33

Xizor sat alone in his private dining room deep in his castle and lunched on thin slices of moonglow, a delicate, rare—and expensive—pearlike fruit from more than a hundred light-years away. As he ate, he frowned. It wasn’t the fruit, which was crisp and delicious; no, that was outstanding, was exquisite as always.

But something was wrong.

What it was he could not say, but he had not gotten to the top of an organization where you were either quick and clever or you were dead and gone by ignoring any input, be it logical or intuitive. In the complexity that was Black Sun there were always problems—but there were no indications of any more problems than usual. No reports of treachery, no upstart rivals trespassing on forbidden territory, no idealistic and overzealous police officers snooping where they’d been paid to leave off. The machine seemed to be running fine.

But there was an edgy, pit-of-the-stomach, nervous feeling he had learned to pay attention to over the years. It was a feeling, yes, but it was not as if he had no emotions, merely that he controlled them.

He chewed thoughtfully on the fruit. Nothing had changed about it, but it seemed to be … not quite as good as it had been a few moments before.

Moonglow was found only on a single satellite world, in a small section of one forest; it grew naturally nowhere else in the galaxy; in fact, it could not be grown anywhere else. Many had tried to transplant the funguslike tree, and all had failed. About the size of a man’s fist, the fruit contained in its natural state one of the most potent biological poisons known. A single unaltered slice divided into a thousand tiny pieces would be enough, if consumed, to kill a thousand people and to do it in less than a minute. There was no known antidote, but there was a way to neutralize the poison before eating the fruit. Such preparation of moonglow legally required a chef who had studied the technique for a minimum of two years under a certified Master Moonglow Chef, and the process itself consisted of some ninety-seven steps. Should any of the steps be omitted or performed incorrectly, the resulting dish might cause anything from a mild stomach upset to a painful, thrashing, hallucinatory coma, followed by death. If a would-be diner went into a restaurant that had the proper licenses to offer the dish, the price of a single serving of moonglow would be somewhere around a thousand credits. Xizor generally ate it three or four times a month and had the most respected moonglow chef in the galaxy on his payroll. Even so, a small thrill always arose when he consumed the fruit. Always the possibility, however slight, of an error.

It added a wondrous flavor to the taste.

Eating moonglow was somewhat like Xizor’s contest with Darth Vader, when he thought about it. There was no thrill in contending with those you knew you would defeat beyond any shadow of a doubt. But with an opponent such as Vader, lapdog to the Emperor that he was, you had to remember that those teeth were sharp and always ready to bite. He did not think Vader would win, but there certainly was a slight possibility.

It added a wondrous flavor to the contest.

Was it Vader who tripped those warning jitters?

Or was it someone else?

He pushed the moonglow aside, no longer interested in it. He would have Guri run a full security check on his operations, onplanet and off-. And while she was here, he would have her remove the remaining moonglow, too. If his chef saw anything left on the plate, he would probably quit in high dudgeon. Or worse, he might be upset enough to miss a step next time he prepared the dish. Xizor did not want that. Artists were so temperamental.

He stared at the half-empty plate, whose cost would furnish food for a small family for several months. There was nothing else to be done about the edgy feeling. It probably meant nothing anyway. Jitters, nothing more.

He wished he could believe that.

They sat at a small table in the Underground hotel’s restaurant, waiting for their meal to be served.

Dash began, “This is the center of the Empire—”

“It is?” Lando cut in, heavy on the irony. “Uh-oh. We shouldn’t be here. Why, it could be … dangerous.”

“What’s your point, Dash?” Luke asked, ignoring Lando’s sarcasm.

“The Empire is corrupt. It runs less on loyalty and honor than it does on bribes and graft. Credits lube the gears, and nowhere more than here.”

“So? You think we’re going to be able to bribe a guard? I don’t think Black Sun is likely to put that kind of person on the door,” Lando offered.

“Not a guard, an engineer.”

“What am I missing here?” Luke asked.

