Planet of Twilight

by Barbara Hambley

  It was about the size of a pittin, sitting upright twenty or thirty

  centimeters high--glistening, crablike, cocking its long eyestalks at her

  with malign awareness. Sitting upright. Waiting for her.

  Leia took another step, and extended the blade.

  The thing swayed back. In the dense shadows it was extremely difficult to

  make out what it looked like, but glancing up, Leia saw that there were

  other things, things like long-legged spiders splayed out on the ceiling and

  walls, things like short-legged slugs that scooted along the walls, catching

  and eating the huge drochs that rustled in the shadows. As she watched, the

  upright thing on the step bent and turned, extruding what looked like a

  single spiky limb from itself to pounce on a particularly gross droch,

  catching it in a pincer that seemed to alter in shape and transform into a

  gulping mouth. For a moment she heard it purr, a soft little thrum of deep

  pleasure. Then it swung back, eyestalks swiveling to face her again.

  Sickened, overwhelmed with the sensation that this was an evil that could

  not be fought, Leia extended the lightsaber so that the glowing tip advanced

  on the crab thing.

  Movement flickered in the corner of her eye and she swung around as

  something dropped from the ceiling, landing on her shoulder with a wet plop.

  Pain stabbed through her, like a droch bite but far worse. The soft-bodied

  thing that had fallen on her morphed out grabbing legs, hooks that sank into

  her flesh as she cried out and tried to pull it loose.

  Weakness. Pain in her chest. Cold and dreamy sleep.

  Something else fastened on her leg. The crab thing on the steps purred

  louder, a sound of dreamy pleasure. She felt as if she were dropping down in

  a lift bound for the center of the world.

  She whipped the lightsaber around in her hand, shrinking in terror from the

  glowing blade that she knew could take her own arm off' as she touched it to

  the parasite on her shoulder. It frizzled horribly and the pain it felt went

  through her like a knife, and in her dreamy, sickened weakness she felt it

  die. It was like a part of her own flesh dying. She turned the blade, fried

  the thing on her leg, taking the pain, taking the sense of black slipping

  death, and moved another step down.

  The crab thing scuttered ahead of her, vanishing into the dark, save for the

  orange sparks of its eyes. Around the curve of the stair she could see the

  walls moving with them, all shapes, shifting one into the other, feeding on

  one another but all turning as one toward her with the awareness of the

  light. Leia backed up, catching her heel on the stair in her weakness and

  almost falling. Another one, whatever they were, dropped from the ceiling

  onto her neck, smaller, so that both the sinking weakness of dying, and the

  pain of its death, were less; but they were coming after her.

  Two more bites. She felt like she would faint from lack of air. The crab

  thing's soft throb of delight made her long to find it, cut it to shreds,

  wherever it was. Her hand fumbled with the lightsaber's hilt, pain of a

  different sort lancing through her arm as the tiniest edge of the blade

  brushed her flesh in killing another parasite. If she fell, she thought, if

  she lost consciousness, she would die.

  Clinging to the walls, sobbing, trying to breathe, fighting not to sink into

  that cool welcoming sleep, she stumbled upward, fifteen steps, twenty. The

  crab thing was following in the darkness behind, as if relishing, reveling

  in her exhaustion and pain. They'll find me, she thought. I won't be able to

  make it back to my room and they'll find me.

  Seti Ashgad was away, Seti Ashgad who had warned, Skywalker will know, if

  she dies. She had tried, again and again, to call out to Luke, to send him

  signals with her mind, but wasn't sure that he had heard. The humming,

  singing power of the Force in this world might have drowned out everything

  else. Only Dzym was there, silent in this silent house.

  If he finds me I shall die.

  She fell through the door, lay panting, cold, unable to breathe or think,

  while the wan patticolored glow of the light-sculpture flickered over her,

  and the lightsaber, its blade vanished with the relaxation of her grip,

  glinted an inch or so from her fingers. I have to pick it up. I have to

  stand up. To get out of here. To get back to my room.

  Dying would be easier, she thought. She wondered if Luke really would know.

  At least if I died, they could appoint a successor.

  As an idea it had its merits. But in the slow-sinking dimness of cold that

  surrounded her, she heard movement, the heavy, thick, sluglike panting of

  Beldorion. Somewhere near, she thought. Heading this way.

  Don't let him find me, she prayed, trying to stand. She couldn't, but on her

  hands and knees she crawled, across the darkened chamber, up the endless

  stairs. He would take her prisoner for his own purposes, Liegeus had

  warned--but in time he would trade her to Dzym, as he had some other poor

  slave.

  She thought there were parasites still on her, the pain of them chewing her

  arms and thighs and back, the weakness draining her, sapping her strength

  away. But when she crawled into the long, narrow office where the computer

  was, and lay in the ghastly tinted grayish purple bands of the setting

  sunlight, she felt better, and feeling herself after a time, found no sign

  of them.

  I can't let them find me, she thought. I can't.

