“Barnley! Watch out the way you grab me.”
“Flautis, get a look at this guy,” Barnley said, ignoring his friend’s protest.
Flautis was a somewhat smaller and greasier version of Barnley. He looked at Han and his eyes widened in surprise. “What do ya think of that?” he asked of no one in particular.
Han was used to people recognizing him, even this long after the adventures that had made him famous, but these guys didn’t seem to recognize him, exactly. “Ah, fellows, is there a problem?” he asked, shouting in his friendliest voice over the din of the march.
Flautis and Barnley exchanged looks, and then each of them grabbed an arm. They dragged him to the side of the street, shoving the marchers out of the way. They got to the sidewalk and Barnley threw Han up against the side of the wall. “Okay, buddy, what’s the game? Who are you?”
“No game. No game,” Han said. “I was just walking along and got tangled up in your march by accident. I was trying to get back out when I bumped into you,” he said, trying to put the best possible face on things. “Sorry I did that, really. Honest. And thanks for rescuing me,” he said.
Barnley grabbed Han by the front of his shirt and pulled Han so close he could feel Barnley’s hot breath on his face. “Your name, buddy. Your name right now.”
“Han,” he said in as friendly a voice as he could manage. “Han Solo.”
Barnley looked at Han in greasy astonishment. “Solo? Yeah, sure,” he said. He turned to his companion. “We gotta pull him in.”
“Absolutely,” Flautis agreed. “We have got to check this out.”
“But—wait a second!” Han protested. “I didn’t—”
But then he felt a blow on the back of his skull, and the universe went black.
* * *
“Now then, children. We shall begin at the beginning,” Ebrihim said. The three children—Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin—were sitting on one side of the low table in the playroom. Ebrihim was seated on the other side, in the same sort of children’s chair as his three charges, and more or less at eye level with them. Q9 stood next to him, taller than his seated master.
“What beginning?” the boy, Jacen, demanded, a scowl on his face. His sister Jaina’s expression was no less unpleasant, and the little one, Anakin, seemed to be trying to take his cue from his elders. At least he tried to sulk, but somehow it was not a very convincing performance. He seemed to be distracted by Q9.
Ebrihim sighed. It was plain to see that his charges were not very happy to be dragged in from the beach on a beautiful day and plopped down in front of a tutor. “The beginning of your education concerning the Corellian Sector,” he said. He paused long enough for the groans to subside before going on. “After all,” he said, “I can scarcely take you exploring if you don’t know where we are going.”
“Exploring?” Jaina asked.
That got their interest, as he intended that it would. “Of course,” Ebrihim said. “There are five worlds to get a look at. Drall, Selonia, Tralus and Talus, Corellia—and Centerpoint Station, for that matter. I am to be the guide for you and your families as you tour those places.”
“Well, all right, then,” Jacen said. “Where are we going first?” he asked.
“If we are to learn about the history of this system, I thought it best if you got a look at its past. There is a large archaeological dig not far from the city of Coronet. Your mother has agreed that we should all go and take a look at it tomorrow.”
“What kind of archaeology?” Jaina asked.
“The site in question is actually underground. It appears to be some sort of large industrial site from long ago. We still don’t know exactly what sort of place it is—but humans and Drall and Selonians were clearly using it for something—and something big—at least two thousand standard years ago, and possibly long before that.”
“Wow,” said Jacen. “Will we see skeletons?”
Ebrihim nodded. “In all probability,” he said. “Quite a number have been excavated.”
“Is he like Artoo?” Anakin suddenly demanded, pointing a pudgy finger at Q9-X2.
Q9 rolled back a few centimeters and swiveled his camera eye around to look at Anakin. “I beg your pardon?” he said, clearly a bit startled.
“R2-D2,” Jacen explained. “It’s the droid our uncle Luke has back home. I think he wants to know if you’re the same kind of droid.”
“I am not,” Q9 said, rolling back toward the table. “I will thank you not to make such a suggestion again.”
