by James Luceno
He became aware that Jaina was still speaking, her words lost in his distraction. He smiled at her and shook his head. “Sorry. I was daydreaming.”
“That’s not like you.”
“More like Anakin. Listen, would you like to trade?”
Jaina frowned. “Trade what?”
“Assignments. I’m feeling something from these tassels—can you?”
“No, not really.” She stooped to look them over more closely, then shook her head.
“So I should be the one to investigate them. You look into Tawaler, then go and take command of Uncle Luke’s squadron.”
Jaina briefly considered. “Let’s clear it with Uncle Luke first.”
“Let’s not. He’s been second-guessing a lot of my instincts lately … even though he keeps telling me to trust them. Well, I trust this one—I need to be the one to investigate the tassel.”
She gave him a long-suffering look. “And when he asks about it—”
“It’ll be all my fault.”
She nodded. “He’ll believe that. You are male, after all.”
Luke, Mara, and Ben walked along Varganner Way, one level up from and running precisely parallel to Kallebarth Way. This passageway had been locked down for the brief duration of the GA/Corellia diplomatic mission; now Luke had it opened, temporarily, so he and his family could take a private walk.
They paused at a recess dominated by an outer-hull wall made up entirely of crystal-clear transparisteel. It showed the same view as the viewport in the Solo suite, but even less bounded, and at this moment the Skywalkers could gaze upon a majestic field of stars and the distant sun of Kuat.
Finally Luke said, “Ben, your thoughts are very close to the surface.”
“We should all go there together,” the boy said. “To Corellia. Us and Jacen and Jaina. And we should hammer on Thrackan Sal-Solo until he admits what he did, and lock him away so he doesn’t do it anymore.”
“All together as a family, yes?” Luke asked.
Ben nodded, but didn’t look at his father. He stubbornly kept his attention on a diamond-shaped nebula far away.
“We’re all mad because they attacked,” Mara said. “But we can’t use our Jedi abilities just because we’re mad. We can’t attack Thrackan under the assumption that he’s responsible; we have to have more evidence.”
“I know.” Ben sounded resigned. “If you’re mad, you can’t let your instincts guide your actions, ’cause it may not be the Force, it’s probably your anger. But we could do it when we’re cold inside. Jacen’s cold inside a lot.”
His parents exchanged a quick look. Luke said, “I think what you’re feeling as coldness is really submergence into the Force. His own emotions will go away for a while. That can seem cold.”
“Whatever.” Ben shrugged. “But we could still do it. We could grab Sal-Solo. And we could stop the Corellians from starting a war.”
“That’s another issue. What if the Force tells you not to beat them? Or doesn’t tell you anything at all about whether they should win?”
Finally Ben did look up at him. “Huh?”
“Ben, can you honestly tell me that the Corellians shouldn’t have freedom from the Galactic Alliance if they want it? Think about the Corellians you know—Uncle Han and Wedge Antilles, for instance. If most of the people in their system want to be independent, why shouldn’t they be?”
Ben frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. They’re part of the Galactic Alliance. They can’t just leave.”
“Why not?” Mara asked.
“It’ll cause unrest. That’s what Jacen says.”
Mara nodded. “It will cause unrest. There is a lot of unrest in life. The Force is created by life, so it has unrest in it. If you open yourself to the Force, how can you not open yourself to a certain amount of unrest?”
Ben gave his parents a suspicious stare. It wasn’t a look of mistrust, just the expression of a teenager anxious not to be tricked. “Whose side are you really on?”
Luke snorted. “The Jedi order protects and serves the Galactic Alliance, just as it did the New Republic. Just as the old order protected and served the Old Republic. But we choose to maintain a certain amount of latitude in interpreting our missions, our orders. For the good of everybody. And that means if we’re ordered into battle, but we discover we can achieve a victory through negotiation or a bloodless show of force, we do it. If we discover that we can bring peace by obliging the opposing sides to listen to each other, we do it—even if one side is supposed to be in charge of what we do.”
Ben returned his attention to the starfield for a moment. “I hear kids say they hate it when their parents say Do this because I say so. Sometimes I think they have it easy.”
Mara laughed softly and reached out to brush her hand across her son’s fine red hair. “I suspect they do. Of course, they don’t get to run all over the galaxy and practice with live lightsabers.”
“Yeah, I guess. But thinking is hard. And kind of unfair. There never seems to be a right answer.”
Luke felt his lump return, but this time he knew it was caused by pride, not pain. “That’s it,” he said. “There never seems to be a right answer is a right answer.”
“Oh.”
“Watch out for people who tell you they know the right answer,” Mara added. “They may think they do, but often they’re wrong. Or they may just know that thinking is so hard, many people don’t want to do it. They want a leader they can trust … so they don’t have to do the hard work of thinking. That’s one type of leader you don’t want to follow.”
Ben opened his mouth as if to ask another question, then closed it again.
“You’re right,” Luke said. “If you asked whether you should tell Han and Leia about the Anakin Solo droid, we’d just have to say we don’t know.”
Ben looked up at him. “Sometimes you hate being a Jedi, don’t you?”
Luke thought about it, then nodded. “Occasionally.”
“Me, too.”
