by Troy Denning
“No problem,” Han said. He stepped closer and spoke in a whisper so low that Luke barely heard it. “We’ll just wait until the boarding ramp starts to go up, then jump on. Leia can cold-start the repulsor drives, and we’ll—”
“Han, we gave Raynar our word.”
“Yeah, I remember.” Han continued to whisper. “But we can do this. We’ll be out of here before—”
“We’re staying.” Luke spoke loudly enough so that the eavesdroppers he sensed watching them would have no trouble overhearing. “A Jedi Master’s promise should mean something.”
Han glanced at the Saras cargo handlers loading moirestone into the next ship over, and a glimmer of understanding came to his eyes. Each nest of Killiks shared a collective mind, so as long as there was a single Saras within sight of them, all of the Saras Killiks would know exactly what they were doing. And since the Unu included a delegate from the Saras nest, that meant Raynar would always know exactly what they were doing.
“I see your point,” Han said. “We wouldn’t want to double-cross UnuThul.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “Han, you don’t see.”
The ease with which Alema Rar had fallen under the sway of the Dark Nest during the Qoribu crisis had prompted Luke to do a lot of soul searching, and he had come to the conclusion that the Jedi had been injured by the war with the Yuuzhan Vong in ways even more serious than the deaths they had suffered. They had embraced a ruthless, anything-goes philosophy that left young Jedi Knights with no clear concept of who they were and what they stood for, that blurred the difference between right and wrong and made them far too susceptible to sinister influences. And so Luke had decided to rebuild a sense of principle in the Jedi order, to demonstrate to his followers that a Jedi Knight was a force for good in the galaxy.
“If we leave now, it will make solving other problems with the Colony more difficult,” Luke continued. He hated having to drag Han into his quest to revitalize the Jedi, but Raynar had agreed to allow Mara, Leia, and the others to leave peacefully only if Luke and Han remained on Woteba until the Jedi found a remedy for the Fizz. “We have to build some trust, or we’ll only have more pirates and black membrosia coming out of these nests.”
Han scowled. “Luke, you just don’t understand bugs,” he said. “Trust isn’t that big in their way of seeing things.”
“Captain Solo is quite correct.” C-3PO remained halfway up the ramp. “I haven’t been able to identify a word for ‘trust’ or ‘honor’ in any of their native languages. It really would be wiser to flee.”
“Nice try, Threepio,” Mara said, stepping to Luke’s side. “But you may as well come back down here. We’re staying.”
As the droid clanked reluctantly down the ramp, Luke turned to Mara. He knew she could sense his unspoken plan as clearly as he sensed her anxiety, but this was one time he would truly be better off without her at his side.
“Mara, I think—”
“I’m not leaving here without you, Luke.”
Leia touched Mara’s elbow. “Mara, the Dark Nest wants you dead. Staying on Woteba will only make Luke and Han targets along with you.”
Mara’s eyes grew narrow and angry, but she dropped her chin and sighed. “I hate this,” she said. “It makes me feel like a coward.”
“Coward? Mara Jade Skywalker?” Saba snorted. “That is just rockheaded. Leaving is the best thing you can do for Master Skywalker and Han.”
“Yeah, but before you go, I want to know who this Daxar Ies was,” Han said. “I’ve never heard of him.”
“You wouldn’t have. He was one of Palpatine’s private accountants,” Mara answered. “He embezzled two billion credits from the Emperor’s personal funds and stashed it in accounts all over the galaxy.”
Han whistled. “Brave guy.”
“Foolish guy,” Saba corrected. “He believed he could deceive the Emperor?”
Mara shrugged. “You’d be surprised how many people believed that,” she said. “And Daxar Ies was a strange man. All that money, and I found him living in a shabby twilight-level apartment on Coruscant. He never left the planet.”
“Maybe he lost the list of accounts, or couldn’t get to it,” Leia suggested. “That would explain why you couldn’t find it.”
“Maybe,” Mara said. “But the Emperor didn’t think so. Ies knew where one of the accounts was. He made a withdrawal, and that’s how I tracked him down.”
