Star Wars: Planet of Twilight Read online

  Hence, thought Leia uneasily, this mission. Even before she’d had the surreptitious message, their distance from the nearest bases of the New Republic’s power on Durren and their proximity to the onetime Imperial satrapy of the Antemeridian sector, made her nervous.

  Was that all that note had meant? Or was there something more?

  “The Theran cultists are not anyone into whose hands I would be willing to place my destiny, Your Excellency,” murmured Dzym. He seemed to draw himself back into the conversation with an effort, folding his small hands in their violet leather gloves. “They hold an astonishing amount of power in the Oldtimer settlements along the water seams. How could it be otherwise when they are armed, mobile, and have for generations been the only source of healing that these people have known?”

  Beyond the dyanthis leaves that masked the edges of the observation port, Leia’s eye was caught by a flickering of the lights along the Adamantine’s gleaming sides. She saw that in the rear quarter of the escort ship, a number of them had blinked out.

  “What do you mean, you can’t get through?” Commander Zoalin turned, harried, from the comm board, which had blazed into life like a festival lamp, to stab yet another flashing switch. “Are you not getting an answer from the Borealis, or what?”

  “It seems to be a simple signal block, sir.” Communications Chief Oran touched her forehead in a nervous salute. “Legassi is running a scan for it.”

  In the small screen, Oran turned in her chair, granting the Commander a glimpse of the comm center, on whose main board a huge readout of the Adamantine’s comm circuits was illuminated in glowing yellow lines. Red lights flowed along them, synaptic testing for a blockage or interference in the power transmission, easy enough to find and correct under ordinary circumstances.

  But the circumstances had gone from ordinary to hideous in just under ten minutes. And by the red lights flaring all over his comm board; by the hastily gasped message from the infirmary; and by the sudden absence of anyone replying or reporting from maintenance, shuttles, power, and several other ship sections, things were plunging from bad to worse with the speed of a decaying orbit.

  “Legassi?” Oran rose from her chair. Zoalin saw past her that the chair he had thought empty in front of the scan console was, in fact, occupied. Yeoman Legassi had collapsed forward over his console, squamous salmon-colored hands clutching the edge of the board spasmodically, in time to the dreadful shudders that ran like waves through his frame.

  Zoalin thought, Calamari aren’t supposed to be affected by human viruses …

  If this was a virus.

  Neither, of course, were Sullustans or Nalroni, both of which species were represented by crewmembers who had reported ill in the past five minutes. Zoalin seemed to recall from his xenobiology courses that Nalroni and Mon Calamari were a textbook example of mutually exclusive immune systems. What a Nalroni could get, a Calamari literally couldn’t.

  “Legassi?” Oran bent over the Mon Calamari’s shivering body. “Legassi, what …?” She staggered a little, almost as if she had been struck, and put a hand to her chest. Groping, as if trying to massage away some numbness or pain.

  “Commander Zoalin,” stated the calm voice of Two-Onebee, the head of the infirmary section, on the channel that he had left open, “I regret to report that bacta tank therapy appears to accelerate rather than retard dissolution of subjects, by a factor of nearly thirty-five percent, as far as can be analyzed.”

  With the measured tones sounding in his earclip, Zoalin flicked the central console screen from image to image, keying through to corridors where the search teams in quest of the signal block device turned toward the infirmary as first one, then another of their number would stop, lean against the wall, knead and rub at the chest or head or side. The view cut to sick bay, where the calm and tireless droids operated mechanical lifts to remove Sergeant Wover’s lifeless, dripping body from the bacta tank; to the shuttle bay control room where the last yeoman on duty lay dying alone in a corner by the door.

  Fifteen minutes, thought Zoalin blankly. Fifteen minutes since Wover signaled from the deck-nine break room.

  He hadn’t even severed the connection when the other calls had started pouring in. Midshipman Gasto down. Engineering Chief Cho P’qun down. Sir, we can’t get any signal from maintenance …

  “Foursi.” He clicked through a channel to the Central Computer’s Operating Signal Division—Division 4C. “Emergency reprogramming request. All maintenance droids of the …” His head was aching—his chest, too. He found it difficult to breathe. Stress, he told himself. And no wonder. He had to find the signal block, had to get in touch with the Chief of State’s flagship. Had to get a signal out to the Sector Medical Facility on Nim Drovis.

