“Where else would he come?” Khabarakh countered darkly, his eyes on the maitrakh. “Perhaps he was not fooled, as we thought.”
Leia looked around the dukha again. If the shuttle landed by the double doors, there would be a few seconds before the Imperials entered when the rear of the building would be out of their view. If she used those seconds to cut them an escape hole with her lightsaber …
Chewbacca’s growled suggestion echoed her own train of thought. “Yes, but cutting a hole isn’t the problem,” she pointed out. “It’s how to seal it up afterward.”
The Wookiee growled again, jabbing a massive hand toward the booth. “Well, it’ll hide the hole from the inside, anyway,” Leia agreed doubtfully. “I suppose that’s better than nothing.” She looked at the maitrakh, suddenly aware that slicing away part of their ancient clan dukha might well qualify as sacrilege. “Maitrakh—”
“If it must be done, then be it so,” the Noghri cut her off harshly. She was still in shock herself; but even as Leia watched she visibly drew herself together again. “You must not be found here.”
Leia bit at the inside of her lip. She’d seen that same expression several times on Khabarakh’s face during the trip from Endor. It was a look she’d come to interpret as regret for his decision to bring her to his home. “We’ll be as neat as possible,” she assured the maitrakh, pulling her lightsaber from her belt. “And as soon as the Grand Admiral is gone, Khabarakh can get his ship back and take us away—”
She broke off as Chewbacca snarled for silence. Faintly, in the distance, they could hear the sound of the approaching shuttle; and then, suddenly, another all-too-familiar whine shot past the dukha.
“Scimitar assault bombers,” Leia breathed, hearing in the whine the crumbling of her impromptu plan. With Imperial bombers flying cover overhead, it would be impossible for them to sneak out of the dukha without being spotted.
Which left them only one option. “We’ll have to hide in the booth,” she told Chewbacca, doing a quick estimation of its size as she hurried toward it. If the slanting roof that sloped upward from the front edge back to the dukha wall wasn’t just for show, there should be barely enough room for both her and Chewbacca inside—
“Will you want me in there as well, Your Highness?”
Leia skidded to a halt, spinning around in shock and chagrin. Threepio—she’d forgotten all about him.
“There will not be room enough,” the maitrakh hissed. “Your presence here has betrayed us, Lady Vader—”
“Quiet!” Leia snapped, throwing another desperate look around the dukha. But there was still no other place to hide.
Unless …
She looked at the star dish hanging over the middle of the room. “We’ll have to put him up there,” she told Chewbacca, pointing to it. “Do you think you can—?”
There was no need to finish the question. Chewbacca had already grabbed Threepio and was heading at top speed toward the nearest of the tree-trunk pillars, throwing the frantically protesting droid over his shoulder as he ran. The Wookiee leaped upward at the pillar from two meters out, his hidden climbing claws anchoring him solidly to the wood. Three quick pulls got him to the top of the wall; and, with the half hysterical droid balanced precariously, he began to race hand over hand along the chain. “Quiet, Threepio,” Leia called to him from the booth door, giving the interior a quick look. The ceiling did indeed follow the slanting roof, giving the back of the booth considerably more height than the front, and there was a low benchlike seat across the back wall. A tight fit, but they should make it. “Better yet, shut down—they may have sensors going,” she added.
Though if they did, the whole game was over already. Listening to the approaching whine of repulsorlifts, she could only hope that after the negative sensor scan from the previous night, they wouldn’t bother doing another one.
Chewbacca had reached the center now. Pulling himself partway up on the chain with one hand, he unceremoniously dumped Threepio into the star dish. The droid gave one last screech of protest, a screech that broke off halfway through as the Wookiee reached into the dish and shut him off. Dropping back to the floor with a thud, he hit the ground running as the repulsorlifts outside went silent.
