Free Star Wars - Planet Of Twilight by Barbara Hambly

tell me I was too wasteful or too lazy to know what I'm talking about.” He extended one hand, and Leia felt it.
    The Force.
    A silver cup, probably kept in some kind of cooling bowl under the gazebo's black shade, floated into sight and drifted across toward the stubby, outstretched yellow fingers with their golden rings.
    And all around her, Leia felt the air change, as if the iridescent sunlight had thickened or changed its composition Itchy, swirling, angry.
    Beldorion the Hutt had been trained as a Jedi.
    And against his use of the Force, there was a stirring, a reaction, a movement in the Force itself that Leia, though only marginally adept with her Jedi powers, felt like sandpaper on the inside of her skull.
    Leia's knees felt weak, and she retreated to the divan again, catching the head of it for balance, shivering within the garnet weight of the state robe.
    The Borealis, sent into hyperspace blind and unprogrammed, never to emerge .... But if what Dzym said was true, if the Death Seed plague had been on board, that was just as well.
    She had had the Death Seed. She shook her head. It was impossible, according to the records no one recovered.
    And Minister Rieekan, her second-in-command in the Council . . When Rieekan goes into his coma . . .
    I have to warn him. I have to warn someone . . .
    She dropped onto the divan, shaking in every limb with weakness and shock. Panic and rage struggled against the thickness of the sweet-blossom that clogged her brain, a fury to escape, to outwit them.
    And the drug whispered its reply, Of course you should. But not just now.
    Something in the pocket of her robe pressed into her thigh, hard and uncomfortable. Leia frowned, trying to recall what she'd carried with her in the garment's bulky folds to the meeting with Ashgad. The answer was, of course, Nothing. The velvet garment of state was sufficiently heavy without adding weight to it.
    But in that case, who could have put something there, and when She fished and fumbled around until she found the pocket in the lining, originally designed to carry a recording device or, depending on who the wearer planned to meet, a hold-out blaster.
    Clumsy with the effects of the sweetblossom, her fingers closed on metal.
    It was her lightsaber.
    She brought it out, stared at it in a kind of shock. Touched the switch, the quivering laser blade humming faintly, pale blue and nearly invisible in the odd, morning light.
    Luke's voice came to her, Keep up with your lightsaber practice. You need it. And like an echo, the voice of the Anakin she had never heard, We have the Power . . .
    She pushed the ugly dream from her mind. But she couldn't push from her the knowledge of what they were The grandchildren of Darth Vader, with only the teaching of Law and Justice between the New Republic and that terrible dream. She remembered all the efforts that had been made to kidnap them, to use them, to twist them into tools for greed or obsession. And all the while people assumed that she would teach them better, teach them not to use their powers for selfishness or impulse, while she watched the jackals of the broken Empire and the members of her own Council squabble and snatch and waste time and lives.
    And Luke kept urging her to take up that personal, frightening power the power of Palpatine. The power to have it all her own way.
    She touched the switch again. The shining blade was gone.
    Artoo. Dimly she remembered Threepio's despairing wails into the comm, and as she slid toward cold darkness, the soft clickety-whirr of the astromech's servos near her. Artoo knew I was in danger. He helped me the only way he could.
    She closed her eyes, fighting tears.
    I will kill them, she thought, the cold fury breaking through the sluggishness of the drug. Ashgad, and Dzym, and that foul Hutt, and Liegeus with his drugged drinks and phony concern. Whatever they're up to, I'll destroy them.
    Before Liegeus came back, she thought, she'd better check out her room for