Assault at Selonia Read online

  Of course, there was the question of what sort of reception she would receive. The capital had been attacked, bombed, besieged, and who knows what else over the years. The New Republic Navy therefore took its job of defending the place very seriously, and the years of peace hadn’t taken the edge off Coruscant Command. If she had learned anything in NRI, she had learned that much. She also knew how suspicious they were of unknown ship types—such as the X-TIE she was riding in. It might be unfortunate, but it would be understandable if they blasted her out of the sky first and asked questions later.

  Kalenda smiled to herself. But why borrow trouble? The X-TIE’s hyperspace systems might blow before she got there, and then the problem would never come up. For at least the dozenth time in the last hour, she checked her systems’ status display. More than a few of the propulsion subsystems were in the amber, but so far at least, none of them had spiked up into the red. She double-checked her navigational settings and willed the X-TIE Ugly to fly a trifle more gracefully.

  * * *

  The Lady Luck lifted off from Coruscant with a smooth surge of power and moved gracefully toward orbit. Lando checked his instruments. “Everything in the green,” he announced. He checked the central repeater boards. “Artoo’s got your X-wing right in the groove behind us. I must admit I’m impressed. I wasn’t quite sure our little friend was up to the job.”

  “I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” Luke said. “Artoo knows what he’s doing.”

  “Oh, I’ve learned it,” Lando said. “Now I know the only incompetent droid on this trip is the one sitting behind you.”

  “Really, Captain Calrissian!”

  “Quiet, Threepio, or I’ll make you ride outside on the hull.”

  It had taken some fairly ingenious improvised engineering to hook up the X-wing and the Lady Luck. But now that it was done, the X-wing could fly up under the base of the Lady and dock itself to the space yacht’s newly installed ventral docking clamps. The Lady could take Luke’s refurbished and upgraded X-wing fighter in tow. Even if had taken a bit of doing, no one had minded. They were going to be flying into the unknown, more than likely a hostile part of it, and there was nothing like having an X-wing’s firepower and maneuverability if things got sticky.

  However, no one had been able to dream up a way to fly the two craft through atmosphere while they were docked together—and there was no real need to try too hard, as long as Artoo could fly the X-wing to orbit. Lando had been a bit worried by the idea, but not Luke. After all, the R2 series had been designed to serve as pilot assistants. The brief flight from the surface of Coruscant merely marked the first occasion in a long, long time that Artoo had done the job he had been designed for in the first place.

  “That droid can do some tight formation flying,” Lando said. “Maybe I ought to let him do the docking maneuver once we’re in free space.”

  “If you like,” Luke said, not really paying attention.

  Lando looked over at his friend. He was plainly aware that Luke was not exactly fully engaged at the moment and was trying to cheer him up. “Yes, sir,” he said, “we get all docked up, and next stop, Bakura.”

  “Yes,” Luke said, in the same absent tone of voice. “Bakura. Bakura and Gaeriel Captison.” Luke stared out the port of the Lady Luck without seeing anything, and remembered Gaeriel. There was a name out of the past, if ever there was one.

  Luke had not so much as heard her name in years, but the thought of her had not lost its power to move him. He had met Gaeriel in the tumultuous days just after the destruction of the second Death Star and the deaths of Darth Vader and the Emperor. Her planet, Bakura, had been attacked by a hitherto unknown alien race, the Ssi-ruuk, which was intent on enslaving humanity. It had taken a joint force of Imperial and Republic forces to push the Ssi-ruuk back, and the Bakurans had kept a close watch on their borders ever since.

  Luke and Gaeriel met during the time he was on Bakura. They had quickly gotten to know each other very well in a very short period of time—and then had been forced to part just as quickly. It would have been a gross exaggeration to say she had been one of the great loves of his life—or indeed a love at all—but she might have been. That was what gnawed at him. If Luke’s path through life had been any different, if Gaeriel’s religion and her duty to her home world had not called to her, if they had met in a Galaxy at peace instead of one not yet done with war … if, if, if.

