Assault at Selonia Read online

  “Apologize my asking in the Basic,” Dracmus said at last, speaking so suddenly that Han jumped in startlement. “My Basic I have not used much for long, and it is not good. As I use, will come back. But must use. Must ask. Cannot ask in my tongue, as Selonian has not the word. So, in Basic. That man Thrackan Sal-Solo is your cousin? Yes? That is how you say the thing?”

  An anticlimactic way to start the confrontation, but the way things had been going, Han would take all the anticlimaxes he could get. “Yeah, that’s right. My cousin.”

  “Which is a kind of relative? A relation of the blood? Of what sort, please, does it mean?”

  “There are various kinds of cousin,” Han said slowly. “But the sort he is to me is of the closest sort, a first cousin. That means a child of your parents’ siblings. Thrackan is my father’s sister’s son.”

  “Ah,” said Dracmus, still staring fixedly at Han. “I make confession that I do having the trouble getting human family concepts straight,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Han said, a bit slowly. “I can see how that might be.” He had not known what to expect of Dracmus. He had been worried that she might bear a grudge about the fight, but it seemed she wasn’t going to mention it. Well, if she wasn’t, he certainly wasn’t going to. Still and all, he hadn’t expected her to start off asking about cousins. Why cousins? Han didn’t know a great deal about Selonian family life, but he knew something.

  Selonians were hive animals, living somewhat like certain social insects, in groups they called dens. Normally the whole den lived together, but members might travel far and wide, and some might live apart from others. It was the bloodline of the den, and not the physical proximity of den members, that mattered.

  Each den normally contained a few fertile males and exactly one actively fertile female, the queen. That one queen, the single breeder female, gave birth to all the rest of the den’s offspring. She would have four or five birthings of five or more every year, a pace she might keep up for thirty or forty standard years. Only one birth in a hundred was a male, but all males were fertile. One birth in five hundred was a fertile female. The vast majority of a given den was made up of sterile females. Strangely enough, the fertile males and females, the breeders, were an oppressed, albeit pampered, minority. The steriles treated the fertiles as breeding stock. Power was vested not in the fertile queen, but in one of her sterile daughters or aunts or sisters, who, in effect, owned her.

  A very odd setup, and Han could see how human family relations would seem just as odd to Dracmus. “You Selonians do things a bit differently,” he said.

  “Yes, yes,” Dracmus said, a bit absently. “Very differently.” She curled her tail on her lap. “But this your cousin. He is not like you.”

  Han felt his head reeling just a bit. It had been a hard enough day already without some Selonian trying to play anthropologist. Still, there was something in her tone of voice that told him she was the persistent sort. He wouldn’t get any peace until he satisfied her curiosity. “He is and he isn’t,” he said. “We look a lot alike and sound a lot a like. But we don’t think alike. Which is why he’s out with his drinking buddies and I’m in a cell.”

  “Is that the rule with human cousins? Look alike, not think alike?”

  “There’s no rule,” Han said. “It varies. It varies an awful lot. Thrackan and I look a lot more like each other than most cousins. Cousins don’t usually act much alike.”

  “Very much of interest,” Dracmus said. “Very much. And he is your enemy? Deeply and truly so? Of your blood, your close blood, and yet you work against each other?”

  “Oh, yes,” Han said. “Very much so.”

  The tip of Dracmus’s tail whipped back and forth moodily. “Amazement. We Selonians, we know other species are so, but having know is not understand. Against blood.”

  “Yeah. Against it,” Han said. He was exhausted, and not quite sure how much longer he could keep up the small talk without passing out on the spot. Still, he really didn’t want to insult Dracmus. Especially considering how sharp those teeth were. He hesitated a moment, then decided to take the chance. “Look, no offense, and I really am glad it seems you’re not going to tear me limb from limb, but I’m not in such great shape just now. Why does this matter? Can’t it wait?”

  “It matters much,” Dracmus said. “I believe now you are not like him, though I wonder why you are not. I am glad you are not the same. So you should be glad.”

  “And why is that?” Han asked.

  “Because one is enough bad. If I decided you were him like, I would have torn your throat out by now.”

  Han nodded and smiled to himself. “In that case, I am glad you don’t think we’re the same. But I’m beat.”

  “Beat? Yes, I beat you hard. Apologies.”

  “No. I mean yes, but that’s not what I meant. It’s a slang expression meaning ‘I am exhausted.’ ”

  “Ah. You need to rest. Understandable.”

  “Right. So if you promise not to tear my throat out overnight, can we continue this in the morning?”

  Dracmus hissed low, the Selonian equivalent of a laugh, as she lay back on her own cot. “I promise, honored Han Solo. Your throat is yours till the morning. I not harm you this night. But we have much to discuss.”

  “I bet we do,” he said as he eased himself back down on his cot. He felt safe now, at least for the moment. Most Selonians were ferociously, relentlessly, honest. If Dracmus said she would not harm him tonight, then he was safe from harm.

  Until the morning, at least. Han could not help but notice she had left herself an out.

  He shut his eyes and was instantly asleep.

