by James Luceno
Alderaanian councilor Cal Omas spoke up. “Ambassador Organa Solo is attending to personal business.”
“And may I remind Director bel-dar-Nolek and other members of this assembly that she does not represent the Jedi Knights,” Shesh added.
“Then just who does?” bel-dar-Nolek pressed. “Why are they permitted to take whatever actions they see fit, without having to answer to this body or to the Defense Force? We are alleged to be members of a New Republic, and yet it seems to me that we are weaker than the Old Republic, which at least had the Jedi under rein.”
He looked around the hall. “I ask you, too, what are the Jedi waiting for? Do they fear the Yuuzhan Vong, or is it that they harbor secret designs of their own? I suggest that you put an end to their reckless conduct, and that you open negotiations with the Yuuzhan Vong, without using the Jedi—or anyone with ties to the Jedi, like Elegos A’Kla had—as intermediaries.”
Viqi Shesh was the first to speak when the hall had quieted sufficiently for anyone to be heard. “Senators, if nothing else, I think we can all take some consolation in the fact that Director bel-dar-Nolek is neither a politician nor a military strategist.” She waited for the laughter and applause to subside. “We must not allow ourselves to be undermined by divisiveness, nor should we allow the fall of Ithor and now Obroa-skai to undermine our confidence in the Jedi. I know that you will agree with me when I say that by weakening the Jedi Knights, we only weaken ourselves.”
SIX
Mara rose from the couch to greet Luke as he came through the doorway of their suite on Coruscant. He met her halfway with open arms.
“It’s about time,” she said, shutting her eyes and holding him close.
R2-D2 trailed Luke into the room, toodled a greeting to Mara, and immediately headed for the suite’s recharge station.
“I would’ve been back sooner if Streen hadn’t asked me to go to Yavin 4.”
“Trouble?”
“Could be. Now that the Yuuzhan Vong have occupied Obroa-skai, they could discover the academy. If that happens, we have to think about relocating the younger Jedi. In the meantime, Streen, Kam, and Tionne are watching over things.”
They had been separated for only a standard week, but Luke was alarmed at how delicate Mara felt to his touch. He considered trying to feel her through the Force, but feared she would detect him and resent the intrusion. Instead he luxuriated in her embrace for a moment longer, then backed away to hold her at arm’s length. “Let me look at you.”
“If you must,” she said with elaborate sufferance.
Her face was pale and her eyes were underscored by dark circles, but some of the sheen had returned to her red-gold hair, and her green eyes sparked to life under his gaze.
“What’s the verdict, doctor?”
Luke pretended not to hear the quaver in her voice, but Mara saw through his pretense. There wasn’t much they could hide from each other, though one of the more devastating aspects of Mara’s illness had been its detrimental effect on the depth and intensity of their bond.
“You tell me.”
“It hasn’t been my best week.” She smiled frailly, then compressed her lips in annoyance. “But I don’t know how I ever let you talk me into coming here—and don’t say you got me at a weak moment.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
Months earlier, Mara had determined that the best way to fight the illness was to remain active and fully attuned to the Force. But after the brutal murder of Elegos A’Kla and the devastation visited on Ithor her condition had worsened. If all of Luke’s and Mara’s instincts were wrong and the illness wasn’t linked to something the Yuuzhan Vong had introduced to the galaxy, her vitality at least appeared to wax and wane in accordance with the invasion. Where following the minor victories at Helska and Dantooine she had emerged strong, Ithor had constituted a new low, not only for Mara but for everyone.
Luke slipped out of his cloak, and the two of them moved arm in arm into the suite’s modestly furnished sitting room, his black trousers and shirt in stark contrast to Mara’s white sheath. Mara lowered herself into a corner of the couch, her taut legs tucked beneath her. She gathered her long hair in one hand and twirled it behind her head, then spent a moment staring out the window at passing traffic. The apartment wasn’t far from the Grand Convocation Center, but sonic-cancellation glass kept the noise from intruding.
“Did you meet with Dr. Oolos?” Luke asked at last.
She turned to him. “I did.”
