The Crystal Star

by Vonda McIntyre

“You’d practiced healing. He practiced for war.”

  “He overcame me,” Rillao said, turning aside Leia’s excuses for her. “He imprisoned me. He took our child. He has had our child for five years.”

  And, Leia realized, Hethrir had imprisoned Rillao in the passenger freighter, under torture, for five years.

  “What did he want of you?” Leia asked softly, meaning, He could have killed you cleanly, but he chose to torment you, for all that time.

  “He wanted to win me back, of course,” Rillao said. “Or break me to his will. It made no difference to him, I think, as long as I surrendered to his bidding. He wanted a partner, or a pawn, to strengthen his rule of the Empire Reborn.” She stretched out her hands, spread her long fingers, turned her hands over to reveal the scarred palms, and clenched her fists. “And he wanted our child to be his heir. To the Empire Reborn and to his dark power.”

  She smiled again, but her eyes were full of tears.

  “My sweet son … I fear what Hethrir has done to him, in five years. He cannot fulfill his father’s ambitions for him. He cannot gain, for Hethrir, full access to the dark side. He could be a fine scientist, or an artist, or an explorer-diplomat. He cannot be a Jedi.”

  “And you haven’t even seen him in five years!” Leia exclaimed in sympathy. She tried to imagine missing Jaina and Jacen for five years. She did not think she would survive.

  “I have seen him,” Rillao said. “He came to the chamber with his lord. He called me traitor, and weakling, and fool.”

  She scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, dashing the tears away angrily.

  “I must find him, Lelila,” she said. “Perhaps he’s already lost to me … lost to himself. But perhaps Hethrir has not yet extinguished his sweetness. What your children said of him gave me hope.”

  “My name isn’t Lelila,” Leia said.

  “You need not tell me—”

  “It’s Leia. And when we rescue Ti—when we rescue your son, and mine, we’ll go home to Coruscant. You’ll have a safe haven. You’ll have colleagues. Luke—my brother, Luke Skywalker—will be so excited to meet you!”

  To her astonishment, Rillao dropped to one knee before her, awkward in the cramped pilot’s cabin.

  “Princess Leia of Alderaan,” she said. “Freedom fighter, destroyer of the Empire, and founder of the New Republic. I pledge you my loyalty. I should have recognized you—”

  Suddenly shy, Leia began twisting and plaiting her hair into a messy heap on top of her head.

  “I was traveling incognito,” she said.

  Chapter 11

  Leia hugged Chewbacca when he boarded Alderaan and came to her cabin to assure himself that Jaina and Jacen were safe.

  Under Grake’s watchful eye, the other stolen children slept on the worldcraft, which was programmed to travel to Munto Codru. There, the children would be safe, and the work of finding their homes and families could begin.

  “Will you stay in my cabin with Jaina and Jacen?” Leia asked Chewbacca. “I don’t want to leave them alone.”

  Chewbacca snorted a question.

  “Yes,” Leia said. “You are an excellent navigator. But Rillao knows the route to Asylum Station.”

  Chewbacca growled his opinion of a navigator who had not flown for at least five years, but the growl was just for show. He laid one huge hand gently on Leia’s head, and sat on the end of the bunk where the twins were sleeping.

  Leia hurried to her pilot’s seat. She lifted Alderaan off the worldcraft. The worldcraft vanished into the brightness of hyperspace, on its way to refuge. Leia gave the controls over to Rillao.

  They were on their way to Asylum Station, and Anakin.

  Han strolled happily along the quiet path. What a great evening. No one bothering him, the razor edge of his concentration sharpened rather than dulled by the excellent ale, nothing to worry about, nothing to think about, playing cards on instinct and nerve. Winning.

  He felt terrific.

  And he knew what to do about Waru.

  The lobby of the lodge was deserted. He was rather disappointed. If the host had shown up and harassed him for the rent, he could have laughed and thrown hard cash money at the whirlwind’s feet. No, not feet. Whatever the whirlwind used instead of feet. He could have pitched the credits into the host’s twisty gullet.

  He slipped on the flagstone floor and nearly fell.

  What the—? he thought. I’m not that drunk.

