Star Wars - Planet Of Twilight (44 page)

He felt the consultation of them, like an endless green wave spreading out across the plain, through the mountains, over the planet. A deep vibration, like the ripple on a still pond. And then it came back, Force and more Force--shining oceanic currents of it, streaming through his body, unbearably bright. Tearing him apart. He cried out in pain, kneeling upright in the diamond wastes, focusing his mind; calling the Force to his flesh. Reaching out toward the darkness of space, where the Imperial carrack was docking against the Reliant.

He saw Seti Ashgad trying to get to his feet from the main console, stumbling and falling among the dead synthdroids that littered the floor. Saw Dzym draw in a breath of ecstasy, of anticipation, of world-devouring delight.

Luke's eyes were closed, so he didn't see, far, far above in the hard blue unchanging sky, the tiny brightness of an explosion.

Then he fainted, and lay unconscious, alone beside the slow rising pillar of oily smoke in the midst of the wasteland of light.

Given the circumstances under which they had last parted, the eventual journey down to the surface of Nam Chorios could not be other than awkward for both Han Solo and Admiral Daala, once in charge of the security of the Imperial Weapons Installation in the Maw cluster.

See-Threepio, who accompanied them with Chewbacca, Artoo-Detoo, and a considerable number of Daala's comrades, did his best to ease the tension by filling Solo in on the events leading up to Leia's kidnapping, on the state of the Meridian sector as observed by himself and Artoo-Detoo on their travels, and on Yarbolk Yemm's well-documented contention that the whole thing was a ploy originated by Gnifmak Dymurra, CEO of Loronar Corporation, as a means of obtaining hypercomplex polarized crystals from their only known source on Nam Chorios, for the manufacture of both synthdroids and CCIR Needles.

He was at a loss to account for the fact that those supposedly programmable Needles had unexpectedly left off attacking the small Republic fleet and had descended on the square gray ship rising from the planet's surface, blasting it and the Imperial carrack that had gone out to tow it to the safety of the Imperial fleet into sparkling fragments of eternity. A prima facie observation of the attack, even without the wildly furious and speculative jabber intercepted from Admiral Larm aboard the carrack, made clear beyond a doubt that this was not what Admiral Larm had had in mind.

Even as the debris cloud of the Reliant and its escort was dispersing, the entire squadron of Needles had turned with the precision of a dance troupe and had swirled down into the atmosphere, heading for the surface of the planet.

It was a moot point whether Admiral Larm's successor would have continued his attack--his forces still outnumbered the Republic ships almost three to one, and Solo's little fleet had been badly mauled--had not Admiral Daala's ships come out of hyperspace at that point, and descended on the Imperial vessels like black, avenging night.

“From the time I was sixteen, the fleet has been my life.” Arms folded, booted feet apart, Daala glanced over her shoulder at Han, the growing glare of the planet below already so bright as to cast cold, queer shadows on her face. The forward lounge of a Seinar Sentinel landing shuttle included a curving sweep of viewport, as well as small amenities like a cold-cabinet containing wine and beer. Trails of condensation whipped and swirled up the transparisteel viewport, so that the Admiral seemed vreathed in misty light.

“Service. Order. The triumph over the forces of chaos . . .” She cocked her head, as the soft throb of the engines altered with the transfer to repulsorlifts. A hard fold appeared at the corner of her mouth, the track of some bitter thought. “All of my life, and all that i could have had, I laid on the altar of the fleet, and I was satisfied. And now... this.”

“Well,” said Han softly, “I can understand. You're not the only one who's ever been betrayed.”

She started to jeer something back at him, then stopped herself and averted her face. Beyond the shifting vapor trails and their reflected brilliance, the starry darkness was yielding to a deep cobalt noon.

“No,” she said, her voice unwontedly quiet. “Perhaps not.”

“Oh, look,” exclaimed Threepio, from the other side of the lounge.

“The CCIRs all appear to have crash-landed. There, see?” A thread of smoke curled into the still air. “How remarkable that they would have maintained so tight a formation in the face of what was quite clearly a controller malfunction.”

