The powder-blue moon moth lifted into the air, spiraling on the night breezes. It flew in a careful random pattern, precisely erratic, drawing no attention whatsoever.
As Madine tilted his head up, cold pearls of rain began to drop, beading on his cheeks. He blinked, rubbed the greasy water from his face, but his beard absorbed the moisture. Staring at the moth as it approached its target, Madine’s heart pounded.
This mission was simple and smooth. The moth machine fluttered down and alit on the outer hull of Durga’s yacht, just behind one of the stabilizer fins.
The moth stayed on the hull for only a moment, paused to deposit its precious egg—a microscopic droplet—then it beat its wings and rose into the increasing downpour. Madine waited until the tiny droid was lost to sight up in the night blackness, flying as far from Durga’s ship as the buffeting winds would allow.
He felt a twinge of sadness when he reached deep into the torn folds to his pocket for the tiny controls—and pressed the “destruct” button.
He saw a sparkle of white light, a flash of the tiny detonation. Then he turned and was already moving away from the fence, melting into the shadows around the prefab ghettos. He had plenty of time to reach the rendezvous point.
The moth’s mission had been successful, and now Madine would be able to track Durga’s movements, wherever the Hutt went.
DAGOBAH
CHAPTER 26
Luke woke in the middle of the night to see Callista standing over him, her slender body silhouetted against pale watery light, a backwash of reflections that penetrated the polymerized ice walls in the comet quarry.
He sat up, instantly aware. “Callista, what is it?” Warm mists curled around her like steam, and he had an eerie sense of déjà vu, a flash of memory from when he had seen her spectral image while she was trapped inside the Eye of Palpatine.
“Luke,” she said, her voice quiet and troubled, “we shouldn’t be here.…”
He increased the light from the glowpanels. “Why not?” He slid out of bed and stood to hold her. She felt soft and warm, fitting comfortably into his embrace. “This place is beautiful and peaceful. What better spot could there be for us to spend some time?”
Callista stared deeply at him with her gray eyes. “This is romantic and private, Luke, but … that’s all. The comet quarry has no focus, no connection to anything that matters to us. It’s not personal. I’ve got to work with something personal.” She pressed her lips together, then continued with greater conviction, “Oh, Luke, why not take me to where you learned the Force. I’ll see it through my own eyes, and you can guide me.”
A silvery tinkle of water spattered from the fountains. The solidified ice walls were thick and muffling. He and Callista seemed isolated, frozen away from everyone else—as she had been frozen inside the computer banks for so many decades.
He squeezed her tightly. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I can show you many places—it’ll be like a pilgrimage to the worlds that influenced my life.”
She followed him as he walked out of the sleeping chamber into the common room. He whispered his request to the recessed computer terminal. As the computer search sorted public-access navigation charts, he went over to the food-prep unit and summoned two steaming cups of sweet, soothing jeru tea. He handed one to Callista, and she took it, smiling. This was her favorite beverage, and he had learned to drink it with her.
Luke sat down on the comfortable chair, and Callista took a seat beside him, running her long fingers across his shoulders, drawing a melting line of relaxation. He ran a hand through his ruffled hair to straighten it from the chaos of sleep. He took another sip of the syrupy tea and studied the navigational analysis in an outwardly spiraling list of distances.
He smiled with a wistful sigh as he found his target. “All right,” he said and turned to Callista. “Looks like we’ll go to Dagobah first.”
Clouds formed a thick band across the sky of Dagobah, a belt of storms that Luke Skywalker’s ship plowed through. He increased the shields to prevent the lightning damage that his X-wing had sustained the first time he had come to find the Jedi Master Yoda.
Dagobah had many climatic areas, many places not quite as teeming with life as the magnificent swamps; but Yoda had chosen to hide in the marshy areas where his presence could be masked by so many life forces.
Luke talked of Yoda as he brought their space yacht through a break in the canopy. “The first time I landed here in a bog, and my X-wing sank. I thought I’d never get out until Yoda used the Force to heave my ship out of the water. I thought it was impossible. He told me that’s why I failed.”
