“Tell me, Artoo!”
Artoo-Detoo did not reply.
Three ships stood on the small landing field. One was a courier, the ship she had wished to send after Han and Luke. The second was an antique local craft of intricate design, a Munto Codru vessel put at the disposal of the chamberlain.
The third was Alderaan, Leia’s pride and joy. Alderaan was a sleek little ship with hyperdrive capabilities. Luke had chided her for spending the time to learn to fly it that she could have used to study the ways of the Jedi. But the truth was, it was much easier and faster to learn to fly Alderaan than to learn to be a Jedi Knight. And a great deal more fun. Maybe that was why she loved the little starcraft so much. Her responsibility to the Republic kept her from having much fun.
The same was true of everyone she knew. Luke worked himself to exhaustion. Leia thought that he deliberately worked himself beyond exhaustion, either to test himself or to take himself to another level of achievement. But he scared her, sometimes. She wished they had grown up together; she wished she had known her brother as a child, so she could understand him better.
Han did not deliberately push himself beyond his endurance. He had passed plenty of tests in his life; he never needed to give himself more. But he did press himself to his limits without meaning to. Often Leia would come home after a diplomatic reception or a long meeting with her advisers to find Han facedown at his desk, snoring. Once he fell asleep in his bath. Leia was convinced that if she had come in five minutes later, he would have drowned.
That was why he and Luke had gone on a quest together. They were both burning out. They needed time off.
She doubted Luke would find any other Jedi Knights on his quest, but she hoped he would find some rest. And she hoped Han would let loose, like in the old days.
Leia followed Artoo-Detoo onto the field. She expected the droid to stop at the courier. When Artoo-Detoo passed the courier she drew in a long, distressed breath. Could the droid be heading for the chamberlain’s ship? He had always been kind and helpful to her. Even when he drugged her he had meant well. But if the children were in his ship, if he had kidnapped her children to increase his prestige on Munto Codru …
Artoo-Detoo passed the chamberlain’s ship and continued on toward Leia’s.
Leia ran after the droid.
No one can get into Alderaan without my consent! she cried to herself. No one! Not even Han. And certainly not the twins or Anakin! The kidnappers couldn’t have forced them to open the ship, because they don’t know how to do it.
Her heart raced. A powerful practitioner of the Force might be able to get into her ship without setting off the alarms.
She calmed herself. Wait and see, she thought. Wait and see.
Artoo-Detoo stopped beside Alderaan.
Leia laid one hand on the silver flank of her ship. No distinguishing mark marred its limpid finish, which looked like puddled mercury. It was registered to a person who did not exist, a second identity Leia had established so that someday, sometime, somehow, she would be able to take a few days off and fly away to a pleasant place without being recognized. Its ship’s signature did not even list its name, only its number, because the name of Alderaan gave too great a clue to the true identity of the ship’s owner. Almost all the citizens of Alderaan had perished in the attack of the Death Star. Only a few had survived. Princess Leia Organa had been one of them.
“Is someone in there, Artoo?” she whispered.
The droid made a soft faint hum, the sound Alderaan made as it powered up for liftoff.
“All right. I’ll stop them before they can take off. Don’t worry.”
She executed the entry sequence. The hatch opened. Leia entered her ship and moved silently down its corridor.
She had no feeling of intrusion, no sense that anyone was aboard. Artoo-Detoo followed on silent treads. Leia kept the lights off; she could find her way around in Alderaan with her eyes closed if need be. She glanced into her stateroom. Nothing. No one was hiding in the second cabin, in the head, in the storeroom, in the galley. She crept toward the cockpit. Her pulse pounded.
The cockpit, too, was empty.
Could they be hiding in the engines? That was the only possibility left.
At the engine hatch, she stopped and listened carefully. She could hear nothing, no sounds of conspiracy, no cries of frightened children, no shrill squeals of Anakin in one of his brief, intense tantrums. Perhaps they were all asleep.
A soft faint hum surrounded her.
She glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see Artoo-Detoo mimicking the sound of her ship again.
The corridor behind her was empty.
The hum increased. Someone had begun the takeoff procedure.
Leia slammed the hatch and pelted her way back to the cockpit.
Artoo-Detoo had extended connectors into the ship’s systems and powered up Alderaan’s drive.
“Stop it, Artoo!” Leia exclaimed. “What are you doing, I can’t—”
A display flashed into being before her.
The display traced out the spaceways of Munto Codru. Traffic was light around this old world. No ship had arrived or departed for several days.
Except one.
A single distinct trail led from the surface. It reached escape velocity, streaked away from the planet, reached for hyperspace, and disappeared.
“What is this, Artoo?”
The droid trilled at her.
Leia gasped and sat down hard in the pilot’s couch.
She was looking at the trace of a ship that could belong to the kidnappers.
“Why didn’t anyone show this to me before?”
Artoo-Detoo showed her that the information had disappeared from the spaceport’s records. The only uncorrupted information lay within Artoo-Detoo’s compact shell.
“They got away …” Leia whispered. “How did you know, how did you find out?”
Artoo-Detoo sang her an explanation. The droid might have to navigate through local space at any time, and, as a precaution, made a habit—or an instinct—of tracking spaceship traffic. When the kidnappers struck, Artoo compared memory banks to the spaceport report, and noted a disparity.
Artoo-Detoo believed the contradiction was a clue to the kidnappers.
Leia agreed with Artoo’s conclusion. Munto Codru attracted little starship traffic. The disparity in the records, coming as it did just at the time of the children’s disappearance, was too suspicious and too convenient.
The hum of Alderaan’s engines increased.
Leia knew she should shut Alderaan down, return to the castle, and confer with her advisers. Talk for hours, trying to decide what to do, what was prudent, waiting on the whim of the people who had stolen her children.
Arguing with Chamberlain Iyon about whether it was a coup kidnapping …
“You understand, don’t you,” Leia said, as much to herself as to Artoo-Detoo, “if we leave, and if we’re wrong—if it really is a coup kidnapping—we’re risking Mr. Iyon’s wyrwulf.”
Artoo-Detoo warbled a descending call.
Do I hear uncertainty? Leia asked herself. Or is it my uncertainty I feel?
It would be so much easier for her to believe Mr. Iyon, to wait for a few more hours, negotiate with the Munto Codru family, see her children rush happily into her arms. Followed by Chamberlain Iyon’s massive and horrifying black-on-black wyrwulf.
But she did not believe. She did not believe a coup kidnapper could penetrate her security and whisk her children from Chewbacca’s protection. She believed the kidnappers to be altogether more powerful, more sinister.
They wounded Chewbacca and set off the pressure bomb to disguise their true actions and their true intentions, Leia thought. They made us oblivious to the passage of two hours’ time. And they abducted Mr. Iyon’s wyrwulf—to add to their illusion of a coup kidnapping, to distract us, while they escaped.
If this was true, the children were far from Munto Codru, and they were in deadly peril
.
She laid one hand gently on Artoo-Detoo’s carapace.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re right. I have to take the risk.”
Artoo-Detoo emitted a shrill of agreement.
“Mr. Iyon, I’m sorry,” Leia whispered. “I hope I’m right.”
She dragged the safety straps across her body and fastened herself in and engaged the controls. She went through the countdown sequence fast, pushing the safety margins. Her ship came alive around her.
Activation.
Alderaan lifted off.
As soon as Alderaan rose above the clouds, the spaceport sensors reacted. A sleepy traffic controller sent her a message.
“Munto Codru Spaceport to WU-9167, do not proceed.”
If Leia replied, they would know who piloted the ship. She would have to explain, justify herself—and she could not justify herself. She only knew she had no choice.
But she could not let it become known that the Chief of State of the Republic had begun to behave erratically.
“Munto Codru Spaceport to WU-9167, return to your base, the hyperspace supervision systems are under repair. Proceeding could be dangerous to your health!”
