by Greg Keyes
Oolos clasped his scaled hands together. “We still do not know why the original tears worked,” he said, a note of apology in his voice. “We were able to duplicate them without ever really comprehending them.”
“Something must be different, though,” Luke said, “or this wouldn’t be happening.”
“Unfortunately,” Oolos replied, “I do not believe that to be true. The nature of cell reproduction in a fetus is quite unlike the normal cellular processes in an adult human. The ‘tears’ caused Mara’s cells to mimic that process in some ways, hence her regeneration. The Yuuzhan Vong disease is still in her cells, you understand; her cells have merely been given the power to keep it in check and control whatever damage it causes.”
“I still don’t understand the problem.”
“The problem is, the substance somehow does not recognize true fetal development as a part of the normal functioning of a human body. It thus tries to make adjustments to the developmental process, treating the child almost as it would an illness. In turn, Mara’s natural immune system resists and rejects such modifications. Over time, the residue of this conflict has built up enough to cause toxic shock. According to her cellular history, this buildup began with the pregnancy, and only now reached dangerous levels.”
“I was taking the real tears in the first months,” Mara said.
“Precisely,” the healer concurred. “The very qualities that allow the tears to remit your illness are a danger to your fetus.”
“But my child is well?”
“I cannot feel that the child has yet suffered any damage from the process,” Cilghal answered.
“I believe Jedi Cilghal to be correct,” Oolos said.
“But Mara’s in her final month,” Luke said. “If it took eight months for the toxins to build up—”
“She has reached tolerance saturation,” Oolos said. “Her body will flush those chemicals over the course of years, but in the next month she will remain at the danger level. It is unlikely that mere stress will provoke another attack, but a single taste of the tears could bring on a much more violent reaction than that she experienced today.”
“Is there any way to flush these poisons artificially?” Mara asked.
“Yes.”
“Without risk to my child?”
The Ho’Din scientist lowered the spines on his head. “No. The risk would be measurable.”
“Well, let’s add this to the ‘what I already knew’ category,” Mara said. “I’ll stop taking the tears until our son is born. Then I’ll start taking them again.”
“We could induce delivery now,” Cilghal said.
Mara frowned. “That feels wrong. Cilghal, do you really recommend that?”
“I do,” Oolos said.
Cilghal seemed reluctant. “I don’t recommend it,” she said at last. “Logically, it is the thing to do, and yet when I look down that path, I see deep shadows.”
“And if I carry to term, without taking the tears?”
“Shadows there, too, and pain—but also hope.”
Mara sat up and turned her gaze to Luke. “We ready to go?” she asked.
“I—Mara—”
“Don’t even start. Our baby is healthy, and he’ll stay healthy, I promise you that. We’ll get through this, no matter where we are. We have to go. Let’s go.”
“May I accompany you?” Cilghal asked.
“Of course,” Mara replied.
“Sadly, I cannot make the same offer,” Oolos told them. “My responsibilities to my patients and the New Republic are too great to set aside. I wish I could convince you to remain near, but I surmise I cannot. I wish you only the best, the four of you. I will do what I can to improve the substance, based upon what I know. It would be prudent for you to check with me from time to time.”
“Thank you,” Luke told the healer. “Thanks for everything.”
Jaina rolled her X-wing into the night-shadow of Coruscant, reveling in the feel of the stick in her hand, the shifting crush of acceleration. She felt like shouting out loud, and did. It was good to fly again! This was the best she had felt in a long time.
For months she had been forced out of the cockpit by damaged eyes, and even after they were healed, Rogue Squadron had shown a marked reluctance to recall her. It had unfolded to her gradually, sickeningly, that given her Jedi status and her involvement in the rescue at Yavin 4, they really didn’t want her back. She had gone from being their golden child to their ugly little liability. Only today Colonel Darklighter—the very man who had asked her to join the squadron—had suggested she extend her leave of absence indefinitely.
She didn’t care right now. Coruscant was rushing below, a universe of stars turned inside out. She was one with the X-wing. Tomorrow she would hurt. Not today.
She aimed her ship’s nose away from the planet and its multitude of satellites, out toward the stars, and wondered where her family was. Anakin was skipping around the galaxy with Booster Terrik, watching over his friend Tahiri. Her twin Jacen was with her mother and father, trying to set up Uncle Luke’s “great river”—a series of routes and safe houses designed to help Jedi escape the Yuuzhan Vong and their collaborationist shills. She had stayed behind, assuming Rogue Squadron would recall her any day.
Well, another day, another mistake. She briefly considered chucking it all and heading out, perhaps to find the Millennium Falcon and the greater part of her family.
But she had to stick it out. Rogue Squadron was worth fighting for, and eventually they would recall her. How could they afford anyone sitting out now?
Of course, the Yuuzhan Vong had been relatively quiet since Yavin 4—since Duro, as far as the idiot government was concerned. But that couldn’t last. Any thought that it could—that the enemy could be appeased by any number of sacrifices and concessions—was wishful thinking of a nearly criminal sort.
Her joy of flying was leaking out of her, swallowed by the sort of mental entropy that seemed to come with growing older. She considered going back, but if she had to sulk out here or down there, she might as well do it out here.
