Jedi Search
Page 29
A lull fell in the conversation, the type of pause that often occurs in
forced social situations. During the quiet Ambassador Furgan made his move.
"I require your attention!" he called.
Leia watched him suddenly step away from her. Not knowing what he might do,
she tensed, ready for anything.
The few conversations stuttered to a halt. All eyes turned to the Caridan
ambassador. Mon Mothma had been chatting with General Jan Dodonna, the aged
tactician who had planned the strike on the first Death Star. Mon Mothma
raised her eyebrows, curious at Furgan's call for silence. Jan Dodonna
stopped telling his tale and held his hands in mid-gesture as he stared.
Furgan took his empty glass and dropped it to his hip, filling it from the
left hip flask this time. Leia wondered if he had already emptied the right
flask.
Raising his glass high, he took one step toward Mon Mothma, grinning. Leia
watched in disbelief. Was the rude ambassador going to propose a toast?
Furgan looked around the enclosed Skydome, making certain he had everyone's
attention. Even the patchy rain had ceased. "To all gathered here, I wish to
he heard. As ambassador of Carida, I have been empowered to speak for the
Imperial military training center, my planet, and my entire system.
Therefore, I must deliver a message to you all."
He raised his voice and raised his glass. "To Mon Mothma, who calls herself
leader of the New Republic--'' With a vicious sneer he hurled his drink into
her face. The honey-green liquid splashed on her cheeks, her hair, her
chest. She staggered back, appalled. Jan Dodonna caught her shoulders,
steadying her; his mouth gaped open in astonishment.
The New Republic guards at the door immediately drew their weapons but
somehow refrained from firing.
'We denounce your foul rebellion of lawbreakers and murderers. You have
tried to impress me with the number of other weak-minded systems that have
joined your Alliance, but no amount of rabble can erase your crimes against
the Empire."
He smashed his empty glass on the floor and ground the shards under his boot
heel. "Carida will never surrender to your so-called New Republic."
With a flourish Furgan took his entourage and stormed off. At the doorway
the gathered stormtroopers triumphantly placed the white helmets back on
their heads, hiding their faces, and followed the ambassador out. The New
Republic guards stared after them, weapons ready but not knowing what to do.
After a shocked silence the crowd erupted into a babble of outraged
conversations. Leia ran to the Chief of State. Dodonna was already swabbing
at Mon Mothma's damp robes.
The sticky drink drying on her face, Mon Mothma forced a smile for Leia.
Into the rising hubbub of indignation she said, "Well, we didn't lose
anything by trying, did we?"
In her disappointment Leia could not answer.
The tinny voice of Threepio burst over the background noise. "Excuse me,
Mistress Leia?"
Leia frantically looked around for the twins, afraid Furgan had somehow
kidnapped them during his diversion, but was relieved when she saw Jacen and
Jaina standing with their faces pressed against the curved window looking
out at the skyline of Imperial City.
Finally, from the corner of her eye, she noticed a golden arm flailing about
in alarm. Somehow Threepio had gotten tangled in the tentacle-cactus
exhibit; even from across the room Leia could see how badly scratched his
plating had become. Hors d'oeuvres lay scattered about the floor.
"Could anyone assist me in getting free from this plant?" Threepio cried.
"Please?"
Han Solo seemed to be drowning in a syrup of nightmares. He could not escape
the drugged and painful interrogation, as the hardened and
porcelain-beautiful face of Admiral Daala stared at him and pummeled him
with questions.
"Just put him over here," a woman's trilling voice said. Not Daala.
His body was being dragged like luggage across a floor.
"We have been ordered to stand guard," said a fuzzed voice filtered through
a stormtrooper helmet.
"Stand guard, then, but do it outside my lab. I want to talk to him in
peace." The woman's voice again.
"For your own protection--' the stormtrooper began. Han felt himself dropped
to the floor. His limbs didn't seem to remember how to bend.
"Protection? What is he going to do--he doesn't seem to have the energy to
sneeze. If you left any unscrambled memories in his head, I want to pick at
them without any interference."
Han felt himself hauled upright again, his arms wrapped behind him. Cold,
smooth stone pressed against his back. "Yes, yes," the woman's voice said,
"chain him to the column. I'm sure I'll be safe. I promise to stay out of
reach of his fangs."
He heard the marching boots of stormtroopers leaving the room. His mind
became active long before his body figured out how to respond. He remembered
parts of the interrogation, but not all of it. What had he told Admiral
Daala? His heart began pounding harder. Had he divulged any crucial secrets?
