Children of the Jedi

by Barbara Hambly

  Deck 6 was utterly dark. The dead air stank of Jawas, of oil, of insulation, of Luke's own sweat as he dragged himself along its lightless corridors, his shadow and Threepio's lurching like drunkards in the dim flicker of the glowrods on his staff. Even those were failing--he'd have to cannibalize a power cell from somewhere and the thought of that niggling little chore made his whole aching body revolt. Ahead of him, and in all directions, he heard the squeak and scuffle of Jawa feet, saw the firebug glimmer of their eyes.

  Threepio, he thought. They'll be after Threepio if I pass out.

  Now and then he smelled, and heard, the Talz, and breathed a sigh of thanks that the Sand People, being essentially conservative, would defend their own territory rather than explore new corridors at this stage of the game.

  Everywhere he saw torn-out panels, looted wiring, SP'S and MSE'S lying gutted and derelict along the walls. Helmets, plates, dismantled blasters and ion mortars strewed the halls--Luke checked the weapons and found that, one and all, they'd had their power cells pulled. Limping painfully down the echoing blackness, Luke had the eerie sensation of being trapped in the gut of a rotting beast, a zombie killer still bent on destruction though its body was being eaten from within.

  This section of Deck 6 was dead to the Will. No wonder Callista had directed him here.

  Cray. Somehow they had to rescue Cray. She'd know how to cope with the Will, know how to disable the artificial intelligence that ruled this metal microcosm.

  Sixteen hundred hours. His whole body felt on the verge of collapse. Somehow he'd have to get enough rest to get up the lift shaft tomorrow. Thirteen levels. His mind flinched from the thought. They ricochet blaster bolts down the shaft...

  "Callista..."

  But there was no reply.

  I exist side by side with the Will.

  She had died in the computer core. Luke had seen how the spirit of the Jedi could detach itself from the physical body, could imbue itself in other things, as Exar Kun's had imbued the stones of Yavin.

  Knowing she had disa4 the automatic trigger--knowing the Empire might very well send an agent to trigger the Eye manually--she had stayed in the gunnery computers for thirty years, guarding the entry to the machine that had taken her life, a fading ghost keeping watch on a forgotten battlefield.

  "Come on, Threepio," he said, and bent to retrieve a hank of cable from the corpse of a gutted MSE. "Let's find ourselves a terminal."

  On Chad Callista said, the letters fading in slowly as a single paragraph, as if rising whole from the depths of her recollection, if our ark were in Wystoh territory--and Wystoh hunt most of the deep oceans where our ranch was--and we had to make a hull repair, or go out to the herd to help an off-season calving, we'd send out something called a foo-twitter the night before, a floater that made some kind of hooting or tweeting. Since Wystoh are frantically territorial, they'd all head for the thing--which by then would be kilometers from the ark--and that would give Papa or me or Uncle Claine a chance to do what we had to do in open water and get back to safety. Would the Klaggs respond to a foo-twitter long enough for you to get up the shaft? They seem pretty territorial to me "If it sounded like Ugbuz and the Gakfedds, they would." Luke leaned back into the heap of blankets and thermal vests Threepio had gathered to make cushions for him in the corner of a repair shop, and considered the screen before him. It had taken most of his salvaged batteries and power cells, rigged in series, to fire up even the smallest of the portable diagnostic units in the shop. With the Jawas in control of most of the deck it would be a hard search for more. But it was a trade-off he was willing to make. Not just that he needed Callista's advice, he realized.

  He wanted her company.

  "Any of the bigger game systems in the lounges will have voders," he said at length. "Threepio, you know the stats on Gamorrean vocal range, don't you?"

  "I can reproduce exactly the language and tonalities of over two hundred thousand sentient civilizations," replied the droid, with perhaps pardonable pride. "Gamorrean verbal tones begin at fifty hertz and run up to thirteen thousand; squeals begin at--”

  "So you could help me program the voder?"

  "With the greatest of ease, Master Luke."

  "Then what we need is a way to get the voder up to Deck Nineteen in time to pull the Klagg guards away from the shaft."

  A schematic appeared on the screen. Not the precise, every-wire-and-conduit blueprint a ship's computer would display, but a more or less to scale sketch of a section of the vessel, labeled in one corner Deck 17. A bright circle flashed around a gangway. Then a window appeared in the screen.

