Part 13 (2/2)

”Maybe we'd better get out of sight,” Luke said. ”Hide inside, Artoo.”

With Artoo safely in Ben's house, Luke circled around to a sandy hillock and crouched down. He couldn't be bolting every time some pa.s.sing dune rat coughed. He had to stay and see what was going on.

The noise of the engines was an echoing racket now, and Luke finally recognized the source: swoops.

Swoops were long, raked repulsor craft with a plowlike scoop on the front. The vehicles were capable of seating two, were fast and maneuverable but hard to control well. They weren't much more than huge engines with seats and controls, and the combination of big repulsors and hot turbothrusters made for a mean, fast, noisy flier. A speeder bike was a child's toy compared to a fully dressed-out swoop. Most people a.s.sociated the small, unprotected craft with gangs, outlaws who did almost anything as long as it wasn't legal. Some of them were famous, like the Nova Demons and the Dark Star h.e.l.lions. They could make their swoops do everything but dance. They ran spice, smuggled weapons, did odd jobs for various factions of the underworld, and generally raised a lot of grief wherever they went.

Of course, not everybody who flew a swoop was a thug.

He'd spent quite a bit of time riding a borrowed swoop himself when he'd been a teen, darting in and out of the canyons and roaring through the streets of Mos Eisley late at night when the traffic patrol was thin.

Question was, what was a swooptroop gang doing out here? He was the only person around for a hundred kilometers. Had they gotten lost?

Not likely, given their time in the seats.

No, if this was what he thought it was, they were coming to see him.

And he didn't think they were coming out to wish him a nice day. Well, he'd wanted a real test for his lightsaber. Looked as if he might be about to get one.

Luke looked for insignia as the swoops roared in and began to circle Ben's house. There were eight, nine... a dozen of them, and they all wore protective goggles and shock helmets, but their flight suits weren't matched. A couple of them wore blue neocels; a couple wore orange and tan; one was in green puff sleeves; another sported dyed red bantha hide; and about half of them wore freight handler grays.

All had the same insignia on their jackets-Luke couldn't quite place it, though it looked vaguely familiar somehow.

All carried blasters.

He wasn't as well hidden as he'd thought. One of them spotted him, jerked his blaster up, and fired. The beam sizzled past him, turned sand into muddy gla.s.s. Not even close, but it didn't look as if they were here to take any prisoners.

Uh-oh.

He heard one of the bikers yell above the engine racket: ”Blow the little runt to Bespin, boys!”

Luke hurried to find better cover. There were a couple of large boulders that would keep most of their fire off him. He ran. His own blaster was in the house; all he had was his lightsaber and-ten-to-one, twelve-toone odds? That could be a lot better. He'd never outrun them on foot. Not a whole lot of places to hide out here.

Why were they trying to kill him? Who sent them? He needed to know that.

He also needed to stay alive.

The engines rumbled; the vibrations of the repulsors shook the ground; the sound washed over him in hard ba.s.s, and the subsonics made his head ache. He could see their mouths working, but he couldn't hear what they were yelling.

Okay, Luke. Think of something.

The swoopers roared in, snapped off shots at him. Most of the bolts didn't come close, and he was able to block those that did with his own unaugmented skills. He tried to let the Force fill him, but it didn't happen. Hard to concentrate with all that racket and a dozen armed thugs taking potshots at him that way.

Two of the riders headed for him; both fired again. Neither was even close; their beams missed by a meter.

Fortunately the swoops kicked up a lot of grit. A cloud of dust surrounded them and offered a translucent tan screen.

Again a blaster beam went wide as Luke jumped and swung his glowing green blade.

Behind him there came a crash. Luke spun, saw that two of the swoops had collided. One of them angled off and smashed into a clump of rocks, the rider leaping free at the last second. The other bike settled to the ground, damaged but probably not unusable. They couldn't shoot and they couldn't fly. Lucky for him.

A roar to his left. Luke twisted. A biker roared in; he had what looked like a giant ax in his hand!

Another engine screamed closer than the axman. Luke set himself, and as the second swooper came in, he swung his saber in a feint and slammed his boot into the rider.

Luke's kick toppled the attacker from the swoop. The deadman switch in the grips immediately killed the turbine, but not the repulsor engine.

Luke hopped onto the swoop, grabbed the handlebars, and twisted the start ring. The swoop's turbine grumbled back online.

Now the odds were better. He couldn't keep riding his luck; better to take his chances riding one of these.

He opened the throttle a little, hit the retros, turned, put the swoop into a one-eighty and kicked up a sandwall, just like he'd done as a teen. He pointed the swoop at the axman and opened the throttle wide.

The acceleration nearly unseated him, but he managed to stay in the saddle.

Oh, boy! He'd nearly forgotten how much fun one of these was!

The axman's weapon shattered when it hit Luke's saber. Luke twisted the throttle, turned, roared away.

The next rider nearest Luke was the one dressed in puffy green. With the swoop's turbos open wide, it didn't take long to reach him.

Green saw him coming, and by the time he figured out Luke wasn't one of his gang, it was too late. He tried to turn away at the last second, but Luke's cut sheared through Green's right thruster-control line. The right jet shut down, but the left jet did not, and the swoop immediately spun out of control. Luke was past him and safe, but the wildly twirling and gyrating little craft flew into the path of another of the gray riders.

There came a crunch of metal and plastic as the two swoops smashed into each other and crashed to the ground.

Well, well. Three down, nine to go. So far, so good.

It was too good to last.

The leader saw Luke and used hand signals to move his troops. They scattered and re-formed in a unit.

Luke swung the swoop into a wide turn and hit the throttles. If he took this baby a few hundred meters up and out of the sand and ground clutter, he could open it up to racing speed. He could be at Beggar's Canyon in minutes. He'd explored just about every centimeter of that place in his T-16; no way they'd run him down there. He could pick them off one at a time, disable their machines-shoot, he could capture the whole gang!

There was an extra set of goggles clipped to the handlebars. Luke belted his lightsaber, pulled the goggles free, and strapped them on. He'd need them-when the afterburners kicked in on a hot swoop, it could hit a good 600 kph. A bug would put an eye out at that speed. He hoped the machine's owner kept this rake tuned.

Beggar's Canyon, here I come.

Beggar's Canyon was actually a series of interlinked canyons. Long ago, there had been a lot of water on Tatooine, and much of it had flowed as rivers. Beggar's Canyon had been the confluence of at least three rivers, and, along with millions of years of wind and rain and sunlight, the flowing water had carved deep and twisted valleys into the rock.

It had been a while since Luke had flown the canyons. Then again, they hadn't changed since his last visit. He and a few of the other local would-be star pilots had engaged in mock firefights here, using harmless light beams for lasers. Plus he'd hunted womp rats, some of them three meters long, but hard targets to hit with a low-powered sporting blaster while traveling at speed.

The pack of swooptroops was still behind him as he dropped below ground level. They hadn't gained on him, save for one of the riders, who was only a hundred meters or so back. But the pack hadn't lost much distance, either; it was only a few hundred meters behind the rider dressed in blue, and holding steady.

Luke grinned. Let's see how they like playing in my territory.

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