Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [157]
“We don’t know,” said Jevax. “That’s what’s driving the tech crew crazy. It shouldn’t have happened. None of the cutouts operated. They’re going to have to go in and pull the whole mechanism and open the gates manually—which means I hope you like the food here, General Solo, because it’ll be at least twenty-four hours—”
“Wait a minute,” said Solo, pausing at the foot of the steep slope of Painted Door Street. “You’re telling me that there’s been another case of … of a fairly complicated, freak malfunction? Like our astromech droid trying to murder us? That’s two in twenty-four hours.”
Jevax’s snowy brow ridge folded upward in the middle as he considered the matter in that light. Then he said, “Three. The comm system’s down again … But that happens so often …”
There was momentary silence as they regarded each other in the heavy gloom. Then Solo said softly, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
In swift silence, they felt their way from pillar to pillar of the foundations of an old building, following the course of the street.
It was a neighborhood of ancient houses, prefabs rising out of the bomb damage like white ships stranded on high rocks. Vines growing over the old lava blocks rustled wetly as the party passed along them, and somewhere a warm spring welling up from an old foundation bubbled in the dark. The higher altitude, on the bench beneath the Citadel ruins, thinned the fog a little, and when they stopped at the turning at the top of the street, Solo could even see the house Jevax pointed out.
Han felt a cold snake of uneasiness corkscrew down his backbone. If Roganda Ismaren was the Emperor’s Hand, it meant she was Force-strong … not something he wanted to go up against.
But if she’d hurt so much as a hair on Leia’s head, he’d …
“That’s hers.” Jevax looked down at Stusjevsky. “Anyone home?”
The Chadra-Fan closed his huge dark eyes, flared his four large nostrils, and stood, breathing and listening to the night. Solo couldn’t see how the little creature could be sifting out the odors of a single house from all others, for the night was redolent of greenery, wet stone, the faintly sulfurous pong of the hot springs, and the overpowering sweetness that hung in the air near the packing plants …
But Stusjevsky opened his eyes after a moment and said, “Nobody home, Chief.”
Chewie grumbled a little and checked the pockets of his utility belt for his wire-bridging kit, preparatory to making an assault on whatever security system the house might have.
“I’ll tell you this, though,” said the Chadra-Fan. “Somebody in that place has been wearing awfully expensive perfume—Whisper or Lake of Dreams—which I know for a fact nobody sells on this entire planet.”
With startling suddenness, the door at the top of the steps whooshed open.
“I thought you said there was nobody home!” hissed Han as the four of them flattened into the shadows of a shell-ravaged old colonnade.
“Nobody human,” retorted the Chadra-Fan. “I can smell …”
There was a faint whirring in the shadows of the vines that half masked the doorway, and the movement of something pale.
Then a small form appeared at the top of the steps and paused as if intensely weary, or considering what to do next.
Battered, dented, covered with filth and slime, it was Artoo-Detoo.
Chapter 23
“Commander,” announced the stormtrooper with a sharp salute, “emergency orders have arrived from the Grand Moff of the entire Imperial Battlefleet! Priority one, sir!”
The commander straightened up from grim concentration on the blacked-out control screen of a library reader and returned the salute with the three long and gaudily blossomed yellow pellicules on its right side. Several officers engaged in manning the gunnery and navigation consoles at the dead readers and vids along the library wall turned in their chairs; stems, stamens, and clusters of flowers swiveled in the direction of their commander. They were all a little pale from lack of sunlight, but still very much on the alert.
Luke, leaning in the doorway watching the scene being played out by