The Crystal Star

by Vonda McIntyre

“Why do you hate Rillao?” Leia asked.

  He licked his lips and glanced at the stew pot, but thought again about overloading his system with a third helping.

  “She was in the chamber!” His languor vanished and he leaned toward Leia, angry and intense. “She must be the reason we were exiled, Lelila. Why else would the Empire sentence her to spend the trip under torture?”

  “Random cruelty.” Leia wondered why the Firrerreo used her name—her alias—so often. No matter. It helped her remember what she was calling herself.

  “No. No. The Empire is cruel, Lelila, but it directs its cruelty. To create fear, to extort, to increase its power—”

  “The Empire is gone,” Leia said. “It’s finished. Defeated. You’re free, you and your people.”

  If she expected gratitude or even happiness, she was disappointed.

  “Defeated!” He thumped his fist on the table. “You said you could give me my freedom—but, Lelila, it wasn’t yours to give!”

  “I said you were free,” Leia said. “That’s all I said.” If she admitted who she was, she could claim some responsibility for his freedom. Instead, she would remain Lelila.

  He growled low in his throat. Chewbacca growled, too.

  But Leia remained calm. She smiled at the unnamed one.

  “No one asked me for an explanation,” she said. “You only asked me for your freedom.”

  He snorted in disgust, but his contempt lessened, to be replaced with an expression of grudging respect. To her astonishment, he rose and bowed.

  Then he walked away.

  “Where are you going, unnamed one?” Leia asked.

  Without replying—Why did I expect him to reply? Leia thought—he left Alderaan’s galley.

  She followed him; she caught up to him. He was a head taller than she, sleek and potentially powerful despite his gauntness. He continued toward the airlock without acknowledging her presence.

  “Are you going to wake up your people, unnamed one?”

  A few paces farther along, he said, “Here, Lelila? To what purpose?”

  “To regain their strength—”

  “The ship will return their strength while they sleep.”

  “—and to decide what to do now that you’re free!”

  “Should we return to our home, Lelila?” he snarled.

  He knows, Leia thought. She wondered if the Empire troops had awakened him and tormented him with the news of his world’s death.

  “No,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s quarantined. No one can land, and live … nothing can ever leave the planet.”

  He stopped short at the airlock door. His shoulders slumped. Leia took his elbow, steadying him. The sound he made was the cry of a grief-stricken predator.

  And Leia knew how he felt.

  “I’m sorry,” Leia said again. “I’m so sorry.”

  He turned upon her. “Lelila, did you have a hand in poisoning my world?”

  “No! I—I played a small part in bringing down the people who ordered the poisoning.”

  “The Starcrash Brigade?”

  The Starcrash Brigade had been one of the Empire’s elite assault teams.

  “Not the Brigade—the Empire.” She looked him in the eye. “It destroyed my world, too.”

  He narrowed his wide black eyes. “Ah. Alderaan, yes, Lelila, I thought perhaps you were from Alderaan.”

  The airlock door slid open. The unnamed one strode from Alderaan into the freighter’s echoing entry dock. Leia grabbed his wrist, but snatched back her hand when she felt his muscles tighten.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Continue.”

  “But you don’t have to! Everyone’s free, now, within the New Republic.”

  “The Empire bequeathed us a world. We will continue.”

  “But it might be—you don’t know—what about the other ships stranded here?”

  He leaned toward her. In the low gravity, the motion spread his hair around his head like a brindled halo.

  “The other ships have nothing to do with me,” he said. “And I have nothing to do with them. Do with them as you will, Lelila. As for the new world … we are adventurous people. We will take our chances.”

  “You’ll be traveling at sublight,” Leia said. “You’ll be traveling for years! The Republic could give you hyperdrive, or find a world for you within its bounds—”

  “To what purpose?” he asked again. “We will not notice the length of time. We will not care. We will be asleep. If all memory of the Empire has vanished when we wake—so much the better. If your Republic has vanished when we wake—we will not care.”

