by James Luceno
“Our shuttle should be setting down momentarily, assuming, of course, that we have your permission to land.”
Bail nodded for the holocam. “I’ll see to it that you receive approach and landing coordinates.”
Pestage’s holoimage had no sooner deresolved than Bail snatched his comlink from his belt and tapped a code into the keypad. To the female voice that answered, he said, “Where are Breha and Leia?”
“I believe they’re already on their way to join you, sir,” the Queen’s attendant said.
“Do you know if Breha has her comlink with her?”
“I don’t believe she does, sir.”
“Thank you.” Bail silenced the comlink and turned to his aides. “Find the Queen. She must be somewhere in the main residence. Tell her that she is not to leave the residence under any circumstances, and that she is to contact me as soon as possible. Is that understood?”
Retrac and Aldrete nodded, spun on their heels, and hurried off.
Bail swung to Antilles, eyes bulging in concern. “Are the droids on the Tantive IV or downside?”
“Here,” Antilles said, exhaling. “Somewhere in the palace or on the grounds.”
Bail tightened his lips. “They have to be located and kept out of sight.”
Never was one for crowds, myself,” Skeck said as he, Archyr, and Shryne were negotiating Aldera’s throng of demonstrators.
“Is that what first took you to the Outer Rim?” Shryne asked.
Skeck mocked the idea with a motion of dismissal. “I just hang there for the food.”
In addition to keeping out the cold, their long coats, hats, and high boots supplied hiding places for blasters and other tools of the smuggling trade. Jula, Brudi, and Eyl Dix had remained with the drop ship, which was docked in a circular bay a couple of kilometers west of the palace.
It was Shryne’s first visit to Alderaan. From what little he had seen, the planet lived up to its reputation as both a beautiful world and an arena for political dissent, notwithstanding Alderaan’s allegedly pacifist views. The mood of the enormous crowd, made up of war refugees and those who had arrived from countless worlds to demonstrate their solidarity, seemed to be in keeping with those views. But Shryne had already zeroed in on scores of beings who clearly hoped to provoke the marchers to violence, perhaps as a means of being assured extensive HoloNet coverage, and thus making their point with Palpatine.
Or maybe, just maybe, Alderaan had the Emperor himself to thank for the rabble-rousers.
Judging by the way in which Aldera’s police units were deployed, they had no interest in confrontation, and perhaps had been ordered to exercise restraint at all costs. The mere fact that the marchers were being allowed to voice their protests and display their holoslogans in such close proximity to the Royal Palace, and that Senator Bail Organa himself would occasionally plant himself in full view of the crowd, showed that the restraint was genuine.
Alderaan really did care about the little guy.
For Shryne, the presence of such a huge crowd also suggested that Senator Fang Zar was more than a clever politician. While spiriting him off Alderaan would never have posed an insurmountable challenge, the milling crowds combined with Alderaan’s deliberately lax policy toward orbital insertions and exits was going to make the pickup as easy as one, two, three.
Not bad for Shryne’s first mission.
There might even be a small amount of good attached to it—particularly if the rumors he had heard about Zar over the years were true.
Now it boiled down to keeping the appointment with him.
Shryne, Skeck, and Archyr had already circled the palace twice, primarily to scope out potential problems at the south gate entrance, where the prearranged meet was supposed to take place. Shryne found it interesting that Zar’s ostensible reason for making a low-key departure was to keep from involving Organa in his problems, but Shryne wasn’t clear on just what those problems were. Both Zar and Organa had been outspoken members of the Loyalist Committee, so what could Zar have done to cause problems for himself that didn’t already involve Organa?
Was he in a fix with Palpatine?
Shryne tried to convince himself that Zar’s troubles were none of his business; that the sooner he accustomed himself to simply executing a job, the better—for him and for Jula. This, as opposed to thinking like a Jedi, which involved looking to the Force as a means of gauging possible repercussions and ramifications of his actions.
In that sense, the Alderaan mission was the first day of the rest of his life.
