Star Wars - Planet Of Twilight (36 page)

“As a what?” asked Luke, startled.

“An appetizer.” Liegeus blinked up at him. “I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Forgotten . . .” He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the lassitude did not leave his eyes. “It was Beldorion's greed--or I suppose one could say his gourmandism--that was his downfall. That Kubazi chef of his, Zubindi, was always experimenting with enzymati-callv enhancing and gene-splicing new types of insects so they'd be tastier, juicier, more fun for Beldorion to eat. Hutts like to eat sentient things, you know. They like the game of chasing them around the plate for a bit. Vile things.”

He shook his head again, and this time Luke glimpsed the echoes of ugly scenes long ago witnessed in his eyes.

“Well, Zubindi finally got the idea of enzymatically enhancing, feeding, raising a droch, mutating it in the dark, far longer than its normal lifespan. Before anyone realized what was going on, the droch had grown, and achieved intelligence, to the point where it enslaved Zubindi. It drained energy from him, but at the same time gave him back strength and energy--which goodness knows he needed, in dealing with Beldorion--in a sort of double vampirism. And in the end, of course, the droch Dzym enslaved Beldorion as well.”

He managed a faint laugh, gazing up at the stars. “It's certainly a lesson to us all, though I'm not sure about what. And, of course, once Dzym began draining his strength, Beldorion was finished as a power in Hweg Shul. It was easy for Ashgad to take over, when he arrived on this planet. He stepped into Beldorion's power, into his household and all his servants .... And, of course, into Dzym, too.”

Luke wondered if that was the reason the old Senator had built the house in the desert to protect his growing son from the influence of the creature that he himself could not be rid of. And of course it hadn't done any good.

“In fact, I'm not sure how much of Seti Ashgad is left, in that body and that brain.” Liegeus's voice had sunk to a murmur--for a moment Luke could not tell whether he was speaking of the elder Ashgad or the younger. "Certainly not enough to go against Dzym's will. And as the resident expert on local conditions here, it was his job to assure Getelles and the CEOs of Loronar that the drochs were in no way connected with the ancient Death Seed plague. It's not that difficult.

They truly don't want to know. As I didn't want to know, and managed not to know, up until seven or eight months ago."

His breath went out in another sigh. By a flicker of the moving current, Luke saw his hand grope feebly at the glittering pebbles beneath his fingers, stir at them aimlessly. "Eventually of course the matter was pushed under my nose in unmistakable terms. I told myself I had to do 'something' about it, get word out 'somehow. But the problem with 'somehow' is that it really means 'later. And there was always Dzym, waiting there for me. Hungering for true life, true energy, not that pitiful low-level field that synthflesh generates, though he absorbs that if he can get nothing else. It wasn't until Leia Lady Solo--came, and fought so hard, worked so hard, risked everything, that I understood how completely contemptible I had become. I did not . .

.“ He hesitated. ”I did not wish to appear so in her eyes. Does that seem contemptible to you?"

Luke remembered his days of puppy love for her, and the way he and Han had vied with each other as pilots to impress her. Not only they, but every unattached pilot in the Rebel fleet, it seemed, had been in love with her. “It's the destination that matters,” he said softly. “Not the road.”

“i fear I've left it rather late.” The philosopher's voice sank to a whisper again. "I was lying to Dzym. The program that will take the Reliant out past the gun stations is finished. It just needs to be input.

And the first load of Spook crystals is ready to be shipped."

Luke winced, as sudden pain stabbed through his head. At least, he thought, growing up on this world, Ashgad wouldn't have the educa tion that would permit him to input something as complex as a launch-vector.

“And crystals,” went on Liegeus, not noticing, “are not the only thing it will carry. It will bear Dzym to some headquarters, where he will not be affected by the sunlight and radiance of this world. Dzym and as many drochs as he cares to take with him, to draw lives from others that he may then drink those lives from them in his turn. And so it will go on, until half the worlds of the galaxy are planets of the dead.”

Deep in the dark of the Transit Galactic Shipping Warehouse on Cybloc XII, a flare of white light sparked. There was a hiss, as of an electric welding arm, and the sudden, choking stink of sizzling plastene.

