Corellian Trilogy_ Ambush At Corellia Part 19

"Oh yeah," Lando growled. "Beautiful, young-if you don't think of three hundred years old as old-rich, kind, gentle. But by the time you really get to know her, you're dead and she's on to the next lucky victim. No, the life-witch was bad enough. But this business with Condren Foreck on top of it-I grant it's not as bad, but it is embarra.s.sing."

"Come on," Luke said. "How were you to know? It could happen to anyone. She's the one who failed to recontact you when that Frang Colgter character popped the question. Not your fault." Lando rolled his eyes. "Sure. Anyone could land on the planet, meet with a rich young heiress to discuss the prospect of matrimony, and then find out she's just back from her honeymoon. Right. No way. i'm the only one with that kind of luck."

Luke laughed. "Well, you might have a point at that," he said.

"But you're not giving up, are you?"

"Of course not," Lando replied, trying to achieve just the note of wounded pride. "It'd take a lot more than this to make me quit." He thought for a moment and then shrugged philosophically. "On the bright side, I'm not exactly sure how much of a prize Condren would be. I'm not sure I could have lived with that squeaky voice. Anyway, we ve got to press on. We're expected."

"On Sacorria, right?"

"Sacorria it is," Lando said. "We pay a call on the Outlier planet Saconria in the Corellian Sector, and visit a young lady by the name Tendra Risant. a.s.suming she doesn't turn out to have six kids, three husbands, and a beard down to here.

"That doesn't sound like a likely combination," Luke said with a smile.

"Give it a chance," Lando growled. "In this universe, absurdity tends to a maximum. Especially when I'm around."

"You know, there is a way you could avoid a lot of these problems, if you don't mind spending a bit of time and money," Luke said.

"What way?" Lando asked.

"You could try calling ahead. People don't expect each other to call ahead from interstellar range because it's so expensive, but think about it. You've come in cold twice, and it's turned out wrong twice because your information was bad or out-of-date. You could try calling this Tendra Risant via holocom. It'd cost you, yes-but it might save you a lot of time and embarra.s.sment in the long run."

Lando frowned thoughtfully.

"And besides," Luke said mischievously, "think of how much it will impress the lady to get such expensive holocom calls."

That was all it took to convince Lando. He reached for his data reader and started hunting for Tendra Risant's call code.

* * * Lieutenant Belindi Kalenda knew she had done the best she could. She had taken advantage of the fact that times were bad, and found an unused villa a few hundred meters up the road from where the villa the Chief of State was lodged.

It had been a simple enough matter to break into the villa and conceal her stolen landspeeder and other equipment, and the upper bedroom of the empty villa made for an ideal observation post.

Almost too good a post. It was no good thing that the CDF security team, the uniformed officers she could see so busily marching about on patrol around the Chief of State's villa, had not thought to check out her watch post. Either they weren't good at their job, or someone was telling them not to be very good.

In any event, she would be able to watch everything from here, so long as she didn't bother with eating or sleeping or other such trifles.

But that was absurd, of course. It was time to accept the limits on what she could do, and they were extreme. She could not protect the Chief of State or her family if the CDF decided to move in. She could not tail every member of the entire party. Nor could she be in more than one place if they decided to split up. And if they traveled by hover car, she was out of luck as well. There was no way she could stay unnoticed flying along behind them-a.s.suming she could get her hands on a hover car that could stay in the air for more than five minutes at a time.

But there was one thing that gave her comfort. Outfits like the CDF rarely used their own uniformed agents and officers to do the dirty work. If they decided to make a try for the Chief of State, they would send in covert operatives of one sort or another, quite possibly without the knowledge of the uniformed officers. In fact, if the uniforms actually were trying to protect Organa Solo, or maybe even died in the attempt, that would be all to the good, from the conspiracy's point of view. It would give them deniability.

It was that sort of attack she could be at least some defense against. From her vantage point, Kalenda could watch all the approaches to the house. If the security detail changed its routine, for example in some way that would open a hole in the patrol pattern, that would be a sign to Kalenda to go on the alert. The most likely attack scenario would be for an a.s.sault team to come through just such a hole in the security, kill a few uniformed guards for the sake of versimilitude, and then wipe out the family.

