The Black Fleet Crisis_ Before The Storm Part 27

"Is there more-in the other cottages, or outside, on the other buildings? "

"No. Just here. This was meant for me. "

"The attack-it came after you'd been in the house, " Luke said with sudden understanding. "They knew there was something there. That's why the Empire still had agents here. They were just waiting for someone who could read it to show up. "

"But would the Empire risk sending a ship this deep into New Republic territory? "

"That depends on how badly someone still wants the Fallana.s.si, " Luke said. "I don't think we should wait around to see. "

Akanah frowned. "No. "

"And we can't be followed. "

"No, " she agreed. "Can you cloak us? "

"I can disguise our appearance. But we have to do more than that, " Luke said. "You need to erase the message. "

Even without looking at her, he felt her reluctance and resistance.

"It's the only way to be sure this trap has been disarmed, " he added. "Can you erase it? Can it be done at all? "

"Scribing opens a tiny breach between the real and the unreal, " Akanah said with a slow nod. "It's easier to collapse it than create it. "

She hesitated, then sighed. "Wait for me outside. "

She did not keep him waiting long.

"It's done, " she said, taking his arm as she joined him. "But, just to be certain no one can undo it, please knock it down. "

"Are you sure? "

"Please, " she said. "I'm never coming back here. Bring all of it down. "

Without moving from where they stood, Luke complied. A twist of a corner, a push in the middle of a long wall, opened a spiderweb of cracks. The cracks widened in turn, until the stonework fell in and the roof collapsed atop it, kicking up a billow of yellow dust.

"We'd better hurry now, " Luke said.

"There's one more thing, " she said. "You need to go inside your mother's cottage. "

He shook his head sadly. "There isn't time. "

"Take the time, " she said. "I'll hide us, so you can stay open while you're there. "

"Akanah-"

"A few minutes won't matter to the outcome, " she said. "The nearest friend of the men you killed is either very close already, or a very long way away. But those few minutes may matter a great deal to you. GO. "

Luke sat in the middle of what had been the floor of the ruined cottage and whispered his mother's name, as if to ask the broken stones whether they remembered it.

"Nashira, " he said, but the sound fled into the dark corners and vanished.

"Nashira, " he called, but the echoes escaped out through the cracks and fissures in the walls.

He brushed the litter aside and pressed the palms of his hands to the floor, drew the dusty air deep into his nostrils and tasted it on his tongue, slowly scanned all around him for anything that might have belonged to the last person to make a home of that s.p.a.ce.

"Mother, " he said, and the reality of the moment welled up inside him.

It was a point of contact, after so many years without one. She had been where he was NOW.

It did not matter that he could not find her touch lingering on the rude substance surrounding him. The knowledge alone was enough. Where before he could only pretend, now he could imagine, and imagination overleaped the time that separated them.

She had slept here, laughed here, retreated here for sanctuary, cried and sought peace here, perhaps loved and grieved here, moving through this s.p.a.ce as real as life and as human as the rush of longing Luke felt in that moment.

He could not see her face or hear her voice, but, even so, she was more real to him in that moment than she had ever been before.

It was not enough, not by half, but it was a beginning.

The village was in shadow by the time Luke emerged from Nashira's cottage and rejoined Akanah. The sun had dropped below the hills, and the breeze had a softer edge.

"How long was I in there? "

"It doesn't matter, " she said. "Are you ready? "

Luke nodded. "You were right, " he said. "Thank you. "

"I knew it was important. But we'd better hurry now. It'll be dark before we reach the airfield. "

Neither had anything more to say as they returned to the cart and climbed atop it for the return trip. Luke checked it closely for any sign of a tracker or tampering, then raised the vehicle a meter off the ground.

"No b.u.mps this trip, " he said with a small smile. "But I'd still hold on. What do they call those carrion birds here? "

"Nackhawns. "

"That's what we are, then. A big, ugly nack hawn. " Luke swung the cart in a wide circle over the hills enclosing Ialtra, scanning for any other vehicles.

He found none, and wondered how the Imperial agents had followed them there.

But Luke shook off the thought, and sent the cart arrowing toward the southeast and the airfield. Their pa.s.sage was silent but for the air tearing past the contours of a vehicle that was never meant to fly.

Not long after, back in the ruins of the village of Ialtra, the bodies of two dead Imperial agents merged with the shadows that had enveloped them, and vanished as though they had never been.

Chapter 13.

Near a brown dwarf star on the edge of the Koornacht Cl.u.s.ter, the New Republic astrographic probeAstrolabe dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce.

The broad flat underside of the small unarmed ship was heavily studded with scanners. Four scan platforms carried everything from stereo imagers and neutron dippers to quark detectors and wide-band photometricons. Many of the instruments were duplicated as a hedge against malfunctions. The combination of the thin, wide profile and the scanner configuration had given the Astrogator-cla.s.s probes the nickname "flatfish, " which in turn had given rise to an unofficial logo popular with the crews.

"Your tour operators, the Astrographic Survey Inst.i.tute, welcome you to Doornik-1142, " the pilot called back to his survey team. "Be sure to take in all the recreational opportunities of this undiscovered gem of Farlax Sector-look out the viewports! Then later, you can look out the viewports! And whatever else you do during your nineteen-hour stay, make sure you take the time to look out the viewports! "

It was an old, familiar joke, and drew no more than ritual chuckles from the survey team. ASI vessels were the restless, peripatetic travelers of the stars--Professional tourists on breathless sightseeing expeditions through the galaxy. Capable of exceptionally high speeds in reals.p.a.ce, a flatfish rarely took more than a day to complete a mapping and survey pa.s.s across the top of an entire star system.

