Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [4]
Though she knew that Dzym would undoubtedly back up anything Ashgad said—as the man’s secretary he could scarcely do otherwise—Leia turned to the Chorian. He was still sitting without a word, staring into space, as if concentrating on some other matter entirely, though now and then he would glance at the chronometer on the wall. Beside him, the port offered a spectacular view of the ice green and lavender curve of Brachnis Chorios, the farthest-flung planet of the several systems that went by that name, whose largest moon had been designated as the orbital rendezvous of the secret meeting.
The escort cruiser Adamantine was just visible at the edge of the view, a blunt-nosed silvery shape, unreal in the starlight. Below it, close to the bright triangle of colored stars that were the primaries of Brachnis, Nam, and Pedducis Chorii and pathetically tiny against the cruiser’s bulk, hung the cluster of linked bronze hulls that was Seti Ashgad’s vessel, the Light of Reason. Even Leia’s flagship, the Borealis, dwarfed it. Assembled of such small craft as could slip singly through the watchful screens of Nam Chorios’s ancient defensive installations, the Light would barely have served as a planet-hopper; it could never have taken a hyperspace jump.
Hence, thought Leia uneasily, this mission. Even before she’d had the surreptitious message, their distance from the nearest bases of the New Republic’s power on Durren and their proximity to the onetime Imperial satrapy of the Antemeridian sector, made her nervous.
Was that all that note had meant? Or was there something more?
“The Theran cultists are not anyone into whose hands I would be willing to place my destiny, Your Excellency,” murmured Dzym. He seemed to draw himself back into the conversation with an effort, folding his small hands in their violet leather gloves. “They hold an astonishing amount of power in the Oldtimer settlements along the water seams. How could it be otherwise when they are armed, mobile, and have for generations been the only source of healing that these people have known?”
Beyond the dyanthis leaves that masked the edges of the observation port, Leia’s eye was caught by a flickering of the lights along the Adamantine’s gleaming sides. She saw that in the rear quarter of the escort ship, a number of them had blinked out.
“What do you mean, you can’t get through?” Commander Zoalin turned, harried, from the comm board, which had blazed into life like a festival lamp, to stab yet another flashing switch. “Are you not getting an answer from the Borealis, or what?”
“It seems to be a simple signal block, sir.” Communications Chief Oran touched her forehead in a nervous salute. “Legassi is running a scan for it.”
In the small screen, Oran turned in her chair, granting the Commander a glimpse of the comm center, on whose main board a huge readout of the Adamantine’s comm circuits was illuminated in glowing yellow lines. Red lights flowed along them, synaptic testing for a blockage or interference in the power transmission, easy enough to find and correct under ordinary circumstances.
But the circumstances had gone from ordinary to hideous in just under ten minutes. And by the red lights flaring all over his comm board; by the hastily gasped message from the infirmary; and by the sudden absence of anyone replying or reporting from maintenance, shuttles, power, and several other ship sections, things were plunging from bad to worse with the speed of a decaying orbit.
“Legassi?” Oran rose from her chair. Zoalin saw past her that the chair he had thought empty in front of the scan console was, in fact, occupied. Yeoman Legassi had collapsed forward over his console, squamous salmon-colored hands clutching the edge of the board spasmodically, in time to the dreadful shudders that ran like waves through his frame.
Zoalin thought, Calamari aren’t supposed to be affected by human viruses …
If this was a virus.
Neither, of course, were Sullustans or Nalroni, both of which species were represented by crewmembers who