Children of the Jedi

by Barbara Hambly

  "I don't know. I've never seen her. She used to be one of the Emperor's concubines so she's probably beautiful..."

  "The human males who come into port treat her as if she's beautiful," said Jevax with a small smile. "When she's seen, which is rarely. We're a small town, General Solo, and everyone ends up knowing a great deal about everyone else's business... and though it's none of my business, I admit I have always nursed a deep curiosity about Roganda Ismaren."

  "You know where her house is?"

  Jevax nodded.

  At the Chief Person's suggestion they stopped at a small apartment block, to include in their party Stusjevsky, a meter-tall, dark-furred Chadra-Fan who worked in the vine-coffee gardens as a sniffer. "Some things you just can't explain to supervisors," sighed the little creature as he bid a quick good-bye to the group of convivial friends who'd gathered in his apartment for a wine-and-grooming party. He trotted down the outside stair at Jevax's side, big, clawed hands making quick work of the complicated latches on the silk vest he was donning. "The new girl keeps asking why the beans shouldn't be harvested yet--"They're the right color," she says. Right color my left ear!"

  As if called upon for corroborative evidence, his left ear twitched.

  "They're more or less the right color outside, but they smell green inside. Well, she'll learn... What can I do for you, Chief?"

  Black fog shut them in, huge moths and glowbugs dancing around the blurred yellow wool of streetlamps and windows. Overhead the lights on the hanging gardens twinkled dimly through the mists, like alien galaxies of flowering stars.

  Jevax gave him a swift and bowdlerized version of the problem, ending with, "We have reason to believe the house itself is wired with alarms. Before we go in--before we tip anyone off as to our presence--we'd like to know whether anyone's home or not. Can you do that?"

  "Humans?" The Chadra-Fan's huge ears cocked forward, and he glanced from Han to Chewie.

  Jevax nodded.

  Stusjevsky gave him the circle-finger sign universal among those races with opposable thumbs: No Problem. They turned to cross the market square, all lights retreating into dim smudges in the hot, eerie dark. "So what's this I hear about the landing silos being locked up?"

  The Chief Person gestured helplessly. ”We think it's a malfunction in the programming of the central servo between the computer and the doors over the silos. It looks like it fired and locked at once, and ground the main gear to pieces."

  Chewie turned his head sharply, with a long, rumbling growl.

  "We don't know," said Jevax. "That's what's driving the tech crew crazy. It shouldn't have happened. None of the cutouts operated. They're going to have to go in and pull the whole mechanism and open the gates manually-which means I hope you like the food here, General Solo, because it'll be at least twenty-four hours--”

  "Wait a minute," said Solo, pausing at the foot of the steep slope of Painted Door Street. "You're telling me that there's been another case of... of a fairly complicated, freak malfunction? Like our astromech droid trying to murder us? That's two in twenty-four hours."

  Jevax's snowy brow ridge folded upward in the middle as he considered the matter in that light. Then he said, "Three. The comm system's down again... But that happens so often..."

  There was momentary silence as they regarded each other in the heavy gloom. Then Solo said softly, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

  In swift silence, they felt their way from pillar to pillar of the foundations of an old building, following the course of the street.

  It was a neighborhood of ancient houses, prefabs rising out of the bomb damage like white ships stranded on high rocks. Vines growing over the old lava blocks rustled wetly as the party passed along them, and somewhere a warm spring welling up from an old foundation bubbled in the dark. The higher altitude, on the bench beneath the Citadel ruins, thinned the fog a little, and when they stopped at the turning at the top of the street, Solo could even see the house Jevax pointed out.

  Han felt a cold snake of uneasiness corkscrew down his backbone. If Roganda Ismaren was the Emperor's Hand, it meant she was Force-strong... not something he wanted to go up against.

  But if she'd hurt so much as a hair on Leia's head, he'd...

  "That's hers." Jevax looked down at Stusjevsky. "Anyone home?"

