'Madame Admiral." I was--an officer of the Imperial fleet on exact parity
with others of my rank, and you will employ that usage whenever you address
me."
Her eyes were like ash--burned out, exhausted, defeated. Threepio did not
think he had ever seen such ruin, such bitterness, on a human face.
"Once, Tarkin and I together could have ruled the Empire," she continued
slowly. "Looking back on it, I can't even remember why. All I seek, now, is
a place to live out the rest of my life where I will not be disturbed. I
thought I had found such a place on Pedducis Chorios, a world in a neutral
sector, with amenable local authorities, beyond the interference of those
ham-fisted, brainless, contentious madmen who are engaged in the final
throes of tearing to pieces what was once the finest system of government
this galaxy has known. I want no more of it, or of them."
Her hands lay smooth over the arms of her chair, her knees together, the
square bones of the joints and the hard bulge of muscle clearly defined
where the drab trousers tailored to the flesh. Threepio's copious databanks
contained a great deal of very alarming information about this woman one of
the most brilliant commanders in the Imperial fleet, but a mad bantha, a
loose gun firing at random in battle. A woman of formidable competence and
terrifying anger.
"And now I come to take up the advisory position I and my partners have been
offered by the Pedducian Warlords," she continued in that quiet voice, whose
hoarse timbre spoke of burning gases inhaled in the last battle on board the
Knight Hammer, the battle in which Callista had destroyed her flagship and
in which she and Callista had both been thought to perish. "And what do I
find?"
Threepio had never been good at distinguishing rhetorical from actual
questions.
"Invasion, the Death Seed plague, wholesale rebellion, looting . . ."
"Be silent."
He logged the interchange in his Later Study file under the heading of
"Determinative Cues to Separate Rhetorical from Actual Questions."
It was his duty as a protocol unit to achieve perfection in that area, and
he was aware that it would probably prolong his period of usefulness as
well.
"I find droids who have clearly been at large for some time in this sector,
droids whose function is to accurately record all data taking place around
them, whose answers to my questions are so comprehensively riddled with
holes and omissions that they lead me to suspect that there is something
going on."
She rose to her feet, and touched a wall hatch. With silent efficiency the
panel revolved, exhibiting a complete and up-to-date electronic analysis
kit. She activated the data screens with three taps of those long,
square-tipped fingers, and unhooked a coaxial cable.
"Fortunately, many, many years ago I had a friend who taught me how to
communicate with droids."
Threepio said, with genuine interest, "How very kind of him," but Artoo,
quicker on the uptake, made a nervous attempt to back away, thwarted by the
restraining bolt that Daala's Sergeant-at-Arms had taken the precaution of
installing on both droids before bringing them into her presence. Daala
checked over the various interfaces and cables added by poor Captain Bortrek
and finally hooked her own coax into one of the ports he had space-taped to
Artoo's side.
She flipped a switch on the analysis kit; Artoo quivered and gave a faint,
protesting wail.
"Now," said Daala, her green eyes narrowing. "Tell me what's happening in
the Meridian sector."
"What the blazes are those things?" Lando flipped through half a dozen data
sectors, then cut back immediately to another screen of scan field to check
on the next pass of the vicious, needlelike attackers. "And how much damage
did that one do?"
Chewbacca yowled something through the comm from the rapidly freezing rear
quarter, where he was floating near the ceiling to fix burned-out wiring
through hissing masses of emergency foam. "Those things are the things
that're gonna appear on our headstones, pal," said Han.
"The most i can figure is they're some kind of CCIR technology, like
shield controls while Han whipped and pivoted the Millennium Falcon through
the desperate series of zigzags and loop the loops that was the only
possible defensive strategy against the things. "The Antemeridian fleet
isn't anywhere near us, they can't possibly be guiding them in the usual
sense of the word."
Around them, the Courane and the Fire-eateand the light explorer Sundance,
in which Kyp Durron had shown up to assist--were doing the same, snaking and
weaving in a desperate attempt to remain in position near Nam Chorios until
the actual invading fleet showed up to fight.
Only the fact that they'd made orbit before the arrival of the gnatlike
attackers, with barely forty minutes to spare, let them hold any kind of
position at all.
"Are you kidding?" said Han. "You know what a synthdroid costs?
That's crazy!"
"I know synthdroid technology is based on a kind of programmable crystal,
and that's what kicks up the price . . . Blast!" he added, as there was a
jarring flash and more red lights went up on the board.
"Chewie, we've got another hit, starboard shield--yeah, I know about the
hole in the port shield!"
