by Greg Keyes
“Right. I only meant it makes things worse for Jaina. It’s hard on her, doing nothing, knowing her brother is out fighting the fight.”
“I know. But Rogue Squadron will probably call her up pretty soon.”
“Sure,” Mara replied. “Sure they will.” She sounded far from convinced.
“You don’t think so?” Luke asked.
“No. I think they would like to, but her Jedi training makes her too much of a political liability right now.”
“When did the Rogues ever care about politics? Has someone said this to you?”
“Not in so many words, but I hear things, and I’m trained to listen to the words behind the words. I hope I’m wrong, for Jaina’s sake.”
Her feelings brushed Luke in the Force, running a troubled harmony to her assertion.
“Mara,” Luke said, “my love, while I’ll believe you when you say picking up parasites on a strange beach is relaxing—”
“Nonsense. This sand is as sterile as an isolation lab. It’s perfectly safe to walk barefoot. And you like the feel of it.”
“If you say so. But I forbid any more talk about politics, Jedi, the war, the Yuuzhan Vong, anything like that. We’re out here for you to relax, to forget all of that for a day or so. Just a day.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re the one who thinks the whole universe will collapse unless you’re there to keep it spinning.”
“I’m not pregnant.”
“Say something like that again, and I’ll make you wish you were,” she said, a bit sharply. “And by the way, if we do this again, it’s your turn.”
“We’ll play sabacc for it,” Luke responded, trying to keep a straight face but failing. He kissed her, and she kissed him back, hard.
They continued along the strand, past a rambling stand of crawling slii, all knotted roots and giant gauzy leaves. Waves were beginning to lap on the beach, as they hadn’t earlier, which meant they were on the bow side of the “island.”
It wasn’t an island at all, of course, but a carefully landscaped park atop a floating mass of polymer cells filled with inert gas. A hundred or so of them cruised the artificial western sea of Coruscant, pleasure craft built by rich merchants during the grand, high days of the Old Republic. The Emperor had discouraged such frivolity, and most had been docked for decades and fallen into disrepair. Still, many were in good enough shape to refurbish, and in the youth of the New Republic, a few sharp businessmen had purchased some and made them commercial successes. One such person, not surprisingly, had been Lando Calrissian, a longtime friend of Luke’s. He had offered Luke use of the craft whenever he wished it. It had taken Luke a long time to call in the offer.
He was glad he had done it—Mara seemed to be enjoying it. But she was right, of course. With everything that was happening now, it was hard not to think of it as a waste of time.
But some feelings could not be trusted. Mara was showing now, her belly gloriously rounded around their son, and she was suffering from all of the physical discomforts any woman did in that situation. Nothing in her training as an assassin, smuggler, or Jedi Knight had prepared her for this compromised state, and despite her obvious love for their unborn child, Luke knew physical weakness grated on her. Her comment about Jaina might just as well have been about herself.
And there were other worries, too, and a pocket paradise wasn’t likely to help her forget them, but at least they could take a few deep breaths and pretend they were on some distant, uninhabited world, rather than in the thick of the biggest mess since before the Empire had been defeated.
No, strike that. The Empire had threatened to extinguish liberty and freedom, to bring the dark side of the Force to ascendance. The enemy they faced now threatened extinction in a much more literal and ubiquitous sense.
So Luke walked with his wife as evening fell, pretending not to be thinking of these things, knowing she could feel he was anyway.
“What will we name him?” Mara asked at last. The sun had vanished in a lens on the horizon, and now Coruscant began to shatter the illusion of pristine nature. The distant shores glowed in a solid mass, and the sky remained deep red on the horizon. Only near zenith did it resemble the night sky of most moonless planets, but even there was a baroque embroidery of light as aircars and starships followed their carefully assigned paths, some coming home, some leaving home, some merely arriving at another port.
A million little lights, each with a story, each a spark of significance in the Force that flowed from them, around them, through them.
No illusion, here. All was nature. All was beauty, if you had eyes willing to see it.
