Planet of Twilight

by Barbara Hambley

  They'd only used, after all, the images they could find in his mind the

  indigenous inhabitant, brain gutted and forced to work for the

  stormtroopers.

  You've been alive all this time.

  All this time, they agreed, a gentle vibration like music, rising from the

  crystals beneath him, from the tsils, from the mountains; rising up into his

  bones. From all time For all time. Thinking and dreaming] and speaking and

  singing. The sea formed us, and the sea went away.

  The planet fed us, from the fires of her heart. Little people here and there

  but not important. Not until they took us. Took our . . and the word was

  impossible to translate in his mind, "brother/self" he thought--a part of

  their minds.

  The deep tide of their anger flowed over him, anger for their kidnapped kin.

  Taken and enslaved, zapped with the horrible electronic realignment, as the

  Jawas had been zapped in his dream, so that they became slaves.

  Through the minds of the tsils Luke saw those enslaved ones, imprisoned both

  in the Needles and in the synthdroids; slaves but still kindred, still tsils

  in their hearts. He sensed the incomprehension of those slow timeless beings

  about what it was that they saw, but he himself understood.

  The cabin of the Reliant. Two synthdroids lying dazed, eyes staring, on the

  floor, their flesh a rotting mass but their minds receiving impres sions,

  still and calm, without pain. Seti Ashgad sat at the controls, his face a

  welted, bleeding mass, gasping, fighting for breath. His hair, his clothing,

  his body crawled with drochs, freed of their fear of the crystal-imbued

  light of Nam Chorios; while Luke, through the eyes of the synthdroids,

  watched, he saw a thumb-size brown insect crawl into Ashgad's mouth.

  And Dzym stood behind him. Dzym with his robe open to the waist, every

  pulsing orifice and squirming pendule moving, while Dzym himself stared at

  the Imperial carrack's approach in the main screen with hungry delight in

  his eyes.

  "Reliant?" crackled a voice over the comm system. "Reliant, this is Grand

  Admiral Larm of the Antemeridian sector."

  Luke was so startled, so dazzled by the vision, that he could barely gather

  his thoughts. Can you still talk to them?

  Confusion, murmuring--a dim comprehension of the horror, the pain, of those

  enslaved and taken away. But no focus. No direction or guide.

  They could see this, but could not understand, as Luke had not understood

  the dream that the tsils--the planet's Guardian inhabitants-had sent to him.

  A second vision flashed in his mind, of the Reliant rising against the great

  glowing purple-white gem of the planet, seen from space. Of the carrack

  drawing closer to it, and, weirdly, of the voices transmitted between them,

  picked up over the electronic consciousness of the Needles themselves and

  relayed back to their kindred tsils.

  "This is Grand Admiral Larm, of the Antemeridian sector Imperial Fleet.

  In the name of Moff Getelles, i am empowered to greet you personally."

  With doubled vision he saw the square gray ship, the silvery carrack, and in

  the same consciousness saw the Reliant's bridge again. Seti Ashgad raised

  his head like a drunken man, barely conscious of what was being said.

  Dzym threw back his head and laughed, his eyes sparking in the darkness with

  two flames of unholy triumph.

  Luke took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. It crossed his mind, very

  briefly, to wonder what this was going to do to his own mind, his own brain,

  but through the tsils, through the great white crystals in the ground, the

  green crystals in the high cliffs, he was aware of the pain of those that

  had been taken away, and he knew he could not let them remain in that agony.

  Through me, he said. Focus through me.

  He felt their awareness converge on his. The Force in them, the Force that

  had been growing slowly, strangely, from their utterly alien life, twining

  with the Force within his bones and flesh and mind.

  Tell them to destroy Ashgad's ship he said, reaching out his mind to those

  hovering, darting consciousnesses out in the black gulfs of space.

  Understanding what they were now, and how to reach them. Do this for me and

  I swear to you, wherever they, are, whoever has bought them throughout the

  galaxy, I swear to you they will be brought back here.

  He felt the consultation of them, like an endless green wave spreading out

  across the plain, through the mountains, over the planet. A deep vibration,

  like the ripple on a still pond. And then it came back, Force and more

  Force--shining oceanic currents of it, streaming through his body,

  unbearably bright. Tearing him apart. He cried out in pain, kneeling upright

  in the diamond wastes, focusing his mind; calling the Force to his flesh.

  Reaching out toward the darkness of space, where the Imperial carrack was

  docking against the Reliant.

  He saw Seti Ashgad trying to get to his feet from the main console,

  stumbling and falling among the dead synthdroids that littered the floor.

  Saw Dzym draw in a breath of ecstasy, of anticipation, of world-devouring

  delight.

  Luke's eyes were closed, so he didn't see, far, far above in the hard blue

  unchanging sky, the tiny brightness of an explosion.

  Then he fainted, and lay unconscious, alone beside the slow rising pillar of

  oily smoke in the midst of the wasteland of light.