She could be ready for that, ready to shoot up the a.s.sault force, or at least fire a few rounds that would attract the attention of the uniformed guards.

Such a hit was most likely to come at night, in bad weather if possible. She could catch quick naps during the middle of the day, if she put the macrobinoculars on a tripod, pointed them out the window, and set them to go off if they detected abrupt motion. She would get roused out of bed every time one of the kids ran across the yard, or a sea skimmer flew past the window, but at least she would be able to get some rest.

"No one said anything about a tutor," Jaina said, staring up at the darkened ceiling of the room the children were sharing. "Why do we have to have a tutor?"

"So we can learn stuff, dummy," her brother Jacen replied, his voice coming from the bed next to her. "Why else would they be picking one out for us?"

Jaina shrugged, although she knew her brother could not see her in the dark. "I guess. But it's supposed to be our vacation."

"So what?"

Jacen said. "We're the leaders of tomorrow, or something, whether we like it or not. You think Mom and Dad would give up a chance this big to teach us stuff we might need to help run the galaxy?"

Jaina giggled. She liked it when Jacen talked that way, making fun of how seriously the grown-ups seemed to take everything.

She sighed contentedly and rolled over in her nice big bed. Those bunks...o...b..ard s.h.i.+p had been awfully small. It was nice to be planet-side again. It was the end of their first day on Corellia, but they had barely seen anything of the planet yet. The whole day had been given over to getting through the s.p.a.ceport, getting to the villa on the edge of town, unpacking, and getting organized. That didn't matter.

Jaina was glad to have arrived, even if they hadn't done much yet.

The trip on the Falcon had been fun, of course, but it had been getting a bit cramped onboard. Besides, there had been that strange trouble at the end of the trip that neither of their parents was willing to talk about. Jacen insisted that some other s.h.i.+p had been shooting at them, but that didn't make sense to Jaina. Mom was the Chief of State.

Why would anyone want to shoot at her?

There was a quiet murmur from Anakin, sound asleep in his bed on the other side of the room. It was good to have them all sharing a proper room again, the way they did at home. Yes, indeed, it was good to be off the s.h.i.+p.

"So what do you think the tutor's going to teach us?" she asked. "I mean, besides how to run the universe."

Jacen laughed. "Well, that right there will probably take most of the first day. I guess we'll just have to wait and find out about everything else."

The villa they had rented had a fine view of the city from the one side, and an even better view of the eastern ocean from the other. It sat on a low bluff, with a pathway affording easy access to the white sandy beach below.

Han was on the patio to the rear of the villa, leaning on the railing and staring out to sea. The skies were clear, the air was clean, and a gentle breeze was blowing. He was on his homeworld on a beautiful morning. The three kids were down on the beach, under Chewbacca's watchful eye. Good of him to do it, Han told himself. No one with that much fur could enjoy getting sandy-to say nothing of getting wet.

Everything should have been fine. All the folklore of the s.p.a.ceways said you were never more comfortable than on your own homeworld, where the gravity, the air-pressureand-atmospheric-gas mix, and language and accent and cuisine and everything else were precisely the ones that your body had been born into.

But it just wasn't true for Han. Not this morning. And it was more than the incident with the PPBs and the Uglies.

That was worrisome, but not as much as it might have seemed at first. After all, they plainly could have killed them all, and yet did not. That meant that some powerful someone definitely wanted them alive, at least for the m ment. It wasn't much of a comfort, but it sure beat knowing with absolute certainty that someone wanted you dead.

But there was more. Much more. Leia had told Han that she had the very clear sense of being watched at the s.p.a.ceport, by someone outside the official security net. When a Force adept, even a half-trained one, told you that something like that, it was probably smart if you believed it.

It was the way the countryside and the city had looked as they had driven through them. Han had expected a certain amount of change, and even a certain amount of decline.

He had followed the news from Corellia as well as anyone outside the sector could.