“But you look like Artoo,” Anakin insisted. “Kinda. But he’s shorter, and you can talk regular.”
“I am a Q9, a highly modified and experimental type based on the R7 version, itself a far more advanced version of the R2 series. I might add that I am highly self-modified above and beyond my initial specifications. I have nothing to do with the R2 series.”
“What’s wrong with Artoo?” Anakin insisted.
Ebrihim chuckled to himself. “I’m afraid Q9-X2 has a rather low opinion of the R2 series.”
“Artoo is a good droid!” Anakin protested.
“That is as may be,” said Q9. “But the designers of the R2 made them effectively voiceless and equipped them only with wheels.”
“So what?” Jacen demanded.
“The result is that the R2s cannot do their work as well as they should. I find the very idea of an android that cannot do its work properly most upsetting. It is not just your R2 unit, and not just a question of design. Here on Corellia, for example, many, many androids are in a state of disrepair, and no one can afford to repair them. It is a massive waste of potential. I find it shocking.”
Anakin glared fiercely at Q9. “You shouldn’t say mean things about Artoo,” he said, then hopped down off his chair and stalked out of the room. “Nice going, Q9,” Jacen said. “I’ll go bring him back.” Jacen got up and went after his little brother.
“I am pleased that young Master Jacen thinks I expressed myself well.”
Ebrihim turned toward his assistant. “I suspect,” he said, “that you have not quite mastered the concept of sarcasm.”
* * *
The lights were dim when Han woke up in the cell. There was a dull, throbbing pain at the base of his skull and a foul taste in his mouth.
Why in the world had this Human League crowd snatched him up off the street? The only thing he could think of was that a hero of the Rebel Alliance might not be the most popular sort of person in a group that probably had Imperial sympathies. But even that idea didn’t hold water. He was missing something.
Han looked around, and saw that there was nothing in the cell but the dank cot he was sitting on and a bucket in the corner. Somehow it didn’t look like the room was being used as originally intended. Rather, he was in what looked to be a converted basement storeroom. Well, purpose-built or not, the cell was impossible for him to get out of all the same.
Han had been in enough cells enough times that he was not particularly terrified by being thrown in yet another one. He was safe in the cell. It was when they came for him that the trouble would start.
It was at the precise moment that he had that happy thought that the lights came on, blindingly bright, and the door swung open. Han stumbled to his feet, struggling to force his eyes to adjust. By the time he could see clearly, Barnley, Flautis, and a third man, whose insignia appeared to show him to be of higher rank, were in the cell, peering at him intently. “Well, boys,” the third man said. “I can see why you did it, and you were right to do it. It could have been a trick, but it turns out it wasn’t. Turn him loose.”
“But—” Flautis protested.
“Orders,” the third man interrupted. “From way up, if you know what I mean.”
“From the Hidden Leader?” Barnley asked, something like awe in his voice.
The third man merely nodded, as if his meaning were obvious.
“Well,” Flautis said, immediately chastened. “Okay then.”
Han turne
d toward the third man to ask what was going on, but he never got the chance. It was only as he was about to speak that he realized that he had put his back to Barnley again.
The blow on the back of his head didn’t feel any better this time. The universe went dark again.
* * *
It was evening, getting on toward night, and Leia could not decide whether to be angry or worried. Either Han was off having such a good time with some old cronies that he had forgotten to call home, or else he was in trouble. The Governor-General’s hovercar was supposed to be calling for them in a half hour.
It was then that she heard the sound of a hovercar coming in. Could the Governor-General’s car be early? She went to the window and looked up into the sky—and knew instantly, by the way that hovercar was coming in, hard, fast, without running lights, that it was not the Governor-General or anyone else come to pay a social call. The CDF security teams had installed panic buttons throughout the house. A tap on any of them would call the guards to red-alert status. There was one by the window, and Leia reached to slap it down.