  He glanced at the spot that had tripped him up. A cracked floor tile was littered with thick, ugly flower petals. He had stepped on one and it had squashed under his heel. The petals looked like they came from the same flowers Threepio had pilfered for the breakfast table.

  Probably the cleaning droid mistook them for garbage and took them away, Han said to himself. Then dropped them on the floor.

  Han climbed the stairs two at a time. He would give the rent money to Threepio. Only fair to let the droid pay the host, since Threepio had been the one to explain and excuse their being late with the payment.

  He felt cleanly and completely tired. He looked forward to sleeping late. By afternoon, evening anyway, Luke would have cooled off.

  And I’ve cooled off, too, Han thought. If the kid doesn’t jump down my throat again, everything will be fine.

  His code would not open the door to his room.

  “Hey!” He banged on the door. “Let me in!”

  After a moment, the door-screen lit up with the image of a beautiful woman, wrapped in a robe, her hair disheveled.

  “This is no time for trading,” she said. “Come back at a civilized hour. We’ll go to my ship and I’ll display the new merchandise.”

  “Trading? Merchandise? Huh? Who are you? What are you doing in my room?” He thought, If Luke sees her, I’ll never be able to make him understand about me and Xaverri. I’ll never get him to believe this is a misunderstanding.

  “This is my room, sir, and I am sleeping in it.”

  Peering close, he rechecked the room number. No, he had made no mistake.

  “I’ve been here for days!” he said. “My stuff is in the closet!”

  “My things are in the closet. Go away. I have called the host.” The door-screen faded away and she would not reply to Han’s knocking, or his shouts.

  A couple of large droids trundled toward him, one from each end of the corridor. They looked like Artoo-Detoo on growth hormones. With a pincer maneuver, they herded him toward the stairs, bumping him roughly despite his protests, then trundled on thick treads after him, one before him, one behind.

  In the lobby, the lodge’s host waited for him.

  “What’s going on?” Han said. “Who’s that in my room? Where are my colleagues? Where’s our stuff?”

  “My establishment has been reserved by a conference,” the host said. “You and your colleagues have consistently been late with your rent, so I required them to find other shelter.”

  Han threw a handful of credits at the host. The credits fluttered through the whirlwind image and scattered over the pool’s surface.

  “There.”

  “Too late.”

  The two overgrown droids nudged up against Han’s back and pushed him toward the door, rolling over the crushed flower petals and releasing a powerful cloud of their fetid odor.

  “Wait! Hold on!” Han pushed at the droids. He had no effect. Their pressure increased and their progress continued unhampered.

  “Dammit, where did my friends go?”

  “I do not know,” the whirlwind said. “Furthermore, I do not care.”

  The droids bumped Han outside so roughly that he nearly fell on the steps. The door slammed shut behind him. Catcalls followed him through the darkness.

  In the warm damp night, Han swore.

  Where did they go? he wondered. They didn’t have any money.…

  As Han walked, the crystal star dawned. First dawn and second dawn no longer occurred in opposition, second dawn blasting first sunset out of the sky. Th
e crystal star had plummeted past Crseih Station, falling closer to the black hole. It rose, creating first dawn. Nearly in conjunction, the blazing whirlpool of the black hole exploded over the horizon.

  Between the interference of the burning whirlpool and the haphazardly effective barriers of the radiation shields, Han’s comlink was unreliable. He tried to reach Luke or Threepio, but received no answer.

  He tried to force himself to think clearly.

  Of course: they must have gone back to the Falcon. Too much trouble to come and find me, not that I exactly left word where I’d be. I’ll have to go all the way back to the landing field.…

  He tramped back down the path.

  Suddenly the light around him dimmed a bit. Han glanced upward.

  The white dwarf plunged behind the accretion disk of the black hole. For a moment, communication cleared slightly. Han called the Falcon.

  No one answered except the Falcon’s automatic systems. No one had entered the ship since Threepio fetched the emergency rations. Neither Threepio nor Luke had left him a message.

  As Han tried to call Luke directly, the white dwarf appeared from behind its companion. The interference increased again, blasting Han’s connection to the Falcon.

  Could Luke have gone back to Waru? Han thought. Maybe he doesn’t even know we’re thrown out of our room. Maybe Threepio went to find him.…

  The daylight brightened again.

