by Timothy Zahn
“You all know the history of how your world was devastated by the battle in space. How many of the Noghri were killed by the volcanoes and earthquakes and killer seas that followed, until a remnant arrived here to this place. How the Lord Darth Vader came to you, and offered you aid. How after the falling of the strange-smelling rains all plants except the kholm-grass withered and died. How the Empire told you the ground had been poisoned with chemicals from the destroyed ship, and offered machines to clean the soil for you. And you know all too well the price they demanded for those machines.”
“Yet the ground is indeed poisoned,” one of the dynasts told her. “I and many others have tried through the years to grow food in places where the machines have not been. But the seed was wasted, for nothing would grow.”
“Yes,” Leia nodded. “But it was not the soil that was poisoned. Or rather, not the soil directly.”
She signaled to Chewbacca. Reaching back into the landspeeder, he picked up the analyzer unit and one of the kholm-grass plants and brought them up the steps to her. “I will now tell you the story that is true,” Leia said as the Wookiee went back down the steps. “After the Lord Vader left in his ship, other ships came. They flew far and wide over your world. To any who asked they probably said they were surveying the land, perhaps searching for other survivors or other habitable places. But that was all a lie. Their true purpose was to seed your world with a new type of plant.” She held up the kholm-grass. “This plant.”
“Your truth is dreams,” the dynast Vor’corkh spat. “Kholm-grass has grown on Honoghr since the beginning of knowledge.”
“I didn’t say this was kholm-grass,” Leia countered. “It looks like the kholm-grsiss you remember, and even smells very much like it. But not exactly. It is, in fact, a subtle creation of the Empire … sent by the Emperor to poison your world.”
The silence of the crowd broke into a buzz of stunned conversation. Leia gave them time, letting her gaze drift around the area as she waited. There must be close to a thousand Noghri pressed around the Grand Dukha, she estimated, and more were still coming into the area. The word about her must still be spreading, she decided, and glanced around to see where they were coming from.
And as she looked off to her left a slight glint of metal caught her eye. Well back from the Grand Dukha, half hidden in the long early-morning shadows beside another building, was the boxy shape of a decon droid.
Leia stared at it, a shiver of sudden horror running through her. A decon droid with unusual curiosity—Threepio had mentioned that, but she’d been too preoccupied at the time to pay any attention to his concerns. But for a decon droid to be in Nystao, fifty kilometers or more from its designated work area, was far more than just overdeveloped curiosity. It had to be—
She squatted down, mentally berating herself for her carelessness. Of course the Grand Admiral wouldn’t have just flitted away on the spur of the moment. Not without leaving someone or something to keep an eye on things. “Chewie—over there to your right,” she hissed. “Looks like a decon droid, but I think it’s an espionage droid.”
The Wookiee growled something vicious and started pushing his way through the crowd. But even as the Noghri made way for him, Leia knew he would never make it. Espionage droids weren’t brilliant, but they were smart enough to know not to hang around after their cover had been blown. Long before Chewbacca could get over there it would be off and running. If it had a transmitter—and if there were any Imperial ships within range—
“People of Honoghr!” she shouted over the conversation. “I will prove to you right now the truth of what I say. One of the Emperor’s decon droids is there.” She pointed to it. “Bring it to me.”
The crowd turned to look, and Leia could sense their uncertainty. But before anyone could move, the droid abruptly vanished around the corner of the building it had been skulking beside. A second later Leia caught a glimpse of it between two other buildings, scuttling away for all it was worth.
It was, tactically, the worst decision the droid could have made. Running away was as good as admitting guilt, particularly in front of a people who had grown up with the things and knew exactly what the normal behavioral range of a decon droid was. The crowd roared, and from the rear perhaps fifty of the older adolescents took off after it.
And as they did so, one of the guards on the terrace beside Leia cupped his hand around his mouth and sent a piercing half-scream into the air.
