Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [153]
“Service. Order. The triumph over the forces of chaos …” She cocked her head, as the soft throb of the engines altered with the transfer to repulsorlifts. A hard fold appeared at the corner of her mouth, the track of some bitter thought. “All of my life, and all that I could have had, I laid on the altar of the fleet, and I was satisfied. And now … this.”
“Well,” said Han softly, “I can understand. You’re not the only one who’s ever been betrayed.”
She started to jeer something back at him, then stopped herself and averted her face. Beyond the shifting vapor trails and their reflected brilliance, the starry darkness was yielding to a deep cobalt noon. “No,” she said, her voice unwontedly quiet. “Perhaps not.”
“Oh, look,” exclaimed Threepio, from the other side of the lounge. “The CCIRs all appear to have crash-landed. There, see?” A thread of smoke curled into the still air. “How remarkable that they would have maintained so tight a formation in the face of what was quite clearly a controller malfunction.”
“Yeah, well, maybe we better pick up a couple of them and see what we can learn about getting them to malfunction again.”
As if Threepio had not spoken, Daala said, “You know her policies, Solo.” Once she would never have acknowledged him as her equal, or spoken to him without scorn in her voice. “Will your Chief of State keep her hands off the Chorios systems, once their value is known to her?”
“I don’t know what the Council’s gonna say,” said Han truthfully. “But I do know Lei—Her Excellency—just went through one laserblast raking over because she refused to interfere in a planet that couldn’t get a majority for interference. So as long as you folks keep the majority on Pedducis I’d say you’re pretty safe.”
He rose, and walked over to stand beside her and look at the world that to him had, up until this time, been only a name.
“What a rock! There’re people living down there?”
Chewbacca yowled an observation.
“Oh, right. One crummy little block there and about four houses way over in the distance. I can see we’re at a major population center of the sector.”
Daala remarked drily, “At the moment, Captain Solo, I can think of few views more pleasant than that of an entire planet utterly devoid of human life.”
The homing beacon from the surface brought them, not to the fortress of Seti Ashgad, but to the Bleak Point gun station sixteen kilometers away, where the plain of glass-bright crystal made a landing area for the shuttle. A light freighter already occupied the site—“As long as that station’s out of commission,” said a brisk little woman with long white hair, as the doors of the shuttle opened, “I’d be a fool not to take a cargo of majie offplanet and see what I can bring back. I’ll get the cream of the market. Well, what do we got here?” she demanded, turning, as Han, Chewie, and the two droids descended the boarding ramp and looked around them at the glaring landscape.
Wreckage from the Force storm scattered the gravel for half a kilometer around the walls of the tower, snarls of wire, broken beams, weapons burst by the violence of Beldorion’s uncontrolled will. Rationalists and Therans alike were gathering around the walls, and the plain was a parking lot of speeders, speeder bikes, and cu-pas warbling and wheezing and scratching themselves. A caravan of very dusty, very primitively dressed Therans clustered together, gazing in wonderment at the speeders; at Umolly Darm’s freighter; and at the sleek, deadly shape of Daala’s shuttle. From their midst two figures broke away, crossing to Han and Chewie at a run.
Battered, dusty, blotched with grime