Nothing happened. No security system queried her presence; no light responded to her motion.
The freighter's power had been cut to such a low level that the gravity barely functioned.
Leia's feet touched the floor, but she could jump up and bounce off the ceiling, twice her height, if she chose.
Silent in the vacuum, Artoo-Detoo accelerated to pass her. In the low artificial gravity, the droid's treads catapulted him upward and forward in a long, uncontrolled bounce. Artoo-Detoo landed on the other side of the airlock, bounced off the bulkhead, and finally came to rest. The droid circled slowly and unhappily, searching for danger.
Chewbacca's surprised snort echoed in Leia's comlink. He loomed behind her. He was stiff and sore and he probably could not move very quickly--not that moving quickly was a good idea in these conditions--but she was glad to have him backing her up.
Leia turned on her searchlight.
Artoo-Detoo flashed his spotlights into the corners of the big cubical freight-loading airlock. Leia found the interior controls. The last thing she needed was to be trapped inside the freighter with only Alderaan's cleaning droids left to try to get her out. But neither Artoo nor Chewbacca had been willing to stay behind, and she certainly would not send them in alone.
The controls responded to her commands. She set the air-lock to cycling.
The outer door slid shut. It made no sound, but its vibration rumbled through Leia's boots. Despite the warmth of her suit, she shivered. The last streak of black space and distant, pinpoint stars vanished.
Air entered the freight dock. The air pressure crept upward. Leia fidgeted, wishing she could run the process at full speed.
But the power plant had been damped down almost to nothing. She could not risk draining the life-support systems of the sleeping passengers.
Chewbacca made a plaintive cry.
"I don't know what I'm looking for," Leia said. "The kidnappers stopped here, and I don't know where they went next. If you have a better idea I'd love to hear it." Chewbacca snorted.
Leia's pressure suit sampled the air.
It was breathable, though rather low in oxygen. It would be safer to stay in her suit and not worry about contamination--or passing out from anoxia.
Finally the inner door slid aside and admitted Leia to the passenger freighter. The ship was divided into huge sections, each filled with racks of sleep coffins. The life systems balanced on the edge of failure. Some coffins had gone dark; the people inside had died.
Chewbacca moaned in memory and despair.
Leia touched his hand in sympathy. These people had been stolen, as he had been. Their fortune had failed them.
Leia rubbed the dust from the transparent carapace of one of the sleep coffins. Beneath the glass, a humanoid lay like a fairy-tale prince. His long hair, striped gold and brown, curled in tangles around his face and grew along his chin, like sideburns.
"From Firrerre," Leia said. She swiped her glove along the windows of several of the other sleeping coffins. All the people were from the same world.
"The Empire wiped them all out--wiped out everything on their world. They used a biological weapon... but it's so dangerous no one ever dared land there again. I thought the people were extinct...." If she could save them, find them a suitable world to settle, they could rebuild their civilization.
Leia wished she could find a shipful of people from Alderaan.
Maybe I will, she thought. Maybe one of those other ships carries people from my homeworld. Maybe --somehow--maybe the Empire abducted some of my people. Before it destroyed my world.
Leia set the first sleep coffin to "wake." "Can you find the controls of this ship?" Leia asked Chewbacca. "Can you get the power back?" He set off down a dark corridor. Leia hurried after him, walking with a low-gravity skiing bounce. Artoo-Detoo followed, whistling plaintively. Every time the droid tried to speed up, he left the ground and spun his treads uselessly until he came to rest.
Chewbacca loped unerringly through several intersections and took several turns through the complex corridors. Either he was familiar with passenger freighters from his own experience, or he had found reason to study their plans. Leia decided not to question him; if he wanted to tell her his experiences, he would.
In the depths of the ship, he found a small chamber with no portholes, not even any viewscreens to the outside. The room was close and stuffyou. Displays glowed faintly with low readouts.
Chewbacca studied the levels for a moment, then traced a pattern into the controls. The ship came alive around them, lights brightening, air shusshing through the ventilation. Even the brittle cold eased. Leia's pressure suit stopped straining to keep her warm.
"Good," Leia said. "Thank you. I'm going back to the sleep coffin so the Firrerreo doesn't wake up alone." Chewbacca growled in negation and showed her a separate readout.
"What is it?" But he was already loping out of the control room, bounding in long low-gravity leaps along the corridor. Leia followed as quickly as she could.
She had little experience in very low gravity or free fall; she did not want to go tumbling in the air like Artoo-Detoo.
Chewbacca's cry of grief and rage echoed through the hallway.
Leia found him in a cabin as white and clean as a surgery. He stared upward.
A Firrerreo hung from strange, writhing webbing that hugged her body against the ceiling.
Her eyes were open and staring. Her sharp-featured face was gaunt. Her long hair, striped with black and silver, drifted in the air currents as if it were alive. The webbing cut into her golden-tan skin. She moved.
"She's alive!" Leia cried.