Olee Starstone was the only other issue he had to clear from his mind. His feelings for her didn’t spring from attachment of the sort she would be the first to ridicule. In plain fact, he was worried about her to the point of distraction.
In response to Shryne’s decision to follow his own path, she was about as angry as a Jedi was allowed to be, though some of the other Jedi had said that they understood.
All seven had taken the battered transport and gone in search of surviving Jedi. Shryne feared that it would just be a matter of time before they got themselves in serious trouble, but he wasn’t about to serve as their watchdog. More to the point, they had seen the risks they were taking as flowing from the will of the Force.
Well, who knew for sure?
Shryne wasn’t omniscient. Maybe they would succeed against all odds. Maybe the Jedi, in league with political protestors and sympathetic military commanders, could bring Palpatine to justice for what he had done.
Unlikely. But a possibility, nevertheless.
Jula had been generous enough to loan Filli to the Jedi, outwardly to help them sort through the data they had downloaded from the beacon databases. Shryne suspected, however, that Jula’s real intent was to disable Starstone’s reckless determination. The closer Starstone and Filli grew, the more the young Jedi would be forced to take a hard look at her choices. With time, Filli might even be able to lure her out of her attachment to the perished Jedi order, just as Jula had Shryne.
But then, Shryne had been halfway along before his mother had even entered the picture.
His mother.
He was still getting used to that development: that he was the son of this particular woman. Perhaps the way some of the troopers had had to adjust to the fact that they were all clones of one man.
Through his comlink’s wireless earpiece, Shryne heard Jula’s voice.
“I just heard from our bundle,” she said. “He’s in motion.”
“We’re working our way around to him now,” Shryne said into the audio pickup fastened to the synthfur collar of his coat.
“You sure you’re going to be able to recognize him from the holoimages?”
“Recognizing him won’t be a problem. But finding him in this crowd could be.”
“I’m guessing he didn’t expect this big a turnout.”
“I’m guessing no one did.”
“Does that say something for the Emperor’s days being numbered?”
“Someone’s days, anyway.” Shryne paused, then said: “Hold for a moment.”
The palace’s south gate entrance was within sight now, but in the time it had taken Shryne, Skeck, and Archyr to complete their third circuit, a mob had formed. Three human speakers standing atop repulsorlift platforms were urging everyone to press through the tall gates and onto the palace grounds. Anticipating trouble, a group of forty or so royal troops dressed in ceremonial armor and slack hats had deployed themselves outside the gates, armed with an array of nonlethal crowd control devices, including sonic devices, shock batons, and stun nets.
“Roan, what’s going on?” Jula asked.
“Things are getting rowdy. Everyone’s being warned away from the south gate entrance.”
The crowd surged, and Shryne felt himself lifted from his feet and carried toward the palace. The cordon of troops issued a final warning. When the crowd surged again, two front-line guards sporting backpack rigs began to coat the cobblestone plaza with a
thick layer of repellent foam. The crowd surged back in response, but dozens of demonstrators closest to the front failed to step back in time and were immediately immobilized in the rapidly spreading goo. A few of them were able to retreat by surrendering their footgear, but the rest were stuck fast. The trio of hovering agitators took advantage of the situation, accusing Alderaan’s Queen and vizier of attempting to hinder the marchers’ rights to free assembly, and of kowtowing to the Emperor.
The surges grew more powerful, with demonstrators trapped in the center of the crowd taking the brunt of all the pushing and shoving. Shryne began to edge toward the perimeter, with Skeck and Archyr to either side of him. When he could, he enabled his comlink.
“Jula, we’re not going to be able to get to the gate.”
“Which also means that our bundle won’t be able to exit the grounds that way.”
“Do we have a substitute rendezvous?”
“Roan, I’ve lost voice contact with him.”
“Probably temporary. When you hear from him, just tell him to stay put, wherever he is.”
“Where will you be?”
Shryne studied the palace’s curved south wall. “Don’t worry, we’ll find a way in.”
