The Black Fleet Crisis_ Tyrant's Test Part 2

At intervals, Lumpawarrump would peer out from his improvised blind and scan the forest for a few moments as though expecting a katarn to saunter past in full view. Then, seeing nothing, he would retreat back into the false security of his wishful invisibility.

But Chewbacca had had no trouble spotting his son, and neither would any of the Well's predators. And the stump Lumpawarrump was depending on for protection created an enormous blind spot from which a katarn could approach and strike without warning.

Chewbacca knew that his son was in far more danger than he realized, and yet Chewbacca was honor-bound not to intervene except to stop a killing blow. All he could do was watch and wait, his bowcaster at the ready, trying not to become so distracted that he made himself a ready target.

To help keep himself alert, Chewbacca kept himself moving. He moved in an irregular arc that had Lumpawarrump's hiding place as its anchor--never drawing too close, never wandering too far away, and never compromising the shot he was constantly visualizing.

Four times Chewbacca saw the wroshyr leaves move, and four times he froze.

Lumpawarrump never saw him.

Chewbacca could tell himself that, even caught in the open, motionless, face averted, a long-furred Wookiee could be taken for another of the stalks and mounds of parasitic jaddyyk moss that dotted the floor of the Well. But even a novice hunter using the simplest blink technique should have noticed that one of the jaddyyk stalks kept changing position. It was a sign of just how terrified Lumpawarrump was, cowering behind his green curtain--which was in turn another hard disappointment for his father.

But although Lumpawarrump had taken no notice, before long Chewbacca new that something else had.

It moved only when Chewbacca moved, and yet somehow managed to draw ever closer. It stayed low in the thick overgrowth and melted into the shadows. When Chewbacca turned to face it, he saw nothing. When he moved toward it, he soon sensed it behind him once more.

With the air in the Well heavy and still, Chewbacca could catch no scent of what was stalking him until it had drawn uncomfortably close.

He sniffed the air sharply and breathed a quiet growl. Eight meters away, another Wookiee rose silently from the wroshyr leaves.

It was Freyrr, one of Chewbacca's many second cousins, and the lightest- footed stalker in the family.

After a silent exchange scripted in glances and toothy grimaces, Chewbacca and Freyrr came together back-to-back and lowered themselves into the foliage.

There the conversation continued in growls so quiet that they could be taken for the groaning of branches.

[Where is Lumpawarrump?] asked Freyrr.

[Gone to cover,] Chewbacca said, tipping his head toward his son's hiding place. [Why are you here? Why do you intrude on my son's hrrtayyk?] [Mallatobuck sent me to find you. There is news that could not wait on your return.] [What 'news?"" [It would be better if you left the Well first.] [My son cannot leave until his test is over.] [I will stay with him, cousin. Shoran waits for you on the Rryatt Trail, and will tell you all as you return to Rwookrrorro.] Chewbacca's body went rigid with barely contained fury. [You think to take this duty from me? How can you breathe such shame? Even when the mate of Jiprirr was burned by flame beetles and fell from the Gathering Trail, even when the mate of Grayyshk was confined with yellow-blood malaise and died, they were not recalled from the hrrtayyk.] Freyrr reached back and took a restraining grip on both of Chewbacca's hands. [Mind your voice, cousin.] The answering growl Chewbacca offered under his breath was all the more menacing for the ease With which he broke Freyrr's grip. [If I do not hear in the next moment what brings you to me, every webweaver, gundark, and katarn within three levels of the Well will hear my voice in the moment after that. Now, what is wrong?

Is it Mallatobuck?]

Freyrr sighed his surrender. [No---it is the one to whom you owe your life debt. Han Solo has been taken by the enemies of Princess Leia.

He is a prisoner of the Yevetha, somewhere in Koornacht Cl.u.s.ter.

The Princess has asked you to come back to Coruscant.] Only a mouthful of his own forearm kept Chewbacca's howl of distress from escaping his lips.

[You understand now,] Freyrr went on. [You have a duty that goes beyond your duty here. Go. Shoran awaits. He will tell you the rest.

I will watch over your son and see him through to the end of his tests.

