In many ways it was worse than Vader, worse than Palpatine. At least their dream had been grand.

"What do we do." said Liegeus.

Luke began to back the a.s.sault speeder up the canyon again, the way they had come. A speeder wasn't an antigrav platform and generally couldn't be used as one without restructuring of the buoyancy tanks, but Chariots had motors on them that would do credit to many of the combat vessels Luke had flown. "We hold on tight."

Liegeus gasped, "What are you going to do? - - A silly question, thought Luke, as he slammed the speeder into full-bore acceleration and readied his hand on the turbothrust lever. It should have been patently obvious what the only possible course of action was. The walls of the canyon blurred into a shining curtain, wind and flying gravel scorched back over hood and metal, the gap of the canyon walls rushed toward them and beyond that, the wide break in the tower's defensive crown beckoned like a ridiculously enormous bull's-eye.

Liegeus wailed, "Luke!" and hid his eyes.

The speeder cleared the twenty-five-meter gap between the last ridge of the mountain's shoulder and the top of the tower like a nek battle dog, like a trained Tikkiar rising for a kill. Luke cut the turbos and hit the brake, skidding in among the combatants who scattered before him.

He recognized Gerney Caslo in the fighting around the door and, springing out of the speeder, plunged across the stained and battered paving blocks of the tower's open top and up the steps to where he stood.

"You've got to stop this!" he yelled. Everyone was so startled for a moment by the appearance of the Mobquet among them that they did halt.

"You're being duped!" shouted Luke, turning to the men and women who crouched behind makeshift barricades, guns in hand, to those who had for the moment fallen back from fighting on the laser gun itself.

"You're being used! Seti Ashgad has only one reason for wanting to open this planet-so that he can sell the whole place to Loronar Corporation to strip-mine! He doesn't care about your farms!

He doesn't care about medical supplies, or water pumps, or machinery for you!"

He looked around him, at the dusty, cut, b.l.o.o.d.y faces, the battered forms stepping cautiously forth from their places of cover, at the angry eyes, not wanting to believe. Arvid was among them, and Aunt Gin, and the brother-in-law of the owner of the Blue Blerd.

His arms dropped to his sides. "He isn't doing this for you." Someone said, "Shoot the whiner," and Luke reached forth with the Force and pulled the man's blaster away before he could get the shot off-. The white bolt of energy scattered chips from the wall of the stairway housing behind him.

"A lot you know about it!" yelled someone else.

"i know," said Luke quietly. "We been into Ashgad's house. He isn't doing this for any of you."

"He's right."

Behind Luke, the door opened, very quickly, and closed again-Luke could hear the locks slamming open even as Gerney Caslo and the two men with him made a jump to catch it as it opened.

Leia had stepped through.

Leia grimy, in tatters, her hair hanging down in strings in her eyes and her palms and knuckles bandaged. Leia with strips of s.p.a.ce tape and leather binding what remained of her ornamental golden boots, empty-handed but with a blaster on one hip and her lightsaber on the other.

But definitely Leia Organa Solo, known on a thousand news holos to many and certainly, from Seti Ashgad's faked video, to every man and woman there. There was goggling silence.

"He's telling the truth," she said. She reached into one of the thigh pockets of a pair of far-too-big trousers she wore and produced a wad of computer printouts. "Here's a copy of Ashgad's correspondence with the CEO of Loronar, with Moff Getelles of Antemeridian, with p.a.w.ns and cat's paws in the Republic Council. Is anyone here a neep?"

Booldrum Caslo stepped forward. "I am, ma'am."

"Then you'll recognize the system codes as coming from Ashgad's computer.

The chubby man changed the lens ratio of his visiamps and flipped quickly through the hardcopy, then glanced back at Gerney, apologetic.

"She's right. This is Ashgad's. I installed the components myself."

Cas...o...b...u.s.tered angrily, "Which doesn't mean you didn't compose this yourself, girl." But others were pulling the papers from his cousin's hands, reading the memoranda, the deals, the concessions.

"An installation in Thornwind Valley? Six-month forcible recruitment?

A man can't live a week up there!"

"Mandatory labor pool?"

"Transfer of matriel-isn't the real word for that theft?"

"Price freeze standardization on Spooks?"

"At sixty-seven creds?"

"Occupation fleet... who said anything about an occupation fleet?"

"The occupation fleet is in orbit now," said Luke. He pointed upward.

Several of the Rationalists had electrobinoculars and focused them skyward, where far overhead pinlights of brightness flared in the star-p.r.i.c.kled twilight sky.

Under the spate of exclamations and curses, Leia threw her arms around Luke in a fierce hug. "What about Dzym. Ashgad's..."

"I know about Dzym," said Luke.

