Planet of Twilight

by Barbara Hambley

  force of small artillery fire.

  "What did you do to the synthdroids." Luke still couldn't get over the fact

  that there were virtually no human guards.

  "Gutted the central controller." Leia swept the whole steps before them,

  floor, walls, and ceiling, as far as the landing, with a blast of fire.

  They both wore goggles picked up in the hangar, but Luke still had to blink

  hard to get his bearings back. The curled little black crusts that had been

  drochs crunched under their boots as they ascended to the landing. Leia

  fired again.

  "We'll have to remember that if Loronar gets the Needles going. But any

  commander worth his ammo allowance is going to have the central controller

  locked up in the heart of the biggest battlemoon in the galaxy."

  "Yeah, well, you were locked up in the heart of the biggest bat-tlemoon in

  the galaxy, too." Luke grinned across at her as they dashed up another

  installment of stairs.

  "And unless we've got somebody on the inside willing to let us go again with

  a homing device stuck on our tails," retorted Leia, pushing her goggles onto

  her forehead, "we'd better not count on that kind of luck again." The jewels

  on her gold-headed hairpins glittered incongruously through the soot and

  filth. "There has to be a weakness to them.

  One that doesn't involve access to the central controller."

  The two halted in the doorway of the chamber, where Luke had met Dzym and

  had rescued Liegeus from the life drinker. The floor was a creeping sea of

  drochs. Brother and sister opened fire with the flame-throwers, swept the

  whole room in a licking, roaring sheet of yellow heat. It was like sprinting

  through an oven afterward, sweat rolling down their dust-streaked faces, the

  burned matter left after searing the soles of their boots.

  The gateway that led through to the construction compound was locked, and

  Luke laid a hand on Leia's shoulder as she brought up the ion blaster again.

  "It's shielded." The green column of his lightsaber hummed into existence at

  the touch of a switch.

  Leia glanced back over her shoulder, toward the blown-out door of the

  stairway. Luke knew what it was, who it was, that she felt behind them.

  He was there, Luke thought. He could almost see him, ascending each step

  with a heavy, coiling loop of his great wormlike body, eyes malevolent

  rubies in the dark. The dark hurricane of the Force swirled around him,

  uncontrolled, while in his mind the voice of Dzym whis pered, telling him

  that these humans, these pale little maggots, these defiant little

  play-Jedi, needed to be stopped at all costs.

  Luke ran the lightsaber into the lock's works, tested the door switch.

  It vibrated, but held. "There's another lock," he said. "A hidden one,

  behind a wall-hatch . . ."

  "Here." She had her own blade out. Luke wondered how she had managed to keep

  that with her, when Seti Ashgad had taken her from the ship.

  There was no time to ask, for the floor shivered suddenly with the force of

  liftoff, the amber lights all across the lintel of the door turning red.

  Luke gritted, "They're off!" and far above, over the top of the wall, they

  could see the square, gray shape of the Reliant spring skyward, lifters

  blazing, heading up the single corridor opened in the planet's defenses by

  the destruction of the Bleak Point gun station. At the same moment, Leia

  thrust her lightsaber into the second lock, and the door slid open, the hot

  winds of takeoff fountaining forth over the threshold in a torrent of dust.

  A couple of Spook crystals lay on the permacrete, a trail from the cleared

  space where the boxes had been. There were drochs, too, tiny ones, dying in

  the glare of the pallid sunlight, where they had fallen out of whatever

  shielded container Dzym had carried them in.

  And, on the other side of the open bay, stood the Headhunter, its engine

  hatch open, a gutted tangle of wires hanging down.

  Luke swore, and raced across to it. Leia was already running toward the

  Blastboat, which was likewise gutted but otherwise unharmed. "Can you fix

  it?" she yelled, scrambling up to the canopy. "They didn't have time to

  cripple the guns."

  "I think so. The readouts on the central core look okay. They were in too

  much of a hurry .... Get me the toolkit from the bench."

  Leia sprang down, dashed to the repair bench, swung the red metal energy

  cart around, and dragged it over as Luke stripped off the remains of his

  shirt and began making a fast diagnostic. "Get the guns," he yelled, from

  halfway within the hatch. "They just pull out once you undo the locks, but

  you'll have to reattach the cores . . ."

  She snatched up an extractor and core couplers and raced across

  the permacrete to the Blastboat as if they were the children of the

  Rebellion again, with the Imperials coming in and code scramble blazing from

  every makeshift klaxon on the base.

  Listening. Listening. Knowing what was coming, power and anger and the

  decayed dark sludge of what had once been genuine, trained ability to use

  the Force.

  She had one gun pulled and dragged over to the Headhunter and was starting

  on a second when she knew she could afford to wait no longer.

  Luke was buried in the hatches of the Z-95the Reliant ascending like an

  ash-colored plague angel to the rendezvous with the Loronar fleet . .

  .

  And she heard his breath. Stertorous, rasping, like the beat of gluey tides.

