Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [145]
Threepio felt sorry for him and considerably apprehensive for his own safety as well.
It did not take an interrogation unit to deduce that this tall, red-haired woman sitting so motionless in her black chair was very, very angry indeed.
“The quibbling, incompetent, boot-licking, corset-laced little sand maggot,” she said, in a perfectly soft conversational tone. “Still has his sycophant Larm on a leash, I see—with whom he shared the test results at the Academy, when he was promoted to captain over my head. Selling out to Loronar Corporation, a gang of legalistic thieves who’d peddle their sisters to either side so long as they got paid … Slime molds. All of them. Ranats and Hutts have more honor.”
Threepio made a quick examination of his Determinative Cues subfile, but could not accurately ascertain whether a response was being solicited from him or not.
Daala slid from her chair to her knees, and began uncoupling the various cables from Artoo’s innards.
As she worked she spoke, still softly, almost to herself. “I pity her, your Chief of State,” she said—speaking to Artoo, Threepio thought, slightly indignant. “She was Prince Bail Organa’s daughter. A man of honor, by his own rights, who raised her to be honorable. We had honor in those days. Honor and courage.”
She stood and shook back her hair, which flashed like fire in the dim lighting of the office. Still her eyes were dead, but filled with the stony anger of the dead. “It was honor that drew me to the fleet. Power, yes, but honor and courage as well. And now they have come to this. Maggots feeding off the corpse of the Empire. Ghouls selling it to procurers and money grubbers. Tarkin would have died of shame.”
She was looking in his direction, so Threepio ventured, “I have no conclusive data as to whether Loronar Corporation is in the business of procuration …”
“I was a fool.” She touched the side of the electronic extraction kit, and it retreated soundlessly into the wall. “I was a fool to think that leaving them behind would be so simple as cursing them, and walking through the door. Maybe I’ve always been a fool.”
She returned to her chair, and touched an almost invisible toggle in its arm. “Yelnor? Get me a conference with the captains of all the ships.”
“Ships?” inquired Threepio, startled.
Daala raised her head, her poisoned eyes seeming to take in again that she was not alone in the room. “Ships,” she said. “I am the President of the Independent Company of Settlers, over three thousand of us, counting spouses and children. We who were loyal to the old ways, loyal to the order and efficiency that was the heart of the New Order. Most were officers of the fleet, who sickened, like me, at this constant petty struggle for power, this stupid diplomatic bandying of words with upstarts and scum. Some others—the heads of business and their families, civil servants. We ask only to be let alone, and to that end we entered a contract with Warlord K’iin of the Silver Unifir for one and a half billion acres—the smallest of the three southern continents—on Pedducis Chorios, to colonize and to live as we see fit.
“And I have no intention,” she concluded, reaching out and tapping Artoo on his domed cap, “of seeing my investment—our investment—come to nothing because a boot-kissing, talentless, jumped-up catamite like Moff Getelles wants to be supported in comfort by Loronar Corporation for the rest of his sycophantic life. Even if pushing him out of the sector means saving your Chief of State—and her spineless alien trash of a Senatorial Council—from the embarrassment they so richly deserve.”
She flicked over another