Planet of Twilight

by Barbara Hambley

"Another Palpatine?" asked Callista. "Another Vader? You aren't.

  You're not even another Bail Organa. You're Leia."

  Leia was silent, regarding the soft-shining blue light of the blade, the

  paler glow of Callista's just beyond. Those two heatless beacons illuminated

  the darkness around them, isolated the two women in the heart of an ember

  fire, statesman and warrior, thinker and feeling heart.

  "Haven't you seen that yet?" asked Callista, her voice more quiet still.

  "Luke has."

  Leia's panting breath steadied. The weapon felt more stable in her hands,

  more a part of herself. For the first time ever when she had held the

  lightsaber, she smiled. And smiling, signed to the younger woman and stepped

  into the fray again.

  It was Callista who gestured to stop. Leia lowered her weapon.

  Callista turned her head, listening, her dark, level brows drawn together.

  A moment later B came into the circle of torchlight, his scarred, thin face

  intent in the braided frame of his long hair.

  "They're moving on the gun station," he said. "From Ruby Gulch, dozens of

  them. On other gun stations as well."

  "How did he know that?" Leia asked, as she and Callista followed the others

  to the caves where the cu-pas and speeders were hidden She climbed onto the

  back of a repulsor-lift sled with three other cultists; Callista swung into

  the saddle of a pale golden cu-pa, wrapped the gray veiling close around her

  face, and settled her rifle and grenades over her shoulder "Voices tell

  them, they say. Voices that speak in their minds if they sleep in certain

  places, far back in the hills, or drink preparations of certain herbs--as

  far as I can tell, that suppress left-brain linear activity. Be is a Healer,

  strong in the Force. Many of the other Listeners are, tOO."

  She tossed Leia a rifle and a bow. There were arrows in the back of the

  sled, being passed among those who clustered there, men and women alike, as

  the vehicles and animals began their swift trek through the icy darkness of

  predawn, flowing like water down the silent canyons.

  "The Force is so strong here," she said softly, her gloved hand steady, easy

  on the cu-pa's rein "I'd heard the rumor of it from Djinn, my Master. There

  was a story about two young Jedi who came here centuries ago seeking gifts

  and strength in the Force that they themselves lacked Nothing further was

  known of them, but one of them supposedly was a Hutt. I know Hutts live a

  long time" She shook her head, wonderingly, as if regarding that desperate

  young woman of nearly a year ago, fleeing the ruin of Admiral Daala's

  demolished fleet and seeking a place to go, a clue to lead her through the

  labyrinth of her quest for her own lost gifts.

  "What I found, you know. Pettiness, old feuds, slavery to the base. . . And

  I thought, never again. Never again am I going to be anyone's pawn, because

  of the powers I was born with, the powers I don't even possess anymore But

  while I was a prisoner I saw the Reliant. I had seen Dzym and guessed what

  he was planning. I take it you didn't get my message?"

  "I got it." Leia grimly shifted the rifle on her shoulder, clung to the

  struts of one of the sled's makeshift gun turrets. "It's just that by that

  time things had progressed too far to be called off. It reached me the day I

  left."

  "You should have said you were sick."

  "It took Q-Varx and the Rationalists months to set up the meeting.

  They were operating in good faith--pawns, not spies. I read their

  correspondence.

  I wasn't willing to risk the political repercussions of refusal."

  Callista shook her head, and Leia said, "You have to make these decisions."

  She hesitated, and then, because she herself despised surprises, added,

  "Luke came, too. He was on Hesperidium to see me off.

  He took a fighter to the planet's surface, to look for you."

  Callista's head turned sharply.

  "I don't know where he is."

  She looked away. What could be seen of her face was still as ivory, but

  above the edge of the veil, the wide gray eyes filled with tears.

  They rode for a time in silence, winding down the trails that were barely

  familiar, scattered with broken rock and shards of crystal, with dunes of

  gravel hurled up wholesale from the flats below. Dawn winds had started as

  the wan sun 'warmed the endless dead sea bottom.

  Squinting against it in the silky gray light, Leia could make out the taller

  masses of the cliffs around the gun station, the fretwork of the shattered

  upper works, black against the peadescent air.

  "I found nothing here that would help me," said Callista quietly.

  "The Force is here, but not in a form that I can touch or understand.

  Whatever is alive here--if anything--is invisible, intangible. Believe me,

  I've tried to reach it, to touch it. The Listeners say it's the ghosts of

  the old holy men and women that speak to them, but I think they're wrong.

  The voices only use the shapes that the Listeners have already in their

  minds."

  She shook her head, her eyes narrowing against the shadowless twilight of

  distances and wind. "There's a woman in Hweg Shul who has interests in

  shipping. When this is over I'm going to contact her, see if I can get

  myself off-planet in one of the little cargo lifters and work my passage

  elsewhere. Are you going to tell Luke you've seen me?"

  "Whatever you wish," said Leia. "I'd like to, yes, but I won't if you'd

  rather I didn't."