  Luke sighed and rubbed his eyes. But none of the ifs had come to be. And truth to tell, Luke knew that even if all the ifs had come true, there would have been no guarantees. Luke and Gaeriel might have meant something to each other. Or they might not have. The tragedy was that they had never had the chance to find out.

  “It was a long time ago,” Lando said gently. It seemed he had given up pretending that nothing was wrong. “Life moves on.”

  “Quite right, Master Luke,” Threepio piped up from the temporary jump seat they had rigged for him behind Luke’s copilot seat. “I doubt your brief encounter with her will be of the slightest consequence to our forthcoming meeting.”

  “Oh, great,” Lando said. “Now we get to hear from the greatest living authority on missing the point.” Luke and Lando had decided it might be smart to have Threepio in the control cabin, with a direct hyperwave comlink to Artoo, just in case there was any problem with the docking maneuver and the normal com systems couldn’t cope. Lando was plainly beginning to regret the move, and Luke was inclined to agree.

  “It is approximately fourteen standard years since you have had any contact with her,” Threepio went on, in the relentlessly cheerful tone of voice he always seemed to use when he was putting his foot in it. “While the diplomatic phase of our mission will be quite delicate, I would not concern myself overmuch about how she reacts to seeing you. Why, given the unreliability of human psychology, it is quite possible that she will not even remember you.”

  “I remember her,” Luke said in a quiet voice.

  “I see that you do,” said Threepio. “But I do not believe that you have had the opportunity to review her career since your last contact.”

  “Let me guess,” Lando growled. “You took it upon yourself to link yourself to the Upper Bloovatavian Historical Reference Data Bank and download her entire life story into that rusty tin head of yours.”

  “I am not familiar with Upper Bloovatavia, Captain Calrissian. However, the material on Gaeriel Captison was readily available in the Diplomatic Archives of Coruscant University. I might add that there was no tin at all used in the construction of my head, and, furthermore, tin does not rust.”

  “Luke, would it really bother you that much if I put just a few blaster holes in him?” Lando asked.

  Luke managed a wan smile and glanced back at Threepio. “Don’t be so hard on him, Lando. After all, he did save your life when you were about to marry the life witch on Leria Kersil.”

  “Yeah, but if it means I have to listen to him, I’m not sure it was worth it,” Lando said.

  “Well!” Threepio said. “I never! I don’t know why I bother collecting information when it seems no one is the least bit interested in it.”

  “Go ahead,” Luke said in a soothing tone of voice. “Tell me what you’ve got on Gaeriel.”

  “Would you care for a complete report, or just a summar?”

  “Just the summary, thank you very much.” Threepio’s idea of complete report might take from here until the end of time to recite.

  “Very good, Master Luke. Well, there is really not that much to tell. She continued in politics after the Ssi-ruuk were defeated and became a powerful figure in her faction of the senate. After holding various posts of increasing importance, she became the youngest person ever to hold the post of Prime Minister on Bakura.”

  “I didn’t know she had become Prime Minister,” Luke said, though there was no particular reason to be surprised. She was young and smart and ambitious. Why shouldn’t she rise to the top?

  “I am afraid she
not only became Prime Minister, but then ceased to be Prime Minister. Her party was defeated in the last elections. Several press accounts attribute this to her being distracted from the campaign by the illness and death of her husband.”

  “Husband?” Luke said. “She had a husband?”

  “Oh, yes, Master Luke. Did I neglect to mention that? She married about six years ago, to a man called Pter Thanas … a former Imperial officer. I believe you met him during our time in Bakura. They had a child, a girl, whom they named Malinza. She is now four and half standard years old. Thanas contracted a lingering ailment with which I am not familiar, something called Knowt’s disease, just as the campaign was getting under way, and expired two days after Gaeriel’s party was defeated. It would seem that she’s out of active politics, at least for the moment.”