  Leia stepped back. Nothing she could say could change his mind, she knew that. He was doing what was right by his own sense of duty. She could not force him to accept hers.

  “Good-bye, then,” she said. “And good luck.”

  “May you always be shielded from the wind, Lelila.”

  “Why do you keep repeating my name?” Leia asked.

  “For power,” he said. “Lelila.”

  The airlock door began to slide shut.

  “But I gain only a little power from your false name, Princess Leia,” he said. “You wear it uncomfortably.” As the airlock door closed, he said, “And your disguise is pathetic.”

  Han returned to the city domes and sauntered down the street. He wanted some more of the local ale, and he wanted another card game where Chance & Hazard topped the deck. But he also wanted a different tavern from the one he had been in last night.

  “Good evening, small human.”

  He spun around, and once more bumped his nose against the chest of the enhanced human. She laughed down at him, but Han got the distinct impression that her laughter was superficial.

  “You left our game far too soon,” she said. “The cards began to turn my way, later on in the evening.”

  “Congratulations!” Han said heartily. “I’m glad to hear your night wasn’t a complete loss.”

  She leaned toward him, and the heavy, entangled locks of her white hair swung down on either side of her face.

  “Nor will tonight be,” she said. “You are obviously well born and well mannered, so you will give me the chance to make myself even with you.”

  “I wasn’t planning on cards tonight,” Han said. “Nope, no cards, I was just taking the air, just came out for a glass of ale.”

  “Ale will run as plentifully as water,” she said. She took his upper arm in her huge hand. Her fingers met around his biceps.

  “I mean, I’ve already had my glass of ale,” he said. “Hit my limit—”

  He tried to twist his arm from her grip, as Luke had twisted from his. The enhanced human lifted his arm, lifted his whole body. Han stretched on tiptoe to stay in contact with the ground.

  “You may drink or not, as you choose,” the enhanced human said. “But you will play.”

  “Well, okay, sure, why didn’t you say you had your heart set on a game?” Han said. “Fine, let’s go. Would you do me a favor? Either put me down or pick me up. This is very uncomfortable.”

  He thought she might sling him over her shoulder and cart him away. She could certainly do it if she chose. Finally she let him down. But she did not let him loose. She urged him down the street, holding his arm tight enough to bruise.

  “I didn’t get your name last night,” Han said in a companionable tone. “What did you say it was? And by the way, you want to loosen up a little?”

  “I did not say,” she said, “and you did not ask, but my name is Celestial Serenity. No, I do not want to loosen up at all.”

  He glanced up at her. She smiled down at him and walked faster, pushing him along.

  Jaina ate her breakfast.

  She was so hungry she hardly even tasted the rancid grease that floated on top of the thin porridge. When she finished, her stomach still growled. She could smell the ripe fruit and honey and fresh hot bread that the Proctors passed among themselves.

  Jaina’s
mouth watered. She watched the Proctors at the highest table and the helpers at the middle table breakfasting on good food, more than they could eat. They laughed and shouted and threw half-eaten food on the floor to go to waste, and leaned way back in their chairs with their feet on the table.

  The children, at the low tables, had to wait to be excused until the Proctors were all finished.

  It isn’t fair! she thought.

  Jaina could see Jacen, but only the top of his head. He was all the way on the other side of the cafeteria. She wished she could talk to him about what she had learned she could do. And she wished she could tell him she had drilled halfway through the door of her cell to the lock. Then she had stuck the sawdust together with spit, Ick, and pressed it back into the hole in the door so no one would notice.

  Vram sat at the middle table with the other helpers. He wolfed down a piece of fruit, some bread, and a whole bunch of cookies. He picked up a honey-cake and waved it at the other children. At Jaina. Honey dripped down Vram’s fingers. He licked it off.

  Jaina looked down so she would not have to see him.

  On the table in front of her, a bug, a tiny myrmin, tiptoed past on its hair-thin legs.

  It isn’t really a myrmin, Jaina thought. It has ten legs instead of just six, and an extra set of feelers! But it sort of looks like a myrmin. Jacen would know what it is. I bet it’s hungry.

