The Crystal Star

by Vonda McIntyre

  Leia screamed.

  Rage and terror and pain all shattered around her, and disappeared. The force of her love and grief broke through into a brilliant blue-white reality.

  A vivid scarlet line streaked across the glowing blue-white domain and stabbed into the soft rainbow colors of hyperspace: Leia saw it, felt it, heard its color. She tasted and smelled it.

  She snatched the controls of Alderaan and plunged along the bloodred trail.

  Artoo was right, Leia thought. The children did come this way, it wasn’t a coup kidnapping.

  Leia shivered with relief, and with fear. She had made the correct choice. But her children were in even more danger than Mr. Iyon’s wyrwulf.

  Just outside the cockpit, Artoo-Detoo rolled nervously back and forth, whistling with confusion and distress.

  * * *

  The crystallizing white dwarf plummeted toward Crseih Station, falling toward the black hole. The two stars rose and set in opposition, creating long days, short nights.

  Grateful for even a few hours of relative coolness, Han strolled into the lodge, along the pathways between the quiet streams and glassy pools.

  In his room, the only illumination was the reflection of shore lights off the crater lake.

  Han threw down his jacket, kicked off his boots, and flung himself onto his bed. It was a long walk from the first dome of Crseih Station to the park dome of the lodge. He felt tired but exhilarated.

  The humming whine of a lightsaber startled him. He whirled around. The blue light filled every corner of the room and even lit a dust-mouse beneath the bed, as if the light were too powerful to cast shadows.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  Luke slouched on the deep couch in the corner, wrapped in his robes, his legs extended. The lightsaber flicked off again, plunging the room into darkness.

  “Out enjoying my vacation,” Han said easily. “How about you?”

  The hum of the lightsaber pierced Han’s inebriated brain as the blade snapped into existence.

  “That really hurts my head,” Han said.

  Luke performed a couple of ritual cuts. A slash, a parry, a thrust. The air vibrated. The blade barely missed the wall, and a hanging tapestry, and the arm of the couch.

  In the light of his blade, Luke looked haunted. He let the energy blade withdraw.

  “What were you doing?” Luke asked.

  “Repairing our finances.” Han raised the light level in his room. He grabbed his jacket, reached into the pockets, and pulled out handsful of credits. He let the bills flutter to the bed, to the floor, even over Luke’s feet.

  Luke gazed at the bills dispassionately.

  “We didn’t need our finances repaired,” he said.

  “We’re on the border!” Han exclaimed. “You show a letter of resources on the border and they laugh at you. And maybe knock you on the head in an alley to grab it and take it someplace they can use it.”

  “But gambling winnings,” Luke said dryly, “are perfectly safe.”

  “I couldn’t lose tonight, kid,” Han said. “They thought they could lure me in and take me, but I couldn’t lose. I could have made us rich instead of just comfortable, but I thought, No, why be greedy? Why risk one hand too many? So I picked up my winnings and I thanked them for a fine time—and fine ale—and here I am. Safe, and sound, and flush.”

  “I was worried about you!” Luke said. “You disappeared without a word—”

  “I didn’t want to argue with you,” Han said to his brother-in-law. “You wouldn’t have come along—”

  “How do you know? You didn’t ask.”

  “Would you?”

  “No.”

  “See?”

  “It’s beside the point! I’ve got a mission here, a purpose, I—”

  “What’s wrong?” Han said, suddenly concerned. “What are you so upset about?”

  “Something strange is happening at Crseih Station,” Luke said. His voice was tight and intense. “Something strange, and I don’t know what it is. I think we should be careful.”

  “I’m on vacation,” Han said, trying to make a joke of it. “Being careful is the last thing on my mind.”

  Luke stared in silence out the dark window.

  “I’m tired,” Han said. “I’m going to sleep. In the morning I’m going to sleep in, and have breakfast in bed, and maybe I’m going to have lunch in bed too. And then maybe I’ll go back to the tavern.” He yawned. “Do the same thing, kid. Relax. If there’s anybody here for you to find, you’ll find them. Or they’ll find you.”

