The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  He shook his head. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by irrelevancies, not with the success of his mission so close. He reached out with the Force, a casual sweep that would reveal to him the presence of living beings beyond the portal, and, feeling none, he stepped through.

  Here it was, the control chamber for the Centerpoint Station weapon. The room was surprisingly small, considering the incredible power it harnessed—it was large enough for a medium-sized crew of scientists to operate in, but something this grand should have been enormous, with monumental statuary commemorating the times in the past it was used. Instead there were seats, and banks of lights, switches, and levers, an upright joystick control at the main seat—all of it exactly as he’d last seen it, years before.

  Shortly before Ben’s birth, in fact. He’d last seen it before the boy was born; now he was seeing it just after the boy had been cut down.

  Irrelevancies. From a pocket within his Jedi robes, he plucked a peculiar datachip. Unlike a standard data card, which would fit within the slot readers of the billions of datapads, computers, high-end comlinks, or vehicular control panels that were equipped to scan and utilize the memory devices, it had rounded ends and spiky protrusions of gold, allowing it to conform to exactly one known port in all the galaxy.

  But where was that port? Jacen scanned the banks of switches and other controls. Nothing seemed suited to the datachip, not even on the exact section of control board he’d been told to look for. He was aware that there were distant shouts out in the corridor, signs that Corellian Security forces were rushing his way, that he had only seconds left to complete his mission.

  He closed his eyes and probed with senses that could not be so easily fooled.

  And he found, almost instantly, what he was looking for—a slot shaped in the reverse image of the front end of his datachip. Eyes still closed, he stepped forward, extended the chip, and felt it being gripped by, then drawn into the machinery below the control board’s surface. He released it and opened his eyes.

  The chamber’s thousands of indicator lights went dead and the sounds of shouts and onrushing feet from the corridor stilled. A female voice announced, “Simulation ended. Success ratio seventy-five percent, estimated only.”

  Jacen grinned sourly. Anything over 51 percent was sufficient for the success of the mission—it meant that one of the several techniques intended to damage or destroy Centerpoint Station had been initiated. But even 75 percent wasn’t good enough: it meant that either he or Ben had fallen. Fifty-one percent and both would have died.

  Ben moved into the doorway and carefully stepped over the bisected body of the droid wearing CorSec armor. He rubbed his chest and looked embarrassed. “Stun bolts sting,” he said.

  Jacen nodded. “More motivation for you not to be hit by them.”

  The wall behind the main control board slid upward, revealing a monitoring chamber beyond—several computer stations, one central chair with four viewing monitors mounted on spindly, adjustable bars around it. The man in the chair—stout, gray-bearded, a trifle overweight—offered the two Jedi a faint smile. “You’re getting there,” he said, his voice deep, rumbling.

  “This one seemed pretty easy, Doctor Seyah.” Jacen gestured around. “One guard in the final chamber—”

  “Easy?” Ben sounded outraged. “They shot about a thousand blaster bolts at us!”

  “Jacen’s right,” Dr. Seyah said. “This one is easier. Easier than restarting the station’s centrifugal spin and sabotaging the artificial gravity counterspin to tear the station apart, easier than introducing the station’s own coordinates into its targeting computations and having it destroy itself, easier than hijacking a Star Destroyer and crashing it into the proper end of the station—”

  Ben’s face brightened. “We haven’t done that one yet.”

  “Nor are you going to. That’s not a mission for Jedi. It’s for crazy old naval officers.”

  “Oh.” Ben’s expression fell. “I would have liked that one.”

  Dr. Seyah pushed aside a couple of obtrusive monitors and rose from his chair. “The problem is, we don’t know what the main weapons control chamber looks like now. This is how it was three weeks ago, when everyone but a core crew of scientists—carefully vetted, very pro-Corellian scientists—was pulled out and reassigned elsewhere. They could have replaced all the equipment with string cheese or encased the room in duracrete—we don’t know. But we have no reason to think they did.” He shrugged. “So long as you have that datachip intact, and so long as that receptacle slot is still in existence on the control board—even if you have a wobber of a time finding it—then this approach could work.”

