Tyrant's Test Read online

  But at midrotation, the ready room was deserted, and Gavin had to struggle with the waist ring without benefit of a helping hand. It was not until Gavin was in the middle of the helmet-on pressure test that another pilot joined him there—a young alien wearing a purifier pack on his chest and the red emblem of a provisional flight officer on his collar.

  Instead of going to one of the lockers, the pilot walked to within two meters of Gavin and stopped, as though waiting for him. When the test rig chimed its approval, Gavin broke the neck seal and removed his helmet.

  “Are you looking for someone, son?” Gavin asked, noting the absence of a Fifth Fleet insignia on the pilot’s uniform.

  The officer saluted belatedly, as though it were an unpracticed reflex. “Are you Colonel Gavin, sir?”

  “Guilty as charged. And you are—”

  “Plat Mallar, sir. Sir—they told me that you make all the decisions about pilot assignments.”

  “They?”

  “The crew of the gig. And the crew chief told me where I might find you. I’m one of the ferry pilots from Coruscant.”

  “The escort flight for Tampion,” Gavin said, nodding. “I know that you were all cleared by Intelligence, but I’m a little surprised to hear anyone’s talking to you. Did you ever think they might not be doing you a favor, telling you to come see me?”

  “Colonel, you make all the decisions about flight assignments, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then who else could I see?”

  Gavin nodded thoughtfully. “What is this about, then?”

  “It’s about my orders, sir. There are five of us being sent back to Coruscant on the fleet shuttle, as space is available. We were brought over from Venture this morning to wait.”

  “That’s right. What’s the problem?”

  “Sir, I don’t want to be sent back. I can’t be. I want to stay and be part of this fight. You have to let me do something.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Gavin, tucking his helmet under his right arm. “But I’ll give you a chance to convince me that I ought to. Mind you, though, I signed off on your orders. To be blunt, we do need pilots, but no one wanted you or the others. None of you is experienced enough for the squadron leaders who’re shorthanded to take a chance on you.”

  “If it makes any difference to you, I have another hundred and ninety hours in a TIE interceptor that don’t show up on my service record.”

  “In a TIE?” Gavin raised an eyebrow questioningly. “Give me your ID disc.”

  The young pilot complied, and Gavin studied the data in a portable reader. When he was finished, he looked up and fixed Mallar with a quizzical look.

  “Who are you?” he demanded. “I can’t figure out what you’re doing out here in the first place. You have more hours in sims and fewer hours in a cockpit than anyone I’ve ever seen in a combat zone.”

  “I’ve worked as hard as I can, Colonel, so I could have a chance. I spent every minute my check pilot could spare me flying. I spent every other minute I could training in the simulator. I’ll work just as hard here, if you don’t send me back.”

  “Your check pilot, yes,” said Gavin, handing the ID disc back. “He seems to have run you through primary training in about a third of the usual time, even though he graded you not much better than passing. What’s the missing piece of this picture, Mallar?”

  The question seemed to crush Mallar. “I suppose I should have let the admiral put it all in my file, like he wanted to,” he said dolefully. “He even wanted to give me a confirmed kill.”

  “A kill? For what?”

  “For the Yevethan fighter I shot down over Polneye, the day the Yevetha destroyed it—the day they killed my family,” Mallar said, and shook his head. “I didn’t want any special treatment—I wanted to be good enough on my own. Just good enough to do something to help. But I’m not—or you wouldn’t be trying to send me back. So all I can do now is beg you, Colonel—don’t send me back.”

  “Offer me an alternative,” Gavin said quietly.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mallar said. “Find something I can do to help. Anything. Find some way that my being here makes it easier for you to hand the Yevetha the same kind of hurt they handed me. That’s all I ask. Because what they did to us was wrong. Just let me be a little part of teaching them that lesson. That’s the only thing that matters to me now. I’m the only one left—I have to speak for all of them.”