  That large a dose of news hit Luke hard. Strange to think that Gaeriel had gained and lost a husband, reached to and fallen from the heights of power on her world, and given birth to a daughter, all without Luke knowing a thing about it.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind he had held a picture of Gaeriel. He realized with a shock just how unchanging that image had been. In his mind’s eye, she had stayed the effervescent young woman he had known, all the drive and enthusiasm of youth eternally hers, frozen in time. But he should have known better. Life was not like that.

  Luke felt he should say something, but he didn’t know what. Somehow he did not much want to explain his feelings to Lando—and certainly not to Threepio. “I hadn’t heard any news of her in a long time,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear that Thanas died.”

  “But that was over a year ago, Master Luke. She is more than likely over it by now.”

  Somehow Luke doubted that. The Gaeriel he remembered was not the type to marry on a whim. She would have married a man she loved very deeply. She might well have gotten on with her life by now—but she would not have gotten over her husband.

  And she had had a child, a daughter.…

  Gaeriel. He thought of her, and all the possibilities that name had represented in his mind. He had always doubted that he would ever marry. Romantic love had never seemed to be part of his destiny. Even a Jedi Master could not see far into the future, but Luke needed little more than common sense to know that a life such as his had little room for the pleasures of ordinary people. There were times when his extraordinary gifts were compensation enough—and there were times when they were not.

  Luke knew perfectly well that he treasured Leia’s children in large part because they represented as much family as he was ever likely to have. He thought he had come to be at peace with that fact. Now he knew he was wrong.

  “Given that you once knew her well, I have a good deal of additional information on her that might prove interesting. Much of it is from the less reliable segments of the press, and is somewhat speculative. However—”

  “Look,” said Lando, “I don’t know the whole story, and I don’t want to. But it seems to me that Luke might not want to have this discussion in front of me.”

  “Thank you, Lando,” Luke said. “I appreciate that. We’ll talk later, Threepio.” He undid his seat restraint. “Actually, I think I could do with a bit of time to myself right now. Call me if you need me for anything. I’ll be in my cabin.”

  “Sure thing, Luke,” Lando said. “I don’t think anything’s going to come up.”

  Luke nodded absently and headed aft toward his cabin. When he got there, he slid the hatch open, shut it behind him, and flopped down on his back. He lay back so he could stare at the overhead bulkhead in comfort.

  Amazing how a name from the past could affect someone.

  * * *

  Belindi Kalenda watched the navicomputer’s countdown clock and took a deep breath. Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds until she dropped out of hyperspace into the Coruscant system. The moment she did so, she knew she was going to land in a world of trouble. The X-TIE had nothing she could cobble together into an interrogator that would send an approved identity code. On top of that, her craft was of an unknown type that carried a lot of ex-Imperial hardware.

  Kalenda knew just how twitchy the automatic systems were on the subject of Imperial spacecraft. When the autodetectors spotted the TIE side shields welded to the X-wing body, every detector screen in the system would light up like a glitterdance projector.

  Her only hope was that she could patch through to NRI headquarters, and do it fast, before half of Coruscant Command started blazing away at her. She would have to make a voice call to NRI HQ, use a one-shot word code, and convince them she was legitimate, while doing her best to stay alive.

  Twenty seconds. Try not to think about the last time you dropped out of hyperspace, into Corellian space, she thought. The locals shot your ship out from under you almost before you knew what was happening. You don’t want to try a crash landing onto Coruscant. No, indeed.

  Eighteen seconds. Check that comlink one more time. Confirm the frequency setting on the thing. You don’t want to send your SOS to the Bureau of Agronomic Policy Adjustment by accident. No, indeed.

  Fifteen seconds. Check the navicomputer one last time. It would be just your luck if the brutalized thing scrammed up its programming and dropped you outside the authorized arrival zone—or locked up for good and all and never dropped you out of hyperspace. Ships vanished every once in a while. No doubt about that. Check it again. No desire to be one of them.