“I don’t know.” He sighed. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“It’s just a name,” she said.
“You would think. But everyone seems to believe it’s important. Since we went public with the news, you wouldn’t believe how many suggestions I’ve gotten, and from the strangest places.”
Mara stopped walking, and her face reflected a sudden profound astonishment. “You’re afraid,” she said.
He nodded. “I guess I am. I guess I don’t think it’s ‘just a name,’ not when it comes to people like us. Look at Anakin. Leia named him after our father, a gesture to the person who became Darth Vader, as a recognition that he overcame the dark side and died a good man. It was her reconciliation with him, and a sign to the galaxy that the scars of war could heal. That we could forgive and move on. But for Anakin, it’s been a trial. When he was little, he always feared he would walk the same dark path his grandfather did. It was just a name, but it was a real burden to place on his shoulders. It may be years before we learn the full consequences of that decision.”
“For all that I admire your sister, she is a politician, and she thinks like one. That’s been good for the galaxy, not so good for her children.”
“Exactly,” Luke said reluctantly. “And whether I like it or not, Mara, because of who we are, our child will inherit part of our burden. I’m just afraid of placing an extra one on his shoulders. Suppose I named him Obi-Wan, as a salute to my old Master? Would he think that means I want him to grow up to be a Jedi? Would he think he had to live up to Ben’s reputation? Would he feel his choices in life constrained?”
“I see you’ve thought a lot about this.”
“I guess I have.”
“Notice how quickly this takes us back to the things you said we weren’t supposed to talk about?”
“Oh. Right.”
“Luke, this is who we are,” Mara said, stroking his shoulder lightly. “We can’t deny it, even alone on an island.” She dipped her foot in the wavelets lapping onto the beach. Luke closed his eyes and felt the wind on his face.
“Maybe not,” he admitted.
“And so what?” Mara said, playfully kicking a little water on the cuff of his pants. But then her face grew serious again. “There is one very important thing I want to say, now, before another second passes,” she informed him.
“What’s that?”
“I’m really hungry. Really, really hungry. If I don’t eat right away, I’m going to salt you in seawater and gobble you up.”
“You’d be disappointed,” Luke said. “It’s fresh water. Come on. The pavilion isn’t far. There should be food waiting.”
Luke and Mara ate outside at a table of polished yellow Selonian marble while the blossoms around them chimed a quiet music and released fragrances to complement each course. Luke felt ridiculously pampered and a little guilty, but managed to relax somewhat into the mood.
But the mood was broken during the intermezzo, when the pavilion’s protocol droid interrupted them.
“Master Skywalker,” it said, “an aircar is approaching and requesting admittance through the security perimeter.”
“You have the signal?”
“Most assuredly.”
“Transfer to the holostation on the table.”
“As you wish, sir.”
A hologram of a man
’s face appeared above the remains of their meal. It was human, very long, with aristocratic features.
“Kenth Hamner,” Luke said, a sense of foreboding pricking up his scalp. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”
The retired colonel smiled briefly. “Nothing important. Just a visit from an old friend. May I come aboard?”
That’s what his words said. His expression, somehow, conveyed something altogether different.
“Of course. Link to the ship’s computer, and it will land you somewhere appropriate. I hope you like grilled nylog.”
“One of my favorites. I’ll see you soon.”
A few moments later, Hamner appeared from one of the several trails leading to the pavilion, accompanied by the droid.
“You two make me wish I was young again,” Hamner said, smiling, looking them over.
“We’re not so young, and you’re not so old,” Mara replied.
Hamner offered her a short bow from the waist. “Mara, you’re looking lovely as ever. And my deepest congratulations on your upcoming event.”
“Thank you, Kenth,” Mara returned graciously.
“Have a seat,” Luke said. “May I have the droid bring you something?”
“A cold drink of a mildly stimulating beverage perhaps? Surprise me.”
Luke sent the droid off with those rather vague instructions and then turned to Hamner, who was now seated.
