"Seems as though we'd better do something to cover our withdrawal, then. That seem reasonable to you? "

"You are in command of the Fleet, General Solo. "

"So I am, " Han said. "And I never turn my back to a dark corner when I know someone's after me. Which b.u.t.ton? "

A'baht pointed. "There. "

Chapter 14.

"Koornacht Cl.u.s.ter" was always an outsider's name-an astronomer's name, hundreds of years old, but barely more meaningful than a cataloger's letters and numbers.

Aitro Koornacht had done a favor involving a woman and an Imperial coach for the First Observer at the Court of Emperor Preedu III, on Tamban. That next night, the astronomer spotted a bright, fuzzy disk in the eyepiece of his newest telescope. That grateful First Observer had repaid his benefactor by naming the newly discovered star cl.u.s.ter after the night commander of the palace guard.

But that same gathering of stars had other names.

To the Fia of Galantos, in whose skies it appeared as a great oval of light, it was known as The Mult.i.tude.

The Wehttam, another galactic neighbor, revered it as G.o.d's Temple.

The Ka'aa, a wandering species old enough to have seen the youngest stars in the Cl.u.s.ter wink on, remembered it as no'aat padu'LL the Little Nursery.

The Yevetha knew it by a word that meant Home.

Two thousand suns and twenty thousand worlds, all born together from the same great cloud of dust and gas that still filled the s.p.a.ces between them. They were young suns and hard worlds, and there were few eyes on hand to know either. The faces of fewer than a hundred planets had been brightened with the colors of life, and only a single species sp.a.w.ned in the Cl.u.s.ter had made the leap from its home soil to the stars.

Two thousand suns keeping company in s.p.a.ce, burning so brightly in the skies over N'zoth and its daughter worlds that they blinded the eye to the dimmer lights, the wider galaxy beyond. It was not until visitors came from beyond the Cl.u.s.ter to mine its riches that the Yevetha learned they were not alone.

It was a difficult lesson. A young species with a hard ethic, the Yevetha were accustomed to their place as the center of their universe.

The relentless otherness of the outsiders was a profound challenge to the Yevetha's conception of themselves. In the end, the answer to that challenge was a new vision built on purity of line, sanct.i.ty of territory, and hate.

The occupation by the Empire had been an education for the Yevetha, in more ways than one.

When the Empire came to Koornacht, it belonged to the Yevetha alone. Traveling through reals.p.a.ce in their immaculate spherical thrustships, they had spread from the sp.a.w.nworld of N'zoth to eleven daughter worlds.

In all the recorded history of the galaxy, no species had established more interstellar colonies without the benefit of hyperdrive technology. To the Yevetha, the stars of N'zoth's bright night sky seemed to hover just above their heads, beckoning. Their will was strong enough to leap the distances between the stars.

After the Empire retreated from Koornacht, that will was wedded to a technology that could leap the distances between the stars. Vastly faster ships made the other Yevethan worlds seem no farther away from N'zoth than the other side of the globe, and Imperial comm units could carry the viceroy's voice throughout the Cl.u.s.ter in a matter of minutes. N'zoth and its daughter worlds were bound together as one in a way never before possible, and the Second Birth began. The Yevetha scouted and settled a dozen more prime worlds in a spasm of expansion that satisfied the frustrated ambition of the occupation years.

But the greater vision guiding the Yevetha required a longer period of preparation and consideration. In that time, Yevethan engineers worked to adapt thrustship designs to Imperial technologies, while the metal artisans labored to complete and repair the captured warships. Claiming and protecting all of the Yevethan birthright would require that and more, an unparalleled marshaling of effort-not only ships and crews, but whole communities, an entire generation ready to leave their birthworld for a home in the sky of stars.

And it would also require that someone go before and prepare the way. For during its time as trustee of Koornacht Cl.u.s.ter, the Empire had allowed some immigrant colonies, encouraged others, and created still others for its own purposes. When the Empire. left Koornacht, the Yevetha were no longer alone.

The transfer betweenAramadia and the eight-kilometer-long Star DestroyerPride of Yevetha took place at a reridezvous point deep in the heart of the Koornacht Cl.u.s.ter, far from any prying eyes. Three trips by the thrustship's ferry were required to complete the transfer of the viceroy. In the first trip his darna and breeding mates came across. The second brought his personal staff, including first attach Eri Palle. The final run delivered the honor guard, Nil Spaar himself, and Vor Duull, Ararnadia's proctor of information science. Vor Duull's inclusion was a reward for his work during the successful Coruscant mission.

