Planet of Twilight

by Barbara Hambley

  She looked up quickly--she found she had been staring reflectively at the

  blinking comm light--and said, "Oh, okay. Fine. Thank you."

  She punched through an alternate comm number, and again, got only tone.

  It happened, of course. Usually it meant that the comm watch was in the

  break room. As a girl she'd had the annoying habit of coding and recoding

  comm numbers every few seconds until she got results. It had taken her years

  to break herself of it, to relax for a few moments, do something else, then

  try again like a normal person.

  But the situation wasn't normal. Though the Meridian sector included a

  number of Republic planets and two major fleet strongholds at the Durren

  orbital base and on Cybloc XII, Moff Getelles's satrapy in the Antemeridian

  sector wasn't all that far away. And whereas she doubted he or his admirals

  would try anything in the face of the combined firepower of the Borealis and

  the Adamantine, the fact remained that her mission to the Chorios systems

  wasn't widely known. If there was trouble, response time would be slow.

  The bright-faced boys and girls of the Academy guard leapt to their feet as

  she re-entered the anteroom. bringing their weapons to the present. Leia

  returned the salute with a grave lifting of her hand.

  "Marcopius, would you do me a favor? I know this sounds really paranoid, but

  I've got a message light and I can't raise anyone in Comm.

  Could I get you to go down there and see if it's anything urgent?"

  "Of course, Your Excellency." He slung his weapon, bowed, and departed like

  an advertisement for the Academy before she could get her thanks out of her

  mouth. As Leia returned to her private parlor she smiled a little in

  reflection. Several members of the Council--notably Q-Varx, who like most

  Rationalists was enchanted by gadgetry--had moved to purchase an executive

  honor guard of the new synthdroids, arguing that, in addition to eliminating

  any further need to use the Noghri, it would be cheaper to maintain in the

  long run and provide more uniform security with less chance of betrayal or

  individual error.

  Her desk--neatly arranged by See-Threepio, who had taken it on himself

  periodically to pass through her stateroom like a golden hurricane of

  tidiness--contained a very nicely produced ad-cube from the Loronar

  Corporation's synthdroid division concerning the aesthetic quality, utter

  reliability, high performance standards, and low cost (Hah!

  thought Leia) of the new droids. "Hardly droids at all," the pleasant voice

  of the obviously synthdroid announcer had lauded before Leia muted the

  sound. She had to hand it to Loronar ("All the finest, all the first") The

  cube had been in her stateroom since the start of this mission and as far as

  she could tell hadn't repeated itself yet.

  Centrally Controlled Independent Replicant technology could allegedly

  reproduce the watchfulness and defensive capabilities of the Noghri, though

  she didn't believe it and wasn't sure she wanted something like that on the

  open market. She had to admit, seeing Ashgad's three, that they were nice

  looking, undoubtedly efficient, less aesthetically intrusive than droids,

  and certainly less unsettling than Noghri.

  Freed of standard droid memory system requirements, for all intents and

  purposes they looked like human beings, if human beings were what you

  wanted.

  She shook her head and sat down at the comm station again, suddenly

  overwhelmed with fatigue. Members of Daysong, a splinter group of the Rights

  of Sentience Party, claimed that an honor guard was

  a form of servile humiliation and should be replaced by droids (Hadn't these

  people ever heard of magnetic flux disruptors? But Leia didn't consider

  either Ezrakh or Yeoman Shreel, for instance, either humiliated or servile.

  In his off-duty moments--not that a Noghri was ever completely off duty--the

  little hunter-killer would tell Leia tales of his childhood on Honoghr, of

  his wife and children there, the same way Yeoman Shreel or Yeoman Marcoplus

  would show her holos of their brothers and sisters and pets at home.

  The Daysong folks objected violently to the synthdroids too, of course, on

  the grounds that synthflesh was living and had rights as well.

  The Theran Listeners, wandering around the desert holding conversations with

  rocks, couldn't possibly be crazier.

  Leia leaned her head against the back of the chair, tired beyond words.

  Tired, she thought suddenly, as her hands and feet grew cold, beyond what

  she should be. It didn't exactly hurt her to breathe, but every breath was

  an effort. The hand she raised, or tried to raise, to rub the ache behind

  her sternum felt as if she'd been manacled with lead.

  This is ridiculous, she thought. Every member of Seti Ashgad's party and

  yesterday's good-faith inspection of the vessel had been scanned.

  Of course they'd been scanned. No virus, no microbe, no poison . . .

  nothing had been detected.

  Dizziness swamped her. She reached across the table for the comm button, but

  collapsed halfway and slid to the floor in a great sigh of velvet robe.

  "Your Excellency?" The door swished open. "Your Excellency, I have been

  attempting to monitor fleet communications, and . . . Your Excellency!"

  Threepio toddled into the stateroom, golden hands flying up in a singularly

  human gesture of alarm. "Your Excellency, whatever is the matter?"

  Artoo-Detoo, close on the protocol droid's shining metal heels, rolled up to

  Leia's side and directed a scanner beam over her. He tweeped informatively.

