"That's the Gakfedd tribe," reported the local expert equably. "See the big guy there? That's Ugbuz. Alpha male."
A huge boar Gamorrean was pounding the hatch cover with an ax made of a hunk of stained blast shielding strapped to a hardwood shaft the size of Luke's leg. His helmet was covered with plumes and bits of dried leather, which Luke realized a moment later were the ears of other Gamorreans.
"That one there with the necklace of microchips is Krok, junior husband to Ugbuz's wife, Bullyak. If I know Bullyak, she's watching from the woods..."
"You know them?" said Cray, startled.
Pothman smiled. "Of course, lovely lady." He still held the gauge and snip-welder he'd been using when Luke had gone down to warn the others. "I was slave in their village for the better part of two years. In a minute we'll see... Yep, there they are."
A second band had emerged from the trees on the opposite edge of the great clearing, equally dirty, drooling, shaggy, clothed in spiked armor wrought half of bright-colored reptile leather, half of scrap metal clearly scavenged or stolen from the Imperial base that for thirty years now had rotted in the woods.
"The Klaggs," said Pothman. "Look, back in the trees... That's Mugshub, their matriarch. Like Bullyak, making sure they don't damage anything of value in their enthusiasm. And besides..." He made a close-fisted mime of a manly muscle-flex. ”Fighting just wouldn't be fighting unless the girls were along to watch."
The new band of Gamorreans fell upon those already pounding on the side of the ship. Ugbuz and the other boars of the Gakfedd tribe turned on the newcomers and in instants a full-fledged battle ensued. "The Klaggs held me prisoner for most of a year as well, after I escaped from the Gakfedds," said Pothman pleasantly. "Horrible people, all of them."
The five occupants of the ship--Luke, Pothman, Cray, Nichos, and Threepio-- lined up along the console, looking down through the front viewport at the melee outside.
"We can go back to fixing the engines now," said Pothman after a few moments. "There's no way they can break into the ship, but they'll be fighting each other until it's too dark to see, at which time we can break out the lights and finish work outside."
"They can't see well in the dark?" asked Cray. Outside, Ugbuz picked up a smaller boar by the scruff and seat and heaved him at the rest, ignoring the shower of darts and rocks that fell around him like grimy rain.
Pothman looked surprised. "It'll be suppertime."
Shadow fell across the meadow.
Cloud, Luke thought. Then he realized it wasn't.
It was a ship.
Gleaming, massive, gray as hypothermic death, it descended like a steel flower under its five outspread antigrav reflectors. Imperial without a doubt, though Luke had seen nothing like it anywhere: It was far too large, too sleek, for a smuggler craft. Short legs unfurled from the lander's underside, and the grass of the meadow swirled around the crude hide boots of the Gamorreans as they stopped, lowered their weapons, stared.
"The Emperor." Pothman's face was filled with awe and a sort of terrified confusion, as if he weren't quite sure what he should feel. "He didn't forget."
The lander touched ground, the displaced air and gravitational currents joggling the Huntbird, fifty meters away. The tall central column of the unmarked craft, bigger than a fodder barn for a herd of banthas, settled a little, the movement reminiscent of some huge insect gathering itself together. White arc lights beneath the shelter of the antigravs flared on, automated vid pickups swiveled silently, triangulating on the silent horde of watching Gamorreans. Then the round column of the base rotated, and wide doors hissed smoothly open. A ramp reached forth, extended to the ground.
With a howl of delight audible even in the explorer's bridge, all the Gamorreans in the meadow piled up the ramp, weapons upraised, and foamed into the lander like a dirty and violent tidal race.
"Get the repairs finished," said Luke softly. "I've got a bad feeling about this."
The doors remained open. The vid pickups turned, recalibrating on the smaller ship. A moment's silence. Then the Huntbird's intercom crackled to life. "Exit your ship," commanded a cold male voice. "Escape is futile. Survivors will be considered in sympathy with Rebel forces."
"It's a recording," said Luke, still watching the lander's open door. "Is there--”
"Exit your ship. In sixty seconds vaporization cycle will be initiated. Escape is futile. Exit..."