  The Chadra-Fan closed his huge dark eyes, flared his four large nostrils, and stood, breathing and listening to the night. Solo couldn't see how the little creature could be sifting out the odors of a single house from all others, for the night was redolent of greenery, wet stone, the faintly sulfurous pong of the hot springs, and the overpowering sweetness that hung in the air near the packing plants...

  But Stusjevsky opened his eyes after a moment and said, "Nobody home, Chief."

  Chewie grumbled a little and checked the pockets of his utility belt for his wire-bridging kit, preparatory to making an assault on whatever security system the house might have.

  "I'll tell you this, though," said the Chadra-Fan. "Somebody in that place has been wearing awfully expensive perfume--Whisper or Lake of Dreams--which I know for a fact nobody sells on this entire planet."

  With startling suddenness, the door at the top of the steps whooshed open.

  "I thought you said there was nobody home!" hissed Han as the four of them flattened into the shadows of a shell-ravaged old colonnade.

  "Nobody human," retorted the Chadra-Fan. "I can smell..."

  There was a faint whirring in the shadows of the vines that half masked the doorway, and the movement of something pale.

  Then a small form appeared at the top of the steps and paused as if intensely weary, or considering what to do next.

  Battered, dented, covered with filth and slime, it was Artoo-Detoo.

  Chapter 23

  "Commander," announced the stormtrooper with a sharp salute, "emergency orders have arrived from the Grand Moff of the entire Imperial Battlefleet! Priority one, sir!"

  The commander straightened up from grim concentration on the blacked-out control screen of a library reader and returned the salute with the three long and gaudily blossomed yellow pellicules on its right side. Several officers engaged in manning the gunnery and navigation consoles at the dead readers and vids along the library wall turned in their chairs; stems, stamens, and clusters of flowers swiveled in the direction of their commander. They were all a little pale from lack of sunlight, but still very much on the alert.

  Luke, leaning in the doorway watching the scene being played out by the dim glow of his staff--the Affytechans had been engaged in their imaginary space battle in total darkness before his and Pothman's arrival--wondered for the hundredth time exactly how sentient these beings were.

  The Klaggs and the Gakfedds had remained Gamorreans, albeit convinced most of the time that they were stormtroopers. They had been aware of the slow destruction of the Eye of Palpatine, though they had attributed it, under the instructions of the Will, to the Rebel saboteurs familiar to them from their programming. Ugbuz had remained Ugbuz, and though his aim continued to be truly dreadful he understood the difference between a charged blaster and an empty one.

  To the Affytechans, their programming seemed to be so thorough that what they were programmed to believe took precedence over the actual structure of the ship itself. If they had possessed any individual personalities before induction in the lander, those had been completely subsumed... And, Luke noticed, those Affytechans who had sprouted on board--and he'd come across at least five nurseries, mostly in lesser mess rooms rigged with emergency lighting--seemed to believe themselves to be Imperial troopers with the same utter absorption as their seniors.

  Triv Pothman, resplendent in his white armor, stepped across to the dead control screen in front of the yellow-and-black captain. "With your permission, sir." He touched a switch.

  Fleet Communications Urgent and Priority One

  It is the intent of the Will that all ship's personnel evacuate to the shuttlecraft on Deck 16 i
mmediately. All personnel currently in sick bays and other locations to be moved with necessary life support. The bearer of these orders will serve as director of the evacuation and pilot the shuttlecraft during and after launch.

  "Not bad," approved Luke softly.

  "Are you kidding?" returned Callista's voice in his ear. "For thirty years the Will is the only thing I've gotten when I tried to break into the computer. You bet I know how to do an imitation. You should see me do Pekkie Blu and the Starboys."

  Luke had never heard of Pekkie Blu and the Starboys, but he would have crossed the Dune Sea on foot to hear her do an imitation of anybody.

  "Is this... it, trooper?" The captain's voice was grave.

  Neither Pothman nor Luke knew precisely what it was, but the former trooper nodded. "We have our orders," he said.

  The captain returned the nod, grave and manly despite the huge coronal fluff of white tassels. "All right, men," he said. ”This is it. Pack it up. Move it out."

