The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  The other two fired at him. The first shot hit the back of the sturdy couch and picked the furniture up, spinning it toward the outer wall. Han and the couch hit the transparisteel of the viewport.

  Han felt the viewport shudder under the impact and he wondered, for one eternity-long fraction of a second, if it would give way beneath the blow, buckling free of its housing, sending him into the coldness of space and decompression.

  It didn’t. It rang metallically as he hit it, pain shot through his shoulder blades, and suddenly he was on the floor, the couch on top of him.

  He heard Leia’s lightsaber hum and sizzle. He rolled out from under the furniture. In the moment it took him to come upright, blaster in hand, the situation was resolved. One of the two remaining attackers was down with his head off; the other, shaking in pain, was missing both arms at the elbow. Both of Han’s targets were down, smoke rising from where the blaster bolts had hit them.

  Leia turned her attention to the door, and Han didn’t need Jedi powers to know what she was thinking. “Yeah,” he said. “You left, me right.”

  They emerged into Kallebarth Way at a dead run, Han turning toward the chambers of the Corellian delegation, Leia turning toward the delegation from Coruscant.

  The first door Han passed slid open and a man leapt out. Han aimed, wrenched his blaster back out of line—the man emerging was his own son. “C’mon, kid,” he said and ran past.

  Han could see, up ahead, that the double-wide door leading into the Corellian delegation’s suite was open. Smallarms blasterfire emerged from the doorway to pockmark the passageway wall opposite. As he watched, a blackarmored figure staggered back through the doorway, his chest smoking from what looked like blaster hits, and swung his oversized blaster rifle into line back toward the doorway. The blaster fired. A lance of red light leapt from the weapon, and the interior of the chamber beyond the door was suddenly illuminated in flame colors.

  Han fired. His shot hit the attacker’s armor just under the armpit, staggering him but not penetrating.

  At the same moment, Jacen hurled his lightsaber. It spun in flight, catching the attacker as he was still off-balance from Han’s shot, crossing him at knee level, and severing both legs at the joint.

  Jacen put on a burst of Force-augmented speed, leaving his father behind, and kept the lightsaber spinning in the air just outside the suite’s door. There were more flashes of light from that chamber, more small-arms fire, and he took the last two steps with a sinking feeling.

  He snatched the hilt of his spinning lightsaber out of the air and stepped into the doorway.

  The room was on fire. No, that wasn’t quite right—three members of the Corellian security detail were on fire, their bodies burning briskly, smoke also curling up from their blasters. Oddly, the chamber’s fire alert had not activated.

  There were three bodies on the ground that weren’t smoking; they were black-clad intruders. The burn marks on their heads attested to the accurate fire of the dead CorSec officers.

  One of the interior doors was gone, wrenched free, the frame scorched by the power of the intruders’ blaster rifles. In the doorway stood Wedge Antilles, dressed in his shorts and ancient Rebel Alliance shirt, a blaster in his hand. He looked Jacen in the eye and shook his head, a sorrowful gesture.

  Jacen entered and moved past Wedge. On the floor of the sumptuous bedchamber beyond lay Five World Prime Minister Aidel Saxan, a burned-edge hole the size of a dinner plate passing entirely through her torso, residual charring masking any expression she might have been wearing when she died.

  * * *

  Leia sped faster as she neared the door to the main Coruscant delegation quarters. Those doors were open, and she could hear blasterfire from beyond them. As she reached the doorway, she dropped the speed burst and stopped with the abruptness of a Toydarian junk merchant flying over a credit.

  The chamber beyond, an antechamber providing access to a variety of bedchambers and function rooms, was filled with smoke and bodies. Three of the downed combatants were black-armored intruders. Several were GA security. One, on the far side of the room, sitting half upright, was an elderly man in an admiral’s uniform. His head, neck, and the top portion of his chest were missing, the edges of what remained blackened by high energy. A huge hole in the wall above, centered at the two-meter level, showed where the upper reaches of his body had been when the blast had hit.