Dash continued: “In a bureaucracy, everything has to be filed and copied and logged in quadruplicate. You can’t build anything without permits, licenses, inspections, plans. All we need to do is find the right engineer, one who maybe gambles too much or has more taste than he’s got money.”

They still looked blank.

“All right,” Dash said. “Here’s the idea. We know that the really big buildings on this planet extend as far under the surface as they do above it. One thing I know is, no matter how much graywater recycling and reclamation you do, some of it is always going to be lost. Waste products, sewage, they have to be pumped away where bigger and more efficient systems can work on them.”

“Basic stuff, don’t foul your own nest,” Luke said. “So?”

“A building as big as this one”—here he tapped a holographic postcard showing several huge structures that included among them the Emperor’s castle—“generates a lot of waste. There has to be a way to get rid of it. I haven’t seen any garbage vans or drain wagons on the streets or in the skies of Coruscant, so they have to break the solid waste down and pump it away, probably as a slurry. Therefore we are talking about pipes.”

Luke got it. He looked around the table. Said, “Big pipes.”

He saw the others get it.

Chewie said something.

Lando nodded and said, “Chewie is right. Those conduits, if they are big enough to admit people, will certainly be guarded.”

Chewie said something else.

“Yeah,” Dash said. “Chewie also points out such drains would be hard to locate, given that every building will have similar systems. It’s probably a monster maze under the ground.”

“Right. But there will probably be fewer guards posted on a big sewage drain than the doors aboveground. They wouldn’t really expect any kind of assault that way; you couldn’t move a lot of troops in without making noise their sensors would pick up. But a few men would be lost in the background gurgle, if they were careful.”

Lando looked at Luke and Chewie, then back at Dash. “Assuming we could find a guide, you are saying you want us to wade through kilometers of sewage to get into this place?” He looked at Dash as if he had just turned into a big spider.

Dash smiled. “Exactly what the guards would think. Who would be that stupid?”

Lando shook his head. “Us. Who else?”

“And finding a guide is no problem. I know somebody.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Luke said.

Vader took a deep breath, blew it out, then took another. The energies of the dark side filled him, and he could once again breathe as a normal man did. He focused his anger. It was not right that he be crippled, that he couldn’t do this all the time. It was … not … right!

The healing energies held.

As long as he could maintain his indignation, his lungs and breathing passages stayed open and clear. He fed the fires of his rage with the unfairness of a galaxy that would not let him be whole.

Still the healing energies held.

He fought the sense of relief he felt. Fought it and kept his anger pure.

And still they held. Almost two minutes now. A new record.

He would grow stronger. He would add Luke’s power to his own, and he would eventually be able to shed the armor, to walk around as normal men walked.

Luke …

He tried to stop the smile. Failed.

Sank back into the protection of his breathing chamber, unable to maintain the energies any longer. But even so, he’d managed two minutes. Eventually it would be ten minutes, then an hour, then as long as he wished.

Eventually.

Leia was not the most patient woman in the galaxy, she knew. Being cooped up in a room, no matter how well appointed that room might be, was not her idea of fun.

She tried meditating, but her mind buzzed too much.

She worked on escape plans, but given how little information she had, that was also fairly limited in scope.

Finally she took to exercising. She knew some basic gymnastics, easy enough to do as long as you had a little floor space. The carpet was almost as thick as a tumbling mat, and while the roof wasn’t high enough to allow flips—even if she could still do one—there was nothing stopping her from doing handstands and assorted presses. She stretched, twisted, did splits, pitted her muscles against gravity in a variety of ways until she worked up a healthy sweat.

When she was done and fairly exhausted, she felt a lot better. She padded into the refresher and cranked up the shower. Turned off the lights and undressed, showered, and got dressed again in the dark. Tricky business, but since she was fairly sure Xizor had a hidden holocam or three in her room, she was not going to give him a show.

Feeling a little sore but better, Leia once again considered ways to escape. Or, more likely, ways to help Luke with whatever plan he had. She was worried about him, but on another level, pleased that he would come for her.

It was nice to know somebody cared that much.