Though Mara showed no outward sign of her feelings, Luke could sense how much she disliked talking about that part of her life, how angry she grew when she thought of how the Emperor had manipulated her trust—and how sad it made her to recall her victims. He took her in his arms, silently reminding her that that part of her life was long over, and kissed her.
“Go back to the academy,” Luke said. “Cilghal will need you on Ossus, to tell her everything you can remember about the Fizz. Han and I will be fine.”
Mara pulled herself back and forced a smile. “You’d better be telling the truth, Skywalker.”
“This one will make sure of it.” Saba passed the stasis jar to Mara. “She is also staying.”
“No way,” Han said. “You’ll make the bugs think we’re up to something. Raynar picked me to stay with Luke because he figured one Jedi Master would be more than enough to watch.”
“And because he knowz you are disturbed by insectz,” Saba said. “This one does not like the way this feelz, Han. Raynar is showing a cruel streak.”
“So it seems,” Luke said. He reached out with the Force, urging the Barabel to board the Falcon with the others. “But Han’s right—we don’t want to make the Killiks suspicious of us.”
“If you wish, Master Skywalker,” Saba said. “You are the longfang here.”
Saba took the stasis jar back from Mara, then turned and ascended the ramp with no further comment. In any other species, the abruptness might have indicated anger or hurt feelings. In a Barabel, it just meant she was ready to go.
Luke kissed Mara again and watched her start up the ramp.
Han hugged and kissed Leia, then stepped back with an overly casual air. “Be careful with my ship,” he said to Leia. “I’ve finally got that hyperdrive adjusted just right.”
Leia rolled her eyes. “Sure you do.” She gave him a wistful smile, then said good-bye to Luke and started up the ramp. “I’ll send Cakhmaim out with your bags.”
“And please don’t forget my cleaning kit,” C-3PO called after her. “This planet is unsanitary. I feel contaminated already.”
“Who doesn’t?” Han asked.
Being careful to do nothing that would make the Killiks think they intended to flee, Luke and Han waited at the foot of the ramp until Cakhmaim returned with their bags and C-3PO’s cleaning kit. Though Luke had not yet had a chance to outline his plan, he was fairly certain that Han had guessed it. He was going to search out the Dark Nest, determine how big a threat it posed to Mara and the Galactic Alliance, and find a way to destroy it for good.
Once Cakhmaim had passed them their bags, Leia raised the ramp and sounded the departure alarm. Luke, Han, and the droids backed away to a safe distance, then watched in silence as the Falcon lifted off without them and glided over the bustling floor. When it reached the hangar mouth, it paused briefly and flashed its landing lights in a complicated sequence of flashes and blinks.
R2-D2 let out an astonished whistle.
“I don’t know why that should surprise you,” C-3PO said. “Of course they’re concerned about us.”
“What did they say?” Luke asked.
“Be careful,” C-3PO translated. “And don’t let anything drip on the droids.”
“Drip on the . . . ?” Han looked up. “Uh, maybe we’d better get out of here.”
Luke followed Han’s gaze and found the gray blemish on the ceiling beginning to blister. There was no froth yet, but a long shadow down the center suggested the surface would soon start bubbling.
Luke was about to turn toward the exit when h
is danger sense made the hairs on his neck stand upright. He did not sense anything unusual from the eavesdroppers who had been watching them—no hardening of resolve, no cresting wave of anger or gathering lump of fear. He remained where he was, pretending to study the blemish on the ceiling as he opened himself more fully to the Force.
But instead of expanding his awareness as he would normally do when searching for an unseen threat, Luke waited quietly, patiently, without motion. He was trying to feel not the threat itself, but the ripples it created in the Force around it. The technique was one he had developed—with his nephew, Jacen—to search for beings who could hide their presences in the Force.
“Uh, Luke?” Han had already taken a dozen steps toward the exit and was standing in the middle of a long column of Saras porters. The insects were swinging their line around him, rushing a load of five-meter hamogoni logs into the hold of a boxy Damorian SpaceBantha freighter. “You coming?”
“Not yet,” Luke said. “Why don’t you go on ahead and ask about a place to stay? I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
Han frowned, then shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
“Perhaps Artoo and I should go with Captain Solo.” C-3PO was two steps ahead of Han. “He’s sure to need a translator.”
