The Crystal Star (12 page)

questions.

"And here I thought you were perfect," she said.

Instead of changing Alderaan's course, Leia accelerated. Artoo-Detoo whooped in warning.

"I don't care. We have plenty of power.

If the beam grabs us we'll just have to break it." "Munto Codru Spaceport to WU-9167, we're tracking

you. Stay calm, we think we can counteract your acceleration.

Pilot, are you injured? If you can pull the plug on your engines you'll make our work a lot easier." The

controller kept his voice calm. If Alderaan had been in distress, Leia would certainly have appreciated

the reassurance.

Alderaan accelerated toward the tug's tractor.

Leia's display showed her the beam, waiting to surround her ship with an energy field as thick as

molasses. She poured on more power.

At least we aren't in combat, she thought.

There's no risk to them, trying to stop me. I don't have to worry about their safety.

Her own safety struck her as inconsequential.

"Munto Codru Spaceport to WU-9167, secure yourself for tractor, it's going to get rough in five, four..."

Artoo-Detoo snapped treads into the safety recess and hunkered down. Leia glared at the droid.

"Why do I think you do know the strength of the tractor beam?" she said. his... three, two, one, engage!"

Alderaan shuddered violently as the tractor beam grasped and slowed it. Leia pushed the engine to its

limits. Alderaan quivered around her.

The strain on her ship hurt her.

Alderaan's shields resisted the tractor.

For an instant, Leia's little ship slid free.

The space tug, responding with surprising speed for such an old and obsolete vessel, snatched at

Alderaan again. Alderaan struggled in its grip. The shields wavered, compressed to the edge of their

strength.

Alderaan slowed, plowing through the beam as if through a powerful current.

If I were in trouble, Leia thought, I'd be desperately grateful for whoever's keeping that tug in such good

shape.

The shields rallied. Alderaan seized more distance, another step toward escape.

Alderaan shuddered.

The tractor beam broke. The change buffeted Alderaan and flung Leia into the pilot's couch so hard it

knocked the breath from her. Struggling against the streaks of pain through her vision, she corrected her

ship's course.

Alderaan responded, steadied, and plunged.

"No!" the spaceport controller cried, at the end of his reassurance. "I'm sorry--" Every star exploded into

a multicolored line, radiating around Alderaan's path.

"We made it!" Leia exclaimed.

A cry of distress and relief echoed through the ship.

"What was that?" Leia exclaimed.

She snatched away the restraint, jumped up, and ran to the rear of the ship.

In the second cabin--the cabin that had been empty when she checked it for kidnappers--Chewbacca

lay in the bunk.

"What--how--?" Leia cut off her ^ws.

Artoo-Detoo rolled past her and stopped beside Chewbacca, warbling happily.

"You let him in?" Leia exclaimed.

"How could you? Is that why you let me think my children were hidden under the engines? So you had

time to let him in? He's hurt! How is he going to heal?

What am I going to do with a wounded Wookiee?" She stopped. She tried to calm herself. She was so

angry she could barely speak, much less make sense.

Chewbacca roared.

Leia still had to concentrate hard to understand him.

She had listened and learned for a long time, to be able to communicate with her husband's oldest friend.

She still could not pronounce Chewbacca's language, but she had made some headway in

comprehending it.

Chewbacca expressed distress and regret and sorrow that he had failed Jaina and Jacen and Anakin, but

not a moment's remorse that he had come along.

"I'm not going back," Leia said to Artoo-Detoo. "I'm not taking him back to Dr. Hyos. I hope you

thought to bring enough medicine!" Alderaan carried medical stores, of course, but Chewbacca was large

and his wound was serious. Leia herself had only the most rudimentary of medical training, picked up on

the fly in the old days.

She crossed the cabin and stood beside Chewbacca, gazing down at him. He moaned.

"I'm sorry you're hurt," she said. "And I know you want to help. But I wish you'd stayed back on Munto

Codru. Everyone will recognize you, that's why you couldn't go with Han!

