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Jedi Search Page 5

by Kevin J. Anderson


  on the table. Luke watched her, keeping his face free of any downcast

  expression. "Leia, what is it?" he asked.

  She looked at him with her dark eyes and hesitated before answering. "Just

  feeling sorry for myself, I guess. Han should have arrived on Kessel two

  days ago, but he hasn't bothered to send a message. That's no big surprise,

  considering him!" But Luke saw more wistfulness than sarcasm in her eyes.

  "Sometimes it wears on me not to have my own children here. I've been with

  the twins for only a fraction of their lives. I can count on one hand the

  number of times I've visited the baby. I haven't had time to feel like a

  mother. The diplomatic chores won't give me a rest." Then she looked

  directly at him. "And you're about to go off on your great Jedi hunt. I feel

  like I'm missing out on life."

  Luke reached out to touch her arm. "You could become a very powerful Jedi if

  you would only devote some concentration to your work. To follow the Force,

  you must let your training be the focus of your life and not become

  distracted by other things."

  Leia reacted more strongly than he had anticipated, drawing away. "Maybe I'm

  afraid of that, Luke. When I look at you, I see a haunted expression in your

  eyes, as if a vital part of you has been burned away by the personal hells

  you've walked through. Trying to kill your own father, dueling with a clone

  of yourself, serving the Dark Side for the Emperor. If that's what it takes

  to be a powerful Jedi, maybe I don't want the job!"

  She held up her hand to stop him from saying anything until she had

  finished. "I am doing important work for the Council. I'm helping to rebuild

  a whole republic of a thousand star systems. Maybe that is my life's work,

  not being a Jedi. And maybe, just maybe, I might want to fit being a mother

  in there, too."

  Luke looked at her, unmoved. No one could read his expressions anymore; he

  was no longer innocent. "If that is your destiny, Leia, it's a good thing

  I'll start training other Jedi soon." They stared at each other in an

  uncomfortable silence for a few moments. Luke looked away first, retreating

  from that line of conversation.

  "But you still need to protect yourself from the Dark Side. Let's work a

  little more with shielding and your inner defenses, and then we'll call it a

  night." Leia nodded, but he could sense that her spirits had sunk further.

  He reached out with his fingers to touch her dark hair, drifting over the

  contours of her head. "I'm going to try to probe your mind. I'll use

  different techniques, different touches. Try to resist me, or at least

  pinpoint where I am."

  Luke let his eyes fall half-closed, then sent faint tendrils of thoughts

  into her mind, deftly touching the topography of her memory. At first she

  didn't react, but then he could feel her concentrating, building an

  invisible wall around his probe. Though slow, she succeeded in blocking him

  off. "Good, now I'm going to try different places." He moved his touch to a

  different center. "Resist me if you can."

  As he kept probing deeper, Leia became better at fending him off. She

  parried his attempts with greater speed and stronger force as he guided her

  to put up barriers. He grew more pleased as he worked with her, touching

  random spots in her mind, trying to take her by surprise. He could feel her

  own delight with her improving abilities.

  Luke reached to the back of her mind, an area of deep primal memories but

  little conscious thought. He doubted he could get any defensive reaction

  there, but no attacker would be likely to strike at such places. Her

  thoughts were like a map laid out in front of him, and Luke touched inward

  to an isolated nub in her mind. He pushed--

  And suddenly felt as if a giant invisible palm had planted itself on his

  chest and shoved backward. Luke stumbled to keep his balance, taking two

  steps away from her. Leia's eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open in

  surprise.

  Luke said, "What did you do?" in the same moment Leia said, "What did I

  do?"; then both answered, "I don't know!" simultaneously.

  Luke tried to reconstruct what he had done. "Let me try that again. Just

  relax."

  She seemed anything but relaxed as he probed her again, reaching to the back

  of her mind, finding the isolated nub among her instinctive centers.

  Touching it, he found himself knocked away again with physical force.

  "But I didn't do anything!" Leia insisted.

  Luke allowed himself to smile. "Your reflexes did, Leia. When a medical

  droid taps your knee, your leg jerks whether you want it to or not. We may

  have just stumbled upon something a potential Jedi has that others don't. I

  want you to try it on me. Here, close your eyes and I'll give you an image

  of what I did to you."

  "Do you think I'll be able to?" Leia asked.

  "If it truly is instinctive, all you need to do is find the right spot."

  "I'll try." Her face wore a skeptical expression.

  "Do, or do not. There is no try. That's what Yoda always said."

  "Oh, stop quoting him. You don't need to impress me!"

