by Kathy Tyers
Heavy footsteps approached outside the hall door. Han sprang off the bed. “Can I get out up there?” He dashed toward the fireplace.
“Of course not. Too narrow.”
Too late. The door whooshed. Han seized a metal rod inside the blackened chimney, jumped as high as he could, and pulled up his legs.
“Have you seen anything suspicious out this window?” asked a helmet-filtered voice. Han wedged himself between two scratchy black stone walls. He wanted to gain more altitude, but didn’t dare attract attention by knocking down soot. Smoky residue made his nose and throat itch. At the thought of that guard droid sitting right inside the door, his hands got clammy.
“I haven’t tried.” Leia’s voice defied the intruder.
“Right. Stand aside.” He heard slow steps—two pair—and imagined a scanner team checking for life-forms. He wondered if stone blocked their equipment. He couldn’t reach his blaster. At any second, they’d notice that droid.…
“All right, you’ve run your check. Now get out of here,” Leia said. As if in tribute to the icy menace in her voice, the troopers’ bootsteps beat a hasty retreat. After a few seconds, she called from beneath him, “They’re gone.”
“Stand back,” he said. Cautiously he got a grip on both walls, then he straightened his legs and dropped. For an instant, he saw her standing with a horrified expression. Then carbon dumped like a downpour, obscuring his vision.
“Some rescue,” her voice observed.
“Suppose they’ll be back?” he asked, stepping sideways on the stone platform around the fireplace. Once the soot settled, he could see again. What a mess. The guard droid stood in a corner beside the door, artfully draped with articles of clothing to look like furniture. Leia’d moved fast, too.
“Yes,” she answered. “I think lying low is out of the question.” She ducked through a small door and reemerged carrying a large white towel. “Stand still. I’ll do what I can.”
One minute later, she dropped a black towel onto the floor. “You’re clean enough for now.”
Han had been staring at her repulsor chair. “Hey,” he said, “I’ve got an idea.”
CHAPTER
15
Gaeriel stood outside Eppie Belden’s door and straightened her freshly pruned bundle of cloudberry spikes. Each fragrant blossom could have produced a succulent fruit, but too many spikes on a vine made the fruit tiny and sour. The symbolism—some blossoms, some lives cut off to allow a few to grow stronger—gave her small comfort. Would Eppie understand that her husband for over a century had died in Governor Nereus’s custody? Or would he return again and again in her perception, like Roviden?
Eppie’s caregiver opened the door. “Good morning, Clis.”
“Hello, Gaeriel.” Clis stepped aside with a queer expression on her round face. “Come in. Quickly.”
“Something wrong?” Gaeriel walked past Clis toward Eppie’s favorite wing chair. No one sat in it. “Where is she?” Gaeriel asked, alarmed.
“In the study.”
“The study?”
“See for yourself.”
Gaeriel strode through the dining area to Orn Belden’s office. A work screen silhouetted a small, hunched figure. “Eppie?” Gaeri cried.
The figure turned around. Eppie Belden’s wrinkled face glowed with the intensity of a small bird’s. “You know anyone else who’s likely to be here?”
“She’s been like that all morning,” murmured Clis. “Go on in. She’s been asking for you.”
“And for that young man.” Eppie paddled her repulsor chair away from the work screen. “Who was he? Where did he come from?”
Stunned almost beyond the ability to articulate, Gaeri sat down on top of a packing crate. There weren’t any other chairs in the office. “He’s a … Rebel, but a … dangerous one. A Jedi. One of them.”
“Oh, ho.” Eppie’s feet swung under her chair. “Our teachers have taught us a lot of wisdom down the years, but also a load of guff.” She pointed a bony finger. “You should judge that Jedi by what he does, not by rumors or morality tales. Tell him to come back and see me again, in any case.” Her head turned. “Go make a nice arrangement out of Gaeri’s flowers, Clis.”
The portly caregiver left the door. Eppie slapped a control that shut it.
“Eppie, you’re … you’re well!”