  Callista started to say something, then thought about it and asked, "What do

  you think would be best?"

  "I think it would be best if I did."

  "Then do so," said Callista. "Make him understand, if you can. Tell him that

  I will love him to the ending of my life, but that mine is a life of which

  he cannot be a part."

  Across the crystal ridges, sudden snakes of white lightning flickered, cold

  and pale in the dawning light. Leia grabbed the railing of the speeder as it

  rocked and swayed, jolted by what felt like a groundquake, though the ground

  beneath the antigrav lifters was steady.

  An obsidian boulder several tons in mass wrenched and twisted in the rock

  side of the mountain before them, and the glittering talus of crystals at

  the foot of the cliffk around them leapt upward into funnels, like toothed

  whirlwinds.

  The Therans in the speeders cried out, looking around them with weapons at

  the ready, and Callista and Be fought their cu-pas to a standstill moments

  before the beasts could bolt in panic.

  "Another," said Callista softly. "Worse than before, I think."

  "There's one with them who moves this storm." B6's lizard-black eyes were

  shut, listening deeply. "He brings this storm at his will, summons and

  directs it."

  "That will be Beldorion."

  "What do we do?" asked a man on Leia's repulsor sled, looking nervously

  around at the cold cliffs sparkling in the new light, the world paused, it

  seemed, on the brink of chaos.

  B shook back his tangled braids. "We can do no other than we are

  instructed," said the Listener. "We meet them, and die."

  If the horrors of watching the
dying corpses of Cybloc XII being looted had

  been bad--the squabbles between looters, the remote-operated droids

  patrolling like whirring insects, the sight of those few expiring survivors

  being relieved of jewelry and credit cylinders by thieves--the darkness that

  followed was infinitely worse. The dome lights were gone. The dim auxiliary

  circuits were going. In the medical offices where, with a droid's infinite

  patience, See-Threepio was broad casting his distress call in alternating

  bands of Basic and various of his six million language repertoire, the light

  had gone utterly, and only a few' buildings were lit in the next square,

  leaking stray glims to show him the street below the windows, where nothing

  at all now moved.

  The body of the dead looter lay where it had been left, naked of its e-suit,

  which others had taken along with the computer equipment that he'd been

  dragging. It was little more than a black shape to Threepio's visual

  receptors, though it registered on his infrared for some time. The smells of

  alien bacteria and decay organisms choked the air.

  "It isn't any use," he said in time. Artoo-Detoo, sitting inert as a heating

  unit in the corner, illuminated a single red light, inquiring.

  "The entire base computer core has been gutted. Even should someone attempt

  a landing, we wouldn't know it."

  Artoo wibbled a reply.

  "Oh, very well. But it will do us no good. I expect we'll sit here until our

  power cells run down, and chaos and destruction will encompass the

  Republic." At another time Threepio would have spoken out of a personal

  conviction of impending doom. Now he realized he was saying no more than the

  truth.

  "We did our best."

  The astromech tweeped and settled back to his resting position. It was

  inconceivable that either of them would do other than his best.

  Threepio returned to the jury-rigged microphone. "Distress on Cybloc XII.

  Distress on Cybloc XII. Please send an evacuation team.

  Please send an evacuation team.

  "Ee-tsuti Cybloc XIt. Ee-tsuti Cybloc XII. N'geesw'a eltipic'uti

  ava'acuationma-teem5 negpo, insky.

  "Dzgor groom Cybloc XII. Dzgor groom Cybloc Xli. Hch'ca shmim'ch

  vr/Srkshkipfuth gna gna kabro n'grabiaschkth moah." He dug down into the

  bottommost registers of his voder circuits. The Yeb language had few

  technical terms, and it was necessary to patch together a linguistic

  equivalent from "Several conglomerates are urged strongly but respectfully

  to coordinate activities to prevent the drowning of another conglomerate

  that is not a threat to any of them, nor will be in the immediate or distant

  future to them or to their children." He did the best he could.

  Bith was easier. "Six-five. Twelve-seven-eight. Two-nine-seven." In many

  ways, Threepio was very fond of the Bith.

  "Distress on Cybloc XII. Dis--Artoo, look! It's an incoming vessel!"

  He pointed to the dark transparisteel, through which the transpariflex

  panels of the dome could be seen. Against the livid gloom of the sky the red

  track of descending retros had appeared. "Can you get any sort of reading on

  the computer?"

  Artoo, who had tried already a dozen times, simply twitted a negative.

  Threepio was already toddling toward the turbolift. "They'll be coming into

  the port bays. By the time we reach there they should be just about landed.

  Oh, thank goodness."

  Artoo simply lowered himself down onto his third wheel, and rolled after his

  golden counterpart, without comment. If he had reservations about the nature

  of the rescuers, as deduced from the make and serial numbers of their

  vessels, he kept them to himself.