“Artoo-Detoo,” complained a voice, close by but somewhat muffled, “W ould you please take a few more precautions to ascertain that it is safe before you undertake activities of this nature?”

No reply. Plastene fizzled with heat; then the tenor snarl of popaway fasteners breaking loose. From outside came the dim, swift squeaking of wheels, the fleeing patter of feet.

“Really, if i had known that Master Yarbolk's 'plan' to get us to Cybloc XII consisted of mailing us parcel post . . .”

The light vanished. Silence returned, a dreadful silence far too deep for the hub of trade between the Meridian sector and the Republic whose gateway this lifeless moon was. Then another creak and pop, and the white plastene side of a particularly large crate fell with a clatter.

Artoo-Detoo set forward his balance wheel and trundled slowly out, raining styrene packing in all directions. The white glow of his visual receptor moved across the contents of the warehouse crates and boxes stamped with shipping labels and addresses from every corner of the Meridian sector, bales of raw' materials, machinery and computer equipment still muffled in goatgrass casings. Apart from the cluster of containers stamped with the name and shipping number of the freighter Impardiac, out of Budpock, every crate, every bale, every casing had been opened and rifled. Machinery lay strewn across the rough gray crete of the floor. Gobbets of packing material surrounded broken boxes like wads of gristle after a butchering. Near the door, two men in the uniforms of the shipping company lay dead, with the blue faces and bloated bellies of those who have ceased to worry about the cares of this world quite some time ago.

The huge chamber stank of death.

Artoo's wheels squeaked softly as he moved around the pile of crates, seeking a particular one. The voice that had spoken before said impatiently, “Over here! Really, this may be the safest way for droids to travel, but it certainly has its drawbacks.”

The label on the crate said

CALRISSIAN, CYBLOC XII HOLD FOR PICKtIP

The return addressee was one Yarbolk Yemm, of Dimmit station, on Budpock. A sharp sound in a corner of the warehouse made Artoo swivel his cap, the light following the source of the noise. It was only a small, ranged, insentient scavenger, sniffing for what it could get.

Artoo began to pry open the pop fasteners on Threepio's crate. The silence was dreadful.

“Well, of course, it's quiet,” said Threepio, when Artoo remarked on that silence. He carefully unfolded his much-mangled joints, stepping out of the crate and picking goatgrass and styrene beads out of his joints. “It's quite late at night. I suppose even major ports have to sleep sometime. Oh, all right,” he added, “the main port on Coruscant is never quiet. Nor on Carosi. Oh, I suppose the one on Bespin is active even at the bottom of the graveyard watch. But that's no reason to say that it's 'too quiet.” What is 'too quiet?"

The door of the warehouse hissed open. Artoo rolled immediately behind a gutted bale of dwimmery and, when Threepio showed no sign of following, reached out with his gripper arm and dragged the taller droid into concealment with him.

The creatures that entered the warehouse were unrecognizable in e-suits. They could have been anything from Sullustans to lshi Tib, though one of them, by the nasal inflection of his voice, Threepio identified as a Rodian. What he said in that nasally voice was, “This must have come off that last ship.”

“Good,” rasped another voice, tinny through the e-suit's voder circuit.

“They haven't been touched . . . no, fester it, looks like some of 'em have. Let's see what we got.”

They entered, the tallest hauling an antigrav sledge behind him.

The sodium light on the Rodian's helmet made jarring white slices of glare, huge black rhomboids of shadow. Vermin scampered behind the crates. One of the invaders kicked aside the bodies of the dead, and while he and one comrade began systematically prying open every crate and parcel in the untouched corner, the third knelt by the bodies and checked their pockets.

“What you got there?”

“'Puter system. X-70.”

“Piece of garbage.” They loaded it onto the sledge nevertheless.

“That silk there?”

“Yeah. What's in the crate?”

“Looks like wafers. Company payroll records.”

“Take 'em. We'll sell 'em wiped. What . . .”

The speaker turned quickly, as the door of the warehouse slid open again. Two low', blocky forms stood framed in the almost-total darkness outside and whatever hour of the night it might be, Threepio knew that a working spaceport was never that dark. Gold rounds of light from their visual receptors identified the newcomers as droids.

