by Kathy Tyers
He’d felt so controlled, back in his office. But something in his walk, and the faintest hint in his Force-sense, nudged Luke to an unexpected conclusion. “He’s starting to panic,” Luke observed in a whisper.
“Panic?” Han wrinkled his forehead. “Him?”
“It’s just setting in.” The trio’s backs receded up the corridor. “We’d better watch him.”
“That’s nothing new.” Han’s hands relaxed at his sides.
Once they reached the apartment, Han disappeared into his room. Luke hastily encoded a message to Wedge Antilles, out in the orbital net. Attack coordinated for tomorrow night. Work with Governor Nereus’s forces, follow Thanas’s orders, but keep your deflector shields up. Smiling grimly, he sent it. Han and Leia were headed for the Falcon as soon as he located her. She’d gone off alone after breakfast, but with the attack this imminent, it was time to stand ready. Luke would catch the next shuttle to orbit and reboard the Flurry. He would enjoy proving Manchisco’s premonition wrong.
His stomach grumbled a more immediate message. He ought to catch lunch, but not here. The food at Pad 12’s cantina should be nontoxic. “You ready, Han?” Luke called.
Han stepped back out. “Leia’s not answering.”
“Maybe she and Captison went someplace where the Imperials couldn’t listen to them.”
“Possible,” said Han. “Let’s get you to the troops. Then I’m going looking for her.”
Prime Minister Captison had suggested a drive, and to Leia’s surprise, Senior Senator Orn Belden climbed aboard with a bulging breast pocket. She assumed it contained his voice amplifier. This time, the Bakurans wouldn’t be distracted by droids or Chewbacca.
Captison’s liveried chauffeur steered a closed-cockpit government speeder off the roof port. Belden laid a finger across his lips.
Leia nodded understanding: Not yet. “It’s a lovely city,” she observed lightly. “In many ways, Bakura reminds me of Alderaan.” She glanced up at a layer of broken clouds. “Some of its wetter regions, anyway. Have you explored this quartz outcrop for metals?”
Sitting beside her in the center seat, Captison folded his hands with a knowing smile. “Thoroughly. Why do you think they planted the city here?”
“Ah,” said Leia.
Captison leaned back, looking relaxed. “After a few boom years, the veins began to narrow and the Bakur Corporation factioned. My father’s element wanted to prospect other sites. Another faction lobbied to develop Bakura’s other resources. Still another—mostly second-generation—wanted to bring in settlers at exorbitant fares, or establish a set of luxury resorts.”
“Once the galaxy learns about a newly opened habitable world, it often becomes … stylish.”
“Which brings in a certain undesirable element.”
Perhaps he meant rebels and smugglers, or gamblers and trinket sellers. “It can.”
Captison laughed. “In many ways, Leia, you remind me of my niece.”
“I wish my life had been as simple as Gaeriel’s.”
“She has been a good child,” Belden wheezed from the back seat beside Captison’s bodyguard. “It remains to be seen if she’ll be a good senator.”
Prime Minister Captison tapped a window absently. “She has abruptly reached the disillusionment phase of new adulthood.”
“I understand,” said Leia. “I reached it rather young.” Captison’s chauffeur kept the speeder between two others in a crosstown lane. Salis D’aar, like many sizable cities, funneled air traffic along established routes.
“Oh,” interjected Senator Belden, “please thank Commander Skywalker for trying to help Eppie. He’ll know what I mean.” Then he started talking about mountain soil, namana fruit harvest, and juice extraction.
Leia waited, wondering when the men would feel safe enough to really talk. This could be her only chance to gain headway for the Alliance.
Five minutes later, Captison’s chauffeur landed the speeder at a small dome surrounded by gaudy repulsor signs that hovered several meters overhead. Leia reached for the entry hatch. Captison laid a hand over hers. “Wait,” he said softly.
Ten minutes after that, Captison’s chauffeur and bodyguard took off again in the government speeder while Leia stepped into the front passenger’s seat of a smaller rental craft, Hoth-white with ice-blue cushions and console. “Do you do this often?” she asked, amused but pleased by their subterfuge.
