Planet of Twilight

by Barbara Hambley

  speeder into gear, driving his mind and the Force against the ground again

  like an enormous, stamping foot.

  More dust bellled up, engulfing the Therans who rushed from the first dust

  cloud in his direction and sprayed him with gun pellets and curses. The

  speeder slashed out of the dust cloud, and Luke put it into a long turn,

  heading back into the nearest canyon of the monstrous, glittering massif

  through which the B-wing had descended.

  The shadows swallowed him in a winding maze of dry wadis, chasms, and

  cracks.

  He could tell when he got too far from the wreckage to hold the heat fusion

  of the fuel tanks in stasis by the power of the Force. The explosion boomed

  out over the empty plain, bounced through the dirty jewels of the hills like

  a flat, heavy word of thunder.

  Luke hoped the Thetans--if those people were, in fact, the fanatic cultists

  of whom Leia had spoken--had gotten away from the craft before it blew.

  Later, in the shelter of a fantastically splintered notch somewhere near the

  top of the ridge, Luke saw the white flicker of a laser cannon firing

  skyward again, like threads of perfectly straight lightning pointed into the

  dull navy blue of the jeweled, arid sky. In time, their target came into

  view, weaving and dodging in what was clearly an extremely complex

  preprogrammed pattern One of the small bronze mini-hulls of the Light of

  Reason, detached in orbit and making its way separately into the atmosphere.

  Shading his eyes against the shimmering brilliance that radiated from the

  iridescent gravel, Luke knew when ground control cut in to guide the

  fragment. Every civilian Luke had ever talked to--Leia included, for

  years--claimed that a program was as good as a live operator, but he didn't

  know a single pilot who couldn't distinguish the difference.

  Not one who'd survived more than a few firefights, anyway.

  The mini-hull came in under the lowest point of the gun station's attitude,

  leveled off parallel to the rolling adamant of the plain, and streaked away

  to the north. Far away Luke could descry another threadlike flash of laser

  brightness in the sky.

  He got to his feet, scrambled up the shining slabs to the top of the ridge.

  The ceaseless wind flattened his flightsuit to his body, whined softly among

  the rocks. Five or six kilometers away on the plain below the glassy hogback

  he saw what looked like the outline of ruined walls, and against the

  translucent rose and purple of the surrounding ground, the startlingly green

  splotches of what he had not yet seen in all this world vegetation.

  He raised to his eyes the macrobinoculars he'd found under the speeder's

  seat--much-mended manuals and probably older than he was, but they worked.

  They showed him wind-scoured foundations, long stripped of everything

  usable. At a guess it was one of the old prisons that had formed the

  original colonies on this world. He traced the treble walls, the placement

  of blockhouses designed to defend against an attack from within rather than

  without.

  Still, there was water down there somewhere. The harsh projections of

  faceted stone cut his hands as he picked his way back down to the speeder,

  and he shivered a little in the chill as he put the craft into gear and

  headed down the canyons toward the ruin.

  With clumsy dignity, See-Threepio arranged the body of Yeoman Marcopius in

  the scout boat's small specimen-freeze chamber. The craft contained only

  emergency medical kits, not even a class-3 med droid, much less a stasis

  box, and though Threepio hooked the boy immediately into life supports and

  diagnostics, nothing had been able to save him. The diagnostics faithfully

  reported no anomalous conditions, no poison, no disease, no bacteria, and no

  virus on one screen, while the other cataloged the absence of oxygen

  absorption or brain function.

  There was nothing wrong with him. He'd just died.

  The protocol droid coaxed the young man's limbs into the most dignified

  position possible in a chamber slightly more than a meter square, then

  straightened himself up, made a few little human warm-up noises, and

  proceeded to produce the standard Service for the Departed, complete with

  music.

  Artoo tweeped a worried inquiry. Threepio paused in mid-fugue and said,

  "Well, of course I'm playing the Service for the Departed on full-speed

  fast-forward! We'll be coming out of hyperspace soon--if poor Yeoman

  Marcopius's computations were correct. And I don't scruple to tell you,

  Artoo, that i'm very worried that he might already have been feeling ill

  when he input the calculations to the computer. It takes so little to

  disarrange an organic brain. Really, only a temperature variation of half a

  dozen degrees. Who knows where we might emerge from hyperspace? Or if anyone

  will be within hailing distance to pilot the ship into port?"

  The astromech wibbled another comment.

  "Oh, you've checked? We are on the proper course to emerge within hailing

  distance of the Durren orbital base? Why didn't you say so before? Now'

  don't keep interrupting me. It isn't respectful."

  He turned back to the young man in the white uniform--the young man who had

  been their primary hope of a swift and successful planetfall at

  Durren--assumed a pose of reverent mourning, and whipped through the

  two-hour service in one seven-second lightspeed burst.

  "There." He slid the freeze chamber lid shut and turned the locking ring.