  Ten seconds. Weapons systems powered up or powered down? If Coruscant Command spotted your turbo laser juiced up, they’d be just that more tempted to fire at once. But if they fired missiles at you, you might be able to shoot them down, if your weapons were at the ready on arrival. But suppose the power surge from switching them on was just enough to wonk out the navicomputer? And how likely were they to shoot missiles and not blaster fire? Leave the weapons systems off.

  Seven seconds. Shields. Shields were a different matter. On, definitely on. But don’t risk the power surge to the navicomputer. Slap the shield switch as soon as dropout is complete.

  If dropout ever happened. Five seconds.

  Four.

  Three.

  Two. Be ready for manual cutoff if the autos drop the ball.

  One. Hand on manual cutoff switch.

  Zero—

  And the universe flared into existence around her, star lines blasting out from the center, flashing past her before they resolved down into the familiar stars and sky of Coruscant. She had made it. Now if she could just manage to stay alive long enough to enjoy it.

  She powered up the X-TIE’s shields—and saw the navicomputer flicker and wink out before it popped back on with zeroed-out coordinates. Kalenda congratulated herself on holding off the shields until after arrival, and then started worrying about other things.

  Comlink. Activate the comlink. Pray that the NRI was still on that frequency. She keyed the switch and spoke. “Dartmakers out of luck with frequently iced manifolds. Dartmakers out of luck with frequently iced manifolds. Dartmakers out of luck with frequently iced manifolds.”

  The nonsense phrase was supposed to be stored in some NRI computer somewhere, keyed to her voice pattern. In theory, three repeats of the phrase would track the coordinates of whatever craft sent the signal, and send an emergency clearance to Coruscant Traffic Control, while sending an all-clear to Coruscant Command. A nice theory, all in all. Unless the computers were down, or some fogbrain had changed the procedure, or erased her phrase-voice match, or someone in Coruscant Command decided not to take NRI’s word that the mystery ship was on their side.

  Three repeats of the phrase. Wait two minutes, and send three more repeats. Wait another two minutes, and send the third and final set of repeats. That was the standard procedure, and Kalenda planned to follow it, if she lived long enough.

  In the meantime she’d best get her ship’s detectors—such as they were—powered up. She threw the appropriate switches and was more disappointed than surprised when nothing happened. Whoever
had slapped this Ugly together out of spare parts had probably meant it for some sort of raider support job. It was supposed to follow the other ships in and start shooting when the enemy showed up. Keeping the detection system up to speed would be a real low-maintenance priority.

  “Should have been more choosy about what ship I stole,” Kalenda muttered to herself. She might be able to bring the detectors back on-line if she worked on it for half an hour. Then again, she might not—and besides, she definitely did not have half an hour.

  In fact, it looked as if she did not have even half a minute. There. Coming in hard and fast from dead ahead—a full flight of six Y-wings, all of them looking very much as if they meant business.

  Her hand was on the joystick and she was doing a hard roll to starboard before she had even consciously decided to take evasive action. A turbolaser blast sliced straight through the piece of space she occupied just a moment before. Still working on sheer reflex, she started powering up the weapons systems before she realized that the Y-wings were on her side. She didn’t want to shoot them down. If it had been a choice between trading the life of one or two fighter pilots and the chance to get word of the plot to blow up the star of an inhabited planet, she would have gone to the attack without a moment’s hesitation, although with a great deal of regret. But against six fighters—and whatever else Coruscant would throw at her if she acted hostile—she knew there was no chance at all of her information surviving.

  Her only hope was to go evasive and stay that way long enough for the NRI to scramble a clearance. She checked her chronometer and realized it was time for her to repeat the message. Another laser blast nearly clipped her portside screen, and she flipped the X-TIE and jinked sideways.

  She switched on the comlink and started talking. “Dartmakers out of luck with frequently iced manifolds. Dartmakers out of luck with frequently iced manifolds. Dartmakers out of luck with frequently iced manifolds.” She chanted the words as if they were some sort of mantra, a magic spell that could save her life. And with any luck, that would be exactly right.