by Troy Denning
Jaina nodded. “Well, that’s something.”
“I’m trying to negotiate an autonomous membership in the Galactic Alliance,” Jag explained. “So far, Daala keeps saying all or nothing. She thinks divided loyalties are what sparked the last civil war.”
“She might have a point.” Even as Jaina said this, she began to see a glimmer of hope that it might not be necessary to make this impossible choice. “Jag, could this be some kind of—”
“Test?” Jag finished for her. “We’re not that lucky. I didn’t hear it from Daala herself, just someone talking on a comlink when he didn’t realize I was in the room.”
“It could still be a test,” Jaina said. “Chiefs of State do occasionally use proxies for that sort of thing, you know.”
Jag shook his head. “Wynn Dorvan doesn’t strike me as the kind who involves himself in those sort of games.”
Jaina’s stomach sank. Wynn Dorvan was Daala’s top aide, a rare Coruscanti bureaucrat known as much for his integrity as his competence.
“Bloah,” she said. “And you really need Daala to give in to you on this?”
“I’m afraid so,” Jag said. “If I try to subordinate our government to the Galactic Alliance—especially one led by Natasi Daala—the Moffs will go into open rebellion. I barely have the support to bring us in as equals.”
“And you’re doing good to get that,” Jaina said. “I doubt even Uncle Luke expected you to persuade the Moffs to consider unification at all.”
“I have motivation. For the first time in recent memory, the entire galaxy is at peace.” Jag took Jaina’s hand, and a hopeful note came to his voice. “And if I can convince Daala to let the Empire come into the fold on its own terms, we just might keep it that way.”
“But if the Jedi Order learns that she’s sent for a company of Mandalorians, she’ll take it as proof that divided loyalties can’t work.”
“Exactly.” Jag squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry, but this is bigger than the Jedi order. I think even Master Skywalker would want you to keep quiet.”
“He’d want me to take it to the Council and trust the Masters to do the right thing,” Jaina replied drily.
Jag’s grasp started to slacken, but Jaina did not allow him to withdraw his hand. It hurt her to know he thought she might betray him a second time, but even she had to admit that his lack of faith was justified. He had risked everything when he trusted her word during the Killik crisis, and that had cost him everything. Who was to blame, really, if he found it difficult to trust her now?
Jaina turned to face him. “But Uncle Luke isn’t leading the Council anymore,” she said. “And the way Kenth Hamner has been caving in to Daala, a few Mandalorians just might be enough to make him turn us all over to be frozen in carbonite.”
“So you won’t tell the Masters?”
“of course not,” Jaina said. “Even if telling them were the right thing to do, didn’t I just promise that I wouldn’t?”
Jag gave her one of his rare smiles. “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”
“It better.” Jaina leaned toward him. “Because I wouldn’t do it for anyone else.”
Before she could kiss him, Jag’s head snapped around toward the front of the limousine, and he scowled out the windscreen. “Blast it,” he said. “Look who’s coming.”
Jaina saw two humans slipping through the gap between the GAS assault speeder and the end of the safety wall. The first person was a stocky woman in headsets and a HoloNet news tunic, her attention focused on the joystick hand unit she was using to steer a heavy holocam floating ahead of her. The second human was a slender man in a yellow tabard, his tawny hair cut in a fashionable short-bang chop. Javis Tyrr.
“Why am I not surprised?” Jaina growled.
Tyrr’s cam operator instantly turned to capture the still-raging argument between Baxton and the GAS officer. Meanwhile, Tyrr drew a recording rod from inside his tabard and continued down the lane toward Jag’s limousine.
“Time to go,” Jag said, opening his door. “I’ll take the wheel. You grab Baxton on the way past.”
Before Jaina could acknowledge the order, Tyrr pointed the recording rod in their direction, and a barely audible click sounded behind the beverage locker across from her. Recalling the metallic rim she had noticed earlier, Jaina hurled herself out Jag’s still-open door.
“Down!”
She hit him square in the flank, driving him into the duracrete wall with enough force to draw a startled oomph! before they both dropped to the permacrete.
