Callista's head turned sharply.

"I don't know where he is."

She looked away. What could be seen of her face was still as ivory, but above the edge of the veil, the wide gray eyes filled with tears.

They rode for a time in silence, winding down the trails that were barely familiar, scattered with broken rock and shards of crystal, with dunes of gravel hurled up wholesale from the flats below. Dawn winds had started as the wan sun 'warmed the endless dead sea bottom.

Squinting against it in the silky gray light, Leia could make out the taller ma.s.ses of the cliffs around the gun station, the fretwork of the shattered upper works, black against the peadescent air.

"I found nothing here that would help me," said Callista quietly.

"The Force is here, but not in a form that I can touch or understand.

Whatever is alive here-if anything-is invisible, intangible. Believe me, I've tried to reach it, to touch it. The Listeners say it's the ghosts of the old holy men and women that speak to them, but I think they're wrong.

The voices only use the shapes that the Listeners have already in their minds."

She shook her head, her eyes narrowing against the shadowless twilight of distances and wind. "There's a woman in Hweg Shul who has interests in shipping. When this is over I'm going to contact her, see if I can get myself off-planet in one of the little cargo lifters and work my pa.s.sage elsewhere. Are you going to tell Luke you've seen me?"

"Whatever you wish," said Leia. "I'd like to, yes, but I won't if you'd rather I didn't."

Callista started to say something, then thought about it and asked, "What do you think would be best?"

"I think it would be best if I did."

"Then do so," said Callista. "Make him understand, if you can. Tell him that I will love him to the ending of my life, but that mine is a life of which he cannot be a part."

Across the crystal ridges, sudden snakes of white lightning flickered, cold and pale in the dawning light. Leia grabbed the railing of the speeder as it rocked and swayed, jolted by what felt like a groundquake, though the ground beneath the antigrav lifters was steady.

An obsidian boulder several tons in ma.s.s wrenched and twisted in the rock side of the mountain before them, and the glittering talus of crystals at the foot of the cliffk around them leapt upward into funnels, like toothed whirlwinds.

The Therans in the speeders cried out, looking around them with weapons at the ready, and Callista and Be fought their cu-pas to a standstill moments before the beasts could bolt in panic.

"Another," said Callista softly. "Worse than before, I think."

"There's one with them who moves this storm." B6's lizard-black eyes were shut, listening deeply. "He brings this storm at his will, summons and directs it."

"That will be Beldorion."

"What do we do?" asked a man on Leia's repulsor sled, looking nervously around at the cold cliffs sparkling in the new light, the world paused, it seemed, on the brink of chaos.

B shook back his tangled braids. "We can do no other than we are instructed," said the Listener. "We meet them, and die."

If the horrors of watching the dying corpses of Cybloc XII being looted had been bad-the squabbles between looters, the remote-operated droids patrolling like whirring insects, the sight of those few expiring survivors being relieved of jewelry and credit cylinders by thieves-the darkness that followed was infinitely worse. The dome lights were gone.

The dim auxiliary circuits were going. In the medical offices where, with a droid's infinite patience, See-Threepio was broad casting his distress call in alternating bands of Basic and various of his six million language repertoire, the light had gone utterly, and only a few'

buildings were lit in the next square, leaking stray glims to show him the street below the windows, where nothing at all now moved.

The body of the dead looter lay where it had been left, naked of its e-suit, which others had taken along with the computer equipment that he'd been dragging. It was little more than a black shape to Threepio's visual receptors, though it registered on his infrared for some time. The smells of alien bacteria and decay organisms choked the air.

"It isn't any use," he said in time. Artoo-Detoo, sitting inert as a heating unit in the corner, illuminated a single red light, inquiring.

"The entire base computer core has been gutted. Even should someone attempt a landing, we wouldn't know it."

Artoo wibbled a reply.

"Oh, very well. But it will do us no good. I expect we'll sit here until our power cells run down, and chaos and destruction will encompa.s.s the Republic." At another time Threepio would have spoken out of a personal conviction of impending doom. Now he realized he was saying no more than the truth.