The webbing tightened, cutting into her emaciated arms and legs. The Firrerreo froze without a sound. Only her eyes moved; her gaze touched Leia for a moment. Nictitating membranes crept across her black irises, making her look blind.
"Get her down, quick--c you reach her?" Chewbacca stretched upward and tentatively poked at a stray web filament.
"No..." The Firrerreo's voice was hoarse, growling.
Chewbacca snatched his hand back as the filament whipped into a spiral that nearly captured him.
Behind them, someone snorted in disgust and amusement.
Leia spun toward the new voice.
Chewbacca grabbed for his blaster.
Unfortunately, he was unarmed.
The Firrerreo Leia had awakened stood in the doorway, clutching the frame to keep himself on his feet.
"You can't get her down like that," he said. "You can only get yourself tangled in the web." "It's torturing her!" Leia said. "We have to free her." Artoo-Detoo extended connectors into the cell's data port. Like a locksmith, the droid tested one connector module, then another.
The data port violently ejected Artoo-Detoo's module. Spinnerets popped out of the wall and spurted web silk over the droid. Artoo-Detoo squealed and spun his treads backward. This time the low gravity aided him, for he backflipped into the air and ripped the webbing away before it could immobilize him.
The Firrerreo laughed.
"Stop it!" Leia snapped. She grabbed the web silk and pulled it away from Artoo-Detoo's carapace. She could remove the soft, delicate fibers, but she could not break them. When she tried, they cut into her skin. She brushed them quickly from her hands, before they drew blood. Artoo-Detoo backed away from the filaments.
Chewbacca growled, glaring at the Firrerreo.
"What's your name?" Leia asked. "How can you think this is funny?" "I might ask you the same thing," he replied. "After all, you're the intruder." "I woke you up. I probably saved your life." "Who asked you to?" he said, his voice a low snarl.
Taken aback, Leia paused to collect herself.
I'm a diplomat, she thought. I can manage this.
"I don't mind telling you my name," she said.
She minded very much telling him her real name.
She told him her false identity, the identity that owned Alderaan. It felt strange to call herself by
her nickname from childhood.
"I'm Lelila, and this is my companion Geyyahab." She nodded toward Chewbacca, who gave her a quizzical look. She had chosen for him a name from Wookiee mythology, from a story the twins loved to hear. But the character was not entirely heroic. Leia wondered if Chewbacca was offended by her choice--or if it were religiously offensive, even blasphemous, for her to give him a mythological alias.
I don't know much about his people's religion, Leia realized.
The Firrerreo sneered. "I do not care to tell you my name," he said. "But her name is Rillao." The name sounded like a snarl, the information like an insult.
Leia gestured toward the ceiling. "Please help me free her." "She's not my clan," he said. "I owe her nothing. I owe you nothing." "If I pay you, will you owe me?" "I have no use for money here." "What will it lose you, to help me?" "Nothing," he said. But he did not act.
"What do you want?" Leia cried.
"What are you?" he asked. "A pirate?
Or an Imperial flunky sent to torment us?" "I'm neither," she said. "Do I look like a stormtrooper? Did you see troopers when you came down here?" He regarded her suspiciously. "I want my freedom," he said.
"It's yours," she said instantly. "Please.
Help us." His eyes narrowed till they nearly closed, then abruptly he made a decision and bent over the console that had defeated Artoo-Detoo. He was familiar with its workings, and that made Leia uncomfortable. This cell in the depths of the ship had no purpose other than punishment and torture.
Perhaps he was a collaborator. Perhaps the Empire had built the freighter with a prison cell so some of the passengers could wield power over others.
He stood back from the controls and glanced at Leia with a smirk. When he looked over her shoulder, she followed his gaze.
Rillao drifted slowly from the ceiling. The webworks stretched, then contracted, pulling away from her body, pulling out of her body. The ends of the silver strands were dark with her blood.
Chewbacca's growl was soft and low and angry and nearly inaudible. He caught Rillao gently.
She did not move.
"Let's get her to--ffmy ship." Leia almost gave herself away by revealing the name of Alderaan. It was too good a clue. She would have to give her ship an alias, too.
Jaina flung herself into her study cubicle.
She was sobbing too hard to see the display. Even if she wanted to pay attention to it. Which she did not. She wanted to be up in the canyon with Jacen. She wanted Lusa to come back.
Jaina put her head down and cried.
Vram stopped behind her. He jabbed at her shoulder. "Stop crying! Pay attention! Sit up straight!" Jaina twisted away from him. She made herself stop crying. She wiped her eyes angrily on her sleeve.
"Lord Hethrir wants you to answer these questions," he said. "Who was the greatest leader in our history?" "My mama, of course," Jaina said.
"You're wrong! You're so stupid. The Emperor was our greatest leader." Jaina stared at him in horror.
"Who's going to restore the Empire?" Vram demanded.
"No one!" Jaina cried.
"You're wrong! Lord Hethrir will!" Vram said. "The Empire Rebornffwas "No!" Vram was hateful. Hethrir was hateful.