"If there's really a battle going on up there-if the Council really did manage to get ships to stop Getelles's fleet-he'll still try to lift off in the Reliant with all the drochs he can take."

"The lift programs aren't installed."

"Any competent engineer can do that." She looked up quickly as Liegeus emerged from the Chariot, dodged through the milling men and women, the angrily stirring cables and beams, the lawless Force winds. "Liegeus...

I" She flung her arms around him, and he held her tight, graying head pressed to hers. "My dear child, I'm so glad to see you safe! I never, never in my life thought you'd try to escape..."

"Then you didn't know me very well." She grinned at him and a moment later he grinned back.

"Well-I suppose I did know you'd try it." He shook his head.

"Listen, Liegeus, how much does Ashgad know about the software on that vessel?" demanded Luke. "How much of an education has he had? Can he install it. Can he get the thing off the ground?"

"Of course he can," said Leia impatiently. "Seti Ashgad was one of the top hyperdrive engineers of the Old Republic. The original Z-95s were his design!"

"His design?" Luke stared at her blankly. "They were making Z-95s fifty years ago!"

"Seti Ashgad is the original Seti Ashgad!" said Leia. "Dzym's been keeping him alive all these years."

There was a rising clamor, men and women jostling and shoving aside Gerney Caslo's heated protests of Ashgad's good intent. Sheets and streamers of hardcopy were flourished in dust-covered, blood-covered hands, though Luke noticed that Umolly Darm and Aunt Gin were collecting the doc.u.ments and tucking them into the safety of their pockets.

The Theran cultists had come down from their defensive positions on the gun shielding to join in the fray. With a yell of fury, Cas...o...b..oke from the mob and, with a nimbleness Luke wouldn't have given him credit for, seized a belt of grenades and sprang to the top of a broken girder, scrambled up another one toward the muzzle of the cannon.

Leia yelled, "Stop him!" but it was too late. Someone fired a blaster rifle just as Gerney hurled the grenades. A dozen lines of cold light st.i.tched the man like deadly needles, but no one had thought to fire at the grenades he threw. They went over the stained black rim of the shielding. A moment later a deep, shuddering concussion shook the building, jarring everyone from their feet. White smoke belched from the cannon mouth. Gerney's body was trampled as people scrambled up the sides of the shielding to look.

Around them, there was sudden stillness as the Force storm relaxed its grip.

Leia swore. Luke's hand stole to the red, swollen marks the drochs had left on his flesh, and he shivered.

"Can you fix it?" he asked Liegeus softly.

"I don't know. I don't have tools."

"Umolly and Aunt Gin'll have some..."

"It won't be in time," said Leia. "There's an armored Headhunter in the same hangar and an old Blastboat. You can mount the main turret guns in the Headhunter; that'll give you enough firepower to bring him down."

"The place'll be guarded..."

"The synthdroids are gone. Dead. I put them out of commission before I escaped and I don't think Ashgad's had time to get them back online.

Come on."

Luke bolted back to the Chariot. Aunt Gin and Arvid were already tearing loose the antigravs from the two lifter platforms that had gotten the Rationalists to the top of the tower, affixing them to the black a.s.sault speeder's sides.

Only when the Mobquet had disappeared over the parapet did the battered metal doors of the stairway into the tower itself open, and Callista step forth.

"Liegeus?" She held out her hand to the philosopher. The earpiece of the ancient intercom system still hung around her neck. "We've got tools down here."

"And they'll be about as much good as those silly arrows," stated Aunt Gin fiercely, bustling over with her toolkit. She shoved the enormous, rusty box into Liegeus's hands. "Take this, son. I for one haven't spent ten years on this crummy rock to see it get taken over by those cheats at Loronar."

She led the way into the tower. Liegeus paused on the top step, studying Callista's face. Comparing the thin, tired features with those of the woman who had been Taselda's slave, the woman Beldorion had taken prisoner. "I'm pleased to see you well, after all that-er-un-pleasantness," he said gently. "I owe you a kind of thanks, for opening my eyes to what Ashgad was doing, though I never thought I should be so mad as to say so. You were right."

Callista shook her head. "You were afraid for your life," she said.

"All the knowledge could have done was hurt you, which it looks like it did. I'm only glad you were able to take care of Leia."

"After having not taken care of you?" There was a self-deprecating wrinkle behind the genuine shame in his eyes, and Callista smiled.

"I can take care of myself. Most ladies can."

"How well I know. You know your young man is looking for you."

Callista said softly, "I know."

"Quite honestly, Madame Admiral, that's all I'm able to tell you."

Threepio made one of his best human gestures, spreading his arms, palms out, at precisely the correct angle and positioning to indicate a friendly helplessness, a complete willingness to divulge whatever lay in his power.