They were met by Dar Bille, who had been Nil Spaar's loyal second since long before the day of retribution.

Now primate ofPride of Yevetha , he had directed the training of the other primates as each former Imperial warship had joined the growing Black Fleet.

"Etaias, " Dar Bille said, adding the salute of obeisance to the honorific. It was more than was called for by the difference in their standing, and drove the lower-ranking officers behind him to a similar excess; each dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

"Noreti, " Nil Spaar said warmly. "This was unnecessary, but it pleases me. Eri, see that everyone finds his quarters. Dar, lead me to the bridge. Is the fleet ready? "

"This way, Viceroy. The fleet is well ready. ButGlorycould not be launched in time to join us, " Dar Bille said, knowing that Nil Spaar would not be surprised by that news. Glorywas the vessel the Imperials had called EX-F, and its curious propulsion system, unlike that in any other starship, had been an ongoing vexation.

As he followed Dar Bille into the corridor, Nil Spaar let his fingertips graze across the bare necks of the kneeling officers as he pa.s.sed them. The touch symbolized his acceptance of the offer of their lives, and freed them to rise. "And the others? " he asked.

"After the last combat trial, I made the decision that the crew ofBlessingswas not ready. But that will not hinder us on this mission. "

"I presume the primate earned the expected reward for his failure. "

"He did, at my hand, and his second as well. "

"Excellent, " said Nil Spaar. "It doesn't do for those who serve in the lesser posts to think that the knife will cut only the throat of authority. "

"The new primate ofBlessings.e.xpects another combat trial when we return. Perhaps you would like to witness it. "

"Perhaps, " Nil Spaar said as they reached the bridge. "For now, my mind is full of the work ahead of us. And of memories. It seems a right thing to me that you should be the primate of my flagship today. Do you remember theBeauty , and the day we discovered the first nest of the vermin? "

The little starshipBeauty , a former Imperial corvette, had carried Nil Spaar to the far reaches of the Cl.u.s.ter and beyond. That long scouting mission had opened his eyes to the true challenge ahead and had given purpose to everything he had done since. He had taken the measure of the All and understood its meaning, taken the measure of their enemies and understood their threat, and had come home to N'zoth to make himself viceroy.

"Of course, etaias. And here we are again, together on the bridge of a fine ship. Soon we will again look down undetected on the nests of the vermin-but this time they will know that we were there. " He looked past Nil Spaar to the proctor of information. "Lilatb-what news do you have of the New Republic's Fifth Fleet? "

"Primate, our shadow reports the fleet has disappeared from Hatawa. Our contacts on Coruscant tell us that it has been recalled. "

Nil Spaar bowed his head and breathed relief.

"Then it will be done. I am vindicated. "

Dar Bille turned a proud and joyful face toward Nil Spaar. "On your orders, Viceroy. "

"I wish to speak to all our vessels. "

Turning quickly toward the proctor of communications, Dar Bille arranged the necessary connections and announced the viceroy to the crews of the twenty five warships secreted in twos and threes across the Cl.u.s.ter.

"Remember that we are the blessed, born of the light of the All, " Nil Spaar told them. "All beauty belongs to us. All that we see in our skies was meant for our children. It was not meant for the creatures that creep in from the darkness beyond. Their presence alone fouls the light and defaces the beauty of the All.

"Today we will remove them, as the steward of a granary must remove the vermin to keep the stocks pure. And when next you stand on N'zoth and look to the sky, you will know that none but the children of N'zoth stand above you. "

Then Nil Spaar stepped away from the hyper-comm and looked back to Dar Bille. "You may give the order, " he said generously.

Dar Bille's crests swelled with pride and grat.i.tude.

"All vessels of the Black Fleet-this is the primate of the flagshipPride of Yevetha , " he said in a strong clear voice. "On the word of the viceroy, I direct you to commence your attacks. May each of us honor the name of the Yevetha today. "

Wearing an approving look on his dirty, deep-lined face, Negus Nigekus slammed the check hatch shut and threw the locking bolt home. The ore sheds were more than two-thirds full, and there was still a month to go before the gypsy freighter returned to New Brigia. Perhaps this time there would finally be enough profit over the cost of their supplies to clear the last of their pa.s.sage debt.