Most planets were overflown at close to maximum speed. Only if the approach data showed signs of life would a probe slow to quarter-speed. Only the markers of technological habitation could make them linger as long as a single orbit. Only the most extraordinary anomalies in the scans could make a flatfish lot turn back and make a second pa.s.s. And landings were so rare as to be nearly unheard of.

Astrolabehad been diverted from work in Torranix Sector to fill a gap in the standard star charts-a gap left by the fallen Empire's obsessive secrecy, which treated ordinary astrographic data about the territory it controlled as cla.s.sified military data.

The pilot, an eighteen-year veteran known to his crew as Gabby, had overflown more than a thousand planets in his career-but had set foot on only three.

His senior surveyor, Tanea, had nearly three thousand overflights on her jacket, yet had ground-level memories of only half a dozen. The junior surveyor, Rulffe, expected to pa.s.s the five hundred mark on this tour, but had never drawn a breath on any world but his homeworld.

This mission began like all the others. The first hour was the busiest-while Tanea and Rulffe checked out the scanners, Gabby calibrated the probe's autonav for the shortest-path mapping pa.s.s over the system's quartet of cold, gaseous planets. They had every reason to think that their visit to Doornik-1142 would be short and uneventful, ending with a compressed data dump to Coruscant and the jump to the next gravitational well.

But it would end early, and hard.

Gabby and Tanea were playing a word game over the ship's comm system asAstrolabe approached the second planet.

"Hemostat, " said Gabby.

"Oh, easy. Statistics. "

"Eh-experience. "

Tanea laughed. "That's not legal, but I'm going to give it to you anyway, because I'm such a kind and loving soul. Encephalitis. "

"Tissue. "

Tanea frowned. "I take it back. I think you've got me now-" Without warning the ship began to shake violently.

The cabin was filled with a roaring sound like an animal wind, a deep growly rumble, and crackling like fire.

"What the h.e.l.l! " Rulffe exclaimed.

"Something's wrong with the engines! " Gabby cried as the roar became a screaming whistle.

In the next moment, the air was ripped from his lungs in a frosty plume, and silence reigned.

Moments later, with the temperature plunging, the cabin lights failed.

The trouble board, now a ma.s.s of blinking red and yellow squares, provided the only illumination.

In the last excruciating seconds of consciousness, with the gases boiling in his blood vessels, the pilot tried to reach the switches to manually fire the emergency buoy and transmit the log. But his limbs, bound up by agony, would not obey him. He was already dead, and consciousness soon gratefully followed volition into the abyss.

Vol Noorr, primate of the battle cruiserPurity, watched approvingly as a fierce salvo of high-energy laser pulses blindsided the intruding vessel.

The accuracy and discipline of his gun crews pleased him, and he made a note to commend the weapons master. The firing ceased with the vessel holed and ravaged but not destroyed. A cloud of white fire and metal dust would have had little to tell them.

But there would be wreckage enough to examine, and Vol Noorr's follow-up report could be as complete and useful as possible.

"Send out the salvors, " he ordered. "Make certain they maintain hygienic protocols on all material recovered. "

Then Vol Noorr locked himself in the secure communications booth. A few minutes later he transmitted what would be the only alert concerning the destruction of theAstrolabe to be sent from Doornik-1142-a short burst of code aimed not at the Astrographic Survey Inst.i.tute on Coruscant but at the viceroy's flagshipAramadia , ground-moored at Imperial City's Eastport.

"Three days in a row now, " Princess Leia said to those gathered in the staff conference room. "Does anyone have any hint why Nil Spaar has been canceling our sessions? Is he ill? Do we know anything about what he's been doing? "

"He's only left the ship once, " said General Carlist Rieekan. "He went to the diplomatic hostel and stayed two hours and thirteen minutes-"

"Never mind that. Who did he go there to see? " asked Ackbar.

"We weren't able to develop that information, " Rieekan admitted. "You know what the hostel is like-hot and cold running privacy. The diplomatic missions expect that. I can tell you that the hostel host has been keeping a chalet reserved for the Yevetha since before they arrived, and this is the first time any of them have turned up there. "

"So he could have met with any or all of the legates staying at the hostel, " said Leia.

"That's correct. "

"I want to see a list, " Ackbar demanded.

"We've prepared one, and transmitted it to everyone on the clearance sheet for this meeting, " said Rieekan. "I do have some additional information, which was given to me just before I left the office to come over here. The viceroy received visitors today on board theAramadia -"

"What? " exclaimed Nanaod Engh. "They haven't allowed anyone but their own past the portal since that ship arrived. Who was it? "

"Senator Peramis, Senator Hodidiji, and Senator Marook, " said Rieekan.

"They arrived together, and all stayed more than two hours. Senator Marook left before the others. "

"Do we know if they were invited or they invited themselves? " asked Leia.

"I made a discreet inquiry to Senator Marook's staff. It seems they were invited. "

"Have they been in contact with the Yevetha all along? "

"Princess Organa, I can't answer that. "

"Let's get them all in here, and we'll get some answers, " Admiral Ackbar said testily. "Let Senator Peramis answer. "

"Easy, my friend. Let's try to keep this in perspective, " said Leia. "The viceroy has every right to meet with whomever he chooses. He doesn't need our permission to hold a tea party. "

"Princess, forgive me-if you were not ready to hear the answers, why did you ask the question? "

Leia turned to Rieekan and frowned. "What are you talking about? "

"You asked if anyone had any notion why the viceroy was canceling his sessions with you. Now you learn that he's met privately with some of the candidate legations, and publicly with some of the Senate's most iconoclastic members. He's not only broken all precedent, but pointedly extended courtesies to others that he's never extended to you-and you refuse to draw the obvious conclusion. "

"Which is-"