Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [143]
Callista shook her head. “You were afraid for your life,” she said. “All the knowledge could have done was hurt you, which it looks like it did. I’m only glad you were able to take care of Leia.”
“After having not taken care of you?” There was a self-deprecating twinkle behind the genuine shame in his eyes, and Callista smiled.
“I can take care of myself. Most ladies can.”
“How well I know. You know your young man is looking for you.”
Callista said softly, “I know.”
“Quite honestly, Madame Admiral, that’s all I’m able to tell you.” Threepio made one of his best human gestures, spreading his arms, palms out, at precisely the correct angle and positioning to indicate a friendly helplessness, a complete willingness to divulge whatever lay in his power.
And his digitalized recognition of human body language indicated to him that Daala was not buying it one credit’s worth.
But she said, her harsh voice slow, “My title is ‘Admiral,’ droid, not ‘Madame Admiral.’ I am—I was—an officer of the Imperial fleet on exact parity with others of my rank, and you will employ that usage whenever you address me.”
Her eyes were like ash—burned out, exhausted, defeated. Threepio did not think he had ever seen such ruin, such bitterness, on a human face.
“Once, Tarkin and I together could have ruled the Empire,” she continued slowly. “Looking back on it, I can’t even remember why. All I seek, now, is a place to live out the rest of my life where I will not be disturbed. I thought I had found such a place on Pedducis Chorios, a world in a neutral sector, with amenable local authorities, beyond the interference of those ham-fisted, brainless, contentious madmen who are engaged in the final throes of tearing to pieces what was once the finest system of government this galaxy has known. I want no more of it, or of them.”
Her hands lay smooth over the arms of her chair, her knees together, the square bones of the joints and the hard bulge of muscle clearly defined where the drab trousers tailored to the flesh. Threepio’s copious databanks contained a great deal of very alarming information about this woman: one of the most brilliant commanders in the Imperial fleet, but a mad bantha, a loose gun firing at random in battle. A woman of formidable competence and terrifying anger.
“And now I come to take up the advisory position I and my partners have been offered by the Pedducian Warlords,” she continued in that quiet voice, whose hoarse timbre spoke of burning gases inhaled in the last battle on board the Knight Hammer, the battle in which Callista had destroyed her flagship and in which she and Callista had both been thought to perish. “And what do I find?”
Threepio had never been good at distinguishing rhetorical from actual questions.
“Invasion, the Death Seed plague, wholesale rebellion, looting …”
“Be silent.”
He logged the interchange in his Later Study file under the heading of “Determinative Cues to Separate Rhetorical from Actual Questions.” It was his duty as a protocol unit to achieve perfection in that area, and he was aware that it would probably prolong his period of usefulness as well.
“I find droids who have clearly been at large for some time in this sector, droids whose function is to accurately record all data taking place around them, whose answers to my questions are so comprehensively riddled with holes and omissions that they lead me to suspect that there is something going on.”
She rose to her feet, and touched a wall hatch. With silent efficiency the panel revolved, exhibiting a complete and up-to-date electronic analysis kit. She activated the data screens with three taps of those long, square-tipped fingers, and unhooked a coaxial cable.
“Fortunately, many, many years