Planet of Twilight

by Barbara Hambley

have been able to accurately identify the sound of heavy artillery shelling,

  the crash of crumbling walls, and the harsh clashing of human voices and

  blasters.

  The Gamorrean captain's three husbands, however, seemed to take their lady's

  exclamation as a straightforward request for information, and went barreling

  to the round portal that led onto the boarding ramp to see. All three

  reached the entryway at the same moment and immediately undertook a slugging

  match for precedence. Captain Ugmush, who had taken on another commission to

  transport cargo offplanet and was waiting impatiently for delivery, heaved

  herself from the bridge workstation, where she'd been checking through

  projections of launch windows and hyperspace jump points, and proceeded to

  break up the fight with slaps, squeals, and head bashing, following which

  the entire family group piled out the door and down the ramp. Engineer Jos,

  chained to his console, didn't even raise his eyes.

  A further explosion that made the ship rock on its landing gear brought

  Threepio nervously to his feet. "Captain Ugmush . . ." He realized his vocal

  modulators had gone into default register and quickly reset them to the

  deeper tone that, though it took up far more memory in mimicry of organic

  resonators, exhibited less of the characteristic droid "metallic" quality.

  "Captain Ugmush, do you really think you should leave the ship at this

  moment?" He toddled toward the door as another flurry of shots and outcry

  came echoing from somewhere uncomfortably close by. "In the event of an

  emergency takeoff . . .

  Oh, dear, Artoo . . ." His voice dropped back to default again. "Do you have

  any idea how to get this model of vessel lifted off?"

  The astromech, trundling toward the doorway in his wake, denied any

  expertise in the piloting of the lumpy Gamorrean cubeship.

  Threepio muttered, "Oh dear, oh dear," as he followed Artoo out the door and

  down the ramp, hoping against hope that the situation outside wasn't going

  to get any worse.

  The moment he emerged at the foot of the ramp it became evident that it was

  unlikely that it would--or could--get worse. The next bay over was in

  flames, black oil smoke and thirty-foot columns of fire pouring skyward and

  Gopso'o troops and Drovian government forces searing one another with

  blaster fire and cannister grenades across the wreckage.

  For a moment the docking bay in which the Zicreex lay was quiet.

  None of the Gamorreans was to be seen. Then under the arcade a door opened

  and a muddy, shabby little figure darted through. The fugitive slammed the

  keypad to close the door behind him, pulled a crowbar from the nearest heap

  of scrap under the arcade, and smashed the lock.

  The effort was to little avail. It was clear that whoever was on the other

  side of the door also had crowbars, battering rams, and grenades.

  The fugitive dashed madly across the open permacrete, and Threepio said in

  surprise, "Why, it's Master Yarbolk from the Chug 'n' Chuck!

  Master Yarbolk! Over here, Master Yarbolk!"

  The Chadra-Fan needed no further encouragement. He bolted past

  them and up the entry ramp, instants before the doors gave way and an

  exceedingly mixed congregation of Drovians--some wearing the Gopso'o

  scalplock and others, though presumably sympathizers, not so decorated,

  accompanied by a couple of Durosian and Devaronian lay-about spaceport

  types--came smashing through. Someone yelled something about a stinking

  traitor sellout swine, and Threepio, correctly interpreting the remark to

  reflect on the fugitive Master Yarbolk, pointed toward the doorway that led

  to the unburning bays beyond.

  "That way!" he boomed in his alternate alien voice. "Unclean hairy undersize

  journalist!" He hoped the invective was as acceptable to them as it was

  informative.

  Hollering imprecations, the mob smashed its way through the farther doors at

  the same moment a twenty-centimeter shell struck the arcade between the

  burning bay and the one currently occupied by the Zicreex.

  Threepio let out a squeak of panic and retreated up the ramp as the Drovian

  government forces scattered, regrouped, and fired on the Gopso'o who were

  attempting to advance over the wreckage. At the same moment Ugmush and her

  husbands appeared at a run. They must have passed the mob just within the

  other doorway, and they added their mite to the battle, firing on the

  Gopso'o as they lumbered across the permacrete and up the boarding ramp, an

  assortment of parcels and packing boxes hung over their shoulders and backs.

  Dirty pink curls flying and morrts clinging to her for their very lives,

  Ugmush burst onto the bridge, screaming, "Get yourselves strapped in, you

  stupid garbage eaters! What in sithfestering blazes do you think this is, a

  luxury liner?" She flung herself down behind the console, jabbing keys and

  flipping levers with far more speed than seemed possible in hands so huge.

  "Close that festering boarding ramp, you muck-sodden flapdragon, do I have

  to do everything on this maw-sapping ship? Jos, get us out of here! Fruck,

  open fire on those festering Gopso'o--hang on, the lot of you! Bunch of

  crab-sucking morrtless soap-using cheesebrains!"

  She rammed the activation levers over, the engineer cut in the power

  overrides, and in a roar of ground fire, ion cannons, and retro lasers, the

  Zicreex was airborne and heading out of the ragged billows of smoke, flak

  and wreckage like a spinning overweight glet-fruit shot from a catapult at

  the sky.

