Star Wars_ Planet Of Twilight Part 6

He got to his feet, scrambled up the shining slabs to the top of the ridge. The ceaseless wind flattened his flightsuit to his body, whined softly among the rocks. Five or six kilometers away on the plain below the gla.s.sy hogback he saw what looked like the outline of ruined walls, and against the translucent rose and purple of the surrounding ground, the startlingly green splotches of what he had not yet seen in all this world: vegetation.

He raised to his eyes the macrobinoculars he'd found under the speeder's seat-much-mended manuals and probably older than he was, but they worked.

They showed him wind-scoured foundations, long stripped of everything usable. At a guess it was one of the old prisons that had formed the original colonies on this world. He traced the treble walls, the placement of blockhouses designed to defend against an attack from within rather than without.

Still, there was water down there somewhere. The harsh projections of faceted stone cut his hands as he picked his way back down to the speeder, and he shivered a little in the chill as he put the craft into gear and headed down the canyons toward the ruin.

With clumsy dignity, See-Threepio arranged the body of Yeoman Marcopius in the scout boat's small specimen-freeze chamber. The craft contained only emergency medical kits, not even a cla.s.s-3 med droid, much less a stasis box, and though Threepio hooked the boy immediately into life supports and diagnostics, nothing had been able to save him. The diagnostics faithfully reported no anomalous conditions, no poison, no disease, no bacteria, and no virus on one screen, while the other cataloged the absence of oxygen absorption or brain function.

There was nothing wrong with him. He'd just died.

The protocol droid coaxed the young man's limbs into the most dignified position possible in a chamber slightly more than a meter square, then straightened himself up, made a few little human warm-up noises, and proceeded to produce the standard Service for the Departed, complete with music.

Artoo tweeped a worried inquiry. Threepio paused in mid-fugue and said, "Well, of course I'm playing the Service for the Departed on full-speed fast-forward! We'll be coming out of hypers.p.a.ce soon-if poor Yeoman Marcopius's computations were correct. And I don't scruple to tell you, Artoo, that i'm very worried that he might already have been feeling ill when he input the calculations to the computer. It takes so little to disarrange an organic brain. Really, only a temperature variation of half a dozen degrees. Who knows where we might emerge from hypers.p.a.ce? Or if anyone will be within hailing distance to pilot the ship into port?"

The astromech wibbled another comment.

"Oh, you've checked? We are on the proper course to emerge within hailing distance of the Durren orbital base? Why didn't you say so before? Now'

don't keep interrupting me. It isn't respectful."

He turned back to the young man in the white uniform-the young man who had been their primary hope of a swift and successful planetfall at Durren-a.s.sumed a pose of reverent mourning, and whipped through the two-hour service in one seven-second lightspeed burst.

"There." He slid the freeze chamber lid shut and turned the locking ring.

"The unit is certified to contain any form of communicable disease in the Registry. Once we've alerted Fleet authorities as to Master Ash-gad's appalling treachery, poor Yeoman Marcopius's family can be notified....

Good heavens!" His gold head snapped a quick thirty degrees as a light went up over the infirmary door. "That's the warning signal.

We'd better immobilize to come out of hypers.p.a.ce."

The amber light blinked faster as the two droids ascended the lift to the bridge. Though the scout boat was set for an automatic deceleration and would have emerged from hypers.p.a.ce whether or not anyone was at the controls, Threepio felt vaguely safer as he stepped into one of the several immobilization niches near the lift door of the bridge. Beyond the vacant chairs of captain and co-pilot, the line of readouts appeared normal. No warning lights shone beneath the great viewports with their svirling lights and darks of mutated starlight and bent gravitational fields. Artoo settled himself in the niche nearest the consoles and extruded an input jack to the dataport at the near end of the board. He tweeped rea.s.suringly as the lockdown lights flowed from their flutter of blinking into steady, burning gold.

"I know we're coming out at the far edge of Durren planetary s.p.a.ce,"

retorted Threepio crossly. "Durren is a major port. Only an idiot would set an automatic deceleration sequence for anywhere that there would be the slightest possibility of encountering another ship."