Both opened fire without hesitation or parlay on the looters, who fell in their tracks.

The internal weapons had been reset--these droids had not fired to stun.

Threepio was so indignant he would have spoken out in protest, had not Artoo sent a quick subsonic prod with his welding arm into Threepio's exposed wiring.

The two new droids wavered and hissed a report over their remote transmitters, then, receiving an answer, proceeded to take up where the human looters had left off, loading up the sledge with everything of value that had been in the Impardiac's delivery, then stripping the e-suits off the looters before they left, silent as they had come.

“What in the name of the maker,” asked Threepio, “is going on?”

The streets of Cybloc XII's main transit base were lightless, save for the occasional flicker of dying emergency circuits. Most of the docking bays were empty and dark, the buildings of its transport facilities a furtive whisper of scavengers, vermin, and occasional looters, the helmets of their e-suits glistening in the dark. The offices of the Port Authority contained horrors, bodies long dead and rotting in the alien bacteria that even the carefully controlled atmosphere of the domed facility could not completely exclude.

The Port Authority, the Republic Consular Offices, the fleet head-quarters--all had been looted of their communications equipment.

In the main infirmary of the base, bodies occupied every bed, every centimeter of spare floor space, every office and closet bodies unmarked, rotting, curiously peaceful in aspect, as if they had all slipped into sleep and from there to dissolution. Those bodies, that is, that had not been turned over, tossed about, pockets and clothing checked for what they might contain. The medical equipment in every laboratory was gone or partially dismantled for its microprocessors and transistors. A couple of decapitated Two-Onebees remained in what had been the bacta-tank room--the tank drained of its fluid and bereft of its control panel--silent, their chest cavities open and dangling wires, like corpses themselves in the horrible gloom.

With a slight hiss, the emergency lighting of the medical center browned out and gave up its final, feeble ghost. With darkness came a skittering, brown insects with which Threepio was not familiar scrambling along the walls.

"What are we going to do?

Artoo maneuvered his way into one of the offices, where an Ithorian in the white coat of a physician lay dead over her console, and plugged into the computer jack in the wall. He tweeped worriedly, light from the street outside falling across him in pale orange bars.

“At the same time as the Adamantine?” said Threepio. "That's absurd.

Plague vectors don't operate that swiftly and the odds against a simultaneous mutation are seven thousand four hundred twenty-one against."

A couple of tweets and a wibble.

“When were the last reports from anywhere in the facility?”

Artoo reported. Though the street below the med station had been deserted for some time, a small band of e-suited figures hurried along, dragging sheets heaped with what looked like random gleanings--monitors, circuit boards, jewelry, shoes. One of those figures staggered, caught itself against the corner of a wall. The others conferred hastily among themselves, not going anywhere near their afflicted comrade, and ran. The man they had left tried to stagger after them, then sank down, helmeted head resting on his knees.

In ten minutes or so, during which Artoo gave Threepio a prcis of the progress of the plague in all reported quarters of the Meridian sector, the green light on the looter's e-suit went to amber, then to red, visible as a tiny dot of brightness across the street.

Through the smoky transparisteel of the facility's environmental dome, the orange streak of a departing ship could be seen.

A few moments later, the streetlamps went out.

The nights on Cybloc XII are long. The small moon on which it is built has a rotation period almost synchronous with its orbit. The great, glowing mass of the planet Cybloc is only occasionally visible from the port facility there, as a huge gold-and-green disk low in the sky. It did not show that night. Until the harsh light of the primary, Erg Es 992, flooded through the port's dome, Artoo worked alone, sending Threepio out on scavenging expeditions to various laboratories for what he needed and improvising what the protocol droid could not find. By that time it was safe, the streets were deserted save for the dead.

In time Artoo was ready.

“But it's useless,” Threepio protested, looking down at the little stack of circuit boards and wiring that the astromech had hooked into the medical center computer. “There isn't enough amplification in that modulator to get a signal out of the system. Don't get smart with me,” he added, to Attoo's tweeted reply. “I found the only thing on your list that was available. You should be glad I was able to retrieve that. There's absolutely nothing usable left in the Port Authority, or in any one of the shipping companies.”