“I don’t doubt it,” Leia told him. It was starting to come back now, like moonlight through the edge of a cloud. The menace, the rage; the hatred, the despair. “You didn’t feel it, did you?” she asked Chewbacca.
He growled a negative, watching her closely. “I felt nothing either,” Threepio put in.
Leia shook her head. “I don’t know what it could have been. One minute I was sitting there, and then the next—”
She broke off, a sudden horrible thought striking her. “Chewie—where does this orbit take us? Does it ever pass through the position where the Death Star blew up?”
Chewbacca stared at her a moment, rumbling something deep in his throat. Then, shifting the medpack to his other hand, he reached past her to key the computer. The answer came almost immediately.
“Five minutes ago,” Leia murmured, feeling cold. “That would be just about right, wouldn’t it?”
Chewbacca growled an affirmative, then a question. “I really don’t know,” she had to admit. “It sounds a little like something Luke went through on—during his Jedi training,” she amended, remembering just in time that Luke still wanted Dagobah’s significance to be kept a secret. “But he saw a vision. All I felt was … I don’t know. It was anger and bitterness; but at the same time, there was something almost sad about it. No—sad isn’t the right word.” She shook her head, sudden tears welling inexplicably up in her eyes. “I don’t know. Look, I’m all right. You two can go on back to what you were doing.”
Chewbacca rumbled under his breath again, clearly not convinced. But he said nothing else as he closed the medpack and pushed past Threepio. The cockpit door slid open for him; with the proverbial Wookiee disdain for subtlety, he locked it in that position before disappearing down the tunnel into the main body of the ship.
Leia focused on Threepio. “You, too,” she told him. “Go on—you still have work to do back there. I’m all right. Really.”
“Well … very well, Your Highness,” the droid said, clearly no happier than Chewbacca was. “If you’re certain.”
“I am. Go on, scat.”
Threepio dithered another moment, then obediently shuffled out of the cockpit.
And the silence resumed. A silence that was thicker, somehow, than it had been before. And much darker.
Leia set her teeth firmly together. “I will not be intimidated,” she said aloud to the silence. “Not here; not anywhere.”
The silence didn’t reply. After a minute Leia reached over to the board and keyed in a course alteration that would keep them from again passing through the spot where the Emperor had died. Refusing to be intimidated, after all, didn’t mean deliberately asking for trouble.
And after that, there was nothing left to do but wait. And wonder if Khabarakh would indeed come.
The topmost bit of the walled city Ilic poked through the clutching trees of the jungle pressing tightly around it, looking to Han for all the world like some sort of dome-topped, silver-skinned droid drowning in a sea of green quicksand. “Any idea how we land on that thing?” he asked.
“Probably through those vents near the top,” Lando said, pointing at the Lady Luck’s main display. “They read large enough for anything up to about W-class space barge to get into.”
Han nodded, fingers plucking restlessly at the soft armrest of his copilot seat. There weren’t a lot of things in the galaxy that could make him nervous, but having to sit there while someone else made a tricky landing was one of them. “This is even a crazier place to live than that Nomad City thing of yours,” he growled.
“No argument from me,” Lando agreed, adjusting their altitude a bit. Several seconds later than Han would have done it. “At least on Nkllon we don’t have to worry about getting eaten by some exotic plant. But that’s economics for you. At last count there were eight cities in this part of New Cov, and two more being built.”
Han grimaced. And all because of those same exotic plants. Or to be specific, the exotic biomolecules that could be harvested from them. The Covies seemed to think the profit was worth having to live in armored cities all the time. No one knew what the plants thought about it. “They’re still crazy,” he said. “Watch out—they may have magnetic airlocks on those entrance ducts.”
Lando gave him a patient look. “Will you relax? I have flown ships before, you know.”
“Yeah,” Han muttered. Setting his teeth together, he settled in to suffer through the landing.
It wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. Lando got his clearance from Control and guided the Lady Luck with reasonable skill into the flaring maw of one of the entrance ducts, following the curved pipe down and inward to a brightly lit landing area just beneath the transparisteel dome that topped the city walls. Inbound customs were a mere formality, though given the planet’s dependence on exports, the outbound scrutiny would probably be a lot tighter. They were officially welcomed to Ilic by a professional greeter with a professional smile, given a data card with maps of the city and surrounding territory, and then turned loose.
“That wasn’t so hard,” Lando commented as they rode a sliding spiral ramp down through the spacious open center. At each level walkways led outward from the ramp to the market, administrative, and living areas of the city. “Where are we supposed to be meeting Luke?”
“Three more levels down, in one of the entertainment districts,” Han told him. “The Imperial library didn’t have much detail on this place, but it did mention a little tapcafe called the Mishra attached to some half-size version they’ve got of the old Grandis Mon theater on Coruscant. I got the impression it was land of a watering hole for local big shots.”
“Sounds like a good place to meet,” Lando agreed. He threw Han a sideways look. “So. You ready to show me the hook yet?”
Han frowned. “Hook?”
“Come on, you old pirate,” Lando snorted. “You pick me up at Sluis Van, ask for a lift out to New Cov, send Luke on ahead for this cloak-and-blade rendezvous—and you expect me to believe you’re just going to wave goodbye now and let me go back to Nkllon?”
Han gave his friend his best wounded look. “Come on, Lando—”
“The hook, Han. Let me see the hook.”
Han sighed theatrically. “There isn’t any hook, Lando,” he said. “You can leave for Nkllon any time you want to. ’Course,” he added casually, “if you hung around a little and gave us a hand, you might be able to work a deal here to unload any spare metals you had lying around. Like, oh, a stockpile of hfredium or something.”
Carefully keeping his eyes forward, he could still feel the heat of Lando’s glare. “Luke told you about that, didn’t he?” Lando demanded.
Han shrugged. “He might have mentioned it,” he conceded.
Lando hissed between clenched teeth. “I’m going to strangle him,” he announced. “Jedi or not, I’m going to strangle him.”
“Oh, come on, Lando,” Han soothed. “You hang around a couple days, you listen to people’s jabberings, you maybe dig us out a lead or two about what Fey’lya’s got going here, and that’s it. You go home and back to your mining operation, and we never bother you again.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Lando countered. But Han could hear the resignation in his voice. “What makes you think Fey’lya’s got contacts on New Cov?”
“Because during the war, this was the only place his Bothans ever seemed to care about defending—”
He broke off, grabbing Lando’s arm and turning both of them hard to the right toward the central column of the spiral walkway. “What—” Lando managed.
“Quiet!” Han hissed, trying to simultaneously hide his face and still watch the figure he’d spotted leaving the ramp one level down. “That Bothan down there to the left—see him?”
Lando turned slightly, peering in the indicated direction out of the corner of his eye. “What about him?”
“It’s Tav Breil’lya. One of Fey’lya’s top aides.”
“You’re kidding,” Lando said, frowning down at the alien. “How can you tell?”
“That neckpiece he wears—some kind of family crest or something. I’ve seen it dozens of times at Council meetings.” Han chewed at his lip, trying to think. If that really was Breil’lya over there, finding out what he was up to could save them a lot of time. But Luke was probably sitting in the tapcafe downstairs right now waiting for them … “I’m going to follow him,” he told Lando, shoving his data pad and the city map into the other’s hands. “You head down to the Mishra, grab Luke, and catch up with me.”
“But—”
“If you’re not with me in an hour I’ll try calling on the comlink,” Han cut him off, stepping toward the outside of the ramp. They were nearly to the Bothan’s level now. “Don’t call me—I might be someplace I wouldn’t want a callbeep going off.” He stepped off the ramp onto the walkway.
“Good luck,” Lando called softly after him.