Free The Last Command by Timothy Zahn Page A

distant but clearly detectable, were small pockets of darkness where his Jedi senses could read absolutely nothing. As if the Force that carried the information to him had somehow ceased to exist… or was being blocked.
    Which meant this was no ordinary ambush, for an ordinary New Republic spy. The Imperials knew he was here and had come to Poderis equipped with ysalamiri.
    And unless he did something fast, they were going to take him.
    He looked again at the buildings around him. Squat, two-story structures, for the most part, with textured facades and decorative roof parapets. Those to his immediate right were built in a single solid row; directly across the street to his left, the first building after the T-junction had a warped facade, leaving a narrow gap between it and its neighbor’s. It wasn’t much in the way of cover—and the distance itself was going to be a reach—but it was all he had. Hurrying across the street, half expecting the trap to be sprung before he got there, he slipped into the opening. Bending his knees, letting the Force flow into his muscles, he jumped.
    He almost didn’t make it. The parapet directly above him was angled and smooth, and for a second he seemed to hang in midair as his fingers scrabbled for a hold. Then, he found a grip, and with a surge of effort pulled himself up and over to lie flat along the rooftop.
    Just in time. Even as he eased one eye over the edge of the parapet, he saw his tail come racing around the corner, all efforts at subtlety abandoned. Shoving aside those in his way, he said something inaudible into the comlink in his hand—
    And from the cross street a block away, a row of white-armored stormtroopers stepped into view. Blaster rifles held high against their chests, the dark elongated shapes of ysalamiri slung on backpack nutrient frames across their shoulders, they cordoned off the end of the street.
    It was a well-planned, well-executed net; and Luke had maybe three minutes to get across the roof and down before they realized their fish had slipped out of it. Easing back from the edge, he turned his head toward the other side of the roof.
    The roof didn’t have another side. Barely sixty centimeters from where he lay, the roof abruptly became a blank wall that angled steeply downward for perhaps a hundred meters, extending in both directions as far as Luke could see. Beyond its lower edge, there was nothing but the distant mists in the lowlands beneath the mesa.
    He’d miscalculated, possibly fatally. Preoccupied with the man shadowing him, he’d completely missed the fact that his path had taken him to the outer edge of the mesa. The slanting wall beside him was one of the massive shield-barriers designed to deflect the planet’s vicious seasonal winds harmlessly over the city.
    Luke had escaped the Imperial net… only to discover that there was literally nowhere else for him to go.
    “Great,” he muttered under his breath, easing back to the parapet and looking down into the street. More stormtroopers had joined the first squad now and were beginning to sift through the stunned crowd of people caught in the trap; behind them, two squads from the other direction of the T-junction had moved in to seal off the rear of the street. Luke’s erstwhile shadow, a blaster now gripped his hand, was pushing his way through the crowd, making for the other robed figure Luke had noticed earlier.
    The other robed figure…
    Luke bit at his lip. It would be a rather unfriendly trick to play on a totally innocent bystander. But on the other hand, the Imperials obviously knew who they were looking for and just as obviously wanted him alive. Putting the man down there in deadly danger, he knew, would be unacceptable behavior for a Jedi. Luke could only hope that inconveniencing him wouldn’t fall under the same heading.
    Gritting his teeth, he reached out with the Force and plucked the blaster from the shadow’s hand. Spinning it low over the heads of the crowd, he