  Instead of soaring outward from the black hole, the white dwarf sailed around in front of it. Its eccentric elliptical orbit had changed phase, to an orbit nearly circular. The black hole drew the crystalline white dwarf closer. As the crystal star spun around the black hole, a stream of glowing plasma ripped from its surface. The dying star whirled around the black hole, plasma surging from it as it spun. The two stars formed a double whirlpool of light.

  As the binary rose higher in the sky, the strange harsh light mottled the dome and the ground. Han blinked, wishing for a clearer, warmer, more ordinary light. He did not even want to know the strength of the X-ray flux.

  Threepio was right about the radiation, Han thought.

  Han reached the welcome dome, where the lights of the signs and shops obliterated the burning of the black hole. The welcome dome was as active, bright, and noisy now, at double-dawn, as it had been at star-dusk, and at midnight.

  Han sighed. He was not interested in anything the welcome dome had to offer. All he wanted was a few hours’ sleep. Instead, he trudged away toward Waru’s compound, thinking, Haven’t these folks ever heard of public transportation?

  Alderaan’s molten skin shivered beneath the assault of X rays as it dove into the strange system.

  Asylum Station spun in space, a chaotic cluster of irregular, cratered asteroids, held together with communicating tunnels and gravity fields.

  Leia frowned. She had never been to Asylum Station, yet she recognized it. There could not be two such strange stations.

  “It’s Crseih!” she exclaimed, as Artoo-Detoo whistled the same conclusion. “Crseih Station!”

  “Yes,” Rillao said. “Its real name is Crseih. In the trade, it is known as Asylum. Do you know it?”

  “My husband and my brother are here,” she said. She felt both hope and joy. “If Anakin’s here, Luke will know it!”

  She might land on Crseih Station and find her little boy waiting to meet her, safe and free. She imagined him running toward her, imagined his arms wrapped around her neck, imagined hugging him to her.

  She imagined the empty spot in her heart, filling with his presence.

  She tried to reach Han, to contact the Millennium Falcon, but the same radiation flux that had prevented her calling him from Munto Codru now blasted her communications out of the sky. Crseih Station was cut off from the rest of the galaxy by the frenzy of the double star.

  “Be patient,” Rillao said. “Soon we will find out. Soon we will know.”

  “You sound like my brother!”

  Leia sighed in distress. For all she knew, Han and Luke had finished their investigation—their vacation—and headed back home before Hethrir brought Anakin to Crseih.

  Near tears, Leia caught her breath. She pressed her hands against her eyes and extended her perceptions as far as she could.

  She felt nothing.

  She let her hands fall.

  Rillao, beside her, patted her shoulder gently.

  “We’re still a distance from Crseih,” she said. “Let’s not distress ourselves quite yet.”

  Leia saw that Rillao had searched for Tigris, as Leia had searched for Anakin, and failed to find him.

  Leia shook herself and tried to take Rillao’s advice.

  Before Leia, beyond Crseih, a binary system blazed. A white dwarf star plunged around a whirlpool of glowing debris. The black hole within the whirlpool ripped at the surface of the white dwarf, drawing star-stuff into explosive destruction.

  Leia gazed at its wild beauty.

  “This is the oddest system I’ve ever been in,” Leia said, searching for something to distract her attention. “The oddest, and the most violent.”

  Artoo-Detoo beeped, and a geyser of information burst into the air above his carapace. He warbled with excitement.

  Leia deciphered Artoo’s display of information.

  “He says they’re odd indeed,” Leia said.

  Artoo amplified a portion of the information and pushed it toward her.

  “Dying?” Leia exclaimed. “The star is dying?” Leia looked closer, interpreting what Artoo showed her. “All white dwarf stars are dying. The star—it’s freezing.”

  “A freezing star?” Rillao said skeptically. “I think your droid is joking with us.”

  “Artoo has a lot of good qualities,” Leia said, “but he doesn’t have much in the way of a sense of humor. What’s happening is, the star’s so dense it’s nothing but a quantum plasma. It’s very, very old, so old it’s stopped burning. It’s giving up its heat to the universe. Freezing into one huge quantum crystal.”