  "I know she's not well, you stupid bucket of bolts! And don't you go quoting

  heart-rate readings to me." He was already at the wall comm unit.

  "Infirmary? Infirmar? There's no answer!" He turned dramatically to his

  counterpart. "Something terrible is going on! I attempted to get in touch

  with the Adamantine just now to check on our departure for the rendezvous

  point and there was no answer! We must .

  . ."

  The stateroom door slid open, framing in its tall rectangle the slumped,

  small form of Dzym.

  "Oh, Master Dzym!" cried Threepio. "Something terrible has happened!

  You must inform the emergency services . . ."

  The man only stepped clear of the opener beam of the doorway and walked to

  Leia's side. He seemed a trifle unsteady on his feet, as if drunk or

  drugged. His colorless eyes half-shut, he wore on his face an expression

  Threepio--never truly good at interpretation of human facial expression

  despite the most advanced of pattern-recognition software--could not define

  or even guess at ecstasy, concentration, dreamy pain.

  He stood beside Leia for a time, looking down at her. Then he half-knelt and

  began to pull off his violet leather gloves.

  The door swished open behind him. "Dzym!" cried Ashgad, striding through as

  his secretary slewed around.

  Dzym got quickly to his feet, pulling his glove on once again.

  Ashgad dropped to one knee at Leia's side.

  "Oh, Master Ashgad . . ." began Threepio, starting forward.

  Ashgad said briefly, "Push him aside," and one of the fair-haired,

  androgynous synthdro
ids stepped through the door after him, and shoved

  Threepio hard across the room. The synthdroid had the startling strength of

  cable and hydraulic joints, and Threepio, for all his excellent

  construction, was only middling well balanced. He went crashing down in the

  corner, flailing and struggling to get up.

  "Stop it," said Ashgad, looking up at Dzym, holding his gaze Meaning,

  obscure to any onlooker, passed between them that they both understood.

  "Release her."

  "My lord, she may revive before . . ."

  "Release her! Now!"

  Dzym's mouth turned pettishly down for a moment. He shut his eyes in

  momentary concentration. Then he drew a little breath, and said, "Very well.

  The action is stopped."

  Ashgad turned back to Leia. Artoo-Detoo, standing over her with

  his single little clamper-arm extended downward as if to try to rouse her,

  swung back to his upright mode and backed hastily.

  "Wait!" cried Threepio. "No!" For the first time, he had an almost human

  intuition that this man had not the smallest intention of taking the Chief

  of State to the infirmary. "Artoo, stop them!"

  But Ashgad was human, and Artoo, though he had a certain defensive

  capability with his electronic welder, could no more have attacked him than

  he could have danced on a tightrope. It was something that normally

  programmed droids simply could not do.

  Ashgad got to his feet, with Leia limp in his arms, the red velvet of her

  robes hanging nearly to the floor. To the synthdroid, Ashgad began to say,

  "You're to wait until the brig is . . . Yes, Liegeus?"

  The thin, tired-looking man whom Threepio recognized as the brig's pilot

  stepped in as the door swished open once more. "It's finished," the pilot

  said. "I've launched the slave relay with the time-delayed projections of

  final reports for both vessels. I used scrap from the active files of both

  onboard computers. The messages should be indistinguishable from real

  transmissions."

  His face was white in the dark, graying tousle of his hair, and there was a

  tautness to his mouth, as if he had just finished being sick.

  "Everyone on board both ships appears to be dead or incapacitated."

  He glanced over at Dzym, whose eyes had gone dreamy again.

  Dzym smiled and murmured, "Yes. Oh, yes."

  The man Liegeus looked away from him, pain and loathing in his eyes.

  "The synthdroids have taken one of the shuttles over to the escort ship.

  They should have no trouble boarding."

  "Very good." Ashgad glanced at the wall chronometer. "It should take about

  thirty minutes for us to return to the Light of Reason and take her far

  enough from these ships for safety."

  The door opened as they turned to enter the anteroom. Through it, Threepio

  could glimpse the Noghri Ezrakh, sprawled on the floor across the threshold,

  still moving feebly but his face livid with the pallor of approaching death.

  Ashgad, with Leia in his arms, stepped over him, and over the others, human

  and Noghri, lying on the floor beyond, the crimson velvet dragging over

  their faces. Dzym knelt for a moment at

  Ezrakh's side, passed his gloved hands lightly across the dying bodyguard's

  face and throat, his face suffused with pleasure; Liegeus averted his eyes

  and avoided touching him as he passed.

  The closing door cut off the sight of them, and whatever Ashgad said next.

  "Oh, do something!" cried Threepio, and tried to get to his feet.

  Artoo rolled over to him and extended his welder as a sort of lever arm to

  help him up. "Why didn't you do something, you ignorant little adding

  machine! We have to stop them! Guards! Guards! They're kidnapping the Chief

  of State!"

  The anteroom door swooshed wide at Threepio's touch. The protocol droid

  hesitated over the body of Ezrakh, dead now, eyes staring in horror, then

  turned helplessly away. With the opening of the door into the corridor he

  stopped in alarm. Two other Noghri lay on the floor, one still breathing

  with slow, harsh, stertorous gasps, the other utterly still. They bore no

  marks of violence or struggle.