To Jaina’s surprise, that was not the last thing she ever heard. Instead, she heard Jag yelling condition codes at Baxton and asking her what was wrong. She heard a shocked silence from Baxton and the GAS lieutenant, who had stopped arguing and spun around to look at her and Jag stacked on the permacrete. And from the interior of the limousine, she heard the barely audible hum of a tiny repulsorlift engine.
Jaina looked toward the vehicle and saw a small, dome-topped cleaning droid gliding out the door through which she had just dived. Its photoreceptor lingered on her face, and suddenly she knew how Javis Tyrr had been acquiring his images from inside the Jedi Temple. She started to rise, and the cleaning droid quickly banked around the limousine’s open door and started up the lane.
“Oh no you don’t!”
As Jaina rose, she thrust a hand at the cleaning droid and used the Force to summon it back toward her. Tyrr cried out in astonishment and scurried down the lane, angrily thumbing his recording rod, as though that might give the droid’s repulsorlift engines enough power to break free of Jaina’s Force grasp.
By the time the droid floated into her hands, Tyrr was only a couple of paces away, his full lips twisted into a self-righteous sneer.
“You can’t do that,” he said, still pointing the recording rod at the droid. “Trying to hide the—”
“Jedi Solo can’t do what, exactly?” Jag interrupted, stepping to her side. “Recover a cleaning droid that’s obviously malfunctioning?”
“That’s no ordinary cleaning droid,” Tyrr shot back. “And you know it.”
“Are you’re saying that it belongs to you?” Jaina asked. The droid was still trying to pull free of her grasp, so she flipped it over and hit the primary circuit breaker. “Because if it is your droid, I’d be very interested to know how it found its way into the Jedi Temple.”
“As would a lot of people,” Jag said. He gave his head a quick tip toward the hangar gate, then gently pushed Jaina toward the limousine. “I’m quite certain that private espionage is as illegal in the Galactic Alliance as it is in the Galactic Empire.”
Taking Jag’s hint, Jaina extended her Force awareness toward the gate and sensed several GAS troopers rushing up the lane toward them. She slipped back into the limousine just an instant before Captain Atar’s voice called out from behind the vehicle.
“What’s the problem here?” he demanded. “I hope the Jedi aren’t trying to intimidate you, Tyrr.”
“Not at all,” Jag said, turning to face the captain and his men as they approached the limousine. “I believe the esteemed journalist Tyrr was just preparing to admit that he had placed a private surveillance device inside the Jedi Temple.”
Atar’s scowl deepened. “I’m sure a reporter of Javis Tyrr’s reputation would never resort to anything illegal.” The captain shifted his attention to Tyrr. “Isn’t that right, Tyrr?”
Tyrr’s face reddened, but he nodded. “Of course.”
Jag’s lips tightened into a grim smile. “My mistake, then.” He raised a hand and summoned Baxton, then slipped into the limousine next to Jaina. “I’d appreciate it if you ordered your men not to open fire as we pass over, Captain. I’m overdue for an important briefing.”
Atar’s eyes grew stormy, but he leaned down to peer inside. “Flying over won’t be necessary, sir. I’ll order the speeder to move aside as soon as Jedi Solo steps out of the vehicle.” His gaze dropped to the droid in her hands. “And she should bring the cleaning droid
—we may be needing it as evidence.”
Jaina unsnapped her lightsaber and leaned across to glare at Atar. “Forget it, Captain.” There was no way she was surrendering the spy droid—not when it had a recording of Jag telling her what he had overheard in Daala’s office. “We’re in an Imperial diplomat’s vehicle, and that makes this droid Imperial property.”
Atar stared at the lightsaber hilt in Jaina’s hand for a moment, then finally nodded. “All right, Jedi Solo. You win this one.” He looked away and motioned the GAS speeder aside, then turned back to her. “But you won’t be able to hide behind your boyfriend forever. Sooner or later, the Remnant is going to come all the way into the Alliance. And when it does, GAS will still be here, waiting for the next time you screw up.”
THE ONLY THING MORE DESTRUCTIVE THAN AN ANGRY RAMOAN, LEIA decided, was a Ramoan having convulsions. At present, Bazel lay pinned between two crushed airspeeders, shuddering, flailing, and—thankfully—trapped in one place. But half the vehicles in the hangar had already suffered crumpled hoods or smashed fenders, and the cargo lifter’s doors had been too badly dented to open. Perhaps most troubling of all, the walls and support columns were spattered with a yellow froth so foul that every breath came with a gag.