  Given the circumstances under which they had last parted, the eventual

  journey down to the surface of Nam Chorios could not be other than awkward

  for both Han Solo and Admiral Daala, once in charge of the security of the

  Imperial Weapons Installation in the Maw cluster.

  See-Threepio, who accompanied them with Chewbacca, Artoo-Detoo, and a

  considerable number of Daala's comrades, did his best to ease the tension by

  filling Solo in on the events leading up to Leia's kidnapping, on the state

  of the Meridian sector as observed by himself and Artoo-Detoo on their

  travels, and on Yarbolk Yemm's well-documented contention that the whole

  thing was a ploy originated by Gnifmak Dymurra, CEO of Loronar Corporation,

  as a means of obtaining hypercomplex polarized crystals from their only

  known source on Nam Chorios, for the manufacture of both synthdroids and

  CCIR Needles.

  He was at a loss to account for the fact that those supposedly programmable

  Needles had unexpectedly left off attacking the small Republic fleet and had

  descended on the square gray ship rising from the planet's surface, blasting

  it and the Imperial carrack that had gone out to tow it to the safety of the

  Imperial fleet into sparkling fragments of eternity. A prima facie

  observation of the attack, even without the wildly furious and speculative

  jabber intercepted from Admiral Larm aboard the carrack, made clear beyond a

  doubt that this was not what Admiral Larm had had in mind.

  Even as the debris cloud of the Reliant and its escort was dispersing, the

  entire squadron of Needles had turned with the precision of a dance troupe

  and had swirled down into the atmosphere, heading for the surface of the

  planet.

  It was a moot point whether A
dmiral Larm's successor would have continued

  his attack--his forces still outnumbered the Republic ships almost three to

  one, and Solo's little fleet had been badly mauled--had not Admiral Daala's

  ships come out of hyperspace at that point, and descended on the Imperial

  vessels like black, avenging night.

  "From the time I was sixteen, the fleet has been my life." Arms folded,

  booted feet apart, Daala glanced over her shoulder at Han, the growing glare

  of the planet below already so bright as to cast cold, queer shadows on her

  face. The forward lounge of a Seinar Sentinel landing shuttle included a

  curving sweep of viewport, as well as small amenities like a cold-cabinet

  containing wine and beer. Trails of condensation whipped and swirled up the

  transparisteel viewport, so that the Admiral seemed vreathed in misty light.

  "Service. Order. The triumph over the forces of chaos . . ." She cocked her

  head, as the soft throb of the engines altered with the transfer to

  repulsorlifts. A hard fold appeared at the corner of her mouth, the track of

  some bitter thought. "All of my life, and all that i could have had, I laid

  on the altar of the fleet, and I was satisfied. And now... this."

  "Well," said Han softly, "I can understand. You're not the only one who's

  ever been betrayed."

  She started to jeer something back at him, then stopped herself and averted

  her face. Beyond the shifting vapor trails and their reflected brilliance,

  the starry darkness was yielding to a deep cobalt noon.

  "No," she said, her voice unwontedly quiet. "Perhaps not."

  "Oh, look," exclaimed Threepio, from the other side of the lounge.

  "The CCIRs all appear to have crash-landed. There, see?" A thread of smoke

  curled into the still air. "How remarkable that they would have maintained

  so tight a formation in the face of what was quite clearly a controller

  malfunction."

  "Yeah, well, maybe we better pick up a couple of them and see what we can

  learn about getting them to malfunction again."

  As if Threepio had not spoken, Daala said, "You know her policies, Solo."

  Once she would never have acknowledged him as her equal, or spoken to him

  without scorn in her voice. "Will your Chief of State keep her hands off the

  Chorios systems, once their value is known to her?"

  "I don't know what the Council's gonna say," said Han truthfully.

  "But I do know Lei--Her Excellency--just went through one laser blast raking

  over because she refused to interfere in a planet that couldn't get a

  majority for interference. So as long as you folks keep the majority on

  Pedducis I'd say you're pretty safe."

  He rose, and walked over to stand beside her and look at the world that to

  him had, up until this time, been only a name.

  "What a rock! There're people living down there?"

  Chewbacca yowled an observation.

  "Oh, right. One crummy little block there and about four houses way over in

  the distance. I can see we're at a major population center of the sector."

  Daala remarked drily, "At the moment, Captain Solo, I can think of few views

  more pleasant than that of an entire planet utterly devoid of human life."

  The homing beacon from the surface brought them, not to the fortress of Seti

  Ashgad, but to the Bleak Point gun station sixteen kilometers away, where

  the plain of glass-bright crystal made a landing area for the shuttle. A

  light freighter already occupied the site--"As long as that station's out of

  commission," said a brisk little woman with long white hair, as the doors of

  the shuttle opened, "I'd be a fool not to take a cargo of majie offplanet

  and see what I can bring back. I'll get the cream of the market. Well, what

  do we got here?" she demanded, turning, as Han, Chewie, and the two droids

  descended the boarding ramp and looked around them at the glaring landscape.

