Star Wars - Planet Of Twilight (14 page)

BOOK: Star Wars - Planet Of Twilight
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No evidence of an actual illness, either. No bacteria, no virus, no polyphagous microorganisms Nothing.

Only men and women dying.

We can't get med teams in because of the revolt that has broken out on Durren itself. Local factions have the base under siege . . ."

“Siege? said Han ”With two cruisers there?"

“The cruisers were--are--out, investigating what is either a pirate attack on Ampliquen or what might be a rupture of the truce between Budpock and Ampliquen. We haven't heard. Nor have we heard anything of Leia's flagship or its escort after they reported the meeting 'acceptably' concluded and entered hyperspace at the scheduled jump point.”

An R-10 trundled in, dispatched by the house timer with a glass of beer for Han and cocoa for Mon Mothma. Like everything else in the house, the little droid was designed to fit in with the rustic fantasy, hand-crafted in patinated wood and old green bronze. if the Emperor still owned the house, reflected Han, the droid would probably have been replaced by a synthdroid, which according to the ads could be shaped to exactly resemble any sentient or semisentient life form in the Registry. Han wasn't sure how comfortable he'd have been with them around, in the unlikely event that Leia's salary would even cover the cost of such a thing.

“Have you checked Ashgad's part in this?”

She nodded, and sipped her cocoa, setting the cup down on the droid's worn-looking bronze top. "Final report from the Borealis includes sensor readings from Ashgad's vessel, which indicate nothing unusual.

The captains of both the flagship and the escort reported no other vessels closer than Pedducis Chorios, and Leia herself said that Ashgad seemed content with the outcome of the meeting. We've sent a message to Ashgad . . ."

“Which means nothing if he's in on it.”

“Maybe.” She rubbed her arms, and Chewbacca picked up one of Winter's shawls, whose pattern and colors changed kaleidoscope-like every few' minutes, and draped it over the former Chief's shoulders. She looked her thanks to him with a smile.

"Nov, I know an Interdictor can extract a ship from hyperspace ....

“It can,” said Han. "But Intelligence has been keeping a pretty close eye on everybody who's Got Interdictors---everybody that we know about.

As far as I know we haven't heard a peep. I mean, yeah, they can pull a ship out of hyperspace, but then they've got a ship on their hands that has to be explained. We've been watching for that one."

“As you said,” murmured Mon Mothma, "you can only watch those you know about. Might someone alter a jump point by remote?

Re-route them?"

“Not possible,” said Han. “I mean, I'm not a scientist or anything, but those navicomputers are shielded like a Valorsian harem against every kind of solar flare and gamma particle for just that reason, but when I was in the game there were always rumors about either the Imps or some one of the big smuggler chiefs figuring out a way to do that.”

The chill behind his sternum seemed to tighten as he said it. All his life he'd played tag with the black hollows of eternity, and he knew just how immense were the spaces between stars. Anything could be out there. It was every deep-spacer's nightmare to be somehow disoriented in the interstellar gulfs. It was why he had labored to memorize hundreds of starfields, why he still kept reams of hardcopy starcharts on the Millennium Falcon in spite of the teasing he got about it from Lando and his other smuggler buddies of years past.

Just the thought that someone might be able to alter a jump point by remote was enough to scare the pants off him.

It was something else. It had to be something else.

Angrily, he said, “So whose great idea was it for the Council to select a pro tem successor if both the Chief of State and the First Minister bought it? The minute they know she's missing they're gonna deadlock, and then you won't be able to do anything.”

“We can't do anything now.”

“What about a hologram?” asked Han. “We could get some holo faker to splice together recent footage . . .”

“That,” said Mon Mothma coldly, "has already been tried. Once by the Daysong Party, who have heard rumors of the disappear ance . . .

“From whom? Where?”

She shook her head. "Rumors are already beginning to fly, Han.

Admiral Ackbar has put the Council on a twelve-hour hiatus to prevent violence between Senator Typia of the Daysong Party and Senator Aras-tide of Gantho. The second faked hologram we haven't been able to trace, though we suspect the Tervigs, since it declared that trade in Bandie slaves from Tervissis was acceptable. In any case, it was so badly put together that it obviates any connection with the original disappearance.