Cray, Luke, and Pothman traded one look, then headed for the hatch. "I'll take the center," panted Luke, gritting his teeth as the deck seemed to lurch under his feet. "You go left, Cray; Triv, head right." Luke wondered just how exactly he was going to elude whatever was going to come out of that lander, let alone give any help whatsoever to his companions. ”Threepio, Nichos, get clear of the ship and head for the woods. We'll rendezvous at Pothman's base, it's two kilometers west of here...."
He saw the lander's autocannons turn, half hidden by the protective petals of the antigrav, as he and his companions were halfway down the emergency ladder. He yelled, "Jump!" and threw himself off, falling the three meters to the long grass as white stunbeams seared noisily off the Huntbird's sides. The impact with the ground was almost as bad as being hit with a beam. For a moment he couldn't breathe, couldn't see... but even in that moment he was rolling, dodging, trying to collect enough of his concentration to concentrate the Force--any quantity of the Force--on clearing his spinning head.
"Do not attempt escape." The hateful metal voice clanked through his swirling consciousness like an automated dream. "Mutineers and evaders will be considered in violation of the Capital Powers Act. Do not attempt escape...."
His vision cleared and he saw Pothman running, zigzagging in the long grass. One shot from the autocannon puffed dirt and shredded stems on the black man's heels; a second caught him square between the shoulder blades. Luke hit the ground again and rolled to avoid a similar blast. From the tail of his eye he saw Cray do the same.
The Force. Got to use the Force...
Silent and evil, like silvery bubbles, tracker droids drifted from the open door of the lander.
They paused for a moment at the top of the ramp, round and gleaming, the small searchbeams clustered at their apexes moving, shifting, actinic beams stabbing around them, crisscrossing in the rich dim sunlight as they established bearings. Sensors turned like obscene antennae--Luke saw the round lenses on their equators iris open and shut, vile, all-seeing eyes.
Steel pincers and grippers unfurled from beneath them like insect feet, jellyfish tentacles, dangling as they drifted. With medium but inexorable speed, they floated down the ramp.
Concentrate the Force on body temperature, thought Luke. Lower it, slow the heart rate, anything to fox their signals...
Nichos, with far more agility than average for human-form droids, was running for the woods. Threepio, not designed for headlong flight, hastened determinedly after him. The trackers ignored them both.
"Do not attempt escape. Mutineers and evaders..."
Forty meters away, Cray rose to her knees behind a fallen log and got off a perfect shot, burning away the nest of sensors on the tracker homing in on where she lay. Luke shut his teeth on a cry of "Don't..." knowing that it didn't matter if she gave away her position. The trackers knew her position.
As the injured machine whirled, lurched, sensor lights stabbing and swiveling wildly to reorient, a second tracker spun in midair and caught Cray hard with a stunbolt, dropping her like a dead thing in the long grass.
Luke flattened, felt for his blaster, fighting to keep his vision single as the image of two of the floating droids divided into four, hovering over Cray's fallen body, reaching down with glittering, jointed limbs. Halfway to the clearing's edge, Nichos halted.
"Cray!"
His cry was a living man's cry of despair.
A shadow fell over Luke. He knew what it was even as he rolled to face it, turned on the ground, summoned all the Force, all his will and concentration, for a single shot.
White light blinded his eyes and he heard the oily soft chitter of steel limbs unfurling toward him as he pressed the trigger.
It was the last thing he recalled.
Chapter 5
"The children of the Jedi." Jevax, Chief Person of Plawal, slowed his steps on the hairpin switchbacks of the red-black rock stairs, deep-set green eyes taking on a faraway expression as he gazed out into the still rainbow mists that shut them in. The steps were cut straight into the coarse, faintly sparkling rock of the little valley's cliffs, but whoever had done that cutting had had either limited facilities or a paranoid streak about the original inhabitants of the valley floor. Leia could touch the rock to her right, and the railing of stripped shalaman wood on her left, without extending her arms more than a dozen centimeters from her sides, and by the look of the wood the railing was fairly new. Beyond it lay fog, darkened by blurs that she knew were the tops of trees.