  Threepio, who hadn't had time to buckle himself down or even take a seat,

  picked himself gingerly up and readjusted his breath mask, hoping that

  either his robe hadn't come disarranged enough to exhibit his undeniably

  droidlike legs, or that Ugmush had been too occupied with her velocity

  computations to notice. Yarbolk, who like him had been hurled to the far

  corner of the bridge, limped over to assist him in righting Artoo-Detoo, who

  had rolled a considerable distance and whose distress lights were blinking

  in several systems, including one of the bolted-on components they hadn't

  been able to get rid of after disconnecting him from the Pure Sabacc. Most

  of the distress lights went out. Artoo tweeped a wan thanks, and without a

  word, los removed the elastic tie from his long hair and offered it to

  Yarbolk to tie up some of Artoo's stray cables.

  "Thank you---er--Igpek," said the Chadra-Fan. "I owe you one."

  Ugmush turned in her seat, and glared at the furry little journalist out of

  orange pinhead eyes. "And what the festering muck is that troublemaker doing

  on my ship?" she demanded. "Don't you sapheads know there's a reward out for

  him on seven systems?"

  They were there.

  Luke froze, lying under the pitted steel belly of the speeder.

  Listening.

  No sound.

  But they were there, watching him. He knew' it. Even through the silent

  trumpets of the Force in the deep stillness of the wastelands, he could

  sense their presence. He'd sensed awareness of him again and again since

  leaving Hweg Shul.

  The invisible watchers.
<
br />   The planet's unseen original inhabitants.

  Effortlessly following his speeder, keeping him in sight.

  Where he lay under the speeder he could see nothing. When the starboard

  antigrav unit had started to go he'd prudently set the vehicle down with one

  edge on a sort of bench of basalt, the other side on a lump of frost-green

  quartz the size of a hassock, so his only view from underneath, as he

  rejiggered the generator wiring to recharge the defective a-g coil, was

  straight ahead or straight behind, identical vistas of harsh reflective

  gravel broken by bigger fragments and hunks of crystal, and, farther off5

  crystal chimneys piercing the sky.

  He sensed that should he emerge from beneath the speeder and look around

  him, he would still see no one.

  He lowered his eyelids, trying to call the shape of them within the Force.

  But such was the interference of the Force on this world, the sheer

  magnitude of its presence in alien guise, that he could get no clear picture

  of those invisible ones. Maybe, he thought, that was the point of the

  interference to begin with.

  Nor could he tell exactly when they had begun to dog him, or feel whether

  their interest was beneficent, malicious, or merely inquiring.

  They were only there.

  "Who are you?" he called out, aware of his vulnerability, lying on his back

  under the speeder. "I mean you no harm. You don't need to be afraid to show

  yourself to me. Can you show yourselves to me?"

  Their presence drew closer--or something drew closer, a distinct awareness

  of their awareness of him. He wondered how he knew' it was they and not he,

  she, or it.

  Carefully, he crawled from beneath the speeder, and stood up.

  Pale shadows lay about him; pale daytime stars pierced the dark blue of the

  sky. Pale sunlight fragmented from the glittering gravel that stretched in

  all directions, empty to the farthest shore of the long-forgotten sea.

  "It's the Loronar Corporation." The Chadra-Fan journalist Yarbolk lowered

  his husky alto voice, brought out from the pocket of his singed and stained

  silk vest a handful of green datacubes, held them out as if their mere

  presence on his hairless, pink palm were proof of what he said. "On every

  one of these planets, every place in the Meridian sector where there's been

  an armed revolt or religious rioting or uprisings from minority tribes or

  groups or whatever it's been . . .

  the dissident forces are always armed with Loronar weapons. Not bottom-cut

  sell-outs, mind you, like the gunrunners are always peddling to aborigines

  if they think they can get away with it. Top-of-the-line blasters and

  grenades and ion cannons. Look at these."

  He rattled the datacubes like dice in his hand. Artoo-Detoo, taking him at

  his word, promptly extruded a gripper arm, picked up a cube, and withdrew

  the arm into his own vitals. "Hey, give that back!"

  protested Yarbolk, loudly enough that two of Ugmush's husbands, an armed

  guard, two very nervous Aqualish smugglers, and the dozen or so others who

  shared the waiting chamber of the Quarantine Enforcement Cruiser

  Lycominturned to glare at them, as if blaming them for their present

  situation.

  The Zicreex had not even made it to the hyperspace jump point when it ran

  into trouble. Just outside the outlying asteroid fields of the Drovian

  system they had encountered the Republic cruiser Empyrean, firing furiously

  with all guns in all directions without any target immediately apparent--not

  until the flash of one of the cruiser's shield generators blowing up had

  illuminated what at first appeared to be a cloud of space debris surrounding

  the vessel like flies. Within moments, however, it was obvious that the tiny

  slips of matte black metal were vessels of some kind, pouring concentrated

  fire on the huge ship and slipping and scattering from return fire like a

  cloud of butterbats.

