people. There are so many stories about you, Han Solo--more than are
told of any Yevetha, even the viceroy. I wonder why you permit it."
He paused a moment, then continued. "This is also how we knew that
Lieutenant Barth was not
important. There were no stories of his life and heroics.
I was not surprised when you let him die."
Han's hot flash of anger overwhelmed any good intentions he had not to
be drawn into Tal Fraan's game. "You son of a bitch--you think you
understand us, but you haven't the first clue," he snapped. "What you
did to Barth makes him important to us--just like what you did to those
colonists all over the Cluster made them important to us. We're not
like you--we remember our dead. That's why our fleet isn't going
away."
Other than a twitch of his forebrow ridges, Tal Fraan showed no outward
reaction whatever to Han's outburst. "I have an interesting question
for you, Han Solo--do you think that your mate would be willing to fire
through your body to kill my master?"
"Is that what this is about? Is that why I'm being moved?" Han looked
out at the swiftly darkening sky enveloping the shuttle, at the rich
array of bright stars piercing the curtain. "When you can answer that
question yourself, Proctor, then you really will understand us as well
as you think you do."
"So coy," said Tal Fraan. "Is the answer that distasteful to you?"
"All I'm gonna say is this," Han said, relaxing against the back of the
bench and turning a quietly murderous gaze on the Yevetha. "When your
last morning arrives--and it'll come sooner than you think--I hope the
fates give you a moment to realize that everything that's happened, you
brought on yourself."
"You are kind to show such concern for me," Tal Fraan said, nodding and
smiling generously. "We will have to talk again. You have been most
helpful."
As Han gritted his teeth Tal Fraan peered past him out the viewport at
the massive Star Destroyer Pride of Yevetha, which had just come into
view.
"Such a splendid vessel. The sight of it still inspires my blood," he
said with open pride. "You should count yourself honored that the
viceroy has allowed you to make it your new home."
From the moment Han knew where he was bound, he had been picturing
himself alone in one of the tiny isolation cells of a standard Imperial
detention block. A Super-class Star Destroyer had six such detention
blocks for crew discipline alone, and ten additional high-security
blocks for enemy prisoners.
But to Han's surprise, his four-guard escort led him to a different
part of the ship, and a different sort of prison. Three of the ship's
cargo areas had been designed for the secure transport of large numbers
of slaves, refugees, or prisoners of war. Located adjacent to the
large landing bays used by the SSD's bulk shuttles, each of the holding
areas was equipped with minimal facilities--water taps, ventilation,
and food dispensers--considered adequate for up to a thousand people.
The holding area to which Han was taken, number two, was not even
remotely that crowded. At a glance, Han guessed that there were no
more than a hundred prisoners huddled along the walls or sprawled on
the hard deck.
Most took little or no notice of his arrival, but a small group,
perhaps twenty strong, formed a large, ragged circle around him as he
made his way toward a water tap. More than half a dozen species were
represented in the circle, and they looked upon him with a mixture of
dull-eyed curiosity and suspicion.
"What world are you from?" asked a young woman in a brown
fire-scorched caftan. She was either human or Andalese--her tousled
hair might have concealed the latter's horn points, and the caftan was
shapeless enough to hide the symbiosis grafts.
"Coruscant," said Han. "And you?"
"I was at the Morath pholikite mine number four, on Elcorth."
The others began to crowd closer around him as they recited their own
answers.
"Taratan, of the Kubaz, nested at Morning Bell--" "I am Brakka
Bar.akas, dothmir of New Brigia--"
"Bek nar walae Ithak e Gotoma--" "Fogg Alait, assigned to Polneye--"
"I am called Noloth by my brothers of the L'at H'kig--" "My home was
Kojash. I am known as Jara ba Nylra--" "My stars," said Han, turning
slowly, hands raised as though to fend them off. "Are there survivors
here from all the colony worlds?"
"All our homes were attacked by the silver spheres," said the woman who
had spoken first. "Are we the only survivors?"
"How much longer will we be here?" asked Noloth.
"Do you think we can go home soon?" asked a slender alien who had not
spoken before.
Han swept his gaze across their faces. "I don't know," he said
uncomfortably. "I'm just like you are--I don't know what's going on
out there."
The days immediately following the presentation to the Senate of a
petition of recall against President Leia Organa Solo were full of the
kind of moments that made Hiram Drayson despair of leaving the
government in the hands of civilians.