She was still fighting the downward emotional spiral when the comm demanded attention.
It was Aunt Mara, and she sounded more troubled than Jaina felt.
“Jaina, where are you?” Mara asked.
“Just out. What’s the matter?”
“We’re taking the Jade Shadow up. Meet me, will you? It’s important.” She ticked off a list of coordinates.
“Sure,” Jaina replied. “Laying that course now.”
“And Jaina—keep your eyes open. Trust no one.”
“Mara, what—?”
“We’ll discuss it when we rendezvous.”
Great, Jaina thought. What else could be going wrong? But it could be almost anything, including some possibilities too terrible even to contemplate.
Luke and Mara decided not to risk being seen boarding the Jade Shadow. They made their way with an occasional pass of the hand and a suggestion backed by the Force. Some wouldn’t remember them at all; others would not be able to recall their faces, though both were well known.
Taking off was a little trickier, but Mara hadn’t lost her knack, managing to secure a launch authority using a fake transponder ID and then filing a flight plan to orbit. As Luke watched Coruscant dwindle, he felt, oddly, a strange elation, a kind of freedom he hadn’t known he missed. He glanced over at Mara.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine, now. I contacted Jaina. She’ll meet us in orbit.” She eased the angle of their climb and glanced at Luke. “This is the right thing to do, you know.”
“I’m still not sure.”
“It’s done, now. Where are we going, by the way?”
“We’ll find Booster first,” he decided. “I’ve arranged a way for us to contact him. He’ll have some of the medical facilities you need, at least. After that—the Jedi need a haven, a base to operate from. I’ve already done preliminary searching. That will have to wa
it, though. Your health is our first priority right now.”
She nodded. “I am going off the drug.”
“And risk your illness coming back, full-blown?”
She pursed her lips. “That’s a risk, but right now it looks like the lesser of two.” She made a face at her instruments. “By the way,” she said, “looks like your first priority has been bumped back. I’ve got planetary security hailing us and at least four ships on an intercept course.”
Luke opened to the hail and activated the visual communications array.
“Jade Shadow, this is planetary security.” The screen showed a pale gold Bothan male. “You must return to ground immediately. Slave yourselves to us for escort.”
Luke smiled tightly. “This is Luke Skywalker of the Jade Shadow. We’re outward bound and not prepared to turn back.”
The Bothan looked extremely uncomfortable. “I have my orders, Master Skywalker. Please help me carry them out with minimum fuss.”
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience, Captain, but we aren’t returning to ground.”
“I’m authorized to use force, Master Skywalker.”
“This ship will defend itself,” Luke replied reluctantly. “Let us go, Captain.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Luke shrugged. “Then we really have nothing else to discuss.” He switched off the comm.
“Can we outrun them?” he asked Mara.
“It’ll be tight.” She eyed her instruments again. “Probably not. They must have been on to us almost from the beginning. Two of the ships are coming in from a high orbit.”
“Right. Waiting for us. I was more than half expecting that.”
“So much for Fey’lya wanting us to escape.”
“They have to make an effort,” Luke replied. “As efforts go, this isn’t a big one.”
“No, but maybe sufficient,” Mara replied. “We’ll at least have to fight them, which won’t make us look any better.”
Within moments the approaching ships were in sight.
“Military-grade shields,” Mara remarked. “Hang on, Skywalker.”
A moment later she began to fire.
If we weren’t outlaws before, we are now, Luke thought. How could it have come to this?
Jaina couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The Jade Shadow was under fire from four security interceptors. What was going on?
Not that it mattered. She powered up her weapons and dived in, ignoring the hails from the security ships but sending her own signal to the Shadow. It was Uncle Luke who answered.
“You two look like you could use a hand,” she said. “What did you do to irk the sky cops?”
“Stay out of this, Jaina,” Luke told her.
“Yeah, right. That’ll happen.” She was close enough to fire now, and fire she did, rolling between the trailing interceptor and spearing it with her lasers as she went past. The heavy shield took the shots easily, but she achieved the desired effect; the interceptor had noticed her now. It tried to lock on to her tail, but she was having none of that. Leaning on the stick, she circled tight and planetward. A few lucky shots grazed her shields, but they had a long way to go before they could bring her down. She nosed back up and had her pursuer in her sights again. She held the beak-to-beak collision course long enough to put a few more into its shields, then yawed starboard, missing the oncoming craft by a few meters. She eyed her proton torpedoes speculatively. She could take them out with those, but she still wasn’t sure what was going on here, and it was probably a bad idea to kill someone in Coruscant’s security force. For all she knew, it might even be a friend of hers. That meant she needed to cripple, not kill.
Both ships turned tight, trying once again to pick up the other’s tail. Jaina had the more maneuverable ship and soon found herself flying up the interceptor’s exhaust. She stuttered laser fire, following her opponents’ attempts to shake her, until finally their shields failed. She cut the drive off as neatly as a gardener pruning a tree, then came around to disable their weapons.