“And?”
“He told me the same thing Cilghal and Tomla El told me seven months ago. The illness isn’t like anything he’s ever seen, and there’s nothing he can do. But I could have told you that—and saved both of us the trouble of coming here. Oolos wouldn’t come right out and say that the Force is the only thing keeping me alive, but he implied as much.”
“There’s the one other. . . case,” Luke started to say.
Mara shook her head. “He died. Just after you left for Kashyyyk.”
Luke allowed his disappointment to show. A Ho’Din, Ism Oolos was not only a noted physician, but also a researcher of some celebrity, as a result of his investigations into the Death Seed plague that had swept through the Meridian sector twelve years earlier.
“Did he have anything to say about the beetle?”
“The infamous Belkadan beetle,” Mara said jocularly, then shook her head. “Other than that it’s also like nothing he’s ever seen. But the tests he ran didn’t show any evidence that my illness is connected to the thing.”
Luke grew introspective. Many years earlier, the Mon Calamari Jedi Cilghal had employed the Force to heal then Chief of State Mon Mothma of an assassin-induced nano-destroyer virus. So how was it that she and Oolos and the Ithorian healer Tomla El could all remain powerless against the molecular disorder that had assailed Mara? It could only have come from the Yuuzhan Vong, Luke told himself. In the midst of an all-embracing conflict, he and Mara were waging their own private struggle.
“Was the memorial difficult?” Mara said, clearly eager to talk about something other than the state of her health.
Luke looked up and took a breath. “Not for Chewbacca’s immediate family. Wookiees are very accepting of death. But I am worried about Han.”
Mara frowned sympathetically. “Your sister might be Han’s soul mate, but Chewbacca was his first mate. It’s going to take time.”
“I didn’t help matters any. When I tried to suggest that he open himself up to the Force, he made a point of reminding me that he isn’t a Jedi.”
“Which is another reason he and Chewbacca were so close,” Mara said. “He’s surrounded on all sides.” She grew quiet, then surfaced from her thoughts and looked at Luke. “I was just remembering a time I saw your father hurl someone against a bulkhead for showing a lack of respect for the Force.”
“I don’t think that’s the right approach to take with Han,” Luke said wryly.
“But it’s exactly the approach the Jedi are expected to take with the Yuuzhan Vong.”
“Yes. By the same people who fear us taking over the galaxy or succumbing to the dark side.”
Mara smiled wanly. “Things haven’t exactly turned out as planned, have they? Even after the peace accord, I never doubted that we’d face challenges and go through the usual ups and downs. But I truly believed we’d be able to send any enemies of the New Republic running for cover. Now I’m not so sure.”
Luke nodded, wondering if Mara was referring obliquely to her own enemy. If so, her words suggested that she was losing confidence in her ability to prevail.
“Mon Mothma once asked me if I thought my students would eventually set themselves up as an elite priesthood or as a band of champions. Would the Jedi choose to insulate themselves or act in the service of those in need? Would we be a part of the citizenry or outside it?” He narrowed his eyes in recollection. “She envisioned Jedi who would be willing to get their hands dirty, Jedi in all walks of life-medicine, law
, politics, and the military. She saw it as my duty to set an example, to become a genuine leader rather than a mere figurehead.”
“And she’d be the first to admit that her concerns were unfounded.”
“Would she? Obi-Wan and Yoda never talked about what the distant future held for me. Maybe if I hadn’t spent the past few years trying to learn how to overcome ysalamiri and tune my lightsaber to cleave cortosis ore, I’d know what course the Jedi should take now. It’s the dark side that calls constantly for aggression and revenge—even against the Yuuzhan Vong. The stronger you become, the more you’re tempted.” Luke gazed at his wife. “Maybe Jacen’s right about there being alternatives to fighting.”
“He certainly didn’t get that from his father.”
“His coming to it on his own makes it all the more significant. He thinks I’ve paid too much attention to the Force as power, at the expense of understanding a more unifying Force.”
“Jacen is still a young man.”