  It wasn't that Threepio hadn't considered the possibility of smugglers,

  looters, or space pirates. But the events that had transpired since the two

  droids and the unfortunate Yeoman Marcopius's escape from the doomed

  Borealis had given the protocol droid a little more confidence in his

  ability to negotiate possible transport. in any case his power core was

  dangerously close to reserve, and even another pas de deux with space

  pirates seemed preferable to going cold on the dead world, leaving Her

  Excellency to her own devices with no one who knew where she was. All the

  way through the dark, utterly silent streets of the plague-stricken dome, he

  composed scenarios and arguments to talk his way into passage to Coruscant

  without informing potentially hostile--or simply verbally incontinent hosts

  what his message and mission might be.

  And they all fell silent within him as he and Artoo stepped through the

  doorway of the largest of the docking bays, and he saw before him in the

  actinic glare of its landing lights the black ship that stood there, an

  Imperial Fleet Seinar IPV System Patrol Craft, like a sleek-shelled crab,

  lowering its boarding ramp.

  Threepio said, "Oh, dear."

  On the face of it, there seemed very little chance that any amount of money

  would persuade the inhabitants to drop him and Artoo off at Coruscant.

  It was too late to turn tail, however. Figures in dark e-suits were coming

  down the ramp--both men and women, judging from the way they walked, which

  was unusual for the Imperial Service--followed by two black, spider-armed

  floating remotes that scanned the base with hard beams of white light while

  the troopers crossed the stained floor of the bay to where the two droids

  stood. One of them, a dusky Twi'lek woman with an enormously extended

  helmet, touched the comm button in her suit and said, "Two of them," and

  again Threepio wondered.

  The Imperial Service would ordinarily no more employ nonhumans than it would

  employ nonmales. On closer study he identified the e-suits of Imperial

  design--CoMar 980s--but without emblems, though the sleeves and chest bore

  marks where emblems had been removed.

  "No other signs of life on the base?" inquired a very small, very tinny

  voice from the comm.

  "No, Admiral. Looks well and truly looted to me."

  "There was, in fact, extensive looting during the final throes of the

  epidemic," provided Threepio helpfully. "My counterpart and I counted five

  separate parties of looters, and the Computer Core of the base system was so

  extensively dilapidated that we could not even use it 'to signal out."

  "Put them through cleansing procedures," said the tinny voice.

  "Bring them to me. I want to find out once. and for all what's taking place

  in this sector."

  "You know, Artoo," surmised Threepio, when after a very thorough passage

  through two radiation chambers and a chemical bath the two droids were

  conducted, still by the Twi'lek Sergeant, to a small lift marked "Private,"

  "I think this isn't an Imperial mission at all. The ship, though of Imperial

  design and manufacture, does not bear the markings of any of the various

  satrapies of the former Empire. Neither do the uniforms of such crew members

  as we have seen. We might be dealing with a case of extensive theft of

  Imperial matdriel by a completely neutral third party."

  The doors of the lift closed soundlessly. There was a shivering vibration as

  it ascen
ded. Artoo tweeped.

  "Clandestine operation? What kind of clandestine operation would be

  undertaken by any of the remaining Imperial governors? I'm sure it can't be

  that."

  The doors slid open. Imperial Captains and Admirals always tended to favor a

  black sleekness in their offices, in part in the interests of spare

  unclutteredness, in part, quite frankly, in the interests of intimidation.

  The chamber into which the two droids stepped now was no exception.

  Threepio was quite well aware that computer screens and consoles lurked

  behind those obsidian-mirrored panels, that a touch on an access hatch would

  summon chairs, if necessary; more lamps; dictation equipment, if required;

  implements of torture; articles of restraint; a mirror and shaving

  equipment; or wine, caffeine, and beignets for that matter . .

  .

  But all of that was secondary to the digitalized tallying of recogni-tive

  factors concerning the woman who sat in the room's single chair tall, tough,

  and athletic in her stripped-down version of the Imperial officer's uniform,

  red hair hanging like a comet's tail down her back and eyes cold as ball

  bearings in a pale, expressionless face.

  Threepio had never seen her in person, but as a specialist in protocol he

  was programmed with all sorts of files about people who were or had been in

  positions of authority, and he identified her at once.

  "Good heavens, Artoo," he exclaimed, "I seem to have been given inaccurate

  data. According to my most recent information, Imperial Admiral Daala should

  be dead."

  Daala said softly, "I am."

  Han Solo wondered whether there was any insanity in his family.

  He folded his arms, considering the vista afforded him by the hard

  transparisteel of the viewport two CEC gunships, the Courane and the

  Fireater, half a dozen smaller cruisers, and maybe twice that many escorts,

  X-wings and E-wings. They hung pale silvery against the darkness of

  realspace, sleek white fish among the stars. The newest Republic equipment,

  true--unlike the clunky, crotchety horrors of the Rebel fleet--but all of

  them, he knew', understaffed with men and women pushed to the brink of

  exhaustion. None of them a match for what he knew lay ahead.

  But not a bad turnout for a faked video and a lot of bluster and fast talk.

  He turned from the Falcon's viewport to the main screen, where Lando, who'd