"The Emperor is ent.i.tled to special powers," Furgan said, as if stating the obvious. "After all, he's the Emperor. And Vader turned out to be a traitor in the end. As I understand it, he was the one who actually killed the Emperor. All the more reason to outlaw such powers."

Leia knew he must have seen Luke's widely broadcast speech to the Council.

"Nevertheless, the Jedi have managed to survive, and the entire order of Jedi Knights will be restored. My brother will see to that.

Within a few years the new Jedi Knights will fill the same role as the old, as protectors of the Republic."

"Too bad," Furgan said, turning away to seek other conversation, but no one seemed to want to talk to him.

Threepio lost track of the twins almost immediately, when they decided to play hide-and-seek among the flora exhibits, crawling under guardrails too low for Threepio to manage, then chasing each other around areas marked DO NOT ENTER. When the droid called for them to come back, Jacen and Jaina developed a selective hearing difficulty and continued to dash away.

He chased them through a grove of mucus trees that dripped yellow pollinated ooze all over his polished body sh.e.l.l; but at least the slime left a trail of footprints for him to follow. Threepio wailed in dismay when he saw the small footprints leading directly into the "Carnivorous Plants" area.

"Oh, my!" he said, imagining bloodthirsty shrubs already digesting pieces of the small children. Before he could sound an all-out alarm, though, Threepio heard Jacen's high-pitched giggles, joined by his sister's laughter. Using directional locators, Threepio bustled back to the center of the exhibit.

Sitting in the middle of the giant tentacle-cactus, the twins played with the waving fronds, oblivious to the thorns. Somehow they had blithely eased their way past the dagger-like points and made a pillow out of the central ma.s.s of fine new bristles.

"Master Jacen and Mistress Jaina, come out of there this instant!"

Threepio said in a stern voice. "I must insist!" Instead, Jaina giggled and waved to him.

In a tizzy Threepio wondered how he could rescue the children from the great plant without dislodging any of the hors d'oeuvres.

A lull fell in the conversation, the type of pause that often occurs in forced social situations. During the quiet Amba.s.sador Furgan made his move. "I require your attention!" he called.

Leia watched him suddenly step away from her. Not knowing what he might do, she tensed, ready for anything.

The few conversations stuttered to a halt. All eyes turned to the Caridan amba.s.sador. Mon Mothma had been chatting with General Jan Dodonna, the aged tactician who had planned the strike on the first Death Star. Mon Mothma raised her eyebrows, curious at Furgan's call for silence. Jan Dodonna stopped telling his tale and held his hands in mid-gesture as he stared.

Furgan took his empty gla.s.s and dropped it to his hip, filling it from the left hip flask this time. Leia wondered if he had already emptied the right flask.

Raising his gla.s.s high, he took one step toward Mon Mothma, grinning. Leia watched in disbelief. Was the rude amba.s.sador going to propose a toast?

Furgan looked around the enclosed Skydome, making certain he had everyone's attention. Even the patchy rain had ceased. "To all gathered here, I wish to he heard. As amba.s.sador of Carida, I have been empowered to speak for the Imperial military training center, my planet, and my entire system. Therefore, I must deliver a message to you all."

He raised his voice and raised his gla.s.s. "To Mon Mothma, who calls herself leader of the New Republic--" With a vicious sneer he hurled his drink into her face. The honey-green liquid splashed on her cheeks, her hair, her chest. She staggered back, appalled. Jan Dodonna caught her shoulders, steadying her; his mouth gaped open in astonishment.

The New Republic guards at the door immediately drew their weapons but somehow refrained from firing.

"We denounce your foul rebellion of lawbreakers and murderers. You have tried to impress me with the number of other weak-minded systems that have joined your Alliance, but no amount of rabble can erase your crimes against the Empire."

He smashed his empty gla.s.s on the floor and ground the shards under his boot heel. "Carida will never surrender to your so-called New Republic."

