Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [47]
“As you said,” murmured Mon Mothma, “you can only watch those you know about. Might someone alter a jump point by remote? Re-route them?”
“Not possible,” said Han. “I mean, I’m not a scientist or anything, but those navicomputers are shielded like a Valorsian harem against every kind of solar flare and gamma particle for just that reason, but when I was in the game there were always rumors about either the Imps or some one of the big smuggler chiefs figuring out a way to do that.”
The chill behind his sternum seemed to tighten as he said it. All his life he’d played tag with the black hollows of eternity, and he knew just how immense were the spaces between stars. Anything could be out there. It was every deep-spacer’s nightmare to be somehow disoriented in the interstellar gulfs. It was why he had labored to memorize hundreds of starfields, why he still kept reams of hardcopy starcharts on the Millennium Falcon in spite of the teasing he got about it from Lando and his other smuggler buddies of years past.
Just the thought that someone might be able to alter a jump point by remote was enough to scare the pants off him.
It was something else. It had to be something else.
Angrily, he said, “So whose great idea was it for the Council to select a pro tem successor if both the Chief of State and the First Minister bought it? The minute they know she’s missing they’re gonna deadlock, and then you won’t be able to do anything.”
“We can’t do anything now.”
“What about a hologram?” asked Han. “We could get some holo faker to splice together recent footage …”
“That,” said Mon Mothma coldly, “has already been tried. Once by the Daysong Party, who have heard rumors of the disappearance …”
“From whom? Where?”
She shook her head. “Rumors are already beginning to fly, Han. Admiral Ackbar has put the Council on a twelve-hour hiatus to prevent violence between Senator Typia of the Daysong Party and Senator Arastide of Gantho. The second faked hologram we haven’t been able to trace, though we suspect the Tervigs, since it declared that trade in Bandie slaves from Tervissis was acceptable. In any case, it was so badly put together that it obviates any connection with the original disappearance.
“And no matter what the circumstances,” she went on, measuring her words with arctic exactness, “substitution of a holographic fake for the Chief of State of the Republic is not a precedent I wish to see set. Nor, I think you would agree, does Leia.”
Han felt like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “No. I guess not.”
Another reason, he reflected, not to rule the galaxy.
“What about Luke?” he asked into the silence that followed.
“Luke?”
“He was on the Borealis. He was here to see her off. Then she got a message at the last minute from Callista—saying for Leia not to trust Ashgad as far as she could throw him—and Luke went along. He planned to take a small craft down to the surface past the gun stations, to see if Callista was on Nam Chorios.”
“Ashgad,” said Mon Mothma softly. “I didn’t know that. We’ve been trying to reach Luke on the moon of Yavin. His students thought he might have returned and gone into the jungle to meditate.”
Han grunted. Then the silence returned, save for the wickering of the fire, and the murmur of the fountain in the corner of the parlor. Firelight caught in Chewbacca’s eyes, twin blue glimmers beneath the shadow of his brows. Beyond the tall, magnetically guarded opening that made up the room’s southern wall, the magic skies of the Coruscant system shimmered with ropes and veils and spilled treasures of prodigal starlight.
“I’ll need to get in touch with Lando,” he said at length.
Mon Mothma nodded. She seemed to have read his mind from the first. He reflected that it was probably part of the Chief of State’s job description.