Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Outcast

by Aaron Allston

  “Great,” Han said. He moved to the front of the speeder and opened the engine compartment.

  “Hey, any landing you can walk away from is a good one,” Leia said.

  He offered a derisive snort. “That's survivor talk. A pilot says, any landing you can't fly away from is a failure.”

  “You did all right.”

  “I know I did. It was this archaic piece of junk that let us down.” He shook his head over the state of the engine and slammed the compartment closed. Then he gave the side of the speeder a savage kick.

  “That good.”

  “Yeah. I hope you like walking, lady.”

  “Han, you may have noticed, in the distance, some light sources?”

  “Probably phosphorescent lures of an infinite number of giant carnivorous tunnel beetles.”

  She laughed at him, then began pulling equipment from the backseat. “Let's gear up for a hike.”

  Half an hour later, they looked out over a new and different world.

  It was the source of the light they had seen down the tunnel past the mound of fallen stone; Leia had judged it to be closer, so they had headed in that direction. The walk had been easy. Though they had all but emptied the gear from the speeder and Han had taken turret gun grenades besides, in Kessel's gravity the sixty or so kilos of gear he was packing was a comparatively comfortable load.

  The approach to the point where lofting tunnel met vast cavern was a rise; Han and Leia had to clamber up a steep climb of stone some three meters high before they could look into the cavern beyond.

  The size of a city, the cavern was lined with great blocks of manufactured equipment, each block the size of a human habitation; some were as large as three-level houses, some the size of ten-story apartment buildings, and all were thick with colored lights, some constant, some blinking regularly or intermittently. The faces of the equipment blocks were broken down into rectangles of different colors of metal, but at this distance Han could not tell whether they were merely decorative touches or if the rectangles were access hatches.

  In addition to the indicators on the equipment, there was light from above and below. The ceiling of the chamber had patches of greenish material, possibly organic, that exuded a soft blue-green glow. The floor was bare of equipment and was littered, though not thickly, with greenish round-capped fungi, some of which stood taller than Han. Light from all these sources blended together into the dim, pale glow Han and Leia had seen from so far away.

  The vista of machinery, fungi, and cavern walls went on as far as the eye could see—kilometers at least.

  Leia reached over and gently pressed up on Han's jaw under his breath mask, closing his mouth. “Lando has no idea what he's sitting on, does he?”

  Han shook his head. “If all of this shut down tomorrow, just the scrap value would make him a richer man. But what's it for?”

  “Let's find out.” Hitching up her pack, she walked down into the cavern.

  They divided their duties naturally and without discussion. Leia investigated the machinery. Han kept his eye out for predatory life-forms.

  Within a few minutes' walk, they reached the first bank of machinery on the right-hand sloping wall of the cavern. First in their path was a cabinet-like structure the size of a warehouse. Its panels, mostly black, gleamed with what looked like thousands of small rectangular lights.

  Leia put her hands on her hips and stared up at the thing. “Where to start?”

  “Something's powering it. If it doesn't have some sort of internal reactor, there's probably a series of cables entering it somewhere. And unless it's doing whatever it does in isolation, it's receiving or sending data—by cable, by broadcast, somehow.”

  At nearly ground level, a bogey emerged from the face of the machine. It hovered there, a few meters from Han and Leia, and emitted a faint chittering noise, like a whole colony of curious insects.

  “Or maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about,” Han said.

  CITY OF DOR'SHAN, DORIN

  Fresh from the Jade Shadow's sanisteam and dressed in a clean robe, Ben joined his father in the main cabin. Dinner consisted of prepackaged meals heated in the yacht's tiny pulse oven, but Ben was all right with that; the nerf loaf, tuber mash, and seasoned greens in the individual compartments of the tray reminded him of food from home—bad food from home.

  “So,” his father said. “What did you learn today?”