* * *
It was a quiet evening, Kalenda told herself, but things were most likely to happen when it was quiet. And then she heard it, the low whirring sound of a hovercar coming in on its repulsor lifts.
Suddenly the night was full of the sound of blaring alarms, and the grounds of the Chief of State’s villa were flooded with light. Guards scrambled for position. Kalenda ignored it all and scanned the sky for the intruder.
There it was! The hovercar dropped out of the evening sky three hundred meters shy of the villa, the bluish glow of its repulsore throwing strange and shifting shadows on the narrow country road. The hovercar bumped once, hard, as it landed. A rear door popped open, and a large, indistinct shape was dumped out. Almost before it came to a halt, the hovercar had bounced back up into the sky and away.
Guards rushed forward from the villa and surrounded the new arrival. Kalenda grabbed her macrobinoculars and zoomed in close.
The figure lurched to its feet, and she saw that it was Han Solo, looking very much the worse for wear.
Kalenda swore to herself. This was not good. Not good at all. Someone was sending another message, and even if she could not read it, it clearly was not meant to be friendly.
Things were beginning to go sour.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Conversation by Torchlight
Dinner was done, and it had not been a cheerful affair. Getting Han patched up from his injuries had put them behind schedule, but they had turned what was meant to be a social occasion into something closer to a council of war.
Nor had the noise from outside helped matters. Despite being six floors up, despite the soundproofing in Corona House, the Governor-General’s official residence, the shouting and the singing of the demonstrators were too loud to ignore. Now they had retired to the Governor-General’s private study, and from here the sound was even louder. They had given up all pretense of not hearing it. Instead they watched the proceedings from the study’s window, the lights in the room low both to make it easier to see, and harder to be seen. The windows were supposed to be blaster-proof, but there was no sense taking chances. The flames of the flickering torches lit their faces as they watched the march of the thugs.
Governor-General Micamberlecto stared through the window, looking mournfully down at the spectacle below. “There they are,” he said. “Again tonight. And I dare not, dare not, call in the Corellia Defense Forces or the Public Safety Service. I am not even sure they are on my side anymore. Indeed, I am nearly sure they are no longer with me. If I called them, they might just join in.”
He sighed and leaned his spindly shoulder against the edge of the window frame as he watched the rowdy demonstration below. To Leia, the sound of his sigh was the saddest part of it all. It was such a tired sound, so full of resignation and frustrated hopes that were no longer even worth recalling. That one little sigh told her there was no real hope at all.
Leia and Han stood next to Micamberlecto, watching as well. Gray wisps of smoke still hung in the air, and the effigy of Micamberlecto was still smoldering, though by now it was so trodden upon as to be scarcely recognizable.
The demonstrators, all of them humans, nearly all of them men, were carrying torches as they marched in a circle around Corona House. The torches let off their own smoke as well, and it hung heavy in the windless air, draining the color from everything, making the night seem darker than it truly was. Those who did not have torches had placards and signs with anti-Drall and anti-Selonian slogans.
The singing—if you could call it singing—started up again, louder this time. The lyrics were coarse, obscene, and quite distinctly not supportive of the New Republic. The song reached its climax, the demonstrators bellowed out the last and most graphically offensive line, and then cheered for themselves.
“They’ll go on, go on that way for quite a while yet,” said Micamberlecto. He spoke Basic with hardly a trace of accent, but with one or two patterns of Frozian grammar and word order—most noticeably the tendency to repeat a phrase for emphasis. “They will march for a bit longer, a bit longer,” the Governor-General went on, “but for all intents and purposes, I expect that’s the end of the show. Not much more to see that you have not seen already. They’ll sing and shout slogans, and get drunk and start some fights and break some windows, and drift off to wherever they come from—until the next time. The next time. But I doubt the streets will be safe tonight.” Micamberlecto shook his head mournfully. “I am afraid you did not pick, did not pick, the ideal spot for your vacation.”