Even when you're well enough to get up, you're going to have to stay in the ship." Chewbacca snarled a

quick retort.

"I suppose you're right," Leia said reluctantly. "You and Han, people would recognize. You and me...

maybe not. I'll have to think about it." His huge palm touched the back of her hand; his fingers, very

warm and gentle, curled around her wrist. Leia jerked away, fighting her anger at him, but losing.

"Go to sleep," she said. "You're supposed to be asleep." She fled before her anger could hurt him any

more.

Leia flung herself into Alderaan's pilot's chair.

She breathed deeply, slowly. The exercise felt ragged, for she was still angry and distressed.

The calming ritual was one of the few Jedi abilities she had begun to learn, though when she had told

Luke she knew how to do it, he had replied that no one ever completely understood Jedi techniques.

"Every time you reach a new stage," he had said, "you realize that you really don't understand anything,

you have to go back to the beginning, to the most basic practice, and learn what you didn't see the last

time through." "That's very encouraging," Leia had said in a dry tone that Luke chose not to

acknowledge.

"It is," he said. "It's wonderful, isn't it? There's always something more to learn. There's always something

new." Her pulse and her breathing slowed and steadied.

For the first time since morning, she felt a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of the presence of her children. The

center of her being yearned toward them.

Behind her, Artoo-Detoo entered the cockpit.

The glimmer vanished.

"I'm not speaking to you," Leia said.

With a plaintive whine, Artoo-Detoo rolled away.

She had to start all over again. In a state of calm, or in a state of frenzy, she could begin to use her

untrained potential. She had more control when she was calm, more power when she drove her potential

with fury. With fury came great danger.

Hyperspace glowed and writhed around her.

Somewhere in its patterns she would find a trail.

She must find it.

She thought she saw it, she grasped for it, it eluded her and disappeared.

Relax, she said to herself. Relax, and maybe you can find them.

That was like ordering herself to stop worrying: it was impossible.

She abandoned her quest for detached calm.

She discarded her pretense of composure.

Instead, Leia loosed her rage and terror and pain. Tears sprang to her eyes, blurred her vision, and rolled

down her cheeks. Anger spiced the terror. She pounded her fists against her pilot's chair. She began to

sob, to groan, to mutter the basest curses of Han's roughest smuggler friends.

Leia screamed.

Rage and terror and pain all shattered around her, and disappeared. The force of her love and grief

broke through into a brilliant blue-white reality.

A vivid scarlet line streaked across the glowing blue-white domain and stabbed into the soft rainbow

colors of hyperspace: Leia saw it, felt it, heard its color. She tasted and smelled it.

She snatched the controls of Alderaan and plunged along the bloodred trail.

Artoo was right, Leia thought. The children did come this way, it wasn't a coup kidnapping.

Leia shivered with relief, andwith fear. She had made the correct choice. But her children were in even

more danger than Mr. Iyon's wyrwulf.

Just outside the cockpit, Artoo-Detoo rolled nervously back and forth, whistling with confusion and

distress.

The crystallizing white dwarf plummeted toward Crseih Station, falling toward the black hole. The two

stars rose and set in opposition, creating long days, short nights.

Grateful for even a few hours of relative coolness, Han strolled into the lodge, along the pathways

between the quiet streams and glassy pools.

In his room, the only illumination was the reflection of shore lights off the crater lake.

Han threw down his jacket, kicked off his boots, and flung himself onto his bed. It was a long walk from

the first dome of Crseih Station to the park dome of the lodge. He felt tired but exhilarated.

The humming whine of a lightsaber startled him.

He whirled around. The blue light filled every corner of the room and even lit a dust-mouse beneath the

bed, as if the light were too powerful to cast shadows.

"Where've you been?" Luke slouched on the deep couch in the corner, wrapped in his robes, his legs

extended. The lightsaber flicked off again, plunging the room into darkness.

"Out enjoying my vacation," Han said easily.

"How about you?" The hum of the lightsaber pierced Han's inebriated brain as the blade snapped into

existence.

