“I know.” The girl gave a little shrug. “I am Vestara Khai.”
“And you are a Sith.”
“I … was.”
Luke raised a brow. “You are no longer.”
“Now I am Raining Leaves.”
“Then if you’ve chosen to abandon your Sith ways, you wouldn’t mind telling us all about your former life.”
Vestara’s illusory smile became real. “No matter how I regard myself now, my friends are my friends and my kin are my kin. Shall I tell you all about them, so you can go to them and slay them?”
Luke shook his head, dismissing her protest. “All it takes to do evil is to stand aside while others do it—when a single word from you could have stopped it.”
“It’s also hard to talk of them without, in some sense, calling to them. Summoning them. Do you want me to summon them to this place?”
“Yes.” Luke kept his voice matter-of-fact. “If that’s what it takes.”
“I do not wish Olianne hurt. Not her, not my new clan.”
“She’s lying.” Ben’s tone was exasperated. Luke did not have to look at his son to know that Ben was rolling his eyes.
Luke wanted to tell his son, Of course she’s lying. Yet you can learn almost as much from the lies as you can from the truth. But he did not. Instead, he let Ben feel a flash of irritation, and outwardly ignored his son’s interjection. “For one who is anxious to be free of the Sith, you fought alongside your companion with exceptional dedication.”
“Of course I did! To do any less than your best effort at any time is to invite punishment. Is it not so with your Jedi?”
Luke ignored the question. “What can you tell us of your home-world?”
“Nothing.”
“And your plans, your aims? Whatever brought you to the Maw cluster in the first place?”
Vestara shrugged. “Nothing.” Vestara leaned toward Luke. “Just let me be. Let me stay among the Raining Leaves. Stop chasing me.”
“Where did you crash your yacht?”
She blinked as if surprised to be asked a question she could choose to answer. “It was in the middle of the jungle. I don’t know where. All the instrumentation was out. After the crash, I wandered for hours before Olianne found me.”
“Where’s your lightsaber?”
“It was in my cabin when I began my landing run. When the crash happened … there was nothing left of the cabin. I couldn’t find any sign of my gear.”
“Are you done?” Olianne did not sound so much worried for Vestara as annoyed with Luke.
Luke considered his answer, but Ben spoke first. “Olianne, this girl is a Sith, and that means she’s pure evil. She’s like a thermal detonator rolling around your camp waiting to go off. When she does, you and all your clan—”
“Evil?” Vestara practically sputtered the word. “Being Sith has nothing to do with good or evil, any more than being Jedi does.”
Ben glared at her, outraged. “How can you say that? People become Sith and they do nothing but evil—”
“Oh, I suppose that explains your Jacen Solo, whom we have heard of—”
“It does. He was Sith.”
“He was Jedi, and you know it!”
“He became Sith,” Ben insisted.
“Be quiet.” Luke spoke softly, but put some extra emphasis on his words through the Force. All four of those near him leaned away as he spoke.
He returned his attention to Vestara, but Olianne spoke first. “Not these Jedi nor any Sith can take you away from us. You need feel no fear.” She leaned over to embrace Vestara.
Knowing that they were not likely to glean anything more that night, Luke rose, gave the Dathomiri women a little bow, and led Ben back toward the offworlders’ campfire.
Once they were far enough away that the women could not hear them, Ben, irritated, kicked a stone. “She’s playing them. Like they’re a sabacc deck. A children’s sabacc deck.”
Luke gave his son a disapproving look. “She played you exactly the same way. She drew you into an argument that was all emotion, no logic. And since she’s Sith and you’re Jedi, that means she won hands-down.”
Ben was silent for a long moment. Then he kicked another rock. “Yeah. I know.”
DATHOMIR SPACEPORT
Spying, Allana concluded, was mostly boring.
In the holodramas, a spy would hide herself where she could watch an important door, and a minute would pass, and something would happen at that door, and the spy would have an Important Clue.