  “A little bit about the difference between the way skinny limbs with dense, leather muscles move compared with human arms and legs. That's about it. Oh, and you know that thing where the sages decide that it's time to die, and they just will themselves to do it?”

  Luke nodded.

  “One of the Baran Do Masters has decided to do that. Charsae Saal, the senior combat instructor. He worked with Tistura Paan and me today.”

  “Did you talk to him about it?”

  Ben nodded. “I didn't, you know, just blurt it out, Why have you decided to die? or anything like that. But Tistura Paan had some questions about his ceremony tomorrow. She was pretty sad. She was his special student. He gave her a datacard with his memoirs and instruction manuals on it. He'd just finished it.”

  “What did you ask him?”

  “Well, I said that from the human perspective, it was always sad when a good person died, when he took his knowledge with him. He said he was leaving his knowledge behind. I asked if he had family, and he said he would be seeing them again someday, by which I took it he meant they were already dead.”

  “He plans to die tomorrow.”

  Ben nodded.

  Luke frowned.

  “What?”

  “Turn of phrase.” But Luke said no more on the subject.

  “What did you learn today, Dad?”

  “I learned to make a ball float at a constant altitude, but not to make it be still.”

  “You had an exciting day.”

  “I also learned that there's something about Jacen's visit here, or about the former Master of the sages, that Tila Mong doesn't want me to know. That was probably the hidden thought I kept feeling last night.”

  “Once you've figured out the scanner-blanking technique and you've pried all of Tila Mong's secrets out, where are we going next?”

  Luke shrugged. “We'll have to take that as we come to it.”

  UNEXPLORED DEPTHS, KESSEL

  HAN WATCHED LEIA AS, UNAFRAID, SHE APPROACHED THE BOGEY. UNLIKE the previous one, this creature did not retreat at her approach, but hung in the air as if watching her.

  She came within a meter of it and still it did not move, though its chittering grew louder and the lights within it swirled even faster.

  “Leia, be careful …” Torn between a need to know what was happening with his wife and an equally strong need to know they were not being crept up on, Han kept switching his attention from the tableau with the bogey to the surrounding machinery and field of fungi.

  “I don't sense any hostile intent. Or, for that matter, any life.” Leia raised a hand as if to touch the bogey.

  Her hand penetrated its outer boundaries. Colorful lights swirled around her fingers as if they were the center of some new maelstrom. Leia's hair rose, standing on end, and a crackling noise joined the chittering Han heard. “Leia, keep talking.”

  “It's all right, I'm not hurt.” There was some strain to her voice, as if she were making an effort of exertion or concentration. “It's … it's …”

  “What?” Han heard a note that was almost a yelp in his voice.

  “A datacard.” She swayed backward, almost falling, and the action broke her contact with the bogey. Abruptly, it zoomed away, straight up.

  Han put a hand on Leia's shoulder to steady her. He watched the bogey ascend. Several moments later, it hit the ceiling and vanished into the rock there. Han breathed a sigh of relief.

  Leia straightened, shaking her head to clear it. “That was … interesting.”

  “What did you mean, it was a datacard?”
/>
  “That was what it reminded me of. I think that was something like its function. I could sense a reservoir of energy within it, and the ability to communicate, and a big store of data … fresh data. From this device, I think.” She gestured at the building-sized cabinet. “I saw a three-dimensional pattern of, I don't know what to call them, intensities. Thousands. Millions. It had a mission, an intent to go somewhere and deliver the data. There was something else, too. A sense of futility.”

  “You got a lot out of that contact.”

  “Its whole purpose is communication. Not with me, not with anything like us. It helped a lot that I was trying to do what it was meant to do. I need to find another one. A lot more of them. Learn more from each one.” Energetic again, she set off at a brisk walk along the row of immense cabinets, holding her right arm out as she did as if to wave more bogeys out of the machines she passed.

  Han shook his head and followed.

  Han saw things on that walk, some of which were fascinating and some of which he'd prefer not to have seen.

