Tyrant's Test

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  Chapter Two

  Wincing, Han opened a puffy, purple eye crusted with blood and forced the room to come into focus.

  “Barth,” he said.

  The flight engineer was sitting with his back against the opposite wall, curled up in a ball with his knees drawn up toward his chest and his arms wrapped around them. His face was downturned, his chin against his collarbone, as though he were sleeping—or hiding.

  “Barth,” Han said again, more distinctly.

  This time his cellmate stirred, raising his head and turning his face toward Han. “Commodore,” he said in a surprised tone, and scrambled across the rough floor to Han’s side. “I don’t know how long it’s been since they brought you in—hours, at least.”

  “What’s been happening?”

  “Nothing, sir. You’ve been out the whole time. I wasn’t sure you were ever going to wake up. Sir, don’t take this wrong, but I hope you don’t feel as bad as you look.”

  Han let the flight engineer help him up to a sitting position. “This isn’t so bad. I’ve been beat up by experts. The Yevetha are strictly amateurs.” Han straightened a leg, grimaced, and leaned back against the wall. “On the other hand, they’re amateurs with stamina.”

  “What do they want with us?”

  “They didn’t say,” Han said. He worked his jaw from side to side experimentally, then sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “Tell me the truth, Barth—is that smell me?”

  A faintly embarrassed look crossed Barth’s face. “It’s all of us, I’m afraid. There’s no refresher, or anything resembling one, and no water. I, uh, just picked a corner. But at least it helps mask the smell coming off the captain. And there’s something growing on him now—it’s covered most of his skin. I can’t stand to look at him.”

  “Don’t, then,” Han said, looking past the lieutenant at the corpse of Captain Sreas. His face and hands were shadowed by a fine gray down. “Fungal spores, probably. It’s a dry world—you can tell from the air, and the Yevetha’s skin. A human corpse probably looks like a water hole to the stuff that lives in a place like this.”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Barth said.

  “Don’t, then,” said Han. As he straightened his other leg, pain made him squeeze his eyes shut and grunt. “On the whole, I think I’d rather be beaten up by an expert. Has anyone looked in on us?”

  “Not since they brought you in.” Barth hesitated, then added, “Commodore, what do you give for our chances?”

  “More than I’d give you for our privacy right now,” Han said.

  Barth twisted his head around, scanning the nearly featureless walls of their prison. The cell had a slitted air vent in the center of the ceiling, a slitted drain in the center of the floor, harsh lights flush in the ceiling corners, and a half-height door armored in riveted plate. “Do you think they’re watching us—listening?”

  “I would be. Doko prek anuda ten?” he asked, hoping Barth knew smuggler cant.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  Han switched to Illodian sibilant. “Stacch isch stralsi?”

  “Sorry, Commodore. I can get by in Bothan, handle a bit of Corporate Sector Contract Standard, and rattle off all nine water curses in Calamari, if that will help. But that’s the limit of my linguistic talents.” He ducked his head apologetically. “The Fleet Academy dropped its three-language requirement the year I entered.”

  “Never mind,” Han said. “I doubt any of those would stump the Yevetha for long. Let’s just assume we have an audience and they’re getting most of the jokes. Have they given you any food?”

  “No, nothing.”

  Han nodded thoughtfully. “Well, if that doesn’t change, you’ll be able to figure out our chances by yourself. Let’s take inventory.”

  The pockets of what remained of the two men’s flight suits yielded a flexible comb, the Imperial thousand-credit “Victory Tax” coin Barth carried as a worry-stone, an expired meal card from the Fleet headquarters mess, a pilot’s pop-up collapsible cup, and one two-tablet dose of an antiallergen that was on the preflight restricted list. The inventory of jewelry was even shorter—two Fleet service pins with sealed-back attachment mounts, and a fine titanium ankle chain.

  “I’ve seen bigger arsenals,” Han said, and nodded toward the corpse. “We’d better see what he has.”

  Barth blanched. “Couldn’t we skip that?”

