It was about the size of a pittin, sitting upright twenty or thirty
centimeters high--glistening, crablike, cocking its long eyestalks at her
with malign awareness. Sitting upright. Waiting for her.
Leia took another step, and extended the blade.
The thing swayed back. In the dense shadows it was extremely difficult to
make out what it looked like, but glancing up, Leia saw that there were
other things, things like long-legged spiders splayed out on the ceiling and
walls, things like short-legged slugs that scooted along the walls, catching
and eating the huge drochs that rustled in the shadows. As she watched, the
upright thing on the step bent and turned, extruding what looked like a
single spiky limb from itself to pounce on a particularly gross droch,
catching it in a pincer that seemed to alter in shape and transform into a
gulping mouth. For a moment she heard it purr, a soft little thrum of deep
pleasure. Then it swung back, eyestalks swiveling to face her again.
Sickened, overwhelmed with the sensation that this was an evil that could
not be fought, Leia extended the lightsaber so that the glowing tip advanced
on the crab thing.
Movement flickered in the corner of her eye and she swung around as
something dropped from the ceiling, landing on her shoulder with a wet plop.
Pain stabbed through her, like a droch bite but far worse. The soft-bodied
thing that had fallen on her morphed out grabbing legs, hooks that sank into
her flesh as she cried out and tried to pull it loose.
Weakness. Pain in her chest. Cold and dreamy sleep.
Something else fastened on her leg. The crab thing on the steps purred
louder, a sound of dreamy pleasure. She felt as if she were dropping down in
a lift bound for the center of the world.
She whipped the lightsaber around in her hand, shrinking in terror from the
glowing blade that she knew could take her own arm off' as she touched it to
the parasite on her shoulder. It frizzled horribly and the pain it felt went
through her like a knife, and in her dreamy, sickened weakness she felt it
die. It was like a part of her own flesh dying. She turned the blade, fried
the thing on her leg, taking the pain, taking the sense of black slipping
death, and moved another step down.
The crab thing scuttered ahead of her, vanishing into the dark, save for the
orange sparks of its eyes. Around the curve of the stair she could see the
walls moving with them, all shapes, shifting one into the other, feeding on
one another but all turning as one toward her with the awareness of the
light. Leia backed up, catching her heel on the stair in her weakness and
almost falling. Another one, whatever they were, dropped from the ceiling
onto her neck, smaller, so that both the sinking weakness of dying, and the
pain of its death, were less; but they were coming after her.
Two more bites. She felt like she would faint from lack of air. The crab
thing's soft throb of delight made her long to find it, cut it to shreds,
wherever it was. Her hand fumbled with the lightsaber's hilt, pain of a
different sort lancing through her arm as the tiniest edge of the blade
brushed her flesh in killing another parasite. If she fell, she thought, if
she lost consciousness, she would die.
Clinging to the walls, sobbing, trying to breathe, fighting not to sink into
that cool welcoming sleep, she stumbled upward, fifteen steps, twenty. The
crab thing was following in the darkness behind, as if relishing, reveling
in her exhaustion and pain. They'll find me, she thought. I won't be able to
make it back to my room and they'll find me.
Seti Ashgad was away, Seti Ashgad who had warned, Skywalker will know, if
she dies. She had tried, again and again, to call out to Luke, to send him
signals with her mind, but wasn't sure that he had heard. The humming,
singing power of the Force in this world might have drowned out everything
else. Only Dzym was there, silent in this silent house.
If he finds me I shall die.
She fell through the door, lay panting, cold, unable to breathe or think,
while the wan patticolored glow of the light-sculpture flickered over her,
and the lightsaber, its blade vanished with the relaxation of her grip,
glinted an inch or so from her fingers. I have to pick it up. I have to
stand up. To get out of here. To get back to my room.
Dying would be easier, she thought. She wondered if Luke really would know.
At least if I died, they could appoint a successor.
As an idea it had its merits. But in the slow-sinking dimness of cold that
surrounded her, she heard movement, the heavy, thick, sluglike panting of
Beldorion. Somewhere near, she thought. Heading this way.
Don't let him find me, she prayed, trying to stand. She couldn't, but on her
hands and knees she crawled, across the darkened chamber, up the endless
stairs. He would take her prisoner for his own purposes, Liegeus had
warned--but in time he would trade her to Dzym, as he had some other poor
slave.
She thought there were parasites still on her, the pain of them chewing her
arms and thighs and back, the weakness draining her, sapping her strength
away. But when she crawled into the long, narrow office where the computer
was, and lay in the ghastly tinted grayish purple bands of the setting
sunlight, she felt better, and feeling herself after a time, found no sign
of them.
I can't let them find me, she thought. I can't.