“You didn’t come here just to congratulate us, did you?”
Hamner nodded sadly. “No. I came to give you a heads-up. Borsk Fey’lya has managed to secure an order for your arrest. The warrant will be served about six standard hours from now.”
TWO
Somewhere between the Corellian Trade Spine and the Kathol sector, the Star Destroyer Errant Venture dropped out of hyperspace, reoriented its massive wedge-shaped frame, and resumed lightspeed. An uninformed observer would have had less than a minute to wonder what a Star Destroyer was doing in such an out-of-the-way part of space and why it was painted red.
Deep in the Destroyer’s belly, Anakin Solo hardly noticed the transition, so intent was he on what he was doing. He stood quickly into narrow profile, the point of his lightsaber aiming toward the deck, pommel level with his forehead and pointed at the ceiling. With two quick twists of his wrist, he deflected a pair of stun bolts from the remote whirring around him. He flipped the lightsaber to an identical position behind his back to catch the blast from a second remote, then dropped into a crouch, his luminescent weapon whipping up to high guard. A leaping somersault carried him over the sudden coordinated flurry of shots from the two flying spheres. By the time his feet touched the deck, he was weaving a complex set of parries that sent reddish bolts hissing against the walls.
He was in the rhythm, now, and his blue eyes sparkled like electron arcs as the stinging rays came faster, more often, better timed. After a few minutes of this, sweat was plastering his brown hair to his head and soaking his dark Jedi robes, but none of the painful though harmless attacks had found their mark.
He was warmed up, now.
“Halt,” he commanded. Immediately the spheres became stationary and quiescent.
He deactivated his lightsaber and set it aside. From a wall cabinet, Anakin removed another lightsaber, thumbed it on, took a few deep breaths, calmed his racing pulse. It was quiet in the storage compartment he’d converted into his training space. Quiet and spare and off-white. A motley trio of droids regarded him with unblinking eyes. Even the most casual observer could see they had been cobbled together from spare parts, though the central chassis of each was that of a rather common worker drone. They did not look particularly dangerous, until one examined what they held in their hands—wicked-looking staffs, sharp on one end, spoon-shaped on the other. They looked remarkably like snakes, an impression enhanced by the fact that they undulated now and then.
Anakin blew out another breath and nodded at the droids.
“Begin sequence one,” he said.
The droids flashed into motion, their spindly frames moving with eye-daunting speed, two flanking him on either side, one driving straight toward him. Anakin backpedaled and parried, dropped, and swept the legs out from under the droid on his right. The other two were attacking, one staff spearing at his neck, the other gone suddenly flexible, flicking around his rising parry toward his back. Anakin stepped forward a centimeter and felt the wind from the vicious whip-over as it came up short of his spine.
That’s it, he thought. I’m learning the range. The smallest movement possible to prevent the attack from landing is the best.
He dropped the high parry into a riposte. The droid, suddenly too close to him, tried to retreat but stopped instantly, deactivated when Anakin’s weapon touched its torso.
The downed droid was back up by then, and Anakin found himself circling, holding them at the very outside of his guard and in his field of vision. That kept them off him, and he could probably do that forever. He wouldn’t win the fight that way, though, so he gave them a rhythm to follow and let them try to break it.
One of the staffs suddenly spit a stream of liquid at him. He twisted his body to avoid it, again allowing only a centimeter for the miss. At the same moment, the other droid broke tempo and leapt in deep.
Anakin parried, but the staff wrapped around his wrist. He felt a distinct and painful electric shock. The other droid was an instant behind, leveling a blow at Anakin’s skull.
Somewhere a blaster shrieked, and the droid suddenly didn’t have a weapon—or the arm that held it.
“Halt!” Anakin shouted, and hurled himself away as the staff instantly released his hand. He came down in a fighting posture.
A dark-haired man with a blaster stood in the doorway. He had a beard liberally tinseled with silver and wore green robes the same shade as his eyes. He held the blaster up in a nonthreatening way, as if surrendering.