Luke risked a glance at Callista, taking his attention from the piloting. “Never believe that yourself. You will get your powers back. Don’t think it’s impossible.”
She nodded. “I know it’s not impossible, and I’m going to do it.”
The ship spotlights extended brilliant cones to the wet ground below. Luke located a clearing that looked like a field of white boulders, but as he shone the light down to cut through the creeping ground fog, he saw that the white rocks were actually spherical fungi. As the beam played across them, their sensitive skins burst, showering fine spores. He could hear the faint boom of fungus blasts as the lumps reproduced in the sudden wash of light.
Luke set the space yacht down, keeping his fingers tense on the controls in case the ship should begin to cant or settle awkwardly. But the ground seemed stable beneath them. He switched off the engines. “Shall we go for a stroll in the swamp?” he said, offering Callista his hand.
They both wore slick, stain-impermeable jumpsuits, and they pulled on hard boots for sloshing through the brackish water. When he cracked open the hatch, the sudden buzz of millions of life forms—croaks, grunts, whistles, and death screams—assaulted his ears, a chaos of natural sounds that made the jungles of Yavin 4 seem peaceful by comparison. Minuscule gnats and biting flies thickened the air.
Luke stood stunned and a little intimidated on the boarding ramp. A mist had already begun to unfold. The snowy shower of white spores settled to the ground from the sensitive spherical fungi. He smelled the damp odor of decay and fresh life. “Yoda,” he whispered, as memories fell heavy around him.
“This place is so alive,” Callista said beside him, startling Luke from his thoughts. He still couldn’t get used to the fact that he was unable to sense her with the Force, as he did everything else.
A thread of disappointment laced through her voice. “I can see it and hear it, but I can’t feel the web of living creatures as I should.”
“You will,” he said, clasping her hand. “You will. Come on.”
They trudged away from the ship and into the brooding swamps. Enormous gnarltrees stretched to the sky, their twisted roots like multilegged creatures balanced with bent knees. The roots were sweeping and arched, forming dark warrens for innumerable creatures. The day was gray and fog-shrouded, growing darker with each moment as sunset approached.
Luke knew that Yoda’s home had long since been reclaimed by the swamp, torn to a shambles and left in far worse wreckage than Ben Kenobi’s hut had been. He didn’t want to return to the place where he had sat beside the alien Jedi Master’s deathbed, learning the truth about his father and his sister, watching the wrinkle-faced creature fade into nothingness as his spirit left his body after nine hundred years.
He and Callista slogged through puddles, climbing over fallen trees, and scaring creatures that fled into darker hollows, splashing into the swamp. Much larger growling things moved in the distance, crashing between trees.
Luke spoke of Yoda and of his time training here: jogging through the swamp, levitating rocks and Artoo-Detoo, learning nuggets of Jedi philosophy that Yoda spouted in his convoluted language.
The ground fog thickened into white tentacles that wrapped around their lower legs. Callista’s face carried an openness and a tentative wonder that Luke hadn’t seen in some time. Occasionally, she gritted her teeth and seemed to be
straining, trying to accomplish something. Apparently failing, she said nothing to Luke; he squeezed her hand tighter.
A knobby white spider as tall as a human heaved itself up from a pile of underbrush, its legs like twisted forerunners of the thick gnarl-tree roots. But the knobby hunter meant them no harm, and stalked off in search of smaller prey.
“We should head back to the ship,” Luke said. “It’s getting dark. We can start some exercises tomorrow.”
They circled toward the clearing where they had landed the space yacht, then sat outside in the darkness. Callista brought out a portable glowlamp, and Luke removed a case of rations from the ship’s stores. They sat on boulders surrounded by an envelope of light, and tore into their food bars. “What a place for a picnic,” Callista said.
She chewed intently while Luke stared down at his tasteless rations. “Yoda didn’t like this food,” he said. “Couldn’t understand how I managed to grow so tall if I ate food like this. He fixed me some kind of stew, and I don’t think I wanted to know what was in it.”
Bugs swarmed around them, attracted by the light as the night thickened. “Should we go inside the ship?” he asked. “Where it’s more comfortable?”
