Stars whirled and flashed past the viewport as Han put the vessel through another series of evasions. He wondered as he scratched past another line of laser light, perilously close to the main shields on the ship's spine, how' long he could keep up this pitch of alertness and activity, not to mention how much more of this kind of activity the power supplies could take. Though everything was a spangled flash of stars and blackness, he had seen, in a rare moment of pause, the Fire-eater drifting helpless and being cut to pieces by the Needles at their leisure. He could only pray that the crew was already dead or at least unconscious from anoxia.

Lando, who could never leave an explanation unfinished, added, "If somebody's synthesized those crystals, or found a way to get them cheap, there's no problem."

"There's a problem for us!" yelled Han. How did you fight things like that? After long concentration and plenty of practice he'd managed to hit two of them, but with so many wasted shots it wasn't worth it. They could only evade, until the toll of the speed and hyperquick reactions wore them down.

The Needles, as far as he could tell, were tireless.

"One thing's for sure," yelled Lando, "they sure want that rock.

You got any ideas how we're gonna deal with the main fleet when they show up?"

"I'll think of something."

There was a jarring concussion from somewhere in the ship, and more red lights went on.

"Moff Getelles."

Daala sat back from the primary readout screen, letting it go black.

The lesser screens still held the record of Attoo's long, persistent battle to retain the secret files concerning Leia's disappearance, her doubts concerning the integrity of the Council, and all the information for which Yarbolk Yemm had been chased and shot at across half the sector. The little droid rested tipped back on his two main limbs, a posture curiously evocative of defeat. Cables and wires trailed from the various ports and interface hatches, short-circuiting through his defenses to every portion of his memory.

Threepio felt sorry for him and considerably apprehensive for his own safety as well.

It did not take an interrogation unit to deduce that this tall, redhaired woman sitting so motionless in her black chair was very, very angry indeed.

"The quibbling, incompetent, boot-licking, corset-laced little sand maggot," she said, in a perfectly soft conversational tone. "Still has his sycophant Larm on a leash, i see-with whom he shared the test results at the Academy, when he was promoted to captain over my head.

Selling out to Loronar Corporation, a gang of legalistic thieves who'd peddle their sisters to either side so long as they got paid Slime molds.

All of them. Ranats and Hutts have more honor."

Threepio made a quick examination of his Determinative Cues sub-file, but could not accurately ascertain whether a response was being solicited from him or not.

Daala slid from her chair to her knees, and began uncoupling the various cables from Attoo's innards.

As she worked she spoke, still softly, almost to herself. "I pity her, your Chief of State," she said-speaking to Artoo, Threepio thought, slightly indignant. "She was Prince Bail Organa's daughter. A man of honor, by his own rights, who raised her to be honorable. We had honor in those days. Honor and courage."

She stood and shook back her hair, which flashed like fire in the dim lighting of the office. Still her eyes were dead, but filled with the stony anger of the dead. "It was honor that drew me to the fleet.

Power, yes, but honor and courage as well. And now they have come to this. Maggots feeding off the corpse of the Empire. Ghouls selling it to procurers and money grubbers.

Tarkin would have died of shame."

She was looking in his direction, so Threepio ventured, "I have no conclusive data as to whether Loronar Corporation is in the business of procuration..."

"I was a fool."

She touched the side of the electronic extraction kit, and it retreated soundlessly into the wall. "I was a fool to think that leaving them behind would be so simple as cursing them, and walking through the door.

Maybe I've always been a fool."

She returned to her chair, and touched an almost invisible toggle in its arm. "Yelnor.

Get me a conference with the captains of all the ships."

"Ships?" inquired Threepio, startled.

Daala raised her head, her poisoned eyes seeming to take in again that she was not alone in the room. "Ships," she said. "I am the President of the Independent Company of Settlers, over three thousand of us, counting spouses and children. We who were loyal to the old ways, loyal to the order and efficiency that was the heart of the New Order.

Most were officers of the fleet, who sickened, like me, at this constant petty struggle for power, this stupid diplomatic bandying of words with upstarts and sc.u.m.

