Corellian Trilogy_ Ambush At Corellia Part 21

Anakin glared fiercely at Q9. "You shouldn't say mean things about Artoo," he said, then hopped down off his chair and stalked out of the room. "Nice going, Q9," Jacen said. "I'll go bring him back." Jacen got up and went after his little brother.

"I am pleased that young Master Jacen thinks I expressed myself well."

Ebrihim turned toward his a.s.sistant. "I suspect," he said, "that you have not quite mastered the concept of sarcasm.

* * The lights were dim when Han woke up in the cell. There was a dull, throbbing pain at the base of his skull and a foul taste in his mouth.

Why in the world had this Human League crowd s.n.a.t.c.hed him up off the street? The only thing he could think of was that a hero of the Rebel Alliance might not be the most popular sort of person in a group that probably had Imperial sympathies. But even that idea didn't hold water. He was missing something.

Han looked around, and saw that there was nothing in the cell but the dank cot he was sitting on and a bucket in the corner. Somehow it didn't look like the room was being used as originally intended. Rather, he was in what looked to be a converted bas.e.m.e.nt storeroom. Well, purpose-built or not, the cell was impossible for him to get out of all the same.

Han had been in enough cells enough times that he was not particularly terrified by being thrown in yet another one.

He was safe in the cell. It was when they came for him that the trouble would start.

It was at the precise moment that he had that happy thought that the lights came on, blindingly bright, and the door swung open. Han stumbled to his feet, struggling to force his eyes to adjust. By the time he could see clearly, Barriley, Flautis, and a third man, whose insignia appeared to show him to be of higher rank, were in the cell, peering at him intently. "Well, boys," the third man said. "I can see why you did it, and you were right to do it. It could have been a trick, but it turns out it wasn't. Turn him loose."

"But-" Flautis protested.

"Orders," the third man interrupted. "From way up, if you know what I mean."

"From the Hidden Leader?" Bamley asked, something like awe in his voice.

The third man merely nodded, as if his meaning were obvious.

"Well," Flautis said, immediately chastened. "Okay then."

Han turned toward the third man to ask what was going on, but he never got the chance. It was only as he was about to speak that he realized that he had put his back to Bamley again.

The blow on the back of his head didn't feel any better this time.

The universe went dark again.

It was evening, getting on toward night, and Leia could not decide whether to be angry or worried. Either Han was off having such a good time with some old cronies that he had forgotten to call home, or else he was in trouble. The governorgeneral's hovercar was supposed to be calling for them in a half hour.

It was then that she heard the sound of a hovercar coming in. Could the GovernorGeneral's car be early? She went to the window and looked up into the sky-and knew instantly, by the way that hovercar was coming in, hard, fast, without running lights, that it was not the governorgeneral or anyone else come to pay a social call. The CDF security teams had installed panic b.u.t.tons throughout the house. A tap on any of them would call the guards to red-alert status.

There was one by the window, and Leia reached to slap it down.

There it was! The hovercar droleP~~:u~f th~~~~gi~ sky three hundred meters shy o of its repulsors throwing strange and shifting shadows on the narrow country road. The hovercar b.u.mped once hard as it landed A rear door popped open, and a large, indistinct' shape was 'dumped out. Almost before it came to a halt, the hovercar had bounced back up into the sky and away irounded Guards rushed forward from the villa and surounded the new arrival. Kalenda grabbed her macrobinoculars and zoomed in close. 5 w that it was The figure lurched to its feet, and she a Han Solo looking very much the worse for wear. ood Kalen(ia swore to herself. This was not good. Not good at all Someone was sending another message, and even if she could not read it, it clearly was not meant to be friendly.

Things were beginning to go sour.

It was a quiet evening, Kalenda told herself, but things were most likely to happen when it was quiet. And then she heard it, the low whirring sound of a hovercar coming in on its repulsorlifts.

Suddenly the night was full of the sound of blaring alarnis, and the grounds of the Chief of State's villa were flooded with light. Guards scrambled for position. Kalenda ignored it all and scanned the sky for the intruder.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Conversation by Torchlight Dinner was done, and it had not been a cheerful affair.