"Yes," said Jevax softly. "Yes, they were here."
He returned his concentration to the climb, pushing through overhanging branches bearded with sweetberry vines and holding them politely back for Leia, Han, and finally Chewbacca to follow. In the steam-chamber atmosphere of the Plawal Rift, trees grew from the smallest juts and irregularities in the succession of "benches"-- natural rock platforms or ledges that led up to the sheer wall of the cliffs themselves. Dark leaves mixed with trailing gray curtains of moss that hung over the rock face, jeweled with speckled bowvines and blood-red sweetberry fruit.
Leia shifted her shoulders under the baggy white linen of her shirt. The sticky heat was far worse than Ithor, the humidity gruesome, though at least up at this, the higher end of the valley, the unpleasant sulfur tang that managed to get past the processing plants lower down was almost hidden under the heavy green sweetness of the leaves. Looking up, it was impossible to believe that a hundred and fifty meters over her head, iron winds scoured glaciers deeper than the towers of most cities.
Looking up, in fact, it was impossible to see anything except green, and more green: galaxies of starbloom, riotous armies of orchids, fruits of every color, shape, composition, and degree of ripeness, all blurred and softened and hidden by the omnipresent density of the mist.
"Do you remember them?" On the way to Belsavis she'd looked up statistics about the original population. The Mluki were adolescent at seven, old at thirty. With his long white hair elaborately braided into crests down his back and arms, Jevax would have been a child when the Jedi left.
"Not clearly." Jevax, small among his peers, was still taller than Han, and would have been taller yet had his natural posture been straight instead of inclined slightly forward, long arms almost touching his bowed knees. He wore a great deal of jewelry, silver and iridescent blue shell-work imported from Eriadu, mostly in the form of earrings. His sarong-like breeches were printed in dark purple and black. Like nearly everyone in Plawal, he wore black rubber injecto-kit shoes of the kind manufactured on Sullust and sold by the freighterload in every corner of the galaxy, incongruous on the slumped, hairy, primitive form. The shoes had bright orange latches.
"It was years, you see, before any of us remembered the Jedi had been here at all."
"That quiet, hunh?"
Leia reached back to give Han a shove. "They blotted your minds, didn't they?"
"I think they must have." Jevax led them around another corner and up another knee-breaking screw of stairs. Trees and promontories of rock overhung the way, and Leia could see Chewbacca gazing up approvingly at the possibilities for defensive ambush. The mists shredded away around them, the pallid daylight almost blinding after the ghostly dimness of the rift floor. Matte-gray cutouts of plants showed a cliff edge overhead, the tallest of the benches that graded up in the narrow end of what had originally been a small volcanic crevasse.
"I can't recall them doing so, of course," went on Jevax, rubbing his head in rueful amusement. "Nor could my mother. I was only three." He smiled at the recollection. ”Funny, looking back. For ten or twelve years nobody remembered them at all--though it's quite clear from examining the ruins of Plett's House that he'd been living here for some seventy years before the other Jedi brought their spouses and children here to hide. Lately a few people have remembered: small things, memories that don't seem to fit with what we all thought we knew. But it's as if..."
He shook his head, searching for a way to explain. "It's as if for years we just didn't think about our past."
"I know people who run their lives that way," remarked Han. He didn't add--though he could have, Leia thought--that for a good percentage of his life he'd been one of them.
"Well, it isn't that we didn't have plenty of present and future to think about," the Chief Person went on. "The Jedi, bless their spirits, saw to that."
The last turn of the stair took them above the level of the mist. As if they had stepped through a trapdoor, the atmosphere was clear and noticeably warmer. Strange small winds stirred at Leia's hair, rustled the gray-stemmed trees that grew like a stalky curtain along the cliff's edge. To her left and below lay a mingled sea of green and gray, trees like islands amid vaporous billows, bright-winged birds and insects flitting between them in the wan and shivery light.
Leia looked up, and gasped.
"The Jedi," said Jevax, with shy pride, "were responsible for that, we think."