  The gangway's wired. It leads from Recycling--the area of the ship where only the droids go--to Deck 19. If you make your foo-twitter light enough, you should be able to propel it up fast while you keep the enclision grid misfiring enough to let it through without too many hits Luke thought about it. "That's how you did it?" he asked at last. "Caused the grid to misfire?"

  A long hesitation. The schematic faded from the screen. At some slight sound in the corridor, Threepio clanked his way out to check, and the whitish glow of the screen edged his golden form in threads of light as he stood listening in the utter black of the doorway square.

  It's like causing a blaster to misfire. You can't keep them all from firing--there are too many, and some of them always get through-- and you can't keep all the bolts from hitting you Another long pause. She would, Luke thought, have avoided his eyes, as Leia sometimes did when she spoke of Bail Organa, not letting him see her grief.

  The more that hit you, the more that will. But if you case the voder in a gutted tracker droid, you can shoot it up the shaft fast enough to survive a few hits. And a mechanical can absorb a lot more hits than human flesh The more that hit you, thought Luke with a chill, the more that will.

  She'd climbed the shaft from the gun room, knowing she'd be hit... knowing the first hit would break her concentration on the Force, damage her ability to keep the grid from firing, lessen her chances to avoid the second... and the second hit would lessen her chances to avoid the third.

  He remembered how the Klagg's blood had trickled down the steps, and the smell of burned flesh. His heart contracted within him, aching, as the silence lengthened. Very softly, he said, "I wish it hadn't happened."

  Wise, powerful, comforting, he approved with bitter sarcasm. The wisdom of a true Jedi Master.

  It's all right They were silent for a time, as if they stood on either side of fathomless night, reaching across to fingers that could not touch.

  "Were you from Chad?"

  The screen was dark for a long time. He almost feared he'd offended her by asking, or that the batteries had failed. Then words came up, white flowers in the sunken meadow of the void.

  We had a deep-water ranch. We moved with the herds along the Algic Current, from the equator almost to the Arctic Circle. The first time I used the Force was to move pack ice one winter when I got trapped with a band of cows. Papa never understood why I couldn't stay, if I was happy "Were you happy?" He looked down at the lightsaber she'd made for herself, on Dagobah, perhaps, or on whatever planet she'd taken her training. She'd put a line of tsaelke around its handgrip, in memory of the tides of her home.

  I think more happy than I've ever been since Luke didn't ask, Then why did you leave? He knew why she'd left.

  "It's funny," he said softly. "I always hated Tatooine, always hated the farm. Now in a way I think I was lucky. It cost me nothing to leave. Even if my family hadn't been killed, it would have cost me nothing to get out of there."

  The Force was like the pull of the tide. Like the deep-ocean currents that carry the herds on their backs. From the time I was a child I knew there was something there; when I learned what it was, couldn't not seek the Jedi "But you also couldn't explain." Any more than he could explain to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru the inner tide pulling at him, almost before he knew how to speak.

  "They're dead, you know," he said softly. "The Jedi."

/>   Another long darkness, like a hollow in her heart. Then, I know. I felt... the emptiness in the Force. I knew what it meant, without knowing He took a deep breath. "Obi-Wan Kenobi hid out for years on Tatooine; he was my first teacher. After he--”

  killed--I went to Dagobah, to study with Yoda. Yoda died... about seven years ago."

  After I left him. The old grief, the old bitterness, rose in him like a faded ghost. His last pupil... And I left him, only to return too late.

  He thought about Kyp Durron, his own finest student; about Streen and Cilghal and the rest of the tiny group in the jungles of Yavin. About Teneniel of Dathomir, and Cray and Nichos, and Jacen and Jaina and Anakin and all he'd gone through; the hellish forge of the dark side, the Emperor's secret fortress on Wayland and all that had happened there... Exar Kun, and the melted Holocron, Gantoris's ashes smoking on the stones of Yavin and the destruction of worlds.

  His heart was the diamond heart of a Jedi, forged and hard and powerful, but the pain he felt inside him was no less for that. Almost to himself, he whispered something he hadn't even said to Leia, who was like the other half of his soul. "Sometimes it seems like there's just such a long way to go."