  "The unit is certified to contain any form of communicable disease in the

  Registry. Once we've alerted Fleet authorities as to Master Ash-gad's

  appalling treachery, poor Yeoman Marcopius's family can be notified ....

  Good heavens!" His gold head snapped a quick thirty degrees as a light went

  up over the infirmary door. "That's the warning signal.

  We'd better immobilize to come out of hyperspace."

  The amber light blinked faster as the two droids ascended the lift to the

  bridge. Though the scout boat was set for an automatic deceleration and

  would have emerged from hyperspace whether or not anyone was at the

  controls, Threepio felt vaguely safer as he stepped into one of the several

  immobilization niches near the lift door of the bridge. Beyond the vacant

  chairs of captain and co-pilot, the line of readouts appeared normal. No

  warning lights shone beneath the great viewports with their svirling lights

  and darks of mutated starlight and bent gravitational fields. Artoo settled

  himself in the niche nearest the consoles and extruded an input jack to the

  dataport at the near end of the board. He tweeped reassuringly as the

  lockdown lights flowed from their flutter of blinking into steady, burning

  gold.

  "I know we're coming out at the far edge of Durren planetary space,"

  retorted Threepio crossly. "Durren is a major port. Only an idiot would set

  an automatic deceleration sequence for anywhere that there would be the

  slightest possibility of encountering another ship."

  The lights on the bridge shifted and brightened. The gravity field surged as

  regular power cut in. The weird, mottled-silk patterns of stretched

 
starlight flexed, lined, and gave way suddenly to the blackness of normal

  space, barely seen behind the small Republic gunship that occupied

  eighty-five percent of the front viewscreen and toward which the scout boat

  was barreling full-blast.

  Threepio said, "Oh, dear!" and Artoo let out a screaming whistle of alarm.

  There was a flash and a glare, then the whole screen washed out in an

  actinic blaze of blue-white as the gunship blew up--it must have taken a

  direct hit in the tanks--instants before the scout boat plunged through the

  surging whirl of debris where it had been.

  The scout boat lurched, heaved, and cartwheeled under the slamming shock

  waves and pounding debris. Threepio cried, "Oh, dear!"

  again as the viewscreens cleared and the vast blue disk of Durren appeared,

  the space between dotted with sparkling clouds of dissipating debris, silver

  flashes of E-wings and various small craft that looked like planet-hoppers

  and armored traders spitting laser fire at one another in battle and,

  farther off, the sprawling, angular, black-and-silver bulk of the Durren

  orbital base surrounded by a cloud of attacking ships.

  "Great heavens, Artoo, what can possibly be going on? I know the orbital

  base is being attacked," he added irritably, in response to his friend's

  immediate reply. "But who would do such a thing?"

  Artoo, still jacked into the main computer, plastered the readouts below the

  vievscreen with stats.

  "They're all converted trading vessels." Threepio pushed the stabilizer bars

  from the front of his niche and toddled to the console for a better look.

  Though vessel identification had not been part of his original programming,

  several years with the fugitive Rebel fleet had augmented his databanks in

  that area by a factor of three.

  "Look at that. Even orbital shuttles have been converted into fighter

  craft. But why isn't the Durren base responding with anything larger than an

  E-wing?"

  Artoo twiddled.

  "Oh, yes. Of course. I was about to do that." The protocol droid toggled the

  comm and keyed through to Durren frequencies. His stiff golden fingers

  navigated the board, switching from channel to channel through the curses of

  squad commanders, base commanders barking out orders and contravening them

  in the next breath, and a spate of intelligence and reconnaissance from the

  planet itself.

  "It's a rebellion!" said Threepio, shocked. "A factional revolt against the

  Durren Central Planetary Council! The insurgent coalition has repudiated the

  Planetary Council's agreements with the Republic and is even now attacking

  the main government centers!"

  Artoo beeped a question.

  "Yesterday, it seems, after the Cadus and the Corbantis left the base to

  deal with reports of pirate attack on Ampliquen. The major attack on the

  government center began last night, and they began the assault on the base

  only hours later."

  He tilted his head, listening again. Between them and the planet, a Kaloth

  Y-9 trader maneuvered itself out of orbit and headed away out of the system.

  "With attacks being made on all major ports, interplanetary trade is being

  turned away. Artoo, this is terrible! No ships are able to come in!

  There's no effective ground control! But someone will have to come out and

  get us. Listen . . ."

  He stabbed the comm toggle. "Durren base, this is the scout boat from the

  Republic flagship Borealis! Come in, Durren base! Something terrible has

  happened!"

  Static growled and whined at him, broken fragments of someone's voice

  jarring out of the comm and then being drowned again.

  "But Her Excellency has been kidnapped! There was an ambush, a plague . . ."

  Artoo swiveled on his axis, all lights flashing, and let loose a shrill

  barrage of twiddles, whoops, and beeps. The taller droid turned his

  horrified attention from the blue curve of the planet, which had grown

  slowly larger at the top of the screen but was now sliding toward its edge

  as the scout boat's trajectory began to carry it past Durren and out toward

  the empty starriness of space.

