to a small resort town nestled at its foot. Lights from the town’s buildings blinked through the trees and other foliage. The susurrus of traffic and city life carried up the hill.
It was late, but not so late that she couldn’t hail an aircar taxi and get to the spaceport before her absence was noted.
Without looking back, she sped off into the night.
When she reached town, she located a line of automated aircar taxis parked outside an open-air eatery filled with young people. A Rodian chef manned the central grill, his arms a whirl of cleavers and knives. The smell of roasted meat, smoke, and a spice she could not place filled the air. Music blared from speakers, the bass causing the ground to vibrate. She kept her hood drawn over her face and hopped into the first taxi in line. The anthropomorphic droid driver put an elbow on the seat and turned to face her. It wore a ridiculous cloth hat designed to make it look more human. Given her own fragile emotions, Aryn was pleased to have a droid driver. Droids were voids to her empathic sense.
“Destination, please.”
“The Eeseen spaceport,” she answered.
“Very good, mistress,” it said.
The door of the taxi closed, the engine started, and the car climbed into the air. The town fell away underneath them.
The droid’s social programming kicked in, and it tried to make small talk designed to put a passenger at ease. “Are you from Alderaan, mistress?”
“No,” Aryn said.
“Ah, then may I recommend that you try—”
“I have no need for conversation,” she said. “Please drive in silence.”
“Yes, mistress.”
Once the taxi took position at commercial altitude and fell into a lane, the droid accelerated the taxi to a few hundred kilometers per hour. They’d make the spaceport in half an hour. She considered powering on the in-car vidscreen but decided against it. Instead, she looked out the window at other traffic, at the dark Alderaanian terrain.
“Spaceport ahead, mistress,” said the droid.
Below and ahead, the Eeseen spaceport—one of many on Alderaan—came into view. Aryn could not have missed it. Its lights glowed like a galaxy.
One of the larger structures on the planet, the spaceport was really a series of interconnected structures that straddled fifty square kilometers. The main hub of the port was a series of tiered, concentric arms that twisted around a core of mostly transparisteel, which locals called “the bubble.” It was very much a self-contained city, with its own hotels, restaurants, medical facilities, and security forces.
From above, Aryn knew, the spaceport looked similar to a spiral-armed galaxy. It could dock several hundred ships at a time, from large superfreighters on the lower-level cargo platforms to single-being craft on the upper platforms. A tower for planetary control stuck out of the top of the bubble like a fat antenna.
Due to the late hour, most of the upper docking platforms were dark, but the lower levels were bright and busy with activity. As Aryn watched, a large cargo freighter descended toward one of the lower platforms, while two others began their slow ascent out of dock and into the atmosphere. Shipping firms often did much of their work at night, when in-atmosphere traffic was reduced.
Watching it all, Aryn was once more struck with the oddity of the fact that life for everyone else in the galaxy went on as it had, while the Republic itself was in grave danger. She wanted desperately to scream at all of them: What do you think is going to happen next!
But instead she kept it inside, an emotional pressure that she thought must soon pop an artery.
Dozens of speeders, swoops, and loader droids flew, buzzed, crawled, and rolled along the port’s many docks and in the air around the landing platforms. Automated cranes lifted the huge shipping containers carried in the bays of freighters.
Even from half a kilometer out, Aryn could see the lines of people and droids riding the autowalks and lifts within the spaceport’s central bubble. The whole structure looked like an insect hive. A portion of the bubble near the top housed a luxury hotel. Each room featured a balcony that looked out on Alderaan’s natural beauty. Seeing them, Aryn thought of her exchange with Syo.
“A Jedi must sacrifice,” she said.
She was about to do exactly that.
“I’m sorry, mistress,” said the droid. “Did you say something?”
“No.”
“What entrance, mistress?”
“I need to get to level one, sublevel D.”
“Very good, mistress.”
The aircar descended from the traffic lane to stop at one of the entrances on level one of the