  Leia touched her brother's temples, and he took a deep breath, using Jedi

  relaxation techniques to drop his guard. He had erected so much mental armor

  in the past seven years that he hoped he could still let her inside. He felt

  the touch of her thoughts, delicate mental fingers tracing the contours of

  his brain. He directed her search toward the back, where primitive thoughts

  slept. "Can you--' Before he could finish his question, Leia stumbled

  backward into the self-conforming seat. "Wow! I found the nub, but when I

  touched it, you knocked me off my feet."

  Luke felt wonder tingle through him. "And it was completely unconscious on

  my part. I wasn't aware of doing anything." Luke touched his lips as new

  thoughts raced through his mind. "I need to try this on other people. If

  it's completely a reflex reaction, this could be a very useful test for

  finding people who have latent Jedi powers."

  Next morning, the metropolitan shuttle skimmed over the rooftops of Imperial

  City, like a bus on the thermals rising from chasms between the tall

  buildings. The strip of buildings newly erected by the construction droids

  looked like a gleaming stripe through the ancient city.

  Admiral Ackbar piloted the shuttle himself, holding the controls in his

  articulated fin-hands as he watched the skies with his widely set fish eyes.

  Behind him, strapped into their seats, rode Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa

  Solo. The bright dawn spread long shadows in the lower levels of the city.

  Ackbar leaned forward to the comlink. "General Antilles, we are on approach.

  I can see the construction droid up ahead. Is everything cleared for our

  landing?"

  "Yes, sir," Wedge's voice sounded clearly from the speaker. "There's a good

  spot just to the right of the droid that should be perfect for landing."

  Ackbar cocked his head to peer through the curved viewplate, then brought

  the metropolitan shuttle in, aligning it with gaps in the buildings,

  descending to the unexplored street levels.

  Wedge came ou
t to meet them after Ackbar had settled the shuttle beside the

  powered-down construction droid. Ackbar emerged first into the rubble-strewn

  clearing, tilting his domed head up to look at the strip of sunlight coming

  from high above. Luke and Leia stepped out side by side as the vehicle

  hummed into it's standby-cooldown mode.

  "Hi, Wedge!" Luke called. "Or should I say, General Antilles?"

  Wedge grinned. "Wait until you see what the demolition crew found. I just

  might get promoted again."

  "I'm not sure you'd want to," Leia said. "Then you'd be stuck with

  diplomatic duties."

  Wedge motioned for them to follow. The construction droid blocked out the

  sun. Luke could hear teams scrambling up access ladders and automated lifts

  on the outer shell of the droid. Maintenance crews were taking advantage of

  the shutdown time to check the internal factories and resource processors,

  to modify some of the programming inside the droid's computer blueprint.

  The stripped carcass of a large beast lay in the rubble just outside the

  opening of the shielded room. Wedge gestured to it. "That thing attacked us

  last night, and my team killed it. Sometime when we were up in the

  construction droid's pilot lounge, napping and cleaning up, other scavengers

  came out and stripped the meat off its bones. Too bad. The xenobiologists

  might have wanted to classify it, but now there's not much left."

  Wedge ducked inside the breached metal walls of the shielded room. Luke

  could hear people shuffling and banging inside. He saw Leia wrinkle her nose

  at the strange smells wafting out.

  Luke's eyes took a moment to adjust to the glowing yellow illumination of

  the floating lights posted around the chamber. Something powerful had gone

  berserk in here. At first he saw broken equipment scattered on the floor,

  wires torn out, smashed computer terminals. Long claw marks gashed the

  walls. A black spherical Imperial interrogation droid lay split open in one

  corner. He saw Leia's eyes fix on it, and he sensed a wave of revulsion pass

  through her.

  Several people from Wedge's team had wrestled a heavy metal grate back into

  place against one wall and were now laser-welding it into it's channel. The

  grate had been horribly bent.

  "More excitement last night," Wedge said. The welders looked up from their

  work, waved to Wedge, then bent back to their beams. "The mate of that

  rat-creature came back up through the tunnels, found its companion killed,

  and smashed everything it could." He frowned. "Ruined most of the old

  equipment here, but we still might be able to salvage something. The Emperor

  kept the place under tight security. Seems to be some kind of deep

  interrogation facility."

  "Yes, indeed," Ackbar said, striding through the wreckage. Broken circuit

  boards crunched under his wide feet. "We wouldn't want any of this to fall

  into the wrong hands."

  Luke's attention drifted over to a tangle of wires and flat sheet-crystal

  readers on the floor. His forehead furrowed with concentration as he went to

  look more closely. "Is that what I think it is?" he mumbled.

  "What did you say, Luke?" Leia asked, following him.

  He didn't answer her as he bent over the equipment, pulling wires and cables

  and trying to sort through the mess. "It looks like there were three

  separate units here. They're probably all destroyed." But he felt a growing

  excitement within him. Maybe they would be able to piece the components

  together.