Stars whirled and flashed past the viewport as Han put the vessel through
another series of evasions. He wondered as he scratched past another line of
laser light, perilously close to the main shields on the ship's spine, how'
long he could keep up this pitch of alertness and activity, not to mention
how much more of this kind of activity the power supplies could take. Though
everything was a spangled flash of stars and blackness, he had seen, in a
rare moment of pause, the Fire-eater drifting helpless and being cut to
pieces by the Needles at their leisure. He could only pray that the crew was
already dead or at least unconscious from anoxia.
Lando, who could never leave an explanation unfinished, added, "If
somebody's synthesized those crystals, or found a way to get them cheap,
there's no problem."
"There's a problem for us!" yelled Han. How did you fight things like that?
After long concentration and plenty of practice he'd managed to hit two of
them, but with so many wasted shots it wasn't worth it. They could only
evade, until the toll of the speed and hyperquick reactions wore them down.
The Needles, as far as he could tell, were tireless.
"One thing's for sure," yelled Lando, "they sure want that rock.
You got any ideas how we're gonna deal with the main fleet when they show
up?"
"I'll think of something."
There was a jarring concussion from somewhere in the ship, and more red
lights went on.
"Moff Getelles."
Daala sat back from the primary readout screen, letting it go black.
The lesser screens still held the record of Attoo's long, persistent batt
le
to retain the secret files concerning Leia's disappearance, her doubts
concerning the integrity of the Council, and all the information for which
Yarbolk Yemm had been chased and shot at across half the sector. The little
droid rested tipped back on his two main limbs, a posture curiously
evocative of defeat. Cables and wires trailed from the various ports and
interface hatches, short-circuiting through his defenses to every portion of
his memory.
Threepio felt sorry for him and considerably apprehensive for his own safety
as well.
It did not take an interrogation unit to deduce that this tall, redhaired
woman sitting so motionless in her black chair was very, very angry indeed.
"The quibbling, incompetent, boot-licking, corset-laced little sand maggot,"
she said, in a perfectly soft conversational tone. "Still has his sycophant
Larm on a leash, i see--with whom he shared the test results at the Academy,
when he was promoted to captain over my head.
Selling out to Loronar Corporation, a gang of legalistic thieves who'd
peddle their sisters to either side so long as they got paid Slime molds.
All of them. Ranats and Hutts have more honor."
Threepio made a quick examination of his Determinative Cues sub-file, but
could not accurately ascertain whether a response was being solicited from
him or not.
Daala slid from her chair to her knees, and began uncoupling the various
cables from Attoo's innards.
As she worked she spoke, still softly, almost to herself. "I pity her, your
Chief of State," she said--speaking to Artoo, Threepio thought, slightly
indignant. "She was Prince Bail Organa's daughter. A man of honor, by his
own rights, who raised her to be honorable. We had honor in those days.
Honor and courage."
She stood and shook back her hair, which flashed like fire in the dim
lighting of the office. Still her eyes were dead, but filled with the stony
anger of the dead. "It was honor that drew me to the fleet.
Power, yes, but honor and courage as well. And now they have come to this.
Maggots feeding off the corpse of the Empire. Ghouls selling it to procurers
and money grubbers.
Tarkin would have died of shame."
She was looking in his direction, so Threepio ventured, "I have no
conclusive data as to whether Loronar Corporation is in the business of
procuration . . ."
"I was a fool."
She touched the side of the electronic extraction kit, and it retreated
soundlessly into the wall. "I was a fool to think that leaving them behind
would be so simple as cursing them, and walking through the door. Maybe I've
always been a fool."
She returned to her chair, and touched an almost invisible toggle in its
arm. "Yelnor.
Get me a conference with the captains of all the ships."
"Ships?" inquired Threepio, startled.
Daala raised her head, her poisoned eyes seeming to take in again that she
was not alone in the room. "Ships," she said. "I am the President of the
Independent Company of Settlers, over three thousand of us, counting spouses
and children. We who were loyal to the old ways, loyal to the order and
efficiency that was the heart of the New Order.
Most were officers of the fleet, who sickened, like me, at this constant
petty struggle for power, this stupid diplomatic bandying of words with
upstarts and scum.
Some others--the heads of business and their families, civil servants.
We ask only to be let alone, and to that end we
entered a contract with Warlord K'iin of the Silver Unifir for one and a
half billion acres--the smallest of the three southern continents--on
Pedducis Chorios, to colonize and to live as we see fit.
"And I have no intention," she concluded, reaching out and tapping Artoo on
his domed cap, "of seeing my investment-our investment--come to nothing
because a boot-kissing, talentless, jumped-up catamite like Moff Getelles
wants to be supported in comfort by Loronar Corporation for the rest of his
sycophantic life. Even if pushing him out of the sector means saving your
Chief of State--and her spineless alien trash of a Senatorial Council--from
the embarrassment they so richly deserve."