By this time, the Jade Shadow only had two pursuers left, and one of them was in bad shape. She wished she could have seen what tricks Mara had pulled out of her sleeve to achieve that. The Shadow’s shields were starting to get a little shaky, but between the two of them, Jaina was certain the remaining interceptors didn’t have a chance.
A moment later, a cloud of blips appeared on her longrange sensors. Twelve starfighters, maybe more. And the Jade Shadow was flying right into them.
NINE
C-3PO yelped as he lost his handhold, but at the same instant something fastened onto his wrist.
“Artoo! Thank the maker!”
The ship made another violent turn, and C-3PO felt his insides try to escape into space through the soles of his metal feet. R2-D2 lurched forward, but only so far. C-3PO noticed with relief that his companion had secured himself with a cable of some sort.
“Clever Artoo! Don’t let go of me!”
Jacen swung around in the laser turret, tracing lines of deadly light through the vacuum, walking them across the nearest coralskipper. Points of absolute darkness swallowed most of the beams before they could strike home, but a fluorescent puff of vaporized coral told him at least one had gotten through. The skip sloughed off starboard, but there were plenty more to take its place. Jacen grimly continued his deadly conversation with them, and they answered with volcanic gobs of plasma.
“Shields are failing,” Han’s voice crackled over the comm. “Jacen, how’s it going down there?”
“Still here, Dad,” he replied, swinging his seat to follow a skip so near he could have thrown a rock and hit it.
“We’re out of the mass shadow in one minute,” Leia said.
Something in the ship shrieked, and the inertial compensators failed. The g’s they were pulling tried to smash Jacen into the ceiling. He managed to get his hands up in time to keep his skull from being crushed, but the force of impact stunned him momentarily. The dampeners went back on-line, and artificial gravity dropped him back roughly into his seat.
“That’s it for the shields,” his father husked.
Groggily, Jacen grabbed the trigger grips as a series of shudders ran through the Falcon.
“Go! Now!” Leia cried.
For an instant nothing happened. Then the stars were gone, and Jacen sagged in his couch.
“It was terrible, just terrible,” C-3PO went on. “If it weren’t for Artoo I would be just space flotsam. Master Jacen, I told you I wasn’t suited for that sort of thing.”
“You did just fine, Threepio. You saved us. Thanks.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose … you’re quite welcome.”
“Right. So run some diagnostics on yourself. Relax.”
“Do you think we’ve really escaped them?”
Han stepped into the cabin and answered that. “We left on a pretty messy vector. Even I’m not exactly sure where we’re headed. We’ll drop out soon and get our bearings, but I’m willing to bet we’re not being followed. One thing is sure—we’ll need repairs.”
“The outer bulkheads?” Jacen asked.
“Like you figured. The coupling tore, but I was able to fix it before our patches gave way. Kinda spoils the look, though. It’s gonna have to go.”
Leia entered and lowered herself onto one of the couches. Jacen noticed she was favoring her right leg more than she had the day before. Her Noghri bodyguards stood silently nearby.
“What did they hit us with?” she asked.
“Something we haven’t seen yet,” Jacen said. “It may just be a side effect of their interdiction device.”
“Or a powerful electromagnetic pulse. It shut our systems down, but didn’t really do a lot of damage to them.”
“It shut us down, too,” Leia pointed out.
“Yeah. It did at that,” Han allowed.
“So now what?” Leia asked.
“Now? Well, now we know the inner Corellian Run is hotter than novashine.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Han said, shrugging his shoulders. “They grow the things, remember?”
“There’s that famous Solo charm,” Leia remarked. “I wondered where it had gone.”
Han opened his mouth to retort, but Jacen stepped in. “That interdictor had been there for a while. Remember the other ships we saw?”
Leia nodded. “True. I’d forgotten that.”
“This is nuts,” Han opined. “This whole thing. Luke’s ‘great river.’ ”
Leia frowned. “Look, we’ve had some setbacks, but—”
“Setbacks?” Han’s brows tried to jump off his head. “Did you just say ‘setbacks’?” We had to shoot our way out of the meeting on Ryloth because your ‘contacts’ turned out to be Peace Brigade—”
“Oh, like your ‘good friends’ on Bimmisaari? The ones who wanted to decorate their speeder with our heads?”
“As a matter of fact,” Han blustered, “things were going just great on Bimmisaari until you …”
They continued bickering, and Jacen listened with mixed emotions. On the one hand, it reminded him of old times, at least insofar as he could remember. They had always been like this, right up until the day Chewbacca died. Then—then they almost stopped talking at all. That silence had been one of the worst things Jacen had ever experienced. Now, they sounded like their old selves, but there was something brittle about it sometimes. As if some of the good nature at the base of it had evaporated. As though if the wrong thing got said, something might break.
Still, it was better than the silence.
As Han had guessed, it took a while to get their bearings and calculate a series of jumps that would take them on to their destination, the cluster of black holes known collectively as the Maw. He picked his way carefully through the enormous gravity wells, his old recklessness submerged beneath several layers of responsibility that a younger Han Solo could never have comprehended.
A younger Han Solo had never really believed in death—or rather, had never believed it could touch him. The loss of Chewbacca had changed that forever. Whenever he thought of losing Leia or one of his children, it put liquid nitrogen in his veins.