“And no matter what the circumstances,” she went on, measuring her words with arctic exactness, "substitution of a holographic fake for the Chief of State of the Republic is not a precedent I wish to see set.

Nor, I think you would agree, does Leia."

Han felt like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "No.

I guess not."

Another reason, he reflected, not to rule the galaxy.

“What about Luke?” he asked into the silence that followed.

“Luke?”

“He was on the Borealis. He was here to see her off Then she got a message at the last minute from Callista--saying for Leia not to trust Ashgad as far as she could throw him--and Luke went along. He planned to take a small craft down to the surface past the gun stations, to see if Callista was on Nam Chorios.”

“Ashgad,” said Mon Mothma softly. “I didn't know' that. We've been trying to reach Luke on the moon of Yavin. His students thought he might have returned and gone into the jungle to meditate.”

Han grunted. Then the silence returned, save for the wickering of the fire, and the murmur of the fountain in the corner of the parlor.

Firelight caught in Chewbacca's eyes, twin blue glimmers beneath the shadow of his brows. Beyond the tall, magnetically guarded opening that made up the room's southern wall, the magic skies of the Corus-cant system shimmered with ropes and veils and spilled treasures of prodigal starlight.

“I'll need to get in touch with Lando,” he said at length.

Mon Mothma nodded. She seemed to have read his mind from the first.

He reflected that it was probably part of the Chief of State's job description.

“He'll have his own ship for the search. We have to keep this small--we'll probably never know who originally blabbed, among the crews of the Borealis and the Adamantine. Any objections to Mara Jade knowing? She knows how to quarter a sector.”

Mothma nodded. “Anyone else?”

"Kyp Durron, from the Academy. Wedge Antilles, if he can be spared.

Kyp'll need a ship. Nothing that'll get noticed, but it has to be fast."

“It's done,” said Mon Mothma. She held out to him a red plast cube.

“These are the final reports from Leia, Commander Zoalin, and Captain Ioa, and the sensor readings on Ashgad's ship and on all the surrounding five parsecs. You'll also find the coordinates for the jump point where they disappeared.”

“Doesn't matter where they went in,” said Han. “If someone found a way to alter the jump, they could have come out anywhere from here to the backside of last week.” He stood up, and helped her to her feet. It was an indication of her ease with him--her trust in him--that she had brought her canes with her. She took them from him with a smile, and Han felt curiously honored. For her to let him see her walking with the canes meant that she regarded him as her friend.

"How long can you hold off the Council?

“A few- day's,” she said. “Maybe a week.” The house was equipped with NL-6 courtesy droids, but Han escorted Mon Mothma to the vestibule himself. “We're still trying to get a medical support team out to Durren, or escorts to take teams in from the Medical Research Facility on Nim Drovis. As I said, the reports are fragmentary, but it doesn't sound good.”

“Unknown?” said Han, looking across at her in the reflected fire glow.

She hesitated, and in her eyes he saw that it was known. She just didn't want to admit what it might be.

The vestibule doors slid open before them. Mon Mothma's courtesy guard-cum-footman got to his feet, a gloomy looking, sandy-haired young man whose expression never seemed to alter no matter what was done or said around him.

“You be careful.”

Han gave her a grin. “Your Excellency, the day I start being careful is the day I buy myself a foot warmer and a rocking chair. I'll find her.”

But when the door closed behind her and her bodyguard, Han stood for a long time in the vestibule, the little red hunk of plast closed in his fist, staring at nothing. Thinking about hyperspace. Thinking about interstellar space.

Thinking about Leia.

Five years since they'd married. Thirteen since they'd met, in the Death Star's corridors with blaster fire zapping around them. If he couldn't find her . . .

There was no conclusion to that sentence. No conclusion to the thought. Only a darkness as deep as the nightmare of disorientation in realtime space, with no starcharts, no navicomputer, no spectroscope, no clue as to which of those tiny, infinitely distant lights to aim for.

His hand tightened around the datacube, and he turned back toward the firelight of the parlor, to tell Chewie to get the Falcon into preflight. They would head out just before dawn.