  Nearer, a fourth black-armored intruder was sprawled on the floor, his blaster rifle a meter beyond his reach; he struggled to rise, but another GA-uniformed officer straddled his body, gripping his helmet by the faceplate. As the intruder continued to struggle, the officer brought a small blaster pistol up to the back of his neck and fired down, through the spine. The attacker jerked and lay still.

  The officer became aware that someone was standing behind him. He spun and aimed, and as he turned Leia recognized him as Tycho Celchu. The old pilot’s friend-or-foe recognition was still incredibly quick—he brought his aim off Leia even as she raised her blade to deflect a possible shot.

  Leia looked past him to the body against the wall. “Oh, no,” she said. “Not Pellaeon.”

  Tycho shook his head. “Not Pellaeon.”

  “My double.” The voice came from a shadowy doorway; its door was opened, not destroyed. From it stepped the old admiral, dressed in a dark robe, a blaster rifle in his hands. He looked sorrowful as he gazed at the man who had died in his stead; even his bristly mustache seemed to droop.

  Tycho asked, “Is Han—”

  “He’s fine,” Leia said. “Han shot first.”

  There was no more blasterfire to be heard; the loudest noises were the hum of Leia’s lightsaber and the crackling of flames from some of the bodies. Leia switched her weapon off and it was even quieter. “Let’s find out how bad the damage is,” she said.

  “He looked at me,” Luke said, “foamed at the mouth, and fell dead.”

  “The one Jacen crippled did the same thing,” Wedge said.

  “I saw foam on the lips of several of them,” Pellaeon added.

  They were crowded into a lounge near the Solo suite—representatives of both diplomatic parties, all the Jedi, and a few of Toryaz Station’s security officers.

  One of them, Lieutenant Yorvin, a reed-thin woman with hair a rustier red than Mara’s, decided to straighten things out. “We need to start taking statements immediately,” she said, “as soon as we can set up our truth analyzers. I’ll be requesting a judge come up from Kuat to help with the officiating. My lord Solo”—she gestured at Han—“I’ll need you to surrender your blaster. You’re in the company of the envoys again.”

  Han gave her a look that was half scowl, half puzzlement. “I’m not sure how to respond to a statement like that,” he said. “Except with violence.”

  Lieutenant Yorvin suddenly discovered herself flanked by Wedge Antilles and Tycho Celchu. “You seem to be asking to suck space,” Wedge said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Perhaps the term isn’t common in the Kuat flavor of Basic,” Tycho said. “What he’s asking, Lieutenant, is whether you’d like to patch the station exterior without wearing an enviro-suit.”

  “I don’t—I’m not—”

  “Shhh,” Wedge said. “Listen. Yes, an investigation is about to happen, but you’re not in charge. We are. Here are your orders.”

  “I—”

  “First,” Tycho said, “shut up. Second, lock down this entire habitat. Seal off the connection to Toryaz Station, then shut and seal every door, allowing them to be opened only from your security station.”

  “Speaking of which,” Wedge said, “is there an auxiliary security station? Somewhere that can override security controls from the bridge and the main security office?”

  “Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Yorvin’s attention flickered back and forth between the two pilots, and the comprehension dawning on her face suggested that she was beginning to understand what she would and would not be able to do in t
his situation. “But it’s easier to—”

  “Do it from there,” Tycho said. “And send us your captain, what’s-his-name …”

  “Tawaler,” Wedge supplied. “Also, no body, no weapon, no scorch mark, no splash of spilled caf is to be touched.”

  “Don’t touch the security recordings without our say-so,” Tycho added. “Just stand by in the security station and be prepared to open doors or provide information whenever I call for it, or General Antilles, or Admiral Pellaeon, or Master Skywalker, or anyone we designate.”

  Lieutenant Yorvin tried one last time. “But—this isn’t the way things are done.”

  Wedge turned back toward Pellaeon. “Admiral, if these people don’t do exactly as we say, is Toryaz Station going to be paid for rental of this habitat?”

  “No, it’s not.” Pellaeon, once again in full-dress uniform, settled back in an overstuffed chair.

  “If they continue to obstruct this investigation, are they going to be sued?” Tycho asked.