  Jaina scraped the last tiny grain of porridge out of her bowl. She put it near the myrmin. The myrmin walked around it, tapped it with its feelers, and struggled to lift it and move it and carry it.

  I hope that tastes better to myrmins than to children, Jaina thought.

  The myrmin balanced the sand-grain-sized bit of porridge and climbed down over the edge of the table.

  The myrmin gave Jaina an idea.

  Sand got tracked in from the playfield. It lay in the cracks between the stone tiles on the floor, and even in the spaces where the planks of the table touched. Jaina experimented with moving a grain.

  I’ll pretend I’m a myrmin, she thought. Not a little girl, not Jaina. I don’t have any Jedi abilities—I’m just a myrmin! Who would pay any attention to a myrmin?

  She pushed the sand grain. It skittered across the table and fell over the edge.

  Jaina hunched her shoulders, expecting Hethrir’s cold wet blanket to fall around her and cut her off from the world.

  Nothing happened. It was just like last night with the air molecules.

  Jaina reached for sand grains on the Proctors’ table. She found none. Someone cleaned their table better. But plenty of sand lay on the platform at their feet. Jaina played with a few grains. They spiraled up into the air. No one noticed.

  The Head Proctor picked up a section of fruit. Jaina dropped the scatter of sand grains on it. The Proctor tossed it down to Vram. For a second, Jaina thought the Proctor had noticed the sand, but then she decided not because he did not look mad and he did not look for more sand on the sticky bun he chose from a steaming basket.

  Vram popped the fruit into his mouth and gobbled it without even noticing the sand.

  Jaina felt a little sorry for him. But only a little.

  If somebody gave me a piece of fruit right now, she thought, I probably wouldn’t notice sand on it, either.

  The second time she moved sand, she dropped it onto the Head Proctor’s sticky bun. Jaina felt like she had done something very, very bad, to spoil good food like that.

  The Proctor pulled off a piece of the soft, sweet bread and put it in his mouth. He chewed.

  His expression changed. Jaina felt glad. Not happy-glad. Jaina felt satisfied-glad.

  She lifted another handful of sand and scattered it across the Proctors’ table, so it fell on all their plates.

  The Head Proctor spit out his mouthful of sticky bun.

  That’s disgusting! Jaina thought. He didn’t even cover his mouth with his napkin.

  “Grake!” the Head Proctor shouted.

  Several of the other Proctors spit out their food, too, and soon they were looking at it and poking it, even the half-chewed bits, and talking to each other and arguing. Jaina watched them, pretending not to. Soon she did not even have to pretend, because all the other children were watching, too.

  “Grake! Get out here!”

  The door beside the Proctors’ stage slammed open, bouncing against the wall.

  A huge being thundered through the doorway. Jaina flinched—she thought the dragon had broken into the bunker—then looked again, surprised and excited.

  The being in the wide white apron was a Veubg, from Gbu, a high-gravity world. Gbu was the last world before Munto Codru that Mama had visited. The New Republic delegation had not been able to go to the surface, most of them, of course, because the gravity would have squashed them. But the Veubgri had traveled to the meeting satellite. They had liked Jaina and Jacen and Anakin. Jaina remembered the soft touch of their tendrils on her hair. Her mouth watered at the memory of their sweets. She wanted to jump up and wave at the Veubg.

  But Grake had never seen Jaina or her brothers. She would not recognize them. She would not care.

  “Why are you yelling at me, little blue-clothes?” Grake climbed the stairs, light-footed and powerful, tendrils coiled around a heavy wooden spatula, and stopped behind the center chair. “I work all day for you, and you only yell at me, you are a very unappreciative person.”

  “There’s sand in the food!” the Head Proctor shouted. “Is this your idea of a joke?”

  “A joke? Sand—in my food?” Grake smacked the Head Proctor on the side of the head with the spatula.

  The Head Proctor fell off his chair and scrambled up, staring, stunned.