“He’s young, but he’s a deep thinker. What’s more, he’s right. I’ve always been more concerned with events in the here and now than the future. I don’t have the long view, so I miss the big picture. I’ve had a harder time fighting myself than I had fighting my clone.”
Luke stood up and moved to the window. “The Jedi have always been peacemakers. They’ve never been mercenaries. That’s why I’ve tried to protect our independence and keep us from swearing allegiance to the New Republic. We aren’t an arm of their military, and we never will be.”
Mara waited until she was certain he was finished. “You’re starting to sound like that Fallanassi woman who took you on a wild yunax chase looking for your mother.”
“Akanah Norand Pell,” Luke supplied. “I wish I knew where her people went.”
Mara snorted. “Even if you found them, I don’t think the Yuuzhan Vong are going to be as susceptible to Fallanassi-created illusions as the Yevetha were.”
“Not judging by what we’ve seen.”
An ironic laugh escaped Mara. “Akanah. Akanah, Gaeriel Captison, Callista. . . Luke Skywalker’s lost loves. Not to mention that one on Folor. . . ”
“Fondor,” Luke corrected. “And I was never in love with Tanith Shire.”
“Just the same, you met each of them during a time of crisis.”
“When haven’t we been in crisis?”
“That’s what I’m getting at. Should I be worried that someone new will cross your path this time?”
Luke went to her. “Our crisis is the one that concerns me most,” he said earnestly. “We need a victory.”
“You want to talk about irony? My father told me a story that happened right here in the Meridian sector, maybe twelve standard years ago.”
Captain Skent Graff—human and proud of it, with broad shoulders and a face that turned heads—was half perched on the com-scan integrator console of the Soothfast’s cramped bridge, one high-booted leg extended to the floor. His captive audience, slouched at sundry duty stations, were the half dozen who made up the light cruiser’s bridge crew. The stations chirped and chimed intermittently, and the ship’s Damorian power plant thrummed. The sloping viewports of the ingot-shaped vessel looked out on cloud-blanketed Exodo II and its poor excuse for a moon, and some lightyears distant, the luminous dust clouds of the Spangled Veil Nebula.
“He’s stationed aboard the Corbantis, out of Durren Orbital, when the ship’s tasked to investigate reports of a pirate attack on Ampliquen. Actually, nobody knew for sure whether it was pirates or forces from Budpock violating a truce accord, but in fact the whole thing turned out to be a ruse engineered by Loronar Corp, a contingent of Imperials, and a guy named Ashgad, who was trying to spread a plague through this entire sector.”
“The Death Seed plague,” the young female Sullustan at the navicomputer said.
“Give the lady a glitterstim spliff,” Graff said good-naturedly. “She knows her history. Anyway, the Corbantis never makes it to Ampliquen. It’s quilled by a flock of Loronar’s smart missiles and left for dead in an ice chasm on Damonite Yors-B—not too far from here as the mynock flies. But then along comes Han Solo and his Wookiee pal—”
“Who just happened to be in the neighborhood?” the communications officer asked.
“Actually they were searching for Chief of State Leia Organa Solo, who’d gone missing, but that’s beside the point.” Graff rested his elbow on a deactivated R series droid fastened to the bulkhead. “Solo and the Wookiee investigate the Corbantis and find seventeen severely rad-burned survivors—one of which was my father—and they take them to the sector medical facility at Bagsho on Nim Drovis. At the time the place was being run by some well-known Ho’Din physician—I can’t remember his name, Oolups or Ooploss, something like that—and Ooploss does everything he can for his patients. The problem was that the med facility was so overcrowded that some of the survivors had to be relocated to bacta wards in the annex. And what do you think happens?”
“They come down with the Death Seed plague,” the navigator ventured.
Graff nodded. “They come down with the Death Seed plague. Which just goes to show you that even when you figure you’ve cheated the odds, you’re still a statistic waiting to happen.”
“And now here you are, all these years later,” the navigator said, “right back where your father was, making local space safe for Drovis’s zwil packers.”
“Zwil?” the Twi’lek enlisted-rating at the threat-assessment station said.
“Some sort of narcotic,” Graff said.
