Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy II: Assault at Selonia

by Roger MacBride Allen

  He was seeing things that he never knew existed, and yet, clearly, they had been part of the world he had grown up on, part of the world he called home. Just how blind had he been, had all humans on Corellia been, to the true nature of Selonian culture? And what of the Drall? Could it be that they had secrets just as deep?

  Han had gotten that far in his thinking when they came out of a particularly tight crawlway tunnel and into a huge chamber, easily twice the size of anything Han had seen so far. It was something close to the size of an underground town, and a crowded one at that. There was something frantic in the air of the place—quite literally so. That spicy aroma of many Selonians was there again, stronger than ever. There was a strange bite to the scent, a tang of what could only be fear-sweat.

  Han followed Dracmus out of the tiny side tunnel and climbed painfully to his feet. It seemed as if every square centimeter of his body had its own special ache or sore or twinge. He still hadn’t gotten completely over the pasting Dracmus had given him for Thrackan’s amusement. That had only been a few days ago, and yet somehow it seemed a half a lifetime at least. Those injuries would have been hard enough to get over without the further punishment of the trip through the Selonian tunnels. It was something of a wonder he could even move at all. But in spite of all, it was, undeniably, a pleasure to stand up straight again. He pulled himself fully erect—and suddenly changed his mind as shooting pains stabbed down his back. It was not so much of a pleasure after all.

  But there was more going on here than an aching back. He looked around himself. He noticed that there seemed to be a number of badly injured Selonians in the throng, several of them laid out on stretchers. Some wore bloody bandages, and under the general hubbub of crowd noises, Han could hear a high-pitched keening, a sound of pain and fear, someone unseen crying out, a cry that was past all hope of help or relief, a mourning call of loss and sorrow. Even those who seemed uninjured looked lost, afraid, gaunt, shell-shocked.

  “Who are they?” Han asked.

  “Refugees,” Dracmus said, her voice hard-edged and angry. No matter what orders she had about answering questions, she could not restrain herself. “Refugees of the making of your cousin Sal-Solo and his Human League. Their surface homes burned, gas bombs in their tunnels. Chased and hunted and shot at. The main transit ways clogged with more of them, and all other transit must take the backways, the small tunnels.

  “We fought back when we could, but the Human League had numbers and weapons and surprise. So we flee, we retreat, we hide. Supplies ruined or far away, and there is nothing we can use to help them. No bandages, no medicine, not even any food. We can get none of these, because the Human League blocks our access. My people suffer because Thrackan Sal-Solo, a human of your blood, says they must, and for no reason other.”

  Han wanted to protest, to say again that it was not his fault, that Thrackan was Han’s enemy as much as Dracmus’s. But then he realized that it was not true. Thrackan Sal-Solo was never going to hunt down all the members of Han’s family for the crime of being human, or demand they all be ejected from the planet of their birth to make room for another race.

  Han tried to look at the situation the way Dracmus did. Selonian family relationships were irrevocable in ways human relationships were not. You were born into your sept, your clan, and there was no way out—or even any thought that there could be any way out. You were part of the whole in ways that humans never were. The clan, the sept, the den moved as one. A sept-sister would no more act against the sept than a person’s hand would try to wrap itself around its owner’s neck and strangle her. In Selonian eyes, Han was a part of the whole of his cousin’s family. If the misery before him was the treatment a member of his family offered to Selonians, Han was starting to understand why the Selonians distrusted him so much.

  Actually, the only surprising thing was that they had not killed him yet. He just hoped the operative word wasn’t “yet.”

  “Come, honored Solo,” said Dracmus. “We must keep moving. The end is near, but time is short.”

  The end is near? There was a phrase with unpleasant connotations. Han didn’t even dare ask what it meant. The other statements, though— “Moving to where?” Han asked as he struggled forward. Even standing still for that short a time had left him stiff and tired. “Time is short until what?”