Moving quickly in the wake of the Ruling Council's vote, both Fleet
Intelligence and New Republic Intelligence had intervened to prevent
the news of Han's capture by the Yevetha from being released with the
petition. Stripped of its supporting argument by the blue and silver
SECURE seals, the petition ought--by all rights--to have foundered on
arrival.
But a Ruling Council had never passed such a judgment against a Senate
President before, and novelty alone gave the petition an undeserved
gravity. And the threat of prosecution for security violations could
do nothing to rein in the rumors and leaks that blossomed to fill the
information vacuum.
Within twelve hours, Drayson's information filters had picked up an
uncensored copy of Beruss's original complaint, an anonymous interview
with one of Tampion's escort pilots, and even a holo that purported to
show Jedi "commandos" in training for an imminent rescue mission. When
Coruscant Prime led its morning packet with a feature titled "Where Is
Han Solo?" and the New Republic Newsgrid answered with "Princess
Leia's Personal War," Drayson knew that the battle had been lost.
"You may as well release everything you have concerning Han," Drayson
told Ackbar. "At this point, the official silence, the denials, look
like admissions that there is something to hide. Leia should be
getting a flood of sympathy over Han's situation--but with Borsk
Fey'lya leaking everything he can get his hands on, and Doman Beruss
appointing himself the champion of the public's right to 'full
disclosure,' her stock is dropping almost by the hour."
"I have urged her to that course," said Ackbar.
"But she is protecting the children--they still do not know what has
happened to their father."
"That can't last much longer."
"She is determined not to burden them with the truth," said Ackbar,
shaking his head. "L
eia has told them that Han is on a secret mission
for her, that they are not to believe anything they hear anywhere
else.
And Winter is keeping them away from anyone and anything that might
contradict Leia's version."
"Children aren't stupid," said Drayson. "Particularly not those
children. I expect that they already know quite a bit more than she
realizes."
"It would not surprise me," said Ackbar. "But until events force her
hand, Leia is determined to protect the children from the knowledge
that their father is a prisoner of war. And I have personally promised
to support that fiction."
Disgruntled, Drayson retired to his private office with the
ever-growing catalog of message packets, grid dispatches, comlink
captures, and electronic graffiti assembled for him by the Maxwell
filters that were riding
the planet's busy communication channels. Later that afternoon,
reports began to come in from his contacts in the palace complex and
Fleet headquarters.
By that time, Drayson had already made a decision about what was needed
to change the tone and tenor of the public and political
consciousness.
His hastily jotted notes to himself read: Must erase the perception of
selfish act--replace with the reality of selfless one. This crisis
must have another face.
Drayson spent the next hour browsing through the personnel records of
the casualties of the engagement at Doornik 319. He marked four of
them for further consideration husband-and-wife pilots from the battle
cruiser Liberty, a female crew chief who died fighting the hangar fire
aboard Venture, and the Hassarian captain of the ill-fated Trenchant.
Each story had a powerful emotional hook; But their effectiveness in
deflecting the focus from Leia and Han would be undercut by the fact
that, coming so late in the crisis, all four deaths could be as easily
blamed on Leia's actions as on Nil Spaar's. The tragedy was obvious;
that the Yevetha were to blame was less so.
So Drayson set the casualty records aside and retrieved his data
folders concerning the eight destroyed colonies in Koornacht Cluster,
including the stasis probes' documentation of the devastation.
Assessing the cold realities of emotional kinship, Drayson knew that
the most ready identification would be with the humanoid Brigians, the
hard-working Morath miners on Elcorth, and the largely human
inhabitants of Polneye.
Which, in the end, brought Drayson to the same place his first
instincts had said he must go, hours be-fore--to the young Grannan
survivor from Polneye, Plat Mailar. It would have been better if
Mallar were human, and of Polneye's historical associations were with
the Alliance rather than the Empire, but those problems could be dealt
with if addressed head on.
The only question remaining was which provider was to receive the
benefit of Drayson's gift-wrapped leadline scoop. Over the years, he
had cultivated mutu ally helpful relationships with understanding
producers in news organizations of all sizes, but rarely had the
material been this hot or the stakes this high. He needed someone who
not only would set the proper tone for the copycats hustling to catch
up, but who also had the courage to risk a shutdown order, even the
seizure of the studio facilities, to break a big story first, In the
end, it came down to an old friend or a young idealist, and Drayson
settled on the latter.