Leia jerked away, ears ringing with the sound. The guard screamed again, and this time there was an answer from somewhere in the near distance. The guard switched to a warble that sounded like a complicated medley of birdcalls; a short reply, and both fell silent. “He calls others to the hunt,” the maitrakh told Leia.
Leia nodded, squeezing her hands into fists as she watched the pursuers disappear around a corner after the droid. If the droid had a transmitter it would right now be frantically dumping its data …
And then, suddenly, the pursuers were back in sight, accompanied by a half dozen adult Noghri males. Held aloft like the prize from a hunt, struggling uselessly in their grip, was the droid.
Leia took a deep breath. “Bring it here to me,” she said as the party approached. They did so, six of the adolescents lugging it up the stairs and laying it on its back on the terrace. Leia ignited her lightsaber, her eyes searching the droid as she did so for signs of a concealed antenna port. She couldn’t see one, but that by itself didn’t prove anything. Steeling herself for the worst, she sliced a vertical cut through the droid’s outer shell. Two more crosswise cuts, and its internal workings were laid out for all to see.
Chewbacca was already kneeling beside the droid as Leia shut down her lightsaber, his huge fingers probing delicately among the maze of tubes and cables and fibers. Near the top of the cavity was a small gray box. He threw a significant look at Leia and pulled it free from its connections.
Leia swallowed as he laid it on the ground beside him. She recognized it, all right, from long and sometimes bitter experience: the motivator/recorder unit from an Imperial probe droid. But the antenna connector jack was empty. Luck, or the Force, was still with them.
Chewbacca was poking around the lower part of the cavity now. Leia watched as he pulled several cylinders out of the tangle, examined their markings, and returned them to their places. The crowd was starting to murmur again when, with a satisfied murmur of his own, he pulled out a large cylinder and slender needle from near the intake hopper.
Gingerly, Leia took the cylinder from him. It shouldn’t be dangerous to her, but there was no point in taking chances. “I call on the dynasts to bear witness that this cylinder was indeed taken from the inside of this machine,” she called to the crowd.
“Is this your proof?” Ir’khaim asked, eyeing the cylinder doubtfully.
“It is,” Leia nodded. “I have said that these plants are not the kholm-grass you remember from before the disaster. But I have not yet said what is different about them.” Picking up one of the plants, she held it up for them to see. “The Emperor’s scientists took your kholm-grass and changed it,” she told the crowd. “They created differences that would breed true between generations. The altered smell you have noticed is caused by a chemical which the stem, roots, and leaves secrete. A chemical which has one purpose only: to inhibit the growth of all other plant life. The machines that the Grand Admiral claims are cleaning the ground are in fact doing nothing but destroying this special kholm-grass which the Empire planted.”
“Your truth is again dreams,” Vor’corkh scoffed. “The droid machines require nearly two tens of days to cleanse a single pirkha of land. My daughters could destroy the kholm-grass there in one.”
Leia smiled grimly. “Perhaps the machines don’t require as much time as it appears. Let’s find out.” Holding the kholm-grass out in front of her, she eased a drop of pale liquid from the tip of the needle and touched it to the stem.
It was as dramatic a demonstration as she could hav
e hoped for. The drop soaked through the dull brown surface of the plant, and for a handful of seconds nothing seemed to happen. There was a faint sizzling sound; and then, without warning, the plant suddenly began to turn black and wither. There was a hissing gasp from the crowd as the patch of catalytic destruction spread along the stem toward the leaves and roots. Leia held it up a moment longer, then dropped it on the terrace. There it lay, writhing like a dry branch thrown into a fire, until there was nothing left but a short and unrecognizable filament of wrinkled black. Leia touched it tentatively with the toe of her boot, and it disintegrated into a fine powder.
She had expected another outburst of surprise or outrage from the crowd. Their dead silence was in its own way more unnerving than any noise would have been. The Noghri understood the implications of the demonstration, all right.
And as she looked around at their faces, she knew that she’d won.