  The expression on her face was unreadable, even for a Selonian. “I have said too much already,” she replied. “Come now.”

  Han stumbled forward, following Dracmus through the tumult of the huge chamber.

  Luke Skywalker stepped into the courtyard gardens of Gaeriel Captison’s home, and sat quietly on the bench that faced the marker-stone. Beneath it, as he had learned, were the ashes of Pter Thanas, Gaeriel’s dead husband. It was hard for him not to look at that stone, hard to avoid thinking about that man it remembered. A good man, and by all accounts, a good husband for Gaeriel.

  But that husband had not been Luke Skywalker. There. There it was. That was the one thing he had found hardest to face. Another man had been to her what he might have been, perhaps would have been if fate had molded events differently.

  But events had been as they were. There was nothing to be done about it. Now, on the morning of leave-taking, it was time to accept things as they were, and move on. The Corellian Sector, his sister, his family, were in trouble. He had to worry about them, not about might-have-beens.

  Leaving the past behind, however, would not be quite so easy. Not this morning. He heard a sound behind him, stood up, and turned around. There they were, coming down the rear stairs. Gaeriel. Gaeriel and her daughter, Malinza.

  The little girl had luxuriant black hair, and wore it in long tresses that hung down her back. She was pale-skinned with serious-looking brown eyes. Mother and child were both wearing long white robes, quite plain and undecorated. Gaeriel was coming down the stairs at a slow, dignified pace, but Malinza was making a game of it, hopping down the stairs one step at a time, and singing a little song to herself.

  Luke walked toward them and met them at the bottom of the stairs. “Good morning, Luke,” said Gaeriel. “It’s good of you to come. I wanted the two of you to meet.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” Luke said.

  Gaeriel smiled. “I’m glad,” she said, and turned toward her daughter. “Malinza,” she said. “I want you to meet a very special friend of mine. He’s going with me on my trip.”

  Malinza stopped singing to herself and looked up at Luke, her face very serious indeed. “Hello,” she said. “Are you going along to take care of my mommy?”

  Luke knelt down in front of the child. The time he had spent with Leia’s children had taught him a few things. He knew that some questions needed to be turned on their side if you wanted to understand what the child was really thinking. Malinza was a little worried about who would take care of her while her mommy was gone. Best to try and direct the conversation to that point and reassure her as best he could. “I’m not going along to take care of her,” Luke said, “but I will watch out for her. And even if your mother has to go away for a while, she’d never do it if she didn’t make sure someone was here to take care of you.”

  “That’s right, Malinza,” Gaeriel said, kneeling down next to her daughter and giving her a pat on the shoulder. “Madame Boble will stay with you, and Lady Corwell will come by every single day to make sure everything is all right. And all your family will be here, too. They’ll all watch out for you.”

  “But I want you, Mommy,” said Malinza.

  “I know you do, sweetheart. It would break my heart if you didn’t. But sometimes grown-ups have to do things they don’t want to do. I don’t want to leave, but I have to. Luke’s friends helped us an awful lot, a long time ago. Now they need help, and we have to pay them back.”

  Malinza looked at Luke, her face solemn. “Do you really need my mommy to help you?” she asked.

  Luke thought of his own niece and nephews, cut off behind the Corelli
an interdiction field, missing in action aboard the Millennium Falcon. Without Gaeriel, they would have no Bakuran fleet. And without the Bakuran fleet, there would be no rescue of Corellia. “Yes,” he said. “We really do need her help.”

  Malinza thought for a moment, and then nodded. “All right,” she said, her voice very serious. “But you watch out for her, like you promised.”

  “I will,” said Luke. “I will.”

  The Gentleman Caller moved in toward Corellia at a leisurely pace, crawling along at sublight speeds on a course that would get the ship to the planet—eventually.

