[Thrawn Trilogy] - 02(37)

Or at least, she amended silently to herself that was what the histories some day would say. That the death of the Empire occurred at Endor, with all the rest of it merely a mopping-up action.

A mopping-up action which had lasted five years, so far. And could wind up lasting another twenty, the way things were going.

She let her eyes drift across the brilliant mottled green world turning slowly beneath them, wondering yet again why she’d chosen this place for her rendezvous with Khabarakh. True, it was a system that practically every being in both the Republic and Imperial sections of the galaxy had heard of and knew how to find. And with the major planes of contention long gone from this sector, it was a quiet enough place for two ships to meet.

But there were memories here, too, some of which Leia would just as soon not bring to mind. Before they’d triumphed, they’d very nearly lost everything.

From down the tunnel, Chewbacca roared a question. “Hang on, I’ll check,” Leia called back. Leaning over the board, she keyed a switch. “It reads ‘standby/modulo,”” she reported. “Wait a minute-now it reads `system ready.” Do you want me-?”

And abruptly, without any warning, a black curtain seemed to drop across her vision:

Slowly, she became aware that there was a metallic voice calling to her. “Your Highness,” it said over and over again. “Your Highness. Can you hear me? Please, Your Highness, can you hear me?”

She opened her eyes, vaguely surprised to discover they were closed, to find Chewbacca leaning over her with an open medpack gripped in one huge hand, an agitated Threepio hovering like a nervous mother bird behind him. “I’m all right,” she managed. “What happened?”

“You shouted for help,” Threepio put in before Chewbacca could answer. “At least, we thought it was for help,” he amended helpfully. “You were brief and rather incoherent.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Leia told him. It was starting to come back now, like moonlight through the edge of a cloud. The menace, the rage; the hatred, the despair. “You didn’t feel it, did you?” she asked Chewbacca.

He growled a negative, watching her closely. “I felt nothing either,” Threepio put in.

Leia shook her head. “I don’t know what it could have been. One minute I was sitting there, and then the next-“

She broke off a sudden horrible thought striking her. “Chewie-where does this orbit take us? Does it ever pass through the position where the Death Star blew up?”

Chewbacca stared at her a moment, rumbling something deep in his throat. Then, shifting the medpack to his other hand, he reached past her to key the computer. The answer came almost immediately.

“Five minutes ago,” Leia murmured, feeling cold. “That would be just about right, wouldn’t it?

Chewbacca growled an affirmative, then a question. “I really don’t know,” she had to admit. “It sounds a little like something Lake went through on-during his Jedi training,” she amended, remembering just in time that Luke still wanted Dagobah’s significance to be kept a secret. “But he saw a vision. All I felt was : I don’t know. It was anger and bitterness; but at the same time, there was something almost sad about it. No-sad isn’t the right word.” She shook her head, sudden tears welling inexplicably up in her eyes. “I don’t know. Look, I’m all right. You two can go on back to what you were doing.”

Chewbacca rumbled under his breath again, clearly not convinced. But he said nothing else as he closed the medpack and pushed past Threepio. The cockpit door slid open for him; with the proverbial Wookiee disdain for subtlety, he locked it in that position before disappearing down the tunnel into the main body of the ship.

Leia focused on Threepio. “You, too,” she told him. “Go on-you still have work to do back there. I’m all right. Really.”

“Well:very well, Your Highness,” the droid said, clearly no happier than Chewbacca was. “If you’re certain.”

“I am. Go on, scat.”

Threepio dithered another moment, then obediently shuffled out of the cockpit.

And the silence resumed. A silence that was thicker, somehow, than it had been before. And much darker.

Leia set her teeth firmly together. “I will not be intimidated,” she said aloud to the silence. “Not here; not anywhere.”

The silence didn’t reply. After a minute Leia reached over to the board and keyed in a course alteration that would keep them from again passing through the spot where the Emperor had died. Refusing to be intimidated, after all, didn’t mean deliberately asking for trouble.