Part 27 (1/2)
Callista's head turned sharply.
”I don't know where he is.”
She looked away. What could be seen of her face was still as ivory, but above the edge of the veil, the wide gray eyes filled with tears.
They rode for a time in silence, winding down the trails that were barely familiar, scattered with broken rock and shards of crystal, with dunes of gravel hurled up wholesale from the flats below. Dawn winds had started as the wan sun 'warmed the endless dead sea bottom.
Squinting against it in the silky gray light, Leia could make out the taller ma.s.ses of the cliffs around the gun station, the fretwork of the shattered upper works, black against the peadescent air.
”I found nothing here that would help me,” said Callista quietly.
”The Force is here, but not in a form that I can touch or understand.
Whatever is alive here-if anything-is invisible, intangible. Believe me, I've tried to reach it, to touch it. The Listeners say it's the ghosts of the old holy men and women that speak to them, but I think they're wrong.
The voices only use the shapes that the Listeners have already in their minds.”
She shook her head, her eyes narrowing against the shadowless twilight of distances and wind. ”There's a woman in Hweg Shul who has interests in s.h.i.+pping. When this is over I'm going to contact her, see if I can get myself off-planet in one of the little cargo lifters and work my pa.s.sage elsewhere. Are you going to tell Luke you've seen me?”
”Whatever you wish,” said Leia. ”I'd like to, yes, but I won't if you'd rather I didn't.”
Callista started to say something, then thought about it and asked, ”What do you think would be best?”
”I think it would be best if I did.”
”Then do so,” said Callista. ”Make him understand, if you can. Tell him that I will love him to the ending of my life, but that mine is a life of which he cannot be a part.”
Across the crystal ridges, sudden snakes of white lightning flickered, cold and pale in the dawning light. Leia grabbed the railing of the speeder as it rocked and swayed, jolted by what felt like a groundquake, though the ground beneath the antigrav lifters was steady.
An obsidian boulder several tons in ma.s.s wrenched and twisted in the rock side of the mountain before them, and the glittering talus of crystals at the foot of the cliffk around them leapt upward into funnels, like toothed whirlwinds.
The Therans in the speeders cried out, looking around them with weapons at the ready, and Callista and Be fought their cu-pas to a standstill moments before the beasts could bolt in panic.
”Another,” said Callista softly. ”Worse than before, I think.”
”There's one with them who moves this storm.” B6's lizard-black eyes were shut, listening deeply. ”He brings this storm at his will, summons and directs it.”
”That will be Beldorion.”
”What do we do?” asked a man on Leia's repulsor sled, looking nervously around at the cold cliffs sparkling in the new light, the world paused, it seemed, on the brink of chaos.
B shook back his tangled braids. ”We can do no other than we are instructed,” said the Listener. ”We meet them, and die.”
If the horrors of watching the dying corpses of Cybloc XII being looted had been bad-the squabbles between looters, the remote-operated droids patrolling like whirring insects, the sight of those few expiring survivors being relieved of jewelry and credit cylinders by thieves-the darkness that followed was infinitely worse. The dome lights were gone.
The dim auxiliary circuits were going. In the medical offices where, with a droid's infinite patience, See-Threepio was broad casting his distress call in alternating bands of Basic and various of his six million language repertoire, the light had gone utterly, and only a few'
buildings were lit in the next square, leaking stray glims to show him the street below the windows, where nothing at all now moved.
The body of the dead looter lay where it had been left, naked of its e-suit, which others had taken along with the computer equipment that he'd been dragging. It was little more than a black shape to Threepio's visual receptors, though it registered on his infrared for some time. The smells of alien bacteria and decay organisms choked the air.
”It isn't any use,” he said in time. Artoo-Detoo, sitting inert as a heating unit in the corner, illuminated a single red light, inquiring.
”The entire base computer core has been gutted. Even should someone attempt a landing, we wouldn't know it.”
Artoo wibbled a reply.