  Since the battle lay between the Zicreex and the outer reaches of the

  system, where it would be safe to jump to hyperspace, the small trader was

  trapped where it was. Ugmush, the droids, and Yarbolk clustered by the

  viewport and watched as the Empyrean tried first to battle, then to flee the

  swarming attackers.

  "Fascinating," Threepio said, looking over Ugmush's shoulder as the captain

  tried to scan up a reading on the nearby area in the hopes of not running

  afoul of whatever larger vessel was controlling the swarm.

  "They seem to be nothing more than ambulant weapons. Don't be silly," he

  added, to Artoo, who had surreptitiously hooked into the console behind

  Ugmush's broad back. "There has to be a principal ship.

  Whatever it is, it must have amazing range."

  Yarbolk, crowding at Ugmush's elbow and peering back and forth between

  Attoo's readouts and those on the console, whispered, "No principal ship.

  Just weapons. It's got to be CCIR of some kind."

  Light flared over their faces as a bolt from one of the tiny ships achieved

  target. The fire cloud from the exploding cruiser enveloped the daggerlike

  little weapons; a hundred white stars flared in the dissipating ball of heat

  and gases as they, too, were destroyed. The score or so which survived

  simply pivoted, like a school of glimmerfish in the darkness, and moved

  away. Black painted as they were, they were swiftly lost to sight.

  Yarbolk whispered, "By the Big Green Fish . . ." And then, "What are you

  doing?" as Ugmush moved the levers, and the Zicreex swung around.

  "Salvage," the Gamorrean said. She jerked one meaty hand at the viewport,

  where the two or three huge chunks of what was left of the cruiser hung

  glowing in blackness, surrounded by whirling fields of half-melted

  shielding, metal shards, spears of glass, and vacuum-bloated corpses. "Lots

  of stuff."

  Ugmush and her husbands, resplendent in deep-space environmental gear

  customized to their species for use by mercenaries, were looting the wreck

  when the Quarantine Enforcement Cruiser Lycoming made its appearance. Its

  captain, a much-harried Gotal female in charge of a small troop of fighters

  and a squad of medics from the Coruscant Institute, had picked up the

  Empyrean's distress call, and was not amused by the presence of the

  Gamorrean free traders at the wreck site.

  Threepio supposed it was a credit to his disguise that he'd been put under

  arrest with the others. Artoo-Detoo had simply been impounded.

  Now the little blue access hatch in Artoo's side slid open again and his

  gripper arm deposited the cube on the table in front of Yarbolk.

  Yarbolk snatched it up possessively and bestowed it in his breast pocket.

  "TriNebulon'll pay me a fortune for that," said the Chadra-Fan. "More so

  than ever, now." He hadn't been groomed in days--most of the grooming

  parlors in Bagsho had been boarded tight--and his silky golden fur was a

  mass of dirt and knots. "Did you get a look at that wreckage?" The hulls of

  the attacking vessels, the weapon vessels?"

  "I didn't examine them closely, no." Threepio turned his head to look at the

  pieces of wreckage that [lgmush had taken on board the Zicreex before the

  QEC had put in
its appearance. They were stacked in a corner of the enormous

  waiting room, labeled and under a very tired-and crabby-looking Sullustan

  guard.

  Yarbolk lowered his voice still further. "They're modified Seifax shielded

  transport shells," he whispered. "Thousands of them were shipped to Seifax's

  new plant on Antemeridias a few months ago--and Seifax is a dummy

  corporation for Loronar."

  "You can't really be serious." Threepio modulated his voice down, shocked.

  Though he was not physically uncomfortable in the all-enfolding black robe

  and leather mask with its breathing tubes and filters, Threepio found the

  disguise massively inconvenient because the fabric bunched in his joints,

  interfered with the delicate operation of his hydraulic retractors,

  and--since like many droids his balance was less acute than

  humans'--threatened to trip him at every other step.

  "Loronar Corporation is a subscriber to the Republic Registry of

  Corporations. Their board of directors is made up of individuals of the

  highest probity and credentials. They were responsible for a good deal of

  the armament that made the Rebellion possible!"

  "And they turned a five hundred percent profit in the ten years of active

  Rebellion that preceded the fall of the New Order. Now the Rebellion had its

  own financial sources, but not that kind of money.

  Loronar was selling to both sides, probably through dummy corporations like

  Seifax. And the Seifax plant on Antemeridias has been buying miniaturized

  hyperspace drives from the Bith. I have a connection in the processing

  office. Hey," he added, snatching back another of the datacubes from Artoo,

  who, apparently still under the impression that look at these was an order,

  had been systematically picking up the cubes on the table with his gripper

  and taking them into his data-retrieval port. "You give those back."

  The droid promptly spat them out in a line onto the table. Yarbolk snatched

  them up, counted them, and glanced quickly over his shoulder again at the

  other occupants of the quarantine hold. They were a motley bunch a

  scrofutous-looking gray Wookiee and a couple of Aqualish who held together

  and kept looking from the guards to the doors, the crew of a Squib

  prospector vessel who protested vehemently and often that they hadn't heard

  about any plague, and a rather extravagantly hued Ergesh who occupied three