But here, though she hid herself well among hedges that gave her a good view of the front door of one of the domes, a minute could turn into fifteen or thirty without anything happening. Anji would come back and curl at her feet and fall asleep. Allana would wait some more, then finally grow frustrated. She’d get up and trot to another vantage point … and wait there for an endless amount of time in which she learned nothing.
Well, not nothing. She learned that the dome nearest to where the Falcon and Jade Shadow were parked was a communications center. She could have guessed that by all the antennas, including hypercomm antennas, that crowded its roof, but it was good to catch a glimpse of the dome’s interior through a briefly opened door and see lots of comm equipment and one bored-looking man about Ben’s age yawning on duty there.
Another dome, the largest, turned out to be a hostel. People wandered in and out all the time, and through the constantly opening door Allana could see a cramped lobby like many she had visited. It was from this dome that all the intriguing food smells emerged.
It occurred to her that if R2-D2 had been looking for a yacht, he wouldn’t find it in a hostel.
That gave her something to think about. A space yacht would only be parked in some kind of dome. Not in a restaurant, not in a playground, not in a hall of records.
She decided to wander past the front doors of all the domes and read the signs this time. And it was the fourth sign she read, affixed to one of the largest of the domes, that bore the words, MONARG’S MECHANIC WORKS.
She set herself up a little nest among a stack of two-hundred-liter hydraulic fluid drums, waited half an hour, and sighed. Spying was dull. She hoped she’d find R2 soon.
The viewports of the dome were, at their bottom rims, about four meters above the ground, far too high for her to see into. But she gave the fluid drums around her an experimental push. They moved easily; they were clearly empty. Of plastoid construction, they were also very light.
Her heart racing, she picked up and carried a drum to the dome, carefully placing it directly beneath one of the viewports a quarter of the way around the dome’s circumference from the door. Scrambling atop it was no challenge, but she was still too low to see in. So she brought up another, placing it flush against the first one, and brought a third. That one took some work, because she had to lift it to rest atop the other two.
Now she could scramble up, and as she stood, wobbling, atop the third drum, she could peer in through the viewport.
Most of her view was blocked by a curtain, but it was tattered. There were holes and gaps she could see through.
She saw the gray tail end of a yacht. It looked a lot like Uncle Lando’s, but older and more beaten-up.
There were droids all over the place, small spindly ones. Most of them did not walk on legs; they glided around on wheeled tripod rigs. Most seemed to be rolling trays or racks for tools and parts; each had two skeletal arms and a sensor station where a head should be, and stood about a meter and a half tall.
There was a man present. Allana did not see him at first; he moved into her field of view from someplace along a wall. He was tall and gaunt, wearing a stained gray jumpsuit. When he turned to track and speak to one of the rack droids, Allana saw that he had a patch over his left eye.
There was no sign of R2-D2, but along one wall in the shadow of the yacht was a blue drop cloth draped over something that could have been an astromech droid. It did not move, and Allana was struck with the sudden worry that her dr
oid friend was hurt or dead. She’d have to find out.
“Miss Amelia? May I inquire, where are you?” C-3PO’s voice seemed to erupt from the pocket where Allana kept her comlink.
Allana ducked. Even as she did so, she saw the man’s head begin to turn up in her direction.
She hadn’t heard much noise from within the dome; even a hydrospanner dropped on the permacrete floor had barely been loud enough for her to hear. So the man probably hadn’t heard much of C-3PO’s voice. But Allana was suddenly afraid and didn’t want to count on that. She scrambled down the drums as fast as she dared and ran to hide among the drums she hadn’t moved. Then, finally, she activated her comlink. “I’m right here,” she whispered.
“Here, where, precisely?”
Should she tell C-3PO now? No, she needed to do that once she could trick him into coming with her. Which might mean tomorrow. “I’m playing hide-and-seek.”
“Ah. Am I to find you, then?”
“Yes. But don’t hurry. I have to, uh, hide better. Count to a thousand.”
“Very well.”
The door into the dome had not opened. Her heart in her throat, Allana sneaked back to the dome and carefully brought the three drums to their places in the stack, then raced across the spaceport grounds to the Falcon.