Did he even know any crucial secrets?
He was fairly certain he had told her the basic events about the fall of the
Empire and the rise of the New Republic--but that caused no harm, and it
might even lead to benefits. If Daala knew she had no chance, perhaps she
would surrender. And if banthas had wings ...
His eyes finally opened grudgingly, letting light slam inside. He flinched
away from returning vision, but eventually his eyes focused. He found
himself in a spacious room, some kind of laboratory or analysis center, not
his detention cell on the Gorgon. He heard singing and the sound of flutes.
Han turned his head to see a willowy alien woman standing in front of a
device that seemed to be a combination musical keyboard and data-entry pad.
He had heard her voice arguing with the stormtrooper. She hummed a complex
string of notes as her fingers played on the musical keys; in front of her a
rotating blueprint of a three-dimensional triangular shape took form, like a
shard of glass capped with a tetrahedron and some sort of energy pod
dangling from the lower point. With each tone the woman processed,
additional lines appeared on the complicated diagram.
Han worked his tongue around in his mouth and tried to talk. He meant to
say, "Who are you?" but his lips and vocal cords would not cooperate. The
sounds came out more like "Whaaaaa yuuuurrrr?"
Startled, the female alien fluttered her slender hands around the 3-D
geometrical image. Then she pranced over to where Han lay. She wore a badge
on her smock, imprinted with her likeness and glittering holograms of the
kind used for cipher-locks.
She was an attractive humanoid, tall and slender, with a bluish tint to her
skin. Her gossamer hair seemed like strands of pearlescent feathers. When
she spoke, her voice was high and reedy. Her eyes were wide and deep blue,
carrying an expression of perpetual astonishment.
"I've been waiting for you to wake up!" she said. "I have so many questions
to ask you. Is it tr
ue that you actually set foot on the first Death Star,
and you got a look at the second one while it was under construction? Tell
me what it was like. Anything you can remember. Every detail would be like a
treasure trove to me."
The babbled questions came at him too quickly to assimilate. What did the
Death Star have to do with anything? That was ten years ago! Instead, Han
focused his gaze past her.
Pastel gases glowed on the other side of the broad window, swirling around
the insatiable mouths of the black holes. He counted all four Star
Destroyers in orbital formation high above. That meant he must be somewhere
in the little cluster of planetoids in the center of the gravitational
island.
And he was alone. Neither Kyp nor Chewbacca had ended up here with him. He
hoped they had at least survived Daala's vicious interrogation. He worked
his mouth, trying to form words again. "Who are you?"
The alien woman touched her badge with one of her long-fingered hands. "My
name is Qwi Xux. And I know that you are Han Solo. I've read a hardcopy of
the debriefing you gave Admiral Daala."
Debriefing? Did she mean the interrogation, the torture chair that made his
entire body spasm?
Qwi Xux's entire demeanor seemed superficial and distracted, as if she were
paying only a small amount of attention to details while she kept her mind
preoccupied with something else. "Now then, please tell me about the Death
Star. I'm very eager to hear what you remember. You're the first person I
can talk to who was actually there."
Han wondered if the interrogation drugs were still muddling his brain, or if
there really was a reason why someone should want him to talk about the
defunct Death Star. And why should he tell this Imperial scientist anything
anyway? Had he divulged anything important to Daala? What if she took her
four Star Destroyers and attacked Coruscant?
"I've already been interrogated." He was pleased to hear his words come out
clearly enough to be understood this time.
In one bluish hand Qwi held up a short printout. "I want your real
impressions about it," she continued. "What did it sound like? What did it
feel like when you walked down the corridors? Tell me everything you can
remember." She wrung her hands in barely restrained excitement.
"No."
His response apparently shocked Qwi enough that she took a step backward and
let out a startled musical squawk. "You have to! I'm one of the top
scientists here." Her mouth hung partly open in confusion. She began to pace
around the pillar where he had been bound, forcing Han to turn his head. The
effort nearly made him pass out.
"What good does it do to withhold information?" Qwi asked. "Information is
for everyone. We build on the knowledge we have, add to it, and leave a
greater legacy for our successors."
Qwi struck him as being impossibly naive. Han wondered how long she had been
sheltered in the middle of the black hole cluster. "Does that mean you share
your information with anyone who asks?" he said.
Qwi bobbed her head. "That's the way Maw Installation works. It is the
foundation of all our research."