  He sat up long enough to pull off his shirt, but he was too tired to take off the rest of his clothes. He flopped back onto his bed.

  “And tomorrow you can try to find Threepio,” he said to Luke.

  “I already did that,” Luke said, matter-of-fact.

  “Oh yeah?” Han mumbled, half asleep. “Where is he?” He fumbled for the edge of the blankets to pull them around himself before he fell asleep.

  “Right here, Gen—sir.” Threepio stepped into Han’s room, almost invisible in his new purple skin.

  “Fine, great,” Han said sleepily. “Tomorrow you and Luke can get on the hunt and find our mysterious informant.” His eyelids drooped and he heard himself snore just as he fell asleep.

  “I have done that, sir,” Threepio said. “She is here.”

  Han woke with a snort. He sat up, still half asleep.

  “Her? Here? What’d you bring her here for?” Struggling to wake up, he thought back over what they had said. Luke had been playing with his lightsaber—had he even been using his disguise?—and Han had not been careful with his tongue. Maybe the informant already knew Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were investigating the strange reports from Crseih Station.

  “Because we need to speak.” The new voice was light and soft, but very serious.

  Han turned over, rolling himself up in his blankets with a groan of exhaustion, hiding himself from the intruder.

  “Come back in the morning,” he said through the muffling bedclothes. “On second thought, come back in the afternoon.”

  “We have no time to waste, Solo.”

  He bolted up, snatching the bedclothes away from his face. She did know who they were—

  Luke’s saber hummed, and the blade stroked a line of light across Han’s dim hotel room. In the ghostly illumination of the Jedi weapon, Han saw their informant’s face. He did not recognize her.

  “You no longer know me, Solo,” she said with resignation. “I should not be surprised, but I am disappointed that you wiped me from your memory.”

  It was her voice that let him remember. He caught his breath.

  “Permit me to introduce—”

  “Xaverri? Xaverri!” Han said to Threepio, “We’ve already been introduced.”

  Luke let his lightsaber blade vanish. The room turned pale with the dawn of the burning whirlpool.

  Han finished untangling himself from his blankets and stood up. His heart beat wildly; he felt as if he had run a race.

  Xaverri faced him. She was nearly his height. She used to look him straight in the eye, but she was not wearing the high-heeled boots that had been so much a part of her style in the time he had known her. Nor was her heavy, curly black hair elaborately dressed, for she had cropped it into short, tight curls. Instead of revealing silks, she wore homespun trousers and shirt.

  “I do remember you, Xaverri,” Han said softly. “Of course I remember you. I could never forget you.”

  When he had known her, she had acted both carefree and careless, avoiding any responsibility, moving on a whim. She took extraordinary risks. For a long time, Han believed she simply sought excitement because she enjoyed it. Exhilarated, they had taken the risks and experienced the excitement together.

  Finally, Han discovered that she did not care if she lived or died. He had not understood why, back then.

  But now he did understand.

  Xaverri had risked her life against the chance that sh
e could outsmart and outrun high officers of the Empire. She had always won.

  Han had begun to wonder, in those heady days of excited terror, if she won because she did not care if she lost. If she lost, she would die, and her grief would end. When she won, revenge eased the grief a little.

  She had changed. When he knew her in the old days she had hidden herself behind makeup and expensive clothing and jewels. She had heightened the gold glow of her skin and disguised the round lines of her smooth face. She had concealed the soft brown of her eyes behind iris-enhancers of opaque silver, piercing green, or eerie faceted diamond.

  Yet her beauty and intensity had always glowed through her veneer of sophistication. Now she no longer hid behind anything, and her spirit shone as strongly. Han would not have recognized a picture of her. But her voice was the same, and her strength.

  “How did you know it was me?” he asked.

  “How could I not?” Xaverri asked. “I sent you the message.”

  “Why didn’t you say it was you? Why didn’t you use a language I know?”