“Yeah, well, maybe we better pick up a couple of them and see what we can learn about getting them to malfunction again.”

As if Threepio had not spoken, Daala said, “You know her policies, Solo.” Once she would never have acknowledged him as her equal, or spoken to him without scorn in her voice. “Will your Chief of State keep her hands off the Chorios systems, once their value is known to her?”

“I don't know what the Council's gonna say,” said Han truthfully.

“But I do know Lei--Her Excellency--just went through one laser blast raking over because she refused to interfere in a planet that couldn't get a majority for interference. So as long as you folks keep the majority on Pedducis I'd say you're pretty safe.”

He rose, and walked over to stand beside her and look at the world that to him had, up until this time, been only a name.

“What a rock! There're people living down there?”

Chewbacca yowled an observation.

“Oh, right. One crummy little block there and about four houses way over in the distance. I can see we're at a major population center of the sector.”

Daala remarked drily, “At the moment, Captain Solo, I can think of few views more pleasant than that of an entire planet utterly devoid of human life.”

The homing beacon from the surface brought them, not to the fortress of Seti Ashgad, but to the Bleak Point gun station sixteen kilometers away, where the plain of glass-bright crystal made a landing area for the shuttle. A light freighter already occupied the site--“As long as that station's out of commission,” said a brisk little woman with long white hair, as the doors of the shuttle opened, “I'd be a fool not to take a cargo of majie offplanet and see what I can bring back. I'll get the cream of the market. Well, what do we got here?” she demanded, turning, as Han, Chewie, and the two droids descended the boarding ramp and looked around them at the glaring landscape.

Wreckage from the Force storm scattered the gravel for half a kilometer around the walls of the tower, snarls of wire, broken beams, weapons burst by the violence of Beldorion's uncontrolled will. Rationalists and Therans alike were gathering around the walls, and the plain was a parking lot of speeders, speeder bikes, and cu-pas warbling and wheezing and scratching themselves. A caravan of very dusty, very primitively dressed Therans clustered together, gazing in wonderment at the speeders; at Umolly Darm's freighter; and at the sleek, deadly shape of Daala's shuttle. From their midst two figures broke away, crossing to Han and Chewie at a run.

Battered, dusty, blotched with grime and smoke and blood, Han realized it was Luke and Leia. Leia cried, “Han!” and threw herself into his arms, crushed against him, face pressed to his shirt and leaving an enormous smutch of slime-dried dust there. Looking down into her face, he realized that he himself was unshaven and smutted with soot from that last burn-through of the defensive shielding that had almost accounted for the Falcon in the last moments before Daala and her fleet had made their appearance.

“Leia!” They were hugging like schoolkids, rocking in each other's arms--Han felt an idiotic urge to whirl her in his arms and dance.

“Admiral Larm . . .” she began.

“Is space dust,” finished Han. “His fleet went back to Antemeridian to give him a nice memorial service. I don't think they're gonna be back.”

“You know what happened?”

“Pretty much. The plague's over three-quarters of the sector, there doesn't seem to be any way of stopping it. The boys at Med Central say it's like the Death Seed . . .”

“It is the Death Seed.” Luke came over to them, limping heavily with a stick, wearing the same sort of padded jacket and loose, ragged robe that the Therans had on. "And the--the Guardian tsils have agreed to send some of their number off planet, to the sector medical facility, to be installed in apparatus that will destroy the drochs. Once we've got the sentient Spook crystals to channel light through, it shouldn't be hard to destroy the drochs wherever they are. All they ask in exchange is that we return every' Spook crystal that has ever been taken off and programmed."

“And you're gonna explain that to Loronar how.”

“I'm going to explain,” said Leia sweetly, “that without their cooperation, the entire story of their support of the epidemic will be released for general consumption, accompanied by sanctions that will put them out of business in a week.”

Han nodded judiciously. “You got me sold.”

“Once the Guardians are able to get offplanet,” said Luke quietly, "I don't think Loronar's going to have much of a market for Needles anymore. The CCIRs worked because the central controllers mimicked the vibrations of the Guardians themselves. But even reprogrammed, the enslaved Spooks will know and obey the voices of the Guardians, their--their family, their alter-selves. The living crystals that have inhabited this planet since first it was formed.