”Oh, very well. But it will do us no good. I expect we'll sit here until our power cells run down, and chaos and destruction will encompa.s.s the Republic.” At another time Threepio would have spoken out of a personal conviction of impending doom. Now he realized he was saying no more than the truth.
”We did our best.”
The astromech tweeped and settled back to his resting position. It was inconceivable that either of them would do other than his best.
Threepio returned to the jury-rigged microphone. ”Distress on Cybloc XII.
Distress on Cybloc XII. Please send an evacuation team.
Please send an evacuation team.
”Ee-tsuti Cybloc XIt. Ee-tsuti Cybloc XII. N'geesw'a eltipic'uti ava'acuationma-teem5 negpo, insky.
”Dzgor groom Cybloc XII. Dzgor groom Cybloc Xli. Hch'ca shmim'ch vr/Srkshkipfuth gna gna kabro n'grabiaschkth moah.” He dug down into the bottommost registers of his voder circuits. The Yeb language had few technical terms, and it was necessary to patch together a linguistic equivalent from: ”Several conglomerates are urged strongly but respectfully to coordinate activities to prevent the drowning of another conglomerate that is not a threat to any of them, nor will be in the immediate or distant future to them or to their children.” He did the best he could.
Bith was easier. ”Six-five. Twelve-seven-eight. Two-nine-seven.” In many ways, Threepio was very fond of the Bith.
”Distress on Cybloc XII. Dis-Artoo, look! It's an incoming vessel!”
He pointed to the dark transparisteel, through which the transpariflex panels of the dome could be seen. Against the livid gloom of the sky the red track of descending retros had appeared. ”Can you get any sort of reading on the computer?”
Artoo, who had tried already a dozen times, simply twitted a negative.
Threepio was already toddling toward the turbolift. ”They'll be coming into the port bays. By the time we reach there they should be just about landed. Oh, thank goodness.”
Artoo simply lowered himself down onto his third wheel, and rolled after his golden counterpart, without comment. If he had reservations about the nature of the rescuers, as deduced from the make and serial numbers of their vessels, he kept them to himself.
It wasn't that Threepio hadn't considered the possibility of smugglers, looters, or s.p.a.ce pirates. But the events that had transpired since the two droids and the unfortunate Yeoman Marcopius's escape from the doomed Borealis had given the protocol droid a little more confidence in his ability to negotiate possible transport. in any case his power core was dangerously close to reserve, and even another pas de deux with s.p.a.ce pirates seemed preferable to going cold on the dead world, leaving Her Excellency to her own devices with no one who knew where she was. All the way through the dark, utterly silent streets of the plague-stricken dome, he composed scenarios and arguments to talk his way into pa.s.sage to Coruscant without informing potentially hostile-or simply verbally incontinent hosts what his message and mission might be.
And they all fell silent within him as he and Artoo stepped through the doorway of the largest of the docking bays, and he saw before him in the actinic glare of its landing lights the black s.h.i.+p that stood there, an Imperial Fleet Seinar IPV System Patrol Craft, like a sleek-sh.e.l.led crab, lowering its boarding ramp.
Threepio said, ”Oh, dear.”
On the face of it, there seemed very little chance that any amount of money would persuade the inhabitants to drop him and Artoo off at Coruscant.
It was too late to turn tail, however. Figures in dark e-suits were coming down the ramp-both men and women, judging from the way they walked, which was unusual for the Imperial Service-followed by two black, spider-armed floating remotes that scanned the base with hard beams of white light while the troopers crossed the stained floor of the bay to where the two droids stood. One of them, a dusky Twi'lek woman with an enormously extended helmet, touched the comm b.u.t.ton in her suit and said, ”Two of them,” and again Threepio wondered.
The Imperial Service would ordinarily no more employ nonhumans than it would employ nonmales. On closer study he identified the e-suits of Imperial design-CoMar 980s-but without emblems, though the sleeves and chest bore marks where emblems had been removed.
”No other signs of life on the base?” inquired a very small, very tinny voice from the comm.
”No, Admiral. Looks well and truly looted to me.”