Star Wars_ Allegiance Part 29

And as she'd seen in the bunker, the Commodore's final action had been to call someone in the sector capital.

With a final look at the wrapped body drifting through the void, Mara turned the ship toward Shelkonwa. Governor Ch.o.a.rd had sent the Reprisal to destroy the Blood-Scars and cover his tracks. He was a traitor to the Empire.

And Mara was going to take him down.

Chapter Eighteen.

LEIA HAD FULLY EXPECTED TO FIND GOVERNOR Ch.o.a.rd's troops already surrounding their hotel by the time she and Chivkyrie arrived. But the hotel and grounds looked just the way they'd left them an hour and a half earlier.

Nevertheless Chivkyrie insisted on entering alone to retrieve their belongings, directing Leia to a tapcafe across the street that catered to offworld personnel. Leia went in, ordered a small drink just for show, and found a table by a window where she could watch.

It seemed like forever before Chivkyrie finally emerged from the hotel, her carrybags looped casually over his shoulders. He looked around, then crossed the street toward her. Dropping some credits on the table, Leia went outside to meet him. "What took you so long?" she asked as she took the bags.

"I thought it would be wise to make a few comlink calls," Chivkyrie said, gesturing her down the street away from the hotel.

"Forgive the impertinence, but that doesn't sound all that wise to me,"

Leia pointed out. "You could have been tracked and caught."

"If so, better there than in your presence," Chivkyrie said. "At any rate, I believe we may have at least a little breathing s.p.a.ce. While the ports have been closed to all female humans of your description, my friends tell me there are no reports of wide-scale patroller activity, at least not in the first-tier areas where any search would naturally begin."

"Or else Ch.o.a.rd is smart enough to a.s.sume we'll avoid those places."

"Hardly," Chivkyrie said calmly. "There is a large population of Adarians in Makrin City and the surrounding area. Governor Ch.o.a.rd is quite familiar with our strengths and weaknesses and way of thinking.

Furthermore, Chief Administrator Disra unfortunately knows me all too well. He knows that I could not permit a guest to stay in quarters below her own proper tier." "Yet you did so," Leia pointed out. Chivkyrie ducked his head. "No," he said, sounding embarra.s.sed. "I allowed you to check into that hotel, but I never intended for you to actually stay there. I planned to send my servants to pick up your belongings after our meeting and move them to my home."

Leia grimaced. They were indeed an inflexible people. "So where are we going now?"

"Do not worry, Princess Leia," Chivkyrie said, his voice grim but steady.

"My tier status will no longer be a problem for us, nor will it cloud my thinking and dictate my actions." He seemed to brace himself. "For you see, my actions have betrayed my guest. I have no choice but to renounce my name, my home, and my tier status."

Leia stared at him in surprise. For an Adarian to do such a thing was the societal equivalent of cutting off his arm. Did he really understand that? She opened her mouth to ask- And had the grace to shut it again. Of course he understood.

By joining the Rebellion he had tacitly stated he was willing to give his life for freedom. Now he had placed his social standing on the line, as well. For an Adarian, was a far harder decision to make. "Thank you,"

Leia murmured. "What now?" "Now," Chivkyrie said, lengthening his stride, "we find a way to use the brief time we have been given." Leia picked up her own pace to keep up. Inflexible these people might be, but they were also honorable and brave. It was, she decided, a fair trade.

They walked three blocks, then got onto one of the public air transports heading northwest toward the main s.p.a.ceport. They got off six blocks later and switched to a transport headed south toward the main interstellar financial district and the third-tier residential areas around it. At the edge of the district they again switched transports, this one heading east toward where Makrin City ended abruptly at a line of craggy cliffs dotted with dark caves.

"The catacombs," Chivkyrie said, pointing at the distant holes visible between the buildings and occasional trees as they walked down a stained walkway. "Over the centuries they have housed the criminals and the exiled, the bringers of war and the bringers of plague. At this time in our history they have become home to the dest.i.tute of many species, peoples who came to Shelkonwa looking for a better life but failed to achieve it."

Leia wrinkled her nose and was immediately ashamed of her reaction. It sounded grim, but no worse than some of the other places she'd found herself in over the years. If Chivkyrie could lower himself to mixing with his society's lowest tier, she certainly could do so.

