6

Leia stood in the private communications chamber, heaving a sigh as she glanced again at the chronometer. The Caridan ambassador was late. He was probably doing it just to spite her.

Out of deference to the ambassador, she had reset her clock to Caridan local time. Though Ambassador Furgan had suggested the transmission time himself, it seemed he couldn’t be bothered to abide by it.

Two-way mirrors displayed empty corridors outside the communications chamber. At this late hour most sensible people were deeply asleep in their own quarters—but no one had ever promised Leia Organa Solo that diplomatic duties kept regular hours.

When such obligations crept into her schedule, Han usually grumbled at being awakened in the depths of the night, complaining that even pirates and smugglers kept their activities to more civilized time slots. But this evening Leia’s alarm had awakened her to empty and silent rooms. Han still had not called.

A cleaning droid puttered along the corridor, polishing the walls and scouring the two-way mirrors; Leia watched its lamprey like scrubbers do their work.

With a burst of static from poorly tuned holonet transmitters, the image of Ambassador Furgan of Carida formed in the center of the receiving dais. Maybe the poor transmission quality was deliberate—yet another rude reaction. The chronometer told Leia that the ambassador had made his transmission a full six minutes past the time he himself had insisted on. Furgan made no attempt to apologize for his tardiness, and Leia studiously avoided calling attention to it.

Furgan was a barrel-chested humanoid with spindly arms and legs. The eyebrows on his squarish face flared upward like birds’ wings. Despite the Emperor’s known prejudice against nonhuman species, apparently the Caridans had been acceptable enough to secure the Emperor’s business, since Palpatine had built his most important Imperial military training center on Carida.

“Princess Leia,” Furgan said, “you needed to discuss certain planning details with me? Please be brief.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest in clearly hostile body language.

Leia tried not to let her exasperation show. “As a matter of protocol I would prefer if you could address me as minister rather than princess. The planet on which I was a princess no longer exists.” Leia worked hard to keep the scowl off her face.

Furgan waved her comment aside as if it were of no consequence. “Very well then, Minister, what did you wish to discuss?”

Leia took a deep breath, quelling the hot temper rising behind her cool expression. “I wanted to inform you that Mon Mothma and the other Cabinet members of the New Republic will be hosting a formal reception in your honor when you reach Coruscant.”

Furgan bristled. “A frivolous reception? Am I supposed to give a warm and glowing speech? Make no mistake, I am coming to Coruscant on a pilgrimage to visit the home of the late Emperor Palpatine—not to be pampered by an upstart, illegitimate band of terrorists. Our loyalty remains with the Empire.”

“Ambassador Furgan, there is no centralized Empire.” It took all her effort not to rise to the bait. Her dark eyes burned with obsidian fires, but she smiled instead at the ambassador. “Nevertheless, we will extend to you every courtesy in the confidence that your planet will find a way to adapt to political reality in the galaxy.”

The Caridan’s holographic image shimmered. “Political realities change,” he said. “It remains to be seen just how long your rebellion will last.”

Furgan’s image fizzled into static as he cut the transmission. Leia sighed and rubbed her temples, trying to massage away the headache lurking behind her eyes. She left the communications chamber discouraged.

What a way to end the day.

Deep underground in the Imperial Information Center, all hours looked the same, but See-Threepio’s internal chronometer told him it was the middle of Coruscant’s night. A pair of repair droids worked at dismantling one of the great air-exchange systems that had burned out. The repair droids dropped tools and discarded pieces of metal shielding with reckless abandon, making the echoing chamber sound like a war zone. Threepio much preferred the humming loneliness of the previous day.

Buried in their own universe of data networks, the hunched slicer droids worked undisturbed. Artoo-Detoo slavishly continued his days-long search without pause.

With a loud clatter the repair droids dropped an entire three-bladed fan assembly. “I’m going to give those droids a piece of my mind!” Threepio said.

Before Threepio could march off, Artoo jacked out of the data port and began chittering and whistling. In his excitement the little astromech droid rocked back and forth, bleeping.

“Oh!” Threepio said. “You’d better let me check that, Artoo. It’s probably another one of your false alarms.”

When data scrolled up on the screen, Threepio could see nothing that would have captured Artoo’s interest—until the other droid recompiled the information to emphasize his point. A name popped up beside every entry—TYMMO.

“Oh, my! It does appear suspicious when you look at it that way. This Tymmo person seems a likely candidate indeed.” Threepio straightened, suddenly at a loss. “But Master Luke isn’t here, and he gave us no further instructions. Whom can we tell?”

Artoo bleeped, then whistled a question. Threepio turned to him with offended dignity. “I will not wake Mistress Leia in the middle of the night! I am a protocol droid, and there is a proper way to go about these things.” He nodded in affirmation of his decision. “We will inform her first thing in the morning.”

The levitating breakfast tray brought itself to Leia’s table on the park balcony high in the Imperial towers. The sun gleamed on the city that stretched across the entire landmass of Coruscant. High in the air flying creatures rode the morning thermals.

Leia scowled down at the food the breakfast tray presented to her. None of it looked appetizing, but she knew she had to eat. She selected a small plate of assorted pastries and sent the breakfast tray on its way. Before it departed, the tray told her to have a pleasant day.

She sighed and picked at her breakfast. She felt exhausted mentally as well as physically. She hated to feel so dependent, even on her own husband, but she never slept well while he was away. Han should have arrived on Kessel three days ago, and he was due back in two days. She didn’t want to cling, but it disappointed her that he had not yet transmitted so much as a greeting. With diplomatic duties that kept her busy at all hours, they saw too little of each other even when they were both on the same planet.

