Corellian Trilogy_ Ambush At Corellia Part 29

Micamberlecto was in his office, where they had watched the torchlight parade. By the time they got there, fire was once again visible from the widnow, but this time it was the Selonian Enclave burning. Back then the office had been calm, quiet, dark. Now it was the brighfly lit center of a madhouse, of aides rus.h.i.+ng in and out, a.s.sistants shouting into phones, two men in navy uniforms setting up a large-scale wall map of the city. And, not to Han's surprise, several of last night's supposed trade delegates were in the thick of it, helping to work the com system. Well, no pomt in the NRI agents sticking to their cover stories now.

"It's everywhere, everywhere," the governor-general said to Han and Leia as they came in. "Not just here in Coronet, but all over the planet. The other planets, other planets, too."

"Where and when did it start?" Han asked.

"It seems as if the first incident was in Bela Vistal's Selonian neighborhood about eight hours ago. Somebody threw a punch, and that began it, began it. But since then, everywhere. Drall attacking Selonians, both attacking humans, and humans attacking, humans attacking everywhere.

Here, on Drall and Selonia, and we're getting the first reports of trouble on Tralus and Talus."

"You're right, Han," Leia said. "The timing is too tight, too perfect. Someone had this all set to go, and sent the go code the minute we met with Mara."

"Yes, yes," said Micamberlecto. "That is my conclusion also."

"What about the CDF?" Han asked. Yesterday he had decided that he trusted them. But today nothing was for sure.

"Almost all the ground forces are still with us, still with us, loyal to the Republic. But I have not been able to contact anyone in authority in the s.p.a.ceside, s.p.a.ceside service."

"And it was the s.p.a.ceside CDF that set up that phony attack on us,"

Han said. "Forget them as an a.s.set, Governor. They aren't yours anymore. They never were yours."

A com panel lit on the Governor's desk, and Micamberlecto pressed the answer b.u.t.ton. "This is the Governor," he said.

"Sir, this is Captain Boultan, CDF groundside."

Gwunnsi&, Han thought. The loyalist faction. It would seem the CDF had aleady found names for the two sides.

"My unit was attempting to get to the CDF barracks in the navy yard to collect our riot equipment. The s.p.a.ceside service has secured the base. I'm pretty sure that I saw people in New Republic uniforms a.s.sisting them."

"The navy?" Leia asked. "The na't has gone over?"

"No," Han said. "Just the navy yard has, though that's bad enough.

Don't forget that used to be the Imperial Navy Yard. lots of ex-Imperial military enlisted in the Republic Navy are here in Corellia Now we know why." Han turned toward the governor-general. "What about the civilian s.p.a.ceport?" he asked.

Micamberlecto shook his head. "1 don't know," he said.

"It's hard to know anything. Too little staff. They are all here, working, and all loyal and trusted, but half the com systems are down. We are helpless, helpless to do more than watch."

Han looked at the Governor-General, and knew Micamberlecto was right.

There was nothing he could do but go to the window and watch his planet burn.

Within a few hours, enough information had come in so that it was at least possible to get a clearer picture of the confused situation. It was soon apparent that the human rebels, the Human League, had indeed been waiting for the signal to start a fight. However, their Drall and Selonia enemies had been ready and waiting for them, much to the apparent surprise of the Leaguers.

In the city of Coronet, it looked as if the Selonian and Drallan Enclaves had managed to throw back the league for the moment, but only just. There was no clear information from Bela Vistal or any of the other large cities on Corellia There were only scattered reports of fighting on Drall and Selonia as yet, but no hard information.

The situation on the Double Worlds was more complicated. On Talus, a mixed force of Drall and humans seemed to be fighting off a savage Selonian attack, if the broadcasts were to be trusted. A humaniDrall coalition was holding Centerpoint Station. But on Tralus, the Selonians and Drall were making common cause against the humans.

The short form was that all three sides-human, Selonian, and Drall-were busily engaged in grabbing as much territory as possible, along with whatever s.h.i.+ps and equipment they could.

It was chaos.

Chewbacca roared his frustration and punched another hole in the wall. He picked up a wall lamp and threw it through the hole, and it stuck there, half in and half out of the wall.

"It's okay, Chewbacca," Jaina said. "You don't have to be scared."

Chewbacca bared his teeth and stomped to the other side of the room.