Besides, the caves could hardly smell any worse than the aromas a.s.saulting her from the packed rows of buildings lining the narrow street. "Sounds like a good place to hide out for a while," she said.

"It is an ideal place," Chivkyrie agreed. "Which is why we are not going there. The caves will be one of the first areas Governor Ch.o.a.rd orders searched when he realizes we are not in any of the city's first-tier locations. We will, however, take some of your personal items there later, the better to confuse our pursuers."

"Good idea," Leia said. "If we're not going to the catacombs, where are we going?"

Abruptly, Chivkyrie stopped. "Here," he said, pointing to the building beside her.

Leia looked. They were standing by a small tapcafe squeezed in between two secondhand stores, with a faded sign over the door in Adarese and a four-language menu in the tinted window. "Here?" she echoed.

"It is sometimes wisest to hide the prize in plain sight, is it not?"

Chivkyrie said. He was trying to be decorous, Leia knew, but it was abundantly clear that he was quietly pleased with himself. "I have thus obtained for you a job."

For one of the very few times in her life, Leia found herself at a complete loss for words. "Oh," she said, just to say something.

"I searched the employment ads myself, to eliminate any chance that it could be traced to a servant or friend," Chivkyrie went on. "You can begin immediately."

"Thank you," Leia said, again mostly to say something. The tapcafe, she noted uneasily, seemed to be the source of the majority of the neighborhood's objectionable odors. "What exactly will I be doing?"

"Serving at tables, of course." Chivkyrie frowned. "Unless you would prefer to cook?"

"No, no-serving's fine," Leia a.s.sured him. "I don't actually know any Adarian recipes."

"The tapcafe also serves Mungras and other species," Chivkyrie said.

"Perhaps later you will be asked to cook for some of them. But we will stay with serving for now. Come-the workers' entrance is around the block and through the back. The manager, Vicria, is expecting you."

Vicria turned out to be a lanky female Mungra with dark red accents in an otherwise tawny mane. "This position requires the lifting of heavy trays," she said doubtfully, her orange eyes measuring Leia's slender form.

"I understand," Leia a.s.sured her. "Don't worry, I'm stronger than I look."

"We will soon discover whether that is true," Vicria said. "There are covergowns in that locker. Put one on, then come to my office for an orderpad."

Leia nodded. "Thank you."

On Alderaan all the serving had been done by BD-3000 attendant droids.

But Leia had been served often enough by living beings that she'd long since become used to the idea. Indeed, after the first few such experiences she'd hardly even noticed the servers anymore unless there was a mistake or accident of some sort. She'd therefore managed to come away with the impression that such work was both simple and largely effortless.

It took only a standard hour for her to lose the simple part of her preconceptions. Serving a table's worth of even these lower-tier Adarians was a subtle minefield of small intra-tier distinctions that required her to take their orders in the proper descending rank succession and not simply by how they were arranged around the table. Since the protocol apparently was for the highest-ranked person to choose his or her preferred seat, followed by the others in their turn, there wasn't even a consistent pattern that repeated itself from group to group, and Leia collected several icy complaints before she figured that out.

The Mungras were less socially rigid, but they presented their own unique set of challenges. It was almost a relief when, late in the afternoon, three humans wandered in. Or it would have been if they hadn't been so obnoxiously falling-down drunk already.

The effortless part of the preconceptions took three standard hours to lose.

It was just after midnight when she finally trudged up the stairway to the row of fourth-floor apartments the tapcafe provided its employees.

Chivkyrie was waiting, dozing in a large armchair that would have comfortably accommodated an overweight Gamorrean. "Ah," he said, snapping awake and pulling himself upright as she closed the door behind her. "I trust the evening's work went well?"

"It went reasonably well, yes," Leia confirmed, looking around as she took off her covergown and hung it on the rack by the door. The apartment was small and cramped, no bigger than a ship's cabin and only slightly better furnished. But it had a comfortable-looking bed, and that was all she really cared about right now. "The afternoon, on the other hand, was pretty much a disaster," she added. "How about your day?"

"Marginally productive," Chivkyrie said. "The patrollers have begun searching all first- and second-tier hotels, aided by a contingent of Governor Ch.o.a.rd's own palace soldiers. There is food in the locker, if you're hungry."