"We did our best."

The astromech tweeped and settled back to his resting position. It was inconceivable that either of them would do other than his best.

Threepio returned to the jury-rigged microphone. "Distress on Cybloc XII.

Distress on Cybloc XII. Please send an evacuation team.

Please send an evacuation team.

"Ee-tsuti Cybloc XIt. Ee-tsuti Cybloc XII. N'geesw'a eltipic'uti ava'acuationma-teem5 negpo, insky.

"Dzgor groom Cybloc XII. Dzgor groom Cybloc Xli. Hch'ca shmim'ch vr/Srkshkipfuth gna gna kabro n'grabiaschkth moah." He dug down into the bottommost registers of his voder circuits. The Yeb language had few technical terms, and it was necessary to patch together a linguistic equivalent from: "Several conglomerates are urged strongly but respectfully to coordinate activities to prevent the drowning of another conglomerate that is not a threat to any of them, nor will be in the immediate or distant future to them or to their children." He did the best he could.

Bith was easier. "Six-five. Twelve-seven-eight. Two-nine-seven." In many ways, Threepio was very fond of the Bith.

"Distress on Cybloc XII. Dis-Artoo, look! It's an incoming vessel!"

He pointed to the dark transparisteel, through which the transpariflex panels of the dome could be seen. Against the livid gloom of the sky the red track of descending retros had appeared. "Can you get any sort of reading on the computer?"

Artoo, who had tried already a dozen times, simply twitted a negative.

Threepio was already toddling toward the turbolift. "They'll be coming into the port bays. By the time we reach there they should be just about landed. Oh, thank goodness."

Artoo simply lowered himself down onto his third wheel, and rolled after his golden counterpart, without comment. If he had reservations about the nature of the rescuers, as deduced from the make and serial numbers of their vessels, he kept them to himself.

It wasn't that Threepio hadn't considered the possibility of smugglers, looters, or s.p.a.ce pirates. But the events that had transpired since the two droids and the unfortunate Yeoman Marcopius's escape from the doomed Borealis had given the protocol droid a little more confidence in his ability to negotiate possible transport. in any case his power core was dangerously close to reserve, and even another pas de deux with s.p.a.ce pirates seemed preferable to going cold on the dead world, leaving Her Excellency to her own devices with no one who knew where she was. All the way through the dark, utterly silent streets of the plague-stricken dome, he composed scenarios and arguments to talk his way into pa.s.sage to Coruscant without informing potentially hostile-or simply verbally incontinent hosts what his message and mission might be.

And they all fell silent within him as he and Artoo stepped through the doorway of the largest of the docking bays, and he saw before him in the actinic glare of its landing lights the black ship that stood there, an Imperial Fleet Seinar IPV System Patrol Craft, like a sleek-sh.e.l.led crab, lowering its boarding ramp.

Threepio said, "Oh, dear."

On the face of it, there seemed very little chance that any amount of money would persuade the inhabitants to drop him and Artoo off at Coruscant.

It was too late to turn tail, however. Figures in dark e-suits were coming down the ramp-both men and women, judging from the way they walked, which was unusual for the Imperial Service-followed by two black, spider-armed floating remotes that scanned the base with hard beams of white light while the troopers crossed the stained floor of the bay to where the two droids stood. One of them, a dusky Twi'lek woman with an enormously extended helmet, touched the comm b.u.t.ton in her suit and said, "Two of them," and again Threepio wondered.

The Imperial Service would ordinarily no more employ nonhumans than it would employ nonmales. On closer study he identified the e-suits of Imperial design-CoMar 980s-but without emblems, though the sleeves and chest bore marks where emblems had been removed.

"No other signs of life on the base?" inquired a very small, very tinny voice from the comm.

"No, Admiral. Looks well and truly looted to me."