Han barely managed a grin of triumph. "All right, then tell me where my
friends are. I came in here with a young man and a Wookiee. Share that
information with me, and I'll see what I can remember about the Death Star."
Qwi's uneasy reaction told him that she had never before considered anything
but clear-cut cases.
"I don't know if I can tell you that," she said. "You don't have a need to
know."
Han managed a shrug. "Then I see how much your own code of ethics means to
you."
Qwi glanced toward the door, as if contemplating whether to summon the
stormtroopers after all. "It is in my charter here as a researcher that I
have access to all the data I need. Why won't you answer my few simple
questions?"
"Why won't you answer mine? I never signed your charter. I'm under no
obligation to you."
Han waited, fixing his eyes on her as she fidgeted. Finally, Qwi pulled out
her datapad and hummed as she keyed in a request.
She looked at him with wide deep-blue eyes that blinked rapidly. Her hair
seemed like a glittering waterfall of fine down spilling to her shoulders.
When she whistled again, the datapad gave a response.
"Your Wookiee companion has been assigned to a labor detail in the
engine-maintenance sector. The physicist formerly in charge of concept
development and implementation always swore by Wookiee laborers. He had
about a hundred of them taken from Kashyyyk and brought to the Installation
when it was formed. We don't have many left. It's hard and dangerous work
there, you know."
Han shifted his position, still finding it difficult to move. He had heard
rumors that Wookiee slaves had been put to work during the actual
construction of the first Death Star. But Qwi spoke of these things with
simple frankness.
"What about my other friend?" Han asked.
"Someone named Kyp Durron--is that him? He is still aboard the Gorgon in the
detention area, high security. I don't see much of a report from his
debriefing, so apparently he didn't have much to tell them."
Han frowned, trying to assess the information, but Qwi became animated
again. "All right, I've shared the information you wanted. Now tell me about
the Death Star!" She stepped closer to him but remained well out of reach.
Han rolled his eyes but saw no reason not to. The Death Star had been
destroyed long ago, and the plans were safely locked inside the protected
data core of the former Imperial Information Center.
Han told Qwi about the corridors, the noises. He knew the most about the
hangar bay, the detention area, and the garbage masher, but she didn't seem
much interested in those details.
"But did you see the core? The propulsion systems?"
"Sorry. I was just running interference while someone else knocked out the
tractor-beam generators." Han pursed his lips. "Why are you so interested in
all this anyway?"
She blinked her eyes. "Because I designed most of the Death Star!"
Before she could notice Han's shocked response, she trotted over to the near
wall and worked a few controls that turned a section of the metal plating
transparent. Suddenly a dizzying panorama replaced his narrow view of the
bright gases. He could see the other clustered rocks that made up Maw
Installation.
"In fact, we've still got the prototype Death Star right here at the
Installation."
As Qwi spoke, a gigantic wire-frame sphere as large as any of the asteroids
rose behind the shortened horizon of the nearest planetoid like a deadly
sunrise. The prototype looked like a giant armillary sphere, circular rings
connected at the poles and spread out for support. Nested in the framework
and superstructure hung the enormous reactor core and the planet-destroying
superlaser.
"This is just the functional part," Qwi said, staring out the window with
admiration in her eyes. "The core, the sup
erlaser, and the reactor, without
a hyperdrive propulsion system. We didn't see any need to add the structural
support and all the housing decks for troops and administrators."
Han found his voice again. "Does it work?"
Qwi smiled at him, her eyes sparkling. "Oh yes, it works beautifully!"
Kyp Durron felt like an animal trapped in a cage. He stared at the dull
confining walls of the detention cell. Illumination came through slitted
grills in the ceiling, too bright and too reddish to be comfortable on his
eyes. He sat on his bunk, stared at the wail, and tried not to think.
Leftover pain still throbbed through his body. The interrogator droid had
been vicious in finding the pain stimuli in his body, damping endorphins so
the slightest scratch seemed like agony. The sharp hypodermic needles felt
like spears as they plunged into his flesh; the will-breaking drugs flowed
like lava through his veins.
He had begged his memories to divulge some detail the interrogators would
find useful, if only to stop the questioning--but Kyp Durron was nobody, a
hapless prisoner who had spent most of his life on Kessel. He didn't know
anything to tell the Imperial monsters. In the end they had found him
worthless.
Kyp stared at the self-making meal the door dispenser had given to him. By
opening the lid of the pack, he spontaneously heated the textured protein