by Timothy Zahn
“But we’ll be back,” Jinzler promised. “Or at least, some Chiss transports will be. They’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
She shook her head. “It won’t make any difference,” she said quietly. “No matter where we go, Uliar will find some kind of Three to put me in.”
“They’re not going to do that,” Jinzler insisted. “Surely they learned a lesson from this whole thing. If it wasn’t for you, a good many more people might have died.”
“That won’t make any difference,” she said again. “Not to them.” She sighed. “I wish you’d never come here. If you hadn’t. . .” She trailed off.
“If we hadn’t, what?” Jinzler prompted. “You would have gone on living a lie?”
“I could have pretended,” she said. “Lots of people pretend.” She looked squarely up into his eyes. “Even you do.”
An edge of guilt dug up under Jinzler’s rib cage. “That’s different,” he said. “If I hadn’t told them I was an ambassador, the Chiss might not have let me come along.”
“But you’re here now,” she reminded him. “You could have stopped pretending a long time ago.”
“Yes, well, we’re not talking about me, young lady,” he reminded her firmly. “We’re talking about you. And the point is, you shouldn’t be ashamed of what you can do.”
“Maybe not.” Pressor’s voice came from behind them. “But that doesn’t mean she should announce it from the command deck, either.” Jinzler turned. Pressor and Rosemari were coming down the corridor toward them, Pressor with a pile of sacks across one forearm. “I brought you a new collection bag,” he said, peeling one off the stack and handing it to Evlyn. “These are plasticized, so they won’t get as soggy.”
“Thanks,” she said, taking it and handing him her partially full one in return.
“I really think you ought to go join the rest of the people down on Six, Evlyn,” Rosemari said, eyeing her daughter’s bandages. “Don’t you think you’d be more comfortable there?”
“Would you be?” Evlyn said pointedly.
The corners of Rosemari’s mouth tightened. “I suppose not,” she conceded. “Director Uliar’s probably been talking to people already.”
“I’m sure he has,” Pressor said. “But I’ve been thinking, and there may still be a way to backtrack on this.”
“What do you mean?” Rosemari asked.
“Well, think about it,” Pressor said. “Besides the stuff in the turbolift, which no one else saw, the only thing Evlyn did was pull that comlink across the meeting room deck. We could easily churn the water by saying it was actually Ambassador Jinzler who did that.”
“Except that I’m not a Jedi,” Jinzler pointed out.
“Maybe you lied about that,” Pressor countered. “Or maybe you didn’t even know yourself that you had the power.”
“And you are the brother of a known Jedi,” Rosemari added thoughtfully. “That has to count for something. Maybe your pep talk in the meeting room actually stimulated your powers, not Evlyn’s.”
“Are you suggesting I lie for your daughter?” Jinzler asked.
Rosemari held his gaze without flinching. “Why not?” she said. “It was you and your people who got her into this mess.”
“It’s not a mess,” Jinzler insisted. “It’s an opportunity.”
Beside him, Evlyn stirred. “Ambassador Jinzler says I shouldn’t be ashamed of who I am.”
“Ambassador Jinzler doesn’t have to live among these people,” Pressor retorted, glaring at Jinzler.
“I do for the moment,” Jinzler pointed out ruefully. “A moment that could stretch out considerably, I might add. We won’t know until the line creepers have all been cleaned out whether or not they caused any permanent damage. We could conceivably find out that the Chaf Envoy will never fly again.”
“That could be a problem, all right,” Pressor grunted. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you to bring a spare hypercapable vehicle with you?”
“We brought three, actually,” Jinzler said with a grimace. “The commander’s glider, the transport the Imperials came in, and Luke and Mara’s ship. The Vagaari hit all three on their way out. Talshib says they even took the time to sabotage their own shuttle, and it wasn’t even hypercapable.”
Pressor shook his head. “They’re thorough, you have to give them that. So how long until the rest of the Chiss come hunting for you?”