  Tendra Risant checked the radionic transmitter for the hundredth time. It seemed to be working. All the indicator lights were showing green, and it was drawing as much power as it was supposed to, and the message repeater was definitely sending out her hailing call over and over again. She had checked that enough times. “Tendra to Lando,” her voice said from the speaker. “Please respond on pre-assigned frequency.” Pause. “Tendra to Lando. Please respond on pre-assigned frequency.” Pause. “Tendra to Lando. Please respond on pre-assigned frequency.…” Then a ten-second pause, and then the same message over again, ad infinitum.

  But it had been days now, and there had been no response. Lando had told her that the radionic unit aboard the Lady Luck was always on, always scanning for messages. So why hadn’t he answered yet? Was he even in-system? Was he away from the Lady Luck? Was he dead? Or was it that some component that cost a tenth of a credit had failed, some gizmo inside her transmitter or his receiver? Maybe Lando was sending a reply back, over and over again, and wondering why she did not respond. But the receiver seemed to be working just fine as well. At least, when she turned the volume gain up all the way, she got a low hissing sound, which had to be static from natural sources. If the unit could pick up static, surely it could pick up a signal. Or did that necessarily follow? Tendra realized she did not know anywhere near enough about radionics.

  But she was getting to be a Galaxy-class expert on waiting. And worrying.

  She turned up the gain on the transmitter-monitor again, just to be sure that it was still working. “Tendra to Lando. Please respond on pre-assigned frequency. Tendra to Lando. Please respond on pre-assigned frequency. Tendra to Lando. Please respond on pre-assigned frequency.…”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Yggyn’s Choice

  Time’s up,” Mara said to Leia. “It’s time to decide.”

  Mara sat at the pilot’s station of the Jade’s Fire, looking calmly at Leia. Leia, seated at the navigator’s station, returned her gaze with an expression steadier than her emotional state. “So it is,” she agreed. “Time to decide.”

  Once she had shaken their initial pursuit, Mara had simply left the Jade’s Fire into a random orbit of the star Corell, letting the craft drift where she might, running under minimum power on all systems. The idea was that a random, unpowered flight pattern would give them the best chance of escaping detection from whoever might try and come after them. Their course was an unstable one; the ship would spiral into Corell in a few months’ time if left to her own devices.

  Not that any such thing would happen. They could change course at any time. The problem was, they had to decide which course to follow. They had helped each other escape, but neither had had any clear plan of action beyond that. They had attempted to come up with a plan just after their escape, but neither of them was in any shape to do so. The discussion had degenerated into pointless bickering. It had become clear in very short order that they were too tired to decide anything. Both women had needed at least a little time to recover from their injuries and rest up, and it seemed as if there was no burning need for an immediate choice in any event. They had agreed on thirty hours’ rest and recuperation before coming to a final decision.

  The time to choose a destination and a plan had come, but Leia had a very strong hunch doing so was not going to be easy. “I take it,” said Leia, “that you still want to head back to Corellia.”

  “Yes, I do,” said Mara. “That’s where it’s all going on. Whatever happens in this system is going to be decided there.”

  “Why should that be of any importance to you?” Leia asked. “Why should you care who’s up and who’s down in this planetary system? You’re not a Corellian, and if you have no love for the Human League, you certainly have no more for the New Republic. Why do you want to be where things are going on? Why don’t you just get out?”

  “I do care what happens,” Mara said. “I run a trading business, and we’ve made a large investment in Corellia. We’ve put in time and money and energy here, and it was just starting to pay off. We were just beginning to do some very promising routing through this sector. My costs went through the roof when the revolts started. I want stability so I can make a reliable profit. Stability doesn’t have much to do with tinpot dictators. And even if I don’t much care for your New Republic, maybe the idea of someone wiping out whole star systems full of people bothers me.” Mara paused for a moment, and looked straight at Leia. “But that’s not the real point of your question, is it?”

