando had often felt the need to be rather secretive about the location of his living quarters.

While he had never had half the galaxy's bounty hunters after him, the way Han had at one point, Lando Calrissian had managed to develop a pretty fair number of enemies over the years. There had been times when not even his most trusted friends knew where he lived. Even the most trusted person could be tailed, or be tricked into wearing a tracer tab, or tortured or drugged. Nowadays, there wasn't any real need for such precautions, but old habits died hard in ex-smugglers who didn't die young-and Lando was still very much alive. And it could very well be that Lando still had a few old a.s.sociates he didn't want to meet unexpectedly. Maybe it wasn't so foolish to take the long way around.

Lando kept up a steady monologue as they walked, nattering on cheerfully about every subject under the stars, from the best odds to be found in the various small-stakes gambling houses-legal and otherwise-in the bowels of Coruscant, to the enormous profits to be realized by anyone in the right place at the right time, should the Corellian Trade Summit prove successful. That much about Lando had stayed the same, Luke thought. As interested in the five-credit bet as he was in the fifty-million-credit investment. And given his usual luck on the fifty-million side of things, he probably was wise to pay attention to those five credits.

Lando Calrissian was famous for developing a huge project, living high off the proceeds-and then, through no fault of his own, having the whole thing crash down around his ears. He had done a splendid job of running Cloud City on Bespin-and gotten out with not much more than the clothes he was standing up in. It was more or less the same story for his mole-mining operation at Nkllon. And then there was that mining on Kessel . . . If he hadn't had a fair bit of skill at the gaming tables, Lando would never have been able to recover from those disasters.

And now, it appeared, he was gearing up to start up all over again.

But if he didn't want Luke's money, and didn't want to trade on Luke's name, then how in the galaxy did it have anything to do with Luke?

On they walked, through increasingly squalid and dirty pa.s.sages.

The occasional pools of water grew more frequent, and more filthy. There were a number of unpleasant odors, some of which Luke could identify, and a number that he was just as glad he could not.

At last the walkway they were on came to a halt before a huge blastproof door. Lando punched a combination into a keypad, and the door slid back into the wall with a ponderous rumbling of machinery.

They stepped onto a terrace overlooking a huge subterranean cavern, a hollow dome, easily a kilometer across.

Luke, quite astonished, found himself on a platform that looked down into a complete pocket city of low stone buildings and cool green parks. The dome was brightly lit, the air sweet and pure, the walkways and byways clean and tidy. The buildings were widely s.p.a.ced, their stone walls brightly painted. Pathways snaked through neatly kept lawns, and the roof of the dome was painted a royal blue.