  * * *

  Lady Tendra Risant of the planet Sacorria looked through her macrobinoculars at the night sky and knew something was happening. Something that was not good.

  The macrobinoculars were high-powered and set up on a tripod with a sophisticated autotracking system that allowed her to track an object in orbit quite easily. Not that she needed any such power and capacity, since the larger ships in the fleet of orbiting spacecraft were visible to the naked eye, if you knew where to look. And after a little bit of extremely quiet research, she knew exactly where to look.

  Tendra Risant had never had much to do with anything outside her own life until a few weeks before. Then she had met Lando Calrissian, and somehow, everything had changed. She was not in love with him, nor he with her. Perhaps they never would be in love. And yet, there had been a sense of connection between them, a sense of possibility that she had never felt before.

  And then, mere hours after he and his friend Luke Skywalker arrived on Sacorria, they had been thrown off the planet by the local authorities. They had lifted off, en route to Corellia—and vanished altogether, even as all traffic in and out of the Corellian system was stopped dead by the huge and mysterious interdiction field, and all communications with the Corellia system were jammed.

  Sacorria was one of the so-called Outlier Worlds of the Corellian Sector, somewhat isolated from the rest of the sector. The planet had always assured itself that it could get along just fine without Corellia’s help, and even dreamed of being free of Corellian control—but the people of Sacorria had received a pointed lesson in the dangers of getting what you wished for. And now they were scared. Without Corellian trade, the economy had not so much stopped as it had slammed face-first into a brick wall.

  Something had happened, something big—and Lando was in the middle of it.

  Lando. Perhaps she was reading too much into the—the possibilities with him. Perhaps Lando had been nothing more than smooth talk. Perhaps, even if nothing had happened on Corellia, he never would have come back, all his pretty words to the contrary. But none of that mattered now. He had gotten her started wondering and worrying. And it did not take her long to find a lot more to worry about—starting with the Triad, the government of her own planet. The population was restive and fearful, yet the government was blandly reassuring. According to the
Triad’s proclamations, they knew nothing more than the average human or Drall or Selonian in the street. Of course, if there was one word to describe the Triad, it was “paranoid.” Most dictators who got to the top via plots and coups were justifiably concerned about falling victim to more of the same. A trio of dictators, each of a different species, each forced to watch both of the others, could not help but be even more concerned about plots and schemes.

  And yet there were no hysterical pronouncements, no mass arrests of enemies and subverters of the status quo. The only clue that something was not right was that the military had vanished. In normal times, it seemed as if every third person walking down the street was in uniform. Now, suddenly, they were all gone, all leaves canceled, all units on alert, if you believed the scuttlebutt. That made sense if there was a crisis, if the Triad was mobilizing against whatever mysterious threat had struck at Corellia. Except, as Tendra had learned with just a little digging, the mobilization had been ordered two days before the Corellian interdiction field went up—in point of fact, just an hour or two after Lando and Luke arrived on planet.

  That would explain why they were allowed to land, but immediately required to leave, at any event. But it also suggested, very strongly, that the Triad knew about the Corellian interdiction field in advance. Whether that meant they were part of the plot that had caused it, or whether they had pulled off some sort of intelligence coup and gotten the word from their spies, Tendra had not the faintest idea.

  But the thing that had her worried most was the fleet assembling in orbit. There were too many ships, far too many—at least ten times the number the Triad admitted to publicly. Even allowing for secrecy and paranoia, it was quite a feat to hide ninety percent of your striking force. Besides, Sacorria was not a particularly populous world. A little quick arithmetic demonstrated that it would take something like half the adult population of the planet to provide crews for a fleet that size. Therefore, many, if not most, of the ships and crew were from off-planet. But where were they getting them? And what did they plan to use them for?

  The answer to the latter question seemed obvious, though she could not see the details clearly. It had to be that this fleet was heading for Corellia. For what purpose, and under whose command, she had no idea. But it had to be Corellia. Nothing else made sense.

  But suppose they were part of the organization that had thrown up the interdiction field? And suppose they could turn the field on and off at will, allowing their ships, but no one else’s, to move? It didn’t take much imagination to see what a powerful weapon that could be.

  But what was she supposed to do about it? She had no great love for the Triad. She felt only the slightest twinge of patriotic guilt over the idea of warning someone about what she had found out. After all, Sacorria was her home world. But whatever she might owe the planet, she certainly owed nothing to the Triad. They were thugs and tyrants, nothing more or less.

  Then what to do? Get to Coruscant, give them a warning? A moment’s thought convinced her there would be no point to such an action. Even if she were able to find someone who would listen to her, she would not be telling them anything they didn’t know. New Republic Intelligence had no doubt been crawling all over Sacorria before the Corellian crisis blew, and no doubt had redoubled their effort since then. No, if NRI hadn’t been able to find out everything a private citizen could discover by keeping her eyes open, then they didn’t deserve to know.

  But Corellia. The people in the Corellia system would not, could not know. And they were the ones who needed to know. And if it just so happened that was where Lando was supposed to be, then so much the better.

  Good. That much was decided. She would go to the Corellian system and warn Lando—warn everyone—of the fleet gathering here.