But R2-D2 remained behind. Luke had been forced to remove a motivation module to preserve a secret memory cache that had surfaced last year, and now the little droid refused to leave his side.
As Han departed, Luke worked to quiet his mind, to shut out the booming and banging and whirring of the busy hangar, the swirling mad efficiency of the Killiks and filmy hot weight of the dank air, to sense nothing but the Force itself, holding him in its liquid grasp, lapping at him from all sides, and soon he felt one set of ripples that seemed to come out of nowhere, from an emptiness where he sensed only a vague uneasiness in the Force, where he felt nothing except a cold, empty hole.
Luke turned toward the emptiness and found himself looking under an old Gallofree Star Barge that was listing toward a collapsed strut. The shadows beneath its belly were so thick and gray that it took a moment to find the source of the ripples he’d felt, but finally he noticed a pair of almond-shaped eyes watching him from near the stern. They had green irises surrounded by yellow sclera, and they were set in a slender blue face with high cheeks and a thin straight nose. The thick tendrils of a pair of lekku curled back from the top of the forehead, arching over the shoulders and vanishing behind a lithe female body.
“Alema Rar.” Luke let his hand drop to the hilt of his lightsaber. “I’m glad to see you survived the trouble at Kr.”
“ ‘Trouble,’ Master Skywalker?” The Twi’lek scuttled forward into the light. “That’s a pretty word for it.”
Alema was dressed in a Killik-silk bodysuit, the color of midnight and as close fitting as a coat of paint. The cloth was semitransparent, save for an opaque triangle that covered the sagging, misshaped shoulder above a dangling arm. Luke’s danger sense had formed an icy ball between his shoulder blades, but both of the Twi’lek’s hands were visible and empty, and the only weapon she carried was the new lightsaber hanging from the belt angled across her hips.
Luke began to quiet his mind again, searching for another set of unexplained Force ripples.
“Worried, Master Skywalker?” Alema stopped a dozen paces away and stared at him, her eyes as steady and unblinking as those of an insect. “There’s no need. We’re not interested in hurting you.”
“You’ll understand if I don’t believe you.”
Though Luke had noticed no other suspicious Force ripples, he pivoted in both directions, scanning the shadows beneath nearby ships, the churning Killik swarms, the hexagonal storage cells along the walls, and anywhere else an attacker might be lurking. He found nothing and turned back to Alema.
“I don’t suppose you’re here to ask the Jedi to take you back?”
“What an interesting idea.” The smile Alema flashed would have been coy once, but now seemed merely hard and base. “But no.”
Fairly confident now that Alema was not going to attack—at least physically—Luke moved his hand away from his lightsaber and advanced to within a few steps of the Twi’lek.
“Well, what are you doing here?” Knowing it would upset her and throw her off balance, Luke purposely allowed his gaze to linger on Alema’s disfigured shoulder. “Just stopping by to let us know you and Lomi Plo are still alive?”
Alema gave a low throat-click, then said, “Lomi Plo died in the Crash.”
“With Welk, I suppose.”
“Exactly,” Alema said.
Luke sighed in frustration. “So we’re back to that, are we?” He had slain Welk during the fight at Qoribu, only a few minutes after he had cut Alema’s shoulder half off, and he had good reason to believe that the apparition that had nearly killed him—and Mara—was what remained of Lomi Plo. “Alema, you were at Kr. You saw Welk before I killed him, and it had to be Lomi Plo who pulled you out of the nest at the end.”
“You killed BedaGorog,” Alema said. “She was the Night Herald before us.”
“The person I killed was male.” Luke suspected he was arguing a lost cause. The Dark Nest remained determined to hide the survival of Lomi Plo behind a veil of lies and false memories, and—as a sort of collective Unconscious for the entire Colony—it was adept at manipulating the beliefs of Joiners and Killiks alike. “He had a lightsaber, and he knew how to use it.”
“BedaGorog was Force-sensitive.” A lewd smile came to Alema’s lips. “And as we recall, you did not take the time to check inside her pants before you killed her.”
Luke let his chin drop. “Alema, you disappoint me.”