The climb up was twice as hard as she had imagined, and if she’d had to do it with arm strength alone, instead of shimmying with both arms and legs, she never would have made it. When she got to the top, Anji gave a little yowl from the ground behind her. Allana peered back over the edge and frowned. She hadn’t thought about how her nexu was going to get back onto the Falcon.
But Anji was determined not to be left outside. She cocked her head and studied the rope for a moment, then extended her claws and began to climb up just like Allana had. If her claws hadn’t been safety-dulled, she probably would have made it a lot quicker than Allana had. As it was, Anji’s feet kept slipping until she learned to catch the knots between her toe pads, and then she clambered right up. Within a few minutes Allana was hauling the coil of cable up to the top hull, standing on the tiny lift, and descending into the Falcon.
C-3PO found her as she was preparing for a sanisteam. “I say. You aren’t hidden at all well.”
“I got sweaty and bored. I’m going to clean up.”
“Excellent idea. And I’ll prepare you a nice snack for afterward. For being so cooperative today.”
She just smiled at him.
QUARTERS OF THE CHIEF OF STATE, CORUSCANT
WITH HER FORK, DAALA PUSHED SOME BITS OF FOOD AROUND ON HER plate, silently cursing her chef. The man was as good a personal chef as any government leader might need, but his choice of seafood for tonight’s meal was a grotesque reminder of Admiral Niathal’s suicide. Daala took a moment to calm down, to remind herself that her chef was not in the loop of government secrets, could not have known about the hypercomm transmission Daala had seen with Niathal’s body so prominently displayed.
She pushed her plate away and gave her dinner companion a look of apology. “I’m sorry. I’m not very good company tonight.”
Nek Bwua’tu, Chief of Naval Operations for the Galactic Alliance, a gray-furred Bothan, gave her a lupine smile in return. “The Chief of State does not need to apologize for having troubled thoughts. Only if your conscience were as easy as a cub’s would I be suspicious and worried.”
“Can we talk business?”
“Yes. Particularly if it will help.”
“Have you heard any recent, I’m not sure what to call them, rumblings among naval personnel suggesting that I’m not being tough enough on enemies of the state?”
Clearly not disturbed by, or not recognizing, any resemblance between his dinner and a recent topic of conversation, Bwua’tu speared a well-grilled cephalopod on the tines of his fork and popped it into his mouth, chewing as he considered his answer. “Yes,” he finally told her. “In the last few months, there has been more grumbling. About the Jedi especially. Colonel Solo, Pellaeon’s killer, and most recently about the crazy Jedi.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think that some sort of special-interest group is keeping those flames burning high. I don’t object to the Jedi being brought in line, you know that, but I don’t believe that they’re as far out of line as the grumblers are saying. I think they’re basically a beneficial force with the Alliance’s interests at heart.”
“But whatever the reason for the grumbling, if it continues to grow, it could damage this administration’s efficiency.”
“Conceivably.”
“Niathal’s death was a tragedy. But speaking pragmatically, it also deprives us of the relief of pressure that her trial—and eventual acquittal—would have offered. I’m going to need to take some very visible steps to do that. To reassure the grumblers.”
Bwua’tu offered her a noncommittal grunt.
“You don’t think so?”
“I don’t have the sense of what it takes to ride herd over a huge, mostly civilian government, and simultaneously over different departments of the armed forces, the way you do. The way you’ve learned to since you became Chief of State. I hear grumbling, my thought is to tell them to pipe down and do their jobs. Are you contemplating a move on the Jedi?”
It took some of Daala’s considerable self-discipline to refrain from twitching. Again Bwua’tu seemed to have peered into her thoughts. Of course, he was a master military strategist, her superior in that capacity, but it was still unsettling. “Yes.”
“I recommend against it.”
“Why?”
“I think there’s a risk of alienating them, as Colonel Solo did. We want the Jedi to be a well-integrated Alliance resource. Too much pressure, too much overt action, runs the risk of turning them into a completely uncooperative element.”
