The Black Fleet Crisis_ Before The Storm Part 10

"Maybe so, " Leia said. "But there's a lot to be gained by forging a link-any link, to start-with the Yevetha. The Senate will understand that. "

"Many a foolish notion has won support in that body, " Behn-kihl-nahm said, "and many a falsehood has enjoyed currency in that room. Princess, no matter how much we want that ally on the Inner Line, or access to Koornacht's metals and the Yevetha's technology, we must always be aware of the price. We are not the suitors-they are. "

"Thank you for your counsel, Chairman. "

"Remember that Cortina and Jandur also came here full of prideful bl.u.s.ter, and both eventually signed the standard articles of confederation. And that was long ago, when members.h.i.+p meant less than it does today. "

"Time! " called the aide.

Leia emptied her gla.s.s quickly. "If you'll excuse me, Chairman-" Behn-kihl-nahm nodded and backed away, leaving her alone with Admiral Drayson and a recording droid.

"End recording, " said Drayson. A black droid controller was all but concealed in his hand. "Princess, may I have a moment? "

"A moment, but not much more. "

"I'm concerned about the process, about the fact that all your advisers must rely on secondhand reports. It makes it difficult for them to provide you with the independent counsel you expect from them. "

"What are you suggesting? "

"That I arrange for more eyes and ears in the room with you. I could provide you with a burst-transmission comlink small enough that even General Solo would be hard pressed to find it. "

"I don't expect to be frisked by the viceroy, " Leia said curtly. "And you can't promise me the comlink would be undetectable by the Yevetha-can you? If we can listen in, in theory so can they. "

"Quite true, " said Drayson. "Technical a.s.sets are always subject to discovery. Of course, if they were covertly monitoring the sessions themselves, they wouldn't be likely to-"

"Do you have evidence that they are? "

"No. But sometimes I find it more prudent to a.s.sume what's not in evidence than believe that what I can't see isn't there. "

"Admiral Drayson, I'm afraid I don't understand that thinking. Especially in this instance. "

"Time, Princess Leia, " called Alole, peering back into the room from the corridor.

"Coming, " Leia called. "No 'technical a.s.sets' in the Grand Hall, General. We'll have to make do with my eyes and ears. I won't take the chance of confirming their worst fears by being caught spying. Understood? "

"Of course, Princess. "

The Yevethan ground skimmer that picked up Nil Spaar in the bowels of the Imperial City administrative complex discharged him a few minutes later in the bowels of the emba.s.sy s.h.i.+pAramadia .

There was no one there to greet him, but that was no surprise. Nor was the fact that the driver waited inside the skimmer for Nil Spaar to climb out on his own and walk the few steps to the airtight exit hatch on the front wall. As soon as the hatch closed behind him, a thick yellow gas began to fill the chamber where the skimmer hovered.

Shortly afterward a scalding spray poured down on the skimmer from thousands of tiny jets, chasing the yellow mist down vents and drains.

Behind the hatch, Nil Spaar found himself in a sanitary entry station.

The drill had already become familiar to him, but that day there was more urgency to his motions. Quickly removing his clothing, he dropped it into a sterile incinerator. There was a rea.s.suring pop and hiss when he sealed the loading chute.

The face of the incinerator grew warm to the touch.

Then Nil Spaar stepped into the scrub chamber.

With eyes closed, he invoked the needle-spray showers-first the gentle rain of the fumigant, then the agonizing bite of the scrub jets.

As the water pelted his body, his expression softened to one approaching bliss. He lingered in the scrub chamber, willingly enduring a second cycle of cleansing. Then he pa.s.sed through the inner door, where waiting hands draped his body in a fire-blue gown.

"Viceroy, " the attache said, bowing.

"Thank you, Eri, " he said, accepting the heavy silver viceroy's neckguard and fastening it in place. "I must resign myself to it-their stink never leaves my nostrils, no matter how long I stay in the scrub chamber. "

"You carry no taint to my senses, " Eri said.