  “All maintenance droids of the See-Three category. Search for nonstandard equipment in …” What color would the lines be, that a signal blocker would be cut into? “Nonstandard equipment in the green lines.” He hoped that was right. His head was throbbing. “Implement immediately.”

  Not that it would do much good, he thought. Droids were systematic. Their method of hunting for nonstandard equipment would be to start at the Adamantine’s nose and work to the stern, investigating every hatch and relay, rather than checking the most obvious places first, the places where some member of Seti Ashgad’s small good-faith party might have made a few moments for himself alone.

  Not that it had to be Ashgad. A signal blocker could have been set with a timer. The thing could have been planted in the Adamantine before their inconspicuous departure from Hesperidium.

  Zoalin found that without thinking about it, he had slumped back into his chair. His hands and feet felt cold. He cut into the image of the flagship Borealis, distant against the blackness of the stars. So close, but kilometers away in the palely shimmering green glow of the planet beneath.

  Had this, whatever it was, broken out there, too? Was Captain Ioa trying to reach him?

  He leaned his head back. Twenty minutes, he thought. Twenty minutes. He felt as if he were in a turbolift, plunging into long darkness.

  “I realize there’s been a great deal of ill said about the Rationalist Party over the past few years.” Seti Ashgad had risen from his chair as if the sheer importance of his cause drove him to his feet, and paced restlessly back and forth behind it. “But I assure you, Your Excellency, that we’re not the—the strip-mining capitalists we’ve been portrayed. The Newcomers went to Nam Chorios in the hopes of opening new frontiers. Individual entrepreneurs can’t get a foothold in Pedducis Chorios. Places like Nim Drovis and Budpock and Ampliquen have their own civilizations, settled up and locked in. Given the presence of the heavy industry in the Antemeridian sector, the trading opportunities alone should have made the entire colonizing of Nam Chorios self-sufficient!

  “But it isn’t just that the Newcomers are forbidden to bring in any ships larger than a personal flitter—or to let any out. The Theran habit of opening fire on any vessel over a certain size means that when equipment wears out, it can’t be replaced except for an exorbitant fee. It means there’s no export to support anything but the barest subsistence livelihood. It means we have to pay smugglers’ prices for everything. It means that because the Registry didn’t give sufficient information about conditions, these people have condemned themselves to exile in a cultural backwater. You can’t pretend that’s fair.”

  “No, I can’t,” said Leia slowly. “But isn’t that what colonization is about? Gambling on what conditions are going to be when you get there? I’m not saying that the Therans are right,” she added, holding up a hand as the man before her drew breath for an indignant protest. “What I am saying is that they are supported by the majority of the population of the planet.”

  “Who are kept as their slaves by superstition and lies!”

  That isn’t the Republic’s business. Leia straightened her shoulders under the velvet weight of her robe, seeing, in the flare of Ashgad’s anger, the reflection of what her
own reactions would have been at eighteen. But it shouldn’t be that way! She remembered crying to her father, when after a complicated and emotional court case concerning vampiric Garhoons and their prey, the prey had elected to return to their vampires. It had taken her a long time to understand and respect her father’s decision to pursue the matter no further.

  “Nam Chorios is not a part of the Republic. Legally, we have no right to interfere in their affairs.”

  “Not even to protect the rights of the colonists? The rights of men and women who …?”

  “Who left the Republic,” said Leia, “to go live on a world that was not part of it. Who decided to take a chance on a world about which they knew almost nothing. Everyone knows the deficiencies in the Registry’s information. And the Empire ‘protected the rights’ of Alzoc III, of Garnib, of Trosh.”

  Ashgad’s broad face reddened. “The cases are nothing alike! We certainly aren’t asking you to enslave a native population! Just to ensure those who wish it the right to a decent livelihood.”

