Part 25 (1/2)
”What are we going to do?
Artoo maneuvered his way into one of the offices, where an Ithorian in the white coat of a physician lay dead over her console, and plugged into the computer jack in the wall. He tweeped worriedly, light from the street outside falling across him in pale orange bars.
”At the same time as the Adamantine?” said Threepio. ”That's absurd.
Plague vectors don't operate that swiftly and the odds against a simultaneous mutation are seven thousand four hundred twenty-one against.”
A couple of tweets and a wibble.
”When were the last reports from anywhere in the facility?”
Artoo reported. Though the street below the med station had been deserted for some time, a small band of e-suited figures hurried along, dragging sheets heaped with what looked like random gleanings-monitors, circuit boards, jewelry, shoes. One of those figures staggered, caught itself against the corner of a wall. The others conferred hastily among themselves, not going anywhere near their afflicted comrade, and ran. The man they had left tried to stagger after them, then sank down, helmeted head resting on his knees.
In ten minutes or so, during which Artoo gave Threepio a prcis of the progress of the plague in all reported quarters of the Meridian sector, the green light on the looter's e-suit went to amber, then to red, visible as a tiny dot of brightness across the street.
Through the smoky transparisteel of the facility's environmental dome, the orange streak of a departing s.h.i.+p could be seen.
A few moments later, the streetlamps went out.
The nights on Cybloc XII are long. The small moon on which it is built has a rotation period almost synchronous with its...o...b..t. The great, glowing ma.s.s of the planet Cybloc is only occasionally visible from the port facility there, as a huge gold-and-green disk low in the sky. It did not show that night. Until the harsh light of the primary, Erg Es 992, flooded through the port's dome, Artoo worked alone, sending Threepio out on scavenging expeditions to various laboratories for what he needed and improvising what the protocol droid could not find. By that time it was safe, the streets were deserted save for the dead.
In time Artoo was ready.
”But it's useless,” Threepio protested, looking down at the little stack of circuit boards and wiring that the astromech had hooked into the medical center computer. ”There isn't enough amplification in that modulator to get a signal out of the system. Don't get smart with me,” he added, to Attoo's tweeted reply. ”I found the only thing on your list that was available. You should be glad I was able to retrieve that.
There's absolutely nothing usable left in the Port Authority, or in any one of the s.h.i.+pping companies.”
Artoo hooked another circuit into the loop.
”And I don't see what good that's going to do. If there's known to be plague here, no one's going to come near enough even to hear a distress signal except more looters.”
Threepio did not even add, We're doomed. There was, perhaps, enough true doom, enough complete hopelessness, in the silent streets he had spent the night traversing to have stilled that particular observation.
Threepio had seen dead humans, but the scale of this devastation awed him. The implications of looters innocent of quarantine regulations scattering even now to every corner of the Republic in all available transport horrified him still more.
So when Artoo gave him his instructions, Threepio obeyed. Thin as a thread, on a beam that wouldn't get much past the world that had been their goal for so long, the signal went out, in Basic and every one of six million galactic languages, just to be on the safe side: ”Help.”
”Whaddaya mean, you can't get a response from Cybloc Twelve?” Han Solo slapped the comm b.u.t.ton on the office viewscreen of the Durren Base Comptroller, much to the annoyance of the Comptroller herself.
”There should be a half-dozen cruisers in port there...”
The Comptroller shouldered her way past him to be in full view of the screen. ”Is there no signal at all, or is there interference?”
”No signal at all, ma'am.” The extremely young mids.h.i.+pman in charge of the communications room saluted nervously. ”The Courane and the Fireater, both out of Cybloc, both reported in as of three hours ago...”
”Where are they?” demanded Solo.
It had been a nightmarish flight to the Durren orbital base. By the time the Millennium Falcon had cleared the dense and stormy atmosphere of Exodo II, the advancing fleet had been close enough to pick them up on sensors. TIE fighters, of the old-fas.h.i.+oned LN type but perfectly serviceable, had been dispatched. While Lando, a good pilot but a less-than-reliable shot, had dodged and veered through the gas clouds of Odos and the nearby fringes of the Spangled Veil Nebula, Chewie and Han had manned the gun turrets, accounting for two of their pursuers before the thickness of the glowing dust clouds and the danger of floating chunks of ice the size of small moons, which swam up with horrifying unexpectedness from the s.h.i.+mmering soup of visual and electrical interference, discouraged pursuit. Han had geared and tinkered with the engine to reduce impulse power below the range of detection; and at greatly reduced speed, the Falcon had all but drifted out of the fighters' range.
