by James Luceno
Shryne’s eyebrows bobbed. “Good question.”
When the assembled crew members fell into a separate conversation, Starstone moved close to Shryne. “Just what is our plan, Mas—”
Shryne’s lifted finger stopped her midsentence. “No order; no ranks.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, echoing his quiet tone. “You agreed that other Jedi probably survived.”
“Listen, kid,” he said, gazing at her for emphasis, “the Climbers of this galaxy are few and far between.”
“Jedi could have survived by other means. It’s our duty to locate them.”
“Our duty?”
“To ourselves. To the Force.”
Shryne took a deep breath. “How do you propose we do that?”
She gnawed at her lower lip while she considered it, then looked at him pointedly. “We have Master Chatak’s beacon transceiver. If we could patch it into the Drunk Dancer’s communications suite, we could issue a Nine Thirteen code on encrypted frequencies.”
Shryne laughed in spite of himself. “You know, that could actually work.” He glanced at the crew members. “Still, I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”
She returned the smile. “But you’re not me.”
When Shryne turned back to the crew, he found Skeck gazing at him. “So I guess your scheme failed, huh?”
“Which scheme would that be, chief?”
Skeck glanced at his crewmates before answering. “Knocking Palpatine off his perch. Fighting the war the way it probably should have been fought all along.”
“You’ve been misinformed,” Shryne said flatly.
Skeck sat back in feigned nonchalance. “Really? We’ve all heard the recordings of what went on in Palpatine’s chambers.”
The other crew members nodded somberly.
“Don’t get me wrong,” the first mate continued before Shryne could respond. “I’ve nothing against any of you personally. But you have to admit, the way some of your people conducted themselves when Republic interests were at stake … The prestige you enjoyed. The wealth you amassed.”
“I give the Jedi credit for trying,” the slicer, Filli Bitters, chimed in. “But you should never have left yourselves so shorthanded on Coruscant. Not with so many troopers garrisoned there.”
Shryne laughed cheerlessly. “We were needed in the Outer Rim Sieges, you see.”
“Don’t you get it?” Eyl Dix said. “The Jedi were played.” When she shrugged her narrow shoulders, her twin antennae bobbed. “That’s what Cash thinks, anyway.”
Skeck laughed in derision. “From where I sit, getting played is worse than losing.”
“You’ll be safe from Imperial reach on Mossak,” Bitters said quickly, in an obvious attempt to be cheerful.
Sudden silence told Shryne that none of the Drunk Dancer’s crew was buying the slicer’s optimism.
“I realize that we’re already in your debt,” he said at last, “but we’ve a proposition for you.”
Skeck’s green eyes widened in interest. “Lay it out. Let’s see how it looks.”
Shryne turned to Starstone. “Tell them.”
She gestured to herself. “Me?”
“It was your idea, kid.”
“Okay,” Starstone began uncertainly. “Sure.” She cleared her voice. “We’re hoping to make contact with other Jedi who survived Palpatine’s execution orders. We have a transceiver capable of transmitting on encrypted frequencies. Any Jedi who survived will be doing the same thing, or listening for special transmissions. The thing is, we’d need to use the Drunk Dancer’s communications suite.”
“That’s a little like whistling in the stellar wind, isn’t it?” Dix said. “From what we hear, the clones got the drop on all of you.”
“Almost all of us,” Starstone said.
Bitters was rocking his head back and forth in uncertainty, but Shryne could tell that the white-haired computer expert was excited by the idea—and perhaps grateful for a chance to win points with Olee. Regardless, Filli said: “Could be dangerous. The Empire might be on to those frequencies by now.”
“Not if as many of us are dead as all of you seem to think,” Shryne countered.
Bitters, Dix, and Archyr waited for Skeck to speak.
“Well, of course, we’d have to get the captain to agree,” he said at last. “Anyway, I’m still waiting to hear the rest of the proposition—the part that makes it worth our while.”
Everyone looked at Shryne.