  It took everything she had left to climb the stairs again, holding to the

  walls, exhausted and sick with the pain of the lightsaber burn.

  She collapsed again on the floor after letting herself in the room, and lay

  there for a long time, curled in a fetal position in the fading bars of

  sunlight, wanting only to sleep until the universe was made new.

  In time she got up and hid the lightsaber, the wafer she had copied, and all

  the printouts under the duvet and pillows of her bed. She called out again,

  reaching out with her mind, but it was little more than a despairing whisper

  Luke . . . then she did pass out, into dreams like the colorless wells of

  death.

  "[gpek Droon," boomed the deep voice of the masked and hooded passenger, and

  what looked like a bad prosthetic hand in a cheap black glove--so bad it

  might almost have been a droid's jointed metal fingers under there--held out

  fifty-seven credits worth of various bars and

  tokens to the captain of the freighter Zicreex. "I'm in the employ of the

  Antemeridian Freight Lines. It's necessary that my droid and I reach Cybloc

  XII as soon as possible."

  The captain counted the money, looked at the glowing yellow lenses that were

  visible through the full-face breathing mask that covered most of her

  prospective passenger's head. Long, pale hair flowed out around it, giving

  it the eerie look of a decorated skull.

  With the driving back of the Gopso'o rioters by government troops, every

  docking bay still operable in the port was jammed with business people,

  stranded travelers, aliens of all sorts and descriptions fleeing the

  fire-ravaged city. Most were paying lots more t
han fifty-seven credits, but

  then, most were trying to get on to better vessels than the Zicreex, which

  would have been termed unprepossessing even by the charitable.

  Captain Ugmush didn't care. She had a human for an engineer who kept the

  thing running, and her several husbands, when they weren't fighting one

  another, made a fair team for trading goods to the rougher worlds of the

  sector, which was about as good as Gamorreans could do in competition with

  more sophisticated species. Ugmush herself, her long hair dyed pink and her

  heavily muscled arms and breasts sporting fifteen parasitic morrts to

  demonstrate her strength and endurance, was aware that few aliens could

  stand to travel on Gamorrean ships. She knew it wasn't likely she'd be

  besieged with offers as long as there was one other vessel in port.

  "You got a deal."

  The black-robed alien who called himself Igpek Droon, clanking just faintly

  as he walked, made his way up the ramp and into the ship, trailed by his

  little R2 unit droid. Ugmush wondered if this person Droon might be talked

  into selling his droid when they got to Cybloc XII.

  It was all there, in black on the pale green plast.

  Seti Ashgad's communication with Moff Getelles of Antemeridian, making

  arrangements to destroy the gun stations in return for weaponry and first

  cut of the profits when Loronar Corporation moved in on Nam Chorios to

  strip-mine it for its crystals.

  Memos from Dymurra--who turned out to be CEO of Loronar for the Core

  systems--detailing which minorities, disaffected factions, and splinter

  groups would rise in revolt, suitably armed at Loronar Corporation's

  expense, in order to split the Republic peace-keeping fleet and allow

  Getelles's Admiral Larm to move in.

  A comparison chart by Seti Ashgad, showing the trade-off in cost between the

  expenses of weaponry, bribes, agitators, and planted atrocity stories

  against the first year's profits on programmable CCIR crystals.

  Details of the meeting, including a payoff to Councillor Q-Varg,

  coordinating Leia's disappearance with the poisoning--not to death, the memo

  assured Getelles, so that no successor could be appointed without hopeless

  legal wrangling among the Council--of Minister of State Rieekan.

  At no point in his letter did Ashgad mention the Death Seed plague of

  centuries ago. "The plague vectors do not appear on any sensor, since within

  the body they mimic exactly human electrochemical fields and tissue

  composition," he said--which explained why they needed the quasi-living

  flesh of the synthdroids. "Once the illness has taken hold, even

  regenerative therapy has no effect. However, be assured that it is in my

  power to completely control the outbreak and spread of this malady, and I

  offer you my personal guarantees that it will not affect anyone other than

  those on the Republic ships and bases."

  And bases! thought Leia, breathless as if she had run for miles and hot with

  anger to the core of her being. Idiot! Idiot! "It is in my power to

  completely control the outbreak," my grandmother's left hind leg. Don't you

  have any idea, any concept, of what will happen if there's an accident? A

  miscalculation? Somethin you hadn't thought of, Master Know-All Ashgad?

  She was almost trembling with rage. Accounts were scanty of the original

  Death Seed, but huge segments of the population of dozens of spacegoing

  civilizations had perished before it had burned itself out.

  In places it had been combated, but she wasn't sure how,, or how effective

  those remedies had been. As far as she had experienced, Dzym, and Dzym

  alone, seemed to have any control over it.

  She thought about Ezrakh, and Marcopius, and her eyes grew hot with tears. I

  will kill them. Rage made her tremble, made her wonder how quickly she could

  master the Force, how quickly she could build strength to wreak wholesale

  vengeance for the innocent. I will gather the Force together in my hands and

  I will bring it down on their heads like a thunderstorm. Vader had done

  that.