"There was, in fact, extensive looting during the final throes of the epidemic," provided Threepio helpfully. "My counterpart and I counted five separate parties of looters, and the Computer Core of the base system was so extensively dilapidated that we could not even use it 'to signal out."

"Put them through cleansing procedures," said the tinny voice.

"Bring them to me. I want to find out once. and for all what's taking place in this sector."

"You know, Artoo," surmised Threepio, when after a very thorough pa.s.sage through two radiation chambers and a chemical bath the two droids were conducted, still by the Twi'lek Sergeant, to a small lift marked "Private,"

"I think this isn't an Imperial mission at all. The ship, though of Imperial design and manufacture, does not bear the markings of any of the various satrapies of the former Empire. Neither do the uniforms of such crew members as we have seen. We might be dealing with a case of extensive theft of Imperial matdriel by a completely neutral third party."

The doors of the lift closed soundlessly. There was a shivering vibration as it ascended. Artoo tweeped.

"Clandestine operation? What kind of clandestine operation would be undertaken by any of the remaining Imperial governors? I'm sure it can't be that."

The doors slid open. Imperial Captains and Admirals always tended to favor a black sleekness in their offices, in part in the interests of spare unclutteredness, in part, quite frankly, in the interests of intimidation.

The chamber into which the two droids stepped now was no exception.

Threepio was quite well aware that computer screens and consoles lurked behind those obsidian-mirrored panels, that a touch on an access hatch would summon chairs, if necessary; more lamps; dictation equipment, if required; implements of torture; articles of restraint; a mirror and shaving equipment; or wine, caffeine, and beignets for that matter...

But all of that was secondary to the digitalized tallying of recogni-tive factors concerning the woman who sat in the room's single chair: tall, tough, and athletic in her stripped-down version of the Imperial officer's uniform, red hair hanging like a comet's tail down her back and eyes cold as ball bearings in a pale, expressionless face.

Threepio had never seen her in person, but as a specialist in protocol he was programmed with all sorts of files about people who were or had been in positions of authority, and he identified her at once.

"Good heavens, Artoo," he exclaimed, "I seem to have been given inaccurate data. According to my most recent information, Imperial Admiral Daala should be dead."

Daala said softly, "I am."

Han Solo wondered whether there was any insanity in his family.

He folded his arms, considering the vista afforded him by the hard transparisteel of the viewport: two CEC gunships, the Courane and the Fireater, half a dozen smaller cruisers, and maybe twice that many escorts, X- wings and E-wings. They hung pale silvery against the darkness of reals.p.a.ce, sleek white fish among the stars. The newest Republic equipment, true-unlike the clunky, crotchety horrors of the Rebel fleet-but all of them, he knew', understaffed with men and women pushed to the brink of exhaustion. None of them a match for what he knew lay ahead.

But not a bad turnout for a faked video and a lot of bl.u.s.ter and fast talk.

He turned from the Falcon's viewport to the main screen, where Lando, who'd hitched a ride back from Algar with the fleet, and his Sull.u.s.tan co-pilot Nien Nunb, were handling the jump extrapolations while Chewbacca studied the sensor readouts beamed in from the few remote stations on the other side of the Spangled Veil Nebula.

"Pick 'em upS." Solo asked, and the Wookiee yowled a.s.sent.

"Where they headed,"

"Well, judging by the point at which they came out of hypers.p.a.ce," said Lando, tapping in a few more numbers, "it could be either Meridias itself, which would be stupid on the face of it considering that planet's been dead for centuries, or any of the Chorios systems."

Lando looked a little tired from his fast trip to summon reinforcements, but was shaven, bathed, and sleek as usual. Han, who felt and looked like many kilometers of bad road, didn't know how he managed.

"For my money it's Pedducis Chorios. They'll have their work cut out for them getting rid of all the pirate Warlords who have alliances with local chiefs, but there's a lot of profit there. Nam Chorios is just a rock."

