Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [105]
Threepio, who hadn’t had time to buckle himself down or even take a seat, picked himself gingerly up and readjusted his breath mask, hoping that either his robe hadn’t come disarranged enough to exhibit his undeniably droidlike legs, or that Ugmush had been too occupied with her velocity computations to notice. Yarbolk, who like him had been hurled to the far corner of the bridge, limped over to assist him in righting Artoo-Detoo, who had rolled a considerable distance and whose distress lights were blinking in several systems, including one of the bolted-on components they hadn’t been able to get rid of after disconnecting him from the Pure Sabacc. Most of the distress lights went out. Artoo tweeped a wan thanks, and without a word, Jos removed the elastic tie from his long hair and offered it to Yarbolk to tie up some of Artoo’s stray cables.
“Thank you—er—Igpek,” said the Chadra-Fan. “I owe you one.”
Ugmush turned in her seat, and glared at the furry little journalist out of orange pinhead eyes. “And what the festering muck is that troublemaker doing on my ship?” she demanded. “Don’t you sapheads know there’s a reward out for him on seven systems?”
15
They were there.
Luke froze, lying under the pitted steel belly of the speeder. Listening.
No sound.
But they were there, watching him. He knew it. Even through the silent trumpets of the Force in the deep stillness of the wastelands, he could sense their presence. He’d sensed awareness of him again and again since leaving Hweg Shul.
The invisible watchers.
The planet’s unseen original inhabitants.
Effortlessly following his speeder, keeping him in sight.
Where he lay under the speeder he could see nothing. When the starboard antigrav unit had started to go he’d prudently set the vehicle down with one edge on a sort of bench of basalt, the other side on a lump of frost-green quartz the size of a hassock, so his only view from underneath, as he rejiggered the generator wiring to recharge the defective a-g coil, was straight ahead or straight behind, identical vistas of harsh reflective gravel broken by bigger fragments and hunks of crystal, and, farther off, crystal chimneys piercing the sky.
He sensed that should he emerge from beneath the speeder and look around him, he would still see no one.
He lowered his eyelids, trying to call the shape of them within the Force. But such was the interference of the Force on this world, the sheer magnitude of its presence in alien guise, that he could get no clear picture of those invisible ones. Maybe, he thought, that was the point of the interference to begin with.
Nor could he tell exactly when they had begun to dog him, or feel whether their interest was beneficent, malicious, or merely inquiring.
They were only there.
“Who are you?” he called out, aware of his vulnerability, lying on his back under the speeder. “I mean you no harm. You don’t need to be afraid to show yourself to me. Can you show yourselves to me?”
Their presence drew closer—or something drew closer, a distinct awareness of their awareness of him. He wondered how he knew it was they and not he, she, or it.
Carefully, he crawled from beneath the speeder, and stood up.
Pale shadows lay about him; pale daytime stars pierced the dark blue of the sky. Pale sunlight fragmented from the glittering gravel that stretched in all directions, empty to the farthest shore of the long-forgotten sea.
“It’s the Loronar Corporation.” The Chadra-Fan journalist Yarbolk lowered his husky alto voice, brought out from the pocket of his singed and stained silk vest a handful of green datacubes, held them out as if their mere presence on his hairless, pink palm were proof of what he said. “On every one of these planets, every place in the Meridian sector where there’s been an armed revolt or religious rioting or uprisings from minority tribes or groups or whatever it’s been … the dissident forces