  “They didn’t bother to strip him. Maybe they didn’t bother to search him, either.”

  The blaster bolt that had killed Captain Sreas had scooped out a third of his upper chest, leaving behind a cauterized concavity into which the burned edges of the hole in his blouse were fused. The hollow was half filled by the gray down enthusiastically growing on the cadaver.

  Gritting his teeth, Han rummaged the pockets and keepaway flaps of the captain’s flight suit. He handed his discoveries to Barth, who hung back and tried not to watch.

  “How long did you serve with him?” Han asked.

  “Four months—nineteen jumps all together.”

  “Your first assignment?”

  “Second. I spent a year with the Third Fleet as a drag pilot on a tender.”

  Han pulled a Fleet ID from the shoulder pocket and passed it back. “What kind of man was he?”

  “All officer,” said Barth. “Demanding, but fair. Not much of a talker—I know he had kids, but I don’t know their names.”

  “I know the kind,” Han said, then touched his tongue to a comlink power pack. “Dead,” he muttered, handing it back. “Did he ever surprise you?”

  “He collected glass animals,” said Barth. “I wouldn’t have expected that. And once he showed me the holo of his wife he always carried with him. It must have been twenty years old. She was sitting on a black-sand beach somewhere wearing nothing but a smile. ‘That’s the most beautiful woman on this or the next thousand worlds,’ he told me. ‘I’ll never figure out why she fell in love with a dullard like me.’”

  “And was she?”

  Barth took a moment to consider. “In a way. I guess I’d have to say any man would say so if that smile of hers was aimed at him. I’m still hoping to find someone who looks at me that way.”

  Han nodded as he gently rolled the corpse onto its back. Then he sat back on his heels. “Well, I can’t say that Captain Sreas’s worldly possessions are going to have much to say about the outcome,” he said. “But hold on to that hope, Lieutenant. You’ll see Coruscant again.”

  By then Barth had retreated from the corpse to the opposite wall. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think we’re going to die here, too.”

  Han grimaced as he stood, but erased the pain from his face before he turned toward the young officer. “Lieutenant, our captors went to a lot of trouble to grab us. They’re not about to discard us now. And the folks at home aren’t going to just write us off. One way or another, our people are going to get us out of here. Until then, we have an obligation to be as difficult and uncooperative as we can manage. You can’t let them make you afraid. That just gives them what they want—a way to control you.”

  “But isn’t that what we are—a way for the Yevetha to control the President?”

  Han shook his head firmly. “If I thought for a moment that Leia would compromise herself, that she’d compromise the Fleet or the New Republic because of us being prisoners here, I’d find a way to die now, before it could happen.”

  “Then explain this—if you’re right, why should the Yevetha keep us alive once they find out we’re not worth anything as bargaining chips?”

  “Slatha essach sechel.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  Han hadn’t expected Barth to understand—the reintroduction of Illodian was meant as a reminder. Han pointed at the air vent over his head to underline the reminder, and a light went on in Barth’s haunted eyes.

  “If your ship was suddenly infested with pests,” Han said, “and the first thing the captain did was order you to ca
pture two of them in a jar, would you describe that as taking hostages?”

  Pursing his lips, Barth swallowed hard, then shook his head.

  “All right, then. From here on out, try to remember where we are, what our purpose is—and that we have an audience, and what their purpose is. We had to have this conversation, but I only want to have it once. And some other conversations are going to have to wait for another time and place.”

  “I know a little nightspot in Imperial City,” Barth said. “Good food, sometimes a slava dancer worth overtipping. We’ll save ’em for there.”

  An affable, approving grin creased Han’s face. “Done. I’ll buy the first round.”

  The Beruss clan estate in Imperial City was almost large enough to be a city in its own right. Within Exmoor’s walls were two parks, one forest, one meadow; a small lake stocked with game fish from Illodia and plied by graceful wind-driven boats; and twenty-one structures, including the hundred-meter-tall Illodia Tower with its external spiral staircase.