  Which only left the trifling question of how, exactly, to go about doing that.

  * * *

  “Are you awake, honored Solo?”

  Han opened his eyes to see a mouthful of very sharp teeth very close to his throat. “I am now,” he said, with the utmost sincerity. It might not be the most pleasant way to be awakened, but the sight of that mouthful of cutlery first thing in the morning certainly was an effective means of making a person fully alert. “Why? What’s happening?”

  “I wished to speak with you.”

  “And it can’t wait?”

  “I think not. There is one reason of which I cannot speak. But also when they find we have not done battling during the night, they might become disappointed, and separate us again.”

  “You could have a point,” Han said, “but I’m all for disappointing them.” He sat up, moving cautiously, and was pleased to find he hardly winced. He might be getting older, but it would seem that he was still a quick healer. “So what do you want to know?”

  “I must know about certain lies. But it is like cousins, this lying thing,” Dracmus said as she returned to her own cot and sat back down on it.

  “What?” Han said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Forgive. A strange way to say it. I am meaning, I suppose, we Selonians have cousins, yes, and uncles and nieces and all such, if you look at chart of descent. At least I think we do. I am not sure of precise meaning of all those words. But though we have these relationships, we never think of them. We do not understand the ideas well.”

  “I guess not,” Han said. “You don’t have families that way.”

  “No, we do not. And this idea of cousins being different and same—all Selonians in a den near identical. Closer genes than in your brother and sister. We are more alike than that. Closer to being hundreds of identical twinses.”

  “That much I knew,” Han said. Selonian genes did not randomize as much as human genes did. Each breeder male would father a certain portion of the sterile population, and all those with the same father were said to be in the same “sept.” All the sterile females in a given sept were, for all intents and purposes, clones, with each individual’s genetic structure all but identical to that of every other member.

  “By way humans use word,” Dracmus said, “Selonian not even have of families. We have dens. In your terms, I have three hundred sisters and half sisters. I may have brothers, but I know not of them. They would have been sent elsewhere to breed. So I have not idea of sister and brother as you do. When we see human parents, see human woman pregnant out in public, we find it odd and some unpleasant. Breeders should be in den. We think, how strange you treat your breeders—and then we remember, all you are breeders. ‘Wife, husband, mother, father.’ We do not think in such ways.”

  Han looked at Dracmus. He had never really stopped to think about it. The Selonians might have breeding pairs, but they did not have husbands, or wives, or marriages. How could they? As with every intelligent species, Selonian culture was driven by Selonian biology, and marriage was not compatible with a species where one breeder queen might have a thousand sterile, asexual daughters. The human way must seem equally strange to Dracmus.

  Human marriage was, of course, associated with breeding, and to Selonians, that was an extremely distasteful subject. Han knew perfectly well that many Selonians looked down on races where everyone was a breeder. “You might not think in such ways most of the time, but you’re going to have to learn if you’re going to deal with humans.”

  “A true thing,” Dracmus said. “Before now, I have not gotten out much. The tasks of dealing with humans fell to my—you would say—elder sister, but she died eight days ago in accident. Now I have job.”

  “I’m sorry your sister died,” Han said.

  “As am I. My training in human dealing was not yet complete.”

  Han looked at Dracmus in surprise. How could she say such a callous thing? But then he stopped himself. Thinking about it, how upset could she afford to get over one sister’s death if she had three hundred? It must have been more like the death of a distant aunt to a human. And if the steriles in a given sept were all near clones anyway, how much sense of loss could there be at t
he death of one sister when she had twenty or fifty more, all virtually identical? “Well, it seems to me that you’re doing fine, even with only partial training.”

  “That is most kind, honored Solo, but we are drifting away from point. We must speak of lying. Lying to us is as strange as families. We Selonians can do lying, but we have no practice at it. We see it is a bad thing. Not a little bad thing, as with you, but a big bad thing, like murder.”

  “Lies can be a big bad thing,” Han said, but then thought for a moment about some of the exceedingly tall tales he had told over the years. “But, ah, mostly they’re not.”

  “You see? You have skill at lies. You understand them, know big from little. Selonians terrible sabacc players, bad at all games that require concealment of truth. I think lie for human can be small because you are so alone. Lie can touch only one, hurt only one. It can be kept secret. For Selonian, together in den, lie touches all. All know of it. No secrets, all hurt. Do you follow?”

  “Just about,” Han said, trying to parse the slightly scrambled sentences. “I take it that there are some lies someone told you that you want to ask me about.”

  “Yes! Yes! Glad I did not kill you in the fight.”

  “The pleasure is all mine,” Han said. “But what are the lies in question?”

  “First, please, can you tell when Thrackan your cousin is lying?” Dracmus asked.

  “Sometimes,” Han answered. “Last night he thought I knew less than I did. He told me things that were in direct contradiction to what I already knew. He even told me that he was telling lies—but he didn’t say what they were.”

  “But when you aren’t sure. Can you tell when all you have is the words of his speaking?”

  Han thought for a minute. “At times. A little. And I can make some guesses about things that might be true inside his lies.”