“Sir, I must protest!” The bridge doors of the Pure Sabacc slid open before Threepio's determined advance--a considerable improvement over those of the storage hold in which he had been incarcerated for the past 2.6 hours while the vessel jolted into hyperspace--and the protocol droid marched through to behold Captain Bortrek ensconced at the main console, picking his teeth with a laser extractor.

“Artoo-Detoo and I are duly registered to Her Excellency Leia Organa Solo, and misap-propriation of any duly registered droid is contrary to Sections Seven, Twelve, and Two Hundred and Forty-Three A of the New Republic Universal Galactic . . . Artoo-Detoo!” Threepio exclaimed in astonishment, as he cleared the doorway and got a better view of the bridge.

The astromech droid made a sorry little sound.

As well he might, See-Threepio reflected. All of his access hatches had been bodily removed, some to admit sinewy snakes of data cables, some to accommodate blocky add-on patches of machinery, which themselves connected into at least three of the bridge stations. An enormous switch box had been screwed into the little droid's domed cap, connected to what Threepio vaguely recognized as the navigational computer; another housing had been affixed to his side with silver space tape, to pipe information to and from the vessel's central core station. His sturdy legs had been unscrewed and lay in a corner, the connecting hydraulic cables dangling sadly at his sides. The general impression was that of a small life form half-absorbed within a carnivorous flower, streaked with grease and glinting with green and orange lights.

“What in the name of goodness happened to you?”

“A little creative reprogramming, that's all.” Captain Bortrek set down his laser extractor. “And I don't give a Ranat's sneeze who you're duly registered to, Goldie. You're mine now, like your little friend . . .” He jerked a grimy thumb at Artoo. “And I didn't call you here from the hold to quote me some pox-festering regulation, either, you understandS. A good See-Three unit's worth a pile even without provenante, but don't think I couldn't get almost as much for your chips and wiring.”

Threepio considered the matter. “Actually, sir, See-Three units with specialized programming like myself sell for a minimum, used, at forty-three thousand standard credits, Blue Registry prices. The aggregate of my components would only bring in five thousand at the very most . . .”

“Shut up!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And come with me down to the hold. I want you to give me a valuation on every piece of that garbage so I know Sandro the Hook isn't going to cheat me once we get to Celanon City.”

"Are we going to Celanon, sir? A most pleasant planet, I've been told.

It isn't necessary to return to the hold, you know. While incarcerated there I took the opportunity to price your acquisitions to the best of my knowledge--which was updated only last week from the Corus-cant Index--and the information is still in my memory."

“No lie?” Captain Bortrek tongued his scarred lip, and studied the golden droid speculatively. In the background, Artoo-Detoo made soft whirring noises indicative of intensive activity, and the ship's core computer flashed and burbled replies. "i tell you what, then, Goldie.

You come with me and we'll get that stuff sorted out, and maybe when we get to Celanon I won't sell you to a travel agent for your programming."

He stood up, and pulled from a pocket of his embroidered leather vest a small flat silver flask, from which he took a drink. By his exhalation, as he walked past Threepio and preceded him out the door, the fluid within consisted of equal parts grain alcohol, synthetic gylocal stimulant, and hyperdrive coolant.

This was, Threepio learned, a constant in Captain Bortrek's life.

Over the next several hours, while Threepio shifted the booty in the ship's three holds into some semblance of order and Captain Bortrek made notes about market value, the human had frequent recourse to the flask, his speech becoming both increasingly slurred and increasingly scatological as the level of his blood alcohol rose.

The universe, it appeared, had never been kind to Captain Bortrek, conspiring against him in a fashion that Threepio privately considered unlikely given the man's relative unimportance. Knowing what he did about the Alderaan social structure, shipping regulations, the psychology of law enforcement agents, and the statistical behavior patterns of human females, Threepio was much inclined to doubt that so many hundreds of people would spend that much time thinking up ways to thwart and injure a small-time free-trader who was, by his own assertion, only trying to make a living.

Still, it was not for droids to contradict humans unless requested to do so for informational purposes, so he moved gold reliquaries, and held his peace.

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