Children of the Jedi

by Barbara Hambly

  A tug on his belt caught his attention. Luke put down his hand protectively as the Jawa pawed at the lightsaber that hung at his belt--the second lightsaber, the one it had brought him. After a moment's hesitation Luke yielded it, and the Jawa ran to a spot directly under the open shaft. It set the weapon on the floor, considered it for a moment, then moved it a few centimeters and changed the angle, clearly re-creating the exact position in which it had been found. Luke hobbled to stand over it, and looked up. The shaft gaped above him, a narrow chimney breathing death. It led to the heart of the ship. There were too many power lines, too many bundles of fiber-optic cables, too many heavy-duty coolant pipes for it to lead anywhere but to the computer core. Luke stooped, carefully balancing on his staff, and picked up the lightsaber, then straightened and gazed up into the darkness again.

  He understood. Someone had ascended that shaft, thirty years ago. There had been two of them who'd made it onto the ship in the battered ally-wing he'd found. One had taken the launch and left, probably arguing that reinforcements should be sought.

  The other had known, or guessed, that there might not be time before the ship jumped to hyperspace to start its mission: that the risk was too great, the stakes too high, to permit the luxury of getting out of there alive. And that other had remained, to attempt to disarm the Will. The deadly enclision grid seemed to grin, like pale, waiting teeth.

  "I'm sorry," said Luke, very softly, to that waiting column of shadow. "I wish I could have been here to help you." She would have needed help.

  He turned the weapon in his hand, knowing instinctively that it had been a woman who made it, who wielded it. A woman with large hands and a long reach, to judge by the weapon's proportions.... Yoda had told him that the old Jedi Masters could learn quite startling things about a Knight just by examining the lightsaber whose making was a Jedi's final test. Around the rim of the handgrip someone had taken the time to inlay a thin line of bronze tsaelke, the long-necked, graceful cetaceans of Chad III'S deep oceans.

  Still more quietly, he said, "I wish I could have known you."

  He clipped the lightsaber to his belt, and began to hunt for the way this woman--his colleague and fellow Jedi--had gotten into the gun room. There was only one entrance, straight into a turbolift, which refused to respond to Luke's touch on the summoning button, but at a guess it was the way she had used. With a little effort he could short the doors into opening, he knew. From there he'd have access to the decks below, either via rope--which could be liberated from a storeroom--or via levitation, if he wanted to risk that great a drain on his limited strength. He wondered if the Force could be used--as it sometimes could--to hold off the blue lightning-threads of the enclision grid long enough for him to get up the shaft to the ship's computer core. The thought of trying it turned him cold.

  Once in the core, it should be fairly simple to trigger an overload, to destroy the Eye of Palpatine as it should have been destroyed thirty years ago...And hadn't been.

  He remembered the Klagg's screams as it bled and charred to agonizing death in the gangway. The Jedi who had ascended that shaft had lived long enough to damage the ship's activation trigger, dying up in the core while the Will itself had been left alive. Because she hadn't been quite strong enough? Quite experienced enough? Or was the enclision grid something not even the strength of a Master could outlast?

  A dirty little hand closed around his sleeve. "Not good, not good." The Jawa tried to pull him in the direction of the repair shaft that led downward again. It pointed up at the dark square in the ceiling. "Bad. Die a lot."

  Die a lot. Luke thought about the Jawas, and the filthy, rival, feuding villages of the Klaggs and the Gakfedds, reestablishing here the patterns of their homeworld in terms of what they now thought they were. About the Kitonaks in the rec room, waiting patiently for their Chooba slugs to crawl into their mouths, and the dead Affytechan on the floor, and the Talz guarding each other's backs--against whom?--as they took water to the tripods. Destroying the ship, he understood, was going to be the easy part.

  See-Threepio was sitting in front of the comm screen in the quartermaster's office, a long flex of cable plugged into the droud at the back of his cranium and a tone of serious annoyance in his voice as he said, "You silly machine, you've got enclaves of alien life forms all over you, what do you mean, "No life forms alien to the intent of the Will?" What about a trace on Galactic Registry Standard 011-733-800-022?"