  In the Deck 12 Portside Section Lounge, and the corridor adjacent, the Kitonaks were still talking.

  "They're still exchanging recipes, most of them," explained Threepio, when Luke appeared. "Although that group in the corridor has begun telling one another about last summer's run of Chooba slugs... an experience that all of them, apparently, shared."

  "They're all here," said Callista. ”Forty-eight of them."

  A group of Affytechans passed them, marching in brisk military fashion, nearly seventy strong including a whole squad of seedlings less than a meter high. "Riiight square turn!" barked the sharp voice of the lieutenant in charge, and they vanished around a corner. Luke shook his head.

  "Somebody's gonna have a job deprogramming them."

  Her yelp of laughter rippled in the air. ”Yikes, I hadn't even thought of that! Okay. Corridors are clear between here and the shuttle bay. Gangways are open. That one elevator shaft they'll have to climb is roped... Can they climb an elevator shaft?"

  "Oh, yes." Luke took a deep breath. He was achingly conscious of the fact that every fragment of his strength that he expended on other matters meant that much less for the final effort, the final exertion...

  "Threepio, you ready?"

  "I believe my grasp of the Kitonak language to be sufficient for the needs of the moment."

  "Yeah," said Luke, "but you better get out of that doorway."

  The droid stepped hastily aside. He knew what was coming.

  "Okay," said Luke. "Here goes nothin'."

  Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the heat sensors of the fire prevention system of the lounge and the corridors around it. It was the simplest of all Jedi powers--directed against the most basic system in the ship--and the result was utterly galvanic.

  The sprinkler system burst into gushing life.

  A rainstorm of water poured down over Luke, Threepio, and every squatty, mushroom-shaped, putty-colored Kitonak in the section.

  "Deck Sixteen!" cried Threepio in the Kitonak tongue. "Deck Sixteen! The water is in the shuttlecraft!" And he sprang back, dragging his master to safety as the thundering tide of Kitonaks not only slammed through the door, but broke down the walls on either side of the entryway and went lumbering and slipping up the corridor in the direction of the shuttle decks.

  Luke cast his mind ahead, visualizing every carefully memorized foot of the corridors, gangway, elevator shaft between the Portside Section Lounge and the Deck 16 shuttle-hangar, superheating the thin layer of air at the top of the hallways to fire the sprinklers along the way.

  Kitonaks mate in water.

  Rain, to them, is the trigger for startling and enthusiastic speed.

  "You think Cray and Nichos'll be able to handle getting them in the shuttle?"

  "Should be no problem," said Callista. ”I'll go along, but I don't think it's anything a well-bred person should see. I'll be back with you by the time we need to convince the Klaggs and the Gakfedds to go on board."

  I can't do it, thought Luke, watching the ghostly flicker in the whirling rain retreat along the corridor in the wake of the lubricated and lust-crazed mob. I can't... not save her.

  He stood with the water coursing down his hair and face, trying not to think about not ever speaking with her again.

  "Master Luke?" Threepio's voice was diffident.

  With an almost physical effort he shook himself free of that grief, the sense that there was nothing in him, body or soul, that did not consist entirely of blinding pain. First things first. "Yeah," he said softly. "Let's go get the Jawas and move the tripods out."

  Roganda and her son were forging an alliance with the Senex Lords.

  Leia struggled, trying desperately to return to consciousness, but her mind felt as if she had been frozen in that gelid green ocean. She was aware of the room around her--still dimly aware of the shadows of others who had occupied that room--but could neither sink back into her original coma nor rise to wakefulness.

  And she had to wake up. She had to get out.

  They were creating a power base, to give them position with the warlords Harrsk and Teradoc and the other remaining branches of the Imperial Fleet.

  And around that power base, the Imperial Fleet might very well coalesce once more.

  And that coalition would be armed with the wealth of the Senex Lords, and the massive weaponry of the Eye of Palpatine, drawn from the darkness of the past by a fifteen-year-old boy whose powers could cripple the Republic's unprepared defenses. To gain the Eye, and Irek, as secret weapons, a man like High Admiral Harrsk might surrender power that he would not have given over to a child's regent a few years ago.