"That really hurts my head," Han said.

Luke performed a couple of ritual cuts.

A slash, a parry, a thrust. The air vibrated. The blade barely missed the wall, and a hanging tapestry, and

the arm of the couch.

In the light of his blade, Luke looked haunted. He let the energy blade withdraw.

"What were you doing?" Luke asked.

"Repairing our finances." Han raised the light level in his room. He grabbed his jacket, reached into the

pockets, and pulled out handsful of credits. He let the bills flutter to the bed, to the floor, even over

Luke's feet.

Luke gazed at the bills dispassionately.

"We didn't need our finances repaired," he said.

"We're on the border!" Han exclaimed.

"You show a letter of resources on the border and they laugh at you. And maybe knock you on the head

in an alley to grab it and take it someplace they can use it." "But gambling winnings," Luke said dryly, "are

perfectly safe." "I couldn't lose tonight, kid," Han said.

"They thought they could lure me in and take me, but I couldn't lose. I could have made us rich instead of

just comfortable, but I thought, No, why be greedy?

Why risk one hand too many? So I picked up my winnings and I thanked them for a fine time--and fine

ale--and here I am. Safe, and sound, and flush." "I was worried about you!" Luke said. "You

disappeared without a ^w--" "I didn't want to argue with you," Han said to his brother-in-law. "You

wouldn't have come along--" "How do you know? You didn't ask." "Would you?" "No." "See?" "It's

beside the point! I've got a mission here, a purpose, I--" "What's wrong?" Han said, suddenly concerned.

"What are you so upset about?" "Something strange is happening at Crseih Station," Luke said. His voice

was tight and intense. "Something strange, and I don't know what it is. I think we should be careful." "I'm

on vacation," Han said, trying to make a joke of it. "Being careful is the last thing on my mind." Luke

stared in silence out the dark window.

"I'm tired," Han said. "I'm going to sleep. In the morning I'm going to sleep in, and have breakfast in bed,

and maybe I'm going to have lunch in bed too. And then maybe I'll go back to the tavern." He yawned.

"Do the same thing, kid. Relax. If there's anybody here for you to find, you'll find them. Or they'll find

you." He sat up long enough to pull off his shirt, but he was too tired to take off the rest of his clothes. He

flopped back onto his bed.

"And tomorrow you can try to find Threepio," he said to Luke.

"I already did that," Luke said, matter-of-fact.

"Oh yeah?" Han mumbled, half asleep.

"Where is he?" He fumbled for the edge of the blankets to pull them around himself before he fell asleep.

"Right here, Gen--sir." Threepio stepped into Han's room, almost invisible in his new purple skin.

"Fine, great," Han said sleepily. "Tomorrow you and Luke can get on the hunt and find our mysterious

informant." His eyelids drooped and he heard himself snore just as he fell asleep.

"I have done that, sir," Threepio said. "She is here." Han woke with a snort. He sat up, still half asleep.

"Her? Here? What'd you bring her here for?" Struggling to wake up, he thought back over what they had

said. Luke had been playing with his lightsaber--had he even been using his disguise?

--and Han had not been careful with his tongue.

Maybe the informant already knew Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were investigating the strange reports

from Crseih Station.

"Because we need to speak." The new voice was light and soft, but very serious.

Han turned over, rolling himself up in his blankets with a groan of exhaustion, hiding himself from the

intruder.

"Come back in the morning," he said through the muffling bedclothes. "On second thought, come back in

the afternoon." "We have no time to waste, Solo." He bolted up, snatching the bedclothes away from his

face. She did know who they were--Luke's saber hummed, and the blade stroked a line of light across

Han's dim hotel room.

In the ghostly illumination of the Jedi weapon, Han saw their informant's face. He did not recognize her.

"You no longer know me, Solo," she said with resignation. "I should not be surprised, but I am

disappointed that you wiped me from your memory." It was her voice that let him remember. He caught

his breath.

"Permit me to introduce--" "Xaverri? Xaverriffwas Han said to Threepio, "We've already been