But the unkempt fields, the unpainted houses, the lines of boarded-up stores a half kilometer long, the worn look of the people. It was bad, worse than he had thought. Han felt a strange, irrational guilt for not having been here, with his people, to experience the suffering with them.

And suddenly he was taken with an impulse to do exactly that. Be with them. Standing in a villa at the edge of the city was no way to see what was going on here on his home planet, in the capital city. He turned and went inside, and found Leia still at the breakfast table.

"Listen," he said.

"Do you think you can handle this tutor thing on your own?"

Leia looked up at him in mild surprise. "I suppose so," she said.

"Why? What's up?"

"I don't know, exactly," Han said. "I just feel like I have to get out of here, go and see what it's really like in town. Walk around on my own two feet, instead of driving around in a nice armored CDF landcruiser. I can catch the airlifter shuttle at the village station."

Leia nodded, her expression a bit sad and serious. "I was half expecting you'd want to go in," she said. "Go on and get a look. I can find a tutor by myself. The first of the candidates is due in an hour.

Han leaned over and gave his wife a gentle kiss on the cheek.

"Thanks," he said. "It really is something I need to do."

"Don't forget we have dinner with the Governor-General tonight at Corona House," Leia reminded him. "The hovercar is supposed to come for us at eight o'clock."

"I'll be back in plenty of time to get ready," Han a.s.sured her.

"But I really have to go see the city. I've been away too long." By the time the third candidate for the tutor's position had come through, Leia was already regretting her willingness to take the job on by herself.

The Governor-General's office had sent over a list of candidates who had undergone intensive security clearances-and she had her own abilities in the Force. She could read any attempt at deceit or fraud.

She did not have to worry about unknowingly hiring some covert operative to educate her children.

However, it seemed that she would have to worry about hiring an absolute incompetent. Of the first three-a human woman, a female Selonian, and a human man-all pleasant, but none of them seemed reliable enough to be trusted watching a kettle boil, never mind dealing with three rambunctious children. Nor did it help that each seemed to undo the others in concocting elaborate compliments for Leia.

She had never had much patience for such nonsense, and just at the moment she had even less.

Leia, sitting in the rather formal confines of the villa's study, braced herself for the next onslaught, and pressed the b.u.t.ton on the desk that would signal the next candidate to come in.

An elderly male Drall entered, followed closely, much to Leia's surprise, by ajet-black droid. The Drall was fairly tall for his species, about one and a quarter meters. His thick, short fur was a deep gray, but shot through with a hint of light gray here and there on his face and at his throat.

He wore no clothing or decoration.

The Drall were fairly conventional bipeds, short, darkfurred, solemn-faced, dignifiedlooking creatures. They were short-limbed, with clawed, fur-covered feet and hands.

And this one here was living up to the species' reputation for self-confidence.

The droid rolled in behind the Drall, and Leia took a good hard look at it. The droid more or less resembled a taller, thinner version of R2-D2-a cylinder with wheels on extendable legs. It appeared to be a highly modified astromech unit. However, unlike Artoo, this droid could move, not just on wheels, but on repulsorlifts, as best Leia could tell.

At least those looked like repulsor pads on the bottom of its cylindrical body. Leia had never seen a droid quite like it. However, Corellian etiquette followed the general pattern in regards to droids: unless the droid was actually in use, you were supposed to ignore it.

The elderly male was as rotund as most of the Drall Leia had seen, and even if he did not move fast as he came in, there was nothing clumsy or awkward in his gait. He moved with an impressive bearing, his jet-black eyes calm as he gazed steadily at the Chief of State of the New Republic.

"I am Ebrihim," he said in a low, growly voice.

Leia found herself standing and coming around the desk to welcome him, something she had not done for any of the other guests. This Ebrihim was the sort who commanded respect, even from a Chief of State.

"I am Leia Organa Solo," she said, following his lead in leaving off all honorifics and t.i.tles. According to the information she had, Ebrihim had quite a list of accomplishments himself.

"You are looking for a tutor for your children," he said, moving toward the visitor's chair. "You wish the same person to act as guide for your entire partty, arranging trips to interesting places. Is all that correct?"