Well, the twins would be coming home in another six days. Han and Chewbacca would be back by then, and their entire lifestyle would change. A pair of two-year-olds running around the palace would force Han and Leia to look differently at many of the things they took for granted.

But why hadn’t Han gotten in touch? It shouldn’t have been so difficult to send a holonet communiqué from the Falcon’s cockpit. She wasn’t quite ready yet to admit she was worried about him.

With a greeting signal from the archway of the park balcony, an older-model protocol droid marched into view. “Excuse me, Minister Organa Solo. Someone wishes to see you. Are you accepting visitors?”

Leia set down her breakfast pastry. “Why not?” It was probably some lobbyist wanting to complain to her in private, or a panicked minor functionary who needed her to make a decision on some uninteresting detail, or one of the other senators trying to hand off some of his own duties.

Instead, with a flourish of his vermillion cape, Lando Calrissian walked through the arch.

“Good morning, Madame Minister. I hope I’m not disturbing your breakfast?” He flashed a broad, disarming smile.

Seeing him, Leia felt her mood immediately lighten. She stood up and met him near the archway. He gallantly kissed her hand, but she was not satisfied until she had given him a friendly hug. “Lando, you’re the last person I expected this morning!”

He followed her back to the table overlooking the skyline of Imperial City and pulled up a chair, sweeping his cape over its back. Without asking, Lando took one of her untouched pastries and began to munch on it.

“So what brings you to Coruscant?” she asked. She realized how eager she was just to have a normal conversation without diplomatic entanglements and hidden agendas.

Lando brushed crumbs from his mustache. “I just came to see how you all are doing in the big city. Where’s Han?”

She grumbled. “That seems to be a sore subject this morning. He and Chewie went off to Kessel, but I think they just used it as an excuse to go joyriding and remembering their glory years.”

“Kessel can be a pretty rough place.”

Leia avoided his eyes. “Han hasn’t bothered to call in six days.”

“That’s not like him,” Lando said.

“Oh, yes, it is—and you know it! I suppose we’ll have words when he comes back day after tomorrow.” Then she forced an artificial air of brightness. “But let’s not talk about that right now. How can you find time to trot around visiting people? A respectable man like yourself has so many responsibilities.”

Lando averted her gaze this time and began fidgeting. He stared at the expanses of gleaming new buildings visible through the metropolis. For the first time Leia noticed a slight scruffiness to his appearance. His clothes seemed a bit ragged around the edges, the colors faded as if from too much wear.

He spread his hands, then took another breakfast pastry. “To tell you the truth, I’m … um, in between engagements right now.” He gave her a lopsided grin, but she frowned back at him.

“What happened to your big mining operation on Nkllon? Didn’t the New Republic replace most of your destroyed machinery?”

“Well, it was still a lot of work, and not paying off—bad publicity after the Sluis Van attack, you know. And Nkllon is a hellish place—you were there. I just needed a change.”

Leia crossed her arms and looked at him skeptically. “All right, Lando. The appropriate excuses are logged and recorded. Now, what really happened to Nkllon?”

He squirmed. “Well, I lost it in a sabacc game.”

She couldn’t keep herself from laughing. “So you’re out of work?” His expression of wounded pride was obviously faked. Leia considered for a moment. “We could always reactivate your commission as a general in the New Republic. You and Wedge were a great team on Calamari.”

His eyes widened. “Are you offering me a job? I can’t imagine what you would want me to do.”

“Formal receptions, state dinners … plenty of wealthy backers wandering around,” Leia said. “The possibilities are endless.”

Just then the old protocol droid shuffled through the arch again, but before he could announce his business, See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo bustled around him, making a direct path to Leia. “Princess Leia!” Threepio could not contain his excitement. “We’ve found one. Artoo, tell the princess. Oh, General Calrissian! What are you doing here?”

Artoo launched into a series of electronic sounds, which Threepio dutifully translated. “Artoo was checking the records of various winners in different gambling establishments throughout the galaxy. We seem to have encountered a man who has extraordinary luck at the Umgullian blob races.”

Threepio handed a hardcopy printout of the winning statistics to Leia, but she passed it on to Lando. “You’re better trained to understand this than I am.” Lando took the page of figures and stared at them. He didn’t appear to know what he was looking for.

Threepio added his own commentary. “If it is displayed only as wins and losses, Mr. Tymmo’s record shows nothing out of the ordinary. But when I had Artoo plot the magnitude of wins, you will note that while Mr. Tymmo loses quite often in minor races, in every instance when he bets more than a hundred credits on a particular blob, that blob wins the race!”

Lando tapped the sheet of numbers. “He’s right. This is pretty unusual. I’ve never seen the Umgullian blob races myself, and I’m no expert in the nuances, but I’m inclined to say that these odds are next to impossible.”

“This is exactly the sort of thing Master Luke asked us to look for.” Threepio moved his arms up and down, whirring the servomotors until they whined in protest. “Do you think Mr. Tymmo could be a potential Jedi for Master Luke’s academy?”

Lando looked at Leia with questions in his eyes. He had obviously not heard of Luke’s recent speech. But Leia’s eyes sparkled. “Someone needs to check this out. If it’s just a scam, we need a person who knows his way around gambling establishments, Lando, isn’t that a job you could do?”

She knew his answer before she even asked the question.