“You’re here to tell me about Orn, aren’t you?” The wall of her preoccupation thinned, and Gaeri glimpsed her fresh grief. Full realization hadn’t set in. Eppie was working while she could, the better to grieve later. “Thank you anyway, love. I heard. No one else thought to notify me, but I’ve been plugged in all morning.”
“But—”
“I haven’t watched the news for years, so you assumed I hadn’t heard? Be careful of your assumptions, Gaeriel.”
“But he … Orn …”
Eppie’s shoulders slumped, transforming her into a wizened old woman. “I’ll miss him, Gaeri. Bakura will miss him. Let the Imperials call it a cerebral hemorrhage, but I know he died for Bakura, as I should’ve.”
“Should’ve?”
“Confession is good for the soul, child. But I’m not ready to tell you everything. Some of it’s not for young Imperial ears.” She spun her repulsor chair and touched a work station control. A screen full of symbols translated itself into a news media picture. “Fires, and strikes, and running street battles in Salis D’aar. I wish I were eighty again.”
“Eppie, what did you do?”
“Only what that young man—excuse me, that terribly dangerous young Jedi—showed me to do. You’re a lot of good things, Gaeri, but reconsider your intolerance.”
Gaeriel gaped. “Then something was done to you?”
“I won’t burden you with my past. Let’s get on with the future.”
“Your past may be my future.”
Eppie’s keen blue eyes blinked at her. “I hope so. And I hope not.”
Gaeri reached out a hand. “You’re going to wear yourself out. Shouldn’t you lie down for a bit?”
Eppie shook her head. “I’ve missed years. Can’t waste minutes now. Bakura’s rising. I want to be in on it.”
Gaeriel steadied her hands against a tremor. “Rising?”
“Against Nereus, of course.”
“But we need Governor Nereus and his forces. We’re going to be invaded any minute. The Alliance talks about freedom, but Bakura was … was crippled by chaos. The Empire saved us from tragedy.”
“We will never be free from tragedy, Gaeriel. Each of us must be free to pursue her own tragedy.”
Gaeri crossed her ankles and stared. How could this lucid philosopher be the mind-sick woman she’d helped nurse since before she went off to Center?
“Even after a defeat,” Eppie murmured, “it’s possible to have a full and happy life. I wish Orn and I had realized …
“Anyway,” she exclaimed, drawing herself up, “there’s work to be done. Are you for me or against me?”
“What—what are you doing at that work station, Eppie?”
“Are you going to turn me in? Look at this!” She swiveled back around and tapped controls beneath the screen. One key brought up an image of flames rising near the Bakur complex. Another showed stormtroopers chasing down armed civilians. Automation, claimed another screen, had gone haywire at the repulsorlift coil production plant. “Salis D’aar is furious. Orn’s dead, your uncle arrested, the Rebel princess in custody. What are you going to do about it?”
“If we fight each other now, the Ssi-ruuk will have us piecemeal!”
“That’s why it can’t be done wrong. Those people on the streets are only the distraction. You and I, and a few others on the inside, will run the real rebellion. We could accomplish plenty before the aliens actually attacked.”
“They’re attacking in less than an hour. I’ve warned Governor Nereus. There’s no time.”
“No one ever told you that I used to be a circuitry guerrilla, did they?”
Gae
ri gaped at the thought. How could she even consider collaborating with Eppie and the Rebels? The Alliance was impractical. Naively idealistic.
Her own tragedy. If fate guaranteed her life an ending, what tragedy did she choose?
A triumphant one. Gingerly she handled the fragile new thought. She couldn’t deliver Eppie Belden to Wilek Nereus. And there’s your answer, she told herself. There wasn’t a single Imperial officer, bureaucrat, or professor that she’d ever admired the way she loved Eppie.
Then this was her decision. She loved Bakura, not the Empire. “I’m with you,” she said softly.
Eppie seized her hand and squeezed it. “I knew you had more sense than you were letting on. It’s a hard decision, girl, and it’ll cost you … but congratulations. Now let’s see what else we can do at that repulsorlift coil plant.”
“You sent the automation haywire?”
Eppie’s smile smoothed half of her wrinkles and deepened the rest of them. “That plant’s worth all the rest of Bakura to the Imperials. If production shuts down, even during wartime, they’ll send every trooper left in Salis D’aar to restore order. That leaves the Bakur complex for me—and a few friends.”