She put the cylinder down on the terrace beside the destroyed plant and turned to face the dynasts. “I have shown you my proof,” she said. “You must now decide whether the Noghri debt has been paid.”
She looked at Vor’corkh; and moved by an impulse she couldn’t explain, she unhooked her lightsaber from her belt and put it in his hand. Stepping past him, she went over to Khabarakh. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t expect for you to have to go through anything like this because of me.”
Khabarakh opened his mouth in a needle-toothed Noghri smile. “The Empire has long taught us that it is a warrior’s pride and duty to face pain for his overlord. Should I do less for the Mal’ary’ush of the Lord Vader?”
Leia shook her head. “I’m not your overlord, Khabarakh, and I never will be. The Noghri are a free people. I came only to try to restore that freedom to you.”
“And to bring us on your side against the Empire,” Vor’corkh said caustically from behind her.
Leia turned. “That would be my wish,” she agreed. “But I do not ask it.”
Vor’corkh studied her a moment. Then, reluctantly, he handed her lightsaber back to her. “The dynasts of Honoghr cannot and will not make so important a decision in a single day,” he said. “There is much to consider, and a full convocate of the Noghri people must be called.”
“Then call it,” Khabarakh urged. “The Mal’ary’ush of the Lord Vader is here.”
“And can the Mal’ary’ush protect us from the might of the Empire, should we choose to defy it?” Vor’corkh countered.
“But—”
“No, Khabarakh, he’s right,” Leia said. “The Empire would rather kill you all than let you defect or even become neutral.”
“Have the Noghri forgotten how to fight?” Khabarakh scoffed.
“And has Khabarakh clan Kihm’bar forgotten what happened to Honoghr forty-eight years ago?” Vor’corkh snapped. “If we defy the Empire now, we would have no option but to leave our world and hide.”
“And doing that would guarantee the instant slaughter of the commando teams that are out serving the Empire,” Leia pointed out to Khabarakh. “Would you have them die without even knowing the reason? There is no honor in that.”
“You speak wisdom, Lady Vader,” Vor’corkh said, and for the first time Leia thought she could detect a trace of grudging respect in his eyes. “True warriors understand the value of patience. You will leave us now?”
“Yes,” Leia nodded. “My presence here is still a danger to you. I would ask one favor: that you would allow Khabarakh to return me to my ship.”
Vor’corkh looked at Khabarakh. “Khabarakh’s family conspired to free him,” he said. “They succeeded, and he escaped into space. Three commando teams who were here on leave have followed in pursuit. The entire clan Kihm’bar will be in disgrace until they yield up the names of those responsible.”
Leia nodded. It was as good a story as any. “Just be sure to warn the commandos you send to be careful when they make contact with the other teams. If even a hint of this gets back to the Empire, they’ll destroy you.”
“Do not presume to tell warriors their job,” Vor’corkh retorted. He hesitated. “Can you obtain more of this for us?” he asked, gesturing back at the cylinder.
“Yes,” Leia said. “We’ll need to go to Endor first and pick up my ship. Khabarakh can accompany me back to Coruscant then and I’ll get him a supply.”
The dynast hesitated. “There is no way to bring it sooner?”
A fragment of conversation floated up from Leia’s memory: the maitrakh, mentioning that the window for planting this season’s crops was almost closed. “There might be,” she said. “Khabarakh, how much time would we save if we skipped Endor and went directly to Coruscant?”
“Approximately four days, Lady Vader,” he said.
Leia nodded. Han would kill her for leaving his beloved Falcon sitting in orbit at Endor like that, but there was no way around it. “All right,” she nodded. “That’s what we’ll do, then. Don’t forget to be careful where you use it, though—you can’t risk incoming Imperial ships spotting new cropland.”
“Do not presume, either, to tell farmers their job,” Vor’corkh said; but this time there was a touch of dry humor in his voice. “We will eagerly await its arrival.”