  "Shuttle bay!" cried Threepio, punching the code on the wall comm.

  "Shuttle bay! They have to be stopped!"

  There was no answer but the whine of a signal blocker somewhere in the

  system.

  He hastened after Artoo, who hadn't even paused, trundling down the corridor

  and making a little detour around the dead guards. "What can have caused it?

  Symptomatic analysis indicates . . ."

  Artoo stopped, with such suddenness that Threepio nearly can-nonaded into

  him, over the body of a third Academy guard. He extended his gripper arm to

  prod the young man's shoulder, and Threepio saw that this one, the bodyguard

  Marcopius, bore on the side of his head the mark of a heavy blow.

  "Yeoman Marcopius, Master Ashgad has kidnapped Her Excellency!"

  cried Threepio, at the first sign of reviving consciousness.

  Sitting up, the youth said a word that Threepio knew in close to a million

  languages but was programmed never to utter in any of them.

  "The vhole ship's been poisoned!" He rolled to his feet with a nimbleness

  that caused the droid a momentary flash of envy.

  "I beg your pardon, sir, but the symptoms are less those of poison

  than of disease," reported Threepio worriedly. "Specifically, my data-banks

  show a ninety percent correlation with the Death Seed plague of seven

  centuries ago. But how such a thing came to pass . . ."

  "Whatever it is, they're panicking down in the infirmary." The boy scooped

  up his ceremonial weapon and strode so quickly along the corridor as he

  spoke that the two droids could barely keep pace. "The engine crew sealed

  themselves off. I caught that pilot of Ashgad's--if he is a pilot--doing

  something with the transmission records . . ."

  "They're going to do something to both vessels, something to destroy them!"

  said Threepio. "They said they had to get their own ship out of range. We're

  doomed!"

  "Not if we can get to one of the scout boats, we're not."

  Beyond the vast portal of the magnetic hatch, the stars were already moving

  when Yeoman Marcopius and the two droids reached the shuttle bay floor. The

  shuttle brig was already gone, a dwindling gray flake in the blackness. The

  three bay guards lay dead on the floor, unmarked and peaceful. Far off the

  Light of Reason was a tiny berry, a cluster of minute bronze, black, and

  silver minihulls, and farther still the silver arrowhead of the Adamantine

  could be seen moving out).

  "Where are they goinggt;." cried Threepio, stopping dead in his tracks to

  watch. He thought he saw something move in the shadows, something tiny

  scuttling along the wall, and turned his head in an attempt at visual

  tracking. "There isn't anyone alive on that ship, I heard them say so . . .

  Marcopius grabbed his arm and dragged him up the small scout craft's ramp.

  "They're taking it out of the vicinity of the Chorios systems," said the

  boy, slamming shut the scout boat's hatch behind them and dropping into the

  chair behind the bridge controls. "If Ashgad kidnapped Lady Solo--if he

  found some wa
y to poison the crews on both ships, or whatever he did--he's

  not going to want record of either ship disappearing too soon after the

  rendezvous." He was jerking over levers, checking readouts, activating the

  emergency relays to open the magnetic portal once again, while beyond the

  portal the stars glided quicker and quicker as the tiny dots of the Charlos

  systems fell behind.

  "He's going to want to say, Oh, they were all fine when they pulled out of

  here. Look at this." He cut into the coded deep-space Net channel.

  Its screen flashed an image of the two Republic cruisers making their serene

  way toward the standard Coruscant jump point on the far side of the Chorios

  systems. Immediately afterward the image of Leia's face appeared, reporting

  the conference successfully concluded.

  Brassy lights flared over Marcopius's dark frown, and the cool, neutral

  voice of an emergency recording began to announce monotonously, "This vessel

  is in stage two of hyperspace sequence. Taking a scout craft out at this

  time is extremely dangerous. Contact the main bridge and review' your

  instructions. This vessel is in stage two of hyperspace sequence . . .

  "Hyperspace!" wailed Threepio. "Who could be taking it into . ."

  "One of the synthdroids. No one else is alive." Marcopius delicately lifted

  the scout boat from its moorings and swung its nose weightlessly toward the

  black rectangle of the portal. "Can't you shut that thing off?"

  'I'm terribly sorry, Yeoman Marcopius, but my program forbids me to tamper

  with safety equipment of any kind."

  The young man made a final sequence of adjustments, lip between his teeth,

  sweat glistening on his forehead, while the warning voice repeated over and

  over that it was extremely dangerous to take out a scout craft of any kind.

  Ahead of them, through the portal, they saw the Adamantine flash bright as

  it turned, accelerating, then vanished in a spangle of hyperblue light.

  "Where can they be goinggt;." nattered Threepio. "That's nowhere near the

  hyperspace jump point for Coruscant. If we can somehow extrapolate from the

  jump point to learn where they're going . . ."

  "They're not going anywhere." Marcopius was breathing hard now, setting the

  controls. On the decoder screen before them the digitalized images of the

  flagship and its escort continued to float among the empty, lifeless worlds