It took everything she had left to climb the stairs again, holding to the
walls, exhausted and sick with the pain of the lightsaber burn.
She collapsed again on the floor after letting herself in the room, and lay
there for a long time, curled in a fetal position in the fading bars of
sunlight, wanting only to sleep until the universe was made new.
In time she got up and hid the lightsaber, the wafer she had copied, and all
the printouts under the duvet and pillows of her bed. She called out again,
reaching out with her mind, but it was little more than a despairing whisper
Luke . . . then she did pass out, into dreams like the colorless wells of
death.
"[gpek Droon," boomed the deep voice of the masked and hooded passenger, and
what looked like a bad prosthetic hand in a cheap black glove--so bad it
might almost have been a droid's jointed metal fingers under there--held out
fifty-seven credits worth of various bars and
tokens to the captain of the freighter Zicreex. "I'm in the employ of the
Antemeridian Freight Lines. It's necessary that my droid and I reach Cybloc
XII as soon as possible."
The captain counted the money, looked at the glowing yellow lenses that were
visible through the full-face breathing mask that covered most of her
prospective passenger's head. Long, pale hair flowed out around it, giving
it the eerie look of a decorated skull.
With the driving back of the Gopso'o rioters by government troops, every
docking bay still operable in the port was jammed with business people,
stranded travelers, aliens of all sorts and descriptions fleeing the
fire-ravaged city. Most were paying lots more t
han fifty-seven credits, but
then, most were trying to get on to better vessels than the Zicreex, which
would have been termed unprepossessing even by the charitable.
Captain Ugmush didn't care. She had a human for an engineer who kept the
thing running, and her several husbands, when they weren't fighting one
another, made a fair team for trading goods to the rougher worlds of the
sector, which was about as good as Gamorreans could do in competition with
more sophisticated species. Ugmush herself, her long hair dyed pink and her
heavily muscled arms and breasts sporting fifteen parasitic morrts to
demonstrate her strength and endurance, was aware that few aliens could
stand to travel on Gamorrean ships. She knew it wasn't likely she'd be
besieged with offers as long as there was one other vessel in port.
"You got a deal."
The black-robed alien who called himself Igpek Droon, clanking just faintly
as he walked, made his way up the ramp and into the ship, trailed by his
little R2 unit droid. Ugmush wondered if this person Droon might be talked
into selling his droid when they got to Cybloc XII.
It was all there, in black on the pale green plast.
Seti Ashgad's communication with Moff Getelles of Antemeridian, making
arrangements to destroy the gun stations in return for weaponry and first
cut of the profits when Loronar Corporation moved in on Nam Chorios to
strip-mine it for its crystals.
Memos from Dymurra--who turned out to be CEO of Loronar for the Core
systems--detailing which minorities, disaffected factions, and splinter
groups would rise in revolt, suitably armed at Loronar Corporation's
expense, in order to split the Republic peace-keeping fleet and allow
Getelles's Admiral Larm to move in.
A comparison chart by Seti Ashgad, showing the trade-off in cost between the
expenses of weaponry, bribes, agitators, and planted atrocity stories
against the first year's profits on programmable CCIR crystals.
Details of the meeting, including a payoff to Councillor Q-Varg,
coordinating Leia's disappearance with the poisoning--not to death, the memo
assured Getelles, so that no successor could be appointed without hopeless
legal wrangling among the Council--of Minister of State Rieekan.
At no point in his letter did Ashgad mention the Death Seed plague of
centuries ago. "The plague vectors do not appear on any sensor, since within
the body they mimic exactly human electrochemical fields and tissue
composition," he said--which explained why they needed the quasi-living
flesh of the synthdroids. "Once the illness has taken hold, even
regenerative therapy has no effect. However, be assured that it is in my
power to completely control the outbreak and spread of this malady, and I
offer you my personal guarantees that it will not affect anyone other than
those on the Republic ships and bases."
And bases! thought Leia, breathless as if she had run for miles and hot with
anger to the core of her being. Idiot! Idiot! "It is in my power to
completely control the outbreak," my grandmother's left hind leg. Don't you
have any idea, any concept, of what will happen if there's an accident? A
miscalculation? Somethin you hadn't thought of, Master Know-All Ashgad?
She was almost trembling with rage. Accounts were scanty of the original
Death Seed, but huge segments of the population of dozens of spacegoing
civilizations had perished before it had burned itself out.
In places it had been combated, but she wasn't sure how,, or how effective
those remedies had been. As far as she had experienced, Dzym, and Dzym
alone, seemed to have any control over it.
She thought about Ezrakh, and Marcopius, and her eyes grew hot with tears. I
will kill them. Rage made her tremble, made her wonder how quickly she could
master the Force, how quickly she could build strength to wreak wholesale
vengeance for the innocent. I will gather the Force together in my hands and
I will bring it down on their heads like a thunderstorm. Vader had done
that.