“Why did you do that?” Anakin asked, trying to suppress the anger suddenly boiling up. He had worked hard on that droid.
“You’re welcome,” Corran Horn said, holstering his weapon.
“Those are training droids. They wouldn’t have hurt me.”
“Oh no? Are those training amphistaffs they’re holding? If he’d hit you with it …”
“He wouldn’t have. They’re programmed to arrest their blows the second the staff touches my skin. And yes, they are training amphistaffs. They aren’t real.”
Corran’s eyes widened in surprise. “How did you manage that? Why didn’t your lightsaber cut through them?”
“It’s not a lightsaber.”
Corran’s expression was almost worth the damage to the droid.
“It’s just a blade-shaped force field, a weak one,” Anakin explained. “Wouldn’t cut anything. The things my droids have act like amphistaffs and move like them, but they just spit dye and deliver a shock when they hit. They only weigh a kilogram or so.”
“I guess I ruined your droid for no good reason, then,” Corran said.
Anakin’s anger was entirely mastered now. It was something he had been working on. “It’s okay. I built it; I can fix it. I’ve got nothing but time.”
“I’m just curious,” Corran said, eyeing the droids. “Booster has a couple of duelist elites in storage. Why not use one of them to train with?”
Anakin deactivated the “weapon” and returned it to the cabinet. “Duelist elites don’t move like Yuuzhan Vong warriors. The droids I built do.”
“I wondered what you’ve been puttering at for the last few weeks.”
Anakin nodded. “I don’t want to lose my edge. You saw what happened—the one you shot had me.”
“Practice is fine,” Corran said. “I just wish you had informed me of what you were doing. Might have saved me a skipped heartbeat and you a droid.”
“Right. I forgot,” Anakin said.
Corran nodded again, this time with a more thoughtful look in his eye. “You didn’t notice me coming. That’s not good. You have to lear
n to extend your sphere of responsibility beyond the immediate battle.”
“I know,” Anakin replied. “I wasn’t using the Force. I’m training to fight without it.”
“Because the Yuuzhan Vong can’t be sensed in the Force, I assume.”
Anakin nodded. “Of course. The Force is a wonderful tool—”
“The Force isn’t merely a tool, Anakin,” Corran admonished. “It’s much more than that.”
“I know,” Anakin said, a bit peevishly. “But among other things it is a tool, and for fighting the Yuuzhan Vong, it’s just not the right tool for the job, no more than a hydrospanner is what you would use to calibrate the input feed of an astromech.”
Corran cocked his head skeptically. “I can’t precisely dispute that, but it’s not because it isn’t wrong.”
Anakin shrugged. “Try it like this, then. All Jedi training involves the Force, even combat training. Sensing blows and blaster bolts before they happen, that sort of thing. Shoving our enemies around telekinetically—”
“With some exceptions,” Corran dryly reminded him.
“Right. So you should know what I mean. What do you think of Jedi who can’t win a fight without resorting to telekinesis? For that matter, you were CorSec long before you were Jedi. You should be able to see that the Force has become as much of a crutch for us as anything. The Yuuzhan Vong prove that.”
“Sounding a little like your brother. Are you abandoning the Force?”
Anakin’s eyebrows arched up. “Of course not. I’ll use it when it works. When I was being hunted by the Yuuzhan Vong on Yavin Four, I discovered ways to use the Force against them. I looked for the holes in the Force around me. I listened to the voices of the jungle and felt the fear of its creatures when the Yuuzhan Vong warriors passed near.”
“And you learned to sense the Yuuzhan Vong themselves,” Corran pointed out.
“Not with the Force, though. With the lambent I used to rebuild my lightsaber.”
“How can you be sure? I’ve never believed the Yuuzhan Vong don’t exist in the Force. They must. Everything does. We just don’t know how to do it. You attuned yourself to a piece of Vong biotech and now you can sense them. Can you be sure you haven’t found where they live in the Force?”