Those poor beings, trapped in that terrible foam,” C-3PO said as he and R2-D2 hastened for a narrow access door in the palace’s south wall.
Close to the palace’s underground droid-maintenance facility, where both droids had enjoyed an oil bath, the door was the same one they had used to exit the palace grounds earlier that day, when the protestors were just beginning their march.
“I think we’ll be much better off inside the palace.”
R2-D2 chittered a response.
C-3PO tilted his head in bafflement. “What do you mean we’ve been ordered inside anyway?”
The astromech chirped and fluted.
“Ordered to conceal ourselves?” C-3PO said. “By whom?” He waited for an answer. “Captain Antilles? How thoughtful of him to show concern for our well-being in the midst of this confusion!”
R2-D2 zithered, then buzzed.
“Something else?” C-3PO waited for R2-D2 to finish. “Don’t tell me you can’t say. It’s simply that you refuse to say. I’ve every right to know, you secretive little machinist.”
C-3PO fell briefly silent as the shadow of a low-flying craft passed over them.
His single photoreceptor tracking the flight of a midnight-black Imperial shuttle, R2-D2 began to whistle and hoot in obvious alarm.
“What is it now?”
The astromech loosed a chorus of warbles and shrill peeps. C-3PO fixed his photoreceptors on him in incredulity.
“Find Queen Breha? What are you going on about? A moment ago you said that Captain Antilles had ordered us into hiding!” Arms crooked, almost akimbo, C-3PO couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You changed your mind. Since when do you get to decide what’s important and what isn’t? Oh, you’re intent on getting us in trouble. I know it!”
By then they had reached the access door in the wall. R2-D2 extended a slender interface arm from one of the compartments in his squat, cylindrical torso and was in the process of inserting it into a computer control terminal alongside the doorway when the voice of a flesh-and-blood said: “Misplace your starfighter, droid?”
Turning completely about, C-3PO found himself looking at a human and two six-fingered humanoids wearing long coats and tall boots. The human’s left hand was patting R2-D2’s dome of a head.
“Oh! Who are you?”
“Never mind that,” one of the humanoids said. Parting his coat, he revealed a blaster wedged into the wide belt that cinched his pants. “Do you know what this is?”
R2-D2 mewled in distress.
C-3PO’s photoreceptors refocused. “Why, yes, it’s a DL-Thirteen ion blaster.”
The humanoid smiled nastily. “You’re very learned.”
“Sir, it is my fondest wish that my master recognize as much. Working with other droids has become so tiresome—”
“Ever see what an ionizer on full power can do to a droid?” the humanoid interrupted.
“No, but I can well imagine.”
“Good,” the human said. “Then here’s the way it’s going to work: you’re going to lead us into the palace like we’re all the best of friends.”
While C-3PO was trying to make sense of it, the man added: “Of course, if you have a problem with that, my friend here”—he gestured to the other humanoid—“who happens to be very knowledgeable about droids, will just tap into this one’s memory and retrieve the entry code. And then both of you will get to enjoy the effects of an ionizer firsthand.”
C-3PO was too stunned to respond, but R2-D2 made up for the sudden silence by filling it with beeps and zithers.
“My counterpart says,” C-3PO started to interpret, then stopped himself. “You certainly will not do as he says, you coward! These beings are not our masters! You should be willing to be disassembled rather than offer them the slightest help!”
But C-3PO’s admonitions fell on deaf auditory sensors. R2-D2 was already unlocking the door.
“This is most unbecoming,” C-3PO said sadly. “Most unbecoming.”
“Good droid.” The long-haired human patted the astromech’s dome again, then threw C-3PO a narrow-eyed gaze. “Any attempts to communicate with anyone and you’ll wish you’d never been built.”
“Sir, you don’t know how many times I’ve already wished that very thing,” C-3PO said as he followed R2-D2 and the three armed organics through the door and onto the palace grounds.