“That’s just it,” Jinzler said. “Formbi was playing this so close to the table that I’m not sure the rest of the Chiss even know we’re out here. There are some aboard the command station we passed on our way into the cluster, of course, but the Vagaari might well be planning to destroy that on their way out. If they succeed, it might be months before anyone comes back out this way.”
“That would solve the problem, wouldn’t it?” Evlyn murmured.
They all looked at her. “What?” Pressor asked.
“That would solve the problem,” Evlyn repeated. “Because if you stay, they’d have to put Luke and Mara in Three if they put me there. And they couldn’t do that, could they?”
“I doubt it seriously,” Jinzler agreed hesitantly. That hadn’t even occurred to him.
“And then they could teach me how to be a real Jedi,” Evlyn continued, looking up at her mother. “Then we wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore about what they might do to me, because they couldn’t.”
Rosemari reached up to stroke her daughter’s hair, an oddly pinched expression on her face. “Evlyn. . .”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Evlyn pressed. She turned back to Jinzler. “It’s what you want, too, isn’t it?”
“Certainly, I want you to develop your gift,” Jinzler agreed. “But we’re the only ones who know about the Vagaari and what they’ve found out about the Redoubt. If we get stuck here, it may mean the deaths of many more Chiss.”
“Is that important?” Evlyn said, a strange edge of challenge in her voice.
“Of course it’s important,” Rosemari said. Her voice seemed sad, almost resigned, yet at the same time had a sense of peace to it. “Ambassador. . . there may be another hypercapable transport available. We have a Delta-Twelve Skysprite sitting in one of the docking bays over on Three.”
Pressor turned to his sister, his jaw dropping in astonishment. “We’ve got a what?”
“A Delta-Twelve Skysprite,” she repeated. “It’s a two-passenger sublight transport with a connecting hyperdrive ring. Dad showed it to me once when we were working over there together.”
“I didn’t know there was anything like that aboard Outbound Flight,” Pressor said.
“Not many people do,” Rosemari said. “And I don’t think anyone knows why it was even aboard. Dad certainly didn’t.”
She looked at Jinzler. “The problem is that the Managing Council made Dad disassemble the hyperdrive. They knew they’d never be able to find a way out of the cluster, and they didn’t want one of their exiled Jedi to figure it out and get away.”
Jinzler took a careful breath. A hypercapable ship. . . “You say the ring was disassembled, not destroyed? Are all the parts still there?”
“I’m sure Dad didn’t break anything,” Rosemari said. “He was being very careful. And when he was done, he put everything into a storage locker. If you could get it to work, someone might at least be able to go for help.”
“So you’d just let us go?” Jinzler asked, eyeing her closely. “Even though keeping us here might help your daughter?”
“Against your will?” Rosemari asked quietly. “And at the cost of all those Chiss lives?” She shook her head. “Not for me. Not even for my daughter. Jedi serve others rather than ruling over them, for the good of the galaxy.”
She looked down at her daughter, a bittersweet smile on her lips. “You see?” she said. “I even know the Code.”
Evlyn wrapped her arms around her mother. “I knew you’d do the right thing,” she murmured.
Jinzler took a deep breath. “M
ara?” he called.
Three seconds later Mara appeared at the recovery room doorway, Captain Talshib right behind her. “What is it?” she demanded, glancing around for trouble.
“Rosemari says there’s a Delta-Twelve tucked away over in D-Three,” he told her. “You ever hear of that particular model?”
“Sounds vaguely familiar,” Mara said, frowning in concentration. “Remind me.”
“It was from Kuat Systems,” he told her. “They manufactured the entire Delta line, including the Delta-Seven Aethersprite the Jedi used as starfighters during the early days of the Clone Wars. None of the Deltas had an internal hyperdrive, but TransGalMeg Industries made a hyperdrive ring for it to dock into. The Twelve was basically a larger, two-person version of the Seven that had its weapons stripped off for the civilian market.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Mara said. “So what’s the question?”
“The question is whether you or Luke could fly it,” Jinzler said.