"Open message to The Life Monitor, blind and secure," he said.
"Personal to Cindel Towani. This is your shopping service. I want to
alert you to a special offer, limited availability, your signature
required .... " The initial release of the sixty-second issue of The
Life Monitor reached fewer than a hundred thousand subscribers, and
Belezaboth Ourn, extraordinary counsel of the Paqwepori, was not among
them.
But the lead producer of Capitol Scavenger was, and within an hour a
licensed crosslink to Towani's feature had appeared in the rolling CS
queue. That brought Plat Mallar's story to the attention of nearly
half a million more viewers, including the senior night producer for
Sunrise and the Senate correspondent for Roll Call.
From there, it was picked up by Coruscant Global and New Republic
Primeraboth of which gave as small a nod to Cindel Towani as possible,
but ran the audio-video portion of her story uncut. By dawn, Mallar's
achingly poignant plea on behalf of the inhabitants of Polneye had
reached more than forty million ears on Coruscant and ridden the
hypercomm trails to eighty thousand other New Republic worlds.
By midday, it had even reached a destitute and dispirited Ourn.
Both the flight crew of the wrecked Mother's Valkyrie and his consular
staff had long since abandoned him. One by one, they had faced up to
the failure and futility of their mission and disappeared, buying
cheap
passage to Paqwepori on their families' credit or with the proceeds
from selling mission supplies and equipment in the no-name market
halls. Cathacatin, the licensed breeder-keeper, had been the last to
go, slaughtering the few remaining toko birds before he departed rather
than see them suffer from neglect.
Ourn's continued presence in the diplomatic hostel was strictly a
courtesy, for he no longer had either the status or the resources to
command a room, much less an entire cottage. First, Mother's Valkyrie
was sold for salvage in a lien auction. Then half of the mission's
line-of-account was attached by the port authorities as partial payment
of the balance of the herthing fees. In the final humiliation, Ourn's
appointment was revoked by Ilar Paqwe himself, and the diplomatic
account closed.
"You would save your parents from further embarrassment by not
returning to the Paqwe dominion," Ourn was advised in the termination
notice.
Since that time, Ourn had clung ever more tightly to the frail reed of
hope represented by the Yevethan blind-relay transmitter and the
promise from Nil Spaar.
If only the viceroy could appease his peers on N'zoth and deliver the
thrustship as he had agreed he would--not only could Ourn repair his
savaged reputation at home, but he would have a hundred generals and
five hundred senators begging him for a chance to study the Yevethan
vessel Ourn clung to that hope against all reason, mining the grids and
the gossip in the hostel's courtyards for even the smallest tidbits of
information, making himself believe that his next dispatch would be the
one by which he would earn the Yevetha's confidence, and his reward.
But when he saw the stories on Plat Mallar's narrow escape from Polneye
and Captain Llotta's death at Morning Bell, that hope finally
evaporated. There was no escaping the truth--the pretty silver spheres
were also deadly warships, and Nil Spaar would never receive permission
to deliver one to Belezaboth Ourn.
"If only the peace had held a little longer," he said resignedly in the
p
rivacy of his room. "If only the Prin cess had not been so
stubborn.
She has cost me everything."
He picked up the hypercomm black box and turned it over in his hands.
"So perhaps I shall ask her for my payment. Perhaps this toy is worth
more than the words that have passed through it."
There were a hundred things Leia should have been doing, a thousand
better uses for her energy than lining a garden path with brilliant
white sasalea blossoms, one fragrant ball--the size of Anakin's
fist--to a planting. It was work a droid could do, work the
residence's groundskeeper would have gladly seen to in the mornng.
But none of those other things she might have been doing that evening
had half the appeal of burying her hands in the cool, moist soil,
crumbling it between her fingers, cradling each sasalea plant gently
into its new home. On a day where nothing she had tackled had yielded
to her efforts, it was intensely gratifying to take on a task where
every element was under her control--spade and earth, stalk and
blossom. Her vision, her time, her labor, her triumph, her
satisfaction.
It was a small triumph, a minor transformation of a tiny landscape, but
it was balm for her whole beingm reassurance that she was, at the end
of the day, master of her own world. If you don't believe that what
you do matters, it's awfully hard to get up in the morning.
"Princess--" Leia looked up from her work in surprise at the voice.
THE BLACK FLEET CRISIS #3 - TYRANTS_TEST Page 18