  There was animal life in the cavern, moving among the fungi. He cataloged at least two different species of centipede-like creatures, one about a meter long and green, the other about two meters long and a dangerous-looking red and yellow. Both species had vicious-looking stingers at their tail ends. He saw the larger centipedes attack, sting, and eat the smaller ones.

  He also saw small avian things, like miniature hawk-bats, swoop upon both species of centipedes and snatch things from their backs. Only when he drew out his macrobinoculars and trained them on one of those flying attacks did he realize that the avian was taking young centipedes riding on the backs of the older ones.

  The fungi were also prey to animal life. Some looked chewed on around the periphery of their caps. But others had defenses. When a green centipede went crawling across the cap of one of the fungi, the cap collapsed, rolling up on itself and trapping the centipede within. That fungus did not unroll in all the time it took Han to walk out of sight of it, and he did not care to think about the digestive processes now going on within it. He just vowed not to touch any fungus caps as he passed them.

  Two kilometers into the hike, he saw the energy spider. He stopped abruptly, the air leaving his lungs. Leia must have sensed his distress; she turned to look at him, then followed his gaze.

  Seventy meters away, its body the size of an airspeeder, it rose from within a tall clump of fungi, glassy and transparent, at least fifteen legs on a side, formidable pincers up front.

  Its head swiveled as it surveyed its surroundings. Slowly, so as not to attract attention, Han slid the slugthrowing rifle off his shoulder strap, lowering it to the ground, and put his hands on the grenade launcher. He'd start with a decoy grenade; if that didn't work, he'd switch to high explosives, then go to the rifle if the spider got nearer.

  The spider took a couple of steps in Han's direction, clambering up on an especially large fungus as if to get some altitude to see better.

  Then it settled down on the fungus cap. The skin of the fungus beneath its body began to turn black, withering away.

  “It's eating fungus,” Leia said. “That's not very aggressive. You do that.”

  “It's different.” Now that his initial burst of panic was subsiding, Han could see that there were differences between this creature and the energy spider he had seen, the ones he had read about in Nien Nunb's communiqués. Instead of being blue, with little flares of light glistening within its transparisteel-like skin, this one was more of a crimson color. Its legs were not festooned with all the claws and blades the spice spiders possessed.

  And, of course, it was not charging at him.

  “A related species. Maybe herbivorous.” Leia remained irritatingly unafraid.

  “Maybe omnivorous, and willing to add a couple of humans to its snack list.” Han reshouldered his rifle. “C'mon, let's get out of here. Maybe it's an out-of-sight, out-of-mind predator.”

  “All right.”

  They moved on, Han keeping a sharp eye on the spider. But it never rose from the perch it was feeding upon, never turned their way. It did not even pay attention to the centipedes moving across the tops of adjacent fungi, and realizing that, only then was Han half certain the thing had to be disinterested in animal life.

  Another kilometer farther on, Leia made a noise of surprise. Another bogey emerged, this one from a silver-gray structure the size of the building where the Solos kept their quarters on Coruscant. It had a darker color scheme, its lights a more muted arrangement of violets and reds. The noise it made was quite musical, like a harp being played by a Kowakian monkey-lizard.

  Leia did not hesitate, but approached it and brushed her hand across its outer nimbus. Again she crackled with static electricity; again her hair stood out in a display that suggested electrocution.

  “Start talking, Princess. I need to know you're not unconscious on your feet.”

  “Looking,” she said, her tone distant. “Variables. Unimaginable numbers of them. Maintaining.”

  “Maintaining what?” Reluctantly, Han turned his back on Leia and the bogey, once again keeping guard against the sea of fungi and the life-forms within it.

  “I don't know … The data will be lost. Cycle ending, cycle winding down.”