“Then we’d better leave at once,” Leia said. She looked past him to the maitrakh, and nodded her head in thanks. Finally—finally—everything was starting to go their way. Despite her earlier doubts, the Force was clearly with her.
Turning back to Khabarakh, she ignited her lightsaber and cut him loose from his chains. “Come on, Khabarakh,” she said. “Time to go.”
CHAPTER
25
The Coral Vanda billed itself as the most impressive casino in the galaxy … and as he looked around the huge and ornate Tralla Room, Han could understand why he’d never heard of anyone challenging that claim.
The room had at least a dozen sabacc tables scattered around its three half-levels, plus a whole range of lugjack bars, tregald booths, holo-chess tables, and even a few of the traditional horseshoe-shaped warp-tops favored by hard-core crinbid fanatics. A bar bisecting the room stocked most anything a customer would want to drink, either to celebrate a win or forget a loss, and there was a serving window built into the back wall for people who didn’t want to stop playing even to eat.
And when you got tired of looking at your cards or into your glass, there was the view through the full-wall transparent outer hull. Rippling blue-green water, hundreds of brilliantly colored fish and small sea mammals; and around all of it the intricate winding loops and fans of the famous Pantolomin coral reefs.
The Tralla Room was, in short, as fine a casino as Han had ever seen in his life … and the Coral Vanda had seven other rooms just like it.
Sitting at the bar beside him, Lando downed the last of his drink and pushed the glass away from him. “So what now?” he asked.
“He’s here, Lando,” Han told him, tearing his gaze from the reef outside and looking one more time around the casino. “Somewhere.”
“I think he’s skipped this trip,” Lando disagreed. “Probably ran out of money. Remember what Sena said—the guy spends it like poisoned water.”
“Yeah, but if he was out of money he’d be trying to sell them another ship,” Han pointed out. He drained his own glass and got up from his seat. “Come on—one more room to go.”
“And then we do it all over again,” Lando growled. “And again, and again. It’s a waste of time.”
“You got any other ideas?”
“Matter of fact, I do,” Lando said as they swung wide to get around a large Herglic balanced precariously across two of the seats and headed down the bar toward the exit. “Instead of just wandering around like we have for the past six hours, we should plant ourselves at a sabacc table somewhere and start dropping some serious money. Word’ll get around that there are a couple of pikers ripe for plucking; and if this guy loses money as fast as Sena says, he’ll be plenty interested in trying to make some of it back
.”
Han looked at his friend in mild surprise. He’d had the same idea a couple of hours ago, but hadn’t figured on Lando going for it. “You think your professional gambler’s pride can take that kind of beating?”
Lando looked him straight in the eye. “If it’ll get me out of here and back to my mining operation, my pride can take anything.”
Han grimaced. He sometimes forgot that he’d kind of dragged Lando into all of this. “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. Okay, tell you what. We’ll give the Saffkin Room one last look. If he’s not there, we’ll come back here and—”
He broke off. There on the bar, in front of an empty seat, was a tray with a still-smoldering cigarra sitting in it. A cigarra with an unusual but very familiar aroma to it …
“Uh-oh,” Lando said quietly at his shoulder.
“I don’t believe it,” Han said, dropping his hand to his blaster as he threw a quick look around the crowded room.
“Believe it, buddy,” Lando said. He touched the cushion of the vacant seat. “It’s still warm. He must be—there he is.”
It was Niles Ferrier, all right, standing beneath the ornate shimmerglass exit archway, another of his ever-present cigarras gripped between his teeth. He grinned at them, made a sort of mock salute, and disappeared out the door.
“Well, that’s just great,” Lando said. “Now what?”
“He wants us to follow him,” Han said, throwing a quick glance around them. He didn’t see anyone he recognized, but that didn’t mean anything. Ferrier’s people were probably all around them. “Let’s go see what he’s up to.”
“It could be a trap,” Lando warned.
“Or he could be ready to deal,” Han countered. “Keep your blaster ready.”
“No kidding.”