  Located more than three hundred kilometers south-west of the Palace, the estate was a testament to the long tenure of the Beruss clan on Coruscant. A Beruss had represented Illodia in the Senate for almost as long as there had been a Senate. Doman’s first father, first and second uncles, sixth grandfather, and ninth great-grandmother were just part of the long line connecting Exmoor with Coruscant history. Illodia had no royal house, no hereditary rulers, but its oligarchy of five clans had proved longer-lived than many blood dynasties. And the Beruss had survived the various plots, crises, and political tides of Illodia in large part by being content to make Coruscant their home.

  Exmoor was likewise a monument to the onetime grandeur of Illodian ambitions. Taxes on Illodia’s twenty colonies had paid for the construction, and the skilled hands of colony artisans had decorated and filled the houses named after their worlds. Even the size and spacing of the structures echoed the map of Illodian territories, and each colony house had once borne a brilliant planetary emblem which could be seen only from the lookout lounge at the top of Illodia Tower.

  The emblems were gone now, the colony houses largely vacant, the colonies themselves only a memory. When the Emperor had annexed Illodia Sector, he had ordered the colonies “liberated” from the oligarchy’s “tyranny”—and then levied assessments on the former colonies that were more than double the taxes imposed by Illodia.

  But the old glories were preserved in the approach and facade of the tower itself. The walks were swept and lined with smartly trimmed, bright-leaved plants. The metal and stone gleamed as it had when Bail Organa had brought his young daughter to play in the meadow park with the clan’s many children while he and the senator spoke of adult things. And the seventy rooms inside were still a curious mixture of museum and clan commune, with the eleven adults and nearly twenty children who made up Doman’s circle sharing and occasionally overwhelming those spaces.

  Doman received Leia in a room she had never before been privileged to enter—the clan counsel room on the top level of the tower, where the bonded adults met to discuss and decide family issues. Eleven identical chairs, each bearing the Beruss emblem in silver and blue, were arranged facing each other in a circle. An augmented skylight lit the circle warmly from the center.

  Doman’s welcoming smile was equally warm. “Little Princess,” he said, standing as though he expected her to come to him with a hug and a cheek kiss, as in the old days. “Is there any further news?”

  “No,” Leia said, entering the circle but coming no farther. “There’s been no word from the Yevetha. The viceroy has ignored my messages.”

  “Perhaps this was not the Yevetha’s doing?”

  “We now have the flight recorders from several of the recon-X escorts. There’s no mistaking the Yevethan thrustship. And Nylykerka has identified the Interdictor they used as the Imperator, a ship that was delegated to Black Sword Command. There’s really no question about it—this is Nil Spaar’s work.”

  “I see,” Doman said, nodding. “In any event, I’m glad you came to see me before the Council sits. It’s better that these matters be settled privately.”

  “I had to come see you,” said Leia, settling into a chair a third of the way around the circle from Doman. “I don’t understand why you’ve done this. I feel betrayed —abandoned by someone I thought was my friend, my father’s friend.”

  “Clan Beruss is and always will be the friend of House Organa,” said Doman. “That will not change in my lifetime, or yours.”

  “Then withdraw the summons.”

  Doman gestured in the air. “I will gladly do so—on your promise that you will not carry the war to N’zoth to rescue a loved one or avenge a casualty. Can you give me that promise?”

  “Are you asking me to give Han up? I can’t believe that you could call yourself my friend and ask me to do that.”

  With an easy grace, Doman lowered himself back into his chair. “Two other men suffered the same fate as Han—be it capture or death. Do you care as much for their return as you do for his?”

  “What an absurd question,” Leia snapped. “Han is my husband, the father of my children. I’m sorry for the others, and I want them all safely returned. But I won’t sit here and pretend that they mean as much to me as Han does.”

  “You need not pretend here,” Doman said. “But can you sit in the office of the President of the Senate of the New Republic and pretend so convincingly that nothing you do shatters the illusion? Because unless you’re ready to give all three lives equal weight—whether much or none—I do not believe you should sit in that office.”