"Thank you." Crossing to the apartment's cooking corner, Leia opened the supply locker. There was some leftover Adarian cuisine in back, a selection of more human-palatable food in front. "Sounds like they're getting serious," she said as she pulled out a meal's worth of the latter and loaded it into the cooker.

"More serious than you realize," Chivkyrie said soberly. "I am told that a message about you has been sent to Imperial Center."

Leia grimaced. She'd hoped that Ch.o.a.rd would keep the search local for a while in the hope of reaping whatever political prestige would come of personally turning her over to the Emperor. Apparently he'd decided instead to let the Imperials do some of the heavy work. "Any idea how soon they'll have a force here?"

"It may be here already," Chivkyrie said. "There are two army garrisons in Shelsha sector, one of them only six hours' flight time away. There is also a Star Destroyer on patrol that could be brought in."

"And probably will be," Leia said. "They'll need something with heavy firepower in orbit in case we make a run for it."

Chivkyrie sighed deeply. "I am sorry, Princess. I have failed you. I can see no way out for us."

"I've been in worse places," Leia a.s.sured him, fighting against the seductive pull of despair. The only thing at the end of that road was defeat. "All we can do is hold on to freedom as long as we can and watch for an opportunity. Don't forget, if Vokkoli and Slanni made it off Shelkonwa safely, they'll have gotten word to the Alliance leadership."

"Which is too far away to reach us with aid before the Imperials arrive,"

Chivkyrie pointed out. He took a look at Leia's face and grimaced. "My apologies," he said, ducking his head. "I should not be speaking thus. I know the Alliance will do everything possible to rescue you."

Leia turned her face to the cooker, a memory flashing unexpectedly through her mind. I'm Luke Skywalker, the too-short stormtrooper had said eagerly as he pulled off his helmet. I'm here to rescue you.

He could have been here beside her now, too, if she'd just kept her mouth shut at that meeting. So could Han, if he weren't so infuriatingly stiff-necked about politics. Instead the two of them were flying madly around the sector trying to figure out how to protect Alliance supply lines from pirates.

A mission that was about to become totally irrelevant, she realized glumly. With Chivkyrie's imminent capture, and with Vokkoli and Slanni now known to Ch.o.a.rd and his people, the Rebel presence in Shelsha sector was as good as destroyed. Once it collapsed, there would be precious little need for supply lines.

She shook her head sharply. That was despair talking again. What she needed right now was to put all such thoughts firmly away, and to get herself some food and sleep. The physical inevitably colored the emotional, and she was as physically drained right now as she'd been in a long time.

She was pulling her meal out of the cooker when through the half-open window she heard the faint sound of breaking gla.s.s.

Chivkyrie was on his feet in an instant, a blaster in his hand. "Get down," he whispered as he moved cautiously toward the window.

Leia ignored him, crossing instead to the door and flicking off the lights. In the sudden darkness she dug her hold-out blaster from her pocket and joined Chivkyrie at the window.

There were fewer streetlights in this part of town than in the higher-tier areas. But there was enough light to see the two shadowy figures on the roof of the three-story building across the wide back alley, plus a third figure who was even now easing his way through one of the darkened third-floor windows.

"Burglars," Chivkyrie muttered, his voice edged with contempt.

"You suppose anyone's home?" Leia asked.

"Unlikely," Chivkyrie said. "Those will be the homes of the playhouse employees on the next street over, and it does not close for another hour. Typical of coward-"

"Wait," Leia said, straining her eyes. The window two down from the one the burglar had entered-had the curtains there just twitched?

They twitched again; and then, to Leia's horror, they parted and a small Adarian face peered anxiously out into the night.

Stuffing her blaster back into her pocket, Leia pulled the window the rest of the way open. "What are you doing?" Chivkyrie demanded in a startled voice.

"There's a child in there," Leia told him, leaning out the window. Just below her was a narrow decorative ledge extending about twenty centimeters outward from the stone facing that ran the length of the building. Below that was a sheer drop to a ledge beneath the third-floor windows, another to the second-floor ledge, and another finally to the alley below. Above her, similar ledges marked the way up to the tenth-floor windows. The building's stone facing itself was old and crumbling, with plenty of gaps and grooves that an experienced climber with the right tools could probably make good use of.