“Tell them we have our own supervision systems,” Leia said to Artoo-Detoo. Alderaan streaked upward through the atmosphere. Its skin grew hot.
Artoo-Detoo warbled a transmission.
“Munto Codru Spaceport to WU-9167, that isn’t an acceptable response. You risk censure, a fine, and confiscation of your spacecraft.”
Artoo-Detoo replied with a soothing explanation.
The chamberlain’s secrecy worked against him now. As far as the spaceport police knew for certain, she was only breaking an administrative order. They could record a fine against her. They could plan to confiscate her ship or take her license, when and if she returned. But this was not a police matter. They did not suspect that she was an escaping kidnapper, because they did not know anyone had been kidnapped.
“Munto Codru Spaceport to WU-9167, if this is an emergency, we can send a tractor after you.”
“Oh, Artoo!” Leia said. The last thing she needed was to have to dodge around a space tug and its tractor beam.
Artoo-Detoo broadcast a loud electronic raspberry and shut down the transmission.
“Got that one from Han, did you?” Leia said.
Alderaan reached the upper atmosphere. In the thinning air, heat dissipated rapidly. The temperature of the ship’s skin dropped, from very hot to very cold.
The blue sky turned indigo, then purple, then black. The stars came out.
One of the stars moved: light glinted off the battered skin of the orbital space tug as it changed its path to intersect Leia’s.
Setting itself to stop her, it put a tractor beam between Alderaan and the hyperspace point through which the kidnappers had escaped.
“How strong is it?” Leia asked. “How far do we have to go to avoid it?”
Artoo-Detoo evaded her questions.
“And here I thought you were perfect,” she said.
Instead of changing Alderaan’s course, Leia accelerated. Artoo-Detoo whooped in warning.
“I don’t care. We have plenty of power. If the beam grabs us we’ll just have to break it.”
“Munto Codru Spaceport to WU-9167, we’re tracking you. Stay calm, we think we can counteract your acceleration. Pilot, are you injured? If you can pull the plug on your engines you’ll make our work a lot easier.”
The controller kept his voice calm. If Alderaan had been in distress, Leia would certainly have appreciated the reassurance.
Alderaan accelerated toward the tug’s tractor.
Leia’s display showed her the beam, waiting to surround her ship with an energy field as thick as molasses. She poured on more power.
At least we aren’t in combat, she thought. There’s no risk to them, trying to stop me. I don’t have to worry about their safety.
Her own safety struck her as inconsequential.
“Munto Codru Spaceport to WU-9167, secure yourself for tractor, it’s going to get rough in five, four …”
Artoo-Detoo snapped treads into the safety recess and hunkered down. Leia glared at the droid.
“Why do I think you do know the strength of the tractor beam?” she said.
“… three, two, one, engage!”
Alderaan shuddered violently as the tractor beam grasped and slowed it. Leia pushed the engines to their limits. Alderaan quivered around her. The strain on her ship hurt her.
Alderaan’s shields resisted the tractor. For an instant, Leia’s little ship slid free. The space tug, responding with surprising speed for such an old and obsolete vessel, snatched at Alderaan again. Alderaan struggled in its grip. The shields wavered, compressed to the edge of their strength.
Alderaan slowed, plowing through the beam as if through a powerful current.
If I were in trouble, Leia thought, I’d be desperately grateful for whoever’s keeping that tug in such good shape …
The shields rallied. Alderaan seized more distance, another step toward escape.
Alderaan shuddered.
The tractor beam broke. The change buffeted Alderaan and flung Leia into the pilot’s couch so hard it knocked the breath from her. Struggling against the streaks of pain through her vision, she corrected her ship’s course.
Alderaan responded, steadied, and plunged.
“No!” the spaceport controller cried, at the end of his reassurance. “I’m sorry—”
Every star exploded into a multicolored line, radiating around Alderaan’s path.
“We made it!” Leia exclaimed.
A cry of distress and relief echoed through the ship.