“Never done it before.” Captison steered out into traffic. “It was Belden’s idea.”
“It’s safe to assume that the speeder pool’s not secured for talking.” The senior senator leaned forward between them and patted his bulging breast pocket. “This will help, too. We are now inaudible.”
Captison frowned and switched on a music channel. Tuned percussion filled the cabin. “You must understand we’re taking some risk speaking with you at all. In public, we’re even forbidden to console you on the loss of Alderaan. However, in private …”
Not his voice amplifier, then. “What do you have, Senator?”
Belden covered his pocket with one hand. “A relic from pre-Imperial Bakura. Corporate infighting crippled our government, but it made our ancestors into survivors. This creates a bubble impenetrable by sonic scanners. Under the Empire, no faction has dared to manufacture more of them.”
Mentally Leia calculated the instrument’s value at somewhere near the Falcon’s. “Better not lose it, then. Gentlemen,” she said, clearing her throat, “I’d be intrigued to know why the Empire hasn’t pushed Bakura into the Rebellion camp.”
“Nereus has been subtle, I suppose,” guessed Captison. “Applying pressure slowly. Like boiling a butter newt.”
“Beg your pardon?” asked Leia.
“They’re too primitive to react to slow stimuli,” creaked Belden. “Put one in a pot of cold water, bring up the heat slowly, and he’ll boil to death before he thinks of jumping out. And that’s what’ll happen here, unless—” He poked Captison’s shoulder.
“Easy, Orn.”
Leia glanced starboard and down into a hilly park. “What would it take to push you, Prime Minister?”
“Not much,” Belden interjected. “He’s smarter than he lets on.”
“Is there an underground, Senator Belden?”
“Officially, no.”
“A hundred members? Ten cells?”
Belden cackled. “Close enough.”
“Are they ready to rise?”
Captison smiled sidelong and thumbed a steering rod to turn right. He seemed to be circling just inside city limits. “Lovely Leia, this isn’t the time. We have Ssi-ruuk on our minds. We’re hoping that the Empire will save us, not subdue us.”
“But it is time,” Leia insisted over the background music. “The Ssi-ruuk have united your people. They’re ready to follow a leader to freedom.”
“Actually,” said Belden, “three years of the Empire have united our people. Nowadays they know what they lost when they lay down too quickly, and that they’ll have to cooperate to get it back and keep it.”
“They believe in you, Prime Minister,” Leia urged him.
Captison stared ahead. “And you, Princess Leia? What is your true goal here?”
“To bring Bakura into the Alliance, of course.”
“Not to defend us against the Ssi-ruuk?”
“That’s Luke’s goal.”
Captison smiled slightly. “Ah. The mission’s defined objective depends on who defines it. The Alliance begins to mature.”
One more round for division of labor. “Prime Minister, how much power do you and the senate truly have?” Captison shook his head.
“If you could choose freely and without risk to your people,” she pressed, “which side would you wish Bakura to support?”
“The Alliance,” he admitted. “We are displeased with Imperial taxation, with offworld rule and sending our young men and women into Imperial service. But we are afraid. Belden’s right: We’ve learned to appreciate each other
, now that we’ve seen what it’s like to be subjugated—to lose our identity because we couldn’t stand together.”
“Isn’t that worth fighting for? Isn’t it worth spending the lives of free persons? Prime Minister, I don’t expect to see … fifty,” she said, guessing at his age. “But I would rather lay down my life for others’ freedom than die quietly in slavery.”
Captison sighed. “You’re exceptional.”
“All free people are exceptional. Let me talk to your cell leaders, Senator Belden. Give your people a chance to fight for their freedom, and they’ll—” Out of long habit, Leia glanced over her shoulder. A double-podded local patrol craft followed ten lengths back. “Those are Imperials behind us, I think,” she said quietly.
Captison checked a sensor screen and pushed his throttle forward.
Leia searched the instrument panel for communications equipment. Han would be on his way to the Falcon by now, en route and unreachable. “They’re still on us. Head for the spaceport.”
“One more, coming up from below. I can’t turn south from this lane.”