With a flourish Furgan took his entourage and stormed off. At the doorway the gathered stormtroopers triumphantly placed the white helmets back on their heads, hiding their faces, and followed the amba.s.sador out.

The New Republic guards stared after them, weapons ready but not knowing what to do.

After a shocked silence the crowd erupted into a babble of outraged conversations. Leia ran to the Chief of State. Dodonna was already swabbing at Mon Mothma's damp robes.

The sticky drink drying on her face, Mon Mothma forced a smile for Leia. Into the rising hubbub of indignation she said, "Well, we didn't lose anything by trying, did we?"

In her disappointment Leia could not answer.

The tinny voice of Threepio burst over the background noise.

"Excuse me, Mistress Leia?"

Leia frantically looked around for thetwins, afraid Furgan had somehow kidnapped them during his diversion, but was relieved when she saw Jacen and Jaina standing with their faces pressed against the curved window looking out at the skyline of Imperial City.

Finally, from the corner of her eye, she noticed a golden arm flailing about in alarm. Somehow Threepio had gotten tangled in the tentacle-cactus exhibit; even from across the room Leia could see how badly scratched his plating had become. Hors d'oeuvres lay scattered about the floor.

"Could anyone a.s.sist me in getting free from this plant?" Threepio cried. "Please?"

Han Solo seemed to be drowning in a syrup of nightmares. He could not escape the drugged and painful interrogation, as the hardened and porcelain-beautiful face of Admiral Daala stared at him and pummeled him with questions.

"Just put him over here," a woman's trilling voice said. Not Daala.

His body was being dragged like luggage across a floor.

"We have been ordered to stand guard," said a fuzzed voice filtered through a stormtrooper helmet.

"Stand guard, then, but do it outside my lab. I want to talk to him in peace." The woman's voice again.

"For your own protection-" the stormtrooper began. Han felt himself dropped to the floor. His limbs didn't seem to remember how to bend.

"Protection? What is he going to do-he doesn't seem to have the energy to sneeze. If you left any unscrambled memories in his head, I want to pick at them without any interference."

Han felt himself hauled upright again, his arms wrapped behind him.

Cold, smooth stone pressed against his back. "Yes, yes," the woman's voice said, "chain him to the column. I'm sure I'll be safe. I promise to stay out of reach of his fangs."

He heard the marching boots of stormtroopers leaving the room. His mind became active long before his body figured out how to respond. He remembered parts of the interrogation, but not all of it. What had he told Admiral Daala? His heart began pounding harder. Had he divulged any crucial secrets? Did he even know any crucial secrets?

He was fairly certain he had told her the basic events about the fall of the Empire and the rise of the New Republic--but that caused no harm, and it might even lead to benefits. If Daala knew she had no chance, perhaps she would surrender. And if banthas had wings ...

His eyes finally opened grudgingly, letting light slam inside. He flinched away from returning vision, but eventually his eyes focused. He found himself in a s.p.a.cious room, some kind of laboratory or a.n.a.lysis center, not his detention cell on the Gorgon. He heard singing and the sound of flutes.

Han turned his head to see a willowy alien woman standing in front of a device that seemed to be a combination musical keyboard and data-entry pad. He had heard her voice arguing with the stormtrooper. She hummed a complex string of notes as her fingers played on the musical keys; in front of her a rotating blueprint of a three-dimensional triangular shape took form, like a shard of gla.s.s capped with a tetrahedron and some sort of energy pod dangling from the lower point.

With each tone the woman processed, additional lines appeared on the complicated diagram.

Han worked his tongue around in his mouth and tried to talk. He meant to say, "Who are you?" but his lips and vocal cords would not cooperate. The sounds came out more like "Whaaaaa yuuuurrrr?"

Startled, the female alien fluttered her slender hands around the 3-D geometrical image. Then she pranced over to where Han lay. She wore a badge on her smock, imprinted with her likeness and glittering holograms of the kind used for cipher-locks.

She was an attractive humanoid, tall and slender, with a bluish tint to her skin. Her gossamer hair seemed like strands of pearlescent feathers. When she spoke, her voice was high and reedy. Her eyes were wide and deep blue, carrying an expression of perpetual astonishment.