“I shouldn’t have hit him with a second dart,” said Melari Ruxon, the Duros apprentice to whom Han had entrusted the dart pistol earlier. “But he kept trying to get up after the first one, and Captain Solo said—”
“You did nothing wrong, Apprentice Ruxon,” Leia assured her. “Jedi Warv is a capable Knight. As long as he was even slightly awake, he would have been using the Force to counteract the tranquilizer.”
“You didn’t have a choice, kid,” Han agreed. “I’d have done the same thing.”
A note of relief came to Melari’s face. “Really?”
“Absolutely,” Leia said. “You know how this illness confuses the mind. How would you have felt if you hadn’t fired the second dart, and he had recovered and fled back out into the plaza?”
“They’re right, Mel, you did him a favor,” said Melari’s Jenet partner, Reeqo. He laid a copper-furred hand on her shoulder. “If I go mookey, I don’t want to end up iced and hanging in some GAS block-house for the rest of eternity. I’d rather be in a cage down below.”
If I go.
Leia had not realized the situation had deteriorated far enough to make young Jedi worry about whether they would be among the next to lose their minds, but of course it had. Until the nature of the illness was understood, the only sure thing anyone knew was that being young and Force-sensitive put you at risk. No wonder they were frightened.
“Listen to me, both of you.” Leia stepped around so that she could look each apprentice in the eye. “Things may look bad right now, but Master Cilghal will figure this out. And when she does, Barv will definitely thank you for keeping him out of carbonite.”
The two apprentices exchanged glances, then Melari asked, “You’re sure?”
“Trust me, she’s sure,” Han said. “I’ve been frozen in carbonite, and anything is better than that.”
Reeqo nodded, seeming to take the Solos at their word. But Melari gazed back toward the mountain of mottled jade flesh still shuddering between the two airspeeders.
“So anything is better than carbonite?” she asked. “Even dying?”
Han shot Leia a questioning glance. When she nodded for him to tell them the truth, he laid a hand on the shoulder of each apprentice.
“If you’re never gonna get out, then yeah, anything is better,” he said. “Even dying. But Barv here isn’t going to die—not today.”
The feeling that came to their Force-auras was not exactly relief, but at least they seemed to understand. Leia confirmed their emotions through the Force and waved the two apprentices back toward the hangar entrance, where an unconscious Yaqeel Saav’etu remained slumped against the back of the guard booth. Her hands were affixed to the collision bar above her head by a pair of plastifiber wrist restraints.
“Let’s have the patients ready to transport when Master Cilghal arrives,” she said. “You two see to Jedi Saav’etu. Han and I will—”
Leia was interrupted by the ding-swoosh of an arriving turbolift. Expecting to see Cilghal and Tekli, she turned toward the station. Instead Kenth Hamner stepped into the hangar. His dignified features were taut with alarm, and as he marched through the carnage toward the Solos, his reaction steadily changed to outrage.
Leia grabbed Han’s tunic sleeve and quickly led him toward Bazel Warv’s still-shuddering form. Judging by Kenth’s expression, this was not going to be a conversation they wanted apprentices to overhear.
Kenth intercepted them near the Ramoan’s giant round feet, then demanded, “What happened?”
“Somatoll reaction,” Han replied. Ready to spring away if Bazel lashed out, he squatted down and tried to find the pulse in the green guy’s big ankle. “Seems it affects Ramoan’s a little differently than most other species. Who knew?”
“I’m not asking about Jedi Warv,” Kenth snapped. “What happened with the GAS squad? They’re threatening to blast open the outer gate if we don’t surrender their prisoner. Don’t tell me you two actually removed Bazel from GAS custody?”
“’Course not,” Han said, glancing up at Kenth. “GAS never even had custody.”
Kenth barely spared Han a glance before turning to glare at Leia. “Why don’t you fill me in, Jedi Solo?”