”Either they're too shorthanded to risk a scout in this mess,” Solo had remarked, watching the engine vibration of the remaining two TIEs retreat into the distance-the only dependable means of detection on board-”or they're in a h.e.l.l of a hurry and don't think we're worth stopping for.”
”Or they think they got us with that last shot.” Lando was nervously calculating the probable locations of the huge ice chunks that were out there, somewhere, in the soaked screens of glittering whiteness that drifted everywhere in both visual and sensor pickup.
Chewbacca had growled and snarled a retort that they had gotten them with that last shot: That black chunk rapidly disappearing into the dust clouds was their rear starboard stabilizer.
Because of the extreme lightness of the floating ice mountains within the nebula compared to the density of the Falcon, seven or eight of these enormous blocks began to drift toward the smuggler vessel and followed it, like banthas in love with a speeder, for some distance, until out of range of the fleet's sensors Lando was able to lay on a little more speed.
But it was not a pleasant journey. By the time they fetched up in the Comptroller of Durren's office, Han was in no mood to be told that no vessels or crews could be released to him from the slender reserves still at the station.
”Captain Solo, if you please...” The Comptroller thrust her way around him, to face her communications officer again. ”Have you attempted to contact Budpock base and inquire, Mids.h.i.+pman Brandis?
”Budpock doesn't know anything, ma'am. They say communications with Cybloc went dead about forty-eight hours ago, no reason given. There's been a lot of static interference; nothing's getting through. They sent a drone visual but it hasn't come back yet.”
”Thank you, mids.h.i.+pman.”
Solo was reaching for the comm b.u.t.ton and taking in breath to demand the whereabouts of the two s.h.i.+ps out of Cybloc. For an elderly, diminutive, and rather stout woman, the Comptroller had very quick reflexes and cut the transmission before a word could be spoken.
”As you know, Captain Solo,” said the Comptroller, with quiet precision, ”the Republic's treaty with Durren specifies protection, not only of the existing majority planetary regime but also, as a backup, of the system itself. We have barely gotten the plague isolated on this base.
The planetary government has only just regained a foothold in the capital and over the transportation and communication systems, and the insurgent faction is equipped with suborbital and supraorbital vessels that have already wreaked great havoc on this station. This is not the time to strip our forces. ..”
”The sector is being invaded.” Han spoke slowly, trying to hold down his temper, knowing that this was an officer who would meet shouting with an icy stone wall.
”Then why have I not been contacted by either the Chief of State or the Senate Inner Council?” When she said ”Chief of State” she fixed him with a beady dark eye-she knew perfectly well who he was married to.
Because the Council is deadlocked over the appointment of a successor, and n.o.body's g oing to risk starting a war they may have to repudiate when Leia shows up again, if Leia shows up.
Han drew a deep breath and let it out. ”You're right,” he said. Leia always started negotiations by saying, You're right. He'd frequently told her that such untruth would eventually cause her tongue to turn black and fall out of her mouth. ”Maybe i'd better see if I can contact the Chief of State on the private channel-it sometimes works better than the military ones.”
Lando and Chewbacca were crowded together with the single clerk in the outer office-because of the outbreak of the Death Seed plague in its lower quarters the entire orbital base was short staffed-every screen around them covered with readouts.
”This's bad, old buddy.” Lando turned in his chair. ”We got two more scouts missing. There's a whole corridor right down the center of the sector blacked out. I'll bet you any money it's those little whatever-they-are missiles, coming out of hypers.p.a.ce shooting...”
”Come on.” Han grabbed him by the arm and hauled him out of his chair and out of the room, Chewbacca striding like a giant, funguscovered tree at their heels.
”What the...?”
The corridor was deserted. Quarantine signs and barriers were everywhere, at every gateway to the lower levels. Han's skin p.r.i.c.kled at the thought of being in the same installation with the Death Seed.
He wondered how soon anyone would know of infection. How was it transmitted? How long an incubation period did it have? Months?
Minutes?
”Does Wing Tip Theel still operate out of Algar?”
”Wing Tip?” Calrissian looked confused at the sudden introduction of one of their less-reputable computer-slicer colleagues into a military operation. ”I think so. He did last time I talked to him.”
”How soon can you get there'. And can he still slice into the Algar Pleasure Dome's central computer core?”