  Luke leaned one shoulder against the jamb of the doorway, aware that there was no more need for Threepio to address the Will aloud than there was for the droid to use human speech to communicate with Artoo-Detoo. But Threepio was programmed to interface with civilized life forms, to think like a civilized life form. And one of the marks of nearly every civilization Luke had ever encountered had been chattiness. Threepio was chatty. "What do you mean there are no life forms of that Registry number on board? You have seventy-six Gamorreans in residence!"

  "I already tried that, Threepio." Luke stepped into the room, his entire body aching from the compensation of walking with the staff, the unaccustomed, agonizingly repeated set of movements involved in dragging himself up the ladder rungs by the strength of his arms.

  Threepio turned in his chair--another unnecessary human mannerism, for his audio receptors would have picked up, and identified, Luke's footsteps and breathing eighteen meters down the hall.

  "According to the Will, there are no aliens on this ship," said Luke, with a kind of wry weariness. ”According to the Will, concentrations of bodies with internal temperatures of a hundred and five degrees--Gamorrean normal--don't exist, either. Or those with temperatures of a hundred and ten, or one-six, or eighty-three, which means there aren't any Jawas, Kitonaks, or Affytechans around. But I have found a way to get up onto the upper decks without—was…”

  From the speaker on the wall on Luke's right a triple chime sounded, and green lights flared in the onyx void of a ten-centimeter in-ship comm screen above the desk. "Attention, all personnel," said a musical contralto voice. ”Attention, all personnel. Tomorrow at thirteen hundred hours an Internal Security Hearing will be broadcast on all ship's channels. Tomorrow at thirteen hundred hours an Internal Security Hearing will be broadcast on all ship's channels."

  The screen sprang to unexpected life. Within it Luke saw the image of Cray, her hands bound, her mouth sealed shut with silver engine tape, her dark eyes wide and scared and furious, being held between two ludicrously uniformed Gamorrean troopers, Klaggs by their helmets.

  "Observation of this hearing is mandatory for all personnel. Refusal or avoidance of observation will be construed as sympathy with the ill intentions of the subject."

  After the first shocked second Luke focused his attention on the background, the texture and color of the walls behind Cray and her guards--darker than those in the crew decks and not as cleanly finished--the relative lowness of the ceilings, the visible beams, bolts, and conduits. A corner of a makeshift hut intruded on the scene, part of a packing box with Sorosub Imports Division stenciled on it and a roof made of what looked like a survival tarp. Klagg village, he thought.

  Nichos stood by the hut, a restraining bolt riveted to his chest and wretched, haunted horror in his eyes. "All personnel with evidence to lay against the subject are requested to speak to their division Surveillance Representative as soon as possible. Neglect in this matter, when discovered, will be construed as sympathy with the ill intentions of the subject."

  Cray jerked her arm against the Gamorrean's grasp, kicked hard at his shin. The Klagg half turned and struck her hard enough to have knocked her down had he and the other guard not kept hold of her arms; her face and the shoulder visible through her torn uniform tunic bore other bruises already. Luke saw the look of agony Nichos cast in her direction, but the droid-man made no move, no effort, of either help or comfort. He couldn't, Luke knew, because of the restraining bolt. The guards were half carrying the nearly unconscious Cray out of vid range when the vid
itself went dark. Nichos remained where he was, his eyes the only living part of his motionless face.

  "Sorry, son, but we've had orders." Ugbuz folded his heavy arms and regarded Luke with a gaze that was hard as flint and not a bit sorry. The Gakfedd chief nodded to himself, as if savoring the orders, or the feeling of having had them, an eerily human gesture that made the hair on Luke's neck prickle.

  "Yeah, I know we have to get them Klagg sons of sows..." The phrase came out all as one word, a leftover fragment from the part of Ugbuz that was still a Gakfedd, his... but we have orders to find the Rebel saboteurs before they wreck the ship."

  His eyes narrowed, hard and yellow and vicious, studying Luke, as if he remembered it was Luke who had stopped them from torturing the Jawa.

  Luke extended the power of the Force, focused it with the small gesture of his hand. "Yet it's vital that we find the Klagg stronghold immediately.” It was like trying to grasp one-handed a wet stone twice the diameter of his grip. He could see it in Ugbuz's eyes. He wasn't trying to influence the Gamorrean, but the strength of the Will.