The lights on the bridge shifted and brightened. The gravity field surged as regular power cut in. The weird, mottled-silk patterns of stretched starlight flexed, lined, and gave way suddenly to the blackness of normal s.p.a.ce, barely seen behind the small Republic gunship that occupied eighty-five percent of the front viewscreen and toward which the scout boat was barreling full-blast.

Threepio said, "Oh, dear!" and Artoo let out a screaming whistle of alarm. There was a flash and a glare, then the whole screen washed out in an actinic blaze of blue-white as the gunship blew up-it must have taken a direct hit in the tanks-instants before the scout boat plunged through the surging whirl of debris where it had been.

The scout boat lurched, heaved, and cartwheeled under the slamming shock waves and pounding debris. Threepio cried, "Oh, dear!" again as the viewscreens cleared and the vast blue disk of Durren appeared, the s.p.a.ce between dotted with sparkling clouds of dissipating debris, silver flashes of E-wings and various small craft that looked like planet-hoppers and armored traders spitting laser fire at one another in battle and, farther off, the sprawling, angular, black-and-silver bulk of the Durren orbital base surrounded by a cloud of attacking ships.

"Great heavens, Artoo, what can possibly be going on? I know the orbital base is being attacked," he added irritably, in response to his friend's immediate reply. "But who would do such a thing?"

Artoo, still jacked into the main computer, plastered the readouts below the vievscreen with stats.

"They're all converted trading vessels." Threepio pushed the stabilizer bars from the front of his niche and toddled to the console for a better look. Though vessel identification had not been part of his original programming, several years with the fugitive Rebel fleet had augmented his databanks in that area by a factor of three.

"Look at that. Even orbital shuttles have been converted into fighter craft. But why isn't the Durren base responding with anything larger than an E-wing?"

Artoo twiddled.

"Oh, yes. Of course. I was about to do that." The protocol droid toggled the comm and keyed through to Durren frequencies. His stiff golden fingers navigated the board, switching from channel to channel through the curses of squad commanders, base commanders barking out orders and contravening them in the next breath, and a spate of intelligence and reconnaissance from the planet itself.

"It's a rebellion!" said Threepio, shocked. "A factional revolt against the Durren Central Planetary Council! The insurgent coalition has repudiated the Planetary Council's agreements with the Republic and is even now attacking the main government centers!"

Artoo beeped a question.

"Yesterday, it seems, after the Cadus and the Corbantis left the base to deal with reports of pirate attack on Ampliquen. The major attack on the government center began last night, and they began the a.s.sault on the base only hours later."

He tilted his head, listening again. Between them and the planet, a Kaloth Y-9 trader maneuvered itself out of orbit and headed away out of the system.

"With attacks being made on all major ports, interplanetary trade is being turned away. Artoo, this is terrible! No ships are able to come in!

There's no effective ground control! But someone will have to come out and get us. Listen..."

He stabbed the comm toggle. "Durren base, this is the scout boat from the Republic flagship Borealis! Come in, Durren base! Something terrible has happened!"

Static growled and whined at him, broken fragments of someone's voice jarring out of the comm and then being drowned again.

"But Her Excellency has been kidnapped! There was an ambush, a plague..."

Artoo swiveled on his axis, all lights flashing, and let loose a shrill barrage of twiddles, whoops, and beeps. The taller droid turned his horrified attention from the blue curve of the planet, which had grown slowly larger at the top of the screen but was now sliding toward its edge as the scout boat's trajectory began to carry it past Durren and out toward the empty starriness of s.p.a.ce.

"Don't be ridiculous, Artoo. Even if there is a traitor in the Council, all communications can't be monitored!" He turned back to the comm.

"You have to listen to us... I" But only static replied.

On the screen before them, the bulky but heavily armed traders of the partisan forces opened fire on the A-Wing squadrons that were evidently all the orbital base had to send against them. The smaller, lighter ships scattered like silvery fish in the planet's reflected light.

"Chief of State Organa Solo has been kidnapped!" Threepio tried again.