"I don't think he's scared, Jaina," Jacen said. "You want to fight, don't you, Chewie?"

The Wookiee nodded vigorously, then threw his hands in the air and roared again.

"I don't know against who, either," Jacen said. "Sure looks like everyone is fighting everyone else out there." Privately, he felt pretty sure that half of Chewbacca's frustration was a direct result of having to play baby-sitter to a bunch of dumb kids, but there didn't seem to be any diplomatic way to say that.

"Do you understand who's fighting who, Ebrihim?"

Jaina asked their tutor. Ebrihim and Q9 were both standing at the window, as they had been most of the morning, watching the disaster unfold.

Ebrihim shook his head sadly. "I understand, and I do not understand. It is species against species, but I believeno, I know-that the vast majority of all three species would rather live in peace. It is rabble-rousers, fools who only know how to blame others for their own failures, that have started this fighting. But I fear it can only spread. A human will kill a Selonian, and a Selonian will kill a human in revenge-and kill a Deall he dislikes while he is at it.

The Drall will fight back against both, or one or the other.

People will get drawn in, against their will, by ties of blood."

"I'm scared," Anakin announced from his seat facing the window.

Jaina came over and sat next to him on the couch. "It's all right," she said, repeating what she had said to Chewbacca.

"You don't have to be scared." Anakin threw his arms around his big sister and she rocked him back and forth.

Apparently the formula worked better on little brothers than Wookiees.

It was at that moment that the first explosion rocked Corona House.

The sound was deafening, so loud that it almost did not seem to be sound at all, and over so suddenly that it was as if they never heard it at all. The whole building shook, and the window blew out. Q9, moving with incredible speed, knocked his master out of the way of the flying gla.s.s, and took most of the force of the blast himself. Anakin wailed in tertor, and buried his head in Jaina's shoulder.

Jacen was knocked flat by the first blast, and had barely gotten to his feet whenBla'n!

Another explosion, sharper and closer, shook the building. He was about to get to his feet again when a huge, furry arm scooped him up.

Jacen looked up to see that Chewbacca already had his brother and sister in his other arm.

The Wookiee roared at Jacen, loud and fast, but he at least managed to get the sense of it.

"Ebrihim !" he shouted across the wind that was suddenly blowing through the room. "Chewbacca's taking us to the Millennium Falcon on the roof. Follow if you can.

But Ebrihim had been knocked about by the second blast, and was still too dazed to respond. Q9 extruded a pair of his carry arms, scooped up his master, and levitated on his repulsors. "Lead the way!"

he shouted.

Boom! Another explosion, farther off this time, shuddered through the building. Chewie turned and headed for the door, already wrenched halfway out of its frame. He kicked it the rest of the way down and rushed out into the hallway, Q9 right behind him.

The turpolift had been designed to survive a major earthquake and still keep working. Chewbacca slapped at the call b.u.t.ton, and the doors of the turbolift car slid open. He half dropped, half threw the children into it, and stood aside as Q9 hustled in.

The door slid shut-and Chewbacca suddenly roared in frustration again and started pounding on it. The controls were dead.

"It's okay, Chewbacca," Jacen said. "I've got my thumbprint card.

He pulled it from his pocket, put it in the slot, and pressed his thumb down on the verification plate.

The controls came to life, and Jacen punched the roof b.u.t.ton. The turbolift car staed moving up.

The first explosion had been at ground level, and had shaken the lower floors of Corona House with greater violence.

The second had been some sort of rocket fired into the seventh or eighth floor. No one seemed quite sure where the third had hit. Not a piece of furniture was still standing upright in Micamberlecto's sixth-floor office. All the lights and the wired com lines were dead, but the portable comlinks were still operational. There had been two or three bad injuries from broken gla.s.s, but no fatalities, for a miracle.

"Chewie! Chewie! This is Han! Come in!" Han had been frantically trying to raise Chewbacca on his comlink since the moment of the first blast. His children. His children were up there. If anything had happened to them .

"Chewie! Chewie! Come in, please!"

"Dad! It's me, Jacen. Dad, are you and Mom okay?"

"Jacen! Yes, yes, we're fine. Where are you?" Relief washed over Han, and vanished just as suddenly. They were still alive, but the danger wasn't going away.

