surrendering. Finally, just here noon, Leia called a halt. 'I can't look at this anymore,' she told Chewbacca, closing her eyes briefly and rubbing her thumbs against throbbing temples. 'Let's go outside for a while.' Chewbacca growled an objection. 'Yes, of course there are risks,' she agreed wearily. 'But the whole village knows we're here, and no one's told the authorities yet. Come on; it'll be okay.' Stepping to the door, she opened it and went out. Chewbacca grumbled under his breath, hut followed after her. The late morning sunshine was blazing brightly down, with only a scattering of high clouds to interfere. Leia glanced upward at the clear sky, shivering involuntarily at the sudden sensation of nakedness that flooded in on her. A clear sky, all the way up to space...but it was all right. A little before midnight the maitrakh had brought the news of the Star Destroyer's imminent departure, a departure which she and Chewbacca had been able to watch with the macrobinoculars from the Wookiee's kit. It had been their first break since Khabarakh's arrest: just as it had begun to look like she and Chewbacca would be pinned down here until it was too late, the Grand Admiral had abruptly left.
It was an unexpected gift...a gift which Leia couldn't help but view with suspicion. From the way the Grand Admiral had been talking in the dukha she'd expected him to stay here until Khabarakh's humiliation period had ended, after which the shipboard interrogation would begin. Perhaps he'd changed his mind and had taken Khabath back early, with a backhand gesture of contempt for Noghri tradition. But the maitrakh had said that Khabarakh was still on public display in the center of Nystao.
Unless she was lying about that. Or was herself being lied to about it. But if the Grand Admiral suspected enough to lie to the maitrakh, why hadn't a legion of Imperial troops already swooped down on them?
But he was a Grand Admiral, with all the cunning and subtlety and tactical genius that the title implied. This whole thing could be a convoluted, carefully orchestrated trap...and if it was, chances were she would never even see it until it had been sprung around her. Stop it! she ordered herself firmly. Letting herself get caught up in the mythos of infallibility that had been built up around the Grand Admirals would gain her nothing but mental paralysis. Even Grand Admirals could make mistakes, and there were any number of reasons why he might have had to leave Honoghr. Perhaps some part of the campaign against the New Republic had gone sour, requiring his attention elsewhere. Or perhaps he'd simply gone off on some short errand, intending to be back in a day or two.
Either way, it meant that the time to strike was now. If they could only find something to strike at.
Beside her, Chewbacca growled a suggestion. 'We can't do that,' Leia shook her head. 'It'd be no better than a frill-blown attack on the spaceport. We have to keep damage to Nystao and its people to an absolute minimum.' The Wookiee snarled impatiently.
'I don't know what else to do,' she snapped back. 'All know is that death and massive destruction won't do anything but put us back where we were before we came here. It certainly won't convince the Noghri that they should leave the Empire and come over to our side.'
She looked out past the cluster of huts at the distant hills and the brown kholm-grass rippling in the breeze. Glinting in the sunlight, the squat box shapes of a dozen decon droids were hard at work, scooping up a quarter cubic meter of topsoil with each bite, running it through some exotic catalytic magic in their interiors, and dumping the cleansed product out the back. Slowly but steadily bringing the people of Honoghr back from the edge of the destruction they'd faced...and a highly visible reminder, if anyone needed it, of the Empire's benevolence toward them.
'Lady Vader,' a gravelly voice mewed from just behind her. Leia jumped. 'Good morning, maitrakh,' she said, turning and giving the Noghri a solemn nod. 'I trust you are well this morning?'
'I feel no sickness,' the other said shortly.
'Good,' Leia said, the word sounding rather lame. The maitrakh hadn't been so impolite as to say anything out loud, but it was clear enough that she considered herself to be in a no-win situation here, with dishonor and perhaps even death waiting for her family as soon as the Grand Admiral discovered what Khabarakh had done. It was probably only a matter of time, Leia knew, before she came to the conclusion that turning the intruders over to the Empire herself would be the least disastrous course still open to her.
'Your plans,' the maitrakh said. 'How do they go?' Leia glanced at Chewbacca. 'We're making progress,' she said. It was true enough, after a fashion: the elimination of every approach they'd come up with did technically qualify as progress. 'We still have a long way to go, though.'
'Yes,' the maitrakh said. She looked out past the buildings. 'Your droid has spent much time with the other machines.'
'There isn't as much here for him to do as I'd thought there would be,' Leia said. 'You and many of your people speak Basic better than I'd anticipated.'
'The Grand Admiral has taught us well.'
'As did my father, the Lord Darth Vader, before him,' Leia reminded her.
The maitrakh was silent a moment. 'Yes,' she conceded reluctantly. Leia felt a chill run up her back. The first step in a betrayal would be to put emotional distance between the Noghri and their former lord.
'That area will be finished soon,' the maitrakh said, pointing to the laboring decon droids. 'If they finish within the next ten days, we will be able to plant there this season.
'Will the extra land be enough to make you self-sufficient?' Leia asked.
'It will help. But not enough.'