“But the hyperdrive doesn’t work,” Pressor reminded him.
“I’ll fix the hyperdrive,” Jinzler said tartly. “Can you fly it?”
“Don’t worry,” she assured him grimly. “If you can fix it, we can fly it.”
“You can fix it?” Evlyn asked, her voice sounding awed.
Jinzler looked at her. She was gazing up at him, her eyes as awed as her voice. A girl who had the power of the Jedi. . . and yet she was awed and impressed that he could fix a hyperdrive.
Suddenly he was staring at his sister again, all those years ago.
“Pretty exotic training for an ambassador,” Pressor murmured.
Jinzler turned to face him; and as he did so, he felt himself drawing up to his full height. “I’m not an ambassador, Guardian,” he said, his voice ringing clearly down the corridor with a pride and self-respect he’d never, ever felt before. “I’m an electronics technician.”
He looked down at Evlyn and smiled. “Like my father before me.”
* * *
As if from deep inside a well, a familiar voice called their standard code phrase. “I love you.”
Luke blinked his eyes open, fighting the equally standard surge of disorientation. It was dark in the operating room, with only a dim permlight glowing off to one side, but he had no trouble recognizing the face leaning over him. “Hi, Mara,” he said, working moisture into his mouth. “How’s it going?”
“Better than I would have thought when you went under,” she told him. “First things first. How do you feel?”
Experimentally, Luke took a deep breath. “Mostly healed, I think,” he told her. “Muscles and skin seem fine.” He wiggled his shoulders. “Except for my left shoulder blade.”
“You took a big piece of shrapnel there,” Mara said, rolling him half up onto his right side and probing the half-healed injury with her fingertips. “That one’ll take a little more work.”
“We seem to have time,” Luke pointed out, glancing around the darkened room. Apparently, Bearsh’s line creepers had gotten a solid grip on Outbound Flight’s electrical systems. “Your turn.”
“The Vagaari didn’t bother to kill any of the Chiss when they left the Chaf Envoy except the squad we’d left in the Dreadnaught docking bay,” Mara said. “That ambush is apparently what we felt while we were poking around D-One. They did dump a whole bunch of line creepers, though, which have pretty well incapacitated everything over there.” She made a face. “Including the Sabre, of course.”
“Of course,” Luke agreed, eyeing her face and wincing for Estosh’s chances if Mara ever caught up with him again. Messing with his wife’s ship was not a healthy thing to do. “So we’re basically stuck here?”
“Not as stuck as Bearsh was hoping,” Mara said. “Jinzler taught us a little trick to draw the line creepers out of the conduits and kill them. Another three or four days and we should have all the ships cleaned out.”
She smiled tightly. “Even more interesting is that Outbound Flight had a small starship tucked away. A Delta-Twelve Skysprite.”
“Never heard of it,” Luke said. “Is it functional?”
“They’re running the final diagnostics on it now,” Mara said. “Jinzler’s stopped being an ambassador, by the way, and gone back to being a lowly hyperdrive tech.”
“Sounds like a more useful profession at the moment,” Luke said. “What about the others? Did everyone make it out of the battle all right?”
“Yes, though no one’s going to be doing any strenuous dancing for a while,” Mara assured him. “The Five-Oh-First took the most damage, but Fel says they should be fine. The big question right now is whether you feel up to a little trip.”
Luke had already figured out where the conversation was heading. “You mean to try to whistle up an alert on the Vagaari before they get out of Chiss space?”
“Preferably before they even get out of the Redoubt,” Mara said. “Don’t forget they’ve got a whole bunch of disguised fighters waiting for them at that command station.”
“Right.” Luke had forgotten that, actually. “You figure they’ll try to destroy the station on their way out?”
“I would, if I were trying to sneak out with a stolen warship,” Mara said. “But right now they’ve only got a six-hour head start on us. They’re also flying a Dreadnaught, which weren’t exactly known for their speed even under the best of circumstances. And we know the course they’re on. If we can get out of here in the next hour or two, there’s a good chance we can beat them to the station.”
