Star Wars_ The New Rebellion Part 7

"I thought this was an informal meeting," ChoFi said. It was an admirable ploy to delay the vote.

"An informal meeting is still a meeting," Meido said.

Leia suppressed a sigh. They had outmaneuvered her. It would be hard to take a vote without their consoles, without the electronic count, or computer backup. But a voice vote would work, if someone counted the votes, and tallied them to the proper senators. It also had the added benefit of making each voter accountable in front of the others.

She sent one of the pages to get an official tally sheet. When the page returned, she scanned the sheet, her gaze stopping each time it hit a dead or seriously wounded senator. She would remember that day in the Hall for the rest of her life. In its own, less devastating way, it had shaken her as the destruction of Alderaan had. She had thought the Hall a completely safe place. Perhaps that was why she fought the introduction of the former Imperials. Perhaps she wanted to protect one of the few havens left in the galaxy.

It only took a few moments to get the system set up. Time enough for each senator to think of a response.

"The question we are putting to the vote is this: Should we have an independent investigation team? Your vocal response must be 'yes,' 'no,'

or 'abstain.' " She took a deep breath, then called on the first senator.

Both she and the page recorded the vote as it occurred. A protocol droid also listened, double-checking the tally. She had expected the vote to go in her favor. At the least, she expected to break the tie on a close vote. But as she ran through the list, skipping the missing and the dead, she realized that her voting block, which had been the majority, was now in the minority. Most of the uninjured were the junior senators. The senior senators, those with long ties to the Republic, had somehow received the brunt of the blast.

By the end of the list, Leia's throat was dry and her eyes burned. Her shoulders were stiff from tension. Fifteen senators voted against the independent investigation. Fifteen. The rest abstained or voted in favor.

The measure won by an overwhelming majority.

Across the room, she met Kerrithrarr's gaze. The Wookiee senator believed, as Leia did, that the former Imperials would destroy the Senate. Kerrithrarr's hair stood on end, and when he noticed Leia, he shook his head in despair.

Leia checked her results against the page's. Then the droid confirmed their numbers. "By a clear majority," Leia said, "the measure to provide for an independent investigation pa.s.ses." The junior senators cheered while the rest of the room looked on in astonishment. Leia picked up a wooden cup and pounded it on the buffet table as she called for order. As the room quieted, she said, "I realize that we are not meeting in the Hall. Due to the informal setting, I will let this breech of etiquette pa.s.s. In the future, though, any senator showing undue partisanship will be expelled from the room and his vote will not be counted. This rule is in the Senatorial bylaws. I suggest you read them." Her voice echoed back to her, and she could hear the thread of anger below it. Usually she prided herself on her restraint, but her patience was wearing thin.

Didn't these so-called leaders understand the effects of their actions?

Didn't they know that this kind of partisanship would divide the Republic?

Faces were turned to hers expectantly. She nodded toward them. "Since it was your idea to have an independent investigation, Senator Meido, I would like you to compile the team. We will need the names of the investigators for our records." Meido smiled. His teeth were pale pink against his crimson skin. "Gladly, President." She didn't like his expression. It made her feel vulnerable. It made her feel as if she had walked into a trap.

"Tomorrow we will meet in the ballroom at the normal time. Until then, we are adjourned." Leia pounded on the buffet table. As she did, the conversation rose around her. The junior senators were pounding one another on the back and laughing.

ChoFi was staring at the list. "You know," he said so softly that only Leia and Senator Gno could hear, "their report won't be the same."

"I know," Leia said. "But I had no real choice. I couldn't appoint one of our people to pick the investigative team. They outmaneuvered me. If I had been thinking when I came in-"

"It's not your fault, Leia," ChoFi' said. "If they didn't approach you on that issue, they would have done so on another. You were running the Senate as it used to be instead of as it is. It is no longer a uniform body. Now we have factions."

"I don't like it," Gno said.

"Like it or not," ChoFi said, "the factions exist and we have to live with them."

"I will not live with them," Gno said. "This is how the Empire took over the last time. Small disagreements became major. Major disagreements were ignored, until the government was so factionalized it didn't work at all.

"That won't happen here," ChoFi said.

