• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

She drew back, and watched as he climbed the rest of that long ladder, settled himself into the B-wing’s cockpit. “I’ll subspace you from Hweg Shul when I need to be picked up,” he said, his voice tinny through the helmet comm as he fastened himself in. “Probably before that, if I can find a transmitter strong enough that’ll take the code.”

“I’ll be waiting.” She reached out with her mind, through the glowing inner net of the Force, and touched his spirit like the warm clasp of a hand. Felt his thanks for that final reassurance.

Then she and the droids retreated, and at her signal the security guard, the shuttle’s pilot, and Marcopius joined her at the bay doors. Ezrakh had already faded into the corridor’s shadows. The great leaves of dull gray metal slid open to let them out. Her last sight of the bay showed her Luke’s B-wing turning with weightless grace to face the black, star-spattered rectangle of the magnetic portal and the steady-burning violet eye of the distant world where Callista had taken her refuge.

The doors slid shut.

Keep up with your lightsaber practice.

Why had she felt that guilty flinch when he’d said that? You need it.

Why did she feel in her chest that slight sensation of panic, like a woman deathly sick who fears to ask the doctor what she has?

She knew she needed it.

The comm light was flashing in her stateroom when she reached it, but when she pressed the toggle and said, “Organa Solo,” there was only the faint hum of an open channel. She frowned, annoyed and a little worried, and kicked the heavy train of her robe aside as she settled into the chair before the station.

“If you have no further requirements, Your Excellency,” said Threepio, “Artoo and I will take this opportunity to repower.”

She looked up quickly—she found she had been staring reflectively at the blinking comm light—and said, “Oh, okay. Fine. Thank you.” She punched through an alternate comm number, and again, got only tone.

It happened, of course. Usually it meant that the comm watch was in the break room. As a girl she’d had the annoying habit of coding and recoding comm numbers every few seconds until she got results. It had taken her years to break herself of it, to relax for a few moments, do something else, then try again like a normal person.

But the situation wasn’t normal. Though the Meridian sector included a number of Republic planets and two major fleet strongholds at the Durren orbital base and on Cybloc XII, Moff Getelles’s satrapy in the Antemeridian sector wasn’t all that far away. And whereas she doubted he or his admirals would try anything in the face of the combined firepower of the Borealis and the Adamantine, the fact remained that her mission to the Chorios systems wasn’t widely known. If there was trouble, response time would be slow.

The bright-faced boys and girls of the Academy guard leapt to their feet as she re-entered the anteroom, bringing their weapons to the present. Leia returned the salute with a grave lifting of her hand. “Marcopius, would you do me a favor? I know this sounds really paranoid, but I’ve got a message light and I can’t raise anyone in Comm. Could I get you to go down there and see if it’s anything urgent?”

“Of course, Your Excellency.” He slung his weapon, bowed, and departed like an advertisement for the Academy before she could get her thanks out of her mouth. As Leia returned to her private parlor she smiled a little in reflection. Several members of the Council—notably Q-Varx, who like most Rationalists was enchanted by gadgetry—had moved to purchase an executive honor guard of the new synthdroids, arguing that, in addition to eliminating any further need to use the Noghri, it would be cheaper to maintain in the long run and provide more uniform security with less chance of betrayal or individual error.

Her desk—neatly arranged by See-Threepio, who had taken it on himself periodically to pass through her stateroom like a golden hurricane of tidiness—contained a very nicely produced ad-cube from the Loronar Corporation’s synthdroid division