  "Sure, sure it's vital, Klagg sons of sows, but we have orders to find the Rebel saboteurs before they wreck the ship."

  It was a programmed loop. Luke knew he wouldn't be able to get past it. Not with his body shaky from exhaustion, his mind aching from the effort to keep trauma and infection at bay. The big boar's brow furrowed suspiciously. "Now you tell me again why you had us let that saboteur go?"

  Before Luke could answer there was a clamor of voices from the edge of the village. Ugbuz spun, jaw coming forward and drool stringing from his heavy tusks. "Got some!" he bellowed, yanked his blaster from the holster at his hip, and dashed for the dark rectangle of doorway into the corridor. From the huts all around the cavernous hold other Gakfedds came running, pulling on helmets and picking up axes, laser carbines, vibro-weapons, and blasters--two of them had gotten ion cannons from somewhere and one had a portable missile launcher.

  "I do see their point, Master Luke." Threepio creaked briskly after him as he followed, much more slowly, in Ugbuz's wake. ”We've already lost the lighting in almost all of Deck Eleven and it's getting more and more difficult to locate a computer terminal in working order. If the Jawas are not stopped they will eventually jeopardize the life support of the vessel itself."

  As they passed the largest hut the matriarch Bullyak emerged, huge arms folded between her first and second sets of breasts, grimy braids framing a face replete with warts, morrt bites, suspicion, and disgust. She squealed something irritably, and spat voluminously on the floor. Threepio inclined his body in a little half bow and replied, "I quite agree, Madame. I agree absolutely. Jawas are no fit combat for a true boar. She's quite annoyed," he explained to Luke.

  "I guessed."

  When they reached the shaft in the laundry drop, Luke said, "I'll levitate you as far as the first hatchway onto Deck Fourteen. I'll take Deck Fifteen. We know the Klagg was trying to go up the gangway when he was killed, so we know their village is above us. Look for any sign of the Klaggs--footprints, blood, torn clothing..." By this time Luke knew the Gamorreans were as likely to fight within the tribe as outside it.

  "I shall certainly try, sir," replied the droid humbly. "But with the SP-80'S doing their duty in cleaning the floors and walls, tracking won't be easy."

  "Do the best you can." Luke reflected that this would have been easier if Cray had been in her right senses--her true identity--when she'd been carried off. "Look also for the kind of walls we saw in the background of the video announcement. The tarp and the crate in that hut have to have come from Mission Stores. Make a note if you see anything similar. Also storerooms for regular navy trooper equipment, as opposed to stormtroopers. I'll be back to get you down the shaft again at twenty-two hundred."

  When he reached Deck 15, Luke found that Threepio was only too right about the SP-80'S and their unflagging mission to keep the Eye of Palpatine spotless. He found half a dozen plates and cups from the mess hall--polished clean by the MSE'S but lying where they had been dropped--but no further evidence of where the Klaggs might have trodden. It was going to be a task, he realized, of laboriously quartering the decks one by one, looking for physical signs of the Klaggs and trying to pick up some trace, some whisper, of recognizable mental resonance from Cray.

  And Threepio wouldn't even be able to do that. A crippled man and a protocol droid. Luke leaned momentarily against the wall, trying not to think about the bruises on Cray's face, the way her body had snapped against the guards' brutal grip. Trying not to think about the look in Nichos's eyes.

  Thirteen hundred hours tomorrow.

  He limped on. The Klagg had been trying to go up. The walls on this deck--or in this section of this deck, which seemed to house the repair installations for the TIE fighters--were darker than those of the crew quarters below, the ceilings lower, but without the metal beams he'd seen in the vid transmission.

  A hangar? he wondered. Storage hold? A corridor stretched to his left, pitch dark. Far down it he heard the scrabble of feet, saw the yellow rat-gleam of Jawa eyes. They were eating the ship to pieces. No wonder the Will had ordered Ugbuz to exterminate them. But he had the suspicion that whatever the result of the Jawa depredations, it would only kill the living crew. Nothing the Jawas could do--not damage or death of those aboard--would prevent the battlemoon's jump to hyperspace, when it thought nobody was looking. It would have no effect on its capacity to blow the city of Plawal--and probably the other settlements on Belsavis for good measure--to powder and mud.