"She's being held captive on Nam Chorios! We're not getting through."

He made a few tentative stabs at the controls, but nothing happened.

The blue disk of Durren slipped to the edge of the screen, then vanished.

Only s.p.a.ce lay before them. s.p.a.ce and eternity, empty and dark as the abyss of a tomb.

Threepio toggled the comm again. "Help? His faint, despairing cry reached vainly out toward a welter of broken receivers and beings who were in no mood to pay attention. "Can anyone out there hear us. Help!"

As Luke maneuvered it down the canyon, the XP-38A sagged lower and lower toward the ground. Either an antigray cell was giving out or the fuel that powered the cell's modulator coil was running low. It w, as impossible to tell which from the defunct and sand-blasted gauges.

Luke muttered sotto voce imprecations against those who would let a good piece of machinery like this get into such a condition, and reached out with the Force to boost the vehicle's rusty belly over a line of palely gleaming transparent rocks-blanched violet, jade green, white blues, all rinsed-out hues like glacier ice.

At the last moment he decided not to use the Force after all and applied the brakes instead. The speeder wibbled to a halt in a way that made Luke think there was a problem with the stabilizers as well.

After a moment, like a tired bantha, the small craft settled to the slanted rocks of the canyon floor.

The silence was huge, like the desert silences of Tatooine. Like the desert silence, it breathed.

Then behind him he heard a soft, deadly crackling, and felt the lance of electricity stab the air. Turning, he saw flickering snakes of lightning racing down the face of the cliffs, like skeletal hands, or the wide-flung root systems of a thorn plant, a zone of fast-moving corusca-tion close to half a mile broad and heading his way.

For an instant he watched it, fascinated. It poured down the face of the cliffs, raced over the jagged rocks at the bottom, sparking and leaping brighter as it raced over the slabs and projections of giant crystals that seemed to grow out of the darker rock. As it came closer he put forth his mind into the Force and raised the speeder in which he sat a few' feet above the ground. The ground lightning poured past under it, moving at the same time along the canyon walls to both sides; he felt the bolts of it that leapt up and struck the bottom of the speeder, jarring him even through its insulation with mild jolts of pain. At the same time he could feel the Force, like a roaring in his mind or hot wind blowing across his face, could almost see it as a sort of ghostly light reflecting back from the cl.u.s.ters and facets of crystals that glowed all around him in the shadows.

The storm, whatever it was, flowed by under him for perhaps five minutes.

When it had gone past him he let the speeder ease to the ground and stood up on it, watching the sparkling flood race down the rocks to the open plain, pale in the wan sun. It washed through the edge of the prison colony ruins, flowed along the jeweled ground beyond, vanishing at last in the direction of the line of spiky crystal rock chimneys that stretched away into the wastelands.

Even in the stillness it left, the Force was everywhere. Luke could feel it, like a radiation penetrating his skin.

The planet is dead, he thought. Completely without life, except for the tin), enclaves of human habitation.

But the Force was here.

It comes from Life, Yoda had said. Binding you, me, all life together...

And Callista had come here seeking it. Seeking the key to the frustration, the fear, the terrible forces that had driven her from him.

There is life here, thought Luke, suddenly aware of it, sure of it. Life somewhere. He wondered if the ruins he'd seen contained some clue as to why no mention had ever been made, in any survey of the planet ever taken.

Luke could have raised the speeder with his mind and floated it down to the ruins at the canyon's foot. By the same token, he understood, Yoda himself could have flown wherever he wanted to travel or could have built himself a palatial dwelling of rock instead of the mud hovel in Dagobah's swamps. Ben Ken.o.bi could have ruled a small planet.

Wars do not make one great, the little Master had said.

And neither did the ability to tote a ma.s.s of metal where one could just as easily walk.

Luke dug his canteen from the speeder, checked the lightsaber at his belt and the blaster he'd found with the macrobinoculars under the seat, and started down the canyon on foot.