"I will trust that is more than politeness, " said Nil Spaar. "Is Vor Duull expecting me? "

"Yes, Viceroy. "

"Good. See that abstracts of today's reports and examinations are waiting for me in my quarters. I'll be there shortly. "

An aircart whisked him up eleven levels to the domain of Vor Duull, proctor of information science for theAramadia . Nil Spaar was greeted with a quick bow. "Welcome back, Viceroy. "

"More welcome for me than for any of you, " he said. "Were you able to receive a signal? "

"Without interruption, " Vor Duull said. "A recording was made per your instructions and placed in your library. "

"Did you watch? "

"Only enough to make certain that the decoders and stabilizers were functioning. "

Nil Spaar nodded. "What do you think of them? "

When Vor Duull hesitated, the viceroy prodded, "Go on, I excuse you. "

"They seem to me weak, gullible-eager to please. She is no match for you. "

"We shall see, " Nil Spaar said. "Thank you, Proctor. Continue your fine work. "

The aircart carried him swiftly up the central spiral of the s.h.i.+p to the third level, above which only command personnel could go. He accepted the salutes of the honor guard and a kiss from his darna, then disappeared behind locked doors.

In the privacy of his quarters, Nil Spaar sat in front of a cryptocomm.

His brief message was beamed to N'zoth, capital of the Duskhan League, as a scrambled string of bits mixed into the stream of ordinary open dispatches.

"I have had my first meeting with the vermin, " Nil Spaar said. "All is going well. "

The datacard Admiral Hiram Drayson dropped into the datapad on his desk looked for all the world like a standard Universal Data Exchange card. But the cards used by Alpha Blue for sensitive data used a nonstandard encoding, which made the card appear blank when placed in a standard datapad.

The little plastic rectangle could even be erased and re-formatted without destroying the information it bore-in this case, excerpts from a recording made earlier that day by a tiny audio telescope concealed in the ornate scrollwork on the ceiling of the Grand Hall.

The excerpts had been selected for Drayson by an Alpha Blue a.n.a.lysis droid, using sophisticated context-processing protocols.

Tipping back in his chair and folding his hands over his abdomen, Drayson listened to the recording that no other sentient had heard-or would hear, unless he chose to share it with them.

He listened as Princess Leia said, "I want Coruscant to stand for the idea that there's an alternative to war and tyranny. Cooperation and tolerance-the best of all of us, available to all of us. "

He listened as Viceroy Nil Spaar said, "We do not want or need your protection. We enjoyed the 'protection' of the Empire for half my lifetime, and we are determined to avoid such blessings in the future. "

And he thought as he listened, I wish that you'd chosen to let us into that room with you, Princess. But I'll do all I can to make certain you don't look back on that choice with regret.

Chapter 6.

Inside the protective coc.o.o.n of Luke Skywalker's secret hermitage, time had no meaning.

To be sure, the elemental cycle of day and night was echoed in the ebb and flow of the Force, as the living web of Coruscant stirred and slept, fought and foraged. The turning of the seasons was a longer, slower rhythm, an almost imperceptible crescendo and decrescendo of vitality and dormancy, fecundity and death.

Beyond that, a mere whisper, lay the almost unimaginably deep, subtle echo that was the birth of stars, the creation and extinction of life, the blossoming of consciousness. Deep in meditation, profoundly connected to the mysteries of the Force, Luke could see that through the manifestations of life, the universe knew itself, and beheld its own wonders.

But to extend himself that far, and reach that degree of oneness, Luke found it necessary to let go of his everyday senses to a degree he once would have thought impossible.

Sealed behind opaque walls, he lived in darkness for days at a time, barely conscious of hunger, thirst, or other bodily demands. He wore clothing only out of habit, but the habit weakened. The winds howled outside the hermitage, but Luke was oblivious to them.

He took no notice of the sun or moons in their courses, the rise and fall of the tide, the ever-changing sky painted in light and cloud.

The sea began to freeze, as the northern hemisphere slid deeper into Coruscant's short winter. Over a period of many days, the rocks and beach were draped with a heavy crust of sculpted ice. But the sight would have surprised Luke, had it mattered enough to him to seek it out.

Even Leia had stopped reaching out for him, though more in anger than in understanding. The result mattered more to him than the reason.

His solitude was complete, timeless and undisturbed.

Then a visitor came, and everything changed.