“Hurry!” Leia hissed, holding the door open for him. Chewbacca made it across the dukha and dived through the narrow opening, jumping up on the bench and turning around to face forward, his head jammed up against the sloping ceiling and his legs spread to both sides of the bench. Leia slid in behind him, sitting down in the narrow gap between the Wookiee’s legs.
There was just enough time to ease the door closed before the double doors a quarter of the way around the dukha slammed open.
Leia pressed against the back wall of the booth and Chewbacca’s legs, forcing herself to breathe slowly and quietly and running through the Jedi sensory enhancement techniques Luke had taught her. From above her Chewbacca’s breathing rasped in her ears, the heat from his body flowing like an invisible waterfall onto her head and shoulders. She was suddenly and acutely aware of the weight and bulge of her belly and of the small movements of the twins within it; of the hardness of the bench she was sitting on; of the intermingling smells of Wookiee hair, the alien wood around her, and her own sweat. Behind her, through the wall of the dukha, she could hear the sound of purposeful footsteps and the occasional clink of laser rifles against stormtrooper armor, and said silent thanks that they’d scrubbed her earlier plan of trying to escape that way.
And from the inside of the dukha, she could hear voices.
“Good morning, maitrakh,” a calm, coolly modulated voice said. “I see that your thirdson, Khabarakh, is here with you. How very convenient.”
Leia shivered, the rough rubbing of her tunic against her skin horribly loud in her ears. That voice had the unmistakable tone of an Imperial commander, but with a calmness and sheer weight of authority behind it. An authority that surpassed even the smug condescension she’d faced from Governor Tarkin aboard the Death Star.
It could only be the Grand Admiral.
“I greet you, my lord,” the maitrakh’s voice mewed, her own tone rigidly controlled. “We are honored by your visit.”
“Thank you,” the Grand Admiral said, his tone still polite but with a new edge of steel beneath it. “And you, Khabarakh clan Kihm’bar. Are you also pleased at my presence here?”
Slowly, carefully, Leia eased her head to the right, hoping to get a look at the newcomer through the dark mesh of the booth window. No good; they were all still over by the double doors, and she didn’t dare get her face too close to the mesh. But even as she eased back to her previous position there was the sound of measured footsteps … and a moment later, in the center of the dukha, the Grand Admiral came into view.
Leia stared at him through the mesh, an icy chill running straight through her. She’d heard Han’s description of the man he’d seen on Myrkr—the pale blue skin, the glowing red eyes, the white Imperial uniform. She’d heard, too, Fey’lya’s casual dismissal of the man as an impostor, or at best a self-promoted Moff. And she’d wondered privately if Han might indeed have been mistaken.
She knew now that he hadn’t been.
“Of course, my lord,” Khabarakh answered the Grand Admiral’s question. “Why should I not be?”
“Do you speak to your lord the Grand Admiral in such a tone?” an unfamiliar Noghri voice demanded.
“I apologize,” Khabarakh said. “I did not mean disrespect.”
Leia winced. Undoubtedly not; but the damage was already done. Even with her relative inexperience of the subtleties of Noghri speech, the words had sounded too quick and too defensive. To the Grand Admiral, who knew this race far better than she did …
“What then did you mean?” the Grand Admiral asked, turning around to face Khabarakh and the maitrakh.
“I—” Khabarakh floundered. The Grand Admiral stood silently, waiting. “I am sorry, my lord,” Khabarakh finally got out. “I was overawed by your visit to our simple village.”
“An obvious excuse,” the Grand Admiral said. “Possibly even a believable one … except that you weren’t overawed by my visit last night.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Or is it that you didn’t expect to face me again so soon?”
“My lord—”
“What is the Noghri penalty for lying to the lord of your overclan?” the Grand Admiral interrupted, his cool voice suddenly harsh. “Is it death, as it was in the old days? Or do the Noghri no longer prize such outdated concepts as honor?”
“My lord has no right to bring such accusations against a son of the clan Kihm’bar,” the maitrakh spoke up stiffly.