  “Because I did not want my message to be easily read.” She hesitated. “And … I did not know you would respond, if you knew the message was from me.”

  Han started to protest, but kept his silence.

  She might be right, he thought. I’m ashamed to admit it, but she might be right.

  “At first I did not know you,” she admitted. She touched his beard. “But as soon as you spoke—”

  Han felt as if he had plunged back into the old days, when his thoughts and Xaverri’s mirrored each other with eerie precision.

  He could not speak directly about those old days. He was surprised at the turbulence of his feelings and the strength of his pain.

  “What have you been doing, all these years?” he asked. “What have you been doing in the Republic, now that all the Empire officers are gone?”

  “They are not gone, Solo,” she said.

  She had always called him Solo. In the society of Xaverri’s birth, the given name came last, after a long list of ancestral references. She had assumed his given name was Solo, and that he was of low class or an orphan, with only a single prename. Once they got that straightened out, she was used to calling him Solo and he was used to hearing it.

  “They are not gone. Some—some that you fought—are dead. But many are hiding beneath respectability, waiting and working for your government to falter and fail. Waiting for their chance.”

  “They’ll wait a long time,” Han said.

  “I hope so. In the meantime, they are as greedy and venal as they always were. They are as susceptible to temptation, when I offer them more wealth.” Her smile was joyous and unmerciful. “And they are even more vulnerable, because they have fallen from power. They do not dare draw the attention of your authorities. I wrong them dreadfully—and they cannot complain.”

  Han laughed, imagining the arrogant Empire officers he had known, brought low by fear and Xaverri’s predations. Then he sobered.

  “You should tell me who they are,” he said. “Who they’re pretending to be. So the New Republic can bring them to justice.”

  “My justice is harsher,” Xaverri said, “and more satisfying. Perhaps, when I have taken sufficient revenge, I will tell you the names of the ones I have humiliated and impoverished. And then I will humiliate and impoverish more of them, and tell you who they are. Thus I will have my justice, and the Republic will have its justice.”

  Han wished he could ease her memories, and her need for vengeance. But he could not help her in the old days, and he could not help her now. He wished he had embraced her as soon as he recognized her, but now he felt awkward about doing so. He backed away a step, and looked around for his boots. His exhaustion had vanished.

  “You’ve met Luke and Threepio, I see,” he said. He sat on the edge of his bed to pull on his boots.

  “Yes.” Xaverri inclined her head to Threepio. “I am not often received with such diplomacy.” She turned toward Luke. “And I had not expected the New Republic to respond to my warning with such illustrious investigators.”

  “We decided—”

  “—that the report deserved a serious response,” Han said quickly, cutting Luke’s words off. Luke might have said the same thing. Then again, he might have let it slip that Han was using her strange report as an excuse for a vacation. He did not want her to know he had not taken the message seriously.

  “Your report,” Luke said. “You wouldn’t tell us the source of the strange phenomena. Will you now?”

  “No,” Xaverri said.

  Luke jumped to his feet. “But you must! Who—?”

  “I will show you,” she said.

  “Just tell me!” Luke exclaimed.

  “You would not believe me. You must see for yourself.”

  Jaina trudged down the hallway, one of many in the long line of children. The helpers made sure the line stayed straight, while a Proctor oversaw the whole group. Tigris walked nearby.

  Is that what they always have for lunch? she thought. She could still taste the rancid grease of the soup she had been given. She had tasted one bite, and then—politely, as she had been taught, she did have good manners no matter what Hethrir and the Proctors said—she had said it was rotten. She did not mean it tasted bad—well, yes, she did mean it tasted bad. It was also spoiled.

  She had not eaten it. Everyone else had. She had given hers to the red-gold centauriform child. But a little bullyboy named Vram had snatched it away and thrown it on the floor and gone and told on them. The helpers had given him a piece of fruit as a reward. They liked Vram.

  Jaina’s stomach growled. She was very, very hungry.

  Someone nudged her shoulder. She glanced back.