Gaeri’s blood tingled. “I can help you better from my office. I’ve got one of the Rebels’ droids stashed away there.”
“Wait.” Eppie rummaged in a drawer and drew out a tiny bit of metal and plastic. “You know about that allegedly secure stormtrooper channel?”
Gaeri nodded.
“Orn wanted you to have this a long time ago, but he couldn’t trust you. Use it now. It’ll let you give the stormtroopers a few commands before they come for you.”
Gaeri closed her hand around it.
“Well, go! Run!” Eppie slapped her shoulder.
Gaeri flew her aircar back to the complex, dodging security patrols and steering between trouble spots and firefighting crews. The Rebels’ droid, Artoo Detoo, stood right where she’d left it, beside her desk, spinning its dome and beeping unintelligibly. Gaeri groaned. “You must be trying to tell me something. But I can’t understand any of that. Aari?”
“Here,” exclaimed her aide.
“Dump all the information you can get from Nereus’s office net, even if it means compromising our security. Everything’s about to break apart.”
“Will do.” To Gaeri’s amusement, the droid rolled to a terminal and plugged in, too. Evidently it had a good deal of perception and volition programmed into it.
“Here, Senator.” Aari had delivered a screenful. Nereus had ordered stormtroopers across the city to quell three demonstrations, and sent his top intelligence man to the coil production plant in Belden’s district. Intell officers shot first and interrogated survivors.
Gaeri clenched a fist. She must try to free Uncle Yeorg, and that Rebel princess as well. But first, no Captison had ever dallied when turmoil wrenched Bakura. She handed Aari the chip. “Install that. It’ll give us the stormtrooper frequency.”
Aari raised one black eyebrow. Artoo Detoo beeped and trilled. Even to Gaeri, it sounded excited.
Her own hands shook. They’d catch any unauthorized user on-line and change all security codes within minutes, but this would be her memorial to a brave old man.
“You’ve got it,” Aari announced a moment later from her adjoining desk. Working her main bank, Gaeriel accessed factory data for the namana juice extraction plant fifteen kilometers down the seacoast—a safely irrelevant, nonmilitary distraction—and then she dumped it onto the troopers’ information banks, replacing their data for repulsorlift coil production. When they tried to move in on Belden’s factory, they would possess all the wrong information. They’d be totally lost, and that might give Belden’s people enough time to … well, she wasn’t sure what Eppie was up to, and she didn’t want to know.
But she did call the repulsorlift plant supervisor on a conventional frequency. She warned him he had troopers on the way—and that Bakura’s resistance had begun. It might not be wildly revolutionary action, but it would confuse the Empire for a few minutes longer.
“All right, Aari. Pull the chip.”
Aari dove for her tool kit and removed the illicit Imperial chip. “I’d better melt this.”
“Right.” Now that she could think of trying to free Uncle Yeorg, she realized that she knew only one person who could possibly help. She cleared her terminal, then bent close to the droid. She felt ludicrous talking to it. “Artoo Detoo, can you help me locate Commander Skywalker?”
Chewbacca stalked slowly around the Falcon, on watch. She was ready to take off, all systems operational—for the moment—and looking good from the outside, which was to say that she hunkered close to the rough-glass white surface, so battered and streaked that a casual observer would doubt that she’d ever lift again. He eyed each ship and gantry, every parked landspeeder and building he could see. There was no sign of Luke.
Finally the whine of an open-top speeder approached. Chewie slipped around the hull and took up a position from which he could fire without being seen. Seconds later, the speeder landed within range. A stormtrooper climbed out clumsily.
That looked like trouble. The trooper didn’t challenge him, but shuffled forward with his arms hanging oddly. Either he couldn’t call out, or he chose not to.
Chewie had just gotten the Falcon lift ready. He wasn’t taking chances on some high-handed Imperial slapping a lock on her hatch. He pulled his blaster, set it for “stun,” and fired off a shot.