Gno smiled. "I used to believe that, all those years ago." Leia picked up the voting record, wincing at the pain in her hands. "We can't be afraid of change, Senator," she said to Gno. "We have to remember that there is one major difference between then and now. They don't have a leader like Palpatine."

"At least not yet," Gno said.

Sunlight poured through a hole in the collapsing roof of the Senate Hall.

Against the sky, the black-clawed hand of a construction droid awaited orders to remove the rubble and rebuild.

Luke stood in the double doorway, and peered into the Hall. The sunlight illuminated only one corner. Emergency glow panels revealed more destruction.

Most of the voting desks were covered with stone and shattered crystal.

The floor was a ma.s.s of debris. Freight droids, maintenance droids, and repair droids waited in the back. No one had started the cleanup yet.

Leia wanted it to wait until the investigation was underway.

Luke had decided to do some investigating on his own.

Several things bothered him: Leia's insistence on the involvement of former Imperials; Han's strange conversation with the missing smuggler; and, most importantly, the disturbance in the Force that Luke, Leia, and the Solo children had felt to varying degrees. Luke agreed with Han; he doubted the direct involvement of the former Imperials. If they had all known, they would have found an excuse to be away from the Hall at the time. Leia had a point too. Most of the junior senators were uninjured.

If she was right, and a former Imperial or a group of former Imperials were involved, what greater way to turn away suspicion than to be in the Hall during the explosion and "miraculously" escape injury?

Luke stepped inside. Dust motes rose in the circle of sunlight. He had been in so many places of destruction, seen so much devastation, and still it didn't prepare him for this. This Hall was the working Chamber.

It had housed the Old Republic's Senate, and even Palpatine's redesign hadn't affected that feeling of ancient and irrevocable law. It had been Leia's favorite room.

She had been below, at the podium, when the blast hit.

The podium was shattered. The circle on which it had stood was littered in ceiling rubble. The repair crews outside had warned Luke that the building was unstable. They weren't going to let him in without an escort, but he insisted. He had to see this, and he had to see it alone.

A chill pervaded the air. It was the same kind of chill he had felt on Yavin 4, the chill of quick, sudden death. So many lives, senselessly taken.

He stepped in deeper. Beneath the chill was that odd sense again, that sense of betrayal. Betrayal was probably a common response to sudden death, but this sense felt different. It felt-personal, like the betrayal Luke had felt when Kyp had joined forces with Exar Kun. As if all in this room had died at the hands of someone they once trusted.

Personal death. A bomb was an impersonal death.

He closed his eyes, let the Force flow through him, and felt for the pockets of coldness. Voices swirled around him, remembered voices, calling for help, shouting instructions. Shouts for friends, wails of the dying.

Pockets of cold.

He opened his eyes.

Not one large explosion. Several small explosions had detonated all at once in this room. And the senators sitting closest to the detonations died.

Several planned executions?

A warning?

Or a destruction of the Hall that went awry?

He couldn't tell. But now he had something to tell Leia's investigators.

They should stop the search for one big cause, and search for several small ones.

Rubble fell from the ceiling, clattering onto the ruined floor. He turned and accidentally stepped into one of the pockets of coldness. The sunlight grew dim, and he felt the taint of a presence.

A former student.

A man.

Brakiss.

NINE.

The closet the Kloperian had placed the droids in had a stained permacrete floor, metal walls, and a metal ceiling. The walls were unadorned, and there wasn't even a k.n.o.b on the inside of the door. It was pitch-black after the door was closed.

R2 whistled softly.

"You're right, R2," 3PO whispered. "I hear footsteps as well. And they're coming our way." The computer lock on the door's k.n.o.b clicked and beeped.

As the door opened, the closet flooded with light. A different Kloperian from the one that captured them stood outside, work orders clutched in one tentacle, a special key code in another.

"Oh, thank the maker," 3PO said. "I am C-3PO and this is my counterpart, R2-D2. We belong to President Leia Organa Solo, the Chief of State, and to her brother, the Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker. We have been falsely imprisoned-"You were trespa.s.sing," the Kloperian said.

"On the contrary," 3PO said. "We-"I don't care," the Kloperian said. "If it were up'to me, I'd put you in recycling with all the other out-of-date droids. But we ran your serial numbers and you are who you say you are.