“Yes,” Luke murmured.
Mara cocked her head slightly. “You don’t sound convinced.”
“Just thinking,” he said. “What about food and air? I seem to remember Deltas not having a lot of range.”
“It has enough,” Mara assured him. “Anyway, we only have to make it out of the cluster.”
“Right,” Luke said, still considering. “How about recognition signals? I presume that the Chiss on Brask Oto aren’t just going to take our word for any of this.”
“Hardly,” Mara agreed. “Formbi’s already given me a recorded message to transmit to them, with Drask and Captain Talshib cosigning on it. Drask’s also given me his private emergency prefix signal, or rather the one that’ll be current on the day we reach Brask Oto: two-space-one-space-two.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Luke grunted, easing himself up into a sitting position. “Do we have time to eat before we take off?”
“They’ve packed us a lunch,” Mara said. “We need to get going as soon as Jinzler gives the okay.”
“Then that time is here,” Jinzler said, stepping through the doorway. “The Skysprite checks out just—”
He broke off. “What is it?” Luke asked, frowning at the sudden surge of emotion in Jinzler’s face and sense.
“That lightsaber,” Jinzler said, his voice suddenly stiff. “May I see it?”
“Sure,” Luke said, pulling the relic from his belt. “We found it down on D-One, in what was left of the bridge.”
“We think it might have been Jorus C’baoth’s,” Mara added.
“No,” Jinzler said quietly as he carefully turned the old weapon over in his hands. “It was Lorana’s.”
Luke felt his heart tighten. “I’m sorry” was all he could think of to say.
Jinzler shrugged, a fractional lifting of his shoulders. “I knew she hadn’t made it,” he said. “All this hatred and prejudice would have disappeared years ago if they’d had a true Jedi living and working in their midst. Do you know how she died?”
Luke shook his head. “The bridge was pretty well wrecked, and of course any evidence that might have been there is half a century old. There was no way for us to tell whether she died in the crash or before.” He hesitated. “We did find some alien bones in the same area, though. They may or may not be connected with her.”
“They probably were,” Jinzler murmured. “She would have died trying to protect her people.”
“I’m sorry,” Luk
e said again. “Would you like to have it?”
For a moment Jinzler continued to gaze at the lightsaber, and Luke could sense the struggle going on within him. Something that had been his sister’s; possibly his last link to that part of his own life. . .
He took a deep breath. “Yes, I would,” he said, handing it back to Luke. “But not now. You might need it; and I rather like the idea of Lorana’s lightsaber being used against those who helped destroy her. You can bring it back to me when this is all over.”
“I will,” Luke promised, taking the weapon back with a new reverence.
“And you’d better get going,” Jinzler added. “The ship’s still over in D-Three, so you’ll need vac suits to get to it. I’ll take you to where Pressor’s got a pair laid out for you.”
* * *
Luke had expected to see most of their companions on the way out, with the opportunity for both a proper farewell and also a quick assessment of their individual injuries.
It didn’t work out that way. Fel and the stormtroopers had been moved down to D-6 with most of the rest of the colony, where they would be more comfortable while they recovered from their battle wounds. Drask and Formbi had been similarly transferred back to the Chaf Envoy for more specialized treatment than the Outbound Flight medics could provide, with Feesa as always staying at the Aristocra’s side. Director Uliar and the rest of the council had rather pointedly retired to D-6 as well, leaving behind an unspoken but distinct impression that they wouldn’t be returning to D-5 until it was free again from the taint of the Jedi and their influence.
Which meant that aside from a couple of silent techs and a pair of Chiss warriors guarding the turbolifts, the only ones there to see them off were Jinzler, Pressor, Rosemari, and Evlyn. Only Evlyn seemed to have anything to say, and she seemed too shy or troubled to say very much of it.
Under other circumstances, Luke would probably have taken the time to try to draw the girl out a little. Mara, he knew, would definitely have done so. But with the Vagaari already hours ahead of them, personal and social considerations would have to wait.