Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [41]
“Son of a …” Han Solo tapped back to the beginning of the message queue and scanned it again. Twelve scramble 9s. He punched into the first of them, though he knew the comm screen would give him nothing but gibberish, and he was right.
“Where’s Goldenrod when you need him?”
At the far end of the terrace, Chewbacca groaned a question.
“Nothing.” Solo paged through the queue again, as if he thought a message would manifest itself saying, DON’T WORRY ABOUT A THING, WE’RE 50 HOURS LATE BECAUSE THE ENTIRE DIPLOMATIC MISSION JUST STOPPED OFF ON CYBLOC XII SO I COULD BUY MYSELF A PAIR OF SHOES. HOME SOON. LOVE, L.
In my dreams, thought Han.
He glanced at the chronometer. It was a few hours after noon, the bright, misty daylight of the resort moon Hesperidium already losing its strength. Above the dark-leaved trees with their neon-bright clusters of gold and scarlet fruit, the sky was fading to its characteristic rosy lavender, the dark edges pricked already by the more prominent stars.
There was no possible way he could continue to deceive himself. Even taking into account the worst imaginable outcome of the conference with this Ashgad character, even taking into account an emergency detour to Coruscant, even taking into account an unscheduled Council session and a harangue by Councillor Q-Varx of the Rationalist sympathies and inexhaustible rhetoric—and why wouldn’t she have at least sent a message to that effect?—Leia was late.
Very, very late.
Chewbacca hauled himself out of the terrace pool and shook, spattering water in all directions. Behind him among the realistically engineered rocks, Winter glided fishlike with the giggling twins in the mild water while Anakin patted solemnly all around the pinkly glowing field of his confinement bubble. Jaina had lately become fascinated with knotting and braiding, and the long feathering of the Wookiee’s mane and arms bore random macramés of her efforts. Dripping, Chewbacca padded to Han’s side. He growled another query, his voice low, for the twins understood Wookiee almost as fluently as did their father.
“I can’t even do that,” replied Han softly. “That was part of the cover. She’s supposed to be here with us, not in the middle of the Meridian sector meeting with a guy who isn’t even the elected representative of his planet.”
Chewie asked something else, tilting his great head, blue eyes glittering worriedly under the overhang of his brow.
“What would Ackbar be able to tell me?” Han spread his hands. “If he knew anything he’d have contacted me already. With a leak someplace in the Council, and the Rationalists and the Rights of Sentience Party ready to split the Council in half, he can’t go through regular channels any more than we can.”
The Wookiee rumbled deep in his chest.
“I know.” Han closed his fist, brought it down with surprising restraint—softly, a slow-motion blow—on the thick glassite of the tabletop beside which he stood.
The small villa that had housed a succession of the Emperor Palpatine’s concubines—one of several retained by the government of the New Republic to shelter diplomats it wanted to impress—had been thoroughly swept for listening devices before Leia and her family went to stay there for an ostensible vacation on what was arguably the most beautiful moon of the Coruscant system, but Han still felt easier talking on the terrace. The gurgle of the fountains among mossy stones and the soft singing of the warbleflowers, would have baffled even a long-range directional listening device.
“She should have listened to Callista,” he said. “She should have listened.”
In his heart, of course, he knew that Leia couldn’t have heeded the warning. The Rationalist Party had spent too many months setting up the secret meeting with Ashgad—and had too much influence both in the New Republic and in the various fragments of the old Empire—for the whole matter to be jettisoned at the last minute on the strength of an anonymous note. Q-Varx, the Calamari Senator who headed up the party on that watery planet, had pointed out that, on the one hand, the case of the