“The Jedi have means of accessing emergency funds,” he said, with a covert motion of his hand. “You don’t have to worry about being paid for your services.”
Skeck nodded, satisfied. “Then we don’t have to worry about being paid for our services.”
While Starstone was staring at Shryne in appalled disbelief and the crew members were talking among themselves about how best to slave the Jedi beacon transceiver to the communications suite, Brudi Gayn and a tall human woman entered the cabin space from the direction of the Drunk Dancer’s bulbous cockpit. The woman’s black hair was shot through with gray, and her age showed there and in her face more than in the way she moved.
“Captain,” Skeck said, coming to his feet, but she ignored him, her gray eyes fixed on Shryne.
“Roan Shryne?” she said.
Shryne looked up at her. “Last time I checked.”
She forced an exhale and shook her head in incredulity. “Stars’ end, it really is you.” She sat down opposite Shryne, without once taking her eyes off him. “You’re the image of Jen.”
Baffled, Shryne said: “Do I know you?”
She nodded and laughed. “On a cellular level, at any rate.” She touched herself on the chest. “I gave birth to you. I’m your mother, Jedi.”
The Emperor’s medical rehabilitation laboratory occupied the crown of Coruscant’s tallest building. A room of modest size, the laboratory’s antechamber closely resembled his former chambers in the Senate Office Building, and featured a semicircle of padded couch, three swivel chairs with shell-shaped backs, and a trio of squat holoprojectors shaped like truncated cones.
Palpatine sat in the center chair, his hands on his knees, the lights of Coruscant blazing behind him through a long arc of fixed windows. The cowl of his heavy robe was lowered, and the blinking telltales of an array of devices and control panels lit his deeply creased face, the face he kept concealed from his advisers and Senatorial guests.
For here he was not simply Emperor Palpatine, he was Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith.
On the far side of thick panels of transparisteel that separated the antechamber from a rib-walled operating theater, Vader sat on the edge of the surgical table on which he had been recalled to life and transformed. His flaring black helmet had been lifted from his head by servos that extended from the laboratory’s ceiling, revealing the pasty complexion of his synthflesh face and the raised wounds on his head that might never fully heal.
The medical droids responsible for repairing what had remained of Vader’s amputated limbs and incinerated body, some of which had observed and participated in the cyborg transformation of General Grievous on Geonosis a decade earlier, had been reduced to scrap by a scream that had torn from Vader’s scorched throat on his learning of his wife’s death. Now a 2-1B droid responding to Vader’s voiced instruction was tending to an injury to Vader’s left-arm prosthesis, the cause of which he had yet to explain.
“The last time you were in this facility, you were in no condition to supervise your own convalescence, Lord Vader,” Sidious said, his words transmitted to the pressurized laboratory by the antechamber’s sensitive enunciators.
“And I will remain ward of myself from this point forward,” Vader said through the intercom system.
“Ward of yourself,” Sidious repeated in an exacting tone.
“When it comes to overseeing modifications of this … shell, Master,” Vader clarified.
“Ah. As it should be.”
The
humaniform 2-1B was in the midst of executing Vader’s instructions when sparks geysered from Vader’s left forearm, and blue electricity began to gambol across his chest. With an infuriated growl, Vader lifted the injured arm, hurling the med droid halfway across the laboratory.
“Useless machine!” he shouted. “Useless! Useless!”
Sidious watched his apprentice with rising concern.
“What is troubling you, my son? I’m aware of the suit’s limitations, and of the exasperation you must be experiencing. But anger is wasted on the droid. You must reserve your rage for times when you can profit from it.” He appraised Vader again. “I think I begin to understand the cause of your frustration … Your rage owes little to the suit or the droid’s ineptitude. Something disturbing occurred on Murkhana. Some occurrence you have elected to keep from me. For your good or mine? I wonder.”
Vader took a long moment to reply. “Master, I found the three Jedi who escaped Order Sixty-Six.”