Some others-the heads of business and their families, civil servants. We ask only to be let alone, and to that end we entered a contract with Warlord K'iin of the Silver Unifir for one and a half billion acres-the smallest of the three southern continents-on Pedducis Chorios, to colonize and to live as we see fit.

"And I have no intention," she concluded, reaching out and tapping Artoo on his domed cap, "of seeing my investment-our investment-come to nothing because a boot-kissing, talentless, jumped-up catamite like Moff Getelles wants to be supported in comfort by Loronar Corporation for the rest of his sycophantic life. Even if pushing him out of the sector means saving your Chief of State-and her spineless alien trash of a Senatorial Council-from the embarra.s.sment they so richly deserve."

She flicked over another comm b.u.t.ton. Viewscreens revolved into existence all along the wall before her, viewscreens bearing the faces of eight men-three of whom wore, like her, drab variations of em-blemless Imperial uniforms-and two women. Stern, disciplined faces, with those same bitter, burned-out eyes.

"My friends," said Daala, "it seems that there is one battle yet to fight."

"He's behind us." Leia reared up to her knees, wind and dust tearing at her long hair, and adjusted Aunt Gin's electrobinoculars. Whipping and veering through the fathomless, glittering gashes of the canyons, scaling hogbacks of diamond scree or dropping down precipices ten and twelve meters deep to catch again on the Mobquet's antigravs, it was impossible to see behind them for more than thirty meters at the most, sometimes only half that. But Leia knew.

"Beldorion."

She dropped back down into the sheltered c.o.c.kpit, began checking loads on the flamethrowers and blaster rifles that Arvid and Umolly Darm had thrust in after them on their departure. She smiled a little grimly at the truly excellent quality of the weapons, all sleek, all new, all black and silver, and all bearing the discreet double-moon logo: LORONAR WEAPONS DIVISION "All the finest-All the first."

As a rule Leia discreetly avoided riding in any vehicle that Luke was driving; but for one of the first times in her life, she was grateful that her brother had developed the skill that had made him one of the best pilots of the Rebellion. And indeed, the Chariot was equipped with internal grav control as well, so she was able to prime and check everything without having her bones jounced out of her body every time the antigravs kicked in as they went over small cliffs-or big cliffs: She was being very careful not to look. She might have been sitting on her own bed at home.

"How'd they import this thing, anyway?" she asked, looking around her at the comfortable black leather of the seats, the small, enclosed bar and the bank of electronic toys and communications equipment. "It's nearly as big as a B-wing itself."

"According to Arvid, Loronar must have made seven or eight drops before they got past the gun stations." Luke flung the Chariot over a chasm that was considerably deeper than he'd supposed, whipped in a long, banking curve over the near-vertical face of a crystalline canyon to take some of the stress, and headed up a ridge like a mating sun dragon taking to the sky. "At least Aunt Gin found pieces of wrecked ones two or three diffbrent times. She's made a fortune charging Ash-gad for repairs. She's bought parts from the Therans, too, so they've found some as well. All in the past year, she says."

"While Q-Varx was putting together the meeting with the 'head of the Rationalists' on this world." Leia shook her head. "I won't say I'd have trusted Q-Varx with my life, but he seemed sincere. Never in a million years would I have thought he'd be part of something like this."

"Maybe he was sincere," said Luke softly. "Maybe he sincerely thought that embroiling the whole sector in warfare and risking the spread of some plague he'd been told they could control were worth the rights of those who seek progress over stagnation. And he can't have known it was the Death Seed they'd be spreading."

"He didn't," said Leia. "But my point is that he should have. A man in that position can't afford to be that stupid."

And all the while Luke was flicking the controls, stretching out his mind and the Force to feel the ground beyond the next ridge, to slip past obstacles before they came into view, he was thinking, There's something else. There's something I'm missinG.

There was life on the planet. Invisible, intangible, but intelligent, and lambent with the Force.

Don't let them. Don't let them.

Don't let who?

Why did he remember his vision last night, of stormtroopers and J awas?

Why did he feel that whoever it was, who had stood near the broken-down speeder in the canyon, watching him at his repairs, avaited him just beyond the next rise, around the next elbow of the rocky way?

But there was never anything there.

"And it's a sure thing," he added, almost to himself, "that Q-Varx didn't know' about Dzym."