“You wouldn’t offer that advice about, say, an elite military unit.”
He shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t. But then, commandos don’t usually have super powers or a tradition that goes back to the very beginnings of the Old Republic.”
“But it’s commandos the civilian population should admire and respect. More than they do the Jedi.” She frowned, considering.
Bwua’tu grinned again. “You’re going to use the Mandos, aren’t you? To send against the Jedi!”
Daala’s voice turned sharp, as if Bwua’tu’s mind-reading exercises had been meant to hurt her feelings. “Now, cut that out.”
“If you wish.”
Finally, she smiled at him. “Sorry. I’m just touchy. Are you staying tonight?”
“If the invitation’s open.”
“You know it is.”
JEDI TEMPLE, CORUSCANT
Kyp Durron swept into the Masters’ Council Chamber, moving so fast that his robes gapped open at the front and swirled around his feet like a cloak. He didn’t hate being late, but he did hate people thinking he was lazy. At such times, speed was called for.
As he entered the Chamber and began to make his way toward his designated chair, he saw that a hologram of Jaden Korr, a live hypercomm transmission, was in the process of addressing the assembly. Korr, a man of Coruscant and onetime apprentice of Kyle Katarn, was far too serious for Kyp’s taste, but had conducted a long and impressive career as a Jedi Knight.
Korr was saying, “… evidence is not overwhelming, but it is growing, and continues to point to a resurgence by the Black Sun. And there are odd elements to it, such as graffiti found in garbage dumped by the hijacked ships, graffiti that suggests the existence of some sort of cult … one that venerates Xizor.”
That drew some murmurs from the assembled Jedi. Prince Xizor, a member of the Falleen species and head of the Black Sun criminal organization forty years earlier, was long dead … or, at least, long believed dead.
Master Kenth Hamner asked the question that leapt to everyone’s mind. “Is there any chance that Prince Xizor is still alive?”
Korr’s hologram shrugged. “I’ve seen no
evidence of it. Zero evidence. But if any piece of him survived, and some sort of Black Sun cultists got their hands on a cloning chamber …”
“Yes, yes.” Master Hamner seemed unimpressed with the theory. “Check it out, of course. Do you have all the resources you need?”
“For now.”
“Very good. Thank you, Jedi Korr. Temple out.”
Korr’s image wavered and disappeared.
Hamner turned back toward the main body of Jedi and picked out one by eye. “Jedi Saar. Do you have a report on your ongoing investigation?”
“I do.” Sothais Saar, the man who came forward at Hamner’s summons, was a Chev—outwardly human in appearance but albinoid. He was tall for a Chev, with blue eyes not commonly found in his species, but his heavy brow was characteristic of his kind. His hair, cut short, was black on top but lightened in an even manner farther down so that it was a light brown at his temples and down to the back of his neck. He wore dark robes that were stylishly cut by contrast with conservative Jedi tastes, and as he stepped out in front of the chairs to face Hamner, he hooked his thumbs in his belt like a backworld advocate ready to argue a case before a jury. “My task for the last several months has involved assembling a comprehensive report, as comprehensive as circumstances allow, on the subject of slavery as it is practiced in the galaxy, both officially in regions not controlled by the Galactic Alliance and unofficially within certain less regulated regions of the GA.” He spoke with the voice of an advocate or natural politician.
“I won’t bore this assembly with a recitation of numbers, but I will discuss trends. In regions such as Hutt-controlled space, slavery of members of sapient species continues unabated. And since, in the last several years, the Jedi Order has increasingly acknowledged its definition as a force benefiting the Old Republic and its successor states, our efforts to diminish slavery outside the Galactic Alliance have decreased in number and effectiveness. While we jockey with the GA government over issues related to use of GA resources outside GA borders, slave populations that once thought of the Jedi Order as their last hope now increasingly face the disappointing realization that they are being left to their own fates …”
Fate of the Jedi: Backlash Page 10