  Gavin studied him as he spoke, and for a long time after. “Draw a flight suit,” he said finally. “Meet me at my gig in ten minutes. We’ll talk more on the way to Floren.”

  “Yes, sir. But the shuttle’s supposed to leave within the hour—”

  “I know,” said Gavin, patting Mallar on the shoulder as he moved past him. “I’m afraid you may miss it.”

  Inbound to Utharis, Mud Sloth came out of hyperspace crippled by a data bus power surge that left the port navigation sensors and the navcom unable to talk to each other. The surge had come at the worst possible time, during the cascade in which the hyperdrive systems shut down and the realspace systems reinitialize.

  “This is why you should never buy a bargain starship,” Luke grumbled as he climbed back out of the service access compartment belowdecks.

  “What do you mean?” asked Akanah.

  “Just that Verpine cut every corner they could building this thing,” Luke said, sliding the access panel back into place. “The power bus can’t handle all the systems, so the cascade processor has to juggle them, turning this one off before turning that one on. But for that to work right, the buffer circuits—” He saw her eyes glazing over and stopped. “Anyway, it means we’re going to be delayed at Utharis.”

  “How long?”

  “Until it’s fixed,” Luke said. He secured the last of the access panel hold-downs and looked up at her. “If there’s a wrench jockey at Taldaak Station who knows this model better than I do, maybe only a day or two.”

  “Two days! You said we were going to stop only long enough to top off the consumables and reset the counters.”

  Luke shrugged. “I’m not any happier about it than you are,” he said. “But better this happened now, inbound to a full-service port, than somewhere in the middle of Farlax.”

  “I can’t bear the thought of any more delay, this close to the end—this close to the Circle.”

  “I know,” Luke said. “But this ship won’t go into hyperspace again until she’s gone into a service bay.” He flashed a wry smile. “At least you’ll have plenty of time to pick out that souvenir hat I promised you.”

  Utharis was in the grip of war fever. Even though Koornacht Cluster was more than two hundred light-years away, Utharis had a border world’s heightened sensitivity to matters of interplanetary politics. It was impossible to go anywhere in Taldaak without hearing about the clouds of war gathering over Farlax Sector, and the talk had prompted a quiet but noticeable exodus through Taldaak Station and the planet’s other major ports.

  The exodus had not yet spread beyond the most affluent, mobile, and well-connected segments of Utharian society, but it had energized conversations everywhere, and intruded on the smooth working of the planet’s economic machine.

  “Sure, we can take care of you, Stonn,” said the yard manager of Starway Services. “But it’ll be three days before we can even look at it.”

  “Three days! Never mind—rent me a service bay,” Luke said, nodding toward a sign offering that option.

  “Sure,” said the manager. “Let me check the schedule.” His fingers danced over his datapad. “Yes, I should have one available in five or six days.”

  “Come on, dear—let’s go,” said Akanah, tugging at Luke’s arm. “Someone in this city must know how to treat visitors properly.”

  “Suit yourself. But you’re not going to do any better anywhere else,” said the manager.

  “And why is that?” Luke asked.

  “I had one crew chief and three mechs decide this would
be a good time to take a family vacation. Most of the other shops are even more shorthanded,” the manager said. “And I had twenty-eight of my regulars call to schedule early annuals or work they’d been putting off. If I weren’t keeping a bay open for transients and referrals, you’d be waiting a week.”

  “Li, dear, I’ve read about this sort of scam in Port of Call,” Akanah said. “The yards take kickbacks from the hoteliers for keeping travelers stranded.”

  Catching the sudden glower in the manager’s eyes, Luke patted Akanah’s hand patronizingly. “Now, darling, let’s not insult the man just because our plans have been upset,” Luke said. “Why are you so busy?” he asked the yard manager.

  “Because of the war, of course,” the manager said.

  Akanah’s gaze narrowed. “War? What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you ever link to the grids? The New Republic and the Duskhan League have been growling and feinting at each other for months.”