Getting Han patched up from his injuries had put them behind schedule, but they had turned what was meant to be a social occasion into something closer to a council of war.

Nor had the noise from outside helped matters. Despite being six floors up, despite the soundproofing in Corona House, the GovernorGeneral's official residence, the shouting and the singing of the demonstrators were too loud to ignore. Now they had retired to the Governor-General's private study, and from here the sound was even louder.

They had given up all pretense of not hearing it. Instead they watched the proceedings from the study's window, the lights in the room low both to make it easier to see, and harder to be seen. The windows were supposed to be blasterproof, but there was no sense taking chances.

The flames of the flickering torches lit their faces as they watched the march of the thugs.

Governor-General Micamberlecto stared through the window, looking mournfully down at the spectacle below.

"There they are," he said. "Again tonight. And I dare not, dare not, call in the Corellia Defense Forces or the Public Safety Service. I am not even sure they are on my side anymore. Indeed, I am nearly sure they are no longer with me. If I called them, they might just join in.

He sighed and leaned his spindly shoulder against the edge of the window frame as he watched the rowdy demonstration below. To Leia the sound of his sigh was the saddest part of it all. It was such a tired sound, so full of resignation and frustrated hopes that were no longer even worth recalling. That one little sigh told her there was no real hope at all.

Leia and Han stood next to Micamberlecto, watching as well. Gray wisps of smoke still hung in the air, and the effigy of Micamberlecto was still smoldering, though by now it was so trodden upon as to be scarcely recognizable.

The demonstrators, all of them humans, nearly all of them men, were carrying torches as they marched in a circle around Corona House. The torches let off their own smoke as well, and it hung heavy in the windless air, draining the color from everything, making the night seem darker than it truly was. Those who did not have torches had placards and signs with anti-Drall and anti-Selonian slogans.

The singing-if you could call it singing-started up again, louder this time. The lyrics were coa.r.s.e, obscene, and quite distinctly not supportive of the New Republic.

The song reached its climax, the demonstrators bellowed out the last and most graphically offensive line, and then cheered for themselves.

"They'll go on, go on that way for quite a while yet," said Micamberlecto. He spoke Basic with hardly a trace of accent, but with one or two patterns of Frozian grammar and word order-most noticeably the tendency to repeat a phrase for emphasis. "They will march for a bit longer, a bit longer," the Governor-General went on, "but for all intents and purposes, I expect that's the end of the show.

Not much more to see that you have not seen already.

They'll sing and shout slogans, and get drunk and start some fights and break some windows, and drift off to wherever they come from-until the next time. The next time. But I doubt the streets will be safe tonight." Micamberlecto shook his head mournfully. "I am afraid you did not pick, did not pick, the ideal spot for your vacation." Micamberlecto was a Frozian, and the Frozians were not known for their cheerful outlook. No one could doubt their probity, honesty, or diligence, but they were a somewhat melancholy race. Still, there did not seem to be much to be optimistic about at the moment. "It doesn't look good,' Leia said.

'No, it does not," Micamberlecto agreed as he turned away from the window and sat back down at his oversized desk. He was a typical Frozian-tall, gangly, a scarecrow of a figure, a third again as tall as Han. Frozians were a fairly standard hominid species, if a rather elongated one. The extra joint in their arms and legs made their movements a bit offputting at first. To human eyes, the Frozians looked to have had all their arms and legs broken. To see Micamberlecto folded up in a chair, with his arms crossed-and recrossed through the second elbows-was a strange sight indeed.

Micamberlecto had short, golden-brown fur over his entire body. He had no noticeable external ears, and his deep brown eyes were set wide apart. His nose was on the end of his prominent muzzle. His mouth was small and lipless, as if it decided there was no sense even attempting to compete with that magnificent nose. Long, black whiskers grew from either side of his muzzle, forming a sort of enormous spiky mustache that grew past the sides of his head. He wiggled his nose thoughtfully, and the whiskers bounced up and down vigorously.

Is it always this bad?" Han asked.

"Yes and no," Micamberlecto said. "Mind you, even now, tonight, no doubt ninety-five percent of the city of Coronet is quiet and calm. Four blocks from here, perhaps no one knows that there has been another demonstration.