The stormtrooper came on, tottering. Chewie fired again. This time, the trooper fell. Tempted to let the intruder lie, he decided the armor might be useful. He dragged the surprisingly heavy body up the Falcon’s ramp. The main hatch slid down into position with a hiss. Crouching, he gripped one side of the white helmet with each massive paw and lifted it off.
A golden head gleamed inside, repeating in a tinny, highspeed voice, “uke! Master … uke! Master …”
Threepio!
Now he’d have to run all those diagnostics again. Disgusted, Chewie kept peeling off armor.
Luke glanced one last time at the cantina’s cracked chrono. In five minutes, if his shuttle hadn’t arrived, he’d join Chewie on the Falcon.
He eyed a slab of unevenly cooked, greasy, mysterious meat. “I guess I’ll have one of those, with whatever you can put on it,” he said. “To go.” He would eat with Chewie.… “Oh. You’d better make it three.” The sooty orange countertop—unoccupied—suggested Pad 12’s nearest cantina was often empty this close to noon. Isolated clusters of Bakurans sat at scattered tables, murmuring and glancing around. “Arrest,” he’d heard from one, and “dead” from another. “Belden” and “Captison” buzzed from table to table. He’d also heard “Jedi.”
The sooner he left, the better.
Quick footsteps approached along the wall outside. Alarmed, he reached out through the Force, so he felt Gaeriel before the main door swung open. His senses came alive, focusing tightly on her presence. She hurried through, followed by an Artoo unit … his, he realized, remembering Threepio’s message. Artoo beeped and whistled incoherently, and Gaeriel’s sense buzzed with shocked excitement. She hurried over, skirt whisking the dirty floor. Luke pushed away from the orange countertop. “What’s going on? How did you find me?”
“Your droid brought me to the commnet terminal you’d used most recently. Haven’t you heard? They’re about to attack. Uncle Yeorg’s been arrested.” Her eyes stayed wide. “Your princess, too.”
“Yes, I’ve heard. I’m trying to get to my carrier—”
Artoo’s insistent warbles rocked the little droid from side to side. “Artoo, wait. I’m not getting any of that.” Closing out Gaeriel for the moment, he reached into the distance for his sister’s feelings. Farther, farther …
“There’s a curfew in effect,” insisted Gaeriel, “and—” A server strolled past, obviously listening. She continued more softly, “Orn Belden keeled over when they tried to lock him up, and died half an hour later. T
he city’s in turmoil.”
“Poor old Belden,” he murmured. In that instant, he found Leia. Very busy, very excited. Han had obviously found her.
Artoo pushed closer to him, extended a probe … and shocked his left calf, still beeping. “Artoo!” he exclaimed.
Gaeri looked both ways and whispered, “This is your moment, Luke. Bakura’s with you.”
He glanced up at her, a new hope striking wildfire in his imagination. “Why were they arrested?”
“Governor Nereus found a DB projector,” said Gaeriel. “Sedition carries the death penalty, Luke. The city’s going crazy. You’ve got to get Princess Leia and Uncle Yeorg free.” She glanced around as if finally noticing her surroundings. “But what are you doing here alone? Didn’t I warn you?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to endanger anybody. I can protect myself, but you’d better not stay more than a few minutes.” He glanced around, half-expecting stormtrooper helmets at the windows. “Let’s have Artoo try to find your uncle. Can you interface the governmental mainframe from a public commnet?”
“I should be able to.”
Luke grabbed a bread knife off the nearest table. After two seconds of prying, Artoo’s restraining bolt popped free.
Gaeriel’s wide eyes looked scandalized. Trying to pacify her, he said, “Artoo, put Gaeriel on your recognize-and-obey program. And her friend Eppie Belden,” he added on impulse. “Okay?” Artoo tweeted up the scale, approving. “Good. Now see if you can find Prime Minister Captison.”
Artoo rolled toward the corner table.
“Not much good without translators, are they?” Gaeriel asked.
Luke followed Artoo. “I understood some of that. He’s an astromech droid—a pilot’s aide, I guess you’d call him—but you’d be surprised what he can handle groundside.” Luke glanced at the kitchen doors. The cooks were taking an awfully long time. “Han’s already gone looking for Leia,” he said.