“What of it?”
“The damage to my arm was done by one of them, though she is now dead, by my blade.”
“And the other two?”
“They eluded me.” Vader lifted his scarred face to regard Sidious. “But they wouldn’t have if this suit didn’t restrict me to the point of immobility! If the Star Destroyer you placed at my command was properly equipped! If Sienar had completed work on the starfighter I designed!”
Sidious waited until Vader was finished, then stood up and walked to within a meter of the room’s transparent panels. “So, my young apprentice, two Jedi slip through your grasp and you scatter the blame like leaves blown about by a storm.”
“Master, if you had been there—”
“Keep still,” Sidious interrupted, “before you damage yourself all the more.” He gave Vader a moment to compose himself. “First, let me reiterate that the Jedi mean nothing to us. In having survived, Yoda and Obi-Wan aren’t exceptions to the rule. I’m certain that dozens of Jedi escaped with their lives, and in due time you will have the pleasure of killing many of them. But of greater import is the fact that their order has been crushed. Finished, Lord Vader. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Master,” Vader muttered.
“In burying their heads in the sands and snows of remote worlds, the surviving Jedi humble themselves before the Sith. So let them: let them atone for one thousand years of arrogance and self-absorption.”
Sidious watched Vader, displeased.
“Once more your thoughts betray you. I see that you are not yet fully convinced.”
Glancing at him, Vader gestured to his face and black-cloaked body, then gestured in similar fashion to Sidious. “Look at us. Are these the faces of victory?”
Sidious was careful to keep himself from becoming too angry, or too sickened by his pupil’s self-pity.
“We are not this crude stuff, Lord Vader. Have you not heard that before?”
“Yes,” Vader said. “Yes, I’ve heard it before. Too often.”
“But from me you will learn the truth of it.”
Vader lifted his face. “In the same way you told me the truth about being able to save Padmé?”
Sidious was not taken aback. For the past month he had been expecting to hear just such an accusation from Vader. “I had nothing to do with Padmé Amidala’s death. She died as a result of your anger at her betrayal, my young apprentice.”
Vader looked at the floor. “You’re right, Master. I brought about the very thing I feared for her. I’m to blame.”
Sidious adopted a more compassionate tone. “Sometimes the Force has other plans for us, my son. Fortunately I arrived at Mustafar in time to save you.”
“Save me,” Vader said without emotion. “Yes, yes, of course you did, Master. And I suppose I should be grateful.” He got up from the table and walked to the panel to place himself opposite Sidious. “But what good is power without reward? What good is power without joy?”
Sidious didn’t move. “Eventually you will come to see that power is joy. The path to the dark side is not without terrible risk, but it is the only path worth following. It matters not how we appear, in any case, or who is sacrificed along the way. We have won, and the galaxy is ours.”
Vader’s eyes searched Sidious’s face. “Did you promise as much to Count Dooku?”
Sidious bared his teeth, but only briefly. “Darth Tyranus knew what he risked, Lord Vader. If he had been stronger in the dark side, you would be dead, and he would be my right hand.”
“And if you should encounter someone stronger than I am?”
Sidious almost smiled. “There is none, my son, even though your body has been crippled. This is your destiny. We have seen to that. Together we are unconquerable.”
“I wasn’t strong enough to defeat Obi-Wan,” Vader said.
Sidious had had enough.
“No, you weren’t,” he said. “So just imagine what Yoda might have done to you.” He flung his words with brutal honesty. “Obi-Wan triumphed because he went to Mustafar with a single intention in mind: to kill Darth Vader. If the Jedi order had showed such resolute intention, if it had remained focused on what needed to be done rather than on fears of the dark side, it might have proved more difficult to topple and eradicate. You and I might have lost everything. Do you understand?”
Vader looked at him, breathing deeply. “Then I suppose I should be grateful for what little I have been able to hold on to.”
“Yes,” Sidious said curtly. “You should.”