But it used to be that I would a.s.sure visitors that ninetynine percent of the city was calm. Things are getting worse, coming to a head. I wish to Froz we could cancel the trade summit. But too late.

Too late. Delegates are already on their way, and we in the New Republic cannot, cannot afford any f u,rther loss of face here in Corellia Sector.

No, we cannot.

"I'm afraid I agree with you, friend Micamberlecto," Leia said, talking over her shoulder as she watched the torchlight procession wend its way around the building.

"We did not know it was like this. We should cancel, but we can't."

"But what's it all about?" Han asked as he turned his back on the window. He winced as he turned his head, and he was moving stiffly.

Obviously he was still in some pain.

"No one seems to be able to answer me that. This should be a rich planet, a rich sector. It has all the resources and talent and investment capital it needs. It used to be rich, and peaceful. What went wrong?"

Micamberlecto shrugged elaborately and impressively.

"On Froz we have a saying. 'Things are bad when there are more questions than answers, but worse, but worse, when there are more answers than questions." You ask me one question, but I could give you a dozen, a hundred answers." He extended a long arm toward the window and the demonstrators beyond. "I wonder if any of our friends out there could give one, give one. As for myself, I could tell you the economy was bad, or that people are frustrated, or angry, or that there is much intolerance, if you like."

"Those are all true," Leia said, "but those are symptoms, not the cause."

"Quite right, quite right. Yes, economic dislocation caused by the upheaval of the last war is the proximate, proximate cause of unrest, but the root goes much deeper, deeper. Without a strong external government to keep the peace, malcontents and rabble-rousers of all sorts are coming out of the woodwork. And it is not just our friends out there. It is the other species as well. The Drall, the Selonians, and the humans have all produced their demagogues.

And they have set to work demonizing each other. But all those, all those answers tell us nothing. Your question asks after the symptoms, not the disease. I think the real answer is that you ask the wrong question. I think you have to ask-why didn't it happen before, before now?"

Han frowned as he sat down in a chair facing Micamberlecto's desk.

"Go on," he said.

"It's a simple question," Micamberlecto said. I askwhat has changed that makes this chaos possible? And the answer is simple-the collapse of empire. There is no power from above forcing all of them to behave. There was a gun to Corellia 5 head for a long time. 'Pretend you love your neighbor or we'll kill you,' said the Empire. No dissent, no dissent allowed, those on top supported, those below held down. No movement possible. Except the economy decayed, decayed during the trade disruptions, and everyone sank lower. That aggravated the crisis, but it did not cause it Leia looked out the window, down into the (larkening night, and the gloom of a torchlit parade seen from a distance. She turned her back on the view, crossed, and sat next to Han. "I'm not sure I like where you're going with this, but say on," she said.

"For millennia, all the species of the Corellian Sector lived under the monolithic government of the Old Republic, and then under the Empire.

But then the war came, war came, and the Empire collapsed. There was some fighting here, but not much. Here, the Imperial system simply fell in on itself. It collapsed, like a balloon with a slow leak.

"Since the Empire ceased to govern here, the sector has been left, left to its own devices. Our very fine New Republic sent me in as a Governor-General, but what is there for me to govern? Where are my tools to govern with? These last years, the Corellians have learned to pay me no mind.

I have a huge, a huge shortage of skilled, politically reliable people. There are not enough actively prnRepublic people to fill all the needed governmental position, or to staff the internal security forces.

I must hire ex-Imperial bureaucrats and soldiers. Worse, nearly every one of these breakaway groups employs some sort of mercenaries. Mostly ex-Imperial soldiers, but there are a few, a few retired from the Republic's armed forces. But scarce any of them are truly loyal to me, to the New Republic. And so the people know my soldiers and bureaucrats fail to follow my orders.

"Under the Empire, the generals and bureaucrats gobbled up other jobs with power. They were factory managers, business directors, on the controlling board of this and that and the other thing. Now, even with their Imperial positions and commissions gone, they still have the power of those other jobs.

"We say the Empire is dead, but here in Corellia the body lives on after the head has been lopped off. The little bosses are still there, doing what they have always done.