Nigekus would never have dreamed that after eighteen years working the chromite digs in the hills above the village, the little colony would still owe a debt to the captain of the freighter that had brought them there. In the beginning the land had been generous.

And with the Cl.u.s.ter under the Empire's protection and their claim to New Brigia accepted by Coruscant, there had been more than enough buyers for the blue-white metal to ensure good prices.

War-so long as it stayed at a safe distance-was good for business.

In the first four years there wasn't a quarter when the community failed to pare its debt. Even with the extra costs as families left the longhouses for cottage shelters, even feeding new mouths too young to contribute, and the mothers who gave their labor share in the nursery rather than the mines, even the summer when the crops withered and the winter when the processing dome burned, there was always something offered against their obligations.

But then the land had grown stingy, and, not long after, the Empire was gone. With the s.p.a.celanes from Koornacht to Galantos and Wehttam no longer secure, the colony's best buyers lowered their offers or stopped bidding at all, pointing to the risk of piracy.

In time only Captain Stanz and theFreebirdcame calling, and his price was the lowest of all-an insult to the sweat and labor of the two hundred who each morning hiked up from the village to the diggings and each evening returned bowed by their labors. But Stanz was a pirate in heart if not in fact, and had no sympathy for them.

"This is droid work yer doing, " he said, "picking rocks from the ground. You can't expect a living wage for droid work. Even at these prices, it's hardly worth my trouble to come here. "

Nigekus doubted the truth of that, but there was no point in arguing.

He had no choice but to stand there and listen to Stanz's poor-mouthing as he figured the load and calculated the overage, using whatever prices the old Bothan's whim dictated. And for years the overage had hovered around the figure for a quarter's interest, sometimes a little more, more often a little less, with the shortfall added to THEIR debt.

If the community had had its own hauler, even a worn-out Corellian freighter or a battered s.p.a.ce barge--but that was a dream beyond reason.

Still, the land had suddenly turned kind again, with two new diggings bringing up rich ore that reminded the surviving elders of the promise that had coaxed them there from Brigia. If they earned no more for this load than the price Stanz had paid on his last visit, the overage should cover not only the interest but the balance.

To guarantee that, Nigekus had decided that this time he would hold back a third of the ore until Stanz set the price. It was a tactic not without risk, or it might have been tried long before. If the Bothan took offense, the community could lose its lifeline-and the offender might lose his life.

But Nigekus was determined to see New Brigia escape Captain Stanz's thrall before the dust-cough that now plagued him at night rendered him fit only to sweeten the dirt of the gardens. If Stanz snapped his neck in a fury at being caught as a cheat, Nigekus would lose little.

"He will only spare me the last weeks of the coughing death, " he had said to the other elders in winning their approval. "And you can then kill him without shame, and claim his ship as honor payment to my family. "

Negus Nigekus walked slowly but proudly across the common toward the processing dome, his thin body warmed by the knowledge that a turning was coming.

It had been hard for him to admit that he could no longer make the climb to the diggings and do more than take up s.p.a.ce in the pit. The aches of hard labor were easier to bear than the deep ache of feeling useless, of standing with the children and feeling that he had become one of them, a mouth that could not earn its table share. He was grateful to have found a way of escaping that feeling.

Before Nigekus reached the dome, a shadow flashed across the common.

But by the time he looked skyward, there was nothing to be seen. The whine and clatter of the machinery had covered the sound of the approaching dropships until very near the end, and the landing sites were downriver around the bend, safely out of view. Shaking his head, Nigekus entered the dome, ignorant of the threat already moving up the valley toward the village.

When he left the dome just a few minutes later, his inspection complete, everything had changed. Tall creatures in green and brown body armor were advancing through the village in a wide line, their weapons turning the cottages into burned and broken sh.e.l.ls. A child's screaming pierced the din of the machinery behind him, then ended with ominous abruptness.

Nigekus was ignored or overlooked long enough to take half a dozen uncertain steps out into the common, long enough to realize in horror that some of the blackened OBJECTS littering the ground were carca.s.ses, long enough to feel a wild rush of indignation over the fact that he did not even know the species of the invaders.

Then he found his voice and cried out his rage, raised both fists in defiance and started across the common toward the nearest of the soldiers. A silver-barreled weapon turned his way, and Nigekus fell in agony, his last breath full of fire.