  "Don't be ridiculous, Artoo. Even if there is a traitor in the Council, all

  communications can't be monitored!" He turned back to the comm.

  "You have to listen to us . . . I" But only static replied.

  On the screen before them, the bulky but heavily armed traders of the

  partisan forces opened fire on the A-Wing squadrons that were evidently all

  the orbital base had to send against them. The smaller, lighter ships

  scattered like silvery fish in the planet's reflected light.

  "Chief of State Organa Solo has been kidnapped!" Threepio tried again.

  "She's being held captive on Nam Chorios! We're not getting through."

  He made a few tentative stabs at the controls, but nothing happened.

  The blue disk of Durren slipped to the edge of the screen, then vanished.

  Only space lay before them. Space and eternity, empty and dark as the abyss

  of a tomb.

  Threepio toggled the comm again. "Help? His faint, despairing cry reached

  vainly out toward a welter of broken receivers and beings who were in no

  mood to pay attention. "Can anyone out there hear us.

  Help!"

  As Luke maneuvered it down the canyon, the XP-38A sagged lower and lower

  toward the ground. Either an antigray cell was giving out or the fuel that

  powered the cell's modulator coil was running low. It w, as impossible to

  tell which from the defunct and sand-blasted gauges.

  Luke muttered sotto voce imprecations against those who would let a good

  piece of machinery like this get into such a condition, and reached out with

  the Force to boost the vehicle's rusty belly over a line of palely gleaming

  transparent rocks--blanched violet, jade green, white blues, all rinsed-out

  hues like glacier ice.

  At the last moment he decided not to use the Force after all and applied the

  brakes instead. The speeder wibbled to a halt in a way that made Luke think

  there was a problem with the stabilizers as well.

  After a moment, like a tired bantha, the small craft settled to the slanted

  rocks of the canyon floor.

  The silence was huge, like the desert silences of Tatooine. Like the desert

  silence, it breathed.

  Then behind him he heard a soft, deadly crackling, and felt the lance of

  electricity stab the air. Turning, he saw flickering snakes of lightning

  racing down the face of the cliffs, like skeletal hands, or the wide-flung

  root systems of a thorn plant, a zone of fast-moving corusca-tion close to

  half a mile broad and heading his way.

  For an instant he watched it, fascinated. It poured down the face of the

  cliffs, raced over the jagged rocks at the bottom, sparking and leaping

  brighter as it raced over the slabs and projections of giant crystals that

  seemed to grow out of the darker rock. As it came closer he put forth his

  mind into the Force and raised the speeder in which he sat a few' feet above

  the ground. The ground lightning poured past under it, moving at the same

  time along the canyon walls to both sides; he felt the bolts of it that

  leapt up and struck the
bottom of the speeder, jarring him even through its

  insulation with mild jolts of pain. At the same time he could feel the

  Force, like a roaring in his mind or hot wind blowing across his face, could

  almost see it as a sort of ghostly light reflecting back from the clusters

  and facets of crystals that glowed all around him in the shadows.

  The storm, whatever it was, flowed by under him for perhaps five minutes.

  When it had gone past him he let the speeder ease to the ground and stood up

  on it, watching the sparkling flood race down the rocks to the open plain,

  pale in the wan sun. It washed through the edge of the prison colony ruins,

  flowed along the jeweled ground beyond, vanishing at last in the direction

  of the line of spiky crystal rock chimneys that stretched away into the

  wastelands.

  Even in the stillness it left, the Force was everywhere. Luke could feel it,

  like a radiation penetrating his skin.

  The planet is dead, he thought. Completely without life, except for the

  tin), enclaves of human habitation.

  But the Force was here.

  It comes from Life, Yoda had said. Binding you, me, all life together . . .

  And Callista had come here seeking it. Seeking the key to the frustration,

  the fear, the terrible forces that had driven her from him.

  There is life here, thought Luke, suddenly aware of it, sure of it.

  life somewhere. He wondered if the ruins he'd seen contained some clue as to

  why no mention had ever been made, in any survey of the planet ever taken.

  Luke could have raised the speeder with his mind and floated it

  down to the ruins at the canyon's foot. By the same token, he understood,

  Yoda himself could have flown wherever he wanted to travel or could have

  built himself a palatial dwelling of rock instead of the mud hovel in

  Dagobah's swamps. Ben Kenobi could have ruled a small planet.

  Wars do not make one great, the little Master had said.

  And neither did the ability to tote a mass of metal where one could just as

  easily walk.

  Luke dug his canteen from the speeder, checked the lightsaber at his belt

  and the blaster he'd found with the macrobinoculars under the seat, and

  started down the canyon on foot.

  Little remained of the Grissmath prison colony after some seven centuries.

  It had been situated above a ground water seam but evidently the hidden

  moisture had proved insufficient when terraforming had gone beyond crom and