"I've been waiting for you to wake up!" she said. "I have so many questions to ask you. Is it true that you actually set foot on the first Death Star, and you got a look at the second one while it was under construction? Tell me what it was like. Anything you can remember. Every detail would be like a treasure trove to me."

The babbled questions came at him too quickly to a.s.similate. What did the Death Star have to do with anything? That was ten years ago!

Instead, Han focused his gaze past her.

Pastel gases glowed on the other side of the broad window, swirling around the insatiable mouths of the black holes. He counted all four Star Destroyers in orbital formation high above. That meant he must be somewhere in the little cl.u.s.ter of planetoids in the center of the gravitational island.

And he was alone. Neither Kyp nor Chewbacca had ended up here with him. He hoped they had at least survived Daala's vicious interrogation.

He worked his mouth, trying to form words again. "Who are you?"

The alien woman touched her badge with one of her long-fingered hands. "My name is Qwi Xux. And I know that you are Han Solo. I've read a hardcopy of the debriefing you gave Admiral Daala."

Debriefing? Did she mean the interrogation, the torture chair that made his entire body spasm?

Qwi Xux's entire demeanor seemed superficial and distracted, as if she were paying only a small amount of attention to details while she kept her mind preoccupied with something else. "Now then, please tell me about the Death Star. I'm very eager to hear what you remember. You're the first person I can talk to who was actually there."

Han wondered if the interrogation drugs were still muddling his brain, or if there really was a reason why someone should want him to talk about the defunct Death Star. And why should he tell this Imperial scientist anything anyway? Had he divulged anything important to Daala?

What if she took her four Star Destroyers and attacked Coruscant?

"I've already been interrogated." He was pleased to hear his words come out clearly enough to be understood this time.

In one bluish hand Qwi held up a short printout. "I want your real impressions about it," she continued. "What did it sound like? What did it feel like when you walked down the corridors? Tell me everything you can remember." She wrung her hands in barely restrained excitement.

"No."

His response apparently shocked Qwi enough that she took a step backward and let out a startled musical squawk. "You have to! I'm one of the top scientists here." Her mouth hung partly open in confusion. She began to pace around the pillar where he had been bound, forcing Han to turn his head. The effort nearly made him pa.s.s out.

"What good does it do to withhold information?" Qwi asked.

"Information is for everyone. We build on the knowledge we have, add to it, and leave a greater legacy for our successors."

Qwi struck him as being impossibly naive. Han wondered how long she had been sheltered in the middle of the black hole cl.u.s.ter. "Does that mean you share your information with anyone who asks?" he said.

Qwi bobbed her head. "That's the way Maw Installation works. It is the foundation of all our research."

Han barely managed a grin of triumph. "All right, then tell me where my friends are. I came in here with a young man and a Wookiee.

Share that information with me, and I'll see what I can remember about the Death Star."

Qwi's uneasy reaction told him that she had never before considered anything but clear-cut cases.

"I don't know if I can tell you that," she said. "You don't have a need to know."

Han managed a shrug. "Then I see how much your own code of ethics means to you."

Qwi glanced toward the door, as if contemplating whether to summon the stormtroopers after all. "It is in my charter here as a researcher that I have access to all the data I need. Why won't you answer my few simple questions?"

"Why won't you answer mine? I never signed your charter. I'm under no obligation to you."

Han waited, fixing his eyes on her as she fidgeted. Finally, Qwi pulled out her datapad and hummed as she keyed in a request.

She looked at him with wide deep-blue eyes that blinked rapidly.

Her hair seemed like a glittering waterfall of fine down spilling to her shoulders. When she whistled again, the datapad gave a response.

"Your Wookiee companion has been a.s.signed to a labor detail in the engine-maintenance sector. The physicist formerly in charge of concept development and implementation always swore by Wookiee laborers. He had about a hundred of them taken from Kashyyyk and brought to the Installation when it was formed. We don't have many left. It's hard and dangerous work there, you know."