And his digitalized recognition of human body language indicated to him that Daala was not buying it one credit's worth.

But she said, her harsh voice slow, "My t.i.tle is 'Admiral," droid, not 'Madame Admiral." I was-an officer of the Imperial fleet on exact parity with others of my rank, and you will employ that usage whenever you address me."

Her eyes were like ash-burned out, exhausted, defeated. Threepio did not think he had ever seen such ruin, such bitterness, on a human face.

"Once, Tarkin and I together could have ruled the Empire," she continued slowly. "Looking back on it, I can't even remember why. All I seek, now, is a place to live out the rest of my life where I will not be disturbed.

I thought I had found such a place on Pedducis Chorios, a world in a neutral sector, with amenable local authorities, beyond the interference of those ham-fisted, brainless, contentious madmen who are engaged in the final throes of tearing to pieces what was once the finest system of government this galaxy has known. I want no more of it, or of them."

Her hands lay smooth over the arms of her chair, her knees together, the square bones of the joints and the hard bulge of muscle clearly defined where the drab trousers tailored to the flesh. Threepio's copious databanks contained a great deal of very alarming information about this woman: one of the most brilliant commanders in the Imperial fleet, but a mad bantha, a loose gun firing at random in battle. A woman of formidable competence and terrifying anger.

"And now I come to take up the advisory position I and my partners have been offered by the Pedducian Warlords," she continued in that quiet voice, whose hoa.r.s.e timbre spoke of burning gases inhaled in the last battle on board the Knight Hammer, the battle in which Callista had destroyed her flagship and in which she and Callista had both been thought to perish. "And what do I find?"

Threepio had never been good at distinguishing rhetorical from actual questions.

"Invasion, the Death Seed plague, wholesale rebellion, looting..."

"Be silent."

He logged the interchange in his Later Study file under the heading of "Determinative Cues to Separate Rhetorical from Actual Questions."

It was his duty as a protocol unit to achieve perfection in that area, and he was aware that it would probably prolong his period of usefulness as well.

"I find droids who have clearly been at large for some time in this sector, droids whose function is to accurately record all data taking place around them, whose answers to my questions are so comprehensively riddled with holes and omissions that they lead me to suspect that there is something going on."

She rose to her feet, and touched a wall hatch. With silent efficiency the panel revolved, exhibiting a complete and up-to-date electronic a.n.a.lysis kit. She activated the data screens with three taps of those long, square-tipped fingers, and unhooked a coaxial cable.

"Fortunately, many, many years ago I had a friend who taught me how to communicate with droids."

Threepio said, with genuine interest, "How very kind of him," but Artoo, quicker on the uptake, made a nervous attempt to back away, thwarted by the restraining bolt that Daala's Sergeant-at-Arms had taken the precaution of installing on both droids before bringing them into her presence. Daala checked over the various interfaces and cables added by poor Captain Bortrek and finally hooked her own coax into one of the ports he had s.p.a.ce-taped to Artoo's side.

She flipped a switch on the a.n.a.lysis kit; Artoo quivered and gave a faint, protesting wail.

"Now," said Daala, her green eyes narrowing. "Tell me what's happening in the Meridian sector."

"What the blazes are those things?" Lando flipped through half a dozen data sectors, then cut back immediately to another screen of scan field to check on the next pa.s.s of the vicious, needlelike attackers. "And how much damage did that one do?"

Chewbacca yowled something through the comm from the rapidly freezing rear quarter, where he was floating near the ceiling to fix burned-out wiring through hissing ma.s.ses of emergency foam. "Those things are the things that're gonna appear on our headstones, pal," said Han.

"The most i can figure is they're some kind of CCIR technology, like synthdroids," said Lando, brown hands flicking and scrambling over the shield controls while Han whipped and pivoted the Millennium Falcon through the desperate series of zigzags and loop the loops that was the only possible defensive strategy against the things. "The Antemeridian fleet isn't anywhere near us, they can't possibly be guiding them in the usual sense of the word."

Around them, the Courane and the Fire-eateand the light explorer Sundance, in which Kyp Durron had shown up to a.s.sist-were doing the same, snaking and weaving in a desperate attempt to remain in position near Nam Chorios until the actual invading fleet showed up to fight.

Only the fact that they'd made orbit before the arrival of the gnatlike attackers, with barely forty minutes to spare, let them hold any kind of position at all.

"Are you kidding?" said Han. "You know what a synthdroid costs?

That's crazy!"

"I know synthdroid technology is based on a kind of programmable crystal, and that's what kicks up the price... Blast!" he added, as there was a jarring flash and more red lights went up on the board.

"Chewie, we've got another hit, starboard shield-yeah, I know about the hole in the port shield!"