  Pellaeon nodded, looking like a kindly old grandfather reluctant to give bad news. “And they’ll lose. Oh, how they’ll lose.”

  Wedge looked back at the officer. “Dismissed,” he said.

  She left. More precisely, she fled, nearly banging her nose on the lounge door as it slid out of her way almost too slowly.

  “Since there’s only one party here that is plausibly neutral,” Wedge said, “I propose we hand coordination of this situation over to Master Skywalker and his Jedi.”

  “I agree,” Pellaeon said. “Which is not to say that I only want Jedi looking into it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Luke said. “I’ll be happy to draw on everyone’s strengths.” He frowned. “Allow me the first question here, Admiral. Do you routinely have a double along with you?”

  The old officer shook his head. “But then, I don’t routinely go on diplomatic missions. The double, and swapping out of the bedchambers we’d been assigned for others that were supposed to be empty, were notions of General Celchu’s. And they saved my life.”

  “Actually,” Tycho corrected, “it’s something Wedge and I settled on together.”

  Pellaeon stage-whispered, “This treasonous collaboration has got to stop.” His expression suggested he didn’t mean it.

  Luke turned to Wedge. “But Saxan wasn’t protected by the same measures.”

  Wedge nodded. “I recommended they be implemented, but remember, I’m not—I wasn’t—in charge of the Prime Minister’s security the way Tycho is in charge of the admiral’s. I was overruled by her security chief, fellow named Tommick. He’s among the dead.”

  Han frowned. “Not Harval Tommick?”

  Wedge nodded again.

  “A member of Thrackan Sal-Solo’s political machine,” Han continued. “What’s someone like that doing in charge of security for a political rival?”

  Wedge offered up a humorless smile. “In his secondary capacity as Minister of War, Sal-Solo was able to insist that Saxan’s security be ‘augmented’ by Tommick’s crew. Tommick’s crew took over.”

  “Who’s going to take over as Five World Prime Minister?” Luke asked. “Saxan’s deputy?”

  Wedge nodded. “Fellow named Denjax Teppler. Once married to Saxan, in fact. They parted but remained friendly. He’ll hold the post until they can arrange a new election. Months, perhaps.”

  Han snorted. “You mean, until he gets killed, too.”

  Luke, seated, finished dressing—he flexed his toes in his boots and then zipped the boots up along the side. Now he was clad head-to-toe in black, somber dress for a somber occasion—and also vaguely menacing dress in a time when he needed politicians and bureaucrats to listen to him very carefully.

  “All right,” he said, “if I’m in charge of this investigation—a circumstance that can only last until the GA and Corellian delegations receive orders from their respective governments—then I’m going to have to act fast.” He rose. “Tycho, Wedge, and the Jedi will spread out to investigate. Admiral, I’d like to ask you to stay here, coordinate data as we obtain it. Han …” He frowned, obviously at a loss to make use of Han’s skills in this situation.

  Leia spoke up. “Han can provide security here. And maybe let the admiral teach him a thing or two about sabacc.”

  “Teach me,” Han repeated.

  “Two kindly old Corellians,” Leia continued, her expression innocent, “having a harmless game of cards.”

  Pellaeon fixed Han with a disbelieving stare. “Your lady really does like the sight of blood, doesn’t she?”

  Han gestured toward the old naval officer, a motion that somehow said, It’s settled. Luke took one last, quick look around. His attention fell on his son. Ben was paler than usual and unnaturally quiet. Luke saw Mara reach for the boy, probably to give his brow or chin an affectionate stroke, but Ben drew back without looking at her. Luke didn’t know whether the boy was shunning contact or simply didn’t want to seem to be a coddled child in front of the other Jedi, but he felt a faint pang of hurt from Mara—a pang she quickly, ruthlessly clamped down on.

  He felt for her, but had no time to talk to her, to talk to Ben. He rose. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Zekk, beside the door, hit the control panel and it slid open for Luke. His cloak streaming, his fellow Jedi trailing behind him, Luke swept out into the hall and prepared himself for what he knew was going to be a long night of investigating, negotiating, and theorizing.