  The wave of ammoniac reek rolled across the permacrete, and the noxious

  shock wave of decayed Force. Leia dropped from the Blastboat and ran lightly

  toward the door, stripping off and dropping her jacket, unhooking and

  throwing aside her blaster, knowing what the Force could do to blasters.

  Beldorion the Splendid moved fast. He crossed the outer court in a series of

  great bounds and slithers, huge muscle rolling beneath his squamous hide.

  Fluid leaked from his mouth and his eyes were twin balefires, glittering

  with a single, evil obsession that he did not even recognize as being not

  his own.

  In the curtains of sun-glittering dust that filled the open gateway of the

  launch bay a woman stood, slender and tiny in the moving aura of misty

  light.

  Taselda? His old rival, his old enemy, flashed to mind . . .

  No.

  The little Jedi woman, the woman Ashgad had brought, the woman Dzym had

  wanted, a small shining figure in the shadows, with the pale glory of a

  lightsaber shining like tamed starfire in her hand.

  "Don't test me, little Princess." His own blade stretched forth with a

  deadly thrumming, a pallid and sickly violet. "It has been years. I may be a

  lazy old slug now, but I am Beldorion still."

  Heart beating fast, Leia studied him, remembering how Jabba had moved,

  sidelong and looping, using the center of the body as a balance point.

  She recalled the one time Jabba had become displeased with someone at his

  court--the fat housekeeper who danced or was it his long-suffering cook--and

  had gone after her or him with a stick.

  Recalled the deadly speed of even that obese and sluggish bulk.

  Yet she felt
no fear.

  She didn't reply and could feel that it displeased him. He was the kind, she

  realized, who liked to expound before he killed.

  Good.

  "You were a sweet little girl. Don't make me--" Leia struck. Step, step,

  thrust, as Callista had shown her, a hard clean slash like diminutive

  lightning, and Beldorion, still expounding, barely got out of the way. But

  his counterstrike was unbelievably fast, the strength of it nearly breaking

  her wrists as she intercepted it on the blade, the doubled vibration roaring

  in her head and in her bones. The blades twined, snarled, Leia twisting out

  from under another descending blow and barely dodging when the descending

  swerved to lateral an old trick, Callista had said, but it took practice and

  left you open. Leia dodged back, shaken by the Hutt's sheer, animal

  strength.

  She stepped back in, pressing him, her attention narrowed to nothing but the

  monstrous thing before her and the shining blades. Nothing else existed in

  her mind. He had enormous striking range, flinging forward like a serpent,

  so that she threw herself sidelong, rolled--Thank you for the practice,

  Callista, Luke--under the paralyzing wallop of his tail and was on her feet

  again and going in, the blade seeming to stream fire from her hand.

  Not a second, not a moment, to lose--the plague rising up from this

  dim-shining world the monster coming toward her again, rutilant eyes

  staring. He struck with his tail again, hundreds of kilos flashing with the

  speed of a whip. She barely dodged, wishing she had Luke's acrobatic

  training, his ability to Force-lift. The blades tangled, parted, Leia

  panting as she leapt sideways again, sparring for distance, watching the

  tail, fighting to remain close enough to strike.

  In and out, Callista had said. It's the only way for a woman to fight.

  Like a huge serpent he struck, and she raised her blade to defend, her mind

  open with the Force, feeling before he did so that he was going to switch to

  lateral again.

  He did, and she was in under the blow and slashing a long, streaming,

  sidelong cut that went through the soft green body like burning

  wire. She flung herself past him, away from him, fast, for the huge bulk of

  him burst open, severed clean through, mammoth gouts of fluid and flesh and

  organs exploding soddenly forth.

  She heard him bellow with rage, once--saw the hot smoke-colored blade of his

  lightsaber go whirling, end over end.

  Then he was collapsing like a punctured balloon, like an empty sack, and

  Leia stood panting, covered in slime, her own blade burning in her hand, as

  Luke flung himself out from under the Headhunter and into its cockpit.

  Dripping with filth, she saluted him with the blade, and Luke saluted back,

  their eyes meeting for an instant before he slammed the cockpit shut. Luke

  knew what it was that he saw.

  Her first victory. The victory over the shadow of Vader. The victory of

  acceptance of herself.

  And, he knew who had taught her that long characteristic side cut.

  He hit the lifters, and the Headhunter slammed into life and rocketed like a

  falcon into the sky.

  It rose faster than the Reliant, faster than most interceptors, for it had

  been designed to outmaneuver the gun stations, and had done so before.

  Course controls were adapted to the positions of each gun station, Liegeus's

  calculations, beautifully precise. He punched in the program, to hold the

  segment of sky guarded only by Bleak Point, knowing that had to be the way

  the Reliant was going as well. The flashes of light returned to his mind.

  Fighting, he thought. Fighting high above the surface of the planet, orbital

  battle. Someone must have come in to stop them.

  Would they know to open fire on a ship rising from the planet's surface?.

  Blue sky darkened around him. The pale stars brightened to burning jewels.