  She had to get out.

  Or get a message out, even if it cost her her life.

  Han Solo. Ithor. Time of Meeting. Once he'd stumbled onto some cache of Irek's yarrock hidden in the tunnels, once his mind had been cleared a little by the counterreaction of the drug, Drub had done everything in his power to warn his friend... to help the Republic that he knew was Han's new allegiance. He, too, knew they had to be warned.

  She wondered at what point they'd gotten rid of Nasdra Magrody. Probably as soon as Irek was capable of controlling and directing his ability to influence mechanicals--Magrody knew far too much to be allowed to live.

  Like his pupil, she thought. She remembered the report of Stinna Draesinge Sha's murder: Her room had been gone through, her papers destroyed. Magrody must have worked on the initial phases of the implanted brain chip with her, or talked to her about them.

  And hadn't there been some other physicist, some other student of Magrody's, who'd died under mysterious circumstances a few years ago?

  Leia didn't remember. That had been back before she'd met Cray. Magrody's other star pupil, Qwi Xux, had probably had her life saved when the renegade adept Kyp Durron had wiped out her memory.

  And Ohran Keldor had been Magrody's pupil as well.

  The door hissed open, and Leia felt the sharp blast of the warmer corridor air on her face. Though her eyes were closed she could "see" Lord Garonnin and Drost Elegin come inside, the stocky security chief carrying an infuser.

  The metal of the infuser was cold against her throat; she felt the rush of chemical, of warming wakefulness, stir her veins.

  The sensation of green glass around her vanished. So did the ghosts, and even the memories of the ghosts, of others in the room. Her head ached as if her brain had been stuffed with desiccant.

  "Your Highness?"

  Leia tried to reply and discovered that her tongue had turned into a three-kilo sack of sand. "Unnnh..."

  Her eyes were still shut, but she saw Garonnin and Elegin exchange a look. "Another one," said Elegin, and the security chief frowned.

  "We don't want to harm her. Idiots."

  He loaded another ampoule into the infuser and put the metal to Leia's throat again.

  Her mind cleared with a snap, her heart pounding as if she'd been waked in panic by a loud noise; she flinched, sat up, aware that her hands were shaking.
>
  "Your Highness?" Garonnin sketched a military bow and replaced the infuser in his pocket. "Madame Roganda wishes your presence."

  He didn't sound happy about it, though it was difficult to tell what emotions passed behind those wet-stone eyes. Madame Roganda was a title of courtesy... Roganda was certainly not a person qualified to demand that the last Princess of the House Organa come to her. Leia slowed her breathing, raised her eyebrows slightly, as if she had not expected that humiliating a slight, but with an air of gracious martyrdom rose, followed the men into the corridor. She had to call on all the physical training of the Jedi not to stumble, but managed to walk with what her aunts would have called "queenly grace."

  Like Palpatine, the men of the Ancient Houses preferred resigned obedience to defiance, and until she found some way in which to actively escape Leia guessed her best course would be to rack up all the points with these people she could.

  They were quite heavily armed, with stunguns as well as blasters.

  She still felt shaky, strange, and a little dizzy, though moving helped. Having no desire for a guaranteed three hours' worth of headaches and nausea, Leia decided to bide her time.

  Roganda, Irek, and Ohran Keldor occupied a small chamber one level up, cold despite the heating unit placed discreetly in a corner. The walls were draped with black; Leia had the momentary impression of the sort of meditation chamber used by some Dathomir sects, which used silence, dimness, and a single-point source of firelight to concentrate the mind.

  A cluster of candles was grouped on the polished wooden table at which Irek and his mother sat. With such discretion as to constitute almost an apology, a quarto-size terminal was set up on a bench just within the range of Irek's peripheral vision, where Ohran Keldor was keying rapidly through a series of calculations and what looked like sensor reports. There were four glass balls of the type Leia had seen in several places in the crypts, set on stands in the corners of the room so that Irek's chair was directly where lines drawn between them would cross.