“I’d be happy to.” Leia was careful to keep her voice warm and relaxed. It was hardly like Kenth to be sharp and uncivil, and she assumed that something must be very wrong to drive him to such behavior. “Han’s right. Captain Atar never had custody of either patient. We were able to subdue both of them ourselves—”
“Hold on,” Kenth said, raising a hand to stop her. “We’re losing them two at a time now?”
“I’m afraid so,” Leia said. She turned and pointed toward the guard booth, where Reeqo and Melari were carefully removing the restraints from Yaqeel’s wrists. “Jedi Saav’etu went first, and Bazel followed her.”
Kenth cursed loudly. “So it is contagious.”
“We don’t know that,” Leia said. “If it’s something dormant, it could have been triggered because they both encountered the same stimulus.”
Kenth’s glare returned. “I’m beginning to see where your daughter gets her stubborn streak, Jedi Solo,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t try to play me.”
“Hey, hold on a minute there,” Han said, rising. “Everyone knows that Jaina gets her stubborn streak from me.”
Kenth shot him a look that could have frozen a wampa. “You’re not helping matters, Captain Solo. Quite the opposite.”
Han’s eyes grew hard, and Leia knew she was perilously close to having two angry men on her hands. She slipped over to Han’s side and touched his arm, then nodded toward the control booth.
“Han, why don’t you see if you can find a stool or something to stick between Bazel’s teeth?” she asked. “With those tusks of his, he’s got to be chewing the inside of his mouth to ribbons.”
Han glanced at her briefly, then shifted his stare back to Kenth. “Okay,” he said. “But if this guy keeps talking to you like you’re some sort of—”
“Han!” Leia turned him toward the control booth. “Please go. I have this.”
Han reluctantly allowed her to push him away, but continued to scowl back over his shoulder. Leia returned her attention to Kenth and waited in silence. She had learned a long time ago never to apologize for Han …especially when he wasn’t the one at fault. Besides, maybe a few sharp words from a hothead smuggler were just what Kenth needed to help him regain control of his temper.
But it wasn’t to be so. When Kenth finally spoke, his voice was as sharp as ever. “Jedi Solo, are you trying to get the Order disbanded?”
Leia cocked her brow, then calmly said, “I’m sure you know better than that, Master Hamner.”
“Then why the kriff wou
ld you ignore a GAS arrest warrant, and do it on a live holocam?” He was nearly shouting. “Daala herself has been on the comm telling me that she can’t allow this kind of public defiance, and I’m starting to agree with her. You know how bad our image is right now, and live feeds of you and Han ignoring a valid warrant only add to our problems.”
Leia remained silent until she was certain he had finished, then allowed a little durasteel to come to her own voice. “And what would you have preferred we do? Serve Bazel and Yaqeel up to be frozen in carbonite?”
“Yes, if that’s what the law demands,” Kenth retorted. “The Jedi aren’t going to survive, not if we keep trying to hold ourselves above the government—and above the beings—that we claim to serve.”
Leia shook her head sadly, wondering how such a principled man could be so blind to what was right. “Kenth, I know you’re in a tough spot, but think about what you’re saying. Law isn’t justice. We can’t start turning young Jedi Knights over to Daala just because they’ve fallen ill—especially not when her solution is to freeze them in carbonite.”
The flash of pain in Kenth’s eyes suggested that Leia had hit a nerve, but he was not ready to yield. “That, Jedi Solo, is not a Jedi Knight’s decision to make.” He pointed up the access tunnel, then said, “If we’re lucky, Captain Atar and his squad are still—”
Leia was saved by the ding-swoosh of the arriving turbolift, and this time it was Master Cilghal and Tekli who stepped out. The Mon Calamari took one look at Bazel’s shuddering form and gave a medication order to her assistant, then came over to stand with Leia and Kenth.
“I came as soon as I heard,” she said to Leia. “Both of them?”
Leia took a calming breath, then nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
Cilghal raised a finned hand. “No, don’t be afraid,” she said. “Now we have learned something.”
“Learned what?” Han asked, returning with the stool Leia had requested. “You know what’s wrong with them?”
“Not yet.” Cilghal waved a hand vaguely toward Bazel, who already had Tekli’s medication dart protruding from his throat. “But with Bazel and Yaqeel both ill, we can begin to draw some conclusions.”