"We're on the roof, headed for the Falcon. Chewie's too busy to talk.

"I'll bet he is. Did he get all of you out?"

"Yes! He got all three of us kids up here, and Ebrihim and Q9, too. But Chewie says we have to leave without you!"

"He's right, son," Han said. "He's right. Your mother and 1 have to stay here." No sense telling him that they had to stay here because the lower turbolift shaft had almost certainly been blown to bits along with the stairwell. Han was fairly certain that the explosions had been touched off in order to bottle up the governor-general in his office.

"We'll meet up with you when we can. Right now you have to do what Chewie says, and take care of your sister and brother.

"But, Dad-"

"No time for that now," Han said. "Get in that s.h.i.+p and do what Chewie says. Tell your brother and sister that your mother and I love you very much. Now go. Go."

"Okay," said the tiny voice coming from the comlink.

"We'll do our best. Good-good-bye, Dad."

"Good-bye, son," Han said, wondering just how long a good-bye it might be. There were at least fair odds that it would be forever. He stuffed the comlink in his pocket and went over to where Leia was tending to the GovernorGeneral. It looked as if Micamberlecto was only shaken up, not seriously injured. Not even a broken bone, which was a bit of a miracle considering how long his arm and leg bones were.

"Chewie has the kids," Han said. "They've reached the Falcon and should be able to lift off any second now.

They're all okay."

"Thank the stars for that," Leia said. "I reached out to them with the Force, and I could feel they were scared but all right, but they were so terrified I couldn't get anything more. Good. Good."

"Well, it's the only thing that is good around here," Han said.

Chewbacca powered up the Millennium Falcon's repulsor engines and slammed them over to maximum from a standard start. He did not want to let anyone get a chance to draw a bead on the s.h.i.+p. The Falcon shot straight up in the air, and Chewie cut in the main sublight engines the moment he was clear, not even thinking about a course. The Falcon leaped forward and up into the sky, toward s.p.a.ce and the safety of the stars.

Chewie had no course, and no navigational fixes, but he also had no options. He had to get out of there and far away as soon as possible.

Once they were in s.p.a.ce, he could worry about where they were going.

a.s.suming, of course, that the Falcon held together that long.

Two hours after the double explosions, the Governor-General's office was back in some sort of order. There didn't seem to be any hope of reaching the upper floors for the time being, but the lower-level explosion had not been as effective at cutting off escape-if that indeed had been its purpose. It might just have been someone raising a rather vigorous objection to New Republican policy. In any event, there seemed to be two or three places where it would be possible to drop to the ground from what was left of the second or third floor.

Of course, it seemed more than a little likely that there were snipers out there. But Han didn't see much chance of living through all this anyway. At this point, everyone still in Corona House was, to all intents and purposes, a political prisoner, and probably a hostage as well. And the people running this show didn't seem like the types who would need much excuse to shoot hostages. No, better to go out his own way. He had a job to do, and he would do it as soon as it was nightfall.

He found a private corner of the office, pulled out his comlink again, and set it to a new frequency. He had to a.s.sume that someone out there was listening in-but on the other hand, either the comlink's scramblers were working, or they weren't. It was not a time for playing it safe. If he started talking in vague, cryptic plrrases that could easily produce fatal confusion.

"Solo to Kalenda. Come in. Come in. Do you read."

No answer. He tried again. "Solo to Kalenda. Come in.

Come in. Do you read?"

"This is Kalenda to Solo," said the voice over the comlink's tiny speaker. "I was starting to worry."

"Well, don't stop yet," Han said. "Things are not going to get better. I have a job for you, and it needs doing. Do you think you could get to the s.p.a.ceport and steal a s.h.i.+p?

One with a hyperrlrive?"

"Possibly," Kalenda said. "It won't be easy."

"Then it's time to do something hard. Besides, I should be able to give you some help. I am going to try and get out of here an hour after sunset. Do you have a groundcar or a hovercar at this point?"

"Groundcar, yes."

"Good," he said. "Then meet me in three hours at the corner of Starliner and Volbick." He did not bother to ask her if she knew where that was. If she was the sort of person who couldn't manage to find it on her own, they were all dead anyway. "I have a package-a very small packagefor you. You are to deliver it directly and personally either to Mon Motlima, Admiral Ackbar, or Luke Skywalker."