Two of the diggers at Pit 4 had seen the descending ships, making that crew the first to start back down to the village. The pall of black smoke rising over the ridgelines drew the other crews away from their work and onto the well-trod trails. Some had shouldered their tools as weapons, but most were armed only with fear for their families. They had had no enemies on New Brigia, and energy weapons were a luxury the colony could not afford.

The Yevethan troops, masked against the smoke and the stench of the vermin, waited patiently in the village for the diggers to return.

There was no need to do anything more. As Nil Spaar had predicted, the sight of the ravaged village gave the diggers the final spur to a reckless charge.

It was a methodical slaughter. Standing back to back in a circle on the common, the soldiers allowed the diggers to reach the valley floor, then cut them down.

The last few deaths were suicides in all but name.

With both the carnage and the futility before them, the remaining Brigians dropped their inadequate weapons, gave up their cover, and walked down the slopes to the village, offering themselves as targets rather than be left alive to remember.

When it was over, and the breeze falling through the valley had blown all but the last tendrils of smoke away, only the Yevethan troops, the ore sheds, and the processing dome were left standing.

It was no accident that those buildings had survived.

As the troops returned downriver to their dropships, a fat-bodied cargo transport landed on the common. Within an hour its empty belly easily swallowed both the contents of the ore sheds and the machinery from the processing dome.

Once the cargo transport was safely clear of the target zone, Star Dream completed its sterilization of the valley with a long salvo from the cruiser's heavy batteries.

The bodies turned to vapor and vanished, and the blood was scorched from the rocks. The ground turned to black gla.s.s, and the river exploded into steam.

When the barrage was over, nothing was left of the vermin but the holes they had carved in the ground with their hands and the trails they had beaten into the hills with their footsteps.

Star Dreamreturned to N'zoth triumphant in herGlorious victory, carrying a pa.s.sage price in chromite in her hold.

In a garden city on J't'p'tan, a world gentled by patient hands, a woman awoke from a dream to a nightmare. A falling star became a starship, the starship a warship, and the warship a fountain of death raining on the face of the world. In the dream, or the nightmare, the Current ran wild with the thrashings of murdered souls, and ran dark with the stain of blood.

"Rouse everyone, at once, " Wialu said, shaking her daughter. "Hurry-something terrible has begun. "

New Brigia was the smallest of the thirteen alien settlements visited by the ships of the Black Fleet in the first hour of the Great Purge. Polneye was the largest, and the only one to fight back.

Orbiting a star on the far side of the Cl.u.s.ter from Coruscant, Polneye was an orphan child of the Empire.

It had been established to serve as a secret military transshipment port for Farlax Sector. Cloaked in high alt.i.tude clouds whose rains rarely reached the ground, arid Polneye became home to a vast open-air armory and supply depot.

Bustling hub-and-spoke landing and holding zones sprawled across the dusky-brown flats. Eventually, even the largest vessels capable of grounding could be accommodated, with cargoes unloaded, a.s.sembled, and transferred by small armies of droids.

As the traffic through Polneye grew, so did the population. At first it was a purely military billet, staffed by the Supply Command on a normal rotation.

The planet was chosen to satisfy certain strategic criteria, not for its suitability for habitation. But over time, as more and more jobs ere bid out to civilians, the center of each landing zone had grown into a small city largely comprised of semipermanent residents.

When the beaten remnants of the Imperial Fleet abandoned Farlax and retreated into the Core, the military staff fled in whatever ships were available on the ground. But the civilian population, which by then numbered nearly a quarter-million scattered across fifty sites, was left behind to fend for itself.

And though, suddenly, transports no longer dropped through the clouds with thrusters roaring to land on Polneye, the droids and cargoes that had been waiting for them proved a rich enough treasure to ease the shock of abandonment. Virtually everything a great army and a fleet of starships required to function could be found somewhere in the cargo containers left scattered on holding pads across the face of Polneye.

There were few missteps, and little was wasted or discarded. Polneye was blessed by strong leadership at the outset, and the cargoes became the raw material for a transformation from client to self-sustaining settlement to a unified state of eight consolidated cities.

So it was that the Yevethan warshipsHonor, Liberty, andDevotionarrived over a planet boasting a healthy population of nearly three hundred thousand sentients, seventy thousand droids-and six operational TIE interceptors.

"Weapons master! Attend me! Why has the attack not begun? "

The weapons master of the Star Destroyer Devotion bowed deeply to Jip Toorr before speaking.