The crew of the Drunk Dancer was every bit as surprised by their captain’s revelations as Shryne was. For most of them, though, the disclosure only explained why they had come to place so much trust in Jula’s judgment and intuition.
Shryne and the woman who claimed to be his mother were sitting in a dark alcove off the main cabin, untouched meals between them and blue-tinted holoimages to one side, allegedly showing a nine-month-old Roan taking his first steps outside the modest dwelling that had been his home for just over three years. He had never enjoyed seeing likenesses of himself, and the images merely served to increase his embarrassment over the entire situation.
Master Nat-Sem had once told him that vanity was the cause of such uneasiness, and had ordered Shryne to spend a full week staring at his own reflection in a mirror, in an effort to teach Shryne that what he saw was no more who he was than a map of a place could be considered the territory itself.
Clear across the cabin, Eyl Dix, Filli Bitters, and Starstone were huddled around the ship’s communications suite, into which Filli had managed to patch Bol Chatak’s beacon transceiver, and the Drunk Dancer was now transmitting on frequencies Jedi would scan in case of trouble, or if attempting to establish contact with other Jedi. The talented young slicer, whose face was nearly as colorless as his short spiked hair, was still trying his best to engage Starstone’s interest, but she was either ignoring his attempts or simply too focused on awaiting a return signal to be aware of them.
With her dark complexion and black curls, and Bitters’s towheaded brilliance, they made for an interesting-looking couple, and Shryne wondered if perhaps Starstone hadn’t unwittingly stumbled on a new path to follow.
Elsewhere in the main cabin, Brudi, Archyr, and Skeck were playing cards at a circular table, labor droids whirring in to clean up their dropped snacks and spilled drinks. All in all it was a pleasant setup, Shryne decided. Almost like a family living room, with the kids playing games, the adults watching competition sports on the HoloNet, and the hired help in the kitchen preparing a big lunch for everyone.
As a Jedi, he had scant familiarity with any of it. The Temple had been more like a huge dormitory, and one was constantly aware of being in service to a cause greater than one’s family or oneself. Frequently there were classes or briefings to attend, chores that needed completing as part of one’s training, and long meditative or lightsaber combat sessions with Masters or peers, except for those rare days when one was allowed to wander about Coruscant, sa
mpling bits of a different reality.
In some ways the Jedi had led a life of royalty.
The order had been wealthy, privileged, entitled.
And that was why we didn’t see it coming, Shryne thought.
Why so many of the Jedi had turned a blind eye to the trap Palpatine had been setting. Because they had refused to accept that such entitlement could ever come to an end—could all come crashing down around them. And yet even those who hadn’t denied the possibility would never have believed that thousands of Jedi could be killed in one fell swoop, or that the order could be ended with one bold stroke, as if pierced through the heart.
We were played, he told himself.
And Skeck was right: knowing that you had been played was worse than losing.
But Roan Shryne—by a quirk of fate, circumstance, the will of the Force—had survived, been brought face-to-face with his mother, and was now at a loss as to what to make of it.
He had seen his share of mothers interacting with their children, and he understood what a child was supposed to feel, how he or she was supposed to behave. But all he felt toward the woman opposite him was an unspecific connection in the Force.
Shryne wasn’t the first Jedi to have inadvertently encountered a blood relative. Over the years he had heard stories about Padawans, Jedi Knights, even Masters running into parents, siblings, cousins …
Unfortunately, he had never heard how any of the stories ended.
“I never wanted you to be found,” Jula said when she had deactivated the holoprojector. “To this day I don’t understand how your father could hand you over to the Jedi. When I learned he had contacted the Temple, and that Jedi agents were coming for you, I tried to talk your father into hiding you.”
“That rarely happens,” Shryne said. “Most Force-sensitive infants were voluntarily surrendered to the Temple.”
“Really? Well, it happened to me.”
Shryne regarded her with his eyes, and through the Force.
“Who do you think you inherited your abilities from?” Jula asked.