  Leia rejected the impulse to deny what Mara was implying. No sense pretending when both sides could see the truth. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”

  “You wanted to know if I could offer up a plausible explanation for my still being here, a motive for my behavior that wasn’t suspicious. After all, the message about the starbuster came through me. You have to wonder if I’m part of the plot. Might I remind you of the reasons I have for suspecting you in the plot? The message itself was keyed to your personal characteristics, and the senders went out of their way to demonstrate that they could read your private cipher. Plus, that message contained data that could only have come from classified New Republic sources.”

  “What possible motive would I have for overthrowing the New Republic’s government in the Corellian Sector?” Leia demanded.

  “I have no idea,” Mara replied. “On the other hand, what motive would I have for disrupting this system? You seem to have no trouble at all suspecting me of things without quibbling over motive. Why shouldn’t I have the same luxury? Besides, I could spin a perfectly feasible scenario, where you set up some sort of plan to flush out the Human League and the other rebels, and trick them into showing themselves, with the intent of smashing them once you knew where they were. That would be a dangerous game, to say the least, and if it’s what you’re playing at, it has clearly gone wrong. But it’s possible.”

  Leia smiled thinly. “Why stop there? Why not let the imagination run wild? Maybe both of us are involved in the plot, but the plot’s so compartmented neither of us knows the other’s in it. Maybe one of us, or both of us, are dupes, unknowing pawns in someone else’s game. You know as well as I do that once you start playing the game of wheels within wheels and hidden plots, it’s very hard to stop.”

  “True enough,” said Mara. “Nonetheless, the point is, I can’t entirely trust you or your motives any more than you can trust me or mine.”

  “Well, that much at least we can agree on,” Leia said. “But let’s pretend we can trust each other. What do you want to do?”

  Mara leaned back in her pilot’s chair and stared out at the stars. “The absolutely logical thing would be to say this is not my fight and I don’t wish to get killed in someone else’s cross-fire. The sensible move would be to point this ship’s nose straight out of the Corellian system and power up the sublight engines. It might take us a good long while to get out of here, but we would get out. And I doubt it would take as long as one might think.”

  “Agreed,” said Leia. “They can’t keep that interdiction field on forever. It’s got to draw huge amounts of power, and it can’t be easy to maintain. Even if maintaining it is no technical problem, sooner or later being isolated is going to do them more harm than good. Politically, economically, and so on.”

  “Right,” said Mara. “That’s the way I see it. Even so, I don’t want to leave, no matter how sens
ible it might be. Someone has caused me a lot of trouble, and I want to return the favor. Besides, we also have to bear in mind that the moment we relight the sublight engines, and the longer we have them on, the higher the odds we will be detected and shot down.”

  “You know this ship and how detectable she is,” Leia said. “Can that help us decide? Is there one destination that we can get to with the lowest odds of being spotted?”

  “Nice thought,” Mara said, “but it doesn’t get anywhere. We’re still close enough to Corellia that we’d barely have to light our engines to get there. If we did a night-side approach over the oceans, and treetop flying to get to where we wanted to be, the odds on spotting us would be very low. Selonia and the Double Worlds, Talus and Tralus, are just about at their point of closest approach to each other. They’re furthest from here, on the opposite side of the sun. On the other hand, we would have the sun behind us, making it harder for anyone watching from Corellia or Selonia or the Doubles to detect us. Drall is closer, making for a shorter flight, but we wouldn’t have the sun’s glare to hide in. However, my best information is that Drall has the least advanced spacecraft detection net of any of the planets. It all comes out about even.”

  “All right, then,” Leia said. “You don’t want to leave the system, and the odds of reaching any one of the plausible destinations are about the same as any of the others, but you want to go to Corellia, on the grounds of it being the center of the crisis. I think returning would be suicidal. They’ll be hunting for us, and they’ll be mad at us. It’s the one place where we’re certain to get a hostile reception by the folks in charge.”

  “And you want to go to Drall, because that is most likely where your children are, right?” Mara asked.