[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(112)

Sconn turned back to Leia. “Sit me where I can look out,” he said.

“I’ll answer whatever questions I can.”

With a broad sweep of her hand, Leia guided Admiral Ackbar to a chair in the President’s briefing room.

“This is the part I thought you should see,” she said, and started the holoprojector.

“Black Fifteen was used mostly for new construction and finish work, not as a repair depot. But it had a reputation for the tightest work in the whole sector. Any captain who had a choice put in there. We took Moff Weblin in there for a rebuild on a blown number four power cell.

“That’s not an overnight in any yard, so the captain told me to look into shore leave. The station morale officer laid out the rules: enlisted restricted to the yard and the station, officers permitted but discouraged from going down to the planet.

“I asked him what was up, since Black Fifteen had been there for three years at that point, and it didn’t usually take the troopers that long to bring the locals in line. He told me that one out of two Imperial personnel on the planet was a stormtrooper.

“‘There’s been very little trouble for a few months now, but I don’t trust them,’ he said. ‘They’re crazy,’ he told me. ‘More blood than rain fell in the streets before we got here, and it will again when we leave.”” Leia heard her own voice asking, “What did he mean by that?”

“That’s what I asked him. But it turned out he wasn’t trying to show off his metaphors. He meant it just like he said it. More blood than rain.”

“There’s that much fighting among the Yevetha?”

“No, they hardly fight at all with each other—not what we’d call fighting, anyway. I got in with a security captain who fancied himself a xenobiologist, a fellow who’d been down on the surface a lot. He told me about dominance killing, blood sacrifice, and some weird ideas he had about blood and Yevethan reproduction.”

“Dominance killing?”

“The way he told it, the only killing the Yevetha consider murder is when a lower-status male kills a higher-status male. The other way around, it’s expected.

You offer your neck every time you approach someone higher up the ladder than you, and you’d better really mean it; they have every right to take what you’re offering and rip you open with those claws of theirs. And there’s something about doing it well that adds to your status.”

“Claws?” Leia winced as she heard the surprise in her voice. “What are you talking about? Nil Spaar didn’t have any claws—” Sconn rubbed his wrists together. “Right here. One big curved claw above each hand, on the inside. This I saw with my own eyes—all the males have them. They retract down to a bump, come out backward—it looked backward to me, anyway—for slashing and grabbing on.

That’s why none of the males wear long sleeves, I guess.

It would just get in the way.”

“Nil Spaar wore a long-sleeved tunic to our sessions,” Leia remembered.

“And gloves.”

“There you go,” said Sconn. “After I heard all this, I had to go down to the surface myself and see. There were Yevetha all over the yard, and no sign of any of this. The yard boss told the captain they were hard workers— especially since they’d figured out we weren’t leaving soon.”

“So did you spend some time on N’zoth, then?”

“About five days, all together, in three trips.” Sconn dropped his eyes and drew a deep breath. “I saw one male put his hands on another’s shoulders, drive those claws through, and lift that screaming devil right off the ground. I saw what they call the proctor—means kind of like mayor, I guess—of Giat Nor nearly take off the head of a nitakka who was a little slow to take the knee. There must have been fifty Yevetha who witnessed that one.

Not one of them said a word, or even showed any surprise.”

Sconn shook his head. “When the yard started losing Yevethan workers to this stuff, having to retrain new ones all the time, I guess the Imperial governor told the troopers to try to put a stop to it. But they never really managed to, unless it happened after Moff Weblin left.

And I ended up the only one of my crew to go down.

After he heard my report, the captain restricted the officers to the base.”

“Make sure you don’t miss this part,” Leia said to Ackbar.

“Is there anything else you can think of that might be useful?” she asked Sconn.

“Just the other thing that the morale officer warned me about my first day in,” Sconn said. “‘They’re crazy, but smart. Don’t show them anything you don’t want them to start building for themselves.”