  “You don’t understand how it is for us,” Leia said. “Look at this room—you may have your favorites, but no one spouse is everything to you, the way Han is to me.”

  “That has always seemed to me a weakness of the way you choose to live,” Doman said.

  “We can argue that another day,” Leia said. “The point is that you can’t understand what it would mean to me to lose him.”

  Shaking his head, Doman settled back into his chair. “Leia, I’ve watched your kind for nearly a hundred years now, and I’ve seen the lengths to which passion drives you. A man in love will move mountains to protect the woman who owns his heart. A woman in love will sacrifice all else for the man she has chosen. To us, it seems a grand folly—but I do understand, Leia, or I would not be afraid of your passion for Han.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Afraid that you would sacrifice what does not belong to you—the peace we’ve struggled toward. The lives of the thousands who would fight at your order, and the millions they might kill. Even the future of the New Republic itself. None of this is beyond human passion, Leia. You know that as well as I.”

  “Do you think that nothing matters more to me than Han? Do you think I’m that out of control?”

  “Dear child, I cannot sit by and trust to reason when reason loses so many battles to passion,” Doman said. “Give me the promise I’ve asked you for, and I will withdraw the summons. I know you’ll honor your word.”

  “You want me to limit my options before I even know why the Yevetha did this,” Leia said with the heat of indignation. “You can’t ask that of me. It’s not time yet to decide how to respond.”

  “And when do you think that time will come?”

  “I haven’t even had a chance to go over all the possibilities—Rieekan won’t have a report to me for another few hours, and I don’t expect to hear any more from A’baht until tonight, after the investigators report from the site of the ambush. Drayson’s asked me for thirty hours, and Fleet Intelligence isn’t making me any promises at all.”

  “When do you expect to receive Minister Falanthas’s report?”

  Leia shot Doman a puzzled look. “What?”

  “Don’t you intend to involve the minister of state? Or are only military options under consideration?”

  “Haven’t the Yevetha already set the ground rules? Aren’t Han, Captain Sreas, and Lieut
enant Barth prisoners of war?”

  “If they are not already casualties of it—which I pray they are not,” said Doman. “But I also pray you remember that every conflict need not be fought to the death, and total war need not follow every outbreak of hostilities.”

  “So we give them what they want?”

  “In the long history of war, far more prisoners have had their freedom bought or bartered than won with arms and noble resolve. There is no shame in compromise.” Doman spread his hands wide to embrace the circle of chairs. “This room—this family—is predicated on that idea.”

  “You lost your colonies and your freedom to Palpatine because of that idea.”

  “For a time,” Doman said. “But here I am, free. Where is Palpatine? Do not let the heat of the moment limit your options.”

  Leia slumped back in her chair and gazed up at the skylight. “I won’t,” she said finally. “But I can’t let you limit them, either, Doman.”

  “Leia—”

  “We don’t know why the Yevetha have done this—to punish me for Doornik Three-nineteen, or in preparation for something still to come.” She sat forward, as if about to stand. “But whatever the reason, they’ll be watching our response. Don’t you think the worst possible sign we could give them is one that says the New Republic has no confidence in its elected leader? Don’t you think Nil Spaar will be delighted to see the Senate distracted by infighting?”

  “There need not be any infighting,” said Doman Beruss. “Step aside until this is over. Let one of us carry the weight. You won’t be shut out, I promise you.”

  “I can’t do that.” Leia stood and closed half the distance between her and the senator. “Please—on our friendship, on my father’s memory—I ask you one last time, Doman, to withdraw the summons. Leave me free to do what needs to be done. Don’t make me fight a war on the home front, too.”

  “I’m sorry, little Princess,” Doman said. “There’s too much at stake. I have a duty.”

  “And so do I,” Leia said, her eyes clouded with a mixture of anger and regret. “I’ll be leaving now, Senator. I have a lot to attend to before the Council session.”