Mallatobuck will see that he understands.] The decision that loomed before Chewbacca was distasteful, but it was not difficult.

[The hrrtayyk can wait until I return,] Chewbacca said, rising to his feet and abandoning his concealment.

Freyrr rose with him. [Chewbacca, I beg you--if your son returns to Rwookrrorro without being able to announce his new name, without being able to wear the baldric Malla has made for him--] [Better that than for him to return over your shoulder, cousin.] Freyrr showed a mouthful of teeth. [Do you question my rrakktorr?] [No, cousin. I question his.]

Chewbacca called across the Well to Lumpawarrump in a stentorian growl that startled a gathering of scur and rousted a fat-bodied charkarr to flight. Farther away, Chewbacca saw the s.h.i.+ver of leaves that marked a katarn turning away from a hunt.

When Lumpawarrump was slow to appear, Chewbacca repeated the call.

[Come to me, first-child.

You will sleep this night in the home tree. My honor brother is in peril, and I must go to him.]

Chapter 2.

Wincing, Han opened a puffy, purple eye crusted jaw with blood and forced the room to come into focus.

"Barth," he said.

The flight engineer was sitting with his back against the opposite wall, curled up in a ball with his knees drawn up toward his chest and his arms wrapped around them. His face was downturned, his chin against his collarbone, as though he were sleeping---or hiding.

"Barth," Han said again, more distinctly.

This time his cellmate stirred, raising his head and turning his face toward Han. "Commodore," he said in a surprised tone, and scrambled across the rough floor to Han's side. "I don't know how long it's been since they brought you in--hours, at least."

"What's been happening?"

"Nothing, sir. You've been out the whole time. I wasn't sure you were ever going to wake up. Sir, don't take this wrong, but I hope you don't feel as bad as you look."

Han let the flight engineer help him up to a sitting position.

"This isn't so bad. I've been beat up by experts. The Yevetha are strictly amateurs. " Han straight ened a leg, grimaced, and leaned back against the wall.

"On the other hand, they're amateurs with stamina."

"What do they want with us?"

"They didn't say," Han said. He worked his jaw from side to side experimentally, then sniffed and wrinkled his nose. "Tell me the truth, Barth- -is that smell me?"

A faintly embarra.s.sed look crossed Barth's face.

"It's all of us, I'm afraid. There's no refresher, or anything resembling one, and no water. I, uh, just picked a corner. But at least it helps mask the smell coming off the captain. And there's something growing on him now--it's covered most of his skin. I can't stand to look at him."

"Don't, then," Han said, looking past the lieutenant at the corpse of Captain Sreas. His face and hands were shadowed by a fine gray down.

"Fungal spores, probably. It's a dry world--you can tell from the air, and the Yevetha's skin. A human corpse probably looks like a water hole to the stuff that lives in a place like this."

"I don't Want to think about it," Barth said.

"Don't, then," said Han As he straightened his other leg, pain made him squeeze his eyes shut and grunt. "On the whole, I think I'd rather be beaten up by an expert. Has anyone looked in on us?"

"Not since they brought you in." Barth hesitated, then added, "Commodore, what do you give for our chances?"

"More than I'd give you for our privacy right now," Han said.

Barth twisted his head around, scanning the nearly featureless walls of their prison. The cell had a slitted air Vent in the center of the ceiling, a slitted drain in the center of the floor, harsh lights flush in the ceiling corners, and a half-height door armored in riveted plate.

"Do you think they're watching us--listening?"

"I would be. Doko prek anuda ten?" he asked, hoping Barth knew smuggler cant.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand."

Han switched to Illodian sibilant. "Stacch iscb stralsi."

"Sorry, Commodore. I can get by in Bothan, handle a bit of Corporate Sector Contract Standard, and rattle off all nine water curses in Calamari, if that will help. But that's the limit of my linguistic talents." He ducked his head apologetically. "The Fleet Academy dropped its three-language requirement the year I entered."

"Never mind," Han said. "I doubt any of those would stump the Yevetha for long. Let's just a.s.sume we have an audience and they're getting most of the jokes.

Have they given you any food?"

"No, nothing."