“They knew about the drochs,” he went on, speaking to Leia. "They were aware, when the Grissmath Dynasty seeded the planet with them to kill its political emigres. They did their best, for seven and a half centuries, to keep the drochs from getting offplanet. They invaded the dreams of the prophet Theras and his followers, taking whatever forms they found there, whatever they would believe, and instructing them to keep anything larger than about the size of a B-wing from taking off.

Anything bigger would have sufficient shielding to protect the drochs from the radiation. But there's nothing, really, to keep large cargoes from coming in. And there are seams of mineral wealth, platinum and rock ivory, deep in the mountains that can be exported in small enough quantities to be ray screened and still support those who take them off."

“Which is just fine with me,” put in Umolly Darm, hurrying past with Arvid and his aunt. “I never liked that Spook crystal business. Too fragile, the ones with good color were too far back in the hills, and even a box or two of the things gave me the willies. That Theran Listener Be is already putting together an expedition for rock ivory with me and Arvid here.”

She hurried on her way, Arvid waving back at Luke, to the stock freighter that stood some distance from the gun station's walls.

Leia glanced in the direction of the shuttle and then back inquiringly at Han. “An old friend,” said Han, rather drily. “She showed up at the last minute to help us out. She wants to have a diplomatic discussion and some assurances from you.”

Leia nodded, “All right.”

She turned back, “Luke?”

He and Liegeus were among the Therans, shaking hands with those who had found Luke in the wastelands, sent by the voices in their Listeners' minds; bidding good-bye to the Rationalists, to Booldrum Caslo and his landlord and Aunt Gin. Luke paused for a moment, looking around, and Liegeus said, “We'd best be going, Luke. I've gotten the gun station back online again. It will be forbidding egress from this world in very short order now.”

And, when Luke still hesitated, the older man added gently, “I think that there is nothing further that you can do here.”

So close, thought Luke desperately. So close. if I could just tell her . . .

Whatever dark the world may send . . .

He remembered her eyes, in the sunset light of Yavin Four's towers.

Remembered the pain in her voice, in that final message.

I have my own odyssey . . .

Tell her what, that would not give her still greater pain?

“No,” said Luke softly. “You're right.”

He turned, and followed his sister and Han, the droids and Chewbacca and Liegeus, to the shuttle. At least he'd have a reason to get up in the morning, he thought wryly--now, and for quite some time to come.

He would be back to this world, he knew to bring back the Guardians, when those who went offworld to form the droch-killing apparatus returned. To bring back the remains of the synth-droids and Needles, for the Guardians to try to rehabilitate and realign after their enslavement.

To learn what he could of the Force, as the tsils understood it and of this strange civilization of timeless minds.

But he would always wonder.

He stopped at the bottom of the ramp, for one last look at the cool-glaring sun, the twilight stars, the wind-scoured sea bottoms, and waste-lands of colored glass, the towering crystal tsils.

She has her own way, Liegeus had said. And he was right. Where she had to go now, Luke thought, he could not follow.

The only way in or out of the gun station tower was over the walls.

A Theran was grappelling easily down on a line, dark crimson coat and gray veils striking a familiar chord the fighter who had thrown the grenades, thought Luke, during that first battle he had seen. When the gawky, graceful figure reached the ground and walked toward Umolly Darm's freighter, he saw the lightsaber swinging at the heavy leather belt, the long tail of malt-brown hair as she pulled loose her veils, and his heart leapt against his ribs.

She turned, at the other side of the landing ground, at the base of the freighter's ramp. She had always known if he was looking at her, even as he had known when her eyes were on him.

For a long moment they stood in stillness. She at the threshold of her long road, he thought, and he at the beginning of his.

He raised his hand to her, Farewell.

Her shoulders relaxed, and he could feel the tension leave her, the fear that he would cross that open ground to tear anew all those toofresh wounds by taking her in his arms.

The time was past, for that.

In her stillness he read her thought Please understand.

I understand.

She raised her hand to him, and he could feel her smile.