  That had an ominous sound to it. But Han was distracted by something in the distance. If they were following a north-south wall—and he had no reason to believe they were, for the speeder's sensors were long gone, but he called it north-south because he had to call it something of his own—then off at an angle, maybe a kilometer away due northwest, there was something in the middle of the fungus field. It looked like a mound of—he wasn't sure. Steel barrels, lashed together, like an improvised fuel dump in a wartime encampment.

  “Centerpoint … Oh.” Leia gasped. Han turned to see her staggering back, the musical bogey disappearing into the stone at their feet.

  Han grabbed her, held her upright while she recovered. “Why did you say Centerpoint?”

  “I saw Centerpoint Station! As clear as a holo.” Her eyes darted back and forth as she reviewed what she'd just experienced. “Han, that image I had before, the millions of random intensities?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Gravity wells, I'm sure of it. A galaxy's worth of gravity wells.”

  “Huh. Is this thing one gigantic astronomical observatory?”

  “Maybe.” She straightened, recovered, but did not break his embrace. “But for what purpose?”

  “Centerpoint Station was all about gravity. Its super-tractor-beam was gravitic in nature.” Han glanced along the seemingly endless row of machinery. “Could this be from the same makers? The so-called Celestials? It doesn't look that old.”

  “Neither did Centerpoint.”

  Han gestured at the distant mound of barrels. “Something different to look at.”

  “Let's eat first. Communing with energy blobs is hard work.”

  Half an hour later, fortified by travel rations, they reached the mound.

  Traveling through the fungus forest to get there had not been safe. Most of the life-forms fled at their approach, but the red-and-yellow centipedes were aggressive and fast moving. Fortunately, they were also loud, skittering forward with all the subtlety of a two-year-old flying a speeder bike. Han shot two before they approached closer than ten meters, and Leia cut one in half with her lightsaber when it reared up over the fungus ahead of them.

  And then they were there, at the foot of the apparatus Han had seen.

  It rested on a disk of something like durasteel, six meters in diameter and a meter thick. Rising from that was a central pole with something like a broad sensor antenna stretching out from it. The antenna was curved like a dish; given the way it was situated, Han was certain it was meant to rotate. Piled up against the back of the dish, strapped to it by metal cabling, were the numerous barrel-like objects he had seen, each large enough to hold a full-grown bantha. The whole structure towered some fifteen me
ters into the air.

  Leia looked at him. He shrugged. “You got me.”

  “I—hey!” Leia's deactivated lightsaber suddenly stretched out toward the apparatus, as if leaping toward it, and she staggered in that direction.

  So did Han. It was as though his weapons and backpack were suddenly caught in a tractor beam, dragging him along.

  Then the pull ceased. Resisting it, Han and Leia were abruptly stumbling in the other direction.

  Leia straightened. “Magnetic pulse. Why don't we, um—”

  “Move back a ways, yeah.”

  They did so, observing the apparatus from what they felt was a safer distance: thirty meters.

  Han was unsurprised when a bogey emerged from the base of the apparatus. “Call for you, sweetie,” he said.

  Leia shot him a half-amused look and approached the bogey.

  “Ask it what the gizmo is for and if there are any good bars or clubs around here.”

  “Your sense of humor is returning—ah.” She offered a little gasp as her hand came in contact with the bogey. Again her hair whipped up into an electrocuted nimbus.

  “Draw in,” she said. “Push out. Deactivate. Next. Next. Next. Acceleration. Interaction.” Clearly pained, Leia kept up the contact.

  “Leia—”

  “Not now, Han. I can see the sequence. They're everywhere, it's huge. Evaluations almost complete, then terminus.” Finally, she staggered back. This time she did fall, sprawling on the mulchy cavern floor, eyes open but glazed.

  “Leia!” Han knelt over her, torn between making sure she was unhurt and keeping a wary eye out for centipedes. He decided to rely on his ears for the latter danger and bent over his wife.

  She was panting, the meter on her breath mask indicating the increased demands on its processing, but her vision was clearing. She sat up almost as abruptly as she had fallen. “We've got to go.”