But Leia wasn't experienced, she had no climbing gear at all, and even if she had, that route wouldn't get her across the twenty-meter gap to where she needed to be.

"You must not interfere," Chivkyrie said urgently, plucking at her sleeve. "If patrollers come-"

"I'm not abandoning that child," Leia cut him off. "I've seen what burglars can do when they run into someone." A meter to the left of her window a thick plastic drainpipe ran from the roof-edge rain catcher to the alley, fastened to the wall at every other floor by a flimsy-looking bracket. Leaning out onto the window-sill, she braced herself on the ledge and gave the pipe a shake. It jiggled in her grip, the brackets not quite flimsy enough for her to simply tear the pipe free by hand. The pipe itself, on the other hand, seemed quite st.u.r.dy, more than thick enough to support her weight. Shifting around onto her side, she drew her blaster again, and lined it up with the topmost bracket.

"Princess, I implore you," Chivkyrie said, all but begging now. "If the patrollers come, we will be lost. And the intruders, too, may hear."

"I doubt anyone even notices blaster shots in this neighborhood," Leia said tartly. "Or cares." Holding her breath, sighting carefully along the barrel, she squeezed the trigger.

The blaster bolt sounded twice as loud as usual in the relative stillness of the night, its echo from the surrounding buildings almost covering up the soft clatter as the pieces of the shattered bracket skittered across the window ledge. She shifted aim and shot off the next bracket, working her way down to the one on her own fourth-floor level.

She might not be a very good tapcafe server, she thought with a touch of dark satisfaction, but she could play sharpshooter games with the best of them.

Chivkyrie, she'd noticed out of the corner of her eye, had winced at each shot. "Now what?" he demanded as silence again descended on the neighborhood.

Leia frowned. That was, she realized suddenly, a very good question. Her plan had been to shoot off the brackets, push the pipe over from the connection joint just above the fourth-floor ledge to land the end on the other rooftop, and then slide down it to where she could confront the burglars. But now it belatedly occurred to her that as she slid down the pipe she would be presenting herself a perfect target to the two accomplices waiting on the other roof.

And even if they didn't shoot her, then what? If she managed to rescue the child and chase them all away, how would she get back to her room again? Walk her way up the pipe like a darediv stage performer?

In her fatigue she hadn't thought it through. Unfortunately there was no time to think it through any further now. The child was still in danger, and getting over to the other building was still the only way to help.

Leaning out the window again, she got a grip on the pipe- "Wait,"

Chivkyrie said, grabbing her leg. "Look- they're leaving."

Sure enough, the burglar Leia had seen going into the window had now reappeared, .climbing back up his ropes at breakneck speed. Above him, one of his two accomplices was helping to haul him up, while the other was frantically stuffing their gear into a dark shoulder sack. "I guess they do notice shots here," Leia commented.

"Your shots will have alerted the entire neighborhood," Chivkyrie said, sounding as if he wasn't sure whether to be pleased or worried. "The intruders have been frightened away."

Leia looked back at the curtained window. Surely the burglar hadn't had time to hurt the youngster.

And then the curtains parted, and the child's face once again peered nervously out.

Leia exhaled in a relieved huff and sent the child an encouraging smile, though she doubted the other would be able to read her expression in the dark. Looking back at the roof, she saw the trio of burglars jump the low parapet to the next building and race out of sight farther down the block.

"Please?" Chivkyrie said, tugging on her leg again. "Before someone else sees you?"

A moment later Leia was back inside the room. "It was a brave and honorable thing you did," he said as he closed the window behind her. "We must hope it will not in turn bring destruction upon us."

"It might," Leia conceded, crossing the room and switching on the lights again. "But it was something I had to do. The reason the Rebel Alliance exists is to free e galaxy from tyranny. The fear of the violent and the lawless is no less a tyranny than the edicts that come from the Emperor's throne."

Returning the blaster to her pocket, she turned back to the cooking corner. "And meanwhile," she added, "even the guardians of freedom have to eat."

Rather to Leia's surprise, the patrollers didn't come that night. They didn't show up in the morning, either, nor were they waiting for her when she reported to the tapcafe just before midday for her shift.