Lieutenant Ress Batten was a slender woman perhaps thirty years of age, with long black curly hair and golden skin. Arms folded across her chest, she said, “If they throw her in jail, do I have to go there too?”
“Yes,” Captain Antilles snapped. “Assuming I don’t throw you in the brig before the Empire gets the chance.” Batten held up her hands in mock surrender before turning to ready one of the speeders. When Leia gave the captain a look, he sighed. “Lieutenant Batten has, shall we say, issues with her attitude. But she’s a strong speeder driver and a better fighter. More than anything, she’s got good instincts about people. If you’re going into a dodgy situation and you’re only taking one crewmember with you, Batten’s the one you want.”
He’d called the situation “dodgy.” Leia liked the sound of that.
Batten readied the landspeeder swiftly, and almost before Leia knew it, the two of them were coasting through endless black fields of mud that had once been meadows. Other camps dotted the horizon, evidence of thousands more people trapped in unlivable circumstances, unable to go home and unable to leave the planet.
“Unbelievable,” Batten said. “Did you notice not one person had their own vehicle along? Not a ship, not a speeder, not a sled. They must’ve been banned from bringing them.” Leia hadn’t noticed that, and was about to say so, when Batten pulled herself sharply upright. “My apologies for speaking informally, Your Highness. It’s a bad habit of mine.”
“That’s all right. Military procedure is one thing, but sometimes royal protocol just gets in the way.” That was what her father always said to keep people from feeling awkward about having broken the rules for conversing with the royals.
Those people usually smiled in relief and remained silent afterward. Batten, however, took it as permission to keep going. “The Emperor’s plan didn’t work, accidentally causing suffering. So how does he go about fixing it? He doesn’t! He deliberately causes more suffering.” She scowled. “People are getting tired of this. Worse than tired. They’re getting angry.”
“I don’t blame them.” Leia’s gaze remained on the distant camps as she tried to guess how many people were trapped there.
“Roughly one thousand families per camp,” said the Imperial official in charge, a Major Tedam. His heavy-lidded eyes drooped as if he’d been interrupted mid-nap. “Give or take. One thousand shelters, at any rate.”
“That must be a very great burden for you.” Given that the Empire wasn’t doing anything much for these people except holding blasters on them, Leia wasn’t sure how much of a burden it could be. Still, this needed to sound like she wasn’t asking for a favor, only trying to solve his problem. “I’m sure you’d rather have fewer mouths to feed. My ship stands ready to transport Wobani citizens off-planet, back to Alderaan—”
“Transport?” Briefly Tedam seemed alert, but the moment passed. “That’s not allowed.”
Leia nodded. “Not under my current clearance, no. We’d have to renegotiate terms, which could be done very quickly.”
Tedam shook his head and repeated, “That’s not allowed. Here, we stick to the rules.” He blinked slowly, almost as if he expected her to be gone before he opened his eyes again.
Keep your temper, she reminded herself. “If you don’t have the authority to renegotiate terms, can you let me know who does?”
“Nobody on this planet. Nobody in this sector.”
“Then—then you must have some authority, if you’re this isolated.” Would the Empire really drop so many troops and officials on one planet and leave them there without orders, so that they might starve and brutalize the citizens at will?
Yes. They would.
“I have authority to enforce the diplomatic permit as issued,” Tedam said. “No more and no less. Your ship will leave this planet with no one on board except yourself and your crewmembers, as planned. I recommend you leave soon.”
With that he went back to reviewing data. He didn’t even glance up as Leia walked out.
The trapezoidal corridor of the local Imperial headquarters was, like most Imperial structures, dark, cold, and depressing. Metal beams seemed to be closing around her like the jaws of an old-fashioned trap, and the reddish hue of the floor reminded her of blood. She trembled, from anger and fear for others, and from sheer helplessness.
On Alderaan, they had no true poverty. All citizens were at least modestly provided for, and public facilities and services were both numerous and available to everyone. On Coruscant, Leia knew, people could be in difficult straits, but they were hard to pick out in the endless throngs of crowds that inhabited every lane and layer of that world. It was different to witness this kind of suffering with her own eyes. To end this day by flying away, having accomplished exactly no lasting good—
She couldn’t stand it.
She wouldn’t.
Batten gave her royal charge several sidelong looks on the way back to the Tantive IV. Leia noticed, but she was too deep in thought to worry about it. What could she do to set this right? Refuse to leave until the agreement was renegotiated? Tell them she’d be back every week—maybe every day!—until they let her take some settlers with her? There had to be a way, but she couldn’t think of one.
On their arrival at the ship, Batten powered down the speeder to allow it to be reloaded by the hauler droids. As Leia stood outside, waiting for that to be done, she saw an elderly woman sitting in one corner of the small, roped-off area around a shelter. With shaking hands, she was mending some knitted garment—doing it herself, sewing with a needle like someone out of an old-fashioned storybook. Leia wondered whether the tremor in the woman’s hands was from age or from cold. But she was using the one skill she had to protect herself and her family—
It was the word skill that did it.
Leia lit up and called out, “Captain Antilles! Lieutenant Batten! Come help me, will you?” As they headed toward her, confused expressions on their faces, she turned back to the old woman. “You seem to be handy with a needle and thread.”
The woman seemed surprised to be spoken to, but she answered calmly, “Why, yes, Your Highness.”
“You see, that’s very interesting,” Leia said. Antilles and Batten had reached her by then, and to them she said, “The Imperial officials say I can’t take any passengers with me. Only crew.”
“They don’t budge on things like that.” The captain managed to say it in a way that didn’t mean I told you so, which Leia appreciated. But she wouldn’t have cared what he said or how he said it, not now that the best idea she’d ever had was burning bright inside her.
She turned back to the old woman. “The thing is, sometimes our soldiers’ uniforms rip or tear. We could use someone to help keep them in repair. So I’m hiring a new crewmember, an official ship’s seamstress. If you take the job, you’ll fly out of here with us immediately.”
The woman’s astonishment and delight would’ve warmed Leia in a snowstorm. “But—but my husband—” She pointed toward an elderly man napping on a nearby cot.