  “Sorry, have I interrupted a veterans’ parade?” Jaina asked.

  Wedge, in anonymous gray civilian clothes, and Tycho, still in his dress uniform, were walking side by side down an outer-rim corridor; Wedge glanced back at Jaina and Zekk, then he and Tycho exchanged a look.

  “Jedi are quiet,” Tycho said. “They sneak up on you even when they’re supposed to be your friends.”

  Wedge grinned. “Maybe you’re just losing your hearing.”

  “I was deafened by the sound of your joints creaking.”

  “That could be it.” Wedge returned his attention to the datapad in his hands. It was open, and its small screen displayed a map of this section of Narsacc Habitat. The map background was black, the partitions and bulkheads were narrow yellow lines, and a dotted red line stretched from behind their current position to a point some meters ahead. “Tell her that I’m not sure I should be talking to a traitor.”

  “General Antilles says—”

  “Traitor?” Jaina stopped, aghast. “Wait a minute. I’m half Corellian by birth, sure, but I wasn’t raised as a citizen. And as Jedi, we’re supposed to put the interest of the greater good ahead of planetary concerns—”

  “Not what I meant,” Wedge said, unruffled.

  Tycho nodded. “She’s young. She jumps to conclusions.”

  Wedge adjusted the datapad so that the map scrolled ahead. It now showed the red dotted line terminating at an air lock. “She also talks too much.”

  “She has to. The boy who follows her everywhere doesn’t say anything.”

  Jaina glanced back and up at Zekk. He nodded, admission that the point was well made.

  “No,” Wedge said, “what I mean is that anyone as good as you are in a snubfighter, but who gives up the flying life to run around in robes and swing an impractical energy sword, has committed treason to her natural aptitudes.”

  “I still fly,” Jaina said, “and I still fly X-wings, and you’re avoiding the subject.”

  Wedge nodded. “All right. No more avoidance.” He drew a deep breath, then let it out in a guilty sigh. “This is not a veterans’ parade.”

  “Well done,” Tycho said. “Confession does cleanse the spirit, doesn’t it?”

  “It does,” Wedge admitted.

  Jaina held up her hands, fingers curled, as if on the verge of reaching for Wedge’s neck. “So what have you found?”

  Tycho said, “As you know, the head security officer for the habitat is missing.”

  “We know,” Jaina said, ruefully. “That’s what Zekk and
I have been doing, looking for him. We looked at the holocam recordings—”

  “Which don’t exist for Kallebarth Way for the time period of the attack,” Tycho said.

  “Correct. We also went through his quarters, tried to get a sense of him …” She frowned.

  “What is it?” Tycho asked.

  Jaina smiled. “Oh, at last you’re curious. At last I have something you want to know.”

  Tycho rolled his eyes. “Better tell her, Wedge. She’s going to get difficult.”

  Wedge came to a stop so suddenly that Jaina almost bumped into him. They were in front of an air lock; Wedge’s datapad indicated that they were at the terminus of the red dotted line. He snapped the device shut. “In the wake of the attack, Tycho and I did the first, most obvious thing—”

  “You asked for brandy?” Zekk asked.

  “The tree speaks at last.” Tycho shook his head. “No, we asked for those selfsame holocam recordings that don’t exist.”

  “So you got nothing,” Jaina said.

  From a pocket, Wedge pulled a cable. One end went into a jack in the datapad. The other was a standard round wall plug, which he fit into the jack beneath the air lock’s control panel. “Running diagnostics,” he said. “Seems to be pressurized. No unusual pulses through the internal sensors. No, Jaina, we asked whether Toryaz Station is the sort of place where the engineering department logs all door openings and closings. You know, to measure wear patterns, predict replacement needs, that sort of thing.”

  “That would never have occurred to me,” Jaina admitted.

  Wedge smiled. “Me, either. Something my wife taught me. Or, rather, taught my younger daughter while I eavesdropped. I have one daughter going into my line of work, one going into my wife’s. Genetically and culturally speaking, isn’t that perfect?”

  “Perfect,” Jaina said, her tone flat. “So? The door openings?”