Part 35 (2/2)

”Tabric and Hovarb may not be able to make it, though-three of their gornts went into labor this afternoon.”

”The gornts can have their litters by themselves,” Carib said shortly. ”This is important.”

Sabmin threw him a frown. ”Oh, come on, Carib, aren't you overreacting just a little? It's an activation order, not a full-blown attack plan.”

”If Thrawn is in charge, there won't be a lot of time between the two,” Carib growled.

”Whatever he's up to, he'll have his timetable shaved down to the half second.”

They walked the rest of the way to Sabmin's vehicle in silence. ”All right, I'll tell them,” Sabmin said as he climbed in. ”They'll be here.”

Carib sighed. ”Let's make it your place instead,” he suggested. ”It's only three minutes by landspeeder from there to their barn. They can get back in plenty of time if anything goes wrong with the labor.”

Sabmin smiled tightly. ”Thanks, Carib. We'll see you there.”

CHAPTER 21.

”There's Lando,” Leia said, pointing out the canopy as Han set! their Incom T-81 down on the Orowood Tower's third-level air-speeder pad. ”Over there, by the entryway, behind that red cloud car.”

”Yeah, I see him,” Han grunted, shutting down the repulsorlifts. ”I still think this is a bad idea, Leia.”

”I know you do,” Leia said, taking a moment to look past the lighted landing area at the darkened shrubbery perimeter beyond it. There was no one visible, either to her eyes or her Jedi senses. ”And I can't say I completely disagree with you. But he insisted on coming.”

”You'd just better hope Dx'ono didn't get wind of it and have someone follow him here,”

Han growled, popping the canopy. ”You get someone yelling secret meeting' and we'll all have bad it.”

”I know,” Leia said, climbing out of the airspeeder and looking around. There were some airspeeder running lights visible in the sky around them, and the various roads crisscrossing the area around the Tower were carrying their usual quota of landspeeders.

None of the vehicles seemed to be particularly heading their direction.

But there were the darkened windows of one of the Tower's five tapcafes gazing down on them from the fourth floor, not to mention all the windows of the apartments stretching up into the night sky. If one of those windows concealed someone with a set of macrobinoculars . . .

Han clearly bad already bad the same thought. ”We'd better get inside,” he muttered, taking her arm. ”Come on, Threepio, move it.”

”Yes, sir,” the golden-skinned droid said hastily, levering himself awkwardly out of the back of the airspeeder and shuffling quickly behind them. That was the first time Threepio had said anything, Leia realized suddenly, since they'd left the Imperial Palace. Had be picked up on Han's mood, and was trying to make himself inconspicuous? Or had he been brooding on his own memories of Thrawn's last bid for power?

Lando emerged from his half concealment as they approached. ”Han, Leia,” he nodded to them. His usual smile of greeting, Leia noted, was conspicuously absent. ”Where's Karrde?”

”He's already here,” Leia told him as Han keyed the entryway lock. ”The Noghri let him in.”

”Good.” Hunching his shoulders beneath his cloak, Lando threw one last look back into the darkness as be followed Leia in.

Thirty-eight stories tall, the Orowood Tower had originally been planned to be the nucleus of an elaborate and extensive colony of Alderaanians who bad been off-planet when the first Death Star destroyed their world. But though the architects had painstakingly crafted every facet of the Tower to fit the Alderaanian style, Coruscant's crowds and near-total land development were simply too alien to their life view for most of the refugees to feel comfortable living there.

Though the rest of the project had been abandoned, there had been hopes that enough Alderaanians would remain on Coruscant to keep the Tower itself occupied, particularly given its spectacular view of the Manarai Mountains. But that final dream bad been dealt its death blow by Grand Admiral Thrawn's short-lived but terrifying siege of the planet.

When the siege was finally lifted, virtually all the Alderaanians left Coruscant, going to New Alderaan or scattering out among the stars. As one of them had e xplained to Leia, they had been lucky enough to escape the destruction of one world, and had no desire to settle on an even more tempting target.