Little remained of the Grissmath prison colony after some seven centuries. It had been situated above a ground water seam but evidently the hidden moisture had proved insufficient when terraforming had gone beyond crom and the simple gomex mosses that broke down the minerals of unyielding rock into soil that such plants as balcrabbian and brachniel could use. Without careful cultivation, most of the intermediate growths of the artificial ecosystems had died before they'd reached the stage of being self-sufficient. Lichens and podhoy still grew everywhere around the walls, as if the entire place had been dunked in a vat of crimson mud that had left a rough sc.u.m; close to the broken pump housing, a little soil remained, where hardy balcrabbian plants spread their leaves.

Luke sensed a human presence there moments before his danger-trained eye picked out the dull metal of another speeder concealed in the shadows of a broken foundation. He drew around himself the aura of advanced inconspicuousness that Yoda had spoken about and that later Callista, recalling her own training, had taught him: Beyond a doubt the same means by which old Ben had wandered around the Death Star utterly unnoticed by the most highly trained troops of the Empire.

The owner of the speeder sat in the dappled shade of the balcrab-bian, protected from the wind, where the long-ruptured pump dribbled a series of tiny pools among the broken pavement. A young man, six or seven years junior to Luke, Corellian or maybe Alderaan stock, to judge by the brown hair, the medium build. He reminded Luke of any of the dozens of young farmers he'd known on Tatooine, trying to wrest a living from an inhospitable world. The duranex of his jumpsuit, though one of the toughest fabrics known, was patched and frayed, and the leather of the utility belt and satchel he wore much mended. He looked up quickly when Luke deliberately sc.r.a.ped the side of his boot on a lump of old-style permacrete. The young man's hand flashed to the long, primitive pellet gun at his side, but something about Luke seemed to convince him that this wasn't the danger he'd been fearing. He put the weapon down again and raised his hand with a grin.

"Where'd you drop out of, brother? Don't tell me you were on that B-wing they brought down."

Luke grinned back ingenuously. "l just want the name of the guy who said B-wings were too small to draw their fire, that's all. Owen Lars," he introduced himself, holding out his hand.

The young man rose. "Arvid Scraf. Were you modified for cargo[Trying to make Hweg Shul?" Something the size of a B-wing usually can get through the automatics. Smugglers use them sometimes, but I've heard they're tricky. The Therans must have been in the base itself when the sensors picked you up. They can take them off auto and fire themselves, if they want."

Luke knelt by the water, dipped his half-empty canteen. The harsh dryness of the air, chilly as it was, filled him with a curious sense of having come home.

"That's my luck. I once picked up half a crate of glitterstim for twenty-five hundred credits, only the guy who sold it to me forgot to tell me he'd stolen it and it had sensor relays in it. I hadn't even cleared the atmosphere when I had fourteen revenue cruisers around me like buzz flies on a ripe fruit." It hadn't happened to him, but it had to Han, and it gave him credentials of a sort, and a persona. More than that, it let him size up Arvid Scraf for a few moments more.

"l heard the Therans were savages-the ones who tried to put holes in me sure looked like them. My cargo must have upped the ship's ma.s.s reading.

They can run a gun stationS."

"Don't sell them short." Scraf picked up his own canteen. Water splotched his sand-beaten orange sleeves, and down the front of his suit.

"Where'd you come down? The Therans will have finished by now. I'll help you haul whatever's left into Ruby Gulch. You can get cash for it there."

A childhood on Tatooine had made Luke familiar with the economics of salvage. They'd been severe enough on the desert world, which had an open trade of sorts through Mos Eisley. On a planet with virtually no natural resources and little access to imported goods, that much metal and microchips would make him a wealthy man.

"Who are they, anyway?" he asked, settling himself on the rough wooden bench that served Arvid Scraf's landspeeder as a seat. The speeder was a crumbling Aratech 7t-Z Jawas wouldn't have touched.

The starboard buoyancy tanks were so low that the deck canted sharply, and Arvid had built up a second deck on planks, with posts to level it up. He'd rigged a retractable limb underneath as well, with a wheel to keep the whole thing steady if too heavily laden. It gave the speeder the appearance of a badly misshapen mushroom, balanced on a single stem that did not quite touch the ground.