“Looks like an escort,” Leia observed. Captison swung the speeder northwest in a long arc. Then the escorts let him straighten out again. “Where are they herding us?”
“Back across town.” Captison frowned. “Complex, I think.”
“Are either of you armed?” she asked quietly.
Captison slid one hand under his jacket, showed her a hold-out blaster, then concealed it again. “But that’s going to be useless if we’re outnumbered. Belden, can you lose the generator?”
“Under a seat, maybe.” Belden’s voice came muffled.
Leia thought quickly. “It might be safer to wrap it in … here, in my shawl … and drop it, rather than be caught with it.”
“No,” Belden said stiffly. “It’s too delicate. Too fragile. People are used to seeing me carry a voice amplifier. I’ll keep it in my pocket.”
The modal percussion pounded on.
Cloistered in a bare, tiny windowless room lined with recording banks and communication setups, Threepio expelled a dramatic sigh. “Every time I feel certain they’ve come up with one last way of making us suffer, they invent another. They’re so difficult to fathom.”
Artoo-Detoo squalled disdainfully.
“I am not stalling, you mismated collection of crosswired nanochips. There was nothing in that last recording that was not in any of the others. Six million forms of communication, and they find a new one. Nonmechanicals are quite impossible.”
Artoo stretched a manipulator arm toward the playback machine.
“I’ll do it,” blustered Threepio. “You can’t reach high enough.”
Artoo thbb’d like a seven-year-old human with his tongue out.
Threepio removed one recording rod and inserted another, carefully replacing the old one in the prime minister’s array case. “Even Prime Minister Captison, an admitted droid hater, simply has to agree that we serve a useful purpose now. We’ve been on the job for seven hours without so much as a break for lubricants.” The speaker twittered and chirped. Threepio leaned his head closer. “Quiet, Artoo.”
Artoo, who was being quiet, thbb’d a little softer.
“There’s something different on top of this one.” At a human-inaudible whine, a series of electronic bursts followed the Ssi-ruuvi birdsong. His automatic scanners compared the code with millions of others. Before the recording ended, “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “Artoo, run that one again.”
Artoo chirped wryly.
“Of course I can reach it better than you can. Don’t blame me for your shortcomings.” Threepio turned his upper body, pressed a repeat key, then held the awkward position. Automatic programming preset his left auditory sensor to follow the Ssi-ruuvi language, his right auditory sensor to record the electronic code, and a central processing unit to compare the two. It noted a decisecond delay, repeated tonal patterns, and inhuman labial/guttural modifiers.
The recording ended. Threepio ran it again. Another circuit, programmed to deduce logical variables out of context, supplied alternate readings and compared them with similar statements he had recorded during the years since his last memory wipe—a long, long time ago.
“Excellent!” Threepio exclaimed. “Now, Artoo. We must begin at the beginning and listen through all the recordings. They’ll provide Princess Leia with all kinds of useful information.”
Artoo whistled.
“Yes, Prime Minister Captison too. Don’t get impatient.” Threepio tapped Artoo’s dome. “I realize this isn’t your specialty. Think of the hours I spent shipboard, functionless.”
Artoo tweaked his memory.
“That’s not funny.” Threepio pressed the play key. “Be quiet and listen. I’ll translate for you.”
The recordings began again, all seven hours at high speed. Threepio listened, and Artoo listened to Threepio. Most of what was said was inconsequential: Realign your ship with the squadron and suchlike.
But abruptly Threepio exclaimed, “Oh, no. Artoo, you must call Master Luke at once. This is dreadful—”
Artoo was already rolling toward a communications interlock.
Leia slid out of the rented aircar into a cool, gusty breeze and stared around the Bakur complex’s roof port, mentally counting stormtroopers. Eighteen, with weapons drawn. This was no friendly welcome committee. Now she wished she’d been able to bring Chewie—even though she wouldn’t have, to please the Bakurans. Belden bumped her and mumbled, “Be sure you give Commander Skywalker that message, Your Highness.”
“Get ready to move,” she mumbled back. She reached up one sleeve for her little blaster. She could probably take three or four before they stunned her. Flinging herself onto the permacrete rooftop, she started shooting.