She flicked over another comm button. Viewscreens revolved into existence
all along the wall before her, viewscreens bearing the faces of eight
men--three of whom wore, like her, drab variations of em-blemless Imperial
uniforms--and two women. Stern, disciplined faces, with those same bitter,
burned-out eyes.
"My friends," said Daala, "it seems that there is one battle yet to fight."
"He's behind us." Leia reared up to her knees, wind and dust tearing at her
long hair, and adjusted Aunt Gin's electrobinoculars. Whipping and veering
through the fathomless, glittering gashes of the canyons, scaling hogbacks
of diamond scree or dropping down precipices ten and twelve meters deep to
catch again on the Mobquet's antigravs, it was impossible to see behind them
for more than thirty meters at the most, sometimes only half that. But Leia
knew.
"Beldorion."
She dropped back down into the sheltered cockpit, began checking loads on
the flamethrowers and blaster rifles that Arvid and Umolly Darm had thrust
in after them on their departure. She smiled a little grimly at the truly
excellent quality of the weapons, all sleek, all new, all black and silver,
and all bearing the discreet double-moon logo
LORONAR WEAPONS DIVISION
"All the finest--All the first."
As a rule Leia discreetly avoided riding in any vehicle that Luke was
driving; but for one of the first times in her life, she was grateful that
her brother had developed the skill that had made him one of the best pilots
of the Rebellion. And indeed, the Chariot was equipped with internal grav
control as well, so she was able to prime and check everything without
having her bones jounced out of her body every time the antigravs kicked in
as they went over small cliffs--or big cliffs She was being very careful not
to look. She might have been sitting on her own bed at home.
"How'd they import this thing, anyway?" she asked, looking around her at the
comfortable black leather of the seats, the small, enclosed bar and the bank
of electronic toys and communications equipment. "It's nearly as big as a
B-wing itself."
"According to Arvid, Loronar must have made seven or eight drops before they
got past the gun stations." Luke flung the Chariot over a chasm that was
considerably deeper than he'd supposed, whipped in a long, banking curve
over the near-vertical face of a crystalline canyon to take some of the
stress, and headed up a ridge like a mating sun dragon taking to the sky.
"At least Aunt Gin found pieces of wrecked ones two or three diffbrent
times. She's made a fortune charging Ash-gad for repairs. She's bought parts
from the Therans, too, so they've found some as well. All in the past year,
she says."
"While Q-Varx was putting together the meeting with the 'head of the
Rationalists' on this world." Leia shook her head. "I won't
say I'd have
trusted Q-Varx with my life, but he seemed sincere. Never in a million years
would I have thought he'd be part of something like this."
"Maybe he was sincere," said Luke softly. "Maybe he sincerely thought that
embroiling the whole sector in warfare and risking the spread of some plague
he'd been told they could control were worth the rights of those who seek
progress over stagnation. And he can't have known it was the Death Seed
they'd be spreading."
"He didn't," said Leia. "But my point is that he should have. A man in that
position can't afford to be that stupid."
And all the while Luke was flicking the controls, stretching out his mind
and the Force to feel the ground beyond the next ridge, to slip past
obstacles before they came into view, he was thinking, There's something
else. There's something I'm missinG.
There was life on the planet. Invisible, intangible, but intelligent, and
lambent with the Force.
Don't let them. Don't let them.
Don't let who?
Why did he remember his vision last night, of stormtroopers and J awas?
Why did he feel that whoever it was, who had stood near the broken-down
speeder in the canyon, watching him at his repairs, avaited him just beyond
the next rise, around the next elbow of the rocky way?
But there was never anything there.
"And it's a sure thing," he added, almost to himself, "that Q-Varx didn't
know' about Dzym."
The hangar doors were locked. So were the doors that led from the hangar to
the stairway, up to Ashgad's house. Luke was of the opinion that half-power
on the ion blaster should be sufficient for the second pair of doors, for
the first had nearly disintegrated when Leia had fired at them full-force.
But the first blast only dented the inner ones, so Leia turned up the
blaster to full and let them have it again.
The noise in the enclosed space of the hangar was quite astonishing, and
brother and sister waded to the resultant, gaping hole through a calf-deep
rubble field and a choking cloud of dust.
"I told you three-quarters would do it."
"We can't waste time."
Leia might have learned diplomacy and patience with ambassadors, reflected
her twin wryly, slinging one of the two flamethrowers into place over his
shoulder, but it was quite clear that she still dearly loved the destructive