“The feeling is mutual, Master Skywalker,” Alema said. “We have not forgotten the slaughter at Kr.”
“There wouldn’t have been a slaughter if you had done your duty as a Jedi.” Luke sensed a familiar presence creeping toward him, skulking its way under the stern of the old Star Barge, and realized that Han had returned to the hangar without C-3PO. “But you let your anger make you weak, and the Dark Nest took advantage.”
Alema’s unblinking eyes turned the color of chlorine. “Don’t blame us for what—”
“I’ll lay the blame where it belongs. As a Master of the Jedi council, that is my duty—and my privilege!” Hoping to keep Alema’s attention too riveted on him to notice Han sneaking up behind her, Luke moved to within lightsaber range of the Twi’lek. “Now I ask you one last time to return to Ossus. I know it will be hard to face those you betrayed, but—”
“We are not interested in ‘redemption’ . . . or anything else you have to offer, Master Skywalker. We are here with—”
Alema stopped in midsentence and cocked her head, then reached for her lightsaber.
Luke had already extended his arm and was summoning the weapon to himself, literally ripping Alema’s belt off her waist and leaving the Twi’lek with an empty hand as Han hit her in the flank with a stun bolt.
Alema dropped to her knees, but did not fall, so Han fired again. This time, the Twi’lek collapsed onto her face and lay on the hangar floor twitching and drooling. Han leveled the weapon to fire again.
“That’s enough,” Luke said. “Are you trying to kill her?”
“As a matter of fact, yeah.” Han scowled at the setting switch on the barrel of his blaster, then thumbed it to the opposite position. “I could have sworn I had it set on full power.”
Luke shook his head in dismay, then used the Force to turn the weapon’s barrel away from Alema. “Sometimes I wonder if I still know you, Han. She’s defenseless.”
“She’s a Jedi,” Han said. “She’s never defenseless.”
Still, he flicked the selector switch back to stun, then stood behind the Twi’lek and pointed the barrel at her head. Luke removed her lightsaber from her belt, then squatted on the floor in front of her and waited until she started to come around—which was incredibly quickly, even for a Jedi.
“Sorry
about that,” Luke said. “Han’s still a little sore about what you did to the Falcon.”
Alema opened one eye. “He always did carry a grudge.” She struggled to bring Luke into focus, then said, “But perhaps you should make something clear to him. We are not at your mercy.”
A tremendous clamor rumbled through the hangar as nearby insects began to drop their loads and scurry toward the Star Barge.
“You are at ours.”
Luke began to slap Alema’s lightsaber against his palm, allowing his frustration to pass, trying to remind himself that the Twi’lek was not in control of herself, that it was impossible for her to separate her own thoughts from those of the Dark Nest. But Jaina and Zekk had found themselves in a similar situation, and they had not turned their backs on the Jedi. The difference was, they had tried to resist.
Finally, Luke tucked Alema’s lightsaber into his belt and stood. “You could have fought this,” he said. “Maybe you still can. Jaina and Zekk became Joiners, and yet they remained true to their duty.”
“You place too much faith in others, Master Skywalker.” Alema braced her good arm on the floor and pushed off, then brought her feet up beneath her. “That has always been your weakness—and soon it will be your downfall.”
A cold shiver of danger sense raced up Luke’s spine, and he resisted the temptation to ask Alema’s meaning. This was the reason she had come to the hangar, he felt certain. She was trying to trap him, to draw him into some dark and twisted maze where he would become as lost as she was.
Unfortunately, Han did not have Jedi danger sense. “Too much faith? What’s that supposed to mean? If something’s going on with Jaina—”
Alema glanced over her shoulder at Han, pouting at the blaster still pointed at her back, then said, “We didn’t mean to alarm you, Han. Jaina and Zekk are fine, as far as we know.” She looked back to Luke. “We were talking about Mara. She has been dishonest with Master Skywalker.”
“I doubt that very much.” Luke saw what the Dark Nest was attempting, and he could not believe they would be foolish enough to try such a thing. Nobody was going to drive a wedge between him and Mara. “And even if I didn’t, I would hardly take the Dark Nest’s word over that of a Jedi Master.”