  Akanah turned to Luke. “Did you know about this?”

  “I heard something of it on Talos,” said Luke. “I didn’t want to worry you. It was only rumor then. I guess it’s become something more, if people are running the other way.”

  “You can see Koornacht Cluster in the night sky from here, you know,” said the manager. “The idea that a thousand warships are poised to clash somewhere over their heads makes people nervous.”

  “A thousand warships?” Akanah asked in an awed whisper.

  “That’s what they’re saying.” The manager shrugged. “Some of them, anyway. You hear a lot of different stories. So—what are you gonna do?”

  “We’ll leave our ship with you,” said Luke, pushing the registration pad across the counter. “But can you tell me how long it might take after you get to it? Do you have a local source for parts?”

  “For a Verpine Adventurer?” the manager asked, glancing down at the pad. “Oh, sure. We’ve got four of them in our scrapyard alone. Call us in three days.”

  The manager’s casual acceptance of war on his doorstep deepened the chill of fear that had come over Akanah on hearing the news. It’s too soon—he’s not ready for this, she thought wildly as she followed Luke out of the depot. I’m taking him exactly where I don’t want him to go—right into the heart of temptation. He’s still trying to direct the Current. He’s not ready to watch others fight without raising a hand of his own—

  “We can’t stay here,” she said in a worried whisper when they were outside. “It doesn’t feel safe. I don’t know what it is, but this place is shadowed.”

  “I don’t see a lot of alternatives,” Luke said, leading them back toward the northbound slidewalk. “You need to be able to tell the hyperdrive which way to jump, and Mud Sloth can’t do that right now.”

  “I understand that,” she said, clinging to his arm. “But we could be here a week or more. Isn’t there something else we can do? Can’t you buy the parts from him and fix it yourself?”

  “Didn’t you hear him in there? We’re headed into a war zone,” said Luke, stopping short. “For all we know about what’s happening, J’t’p’tan could be one of the battlegrounds. Don’t you think it’d be a good thing to be able to count on our hyperdrive?”

  She tried desperately to find a fear that would move him. “If we linger here too long, we can count on more Imperial agents finding us. We can’t let that happen. We can’t let them follow us.”

  “Even the New Republic can’t find us, thanks to your tricks,” said Luke. “Look, all we have to do is find a quiet place to stay and play tourist for a few days. Besides, I want to learn more about what’s ahead of us—and it may take a while to sort the facts from the rumors.”

  “Does it matter what’s ahead?” she asked. “Would you even consider turning back now? Your mother—my mother—they’re almost within reach.”

  “Not with Mud Sloth on crutches, they aren’t,” said Luke.

  “Then we have to get a different ship.”

  Luke snorted. “How?”

  She looked at him in earnest surprise. “Don’t you think that with our combined talents we can take almost any ship we want from here?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Luke said tersely. He scanned about to see if anyone could have heard her, then grabbed her elbow and practically dragged her away from the service center’s entrance and onto the slidewalk.

  “Yes, we probably could,” he said in a sharp whisper as the moving surface whisked them along. “But not without attracting unwanted attention. Do you really want a Utharian patrol boat following us to J’t’p’tan? Do you want every ship under New Republic registry alerted to watch for us?”

  “I can hide us.”

  “We’re already hidden. All we have to do is wait. You’ve gotten this close by biding your time until the right time. This is the wrong time to give in to impatience.”

  “This is the wrong time to delay,” said Akanah, still casting about for emotional leverage. “Luke, the darker the clouds, the more important it is for us to move quickly.”

  “The war’s already started,” Luke said grimly. “The Yevetha attacked more than a dozen worlds not long after we left Coruscant. We can’t arrive before the storm—we can only hope it leaves J’t’p’tan untouched.”