But now these police officials and Imperial bureaucrats answer to no one, no one. There is no higher authority that can punish them for going too far. And they are discovering that they like it that way. They can have the revenge, revenge, for the harm done to them five, ten, twenty, a hundred standard years ago, safe in the knowledge that no Imperial stormtroopers will break down their door and take them away. And that is the core of the problem.

"For endless years, endless years, it was the strong central government that kept the different species from having at each other. The Empire didn't much like nonhumans, but it liked antialien riots even less. They were bad, bad for business. People learned that if they caused trouble, they would be punished. So they didn't cause trouble.

The three Corellian races lived in harmony because they were forced, forced to do so. No no one is forcing them. Times are bad.

They need someone to blame. They blame each other.

"During the war, Corellians were asked to choose between alliance to the Republic and fealty to the Empire.

Now members of all the races of the Corellia system are asking, asking themselves-why any exterior authority at all?" Micamberlecto gestured out the window. "They are starting to ask-why be in the New Republic if it cannot promise order? Why not one planet, one government?

Or one landma.s.s, or one race, one government?"

Han shook his head mournftilly. "I can't believe it. I can look out the window. I can see it. I know it's happening.

But I don't believe it. I was born and raised in a united Corellian Sector-"

"Except that you weren't," Leia said. "What Micamberlecto is saying is that the Empire forced the Corellians to pretend they were united and at peace."

"And now theywe-don't have to pretend anymore.

Incredible.

"Incredible, only perhaps, but true, certainly. The Five Brothers, the inhabited worlds of the Corell System, are on the brink of anarchy.

Generations of enforced peace between the three leading species-human, Selonian, and Drallhave come to an end." Leia looked at her husband, and she needed no ability in the Force to understand his pain, his numbness, his shock.

The sights they had seen were bad enough for her. She could imagine what they had been like for Han. But for Leia, what Micamberlecto was saying was far more disturbing than a mob of street brawlers. Her whole life had been centered around the choice between Republic or Empire. The question had always been which was to be the central authority, never whether there was to be a central authority.

Now, here, that was no longer so. The idea of going it alone was starting to take hold. It took little imagination to see how quickly that might spread.

"Micamberlecto, we cannot allow this to happen," she said. "If the Corellian Sector is allowed to disintegrate, the idea of separatism could spread-and lead to chaos."

"It has begun to spread already," said Micamberlecto in a still more morose tone of voice. "Groups of all three species-and of other Corellian Sector species-are starting to set up independent states in the Outlier systems that surround us. Already a number of them have broken away, broken away from the sector, rejecting my authority-and thus, by extension, the authority of the New Republic as a whole. The sector is threatening to degenerate into a crazy quilt of mini-empires and rump states."

"Is that such a bad thing?" Han asked. "I mean I can see the problems, but what does it matter if all these little planets are independent, as long as they're peaceful and don't hurt anyone?"

Micamberlecto shook his head sadly. "But they do hurt each other,"

he said. "You saw the sort calling for independence tonight. They are rabble-rousers, and rabble-rousers need enemies. People like your friends in the Human League need someone to blame. No, there will be no peaceful, amicable separation. There will be war and riot and vengeance that will go on and on. If the old enemy was the Empire, the new enemy is fragmentation and chaos, chaos."

"How serious a threat is the Human League?" Han asked. "And who's this Hidden Leader character?"

Micamberlecto shook his head sadly. "If I could answer those questions, I would be a most happy, happy Froz.

There seem to be Human League thugs everywhere one moment, and none at all the next. They are good at vanishing when they need to do so.

And the Hidden Leader is just that. Hidden. Some inside the organization know who he is, but no one, no one outside. I simply don't have the police and intelligence facilities to do a proper investigation of them. And of course the NRl seems to have its own troubles, own troubles in Corellia We don't get much information from them."

Leia frowned. "If the situation gets much worse, the New Republic is not going to have much choice but to start acting like the Empire.

We'll have to bring in peace enforcement troops to stop the fighting.

We'll have to impose our will on the Corellian Sector, the same way the Empire did."