Han shifted his position, still finding it difficult to move. He had heard rumors that Wookiee slaves had been put to work during the actual construction of the first Death Star. But Qwi spoke of these things with simple frankness.

"What about my other friend?" Han asked.

"Someone named Kyp Durron--is that him? He is still aboard the Gorgon in the detention area, high security. I don't see much of a report from his debriefing, so apparently he didn't have much to tell them."

Han frowned, trying to a.s.sess the information, but Qwi became animated again. "All right, I've shared the information you wanted. Now tell me about the Death Star!" She stepped closer to him but remained well out of reach.

Han rolled his eyes but saw no reason not to. The Death Star had been destroyed long ago, and the plans were safely locked inside the protected data core of the former Imperial Information Center.

Han told Qwi about the corridors, the noises. He knew the most about the hangar bay, the detention area, and the garbage masher, but she didn't seem much interested in those details.

"But did you see the core? The propulsion systems?"

"Sorry. I was just running interference while someone else knocked out the tractor-beam generators." Han pursed his lips. "Why are you so interested in all this anyway?"

She blinked her eyes. "Because I designed most of the Death Star!"

Before she could notice Han's shocked response, she trotted over to the near wall and worked a few controls that turned a section of the metal plating transparent. Suddenly a dizzying panorama replaced his narrow view of the bright gases. He could see the other cl.u.s.tered rocks that made up Maw Installation.

"In fact, we've still got the prototype Death Star right here at the Installation."

As Qwi spoke, a gigantic wire-frame sphere as large as any of the asteroids rose behind the shortened horizon of the nearest planetoid like a deadly sunrise. The prototype looked like a giant armillarysphere, circular rings connected at the poles and spread out for support. Nested in the framework and superstructure hung the enormous reactor core and the planet-destroying superlaser.

"This is just the functional part," Qwi said, staring out the window with admiration in her eyes. "The core, the superlaser, and the reactor, without a hyperdrive propulsion system. We didn't see any need to add the structural support and all the housing decks for troops and administrators."

Han found his voice again. "Does it work?"

Qwi smiled at him, her eyes sparkling. "Oh yes, it works beautifully!"

Kyp Durron felt like an animal trapped in a cage. He stared at the dull confining walls of the detention cell. Illumination came through slitted grills in the ceiling, too bright and too reddish to be comfortable on his eyes. He sat on his bunk, stared at the wail, and tried not to think.

Leftover pain still throbbed through his body. The interrogator droid had been vicious in finding the pain stimuli in his body, damping endorphins so the slightest scratch seemed like agony. The sharp hypodermic needles felt like spears as they plunged into his flesh; the will-breaking drugs flowed like lava through his veins.

He had begged his memories to divulge some detail the interrogators would find useful, if only to stop the questioning--but Kyp Durron was n.o.body, a hapless prisoner who had spent most of his life on Kessel. He didn't know anything to tell the Imperial monsters. In the end they had found him worthless.

Kyp stared at the self-making meal the door dispenser had given to him. By opening the lid of the pack, he spontaneously heated the textured protein main course and chilled the synthetic fruit dessert; after a short time the utensils themselves began to break down and could be eaten as snacks. But Kyp could find no spark of hunger inside him.

His thoughts drifted again to Han Solo's predicament. Unlike Kyp, Han knew a great deal about the New Republic and had many secrets to divulge. Han's interrogation would have been far more thorough than his own. And Admiral Daala's ministrations had been worse than anything Kyp had experienced during his years in the Imperial Correction Facility. At least down in the spice mines he knew how to avoid calling attention to himself.

Since the age of eight, Kyp had lived on Kessel, coping with the rules, the torturous work, the miserable conditions under the old Imperial rule or under the chain of usurpers and slave lords such as Moruth Doole. His parents were dead, his brother Zeth conscripted away to the stormtrooper academy, but Kyp had learned how to lie low, to survive, to endure.