  “Could work?” Jacen repeated.

  “We think it will. The commands in that datachip should initiate a ten-minute countdown and then activate a complex repulsor pulse that will tear the station apart. Assuming that they haven’t reprogrammed their systems sufficiently to overcome the programming on that chip. Assuming that my team and I did our jobs right all these years. Assuming a lot of things.” Dr. Seyah sighed, then placed a hand on the shoulder of each Jedi. “This is the only thing I can guarantee you: come with me to the cafeteria, and I can treat you to lunch.”

  “Sometimes the simple answers are best,” Jacen agreed, and allowed himself to be turned toward the door.

  But inside, worry tried to gnaw at him. Ben had faltered or died in eight out of ten of the simulations they’d run, suggesting that he should not, after all, be along on this mission … but Jacen’s own sense of the future, day after day, told him that the boy would be crucial to its success, if success were to be found at all. Perhaps both outcomes were correct. Perhaps the mission would succeed, but only if Ben fell during its accomplishment.

  If that were so, how would Jacen face Luke?

  “So what’s it like to be a spy?” Ben asked.

  Jacen murmured, “Doctor Seyah is not a spy, Ben. Be nice.”

  “Oh, of course I’m a spy. Scientist and spy. And it’s very nice. I get to study ancient technology and learn how the universe works. And every so often, I get to go on vacation to learn how to plant the newest listening comlinks, to subvert or seduce enemy spies, to use the latest blasters and fly the latest airspeeders—”

  “Have you ever broken anyone’s neck?”

  “Well, yes. But it was before I was technically a spy …”

  Across a span of days, Han and Leia put together facts, numbers, disappearances, reappearances, ship movements, personnel reassignments, things said, and things not said into a complex computer projection, carefully maintained—though scarcely understood—by C-3PO.

  Fact: elements of the Galactic Alliance Second Fleet were being diverted from their missions of record. As an example, the Mon Cal heavy carrier Blue Diver was supposed to be heading out to the Tingel Arm of the galaxy on an annual fleet mission to retrace the Yuuzhan Vong’s entry route into the galaxy in order to spot any lingering manifestations of their passage. Yet when it had reprovisioned, it had not taken on the sort of provisions appropriate to a months-long solo mission.

  Fact: communications between Coruscant and Corellia continued to be problematic, in a fashion suggesting that comm traffic was being heavily monitored and analyzed—but no anticipated boycotts or economic sanctions had been put in place against the increasingly independent system.

  Fact: civilian experts on Corellian government, military, and economics were increasingly unavailable. None had technically disappeared; all were “on vacation,” on leave of absence, on recent intergallactic assignment. The same was not true of experts on other worlds that had united with Corellia in agitating against the GA—Commenor or Fondor, for instance.

  Fact: Corellian corporate properties belonging to Pefederan Lloyn, chair of the GA Finance Council, had recently been sold or traded in kind for properties in the Kuat system. In theory, because of the active role she played in GA government finances, Lloyn was not exerting any direct control over her busin
ess holdings, having assigned that control to business officers for the duration of her government service … but Han Solo put no faith in theories heavily involving the integrity of government officials.

  These were only a representative sampling of the data Han and Leia found and loaded into C-3PO’s new analysis routine. But all the facts supported Han’s growing conviction that something very bad was about to happen in the planetary system where he’d grown up. His conviction wasn’t eased when C-3PO, during one of their analysis sessions in the Solos’ living chamber, said, “To all appearances, Corellia is about to experience a—a pasting, I believe the term is.”

  Han snorted, an irritated noise that caused the protocol droid to lean back, away from him. “Does your newfound analytical skill give you any idea as to exactly what form this pasting is going to take?”