Five stormtroopers toppled before someone seized her right elbow from behind. She wriggled violently and almost won free before a white gauntlet pried her blaster from her hand.
Half the battle is knowing when you’re beaten. Where had she heard that? Alderaan, she guessed, slowly getting to her feet with both hands clasped over her head. She wasn’t beaten yet. But it was important that they think so.
Governor Wilek Nereus strode out of the lift shaft, followed by four naval troopers in black helmets. “Prime Minister Captison,” he said smoothly, “Senator Belden. Going for a little drive?” He pointed at the aircar, and two stormtroopers climbed aboard.
The trooper who’d confiscated her blaster took something away from Prime Minister Captison. Another seized his arms and locked on a pair of wristbinders. “You have just run out of good sense,” Belden wheezed, red-faced and already cuffed. “This is a preposterous maneuver.”
“Why so much effort to escape observation, if you’re doing nothing wrong?”
Leia stepped in. “There is such a thing as a right to privacy, Governor.”
“Not when it endangers an Imperial world’s security, my dear princess.”
One trooper emerged from the aircar. “Negative, sir.”
“Take it apart. You. You, and you.” He pointed at three other troopers. “Search them.”
Leia stoically endured scanning and then a thorough physical frisking. The trooper took her empty wrist holster and pocket comlink, then cuffed her hands. Another walked swiftly from Belden to Governor Nereus, carrying the small gray box. “What have we here, Senator?”
Belden raised his bound hands and shook a finger at Governor Nereus. “My voice amplifier is a personal item. Give it back.”
“Ah. Righteousness, maligned.” Nereus smiled. “I’ve suspected for some time that you or your wife had possessed illegal devices, Belden … but since you’re so certainly innocent of wrongdoing, I’m sure you won’t mind our detaining you until my people ascertain the nature of this instrument.”
Leia groaned. Belden’s forehead shone wetly over scarlet cheeks, and his breathing had become shallow. He looked as if he might keel over. At his age, these were danger signals.
Yet this incident could set Bakura aflame. Butter newt, she reminded herself. Prime Minister Captison hurried to Belden’s side, reaching him just before one naval trooper. “Governor Nereus, you have overstepped—”
“Guards,” Nereus called, “these three are under arrest. Suspicion of subversion will do. Put them in separate parts of the complex.”
Leia stepped toward Nereus, deliberately drawing attention. “This was a pleasure drive, Governor.”
Nereus lowered his stare. “I made you a promise over dinner that concerned subverting Imperial peoples, my dear. Believe me, I keep my promises. When a speeder full of people goes silent on sensor fields, it rouses curiosity.” A stormtrooper stuck his blast rifle in Belden’s back. “No talking,” Nereus ordered. “Interview each one separately.”
Leia had to prove to Captison that she’d meant every word about sacrificing herself. She lowered her head and took a run at Governor Nereus. She caught him right at his generous midsection.
With a puff of surprise, he went down. Leia climbed onto his chest, wedged his head between her knees, and pushed her wristbinders onto his nose. “Get back, all of you, or we’ll see whose head is harder.” Stormtroopers backed away, but she didn’t spot the one who stunned her from behind.
CHAPTER
14
Han braked his speeder just long enough for Luke to vault out at the spaceport gate, then he spun it around, raising a black cloud of dust. He disliked leaving Luke out here alone, but Luke had insisted he’d be fine. The Flurry’s shuttle was due any minute, and meanwhile, Luke should have plenty of cover at the spaceport cantina. Probably reinforcements, too: Alliance pilots bunking in temporary scramble shelters. They’d sure outnumber the crew of a single Imperial shuttle grounded close to the cantina, just outside Pad 12. Anyway, Luke was Luke, lightsaber and all.
Speeding north, he spotted smoke near the Bakur complex. Several seconds later, a glimmering face appeared in midair over his head-up city map. “Alert, all residents. A curfew has just been imposed. Leave the streets and the air. Security forces will shoot to kill leaders and stun their followers to incarcerate them. The curfew will take effect immediately.”
