Star Wars the Truce at Bakura - Kathy Tyers [45]
Abruptly Luke realized he hadn’t thought about that striking Bakuran senator for over an hour. He tried to dismiss her image again, and his memory of the way her Force aura had energized his own. Forgetting wasn’t as easy without Imperials surrounding him. This wasn’t the time or place to let personal urges distract him.
Yet the first Death Star hadn’t been the time or place for romance either, and his desperate love for Leia had set so much in motion. If only Gaeriel Captison needed to be rescued.…
Shortly after Skywalker’s shuttle left the garrison, Pter Thanas stopped tapping an Alzoc-pearl pocketknife against his desktop. He’d tracked the illegal freighter to Pad 12 at the civilian spaceport. Relevant information, but not yet vital.
He unfolded one knife blade and balanced it over his index finger. He never could have admitted to young Skywalker how long he’d wished to see a lightsaber in action. When Vader and the Emperor had wiped out the Jedi, he’d given up hope. Fascinating, the way it’d deflected laser fire. Its combat uses would be limited, but its very appearance was compelling.
As was the young man who carried it. Now he understood why the reward for his capture was so high.
Thanas imagined what he could do with so many credits. He’d been transferred to this dead-end position after refusing to wipe out a village of recalcitrant Talz slave miners back on Alzoc III.
He hadn’t been trying to play hero.… He’d simply increased his miners’ food allotment. Most sentients worked harder if better fed, and the storehouses had been full. Unbeknownst to him, the furry four-eyed Talz identified their benefactor. One day in the mines, he’d taken a step too close to the lip of an open shaft. Three Talz dove to save him. He owed them his life.
Six standard months later, a colonel with more greed than common sense reduced the food ration again. The Talz headman delivered a cautiously worded protest. The colonel ordered their village wiped out as an example. Thanas ignored the order. The colonel sent in stormtroopers himself, then ordered Thanas on board his own ship, “pending reassignment.”
Thanas smiled bitterly. He’d been told to consider himself lucky—if he’d pulled that stunt in Lord Vader’s presence, he’d have been dead of asphyxiation. Instead, here he sat on Bakura, an isolated, low-paying job with little hope for rotation out to the Core worlds.
Again he thought about that reward—and early retirement. He caressed the iridescent pearl handle. He could marry again and live quietly on some nonaligned world. The reward for Skywalker tempted him, but if anyone on Bakura claimed those credits, it would be Governor Wilek Nereus.
Thanas frowned, refolded the knife, and dropped it into his pocket. No early retirement for him. He hadn’t even been able to repel alien invaders without reinforcements … from the Rebel Alliance. He’d never leave Bakura now.
Leia cleared Luke’s message from her screen and keyed over to her next data file. A photographic memory would’ve been useful. This much raw data would take weeks to internalize. From Artoo, she’d already learned that Bakura had information-level technology, repulsor coil manufacturing and export (due to plentiful mineral deposits in the mountains north of Salis D’aar), and namana trees, a tropical cash crop that showed astonishing profit margins. New information was that descendants of the original Bakur Corporation ship’s captain had always served as titular heads of government. Also new: the senate, not the smallish populace, elected senators to replace those who died or resigned.
Now, she reflected, it was an approval organ for Imperial Governor Wilek Nereus. She’d like quietly to interview a few private citizens and find out how much anti-Imperial