  “Oh, no, sir. I’d have to be loaded with extensive military planning applications, not to mention extensive databases, in order to offer you a useful prediction on that matter. Which would, of course, interfere with my primary function as a protocol droid. Why, the memory demands alone would force me to remove millions of language translators and inflection interpreters. That would be disastrous. I might even become”—the volume of the droid’s voice dropped—“more aggressive.”

  Leia kept her face straight. “That would be terrible. What form would this aggression take? Would you strangle security officers and kick children?”

  “Oh, no, Mistress. But I might become … more sarcastic. Even verbally abusive.”

  “Goldilocks, go get us some caf,” Han said.

  “Yes, sir.” The droid rose. “I don’t believe any has been brewed. Would you like instant?”

  “About as much as I’d like a blaster burn on my kneecap. Go ahead and brew some.” Han waited until C-3PO was in the kitchen and the door closed behind him. He turned to his wife. “So what do we do to keep this from happening?”

  Leia drew in a breath to answer, but held it for several long moments. Han stared at her curiously. He could tell that she was framing her reply, but she was so well practiced at doing so that she could normally compose a speech as she was beginning to recite it. This sort of delay was unusual for her.

  “Perhaps,” she finally said, “the best thing to do would be to not interfere.” The look she turned upon him suggested that she expected him to transform into a rancor and go on a rampage.

  “Not do anything,” he said.

  “Han, what happens if Corellia continues doing exactly what it’s doing … and gets away with it? Suffers no consequences?”

  “Corellia becomes independent again.” Han shrugged. “So?”

  “And other worlds follow Corellia’s lead.”

  “Again—so?”

  “The Alliance will be weakened. Things will become more … untidy. More opportunities for crime. Black markets. Corruption.”

  For once, Han spent a few moments considering his reply. A flip answer would have come easily to him, but good government and a stable galaxy were important to his wife, and he couldn’t casually dismiss them. “Leia, there’s got to be room in this galaxy for independence. For chaos. In a galaxy as tidy, as sanitary, as controlled as you’re talking about, I never could have happened. I’d really prefer to live in a galaxy where there’s room for someone like me.”

  Leia looked away from him, and in her expression Han could see the dawning of a regret that amounted to mourning. Once again, she was mourning the loss of a system, a government that had always existed only in the abstract—one so fair and reasonable, it could never endure when implemented. “Then the thing to do is warn Corellia,” she said. “Preferably without alerting the GA that you’re doing it. Because it would be nice for you not to be thrown in jail.”

  “You’d just rescue me. If I took too long to escape on my own, that is.”

  She smiled sourly, still keeping her attention on the viewport and the sliding door out onto the balcony.

  “I need your help, Leia. I can’t do this alone.” It took an effort to speak those words. Admitting that he couldn’t perform some ordinary task—such as saving a world from invasion or conquest—all by himself was painful enough. It was worse to ask a woman devoted to order and lawfulness to set those considerations aside for him.

  “I know.” Leia looked back at him. “I’ll do it, Han. But only if you’ll help me. Corellia can’t play both sides of the field. If the system is going to be independent, it has to be independent. It can’t continue to accept all the benefits of GA membership and defy GA law. If you tell them the GA is coming in to compel them to obey, you have to tell them to stop playing games. They have to grease the whole bantha.”

  Han blinked at her. “They have to grease—they have to what?”

  “To grease the whole bantha. It’s an expression. From Agamar, I think.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “It is. And you’re just trying to keep from responding to what I just said.”

  “No, I’m not. You’re right, Leia. No more games for Corellia.”

  “Then I’ll help.”

  “And more grease for the bantha.”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Han. There are consequences.”

  “We could grease the protocol droid.”