Vader stood at the foot of the shuttle’s boarding ramp, gazing at the white spires of the Royal Palace. Commander Appo and six of his stormtroopers spread out to flank him as Bail Organa and several others emerged from the ornate building. For a moment neither group moved; then Organa’s contingent walked onto the landing platform and approached the shuttle.
“You are Lord Vader?” Organa asked.
“Senator,” Vader said, inclining his head slightly.
“I demand to know why you’ve come to Alderaan.”
“Senator, you are in no position to demand anything.”
The vocoder built into his mask added menace to the remark. But, in fact, for perhaps the first time Vader felt as if he were wearing a disguise—a macabre costume, as opposed to a suit of life-sustaining devices and durasteel armor.
As Anakin, Vader hadn’t known Bail Organa well, even though he had been in his company on numerous occasions, in the Jedi Temple, the corridors of the Senate, and in Palpatine’s former office. Padmé had spoken of him highly and often, and Vader suspected that it was Organa, along with Mon Mothma, Fang Zar, and a few others, who had persuaded Padmé to withdraw her support of Palpatine prior to the war’s finish. That, however, didn’t trouble Vader as much as the fact that Organa, according to stormtroopers of the 501st, had been the first outsider to turn up at the Temple following the massacre, and was lucky to have escaped with his life.
Vader wondered if Organa had had a hand in helping Yoda, and presumably Obi-Wan, recalibrate the Temple beacon to cancel the message Vader had transmitted, which should have called all the Jedi back to Coruscant.
Aristocratic Organa was Anakin’s height, dark-haired and handsome, and always meticulously dressed in the style of the Republic’s Classic era, like the Naboo, rather than in the ostentatious fashion of Coruscant. But where Padmé had earned her status by being elected Queen, Organa had been born into wealth and privilege, on picture-perfect Alderaan.
Mercy missions or no, Vader wondered whether Organa had any real sense of what it meant to live in the outlying systems, on worlds like sand-swept Tatooine, plagued by Tusken Raiders and lorded over by Hutts.
He felt a sudden urge to put Organa in his place. Pinch off his breath with a narrowing of his thumb and forefinger; crush him in his fist … But the situation didn’t call for that—yet. Besides, Vader could see in Organa’s nervous gestures th
at he understood who was in charge.
Power.
He had power over Organa, and over all like him.
And it was Skywalker, not Vader, who had lived on Tatooine.
Vader’s life was just beginning.
Organa introduced him to his aides and advisers, as well as to Captain Antilles, who commanded Alderaan’s Corellian-made consular ship, and who tried but failed to conceal an expression of profound hostility toward Vader.
If Antilles only knew who he was dealing with …
From beyond the palace’s walls came the sound of angry voices and chanting. Vader surmised that at least some of the turbulence owed to the presence of an Imperial shuttle on Alderaan. The thought entertained him.
Like the Jedi, the demonstrators were another group of deluded, self-important beings convinced that their petty lives had actual meaning; that their protests, their dreams, their accomplishments amounted to anything. They were ignorant of the fact that the universe was changed not by individuals or by mobs, but by what occurred in the Force. In reality, all else was unimportant. Unless one was in communication with the Force, life was only existence in the world of illusion, born as a consequence of the eternal struggle between light and dark.
Vader listened to the sounds of the crowd for a moment more, then turned to regard Organa.
“Why do you permit this?” he asked.
Organa’s restless eyes searched for something, perhaps a peek at the man behind the mask. “Are such demonstrations no longer permitted on Coruscant?”
“Harmony is the ideal of the New Order, Senator, not dissension.”
“When harmony becomes the standard for all, then protests will cease. What’s more, by allowing voices to be heard here, Alderaan saves Coruscant any unmerited embarrassment.”
“There may be some truth to that. But in due time, protests will cease, one way or another.”
Vader recognized that Organa was in a quandary about something. Clearly he resented being challenged on his own world, but his tone of voice was almost conversational.
“I trust that the Emperor knows better than to end them by fear,” he was saying.