  "Master Luke..." Threepio appeared once more in the doorway. "Master Luke, it appears that the Jawas wish to speak with you." He sounded as if he disapproved in advance of whatever it was they might have to say. "They're asking what you have to trade for wire, power cells, and blasters."

  "You know," said Luke, angling a palm-sized diagnostic mirror to see the delicate fastenings of the voder box as he hooked it to the tracker droid's gutted casing, "if somebody had offered me odds on which group of my fellow guests on this little tour had taken the rooms next to the transport shuttles, I'd have bet my boots and lightsaber on it being the Sand People. It had to be them, didn't it?"

  It's something even the Masters don't reveal about the inner nature of the secret heart of the universe The words appeared, minuscule, in the voder's monitor screen. Luke hadn't been aware he'd glanced there automatically for a reply.

  The deepest and darkest secret of all that the Force lets you see "What?"

  She made a whisper by reducing the letters to the tiniest readable specks.

  The universe has a sense of humor Luke shuddered. "I'll have to be a lot higher-level Jedi than I am before I even want to think about that."

  And he felt her rare laughter like a shimmering of the dark air.

  Working on the tracker he'd gotten from the Jawas--it was the one Cray had disabled on Pzob, and at the cost of considerable pain he had used the strength of the Force to heal one of their number of the headache and nausea left over from a bad stunblast, and another of electrical burns on its hands--he'd talked: about Tatooine, and Obi-Wan, and Yoda; about the fall of the Empire and the struggles of the New Republic; about Bakura, and Gaeriel Capiston; about Leia and Han and Chewie and Artoo. About the Academy on Yavin, and the dangers to the unfledged, untried, untaught adepts whose power was growing without any sure knowledge of what to do with it or how to guide it. About Exar Kun.

  About his father.

  And hesitantly, a sentence or two at a time, on the tiny monitor screen or the larger diagnostic--whichever he'd been nearer at the time-Callista had been slowly drawn out: about growing up on the ranch on Chad; about the father who'd never understood and the stepmother who'd been too baffled and unhappy herself to comprehend either of them. About the moons and tides, ice and phosphorus, and the singing of the cy'een far out in the deeps. About Djinn Altis, the Jedi Master who had come to Chad, and the Jedi enclave on Bespin, floating unknown among the clouds.

  It was like riding a cy'een The diagnostic screen flashed a thick, long-necked fish-lizard, huge and matchlessly beautiful and shining with wild power, and Luke felt in the darkness, just for an instant, the touch of salt wind and leashed strength and heard the songs the creatures sang running free in their herds.

  Huge and fast and scary, shining like bronze in the sunlight... but I could do it. Barely "Yes," said Luke, remembering the power of the Force flowing into him as he'd battled Exar Kun for the final time, and that first moment when the lightsaber he'd called to his hand on Hoth tore itself free from the snowbank and flew into his grip. ”Yes."

  He told her about Cray and Nichos, and why they'd gone to Ithor to seek the help of the Healers there; about Drub McKumb's attack, and Han and Leia's mission to Belsavis. "It hasn't been that long," said Luke, sitting back and keying the foo-twitter's makeshift remote. Nothing happened. Resignedly, he undid the fasteners, angled the mirror again, and tried the second of several possible hookups to the A-size power cell. He'd stripped out all the armaments and gripper arms, and most of its memory cores, knowing he'd have to fling it up a long tunnel by effort of his mind alone. ”They're still going to be there. Even if they weren't, there's a whole city on the site now, nearly thirty thousand people."

  It's hard to imagine The words appeared on the monitor, close beside his eyes.

  Plett's House was just a little place, though the crypts went back into the cliff, and all ways up under the glacier. But the part that was outside was just a big stone house, set in the most beautiful garden I've ever seen. I grew up without gardens--you don't have them, on the sea "Nor in the desert."

  I remember it was quiet, like few places I'd been or seen. Maybe night on the ark, after everyone was inside, and the stars come clear down to the edge of the world. But sweeter, because even when it's sleeping, you never can trust the sea "Master Luke?"