  Jaina gasped. She wanted to hide her eyes. She was sure the Proctors would hurt Grake—use the Force to make her explode! And it would be Jaina’s fault.

  But nothing like that happened.

  Maybe they can’t, Jaina thought. Maybe all they can do with the Force is just barely turn on their lightsabers, or maybe Hethrir even cheated to let them do that!

  Grake leaped to the end of the stage and whacked the Proctor who lounged in the last seat. He scrambled to keep his balance, lurching sideways and forward to grab the edge of the table.

  “Take your feet off the table!” The Veubg leaped again, all the way from one end of the stage to the other, knocking the spatula against the head of each Proctor in turn. “You complain of sand in my food—when you put your feet on the dinner table? You have the manners of dragons!”

  The Veubg landed soundlessly—then stamped all six feet. The whole Proctors’ table bounced a handsbreadth in the air and forward.

  Jaina giggled. She could not help it. She tried to stop and so did all the other children. She knew they would get in trouble for laughing and she knew she would be the cause of it. But she could not help it. And how she wished Lusa were here to see it too!

  “Stop it!” the Head Proctor shouted.

  Jaina could not tell whether he meant her or Grake.

  Grake snatched handsful of fruit from the serving dishes and flung them over the second table and out to the children. Everybody shrieked with excitement and grabbed for the fruit.

  Jaina caught a chunk of melon and stuffed it into her mouth. It was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. It made tears spring to her eyes.

  She was glad she had not poured sand on the serving dishes, but she would have eaten the fruit anyway.

  “Sand! In my food!” Grake flung the contents of a whole serving bowl of cookies over the children’s heads. Everyone was running around and jumping up to catch the sweets and snatching them off the floor before they got trampled.

  Jaina snatched more sand, even though she really wanted a cookie. A little cloud of sand grains floated up from the tiles. She dropped the sharp grains down the necks of the Proctors’ uniforms. The sand fell down their backs and into their pants.

  At first they did not notice because they were all on their feet, yelling. Then the
Head Proctor drew his lightsaber. Its blade hummed and glowed.

  Jaina jumped up, horrified. Uncle Luke always said that when she became a Jedi Knight, she should never draw her blade, except for practice, unless she was willing to kill.

  Jaina had never even touched a lightsaber.

  Grake did not give the Proctor the chance to kill her. She leaped down the stage, down the steps, and through the doorway even before the Proctor could strike, if he was going to. Jaina had never seen anyone move so fast.

  The Proctors shouted a few last insults. The Head Proctor put away his lightsaber. Jaina did not know if he would have killed Grake, or if he was only threatening. Or joking. She did not think they should threaten or joke with a lightsaber.

  The Proctors shouted after Grake, and pushed each other back and forth, and finally sat down again.

  None of them put their feet on the table.

  “Be quiet!” the Head Proctor yelled at the children. “Sit down and be quiet or we’ll come put you in your places.”

  Jaina sat back down and so did the other children. They might as well, because all the extra food was gone. Everybody was looking around, hoping to find one last tart grape or sweet crumb.

  The Proctors sat uneasily at their table, not wanting to dismiss the meal because that would mean they had failed at something. But they did not eat any more of the sandy food.

  The Head Proctor frowned and fidgeted and pulled his uniform away from his sides and shook it. Jaina stared down at the table. If she started to laugh before anybody else noticed what was happening, the Proctors would know it was all her fault.

  Jaina wished a grape had fallen on the table in front of her so she could eat it. But the table was empty. She carefully looked past the edge of the table. The Proctors were talking together now. They sounded mad. Jaina made herself not smile. Instead she jiggled the sand in the Proctors’ uniforms, and looked for more sand.

  She had used it all up. The floor tiles, even the cracks between them, were clean.

  Except for little black spots moving toward the Proctors’ table. They formed a line across the floor like the foam on waves.

  The myrmins scurried up the front of the Proctors’ stage. As the Proctors squirmed and itched and hissed impatiently at the Head Proctor to dismiss dinner, the myrmins ran over their shoes and into their pants legs.