  He'd seen what the Empire had left of Coruscant, of Mon Calamari, of the Atravis Systems. He'd felt the screaming outcry of the Force, like the ripping apart of organs within his own body, when Carida had gone up. To prevent that, he thought, he would go up the enclision grid himself, to make his own attempt at destroying this monster's mechanical heart.

  Luke tried a door, and when it refused to open limped down the corridor, testing another, and another, until he found one that responded to his command. There was light in that area of the ship, and the air, though chemical, had the slightly ozoneous smell of new, clean oxygen that hadn't been passed around a hundred sets of lungs. He found another messroom coffee cup on the floor, but no sign of the Klaggs. No trace of Cray's consciousness.

  It was difficult to keep his bearings, difficult to quarter the ship accurately, because of the closed blast doors on some passageways. He was forced repeatedly to circle through offices, laundry drops, lounges, counting turnings and open doors as he went. As a desert boy he'd learned early to orient himself with the most ephemeral of landmarks, and his training as a Jedi had sharpened and heightened this ability to an almost preternatural degree, but there were miles of corridor, hundreds of identical doors. SP-80'S patiently made their rounds along the wall panels, removing already invisible smudges and stains, so there was no sense in marking his way physically with chalk or engine oil. MSE'S scurried on their automated errands, as undistinguished from one another as the carefully cloned bepps grown in Bith hydroponics tanks: Luke had heard the expression "as alike as bepps" all his life without ever meeting anyone who actually enjoyed eating the precise, six-centimeter-square, pale-pink, nutritionally balanced and absolutely flavorless cubes.

  Down a darkened hall a square of white light lay against a wall. Shadows passed across it, and Luke's quick hearing picked up the mutter of voices. Dragging himself along on a crutch, silence was out of the question, but he moved slowly, keeping his distance, extending his senses to listen, to pick out the words...

  Then he relaxed. Though they were saying things like "All gunnery ports cleared, Commander," and "Incoming reports on status of scouts, sir," the lisping musicality of the voices--several octaves higher than those of human children--let him know that he'd just stumbled on an enclave of Affytechans.

  The room was some kind of operations systems node, more likely connected to the ship's recycling and water-pumping lines than to its weaponry. Not that
it mattered to the Affytechans. The gorgeous inhabitants of Dom-Bradden--petaled, tasseled, tufted, and fluttering with hundreds of tendrils and shoots--were bent over the circuit tracers and inventory processors, tapping the responseless keyboards and gazing into the blank screens with the intensity of Imperial guards on a mission from Palpatine himself. And perhaps they thought they were. Luke had never been quite able to tell about the Affytechans.

  Did they know, he wondered, leaning in the doorway, that the levers weren't moving, the knobs weren't turning? That the screens before them were dead as wet slate? "Prepare to launch TIE fighters, Lieutenant," sang out the obvious commander, a frilled purple thing with haloes of white fur outlining the yellow exuberance of its stamens, and the lieutenant--sixteen shades of oranges, yellows, and reds and big around as a barrel--gripped levers in its talons and produced an amazing oratorio of sound effects, none of which had the slightest relation to any mechanical noise Luke had ever heard.

  As far as Luke had been able to ascertain, the Affytechans, unlike the Gamorreans, sought to harm no one. Their consciousness, if they had any, was wholly sunk into the dreams of the Imperial Space Service, not divided between dream and reality.

  "They're firing on us, Captain!" cried a beautiful thing of yellow and blue. "Plasma torpedoes coming in on port deflector shields!" Three or four others made what they clearly fancied were explosion noises--rumblings like thunder and shrill cries--and everyone in the room staggered wildly from one side of the chamber to the other as if the ship had taken a massive hit, waving their flaps and petals and shedding white and gold pollen like clouds of luminous dust.

  "Return fire! Return fire! Yes?" The captain's lacy sensors turned like a breeze-tossed meadow in Luke's direction as Luke hobbled over to it and saluted.