Han nodded thoughtfully. "Well, if that doesn't change, you'll be able to figure out our chances by yourself.

Let's take inventory."

The pockets of what remained of the two men's flight suits yielded a flexible comb, the Imperial thousand-credit "Victory Tax" coin Barth carried as a worry-stone, an expired meal card from the Fleet headquarters mess, a pilot's pop-up collapsible cup, and one two-tablet dose of an antiallergen that was on the pre-flight restricted list.

The inventory of jewelry was even shorter--two Fleet service pins with sealed-back attachment mounts, and a fine t.i.tanium ankle chain.

"I've seen bigger a.r.s.enals," Han said, and nodded toward the corpse.

"We'd better see what he has."

Barth blanched. "Couldn't we skip that?"

"They didn't bother to strip him. Maybe they didn't bother to search him, either."

The blaster bolt that had killed Captain Sreas had scooped out a third of his upper chest, leaving behind a cauterized concavity into which the burned edges of the hole in his blouse were fused. The hollow was half filled by the gray down enthusiastically growing on the cadaver.

Gritting his teeth, Han rummaged the pockets and keepaway flaps of the captain's flight suit. He handed his discoveries to Barth, who hung back and tried not to watch.

"How long did you serve with him?" Han asked.

"Four months--nineteen jumps all together."

"Your first a.s.signment?"

"Second. I spent a year with the Third Fleet as a drag pilot on a tender. "

Han pulled a Fleet ID from the shoulder pocket and pa.s.sed it back.

"What kind of man was he?"

"All officer," said Barth. "Demanding, but fair.

Not much of a talker--I know he had kids, but I don't know their names."

"I know the kind," Han said, then touched his tongue to a comlink power pack. "Dead," he muttered, handing it back. "Did he ever surprise you?"

"He collected gla.s.s animals," said Barth. "I wouldn't have expected that. And once he showed me the holo of his wife he always carried with him. It must have been twenty years old. She was sitting on a black-sand beach somewhere wearing nothing but a smile.

'That's the most beautiful woman on this or the next thousand worlds,' he told me. 'I'll never figure out why she fell in love with a dullard like me."" "And was she?"

Barth took a moment to consider. "In a way. I guess I'd have to say any man would say so if that smile of hers was aimed at him. I'm still hoping to find someone who looks at me that way."

Han nodded as he gently rolled the corpse onto its back. Then he sat back on his heels. "Well, I can't say that Captain Sreas's worldly possessions are going to have much to say about the outcome," he said.

"But hold on to that hope, Lieutenant. You'll see Coruscant again."

By then Barth had retreated from the corpse to the opposite wall.

"I don't think so," he said. "I think we're going to die here, too."

Han grimaced as he stood, but erased the pain from his face before he turned toward the young officer.

"Lieutenant, our captors went to a lot of trouble to grab us. They're not about to discard us now. And the folks at home aren't going to just write us off. One way or another, our people are going to get us out of here. Until then, we have an obligation to be as difficult and unco- operative as we can manage. You can't let them make you afraid. That just gives them what they want--a way to control you."

"But isn't that what we are--a way for the Yevetha to control the President?"

Han shook his head firmly. "If I thought for a moment that Leia would compromise herself, that she'd compromise the Fleet or the New Republic because of us being prisoners here, I'd find a way to die now, before it could happen."

"Then explain this--if you're right, why should the Yevetha keep us alive once they find out we're not worth anything as bargaining chips?"

"Slatha essacb secbel."

"I'm sorry, I don't--" Han hadn't expected Barth to understand--the reintroduction of Illodian was meant as a reminder.

Han pointed at the air vent over his head to underline the reminder, and a light went on in Barth's haunted eyes.

"If your s.h.i.+p Was suddenly infested with pests," Han said, "and the first thing the captain did was order you to capture two of them in a jar, would you describe that as taking hostages?"

Pursing his lips, Barth swallowed hard, then shook his head.

"All right, then. From here on out, try to remember where we are, what Our purpose is--and that we have an audience, and what their purpose is. We had to have this conversation, but I only want to have it once.

And some other conversations are going to have to wait for another time and place."