  “Play, soon,” said the red-gold centauriform child. “Play, now.” She spoke with a heavy accent, but Jaina understood her.

  She cantered one quick step in place, just as she had when Jaina skipped across the gathering room. Her dainty hooves tapped on the stone.

  Tigris glanced back to stop the cheerful noise. But the red-gold child was plodding along with everyone else by then. Her tail switched briskly.

  Jaina wondered what the red-gold child meant.

  Play? she thought. I don’t believe nasty mean Tigris will ever let us play. Why can he tell me what to do, he isn’t a Proctor, I don’t think he’s even a helper!

  The children marched down another long hallway. Jaina wondered why it was so far between places, in these endless underground tunnels. They must have been hard to build. The castle at Munto Codru had been honeycombed with tunnels, but the tunnels connected hundreds of rooms and storage chambers and spy-windows and secret places. Here the tunnels had no windows, no doors, no twists or turns. Each had only a beginning and an ending, with maybe one curve or corner in all its long length.

  Jaina saw light! Real light, white and full of color, not this ghostly gray. It blazed down at her, silhouetting the children ahead of her. She wanted to run toward it. She wanted to shout with joy.

  Ahead of her, the other children climbed stairs and walked out into the light. It washed over them, bathing them in radiance. But they just kept walking. When Jaina saw the sun, she would raise her face to it and let it pour down over her. She would run into the brightness—

  “Stop.”

  All the children stopped at the Proctor’s command. Jaina was only a few steps from the dazzling brightness at the bottom of the stairs. She caught her breath. She feared they would take her back into the darkness.

  The Proctor gestured sharply to Tigris. Jaina yearned toward the light in dismay, certain Tigris would pull her from the line and make her go back to the dim study cubicle, or the dark sleeping cell.

  Tigris raised her chin and turned her toward him and made her look up at him.

  “You can walk, in the play yard,” he said. “You can speak quietly in the play yard. You can’t shout. You can’t run. You can’t dig the sand. You mustn’t pick the leaves. Do yo
u understand?”

  She nodded. His grubby fingers pinched her chin. He let her go.

  “And you can’t go near the fence!” he said.

  “Why do you have so many rules?” Jaina asked.

  “That isn’t a rule,” Tigris said. “If you go near the fence—the dragon will eat you!”

  A dragon! Jaina was entranced.

  The Proctors allowed the children to move forward again, and Jaina climbed out of the pit into the sunlight.

  It was bright and hot, much more intense than she was used to. She blinked the sparks away from her vision, looking for Jacen, anxious to see him, trying to discover where she was and how they might escape for home.

  Mr. Chamberlain’s wyrwulf ran toward her across the sand. She fell to her knees and flung her arms around its neck.

  “Oh, you’re all right! Did they leave you out here all alone? You’re lucky, though, you don’t have to study those dumb lessons!”

  The heavy black guard hairs of the wyrwulf’s coat felt rough against Jaina’s face. A heavy metal and leather collar had been fastened around the wyrwulf’s throat. Jaina tried to free the wyrwulf.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t get it off.” Her fingers were not strong enough to unfasten the collar.

  The wyrwulf whined and leaned against her.

  “Let’s explore.” Jaina got to her feet. “Let’s see if there’s a way out of here.”

  She looked around.

  The play yard was the bottom of a canyon. The canyon was not very deep, but its sides were very steep and smooth. They would be hard to climb.

  There was some way to get up there. On the cliff high above, the Proctors in their light blue uniforms spun and struck and slashed, practicing with lightsabers.

  Jaina stared at them in disbelief. Why did these bad people have lightsabers? Lightsabers were for good people, for Jedi Knights. She wanted to be a Jedi Knight. She wanted to be old enough to build her own lightsaber, and learn to use it. She also wanted to be a mechanic, and a raceship driver, and a drum player.

  She turned her back on the Proctors, up on their high cliff, and kept looking around for a way to escape. Mr. Chamberlain’s wyrwulf trotted after her.