  “The majority of Nam Chorios’s population voted not to affiliate with the Republic,” said Leia. “And that, the colonists did know. We have no right to disregard the wishes of the majority. I have no wish to sound hard-hearted, Master Ashgad, but the Newcomers are not being constrained in any fashion that I have heard of.”

  “Except that their lives are there. All their assets, which with the gun stations in operation they can’t even take with them should they leave. Their stake in the future is on that planet.”

  “So is the stake of the original inhabitants, Master Ashgad.”

  The big man stood for a moment, one hand on his hip, the other on the back of his chair, head down, one dark lock of his thick hair hanging over a forehead furrowed with frustration and thought. Among the dusky leaves of his miniature bower, Dzym had fallen silent again, gloved hands folded, a small frown of concentration furrowing his smooth forehead. He hadn’t, as far as Leia could discover, even made secretarial notes to himself in a hide-out mike to supplement a recorded transcript of the interview.

  “What I will do is this,” said Leia, after a moment’s silence. “When I return to Coruscant, I’ll authorize an investigation team to see what’s really going on down on the planet and to explore other options, if possible. We may be able to negotiate with the Therans who control the gun stations.”

  “No one negotiates with the Therans.” Fierce bitterness flashed like a dagger in Ashgad’s voice and glinted in his green eyes. “They’re fanatical lunatics who’ve had that entire population of credulous fools under their spell for generations.”

  There was a small movement among the dyanthis leaves. Leia glanced quickly across at Dzym, in time to see the secretary sit back, strangely misshapen-looking in his granite-colored robes, an expression of satiated ecstasy flowing across his face. He sighed deeply, savoringly, and was still.

  “I had hoped to convince you to come to our aid, Your Excellency.” Ashgad’s voice again drew her mind away from the curiously nonworking secretary. “And I very much appreciate your sending a commission. I’ll certainly use all the influence I possess in the Newcomer community to help them with their findings.”

  Leia rose, and extended her hand. “I know you will.” She spoke with genuine warmth, though the cynical rebel who still lived in the back of her mind added, I just bet you will.

  Ashgad bowed low over her hand, an old-fashioned courtesy she hadn’t encountered since she’d left Palpatine’s court. The man seemed completely sincere, and Leia’s own instinct to help and protect embattled minorities sympathized with his frustration. From having contended with such factions as the Agro-Militants and the United Separatists, she did genuinely wish that she could do something for modern, intelligent people struggling to free themselves from irrational tyranny.

  If that was what was actually going on.

  “See that Master Ashgad finds his way back to the shuttle bay all right, would you, Ssyrmik?”

  Leia’s small honor guard sprang to their feet as the Chief of State and her guests stepped through the doors to the conference chamber’s anteroom. The lieutenant bowed, and shouldered her sleek white-and-silver ceremonial blaster rifle. “This way, Master Ashgad, Master Dzym.”

  Looking at the youthful faces and earnest demeanor of those half dozen young graduates of the New Republic’s Space Academy made Leia feel a hundred years old.

  The trio of bodyguards Ashgad had brought with him bowed to her as well: Handsome androgynes in close-fitting, light blue uniforms with the oddly dead-looking hair of very expensive dolls.

  As she watched the bronze-embossed doors of the corridor shut behind them, Leia heard a soft, gravelly whisper behind her say, “Those three smell wrong, Lady. They are no living flesh.”

  Leia glanced behind her at the four small, gray, wrinkled humanoids who seemed to have melted from the antechamber’s walls. The smallest, who barely topped Leia’s elbow, regarded the bronze doors with narrowed yellow eyes.

  Several years had passed since, in the face of mounting pressure from the Council, Leia had eliminated her bodyguard of Noghri hunter-killers. Leia understood it; even before the unfortunate incident of the Barabel ambassador, there were those who said it ill behooved her to wield a weapon that had been Palpatine’s. Bringing them on this mission had been a terrible risk.

  Do not trust Ashgad, the message had said.

  She had sent for them, secretly, just before departure. There were some risks greater than schism in the Council.