  He saw the gray ship, rising far ahead, making for the flurry of explosions

  and lights. There was a Republic corsair, hanging in space, far away to his

  left, being torn to pieces by tiny, darting CCIR Needles of black and

  bronze. The things the Empire wanted. The things Loronar was going to give

  them.

  Beyond, at the farthest range of his vision, he saw the fleet.

  Imperials. Two, three Republic vessels--Was that the Falcon?.

  Dodging, twisting, like durkii maddened by parasitic kleex, trying to fire

  at the Imperial ships that were surrounding them. A thousand tiny flashes of

  fire as the Needles tore and swirled around them. He was out of signal range

  still, but coming into firing range on the square, awkward gray ship that

  contained Dzym and Ashgad, the monstrous life drinker and his pitiful pawn

  and the dark boxes of death that would consume the lives of all the galaxy,

  and relay that life back to him.

  Only for that. Destruction, death, ruin stretching over planet after planet,

  only so that Dzym could drink of the lives of everything he touched, without

  fear.

  Luke's thumb hit the firing button. White light lanced forth.

  The next second a terrible concussion ripped his ship, tossed it spinning.

  He glimpsed the Reliant still going its way untouched, glimpsed something

  small and fast and black pass over him .... Another shot, and his whole

  console went red. He scratched and twisted at the joystick, trying to drag

  the Headhunter to stability, but he was spinning out of control, falling

  into Nam Chorios's gravitational pull.

  As the Z-95 rolled, he pulled her straight and got off a wing laser shot at

  the Reliant, saw yellow fire explode from her aft engines.

  But she didn't go up. Only drifted, swinging off course, and his long-range

  pickups brought in the faint crackle of Seti Ashgad's voice, calling for an

  intercept.

  As the Headhunter began its long fall, Luke saw a small carrack detach from

  the Imperial fleet, begin to make its way toward the drifting craft.

  And before the Imperials knew what they had loosed, the Death Seed would

  grow across the stars.

  Then he was falling.

  Cabin gray was out. Against the sickening sensation of freefall, Luke worked

  to reroute switches, to shuttle power from the now-unneeded shields, trying

  to summon enough pickup to at least take him in alive.

  The heat in the cockpit was unbearable, suffocating, the ground a vast lake

  of molten reflection, rushing to smash him to powder. Hot spiky mountains,

  black shadow. The crystalline needles of the tsils. He felt the jolt and

  pull as one of the engines caught, dragged on the joystick, trying to even

  out into a long, sweeping curve. The retros fired, cutting his speed. He

  seemed to be descending in a column of fire, falling he knew' not where. A

  laser bolt hissed near him and he thought, Oh, thanks . . Presumably he had

  passed into the range of some other gun station.

  Or they'd got Bleak Point fixed.

  Flatten the curve. Hold the retros. Cut in the antigravs.

  Callista . . . he thought, wanting more than he had ever wanted anything

  that he had been able to speak to her again. Callista . . .

  He was above a plain. An enormous sea bed, blinding
with the fire of

  diamonds to the horizon. Snaking lines of tsils, marching away into the

  distance. The Ten Cousins. Other circles, other lines, pointing toward the

  great glittering outcrops of Spooks in the hills.

  There was a pattern to them, visible only when coming in from above like

  this. A pattern that tugged at his consciousness, reminded him of

  half-forgotten dreams.

  He pulled back on the joystick as hard as he could, threw his mind open to

  the Force because the ground was flashing by so fast he couldn't see

  anything of the terrain below--and brought her in.

  Afterward he didn't remember getting out of the Headhunter before it

  exploded. He knew he'd probably used the Force to damp the physical

  reactions involved until he'd crawled to more-or-less safety. He had no idea

  where he was or how close might be his chances of rescue, and somehow that

  didn't matter.

  If the Imperial Fleet picked up Dzym--Dzym with his enslaved front man Seti

  Ashgad, with his little dark boxes of crawling life, with his promises of

  controllable, invisible plague and limitless access to the crystals they

  needed for those tiny death dealers--there was going to be nothing left of

  the Republic, of the fragments of the Empire, of any space-going

  civilization whatever.

  Only Dzym, fat and sated and looking around for more.

  Luke lay on the spines of the crystal, eyes shut, the smoke of the burning

  Headhunter in his nostrils, knowing he should get up and knowing that he

  could not.

  Feeling them standing around him again.

  Silent, unseen.

  if-you're going to attack me, attack me, he thought, his mind slipping into

  a darkness and dreams of stormtroopers and Jawas again. If you're going to

  have me, go ahead.

  And then, on the borderlands of consciousness, he remembered the pattern of

  the tsils, coming in from high above remembered his dreams when they'd

  loomed in the background. remembered the voices that spoke to him in those

  dreams, like the Listeners said the rocks spoke to them.

  You're alive, he said, enormously surprised--more surprised than he'd been

  about anything in his life.

  Assent flowed out over him, colors in his mind, as blue as the crystalline

  core of the tsils, the green of the Spook clusters high on the rocks. Alive

  alive alive alive . . . like an echo.

  And his dream of the Jawas came back.