  Wreckage from the Force storm scattered the gravel for half a kilometer

  around the walls of the tower, snarls of wire, broken beams, weapons burst

  by the violence of Beldorion's uncontrolled will. Rationalists and Therans

  alike were gathering around the walls, and the plain was a parking lot of

  speeders, speeder bikes, and cu-pas warbling and wheezing and scratching

  themselves. A caravan of very dusty, very primitively dressed Therans

  clustered together, gazing in wonderment at the speeders; at Umolly Darm's

  freighter; and at the sleek, deadly shape of Daala's shuttle. From their

  midst two figures broke away, crossing to Han and Chewie at a run.

  Battered, dusty, blotched with grime and smoke and blood, Han realized it

  was Luke and Leia. Leia cried, "Han!" and threw herself into his arms,

  crushed against him, face pressed to his shirt and leaving an enormous

  smutch of slime-dried dust there. Looking down into her face, he realized

  that he himself was unshaven and smutted with soot from that last

  burn-through of the defensive shielding that had almost accounted for the

  Falcon in the last moments before Daala and her fleet had made their

  appearance.

  "Leia!" They were hugging like schoolkids, rocking in each other's arms--Han

  felt an idiotic urge to whirl her in his arms and dance.

  "Admiral Larm . . ." she began.

  "Is space dust," finished Han. "His fleet went back to Antemeridian to give

  him a nice memorial service. I don't think they're gonna be back."

  "You know what happened?"

  "Pretty much. The plague's over three-quarters of the sector, there doesn't

  seem to be any way of stopping it. The boys at Med Central say it's like the

  Death Seed . . ."

  "It is the Death Seed." Luke came over to them, limping heavily with a

  stick, wearing the same sort of padded jacket and loose, ragged robe that

  the Therans had on. "And the--the Guardian tsils have agreed to send some of

  their number off planet, to the sector medical facility, to be installed in

  apparatus that will destroy the drochs. Once we've got

  the sentient Spook crystals to channel light through, it shouldn't be hard

  to destroy the drochs wherever they are. All they ask in exchange is that we

  return every' Spook crystal that has ever been taken off and programmed."

  "And you're gonna explain that to Loronar how."

  "I'm going to explain," said Leia sweetly, "that without their cooperation,

  the entire story of their support of the epidemic will be released for

  general consumption, accompanied by sanctions that will put them out of

  business in a week."

  Han nodded judiciously. "You got me sold."

  "Once the Guardians are able to get offplanet," said Luke quietly, "I don't

  think Loronar's going to have much of a market for Needles anymore. The

  CCIRs worked because the central controllers mimicked the vibrations of the

  Guardians themselves. But even reprogrammed, the enslaved Spooks will know

  and obey the voices of the Guardians, their--their family, their

  alter-selves. The living crystals that have inhabited this planet since

  first it was formed.

  "They knew about the drochs," he went on, speaking to Leia. "They were

  aware, when the Grissmath Dynasty seeded the planet with them to kill its

  political emigres. They did their best, for seven and
a half centuries, to

  keep the drochs from getting offplanet. They invaded the dreams of the

  prophet Theras and his followers, taking whatever forms they found there,

  whatever they would believe, and instructing them to keep anything larger

  than about the size of a B-wing from taking off.

  Anything bigger would have sufficient shielding to protect the drochs from

  the radiation. But there's nothing, really, to keep large cargoes from

  coming in. And there are seams of mineral wealth, platinum and rock ivory,

  deep in the mountains that can be exported in small enough quantities to be

  ray screened and still support those who take them off."

  "Which is just fine with me," put in Umolly Darm, hurrying past with Arvid

  and his aunt. "I never liked that Spook crystal business. Too fragile, the

  ones with good color were too far back in the hills, and even a box or two

  of the things gave me the willies. That Theran Listener Be is already

  putting together an expedition for rock ivory with me and Arvid here."

  She hurried on her way, Arvid waving back at Luke, to the stock freighter

  that stood some distance from the gun station's walls.

  Leia glanced in the direction of the shuttle and then back inquiringly at

  Han. "An old friend," said Han, rather drily. "She showed up at the last

  minute to help us out. She wants to have a diplomatic discussion and some

  assurances from you."

  Leia nodded, "All right."

  She turned back, "Luke?"

  He and Liegeus were among the Therans, shaking hands with those who had

  found Luke in the wastelands, sent by the voices in their Listeners' minds;

  bidding good-bye to the Rationalists, to Booldrum Caslo and his landlord and

  Aunt Gin. Luke paused for a moment, looking around, and Liegeus said, "We'd

  best be going, Luke. I've gotten the gun station back online again. It will

  be forbidding egress from this world in very short order now."

  And, when Luke still hesitated, the older man added gently, "I think that

  there is nothing further that you can do here."

  So close, thought Luke desperately. So close. if I could just tell her . . .

  Whatever dark the world may send . . .

  He remembered her eyes, in the sunset light of Yavin Four's towers.

  Remembered the pain in her voice, in that final message.

  I have my own odyssey . . .

  Tell her what, that would not give her still greater pain?