Part 28 (2/2)
Around them, there was sudden stillness as the Force storm relaxed its grip.
Leia swore. Luke's hand stole to the red, swollen marks the drochs had left on his flesh, and he s.h.i.+vered.
”Can you fix it?” he asked Liegeus softly.
”I don't know. I don't have tools.”
”Umolly and Aunt Gin'll have some...”
”It won't be in time,” said Leia. ”There's an armored Headhunter in the same hangar and an old Blastboat. You can mount the main turret guns in the Headhunter; that'll give you enough firepower to bring him down.”
”The place'll be guarded...”
”The synthdroids are gone. Dead. I put them out of commission before I escaped and I don't think Ashgad's had time to get them back online.
Come on.”
Luke bolted back to the Chariot. Aunt Gin and Arvid were already tearing loose the antigravs from the two lifter platforms that had gotten the Rationalists to the top of the tower, affixing them to the black a.s.sault speeder's sides.
Only when the Mobquet had disappeared over the parapet did the battered metal doors of the stairway into the tower itself open, and Callista step forth.
”Liegeus?” She held out her hand to the philosopher. The earpiece of the ancient intercom system still hung around her neck. ”We've got tools down here.”
”And they'll be about as much good as those silly arrows,” stated Aunt Gin fiercely, bustling over with her toolkit. She shoved the enormous, rusty box into Liegeus's hands. ”Take this, son. I for one haven't spent ten years on this crummy rock to see it get taken over by those cheats at Loronar.”
She led the way into the tower. Liegeus paused on the top step, studying Callista's face. Comparing the thin, tired features with those of the woman who had been Taselda's slave, the woman Beldorion had taken prisoner. ”I'm pleased to see you well, after all that-er-un-pleasantness,” he said gently. ”I owe you a kind of thanks, for opening my eyes to what Ashgad was doing, though I never thought I should be so mad as to say so. You were right.”
Callista shook her head. ”You were afraid for your life,” she said.
”All the knowledge could have done was hurt you, which it looks like it did. I'm only glad you were able to take care of Leia.”
”After having not taken care of you?” There was a self-deprecating wrinkle behind the genuine shame in his eyes, and Callista smiled.
”I can take care of myself. Most ladies can.”
”How well I know. You know your young man is looking for you.”
Callista said softly, ”I know.”
”Quite honestly, Madame Admiral, that's all I'm able to tell you.”
Threepio made one of his best human gestures, spreading his arms, palms out, at precisely the correct angle and positioning to indicate a friendly helplessness, a complete willingness to divulge whatever lay in his power.
And his digitalized recognition of human body language indicated to him that Daala was not buying it one credit's worth.
But she said, her harsh voice slow, ”My t.i.tle is 'Admiral,” droid, not 'Madame Admiral.” I was-an officer of the Imperial fleet on exact parity with others of my rank, and you will employ that usage whenever you address me.”
Her eyes were like ash-burned out, exhausted, defeated. Threepio did not think he had ever seen such ruin, such bitterness, on a human face.
”Once, Tarkin and I together could have ruled the Empire,” she continued slowly. ”Looking back on it, I can't even remember why. All I seek, now, is a place to live out the rest of my life where I will not be disturbed.
I thought I had found such a place on Pedducis Chorios, a world in a neutral sector, with amenable local authorities, beyond the interference of those ham-fisted, brainless, contentious madmen who are engaged in the final throes of tearing to pieces what was once the finest system of government this galaxy has known. I want no more of it, or of them.”
Her hands lay smooth over the arms of her chair, her knees together, the square bones of the joints and the hard bulge of muscle clearly defined where the drab trousers tailored to the flesh. Threepio's copious databanks contained a great deal of very alarming information about this woman: one of the most brilliant commanders in the Imperial fleet, but a mad bantha, a loose gun firing at random in battle. A woman of formidable competence and terrifying anger.
”And now I come to take up the advisory position I and my partners have been offered by the Pedducian Warlords,” she continued in that quiet voice, whose hoa.r.s.e timbre spoke of burning gases inhaled in the last battle on board the Knight Hammer, the battle in which Callista had destroyed her flags.h.i.+p and in which she and Callista had both been thought to perish. ”And what do I find?”
Threepio had never been good at distinguis.h.i.+ng rhetorical from actual questions.
”Invasion, the Death Seed plague, wholesale rebellion, looting...”
”Be silent.”
He logged the interchange in his Later Study file under the heading of ”Determinative Cues to Separate Rhetorical from Actual Questions.”
It was his duty as a protocol unit to achieve perfection in that area, and he was aware that it would probably prolong his period of usefulness as well.
”I find droids who have clearly been at large for some time in this sector, droids whose function is to accurately record all data taking place around them, whose answers to my questions are so comprehensively riddled with holes and omissions that they lead me to suspect that there is something going on.”
She rose to her feet, and touched a wall hatch. With silent efficiency the panel revolved, exhibiting a complete and up-to-date electronic a.n.a.lysis kit. She activated the data screens with three taps of those long, square-tipped fingers, and unhooked a coaxial cable.
”Fortunately, many, many years ago I had a friend who taught me how to communicate with droids.”
Threepio said, with genuine interest, ”How very kind of him,” but Artoo, quicker on the uptake, made a nervous attempt to back away, thwarted by the restraining bolt that Daala's Sergeant-at-Arms had taken the precaution of installing on both droids before bringing them into her presence. Daala checked over the various interfaces and cables added by poor Captain Bortrek and finally hooked her own coax into one of the ports he had s.p.a.ce-taped to Artoo's side.
She flipped a switch on the a.n.a.lysis kit; Artoo quivered and gave a faint, protesting wail.
”Now,” said Daala, her green eyes narrowing. ”Tell me what's happening in the Meridian sector.”
”What the blazes are those things?” Lando flipped through half a dozen data sectors, then cut back immediately to another screen of scan field to check on the next pa.s.s of the vicious, needlelike attackers. ”And how much damage did that one do?”
Chewbacca yowled something through the comm from the rapidly freezing rear quarter, where he was floating near the ceiling to fix burned-out wiring through hissing ma.s.ses of emergency foam. ”Those things are the things that're gonna appear on our headstones, pal,” said Han.
”The most i can figure is they're some kind of CCIR technology, like synthdroids,” said Lando, brown hands flicking and scrambling over the s.h.i.+eld controls while Han whipped and pivoted the Millennium Falcon through the desperate series of zigzags and loop the loops that was the only possible defensive strategy against the things. ”The Antemeridian fleet isn't anywhere near us, they can't possibly be guiding them in the usual sense of the word.”
Around them, the Courane and the Fire-eateand the light explorer Sundance, in which Kyp Durron had shown up to a.s.sist-were doing the same, snaking and weaving in a desperate attempt to remain in position near Nam Chorios until the actual invading fleet showed up to fight.
Only the fact that they'd made orbit before the arrival of the gnatlike attackers, with barely forty minutes to spare, let them hold any kind of position at all.
”Are you kidding?” said Han. ”You know what a synthdroid costs?
That's crazy!”
”I know synthdroid technology is based on a kind of programmable crystal, and that's what kicks up the price... Blast!” he added, as there was a jarring flash and more red lights went up on the board.
”Chewie, we've got another hit, starboard s.h.i.+eld-yeah, I know about the hole in the port s.h.i.+eld!”
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