"Yes," Leia said. Somehow it suddenly felt as if she were the one being interviewed.

"Good," the Drall said. "Please, do be seated." He pulled himself up into the human-height chair. Leia obediently returned to her chair and sat down, not at all unaware of how much self-confidence it took to tell the leader of the New Republic how to behave in her own office.

"I am looking for a tutor," she said. This fellow seemed to prefer blunt talk. Very well, she would try it his way.

"Why should I give the job to you?"

"A fair question. Because the job intrigues me. I know the history of this sector. Because I have experience in the field of tutelage to well-to-do humans. If I may make an educated guess or two, judging from your background, you wish your children to have a nonhuman tutor in order to expose them to an alien viewpoint. You want that nonhuman to be one of the races native to this system, and thus provide insights that no outsider could. I am about the same height as your children, and they will not be intimidated by meunless I wish to intimidate them. Are those reasons sufficient, or do you wish more?"

"That list of reasons is quite adequate," Leia said with a smile.

"Good. You have my qualifications listed on that data pad in front of you, I imagine. Do you know enough to make a decision, or do you wish to examine with those ridiculous Force powers of yours and probe the depths of my soul?" 'You do not believe in the Force?" Leia asked.

"I believe in it, the way that I believe in gravity or suns.h.i.+ne. I have observed it, and therefore know it to be.

But I do not take it seriously. There is not a confidence artist or sabacc shark on this planet-or, I would expect, any other-who does not claim to have vast skill in the Force."

"There is something in what you say. But how can the lies of a confidence artist have any bearing on the importance of the Force?"

"Because, in everyday life for the vast majority of beings, the Force has no real meaning. You live in a world of Jedi powers, where wondrous things are commonplace. i live in a world where I cannot leap five times my height no matter how much I try. I must get a ladder, or have Q9-X2 lift me up. The galaxy that you lead, that your children may well help to lead, has far more of my sort of folk than yours.

Your children are strong in the Force, yes?"

"Very much so.

"Then don't let them rely on it too much," Ebrihim said. "It can become a crutch, a shortcut, an easy way out.

Let them learn the everyday way of doing things. Let them do as ordinary folk do. Let them build from there toward the Force, rather than letting them trust to the Force to start with."

"I see," said Leia It dawned on her that she should have been mortally offended by a number of the things Ebrihim had said. But maybe she had been around the courtiers and flatterers too much. She found his bluntness refres.h.i.+ng. And it was distinctly pleasant to deal with someone who was not falling all over himself, treating her like some sort of mythical being. He sounded more a schoolteacher giving advice from a lifetime of experience, telling a parent who was trying too hard how to back off just a bit.

And, she realized, that was exactly the sort of person she wanted schooling her children. He had a point about the Force. It might well be good for her childern to be exposed to a viewpoint that did not see the Force as the beall and end-all, the starting point and ending point of all things. After all, her children were going to live their lives in a universe where the vast majority of sentient beings never have the least thing to do with the Force. "You have the job," she said. "Will the advertised salary be adequate?"

"I would be a fool to turn down more if you should offer it, but yes, it is adequate." And if you have no objection, I will set to work at once."

"No objection at all," Leia said.

Ebrihim got down from his chair, and turned toward his droid. "Come along, Q9," he said. "We have work to do."

Now that Ebrihim had brought attention to his droid, Leia could remark upon it. "Might I say that is a most unusual model," she said. "I don't believe I have seen one like it. Might I ask what use a tutor has for an astromech droid?"

"A great deal of use indeed," Ebrihim replied. "His skills at data access alone are beyond value. But his abilities extend far beyond that.

He has-"

"I am capable of speaking for myself, Master Ebrihim," the droid announced. "You needn't talk about me as if I were not here."

Leia raised an eyebrow in mild surprise. "I don't think I have ever seen an astromech droid capable of speaking Basic before," she said, addressing Ebrihim. "Did you modify him or does this model come that way?"

But the droid turned toward Leia "Your pardon, ma'am, but as I said, I can speak for myself. And I might add that I modified myself for speech as well."