  Luke sat up, aware that his back ached and his hands were trembling with fatigue. Threepio came in, yellow eyes twin moons in the almost-dark of the single glowrod's light. The smell of coffee floated around him like an exquisite sunset cloud.

  "I do hope you'll find this acceptable." The golden droid set down the plast cafeteria tray and began removing dish covers. The nearest working mess room of which Callista had been aware had been the Deck 7 Officers' Lounge, and Threepio had volunteered to make the trek while Luke dismantled the tracker the Jawas had traded to him.

  "Selection was rather limited, and those items for which you expressed preference were not to be found. I chose alternates with the same proportion of protein to carbohydrate, and more or less the same texture."

  "No--uh--this is great." Ordinarily Luke wouldn't have touched gukked egg, but he'd been so long without food that anything sounded good. ”Thank you, Threepio. Did you have any trouble?"

  "Very little, sir. I did encounter a group of Jawas, but the Talz chased them away. The Talz think very highly of your efforts to feed and care for the tripods, sir."

  "Are they down here, too?" The gukked eggs were absolutely horrible but Luke ate both of them and was a little surprised at how much better he felt.

  "Oh, yes, sir. Both Talz and tripods. The Talz wish me to convey their goodwill to you and ask if they can be of service."

  Luke wondered momentarily if a Talz would be any more reliable at selecting edible food for human consumption than a droid, then dismissed the thought. By the time he needed another meal he'd be long out of here.

  Good job there are two transports remarked Callista, when Luke returned to work.

  You couldn't take the Klaggs and the Gakfedds off on the same vessel "And which one of them gets to ride with the Sand People?"

  Lander "They'll never go in it," said Luke. "They hate small enclosed spaces."

  I wondered why they keep knocking holes in walls. You'll be lucky if they don't sever the main power trunk to the magnetic field "Another reason to hurry," said Luke grimly. "This whole ship must be driving them crazy. Not that they were ever real good company to begin with."

  You sound like you've studied them Luke laughed. "You could say they were my next-door neighbors growing up. Them and the Jawas. Everybody who lives on Tatooine has to learn enough about the Sand People to stay out of their way."

  He leaned back and flicked the remote. A harsh, guttural voice boomed, "Very well, men, fan out an
d remain quiet. We are going to massacre those smelly Klagg Rebel saboteurs."

  Luke sighed, and shook his head. "Threepio? Little change in the script here..."

  My, what a grammatical stormtrooper commented Callista, where the protocol droid couldn't see.

  Luke grinned as he hooked up the cable. ”Edit that to, "Okay, men, fan out and keep quiet. We're gonna kill them stinkin' Klagg Rebel saboteurs.""

  You forgot to say "sir" Luke started to make the gesture of elbowing her in the arm, as he did when Leia made a smartmouth remark, but stopped. He couldn't.

  Her arms were dust and bone on the gun deck floor.

  Yet she had no more question than he did himself that somehow, all the Eye's captives--Sand People and Gamorreans as well as the Talz, the Jawas, the Affytechans and Kitonaks and the baffled, helpless tripods--had to somehow be taken to safety. It wasn't their fault, or their wanting, that they were here, he thought, angling the mirror to affix the voder's fasteners once again. Savage, violent, destructive as they were, like himself they were captives.

  He moved the mirror, seeking the fasteners, and for a moment saw in it his own reflection, and a sliver of the room behind him: Threepio like a grimed and dented golden statue in the feeble glare of the worklight, compulsively tidying up the abandoned tray.

  And close beside him, visible clearly over his shoulder, the pale oval face within its dark cloud of hair, the gray eyes from which sorrow had faded a little, replaced by caring, by interest, by renewed life.

  Luke's heart turned over within his ribs, and knowledge fell on him--knowledge, horror, and grief like inevitable night.

  Chapter 15

  "She might have had other reasons for lying."

  "Like what?" Leia folded her legs up tailor fashion on the bed and sipped the glass of podon cider she'd picked up on her way through the kitchen. The craftsmen Jevax had promised had made their appearance while Leia was out. The metal shutters, armed with a formidable new lock, were nearly out of sight in their wall sockets on either side of the tall windows, and a new bedroom door was folded into it’s proper slot. Even the cupboard had been fixed. Sitting on the other end of the bed, Han was checking both blasters.