The navigator’s recurved mouth quirked a smile. “For those with membrane-lined breathing tubes wide enough to—”
“Captain,” the comm officer interrupted. “Durren reports that their hyperspace orbiter has picked up a Cronau radiation event in our sector. Confidence is high that a large ship has reverted to realspace. Interrogators are awaiting a telesponder return.”
Graff leapt to his feet and hurried to his swivel-mounted chair. “Do we have visual contact?”
“Not yet, sir. The event is well outside our sensor range.”
Graff turned to the comsec officer. “Scramble Gauntlet squadron and go to general quarters.”
Sirens blared throughout the ship, and garnet light began to suffuse the bridge.
The comsec officer looked over his shoulder at Graff. “Sir, forward tech station reports countermeasures enabled, shields up and fully charged.”
“Data on the event coming in,” the enlisted-rating said. “Ship is an unknown quantity. Radar and laser-imaging computers are compiling a portrait.”
Graff swung to face the holo-imager, where the ghostly likeness of an enormous, faceted polyhedron, black as onyx, was already taking shape.
“Yuuzhan Vong?”
“Unknown, sir,” the enlisted-rating said. “It doesn’t match anything in our data banks.”
“Move us out of stationary orbit.”
“Sir, drive profiles of the intruder match those of a vessel in the enemy flotilla that attacked Obroa-skai.”
“Gauntlet squadron is out the door, moving to recon position.”
“Any chatter from the Yuuzhan Vong vessel?” Graff asked.
“Negative, sir. No, wait. Scanners now show two ships.”
Again, Graff swiveled to face the holo-imager, where a second, smaller polyhedron was forming alongside the original. “Is that thing a new arrival, or are we observing some sort of mitosis?”
“It appears to be a component of the larger vessel, sir. Vessel one is changing course, bearing for Durren Orbital Station. Module is accelerating to intercept our starfighters. Gauntlet is breaking formation, splitting up into attack elements.”
“Patch me through to Gauntlet leader,” Graff ordered the comm officer.
“Gauntlet leader is patched through,” the woman said.
“Gauntlet One, can you show us what you’re seeing?”
Relayed over the command net annunciator, the squadron leader’s voice was th
in sounding and disrupted by bursts of static. “Transmitting. Looks like the galaxy’s biggest decoder ring lost its stone.”
“Will you look at that thing,” someone on the bridge remarked as a real-time image replaced the holosimulation. “Sir, bioenergy massing in the smaller ship. They have us in target lock.”
Graff engaged the chair’s safety harness. “Brace for impact.”
Effulgent golden light filled the Soothfast’s forward viewports. The ship shook as if snatched and shaken by a giant hand.
“Plasma energy,” the enlisted-rating reported. “Consistent with Yuuzhan Vong-ranged weapons. No damage to vital systems. Shields are holding.”
“Range?”
“Secondary vessel is moving within striking distance, sir.”
Graff gave his command cap a downward tug. “Tell Gauntlet squadron to steer clear. Starboard main batteries, stand by to return fire.”
A retrofitted Proficient-class ship of Corellian design, the Soothfast was 850 meters long, but with only ten heavy turbolasers and twenty ion cannons it was wanting in firepower. Some of the compartmentalization that had originally reinforced the cruiser’s hull had been removed to create a docking bay for starfighters, but even with the fighters the sharp-nosed ship remained an ancillary weapon.
“Gauntlet is clear, sir.”
Graff nodded. “Ready proton torpedoes. Set for detonation at the first hint of gravitic anomalies.”
“Sir, torpedoes are armed as dictated by new protocol.”
“Ready starboard turbolasers,” Graff ordered. “Sir, turbolasers enabled.”
Graff looked at the weapons officer. “If that ‘stone’ operates true to form, it’ll vacuum the torpedoes, but the lasers stand a good chance of scoring.”
“Understood, Captain.”
Graff pivoted his chair. “Main batteries, commence fire.”
Blinding projectiles streaked into space, followed by lances of blue-green light, converging far in the distance with radiant, strobing flashes.