And so the grand experiment had settled into vague obscurity, joining the host of other residential centers cl.u.s.tered beneath the mountains, most of which provided secondary or vacation homes to rich industrialists and government officials. Offworlders and aliens, most of whom bad never even heard of the fabled oro woods of Alderaan, let alone ever walked among them.

Over the years, the ache of that irony had mostly faded from Leia's heart. Mostly.

The turbolift operated with the typical quiet efficiency of Alderaanian construction, depositing them into the lush garden scene that comprised the thirtieth-floor bobby. No one was visible mong the fronds and rock-pile water trickles; but then, no one was supposed to be. ”Barkhimkh?” Leia called softly.

”I am here, Lady Vader,” Barkhimkh's voice mewed from across the lobby. There was a rustle from the frond, and the Noghri warrior stepped into view beside the archway that opened into the corridor leading to their apartment. ”All is quiet.”

”Thank you,” Leia said.

”Make sure you keep it that way,” Han added as they crossed the lobby.

Barkhimkh bowed his bead. ”I obey, Han clan Solo.”

Karrde was lounging in a Plash self-molding contour chair in the apartment's conversation circle, a datapad in one band and a gla.s.s of amber liquid in the other, as Han keyed the door open. ”Ah-there you are,” the smuggler said, closing the datapad and levering himself out of the chair as they filed inside. ”I was just thinking of asking Sakhisakh to try contacting you.”

”We got a later start than I'd expected,” Leia explained. ”I'm sorry.”

”No need to apologize,” Karrde a.s.sured them. ”The children aren't with you?”

”They just left this morning with Chewie to go visit his family on Kashyyyk,” Leia told him. ”With all that's been happening lately, I thought it would be better for them to be there.”

”Between their Noghri guard and a planetful of Wookiees it's hard to imagine anyplace safer,” Karrde agreed. ”h.e.l.lo, Calrissian. Nice to see you again.”

”Yes,” Lando said. ”Though you may not think so when we tell you why you're here.”

Karrde's expression didn't change, but Leia could feel a tightening of his emotions.

”Really,” he said easily. ”Let's dispense with the formalities, then. Sit down and tell me all about it.”

”I'm sorry,” the screening system at the other end of the comm said in its maddeningly pleasant mechanical voice. ”Communication with the residence you request is restricted. I cannot connect you without a proper authorization code.”

”Tell Councilor Organa Solo that it's an emergency,” Shada said, putting the most intimidating official tone into her voice that she could as she gazed out the tapcafe window at the Solos' Incom T-81, sitting there on the Orowood Tower's third-floor landing pad. ”I'm calling under the authorization of Admiral Drayson of New Republic Intelligence.”

The screening system remained unfazed. ”I'm sorry, but I cannot connect you without a proper authorization code,” it repeated.

Grimacing, Shada keyed the comm off. That had been the last verbal gambit in her repertoire, and it bad done nothing but get her the same runaround. The same thing every time she tried, and she was beginning to get very tired of it.

She'd tried the polite, official way first: calling Councilor Organa Solo's office at the Imperial Palace and-when the screeners there wouldn't let her through, either-trying to get into the ma.s.sive governmental building itself. But with no official status or business or connections to call on, she'd bit meter-thick transparisteel walls at every turn. She'd tried calling the Solos' main home outside the palace next, with the same results. And now she'd tried to get through to them at their Manarai Mount ain retreat, again with no luck And with each rebuff, her obviously idealized vision of the New Republic had crumbled a little bit more. She'd hoped they would have more to offer her than the life with the Mistryl that she'd just turned her back on. It was starting to look more and more like she'd been mistaken.

But there was nothing to do now but continue what she'd started. If for no other reason than that there was nowhere left for her to go.

So all right. She'd tried it the polite way and gotten nowhere. Now she would try it the Mistryl way.

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