From the black rock of the ribbed volcanic cliffs sprang girders, supporting in their turn the webbed weight of durasteel with columns as thick as a man was high. Graceful as birds, the girders soared out over the nothingness of mist and flowers, every crystalline facet of the intricate plex roof they carried beveled and angled, designed to catch and multiply the smallest gleams of the weak sun's light.
Scrims of mist flowed like streams among the hanging garden beds that depended from the lacework of transparisteel vaults and domes, pendant gondolas as big as houses, some high in the swift-shifting streams of mist just under the plex, others lowered on cables nearly to the level of the broken turret of the stumpy stone tower that stood on the lava bench that Jevax and his party had just achieved: all that remained of the citadel of the Jedi.
"That's quite an engineering job for a bunch of folks who just ran around the galaxy with swords." Han as usual was determined not to be impressed.
"In running around the galaxy with swords," said Jevax, smiling and tugging on the end of one white braid, "I assume they encountered and befriended not only reliable engineers, but those trading corporations who were both interested in the exotic fruits and vegetable fibers our unique climatic conditions produce, and honest enough not to completely exploit the natives of this and the other volcanic rift valleys on the planet. The first representatives of Brathflen Corporation made their appearance, to the best of my calculations, within a year of the Jedis' departure. Galactic Exotics started development of shalaman and podon orchards here very soon after that. They joined with Imperial Exports to dome the valley, mostly because of a plan designed by-- I believe--the Jedi Master Plett himself, to grow vine-coffee and vine-silk on the adjustable platforms beneath the dome."
He pointed upward. A large gondola, trailing festoons of pale, green-striped foliage, glided silently along one of the myriad tracks that followed the girders, halted under the center of the dome, and lowered itself with graceful ease a good ten meters. In doing so it put itself level with another hanging bed, from which tiny figures threw out a portable bridge made of a single line of chain ladder, and a second cable for handhold before they scrambled insouciantly across.
"Both plants depend on short-cycle temperature swings of thirty degrees or more. Few environments can sustain them, and those that can are seldom habitable enough to make the investment worthwhile. Those aerial plantations support a good thirty percent of our total economy."
Leia refrained from saying that a quantity of vine-silk sufficient to make a decent dress would cost enough to support a good thirty percent of any planet's total economy. Which was why Han's gift to her of
a gown and tabard of the stuff a short time ago had reduced her to speechlessness. Her friend Winter had picked them out. Han still had a weakness for clothing completely unsuited to the Chief of State, and had learned not to trust his own judgment on things to be worn in public.
Chewie, gazing upward, yowled appreciatively. Leia remembered her unnerving adventures on the Wookiee's home planet of Kashyyyk and shivered.
"So you think they arranged commercial development of the planet as a... a kind of thank-you?"
"Well..." Jevax led the way toward the broken walls and half-ruined buildings that formed a clotted line where the bench joined the rise of the cliff behind it. "Brathflen, Galactic, and Imperial/republic are the only three corporations with completely clean records as far as treatment of the local populations goes. Given the number of other companies operating in the Core Worlds, it can't be a coincidence that they were the three who got the coordinates for this planet."
The bench--the last giant step of rock at the end of the valley--”
less than thirty meters wide, running back in an uneven triangle into the sheerness of the cliffs. A jungle-covered slope of debris blunted the inner point of the triangle, before which rose the tower, its front wall broken out to reveal two stone floors and the remains of two more, reduced to little better than ledges around the tower's inner wall. What looked as if it might have been a curtain wall lay about fifteen meters out from that, more or less halfway between the point of the triangle and the edge of the bench. It had been shattered in a dozen places, as if some huge creature had taken bites out of the stonework. Another curtain wall, reduced to a chain of dark rubble, skirted the edge of the bench itself, punctuated with trees, and between them lay a lush, rather unkempt lawn pitted with old blast craters in which thickets of lipana grew around small, silvery rain pools.
"How many of them stayed here?" asked Leia, making quick mental calculations and feeling a sort of shock of surprise and disappointment.
"It can't have been very many, that's for sure." Han surveyed the narrow space of the inner courtyard, hands on hips and a slight frown between his brows. "Not unless they were real friendly."
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