They were all hateful. Jaina sobbed, crying for Lusa andfor Jacen andfor Anakin and Mr.
Chamberlain's wyrwulf andfor Mama and Papa and Uncle Luke--not because she believed they were dead, she did not, they couldn't be, but because they would be sad and worried and searching for her. And she cried for Winter and Mr. Threepio and Chewbacca and Artoo-Detoo. And she cried for herself.
"You're wrong!" Vram cried with glee.
"You're wrong! You have to go to bed without your dinner.
And it goes on your record!" She was so hungry that she almost stopped crying, but she was so angry about Lusa that she could not.
"You're nasty!" she shouted. "How did you get to be so nasty?" Jaina kicked him in the shin.
He yelled in pain. Another helper came running. They dragged Jaina out of her cubicle and toward her sleep cell. She screamed and kicked and wriggled but none of the other children even looked at her. They hunched down in their places and stared at their displays.
Vram slammed the door of her cell, shutting her into the darkness.
Jaina sat on the cold hard floor--it had not turned soft anywhere yet--and struggled to stop crying. She had to think, she had to figure out a way to escape or send a message.
Hethrir's promotion ceremony had scared her. She could practically still hear the Empire Youth shouting, "The Empire Rebornffwas I have to let Mama know about the Empire Reborn, Jaina thought. Somehow. I have to let her know about Hethrir. He sounds like one of the evil tyrants Mama fought against, before I was even alive.
Jaina wondered if the fight would have to happen all over again.
She wiped away her furious tears.
She took out her hidden multitool and held it in her hand. She opened it and felt her way to the door. A splinter scratched her finger. She had found the place where she had begun to drill toward the latch.
While the multitool chipped slowly away at the hard wood, Jaina thought about how she might escape from Hethrir's compound. After she escaped from her cell.
Could I sneak past the dragon? It couldn't see me when it was far away. If it was all the way at one side of the canyon fence, maybe it wouldn't notice if I climbed the fence on the other side.
Jaina really did not believe that would work. The dragon was almost as wide as the canyon mouth.
Even if it was all the way at the other side, if it looked over its shoulder it would still see her.
Maybe I could climb the canyon wall. But it's pretty steep, and it's pretty smooth, and I guess the Proctors would see me as soon as I got to the top.
Maybe I could steal a spaceship, and program it for home-- If she could escape and find Hethrir's skiff.
The trouble was, she did not know where she was, or where home was compared to where she was, or even where Munto Codru was. Maybe the ship would know.
And maybe it wouldn't.
Maybe it would be better to try to send a message.
If I can sneak out of here, somehow, Jaina thought, then maybe I can figure out where they send their messages from. Then I could sneak back in.
She felt the wood where she had been drilling.
She had made a very small and very shallow hole.
The multitool was so hot she could barely hold it.
She sighed. This was going to be hard. She wished she had Jacen to talk to. She wished she could reach past Hethrir's control over her abilities. Then she could open the door, find Hethrir's communications, whatever she wanted.
Can I still do anything? she wondered. Anything at all?
She imagined the molecules of air all around her. She imagined one molecule. She imagined it moving, faster and faster. She felt the molecule respond.
Hethrir's power did not react. She knew it was around her, she could feel its attention off in the distance. But it did not notice the tiny motion she created.
She added another molecule, another, doubling and redoubling the number she affected. Soon a small handful of air vibrated with her energy.
Its warmth took the chill from her cell.
The swirl of air glowed red, then yellow, spreading light into the corners of Jaina's cell.
Jaina laughed with relief and joy.
Chapter 6
People from many worlds crowded around Han and his companions as they made their way toward the graceful gilt buildings. Han thought he saw the ghostling who had approached him in the welcome dome.
The effect of calligraphy, of esoteric hieroglyphics, was magnified by the entry to the structure. An intricate design traced secrets in gold across the mirrored facade.
The building's wings curved around to form a sheltered, quiet courtyard. The visitors gathered just outside, then entered the silent space singly or in small groups.
Xaverri calmly wait
ed their turn.
Han passed the time by trying to identify as many homeworlds as he could. After several dozen, there were still individuals left over whose origin he could not guess.
He nudged Threepio. "Where do those folks over there come from?" He did not point; too many people in the Republic found pointing intolerably rude. He nodded toward a multihumped stack of mobile seaweed. "And is it a group, or one person?" "Why, a group, of course, sir. They are from the fourth world of Markbee's Star, specifically, from--if I am not mistaken--Zefflifflike. That is to say, from the shallow seas of the smaller southern continent--" One of the leafy mounds produced a bulging bag, twisted one end, and squeezed liquid from the bag in an arching spray to splash itself and its companions. Some of the droplets rained down on Han. He stepped back, but it was only saltwater. The wet leaves of the Zefflifflike glistened blackly in the gold light of the building. A few leaves fluttered to the ground and lay twitching.
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