  “Luke, it’s not that the Circle is in danger,” Akanah pressed. “The danger is that we’ll lose touch with them. It’s impossible to work when the Current is in chaos. And it’s intensely uncomfortable to remain connected when the Current is carrying so much pain. I’m not afraid for them—the Circle is strong. I’m afraid they may already have left J’t’p’tan. And any sign they leave for me could be destroyed as easily as Norika’s house in Griann was.”

  “I can ask for another tracking report on Star Morning, find out where it went after Vulvarch. That should tell us something about the Circle’s plans.”

  “And what will we chase them in, Mud Sloth? You were right, Luke. We can’t count on our ship. We should have something faster, more reliable—and we may need room for more than the two of us. Please—we have to leave here now.”

  “I’m not going to help you steal a starship, Akanah.”

  Even before he spoke, she realized she had made a mistake. They shared a goal, but he still observed limits on the means he would allow himself to employ in pursuing it. She had committed everything to this quest, while he had a life to return to if it ended in failure. And she had forgotten that difference between them in a moment of selfish anxiety.

  “You’re right—oh, you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s just so hard being this close after so long,” she said, hastily troweling over the crack in her facade. “If we don’t find them—”

  “We’ll find them,” Luke said.

  “I want to believe that with all my heart, and at the same time I’m afraid to, because I don’t know if I can bear another disappointment,” she said. The tears that glittered in the corners of her eyes were real. “Forgive me. It isn’t that I thought you a thief—”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s forgotten.”

  She smiled gratefully at him and let him draw her into the curl of his arm. “If we must stay here, then at least let’s get away from Taldaak,” she urged, ending a brief silence. “Let’s find some private place safely away from all these eyes. I’ll use the time to teach you more of our disciplines.”

  “First things first,” Luke said. “I want to go back to the ship and put out some queries, then see what I can learn here. I want to find out everything I can about what we might find in the Koornacht Cluster—about what our people are up against.”

  That was the last thing Akanah wanted. Of all the impulses capable of moving Luke’s hand toward his lightsaber, she feared the power of his loyalty to his sister most. In frustration, she pulled away from him, moving to the opposite edge of the slidewalk.

  “What?” he asked in surprise. “What is it?”

  Akanah sensed his confusion and uncertainty and
targeted her words there. “I’m just wondering if maybe we’ve gone as far as we can together,” she said. “Maybe it was a mistake to make you part of this. If you don’t have the commitment or the trust—”

  “Akanah—”

  “I have to think about what to do now,” she said, and stepped neatly off the slidewalk.

  Luke whirled about but did not follow, letting the slidewalk carry him on toward the port. Their gazes locked together for a moment, then she turned away.

  Eyes now closed, she studied the Current’s flow through and around him, reading its eddies and meanders. There was exasperation there, but a new and still raw worry as well. Good, she thought. Wonder about me. Worry that I’ll steal a ship on my own and leave you behind. Then perhaps you won’t worry so much about other people’s wars or think about joining them. Your place is with me, Luke Skywalker—I still have lessons to teach you.

  Han had lost track of time. There was no day-and-night cycle in the brightly lit Yevethan prison cell, no regular meals to mark out intervals. Han dozed, exercised, paced, played endless games of hop-stone solitaire on the dusty floor, dozed. His mouth was parched, and his head and empty stomach were possessed by constant aches too sharp now to simply ignore.

  In the beginning Barth had joined him in what Han had dubbed the planetary championship of two-handed hop-stone, but both of them were too short-tempered for competitive games now. They had exhausted their repertoires of bawdy jokes, with Barth emerging the uncontested winner for both variety and delivery. In revenge, Han had taught Barth all eighty-six verses of a song that their brains kept singing long after their voices were stilled.

  Of late Han had taken to talking to the ceiling, to their unseen jailers. He had peppered his monologues with increasingly savage insults, hoping to provoke a response, any response, that would lead to the cell door opening, that might give them a chance to do something about their circumstances. When he ran out of words, he mentally rehearsed scenarios for overpowering any number of guards up to five.