  "What is it?" Leia asked again.

  Luke uncoiled one of the cables and found an intact sheet-crystal reader at

  the end. It looked like a glassy silver paddle longer than his hand. "I've

  read about this in my research on the old Jedi Knights. The Emperor's hunter

  teams used it to seek out Jedi who were hiding during his great purge."

  He found a second intact sheet-crystal paddle, then picked the control pack

  that looked the least damaged. With his cyborg hand, Luke brushed aside some

  of the dust, then jacked the cables into either side of the pack, holding

  the paddles, one in each hand. He flipped the power switch on the control

  pack and was gratified to see a warm flurry of lights as the unit went

  through its initialization diagnostics.

  "The Emperor's teams used equipment like this as sort of a Force detector,

  for his henchmen to read the auras of people they suspected of having Jedi

  talent. According to the records, the remnants of the Jedi Knights held this

  thing in great fear--but maybe we can use it to restore the Jedi."

  He grinned, and for a moment he felt like the fresh, excited farm boy he had

  been back on Tatooine. "Hold still, Leia. Let me test this on you."

  She stood back, alarmed. "But what does it do?" Both Wedge and Ackbar had

  stepped over to watch.

  "Trust me," Luke said. He held the sheet-crystal paddles at arm's length,

  bracketing Leia. When he tripped the scan switch, a thin slice of coppery

  light traced down Leia's body from head to toe. Suspended in air above the

  control pack, a smaller echo of the copper scan-line reappeared in reverse

  motion, assimilating the data and constructing a tiny hologram of Leia.

  It looked different from the small holo of Leia that Artoo Detoo had

  projected for Ben Kenobi. Instead, it was a wire-frame silhouette of her

  body, with color-coded lines tagged to readings that projected a column of

  numbers in the air. Surrounding the outline was a corona of flickering blue,

  faint but definite.

  "Can you understand anything from that, Luke?" Admiral Ackbar said, peering

  closer.

  "Let's get another one for comparison." This time Luke pointed the paddles

  at Wedge, who flinched as the coppery scan line ran up and down his uniform.

  When his wire-frame holo appeared beside Leia's, most of the color-coded

  details were similar--but his image showed no blue corona.

  "Now let's try you, Admiral." He extended the paddles toward the Mon

  Calamarian, adjusting the control pack to take Ackbar's alien physiology

  into account. When his scanned image appeared, it too lacked the blue aura.

  "Leia, would you do it to me, just so we can be more sure?"

  Leia handled the equipment reluctantly, as if uneasy to touch a device that

  had been used by those who had designed the interrogation droid. But she

  operated the scanner easily, holding the sheet-crystal paddles on either

  side of Luke.

  His image bore the bright corona.

  "This is very valuable," Luke said. "You don't need any particular skill

  with the Force to use this equipment. We can find people with Jedi potential

  just by scanning them. It will be a great help in finding candidates for my

  academy. Maybe some good will come of this device after all these years."

  "Very good, Luke," Ackbar said.

  Luke pursed his lips. "Wedge, I want to try something. Would you relax for a

  minute and let me do a mind touch on you?"

  "Uh," Wedge said, then saw his team members looking at him. He straightened.

  "Whatever you say, Luke."

  Luke wasted no time, reaching out to touch Wedge's temples, running a mental

  probe over the surface of his mind, back to
the primitive area, the

  surprising nub in the contour of thoughts--

  But when Luke touched it, nothing happened.

  Wedge probably didn't even know he was being probed. Luke pushed harder, but

  he triggered no reflexive counteraction, no uncontrolled push as Leia had

  given him.

  "What was that all about?" Wedge asked. "Did you do anything?"

  Luke smiled. "I just strengthened a theory of mine. We have gotten a lot

  closer to bringing back the Jedi Knights."

  At least the ship didn't explode on impact.

  That was the first thing Han Solo thought as painful consciousness returned.

  He blinked his eyes, listened to the hissing of atmosphere streaming through

  breaches in the Millennium Falcon's hull. Somehow they had survived a crash

  landing. He wondered what planet he was on.

  Kessel!

  His eyes widened as he saw red splashes across the control panels. His own

  blood. His leg felt as if it were on fire, and he tasted liquid tin in his

  mouth. As he coughed, more blood splashed out. Han had not managed to strap

  himself in before the crash. It was a good thing he had not stayed up in the

  gun well. From his skewed vantage he could see that the ship had spun on

  impact, with the top gun well crushed beneath them.

  He hoped Chewbacca had fared better. Turning his head, Han felt as if shards

  of ground glass were rubbing his spine. In the copilot's chair, the Wookiee

  lay motionless, his pelt matted with discolored blood oozing from wounds

 

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