Micamberlecto was a Frozian, and the Frozians were not known for their cheerful outlook. No one could doubt their probity, honesty, or diligence, but they were a somewhat melancholy species. Still, there did not seem to be much to be optimistic about at the moment. “It doesn’t look good,” Leia said.
“No, it does not,” Micamberlecto agreed as he turned away from the window and sat back down at his oversized desk. He was a typical Frozian—tall, gangly, a scarecrow of a figure, a third again as tall as Han. Frozians were a fairly standard hominid species, if a rather elongated one. The extra joint in their arms and legs made their movements a bit offputting at first. To human eyes, the Frozians looked to have had all their arms and legs broken. To see Micamberlecto folded up in a chair, with his arms crossed—and recrossed through the second elbows—was a strange sight indeed.
Micamberlecto had short, golden-brown fur over his entire body. He had no noticeable external ears, and his deep brown eyes were set wide apart. His nose was on the end of his prominent muzzle. His mouth was small and lipless, as if it decided there was no sense even attempting to compete with that magnificent nose. Long, black whiskers grew from either side of his muzzle, forming a sort of enormous spiky mustache that grew past the sides of his head. He wiggled his nose thoughtfully, and the whiskers bounced up and down vigorously.
“Is it always this bad?” Han asked.
“Yes and no,” Micamberlecto said. “Mind you, even now, tonight, no doubt ninety-five percent of the city of Coronet is quiet and calm. Four blocks from here, perhaps no one knows that there has been another demonstration. But it used to be that I would assure visitors that ninety-nine percent of the city was calm. Things are getting worse, coming to a head. I wish to Froz we could cancel the trade summit. But too late. Too late. Delegates are already on their way, and we in the New Republic cannot, cannot afford any further loss of face here in Corellia Sector. No, we cannot.”
“I’m afraid I agree with you, friend Micamberlecto,” Leia said, talking over her shoulder as she watched the torchlight procession wend its way around the building. “We did not know it was like this. We should cancel, but we can’t.”
“But what’s it all about?” Han asked as he turned his back on the window. He winced as he turned his head, and he was moving stiffly. Obviously he was still in some pain. “No one seems to be able to answer me that. This should be a ri
ch planet, a rich sector. It has all the resources and talent and investment capital it needs. It used to be rich, and peaceful. What went wrong?”
Micamberlecto shrugged elaborately and impressively. “On Froz we have a saying. ‘Things are bad when there are more questions than answers, but worse, but worse, when there are more answers than questions.’ You ask me one question, but I could give you a dozen, a hundred answers.” He extended a long arm toward the window and the demonstrators beyond. “I wonder if any of our friends out there could give one, give one. As for myself, I could tell you the economy was bad, or that people are frustrated, or angry, or that there is much intolerance, if you like.”
“Those are all true,” Leia said, “but those are symptoms, not the cause.”
“Quite right, quite right. Yes, economic dislocation caused by the upheaval of the last war is the proximate, proximate cause of unrest, but the root goes much deeper, deeper. Without a strong external government to keep the peace, malcontents and rabble-rousers of all sorts are coming out of the woodwork. And it is not just our friends out there. It is the other species as well. The Drall, the Selonians, and the humans have all produced their demagogues. And they have set to work demonizing each other. But all those, all those answers tell us nothing. Your question asks after the symptoms, not the disease. I think the real answer is that you ask the wrong question. I think you have to ask—why didn’t it happen before, before now?”
Han frowned as he sat down in a chair facing Micamberlecto’s desk. “Go on,” he said.
“It’s a simple question,” Micamberlecto said. “I ask—what has changed that makes this chaos possible? And the answer is simple—the collapse of empire. There is no power from above forcing all of them to behave. There was a gun to Corellia’s head for a long time. ‘Pretend you love your neighbor or we’ll kill you,’ said the Empire. No dissent, no dissent allowed, those on top supported, those below held down. No movement possible. Except the economy decayed, decayed during the trade disruptions, and everyone sank lower. That aggravated the crisis, but it did not cause it.”
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