  Leia heard a whimper from the far end of the companionway. She jumped up and ran from the cockpit to her cabin, to her children. Chewbacca sat beside them, looming over them protectively.

  Jaina and Jacen awakened, Jaina with a cry, Jacen pale and silent.

  “It’s all right, dear ones,” Leia said. She and Chewbacca hugged them. She wished she had left them back on the worldcraft, safe and sound, yet she was desperately grateful to have them with her.

  “Is Hethrir back?” Jaina whispered.

  “No,” Leia said. “He’s nowhere near. I’ll never let him near you. Did you have a dream? A nightmare?”

  Jaina nodded somberly from the safety of Chewbacca’s arms.

  “My head hurts, Mama.” Jacen held Leia tight.

  Leia rocked him, crooning. After a while, they fell back into uneasy sleep. Leia tucked them in; Chewbacca fastened a safety guard around them.

  Alderaan was about to land on Crseih Station.

  Tigris entered the meeting hall of Crseih Station’s travelers’ lodge. The long stone pews were filled. Shimmering white velvet backed the dais upon which Lord Hethrir would stand. Against the brilliant white, Hethrir’s gold and red hair would blaze like flame, and his dark eyes would burn.

  Tigris recognized most of the people who waited for Lord Hethrir. Lady Ucce sat in the place of honor reserved for the most generous donor to the Empire Reborn. Lord Qaqquqqu sat among Lord Hethrir’s lesser supporters. Many of the guests had visited the worldcraft, either as members of the trade or as supplicants for Hethrir’s favor. Others had been promoted from Proctor to Empire Youth and sent out to work in secret on behalf of the Empire Reborn. Their reunion was unique in Tigris’s experience. The Youths set themselves off with their pale uniforms, their medals, their elegant long coats.

  Every free person at the meeting was devoted to the memory of the Empire, and to Lord Hethrir’s plan for the Empire Reborn.

  They had never before gathered like this. Something ne
w and strange was happening. Tigris was proud to be involved, no matter how small his part.

  A child of a nonhuman species accompanied each guest. All the guests, of course, were human. It was the place of humans to restore the Empire and to regain their power.

  Tigris saw the centaur child who had joined Anakin’s sister in defying the rules of Lord Hethrir’s school. In fact, many of the slave children in the room were from the group that Lord Hethrir had just culled and sold. It seemed odd to Tigris that the guests would want to be attended by slaves so young and untrained that they had to be leashed. Some still cried for their mothers. But it was not Tigris’s place to criticize Lord Hethrir’s guests.

  Keeping his silence, holding Anakin’s hand, Tigris looked for a place to sit. The meeting room was very full.

  The Proctors gathered just outside.

  “Rise!”

  Tigris hurried into the last pew, pulling Anakin with him. All around, the guests rose and bowed their heads. Tigris stared at the floor, waiting for Hethrir’s permission to look up again.

  Lord Hethrir’s retinue of young Proctors marched through the doorway and up the aisle and fanned out on either side of the podium.

  Lord Hethrir swept in.

  “Were you planning to keep my lightsaber?”

  Tigris straightened up, startled by Hethrir’s low and dangerous voice. The Lord frowned down at him.

  Tigris paled. The pommel of the lightsaber lay heavy in the pocket of his ragged robe. He fumbled for the saber and gave it to his lord. He should have followed Hethrir to his room and returned the saber immediately. Instead he had calmed Anakin. He should have left Anakin to cry himself to silence. The child must, after all, learn to control himself.

  Hethrir strode down the central aisle and took his place on the podium.

  “You may be seated,” Hethrir said.

  But one of the guests remained standing.

  Tigris recognized him. His name was Brashaa. He was an undistinguished member of Lord Hethrir’s following. How dare he defy Hethrir’s command?

  Hethrir looked down at Brashaa, with every evidence of welcome. Tigris thought he detected a hint of amusement in Lord Hethrir’s expression. Amusement, and contempt. Brashaa was a notorious miser. He was not even attended by a slave. Instead, he dragged Anakin’s pet after him on a heavy chain. Lord Hethrir had given Lady Ucce the ugly black six-legged creature for free. It panted and whined. Slaver dripped from its heavy, pitted fangs. Lady Ucce must have made a great profit by selling it to Brashaa.