Callista shook her head. “We were comfortable at the Mulako quarry resort. I didn’t come here to be comfortable.” She looked up at the impenetrable sky. “I wanted to feel something here … but it’s not working.” She turned sharply, flashing her slate gray eyes at Luke, and he saw devastation within them. “Why do you stay with me, Luke?” she said.
He blinked, shocked at her question.
“You are a Jedi Master,” she continued, “one of the heroes of the Rebellion. You could have anyone you want.”
Amazed, Luke raised his hand to cut off her comments. “I don’t want just anybody, Callista—I want you.”
She flung the rest of her ration bar angrily out into the swamp, where it splashed into a weed-covered pool. Luke heard thrashing and bubbles as underwater creatures fought for loose morsels.
Callista’s expression grew stern. “Well, that’s fine, Luke—but you have to think of more than your feelings. You have a responsibility to the New Republic … to the Jedi Knights. If I’m powerless, I’ll drag you down.”
Longingly, Luke caressed her arm. “No you won’t, Callista. I—”
She stood, abruptly stepping away from him. “Yes! There’s only one way we can be together. It’s all or nothing. If I can’t have my powers back, then we shouldn’t stay together. You’d better start preparing yourself for that possibility. I don’t want to always be in your shadow, unable to do the things you do so easily … taunted by the things I used to do myself. You’d be a constant reminder, opening and reopening my wounds. If I’m not your equal, I won’t be part of this relationship. That’s the way it has to be.”
“Hey, wait a minute …” Luke said, trying to calm her down.
Suddenly, with a screeching subsonic cry, a swarm of nightbats crashed out of the swamp trees and swooped down. They had leathery wings and insectile bodies with six thin segmented legs bearing small, sharp claws. Attracted by the light, the nightbats came toward them. Other flying creatures flurried in front of them, confused by the high-pitched barrage of noise.
The nightbats attacked indiscriminately, scratching with their claws at Callista and Luke, slashing his jumpsuit, his neck. Luke fended them off with his hands. Two clutched Callista’s malt blond hair, tugging it and fighting with each other as she thrashed to knock them away. With a hissing thrumm Luke drew his lightsaber, and Callista yanked hers free.
Luke used the Force to strike at his targets, but the nightbats kept coming, dozens of them. The lightsaber blades crackled and flared, topaz and yellow-green—attracting more of the creatures.
Callista hissed in anger and struck with her lightsaber, clumsily wielding it like a club that sliced through anything she encountered. Luke clipped off the wings of a nightbat, even as more swirled in, shrieking.
Callista shouted curses at them as she attacked blindly and with brute force. Her battle disturbed Luke. It was filled with a fury and a wild abandon he had never seen in her. Callista yelled at the nightbats as if they were an incarnation of her greatest enemy.
“It’s not fair!” she said, targeting Luke briefly with her gaze. “I’ve finally found you—and now I might have to give you up.” She raised her voice and chopped with the sun-yellow blade in such an explosion of fury that she sliced through three of the nightbats. “It’s not fair.”
And as she released her anger, Luke felt a glimmer, dark ripples that came from Callista. He caught a glimpse of her image in the Force, like the flickering afterglow of things seen under a strobelight.
“Leave us alone!” she shouted at the bats and unconsciously pushed. The remaining nightbats went into a confused spiral away from their campsite—buffeted by Callista’s rage—and fled shrieking into the night. Stunned silence returned to the clearing.
Then Callista lowered her energy blade, slumping weakly in the aftermath of what she had done. Luke deactivated his own lightsaber and stared at her in amazement. Outside the perimeter of the glowlamp, though, Luke heard other creatures stirring, larger predators crashing through the underbrush, attracted by the commotion. Out of sight, an overhanging branch cracked and was flung to the ground as something huge lumbered forward.
Luke switched off the glowlamp, plunging the swamp into a darkness lit only by the twinkling lights of phosphorescent insects and glowing fungus. But the large, unseen predators kept coming.