Next time you come down here, your owners need to give us official notice. We can't have just any old droids down here. This is a dangerous area, and some of my a.s.sistants are overly enthusiastic. They might think you're sc.r.a.p and use you for parts."

"Parts!" 3PO said. "I a.s.sure you, sir, we are anything but parts. Why, my counterpart and I might even be considered-"You are a protocol droid at least three models behind, and an astromech droid sixteen models out of date. If you were part of our team here, we'd definitely recycle you." R2 blatted.

"As it stands, we'll let you see the X-wing. Then you have to leave." The Kloperian crossed two tentacles. "Follow me." 3PO hurried out of the closet, R2 at his side. The Kloperian slithered forward at a fast clip.

3PO dropped back a few paces, just out of the Kloperian's hearing range.

"You see, R2. I told you that they wouldn't hold us once they knew who we were." R2 bleeped.

"Well, it doesn't seem odd to me," 3PO said.

R2 blurbled.

"All right," 3PO said. "I admit they could have checked our serial numbers quicker. But the point is, R2, that they did. Although I do admit, things could have gone badly. Recycling! And I thought the sc.r.a.p heap for out-of-date droids was just a legend." R2's head swiveled as they walked, and the tiny holocam in his unit flickered. He was filming.

"I don't believe you have permission-" R2 bleebled so loudly that the Kloperian turned.

"Is there a problem?" it asked.

3PO glanced at R2. "There is no problem," 3PO said. "No problem at all."

And he put his hand heavily on R2's head for good measure. The clang of metal against metal echoed in the hangar.

They pa.s.sed dozens of X-wings in various states of disrepair. Through open hangar doors were Y-wings and A-wings that had been disa.s.sembled.

And in a final hangar, new craft glistened, cleaning droids polishing the luminescent metal.

Finally they stopped. The Kloperian pointed to a battered and scarred X-wing in pieces on the hangar floor.

R2 moaned.

3PO approached the pieces. "Oh, dear," he said. "Master Luke relies on this craft."

"We'll have it rea.s.sembled for him in two days," the Kloperian said.

R2 whistled and beeped.

"My counterpart wants to know why it had to be dismantled in the first place."

"Orders," the Kloperian said. "These old X-wings have too many problems to fly across the galaxy without an occasional overhaul." R2 cheebled.

"My counterpart says the ship was in perfect condition."

"Well, he's wrong," the Kloperian said. "Amateur upkeep is no subst.i.tute for a major revamp." R2 shrilled.

"R2!" 3PO said. "I'm so sorry, sir. He was close to the X-wing. He's afraid you've damaged it permanently."

"I haven't touched it," the Kloperian said. "And now that you've seen it, you can report on its condition to your master. The exit is through that door." 3PO nodded. "Come along, R2. We must talk with Master Luke." R2 gave a warbling sigh. He stopped beside the X-wing and leaned precariously over it.

"R2!" 3PO said. "We've seen enough."

"You might want to tell your master to purge that astromech unit's memory. The R2 unit is seriously dated as it is, and with the new changes in ship design it will be obsolete in a matter of months." A cylindrical arm extended from R2's left side, the side away from the Kloperian.

"I will certainly inform Master Luke," 3PO said. "This little R2 unit has been trouble from the day he bought it."

"They all have," the Kloperian said. "Now you two get out of here before I take you out myself."

"Yes, sir! Come along, R2." R2's arm slid back into its compartment. He put his third wheel down and rolled toward the exit.

"Thank you, sir, for showing us the X-wing," 3PO said as he scurried after R2. "I will most certainly speak to our master about you-" And then he stopped as the bay doors closed behind them. R2 let out a long, pitiful wail.

"I think you're overreacting, R2. The X-wing isn't dead. It's merely disa.s.sembled." 3PO hurried down the corridor.

R2 beeped as he kept up.

"Erase its memory? But Master Luke gave specific instructions that the X-wing's memory shouldn't be touched." R2 bleeped an affirmative.

"But that doesn't mean there's a conspiracy, R2. Organic beings are subject to error." R2 whistled and shrilled.