“What was that?” Leia exclaimed.
She snatched away the restraint, jumped up, and ran to the rear of the ship.
In the second cabin—the cabin that had been empty when she checked it for kidnappers—Chewbacca lay in the bunk.
“What—how—?” Leia cut off her words.
Artoo-Detoo rolled past her and stopped beside Chewbacca, warbling happily.
“You let him in?” Leia exclaimed. “How could you? Is that why you let me think my children were hidden under the engines? So you had time to let him in? He’s hurt! How is he going to heal? What am I going to do with a wounded Wookiee?”
She stopped. She tried to calm herself. She was so angry she could barely speak, much less make sense.
Chewbacca roared.
Leia still had to concentrate hard to understand him. She had listened and learned for a long time, to be able to communicate with her husband’s oldest friend. She still could not pronounce Chewbacca’s language, but she had made some headway in comprehending it.
Chewbacca expressed distress and regret and sorrow that he had failed Jaina and Jacen and Anakin, but not a moment’s remorse that he had come along.
“I’m not going back,” Leia said to Artoo-Detoo. “I’m not taking him back to Dr. Hyos. I hope you thought to bring enough medicine!”
Alderaan carried medical stores, of course, but Chewbacca was large and his wound was serious. Leia herself had only the most rudimentary of medical training, picked up on the fly in the old days.
She crossed the cabin and stood beside Chewbacca, gazing down at him. He moaned.
“I’m sorry you’re hurt,” she said. “And I know you want to help. But I wish you’d stayed back on Munto Codru. Everyone will recognize you, that’s why you couldn’t go with Han! Even when you’re well enough to get up, you’re going to have to stay in the ship.”
Chewbacca snarled a quick retort.
“I suppose you’re right,” Leia said reluctantly. “You and Han, people would recognize. You and me … maybe not. I’ll have to think about it.”
His huge palm touched the back of her hand; his fingers, very warm and gentle, curled around her wrist. Leia jerked away, fighting her anger at him, but losing.
“Go to sleep,” she said. “You’re supposed to be asleep.�
�
She fled before her anger could hurt him any more.
Leia flung herself into Alderaan’s pilot’s chair.
She breathed deeply, slowly. The exercise felt ragged, for she was still angry and distressed. The calming ritual was one of the few Jedi abilities she had begun to learn, though when she had told Luke she knew how to do it, he had replied that no one ever completely understood Jedi techniques.
“Every time you reach a new stage,” he had said, “you realize that you really don’t understand anything, you have to go back to the beginning, to the most basic practice, and learn what you didn’t see the last time through.”
“That’s very encouraging,” Leia had said in a dry tone that Luke chose not to acknowledge.
“It is,” he said. “Ifs wonderful, isn’t it? There’s always something more to learn. There’s always something new.”
Her pulse and her breathing slowed and steadied. For the first time since morning, she felt a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of the presence of her children. The center of her being yearned toward them.
Behind her, Artoo-Detoo entered the cockpit.
The glimmer vanished.
“I’m not speaking to you,” Leia said.
With a plaintive whine, Artoo-Detoo rolled away.
She had to start all over again. In a state of calm, or in a state of frenzy, she could begin to use her untrained potential. She had more control when she was calm, more power when she drove her potential with fury. With fury came great danger.
Hyperspace glowed and writhed around her. Somewhere in its patterns she would find a trail.
She must find it.
She thought she saw it, she grasped for it, it eluded her and disappeared.
Relax, she said to herself. Relax, and maybe you can find them.
That was like ordering herself to stop worrying: it was impossible.
She abandoned her quest for detached calm. She discarded her pretense of composure.
Instead, Leia loosed her rage and terror and pain. Tears sprang to her eyes, blurred her vision, and rolled down her cheeks. Anger spiced the terror. She pounded her fists against her pilot’s chair. She began to sob, to groan, to mutter the basest curses of Han’s roughest smuggler friends.
The Crystal Star Page 9