Luke grabbed Callista’s arm, and she stiffened, as if he were a stranger. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to get inside before they come back.”
She snapped out of her funk and followed him up the boarding ramp into the space yacht. Luke activated the hatch controls and the ship sealed itself, locking down for the night.
They both collapsed on one of the passenger benches, and Callista pressed herself against him. Luke put his arms around her shoulders and squeezed. Callista was shuddering, glistening with a sheen of frightened perspiration. “I opened up for just a second,” she said.
“I know,” Luke answered. “I could feel it.”
Then she looked up at him, her eyes very afraid. “But it was the dark side, Luke! We both recognized it.”
Luke nodded, and they stared at each other with a mixture of hope and dread. “At least you’ve cracked through,” he said. “Perhaps now you can do something.”
Callista sat up straight, gathering her strength again. She spoke with absolute certainty as the muffled night sounds of Dagobah’s swamp enfolded the sealed ship.
“It’s not worth the cost, Luke. If I have to touch the dark side to regain my powers, then I’d rather not ever be a Jedi again.”
HOTH ASTEROID BELT
CHAPTER 27
Shortly after Durga left in a huff for Nal Hutta on some unexpected diplomatic mission, Bevel Lemelisk watched Imperial General Sulamar transform into an even more pompous ass without the Hutt there to squash his dictatorial impulses.
Sulamar seemed to think he was the reincarnation of Grand Moff Tarkin, strutting about and issuing orders at his whim. But unlike Tarkin, Sulamar gave orders that had no merit, and the general had none of the personal power or iron-hard charisma Tarkin had displayed.
Lemelisk brushed him aside. He’d never had much use for military puffballs. He had work to do.
The growing magnificent construction of the Darksaber filled him with joy as he watched from the distant Orko SkyMine expeditionary ship. The main supports for the superweapon had taken shape, folding the durasteel lattice into a cylindrical tube, like a gigantic wind tunnel.
General Sulamar had supposedly used his influence to obtain surplus computer cores from old Imperial shipyards, cores powerful enough to direct the operations of the Darksaber. The Hutts had been unable to purchase appropriate computers through regular channels, but Sulamar had promised to get them, chin high with self-importance. Lemelis
k would believe in the alleged computer cores when he actually saw them.
In Durga’s absence, Sulamar loved to remain on the command deck, standing significantly in the space where the Hutt’s levitating platform usually hung. The general wore a smug expression on his old baby face.
Lemelisk, though, preferred the private observation blister that Durga used as a relaxation lounge. Here, staring out at the orbiting battering rams of crushed rock, Lemelisk could be alone and at peace with his thoughts, letting his mind buzz as new things occurred to him, ideas he would explore at some later date. The potential for destruction made him curiously aware of the power contained within this space shrapnel. It calmed him.
Once the Automated Mineral Exploiters Gamma and Delta had gone operational—with programming altered so as to ignore each other as potential targets and resources—the construction had progressed amazingly well. Day by day, Lemelisk could see the behemoth blossoming, taking shape from a jumble of loose, drifting girders into a long and shimmering lightsaber handle whose blade would be a superlaser that could crack planets.
The Taurill workers were the key—Durga’s masterstroke, and Lemelisk gave the Hutt all the credit he deserved. The multiarmed simian creatures were agile, strong, and intelligent enough en masse.
Lemelisk hadn’t the slightest idea where Durga had obtained the thousands of specially made environment suits: small, airtight, heated, and with four arms and two legs to fit the Taurill. Like a pack of vermin the little creatures swarmed outside in the hard vacuum, scurrying over the construction site, working collectively.
Feeling silly at first, Lemelisk had spent hours with representatives from the Taurill, a pair of the fuzzy creatures that seemed like simpering pets. He displayed the Darksaber plans on the holoprojector, pointing out precise construction details, tediously going over every step. It had seemed at first as if he were speaking to a nonintelligent furball that blinked stupidly at him. But he knew that those blank, half-amused stares were windows to a greater Overmind able to concentrate on the input from these two observers, absorb it, and understand it. At least Bevel Lemelisk hoped so.
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