And Anakin, in her dream.
She wrapped her arms around herself, fighting not to weep. It was better,
she thought, not to know that you had the potential for that kind of power.
Better not to know' that you really could do that, if you wanted to turn
your heart and your life over to your rage.
Han would be looking for her. Han would be with the fleet. It will not
affect any but those on the Republic shiPs.
The Republic was in chaos. They'd dared poison poor Rieekan, for no better
purpose than to cause trouble . . .
And for what?
Hands shaking, she shuffled through the flimsiplast pages.
There it was. Loronar Corporation's plan to build a new facility on
Antemeridias, for the manufacture of both synthdroids and something called
Needles controlled by the same CCIR crystals, programmable, long-distance
miniweapons with infinite range and hyperspace rendezvous capability.
And the source of the crystals was Nam Chorios.
CCIR technology. Deep-space Needles, carving up the fleet like the Quamilla
of the Kidton system carving up sodbeasts. And with Nam Chorios firmly in
their sphere of influence, they'd have as many of those programmable
crystals as they cared to use.
The Reliant. Paperwork was complete on that, too. A modified I-7 Howlrunner
hull, with extra capacity. Loronar Corporation had been making drops of
components and materials for months. Ashgad's requests and specs were very
precise--Leia recalled her father saying that the man had been a ship
designer himself--and his communications indicated where and when his
Rationalist friends had picked them up.
There were occasional indents for second and third drops where the gun
stations had blown the incoming cargoes out of the sky. Liegeus Sarpaetius
Vorn was mentioned as the vessel's A.i. designer and programmer, but his
chief value lay in expert holo faking. There were requests for specific
digitalized scrap of her and of her flagship and escort, to be mocked up
into transmissions describing the safe conclusion of the conference between
Ashgad and herself, and the two vessels' departure from the rendezvous point
and entry into hyperspace.
Her stomach twisted with sick betrayal. He couldn't not know what was going
on. He couldn't not know the dangers of the plague. Then bitter anger swept
her, that she had liked the man.
Grand Moff Tarkin was probably good to his wife and children, too, if he'd
had any, she thought, disgusted with her own naivete. The man who pulled the
lever on the Death Star that destroyed Alderaan would undoubtedly have been
kind to someone he cared for. Her hand closed tight on itself for a moment,
her breath shaky with rage.
Then, face cold and still, she began looking through the plast sheets again,
searching for something . . .
nism for antigrav lifters and speeder buoyancy tanks, to make prospecting
for crystals easier once the gun stations had been destroyed and the big
trader vessel was free to take off. She studied the schematics for the
vessel. A curious amoun
t of shielding, she thought. Double and triple hulls
with internal baffles--What kind of radiation did they think they were going
to encounter?
Leia sat back, staring out the windows at the gaudy sunset sky.
She felt she'd slept longer, though by the light she'd only been out for a
few hours. There was fresh water in the pitcher and signs that
someone--probably Liegeus--had been in the room. She'd waked with a blanket
over her, and was gladder than ever that she'd forced herself to conceal the
flimsiplast and the lightsaber before finally passing out.
When she had lain down she felt like she was dying.
In fact, the sensations had been curiously similar to her brush with the
Death Seed.
But Dzym hadn't been around. If Dzym had known where she was, and what she
was doing, she certainly wouldn't have waked up here.
She pushed up her sleeve. Her flesh was reddened in a few places and she had
picked up a couple more droch bites, but there was no sign of violence. No
sign of the broken capillaries, the bruising that the secretary's fingers
had left.
The purplish twilight of day was dimming into deeper night, windless and
still with sunset. Leia thought about waiting until dawn, then shook the
thought away. It wasn't as if any natural predators walked Nam Chorios's
nights. Delay would only bring Ashgad's return eight hours closer. If she
acted now, there was a good chance they wouldn't miss her until morning.
Leia got to her feet, unsteady at the knees. The water pitcher was of the
vacuum type. A turn of the cap sealed it shut. it was heavy, hung over her
shoulder by a makeshift strap of torn bedsheet. She rolled together two
blankets and put on the two spare shirts Liegeus had given her. At the touch
of them, her anger at him faded. He could not have known what he was getting
into, and once in, it would have been too late.
The doorpad combination had been changed while she slept, and she activated
her lightsaber and drove it into the innards of the lock.
It was now or never. She could afford no delay.
Ashgad's study first. There were two more things she needed to find out.
The study faced north, like her room. Its inner wall was currained in
shadow, but the faded sunset reflected from the cliffs and faceted towers of
crystal of the mountains beyond the plateau, and the ghostly crazy quilt of
Planet of Twilight Page 25