"She don't look like much, but she covers ground," the young man said, half-proud and half-defensive, when Luke did a double-take. With Luke on the bench, Arvid had had to shift the gravel sack ballast to compensate for his weight.

But she did, in fact, cover ground. Like the Millennium Falcon, there was marginally more to her than met the eye.

Now Arvid said, "Who, the Therans? There's little villages of them up the canyons, or in caves, anyplace they can find a spring or an old pump still working. But most of them just come out of the farms. Half the Oldtimers were Therans at some time in their lives. Kids go out of the settlements and ride with the bands for a couple-three seasons.

They sniff the smoke, they hear the voices, they dream the dreams, and they meet people they wouldn't have met if they'd stayed around home, I guess. Then they come back and get married and have kids of their own.

Sometimes they ride out again later, but mostly once seems to be enough."

He shrugged, clinging like a bantha-buster to the struggling levers, his eyes moving constantly between the sand-scored gauges and the eroded jags and zigs of the rising ground as the Aratech labored through the narrowing steepness of those light-laden crystal rocks, to where Luke had left his appropriated XP-38A.

"That's why we can't make headway against 'em," Arvid Scraf went on.

"Their Listeners tell them anything coming in or going out is bad, tell 'em in their sleep, in their dreams. Then it's part of their dreams for all time. It gets stuck in their heads so bad you can't make them see different.

They can't see what this world could be, if we could get any kind of trade going. 'We don't want that,' they'll say, and you can talk to the edge of anoxia, and they just look at you with those eyes and say, 'We don't want that." We. Like they know what all the other Oldtimers think.

Weird."

He shook his head. His big hands on the levers were callused and stained with grease, as Luke's own had been, he remembered, back in his days of trying to wring a living from a world not intended to support human life.

The two of them wrestled the XP-38A up wholesale and lashed it to the - 74's bed. Luke knew the reasoning well. In a world without native metal, without timber, without imports, a rusty bucket was treasure.

The anemic sun was sinking fast, and harsh wind pounded them out of the west, making the repulsorlift vehicle jerk and wobble. As they were wra.s.sling the ropes, Luke caught the leg of his flightsuit on one of the - 74's makeshift struts, scratching the flesh underneath.

Reaching down to feel the sc.r.a.pe, his fingers encountered what felt like a droplet of plastic, hard and smooth, on his flesh, and when he pulled up the fabric and stripped the placket, he saw on his calf a very small swelling, like a minute hill in the flesh. In its center bulged a tiny dome of hard, purple-brown chiten, unmistakably the sh.e.l.l of some sort of pinhead-size insect, which vanished into the flesh even as he watched.

With an exclamation of disgusted alarm, Luke pinched the flesh around the swelling, forcing the thing back and out again. The swelling bubble of blood-dark sh.e.l.l elongated into a repellent abdomen perhaps a centimeter long, that ended in a hard little head and a ring of tiny, wriggling, thorn-tipped legs. It immediately turned between his thumb and firstfinger and tried to dig into the ball of his thumb. Luke flicked it away hard, and heard it strike the flat facet of a nearby rock. It bounced down to the slippery canyon floor and scuttered fast for the shadows of the nearest stone.

Luke said, "Yuck!" and pulled his pant leg up farther. His calf was dotted with tiny, reddened swellings, or fading pink patches where the bugs were already burrowing down into the flesh.

"Don't waste your time on 'em," advised Arvid, from the other side of the speeder. He tied down a final knot and clambered over the tailfins to Luke's side. "You probably picked 'em up in the shade around the water."

He pulled up his own sleeve to show' at least four swellings on his forearm, one of them with the hard little insect tail just vanishing into the flesh. Casually he pinched the thing free and flicked it away against the deck, grinding it to a little purple blotch with the heel of his boot when it began to crawl toward his foot again.

"They're kind of gross but they just die and get absorbed. There's stories of crystal hunters who run out of food in the barrens and stick their hands into holes so they can absorb enough drochs to get energy to make it to a settlement. Not something i'd care to do myself."