  “Han, I’m warning you …”

  chapter six

  CORONET, CORELLIA

  Wearing only shorts and a blue undershirt bearing the symbol of the original Rebel Alliance in black now fading to gray, Wedge Antilles moved to the front door of his quarters and activated the security panel on the wall beside it. The screen flickered to life and showed a man and a woman standing in the hall outside. Both were young, in their midtwenties, and despite the fact that they were in the gray jumpsuits and overcoats that constituted one form of anonymous street dress on Corellia, their haircuts—military short rather than slightly shaggy—and an indefinable quality about their body language and facial expressions marked them as outsiders.

  They shouldn’t have been able to reach the front door of Wedge’s quarters without him knowing about it. His housing building was given over to military retirees such as himself. Some were retired from the New Republic, some from CorSec—Corellian Security—some from other Corellian armed forces. There were very basic security measures in place at all the entrances into the housing complex, so if these two were here without having been announced by complex security, it was because some other resident had let them in.

  Wedge shrugged. The complex’s security was designed to keep ordinary folk out of their building, not to prevent agents with contacts from getting in.

  He glanced over his shoulder. His wife, Iella, stood in the doorway to their bedroom. She wore a simple white robe and her hair, normally a wavy, gray-brown cascade, was a tousled mess, including one tuft protruding almost straight up. She had one hand cupped over her mouth as she yawned; the other held a full-sized blaster pistol at her side. Yawn done, she gave him a questioning look, one eyebrow raised.

  He shrugged, then turned back to the door and activated the exterior speakers. “What is it?”

  The female visitor, a well-muscled blond woman who looked to be at least as tall as Wedge—not that this was unusual, as Wedge stood slightly shorter than the average human male—said, “General Wedge Antilles?”

  “He moved,” Wedge said. “I think he’s over in Zed Block. He left the carpets a mess, too.”

  It was a test, of course. If the visitors showed confusion or retreated, then they were simply admirers, or children of colleagues, people who could stand to contact him through ordinary channels and during daylight hours. If they didn’t—

  They didn’t. The male visitor, a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man who looked as though he’d probably represented his military unit as wrestling champion, merely smiled. The woman continued, “I’m sorry for the late visit, General, but we really need to speak to you.”

  Wedge flipped on the living room lights and looked back over his shoulder again. The
door was open, but Iella was no longer in sight. She’d be hanging back in the darkness, wearing something far less visible than the white robe, the blaster in hand … just in case.

  Wedge flipped another switch on the security panel. Now the door leading into the side hall would be sealed, preventing Wedge and Iella’s youngest daughter, Myri, from wandering into the living room if she awoke. An intelligent and stubborn girl, Myri had inherited her mother’s inquisitive nature; it would not be beyond her to try to eavesdrop on a late-night conversation if she was aware one was taking place.

  Finally Wedge pressed the switch to open the front door. It slid down and out of sight, revealing the two visitors.

  The two straightened, an ordinary at-attention courtesy for a retired general, but they couldn’t quite keep dubious expressions from their faces. He knew they were looking at a skinny, graying man with knobby knees, a man wearing a sentimental-value undershirt older than either of them. It was a vision that did not match his reputation.

  Wedge kept any annoyance out of his voice. “Come in.”

  “Thank you,” the woman said. The two moved in and Wedge tripped the door just as soon as they cleared the threshold. The door tugged at the man’s shirt cloth as it rose into place.

  “I apologize for waking you,” the woman said. “I’m Captain Barthis with Intelligence Section. This is my associate, Lieutenant Titch.”

  “Identification?” Wedge said.

  Both reached into inner pockets of their coats. Wedge willed himself not to tense. But their hands emerged with identicards. Wedge held out a hand—not to take the identification, which by regulation these two would not have yielded in any case, but so that a green scanning light from the security panel would fall across his palm.

  Captain Barthis waved her card across his hand, and Lieutenant Titch followed suit. Now Wedge’s computerized security gear would be processing their card information, comparing it with Corellian data sources and a few databases that Wedge was not officially supposed to be able to access.