"Yeah," agreed Han softly. "But by an amazing coincidence, it's the rock Seti Ashgad comes from, with all his swearing up and down he saw Leia off safe and sound. And now all of a sudden while everyone's all in a tizzy because Leia's disappeared, by gosh, somebody comes along and tries to invade Nam Chorios."

"But that's crazy!" protested Lando, every entrepreneurial bone in his body offended to the marrow. "Who'd want anything on Nam Chorios?"

"I don't know," said Han. "But I think we're gonna find that out."

He leaned over the comm, opened the main link.

"Captain Solo here. We're taking hypers.p.a.ce jump bearing seven-seven-five; coming out bearing nine-three-nine-three-two..."

Lando's eyes flared wide at the nearness of that jump point. "Han, old buddy..."

Han put his hand over the mike, "We want to get there before them, don't we? I know what i'm doing."

"What you're doing is smashing us into Nam Chorios if somebody gets one hair off."

"So don't get a hair off," said Han bluntly, and turned back to the comm.

"Course for Nam Chorios. Possible interception on return to reals.p.a.ce, so keep your heads up."

He turned back to the readouts. Three Star Destroyers. Half a dozen carracks. Two interdictors.

And the swarms that didn't even register on the readout, the silent, deadly clouds of CCIR s.p.a.ce needles, waiting to cut them to pieces the minute they came out of hypers.p.a.ce.

He had to be crazy.

"Punch it, Chewie," he said.

Luke felt the violence of the Force storm that surrounded the Bleak Point gun station kilometers away, as a throbbing in his head and a clutch of terror and rage in his chest. As the Mobquet flew down the canyons like a great black glide lizard, crystal boulders and whirlwinds of gravel would spontaneously leap and swirl in the air, spattering against the speeder's sleek body and scratching the tough transplex of the pa.s.senger hoods.

Liegeus whispered, "Beldorion. He can still wield the Force after a fashion. But I've never seen it like this, never." Luke gritted his teeth, knowing that this random torrent of energy was being duplicated elsewhere on the planet, w'recking machinery on which people's lives and livelihoods depended, overturning other forges to cripple other men.

So that Seti Ashgad could disable a gun station, he thought, and create a corridor through which a ship could fly.

He'd only need to disable one.

As they came out of the hanging canyon above the gun station Luke said softly, "They're in."

Most of the wood and metal palisade that had crowned the ancient tower had been torn away by the violence of the uncontrolled Force.

Beams and shards and huge mats of razor wire strewed the gravel at the base of the walls; and with the sheer poltergeist wildness of the Force, these would rise up and hurl themselves like rabid things against the walls, the remains of the defenses, the surrounding rocks.

As Luke watched, a rusted beam flew like a javelin from the ground, dragging after it a whole tangle of wire, and fell among the struggling forms that ran and dodged and fired on one another on the top of the tower. The beam thrashed and whipped until it fell, dragging two of the Rationalist fighters down with it in a snarl of debris.

On the flat top of the tower they were still fighting before the door that led down into the building itself. From the mouth of the hanging canyon Luke couldn't tell, but he thought that there was another, smaller scrimmage going on around the coils and shielding of the barrel of the laser cannon itself. Rationalists were struggling to get up on top of it, raggedly dressed Therans fighting them hand to hand to keep them from damaging the gun. The flare of blasters and ion cannon burst like pale lightning in the morning air, but such was the nature of the Force storm that not many of the shots were getting in, and the Therans had quite clearly stopped even trying to throw spears or shoot arrows.

Even pellets and bullets from projectile weapons were whirled away like chaff.

"Beldorion's there," said Liegeus. He shoved back the long ash-colored hair hanging in his eyes. "Back out of the front lines somewhere, I should think-there!" He pointed down to the silvery shape of a round floater, some distance from the base of the walls. Luke could see the coiled shape of the giant Hutt on it, muscular and serpentine, not at all like Jabba's slothful bulk.

The sense of decayed Force, of rotted abilities and spent purpose, rose to Luke like a stench, as it had from Taselda.