The hangar doors were locked. So were the doors that led from the hangar to the stairway, up to Ashgad's house. Luke was of the opinion that half-power on the ion blaster should be sufficient for the second pair of doors, for the first had nearly disintegrated when Leia had fired at them full-force. But the first blast only dented the inner ones, so Leia turned up the blaster to full and let them have it again.

The noise in the enclosed s.p.a.ce of the hangar was quite astonishing, and brother and sister waded to the resultant, gaping hole through a calf-deep rubble field and a choking cloud of dust.

"I told you three-quarters would do it."

"We can't waste time."

Leia might have learned diplomacy and patience with amba.s.sadors, reflected her twin wryly, slinging one of the two flamethrowers into place over his shoulder, but it was quite clear that she still dearly loved the destructive force of small artillery fire.

"What did you do to the synthdroids." Luke still couldn't get over the fact that there were virtually no human guards.

"Gutted the central controller." Leia swept the whole steps before them, floor, walls, and ceiling, as far as the landing, with a blast of fire.

They both wore goggles picked up in the hangar, but Luke still had to blink hard to get his bearings back. The curled little black crusts that had been drochs crunched under their boots as they ascended to the landing. Leia fired again.

"We'll have to remember that if Loronar gets the Needles going. But any commander worth his ammo allowance is going to have the central controller locked up in the heart of the biggest battlemoon in the galaxy."

"Yeah, well, you were locked up in the heart of the biggest bat-tlemoon in the galaxy, too." Luke grinned across at her as they dashed up another installment of stairs.

"And unless we've got somebody on the inside willing to let us go again with a homing device stuck on our tails," retorted Leia, pushing her goggles onto her forehead, "we'd better not count on that kind of luck again." The jewels on her gold-headed hairpins glittered incongruously through the soot and filth. "There has to be a weakness to them.

One that doesn't involve access to the central controller."

The two halted in the doorway of the chamber, where Luke had met Dzym and had rescued Liegeus from the life drinker. The floor was a creeping sea of drochs. Brother and sister opened fire with the flame-throwers, swept the whole room in a licking, roaring sheet of yellow heat. It was like sprinting through an oven afterward, sweat rolling down their dust-streaked faces, the burned matter left after searing the soles of their boots.

The gateway that led through to the construction compound was locked, and Luke laid a hand on Leia's shoulder as she brought up the ion blaster again. "It's shielded." The green column of his lightsaber hummed into existence at the touch of a switch.

Leia glanced back over her shoulder, toward the blown-out door of the stairway. Luke knew what it was, who it was, that she felt behind them.

He was there, Luke thought. He could almost see him, ascending each step with a heavy, coiling loop of his great wormlike body, eyes malevolent rubies in the dark. The dark hurricane of the Force swirled around him, uncontrolled, while in his mind the voice of Dzym whis pered, telling him that these humans, these pale little maggots, these defiant little play-Jedi, needed to be stopped at all costs.

Luke ran the lightsaber into the lock's works, tested the door switch.

It vibrated, but held. "There's another lock," he said. "A hidden one, behind a wall-hatch..."

"Here." She had her own blade out. Luke wondered how she had managed to keep that with her, when Seti Ashgad had taken her from the ship.

There was no time to ask, for the floor shivered suddenly with the force of liftoff, the amber lights all across the lintel of the door turning red. Luke gritted, "They're off!" and far above, over the top of the wall, they could see the square, gray shape of the Reliant spring skyward, lifters blazing, heading up the single corridor opened in the planet's defenses by the destruction of the Bleak Point gun station. At the same moment, Leia thrust her lightsaber into the second lock, and the door slid open, the hot winds of takeoff fountaining forth over the threshold in a torrent of dust.

A couple of Spook crystals lay on the permacrete, a trail from the cleared s.p.a.ce where the boxes had been. There were drochs, too, tiny ones, dying in the glare of the pallid sunlight, where they had fallen out of whatever shielded container Dzym had carried them in.

And, on the other side of the open bay, stood the Headhunter, its engine hatch open, a gutted tangle of wires hanging down.