  “Technically, it is living flesh, though,” said Leia thoughtfully. “They’re synthdroids, Ezrakh. I’ve seen them in the pleasure domes on Hesperidium and Carosi. Sculpted synthflesh over metal armatures. They have only minimal internal computers; their actions are centrally controlled, probably from Ashgad’s ship, because I don’t know of any technology that would transmit from as far away as Chorios itself.”

  She folded her arms, and a small dark line appeared between the sharp brushstrokes of her brow. “And as far as I know, they’re very, very expensive. Would you just make sure for me that they do get on their vessel?”

  The Noghri inclined his head, but not before she saw the twinkle of amused comprehension in his eyes. “Gshkaath already sees to it, Lady.”

  Maybe the message she had received had prejudiced her, she thought, shaking her head. It was something she tried daily to guard herself against, but personal prejudice could never entirely be discounted.

  The Noghri started to withdraw—they tended to keep themselves separate from the Academy honor guard, who were among the few even aware of their presence on the ship—but Leia raised her hand impulsively. “What about Master Dzym?” she asked. “How does he smell to you?”

  Ezrakh hesitated a moment, weighing the question, the folds of his leathery gray face tightening. Then he made a sign of negation. “His smell is a human smell. I do not like him either, Lady—I do not like his eyes—but he smells as other humans do.”

  Leia nodded, a little comforted. “Will you come with me?” she asked. “And you, Marcopius, if you would.” She smiled to one of the young Academy guards. It wasn’t their fault, she knew, that the hunter-killers of Honoghr could slice a potential assassin to pieces before a human—particularly these youths—could unlimber a blaster rifle, nor was it the fault of the Academy guards that she could not risk any possibility of threat while on this mission. Throughout the trip she had been very careful to keep the Academy guards in their usual position at her side, and to emphasize to them that the Noghri were only a backup, a holdout weapon against unexpected catastrophe.

  And as Luke would say, there was no way of telling which group might be her salvation in a crisis.

  At the turbolifts she touched the summon switch, and when she and her two guards were within the car, toggled the controls for the shuttlecraft hangar deck.

  2

  Do not meet with Ashgad.

  Down on the Borealis shuttle deck, Luke Skywalker t
urned the slip of flimsiplast over in his hands.

  It was small, about the length and width of two fingers, the semitransparent stuff used for packing and wrapping delicate objects for shipping. It had been carefully but unevenly torn from a larger piece and wadded tight in the innards of a cheap music box in fact. The words were written in graphite marker, such as his uncle had used to mark rocks and scrap metal out in the field.

  The tune the box played was an old one, a song about a beleaguered queen and her three magical birds.

  The handwriting was Callista’s.

  Do not trust him or accede to any demand that he makes. Above all, do not go to the Meridian sector.

  Callista

  His heart was a slow battering ram against the inside of his ribs.

  He barely heard the quick, soft beeping at his side as the astromech droid Artoo-Detoo emerged from around the airfoil of the modified B-wing that rose like a suspended wall in the rear corner of the deck-six shuttlecraft bay. See-Threepio, protocol droid extraordinaire, followed close behind, golden carapace shining in the soft light. “According to Artoo, all systems appear to be in flying order, Master Luke,” stated the protocol droid in his prissy mechanical tenor. “But personally, I should be much happier were you to take a larger craft with greater oxygen capacity.”

  Luke nodded absently, “Thanks, Threepio.” But in fact his attention never left the slip of plast in his hand, the bold, firm, slightly old-fashioned writing across its face.

  He was seeing the snows of Hoth, and the way Callista’s lightsaber had vied with the ice planet’s dim sunlight for brightness. Seeing the ruined bunker there and how the ice had glittered in the smoke-brown tousle of her hair. Remembering what it had been to fight at her side, more a part of him than his own hand or arm; knowing which way she’d turn, or lunge, or drive the snow monsters into his blade.

  With the memories of the snow were the warm scents of night on Yavin Four, and of lying in each other’s arms on the hillside above the jungles, counting stars. Callista had explained to him with great solemnity why it had seemed so logical for her and two other Jedi apprentices, thirty-three years ago—in another body, another life—to try to concoct the illusions of ghosts haunting an old drift station on Bespin to puzzle their Master and why this had turned out to be not such a good idea after all.