“So it’s a good thing you’re not doing that,” the lieutenant said. He checked an item off on his datapad.
“No,” Lando continued, “what we’re actually doing is something else. Something vital to the Alliance’s war effort.”
“Vital,” Leia said.
The lieutenant nodded, earnest, interested. “Vital.”
“So we have to get to Corellia.”
“So we have to get to Corellia.”
“Well, you obviously have to get to Corellia, then.”
Lando shrugged. “But how?”
The lieutenant thought about it. “Well, it’s a pity you don’t have any of the access codes provided by Intelligence. That would allow you to fly right in.”
“Oh, that would be handy.” Lando fixed the lieutenant with what he hoped was an honest look. “Do you have a lot of those recorded on your shuttle, son?”
The lieutenant laughed. “I can’t tell you, sir.”
“Of course you can,” Leia said.
“Of course I do.”
“Why don’t you just give us one, then?”
“Why don’t you just give us one, then?”
The lieutenant nodded. “That would solve everyone’s problem, wouldn’t it?”
Lando smiled. “It sure would.”
The lieutenant rose. “I can’t just transmit that sort of information. I’ll go download it from our bridge computer and give you a datachip. How does that sound?”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“I’ll be right back.”
When he was gone, Lando looked at Leia. “That wasn’t really fair, was it?”
She shook her head, smiling. “He was even more weakminded than I’m used to. I don’t think he’s going to progress far in the service. But I still prefer this sort of thing to cutting people’s arms off.”
“And what’s your plan for when we’re past the Alliance blockade and dropping down into Corellia’s atmosphere, with starfighters coming up to blast us out of the sky?”
“Well, we can either transmit who we really are and that we want to see Dur Gejjen, which will either get us an audience or get us assassinated. Or we can try the Jedi mind tricks again, but it’ll be harder to cover up because lots of planetary sensor sites will have picked up our presence. Or we can orbit until we detect a distraction and try to go to ground near that spot, using it for cover.”
Lando dithered for a few seconds. “I say Number Three. And we can resort to Number One if it starts to go bad on us.”
Leia smiled. “You always did like to have a skifter in reserve.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
STAR SYSTEM MZX32905, NEAR BIMMIEL
Today it was to be makeup-good old-fashioned powders and pigments and pseudo-skin appliances. Lumiya sat before a brightly lit mirror and got to work.
It was painful, of course. Not long ago, Luke Skywalker had shot her five times with a blaster. Two of those shots had hit prosthetic limbs, with simulated pain that could be switched off instantly and damage that could be repaired within minutes. But three of those shots had found meat, and despite the fact that she healed at an unnaturally high rate-both from Force-based healing trances and from the alterations made to her body decades earlier by the science of Emperor Palpatine-she was far from recovered. She hurt.
And that was why it was to be makeup today. When trying merely to hide her scarred features, she normally wore an identity-concealing scarf wrapped around her lower face; she could bring up the Force illusion of normal features if obliged to reveal herself. But distracted as she now was by injuries, her control might slip, allowing viewers a glimpse of the real features beneath.
Properly applied pseudo-skin didn’t slip.
Paint-on pseudo-skin eliminated the web of age lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Little pads affixed to the insides of her cheeks gave her face a rounder appearance. A dot of fluid that caused flesh to contract or even wither convincingly provided her with dimples. Pseudo-skin appliances covered her scars and gave her jaw a softer, less angular line. An application of foundation smoothed out all discrepancies of texture or tone … and on top of that she added blush, a striking red lip color, eyeliner. She donned the wig at the end, covering her graying red hair with a tumbling mass of long golden curls.
When she was done, she appeared to be a woman of thirty, roughly half her true age, and to possess the beauty and many of the racial stock characteristics of a woman of the Hapes Consortium.
She drew on the Force to dull her pain while she rose and dressed in a green gown and matching neck scarf, both overlaid with a webwork of gold thread, and altogether too much sapphire jewelry, all appropriate to a wealthy Hapan woman.