Luke swore, and raced across to it. Leia was already running toward the Blastboat, which was likewise gutted but otherwise unharmed. "Can you fix it?" she yelled, scrambling up to the canopy. "They didn't have time to cripple the guns."

"I think so. The readouts on the central core look okay. They were in too much of a hurry.... Get me the toolkit from the bench."

Leia sprang down, dashed to the repair bench, swung the red metal energy cart around, and dragged it over as Luke stripped off the remains of his shirt and began making a fast diagnostic. "Get the guns," he yelled, from halfway within the hatch. "They just pull out once you undo the locks, but you'll have to reattach the cores..."

She s.n.a.t.c.hed up an extractor and core couplers and raced across the permacrete to the Blastboat as if they were the children of the Rebellion again, with the Imperials coming in and code scramble blazing from every makeshift klaxon on the base.

Listening. Listening. Knowing what was coming, power and anger and the decayed dark sludge of what had once been genuine, trained ability to use the Force.

She had one gun pulled and dragged over to the Headhunter and was starting on a second when she knew she could afford to wait no longer.

Luke was buried in the hatches of the Z-95the Reliant ascending like an ash-colored plague angel to the rendezvous with the Loronar fleet...

And she heard his breath. Stertorous, rasping, like the beat of gluey tides. The wave of ammoniac reek rolled across the permacrete, and the noxious shock wave of decayed Force. Leia dropped from the Blastboat and ran lightly toward the door, stripping off and dropping her jacket, unhooking and throwing aside her blaster, knowing what the Force could do to blasters.

Beldorion the Splendid moved fast. He crossed the outer court in a series of great bounds and slithers, huge muscle rolling beneath his squamous hide. Fluid leaked from his mouth and his eyes were twin balefires, glittering with a single, evil obsession that he did not even recognize as being not his own.

In the curtains of sun-glittering dust that filled the open gateway of the launch bay a woman stood, slender and tiny in the moving aura of misty light.

Taselda? His old rival, his old enemy, flashed to mind...

No.

The little Jedi woman, the woman Ashgad had brought, the woman Dzym had wanted, a small shining figure in the shadows, with the pale glory of a lightsaber shining like tamed starfire in her hand.

"Don't test me, little Princess." His own blade stretched forth with a deadly thrumming, a pallid and sickly violet. "It has been years. I may be a lazy old slug now, but I am Beldorion still."

Heart beating fast, Leia studied him, remembering how Jabba had moved, sidelong and looping, using the center of the body as a balance point.

She recalled the one time Jabba had become displeased with someone at his court-the fat housekeeper who danced or was it his long-suffering cook-and had gone after her or him with a stick.

Recalled the deadly speed of even that obese and sluggish bulk.

Yet she felt no fear.

She didn't reply and could feel that it displeased him. He was the kind, she realized, who liked to expound before he killed.

Good.

"You were a sweet little girl. Don't make me-" Leia struck. Step, step, thrust, as Callista had shown her, a hard clean slash like diminutive lightning, and Beldorion, still expounding, barely got out of the way.

But his counterstrike was unbelievably fast, the strength of it nearly breaking her wrists as she intercepted it on the blade, the doubled vibration roaring in her head and in her bones. The blades twined, snarled, Leia twisting out from under another descending blow and barely dodging when the descending swerved to lateral an old trick, Callista had said, but it took practice and left you open. Leia dodged back, shaken by the Hutt's sheer, animal strength.

She stepped back in, pressing him, her attention narrowed to nothing but the monstrous thing before her and the shining blades. Nothing else existed in her mind. He had enormous striking range, flinging forward like a serpent, so that she threw herself sidelong, rolled-Thank you for the practice, Callista, Luke-under the paralyzing wallop of his tail and was on her feet again and going in, the blade seeming to stream fire from her hand.

Not a second, not a moment, to lose-the plague rising up from this dim-shining world the monster coming toward her again, rutilant eyes staring.

He struck with his tail again, hundreds of kilos flashing with the speed of a whip. She barely dodged, wishing she had Luke's acrobatic training, his ability to Force-lift. The blades tangled, parted, Leia panting as she leapt sideways again, sparring for distance, watching the tail, fighting to remain close enough to strike.

In and out, Callista had said. It's the only way for a woman to fight.