It was his ordinary senses, reawakened, which informed Luke of the visitor's presence. First, a sound, which he later realized was his own name.

At that point, it had been many days since he had spoken, or even thought in words.

He concentrated. "Lights, medium. "

The meditation chamber reappeared around him.

Sight told him that a woman stood in the chamber with him, half a dozen steps away. Her shoulders were bare, her throat covered by a long scarf that vanished down her back. Her hair was long and braided, her clothing soft and flattering. Her eyes were dark, intent, and knowing.

He took her at first for a projection, because it was unthinkable that anyone could have pa.s.sed through the walls, his screens, without alerting him. But then he touched her bare arm, and touch told him her skin was real, and warm. He circled her, and scent told him of salt air, dead quarrelgra.s.s crushed underfoot, a body bathed in flowers, a hint of the taint of the old oils and clinging vapors that hung on one's person after a long flight.

"Explain yourself, " he said when he had circled around to face her again.

"You are him. You are Luke, son to Anakin. " She smiled with bright delight. "Forgive me. I thought I would never find you. It must have been the working when you built this place that I felt. That was what led me here. "

"You felt what I did? From where? "

"From Carratos, " she said, naming a planet in a system forty pa.r.s.ecs from Coruscant.

As rudely as his visitor had invaded his hermitage, Luke suddenly invaded her mind, probing the secret place where sensitivity to the Force resided. If she possessed the sort of talent her words claimed for her, he should be thrown halfway across the room when the ancient reflex repelled his mental touch. It was so with every Jedi he had probed, every candidate he had brought to Yavin for training.

Luke's probing met no resistance. He felt no s.h.i.+elds blunting or deflecting his examination. Her mind was open-and yet there was no reflexive response. So sure was he of that test that he wouldn't have considered her for a moment as a candidate for the academy.

But, still, she had found him. She had, somehow, entered a s.p.a.ce she should not have been able to enter unless her gifts in the Force were the equal of his.

"Who are you? " he asked wonderingly.

She laughed. "Forgive me. I am Akanah, of the Fallana.s.si, an adept of the White Current. "

"I'm afraid I don't know your people, or that path, " he said.

"I know, " she said. "You won't find us in your census, or the Emperor's, or the Old Republic's. It's not our way to claim lands and raise flags, or stand queue to be counted. But you should know us. That's part of why I've come. "

His brows showed puzzlement. "If your people are such ciphers, why should I know you? "

"Because your mother is one of us, Luke Skywalker. Because you are bound to us through her. "

Luke stared. "My mother? How can-do you-what do you mean, 'is' one of us? Leia told me my mother is dead. "

"Yes-I know. As Obi-Wan told you that your father was dead. "

"Are you saying my mother might be alive? "

"I don't know, " said Akanah, suddenly sad-eyed. "Who saw her fall? Where is her grave? I wish I could answer your question. But I don't even know my own mother's fate. I've been separated from the body of my people for too many years. "

"Separated? Why? "

"I was away when the Empire came to the world we called home then. The Fallana.s.si had to take flight, because they would not let themselves and their gifts be used for violence and evil. I don't blame them. I know they must have waited for me as long as they could. That was nineteen years ago. I was twelve-not much more than a child. "

"And you never found them again? " There was a touch of suspicion in Luke's voice. "You found me. "

She smiled tolerantly. "The Fallana.s.si are more practiced at hiding than you are, Luke Skywalker. And there isn't much an abandoned child can do in the middle of a war to search for a family that doesn't want to be found. "

"I suppose not, " he said slowly.

"It wasn't until the Emperor was overthrown that I could even think of looking-I was too afraid I would betray them. And even then, it's hard for a young woman on Carratos to become wealthy enough to leave it. Especially to leave in her own s.h.i.+p, owing and answering to no one. "

"So you're looking for them now. And you say my mother could be with them. " He shook his head. "My mother-she's been such a mystery to me my whole life that I can't let myself believe you know anything of her. I don't even know her name. "

"She may have had other names, " Akanah said. "Many of us do. But among the body, she is known as Nas.h.i.+ra. It is a star-name, and thought a high honor. "

"Nas.h.i.+ra, " Luke echoed in a whisper.