  And Anakin, in her dream.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, fighting not to weep. It was better,

  she thought, not to know that you had the potential for that kind of power.

  Better not to know' that you really could do that, if you wanted to turn

  your heart and your life over to your rage.

  Han would be looking for her. Han would be with the fleet. It will not

  affect any but those on the Republic shiPs.

  The Republic was in chaos. They'd dared poison poor Rieekan, for no better

  purpose than to cause trouble . . .

  And for what?

  Hands shaking, she shuffled through the flimsiplast pages.

  There it was. Loronar Corporation's plan to build a new facility on

  Antemeridias, for the manufacture of both synthdroids and something called

  Needles controlled by the same CCIR crystals, programmable, long-distance

  miniweapons with infinite range and hyperspace rendezvous capability.

  And the source of the crystals was Nam Chorios.

  CCIR technology. Deep-space Needles, carving up the fleet like the Quamilla

  of the Kidton system carving up sodbeasts. And with Nam Chorios firmly in

  their sphere of influence, they'd have as many of those programmable

  crystals as they cared to use.

  The Reliant. Paperwork was complete on that, too. A modified I-7 Howlrunner

  hull, with extra capacity. Loronar Corporation had been making drops of

  components and materials for months. Ashgad's requests and specs were very

  precise--Leia recalled her father saying that the man had been a ship

  designer himself--and his communications indicated where and when his

  Rationalist friends had picked them up.

  There were occasional indents for second and third drops where the gun

  stations had blown the incoming cargoes out of the sky. Liegeus Sarpaetius

  Vorn was mentioned as the vessel's A.i. designer and programmer, but his

  chief value lay in expert holo faking. There were requests for specific

  digitalized scrap of her and of her flagship and escort, to be mocked up

  into transmissions describing the safe conclusion of the conference between

  Ashgad and herself, and the two vessels' departure from the rendezvous point

  and entry into hyperspace.

  Her stomach twisted with sick betrayal. He couldn't not know what was going

  on. He couldn't not know the dangers of the plague. Then bitter anger swept

  her, that she had liked the man.

  Grand Moff Tarkin was probably good to his wife and children, too, if he'd

  had any, she thought, disgusted with her own naivete. The man who pulled the

  lever on the Death Star that destroyed Alderaan would undoubtedly have been

  kind to someone he cared for. Her hand closed tight on itself for a moment,

  her breath shaky with rage.

  Then, face cold and still, she began looking through the plast sheets again,

  searching for something . . .

  nism for antigrav lifters and speeder buoyancy tanks, to make prospecting

  for crystals easier once the gun stations had been destroyed and the big

  trader vessel was free to take off. She studied the schematics for the

  vessel. A curious amoun
t of shielding, she thought. Double and triple hulls

  with internal baffles--What kind of radiation did they think they were going

  to encounter?

  Leia sat back, staring out the windows at the gaudy sunset sky.

  She felt she'd slept longer, though by the light she'd only been out for a

  few hours. There was fresh water in the pitcher and signs that

  someone--probably Liegeus--had been in the room. She'd waked with a blanket

  over her, and was gladder than ever that she'd forced herself to conceal the

  flimsiplast and the lightsaber before finally passing out.

  When she had lain down she felt like she was dying.

  In fact, the sensations had been curiously similar to her brush with the

  Death Seed.

  But Dzym hadn't been around. If Dzym had known where she was, and what she

  was doing, she certainly wouldn't have waked up here.

  She pushed up her sleeve. Her flesh was reddened in a few places and she had

  picked up a couple more droch bites, but there was no sign of violence. No

  sign of the broken capillaries, the bruising that the secretary's fingers

  had left.

  The purplish twilight of day was dimming into deeper night, windless and

  still with sunset. Leia thought about waiting until dawn, then shook the

  thought away. It wasn't as if any natural predators walked Nam Chorios's

  nights. Delay would only bring Ashgad's return eight hours closer. If she

  acted now, there was a good chance they wouldn't miss her until morning.

  Leia got to her feet, unsteady at the knees. The water pitcher was of the

  vacuum type. A turn of the cap sealed it shut. it was heavy, hung over her

  shoulder by a makeshift strap of torn bedsheet. She rolled together two

  blankets and put on the two spare shirts Liegeus had given her. At the touch

  of them, her anger at him faded. He could not have known what he was getting

  into, and once in, it would have been too late.

  The doorpad combination had been changed while she slept, and she activated

  her lightsaber and drove it into the innards of the lock.

  It was now or never. She could afford no delay.

  Ashgad's study first. There were two more things she needed to find out.

  The study faced north, like her room. Its inner wall was currained in

  shadow, but the faded sunset reflected from the cliffs and faceted towers of

  crystal of the mountains beyond the plateau, and the ghostly crazy quilt of