Within an hour, all members of the three parties had departed—all but Jaina, Zekk, Jacen, and Ben, who waited behind to begin their investigations from this habitat. They waved at the departing corvettes and transports from the viewport in what had been Han and Leia’s suite.
When the last of the departing ships was gone, Jacen turned to the others. “First,” he said, “sleep. Then we get under way.”
chapter twenty-two
CORONET, CORELLIA
Taking two of the most famous people in the galaxy and smuggling them onto a highly developed, security-conscious world was actually quite simple. Luke knew it would be, at least once, and so didn’t bother consulting any of the many Intelligence friends and allies he had—beyond arranging for identicards for himself and Mara.
Now he stood in a crowded line at a crowded security station in the crowded Corellian city of Coronet and stared, smiling, down at the unamused, weathered face of an officer of CorSec, the system police.
The man squinted up at him. “Luke Skywalker,” he said.
Luke nodded, his smile broadening.
“I really don’t see it.”
“Oh, come on.” Mara stepped forward, voice raised in Luke’s defense. “He looks just like him.”
“Too short,” the CorSec officer said. “No one would believe in a Luke Skywalker that short.”
Luke let a slightly whiny note creep into his voice. “I can do backflips just like him.”
“I’m sure you can.” The CorSec officer waved Luke’s falsified identicard under the needle-like point of a data transmitter. A pinpoint light on the identicard switched from red to green, signifying that the visitor’s visa for Emerek Tovall, actor-impersonator from Fondor, was approved. He was now free to enter Coronet and conduct lawful business of all varieties.
“Would you like an autograph?” Luke asked.
“No, thank you. Move along.” The disinterested officer took Mara’s identicard next.
Three places up in
line, a couple who bore a remarkable resemblance to Han Solo and Leia Organa—as they had looked decades before, at the time of the Battle of Yavin, down to Leia’s white Senatorial dress and side-bun hairstyle—waited patiently at another station. The CorSec woman there looked skeptically at the screen in front of her and asked, “Jiyam Solo?”
“That’s right,” the Han impersonator said, his voice richer, more theatrical than the real Han’s.
“Any relation?”
The impersonator shook his head. “I changed my name for professional reasons.”
“Does it help?”
“I get a lot of work. Here, we’re doing a bio-holodrama of the Solos, with two endings, depending on whose side he takes in the upcoming conflict …”
Just beyond him, the Leia impersonator patted her righthand bun and spoke to the man in line ahead of her. Over the crowd noise, Luke could barely make out her softer tones: “No, we’re not married, but I’ve worked with him before. Well, yes, maybe. Where are you staying?”
Mara bumped into Luke from behind. “Move along, Shorty. I’ve cleared customs.”
Luke picked up his bag and moved toward the chamber exit, through which other visitors to Corellia were streaming. Inside the bag, its housing replaced by a more innocuous one, its power supply replaced by one far less potent, his lightsaber now resembled nothing so much as a personal glow rod and had passed through customs without raising an eyebrow, as Mara’s had. The correct housings and power supplies, shipped separately, would be awaiting them at their respective destinations. “It worked spectacularly,” he said.
“It did. Hiring the actors for the various other ‘roles’ was the clincher, I think. Too bad your Chewbacca couldn’t make it.”
Luke shrugged. “You can’t always get a Wookiee at the last minute. Especially when you’d have to dye his fur and give him a trim. Still …” He allowed a false note of hurt creep into his voice. “Still, I think I make a pretty good Luke Skywalker.”
“Of course you do,” Mara said, her tone soothing, a millimeter short of condescending.
“So before you began impersonating Mara, what was your real hair color?”
“Farmboy, you’re asking for a beating …”
Outside the customs facility, they posed for a holocam picture with two tourists who were delighted to meet Jedi impersonators. Once the tourists were gone, Luke and Mara kissed, put up the hoods of their travelers’ robes, and went their separate ways.
Mara fetched the airspeeder she’d rented under her assumed name and sped off toward a series of meetings where she’d pick up supplies and information she’d need for her mission. Luke, his day’s activities as urgent but not as time-critical, waved down a public transportation groundspeeder and directed it to an address in one lightly trafficked area of the government districts of Coronet.
The building that was his destination—actually three buildings down from the address he’d given the driver and where he exited the transport—was simple of design and pleasing to the eye. It was very low, one story only, on its right and left wings, but swept upward toward the middle in a steep curve so that its center was a narrowing spire several stories in height. The entire building was duracrete, tan speckled with black, except for doors and windows of green transparisteel. It was set back from the street some fifty meters, the property decorated with dark green grasses sectioned off by narrow tan duracrete sidewalks, and was entirely surrounded by a fence of blue-black plasteel bars four meters high.
On the fence gate was a printed sign reading, CLOSED DURING PLANETARY EMERGENCY. FOR HELP OR INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT CORELLIAN SECURITY. Below that was a communications address. Elsewhere on the sign, hand-lettered, were phrases such as JEDI DIE, GO HOME, and WHO PLACES PHILOSOPHY ABOVE PLANET HAS BETRAYED BOTH. Luke recognized the last quote; it was from a recent speech by Chief Sal-Solo.
There was rubbish on the green lawn, and there were blaster scores on the walls and windows of the building side facing the street. Vandals had been at work. A uniformed CorSec officer walked the sidewalk in front of the fence, keeping her eye on pedestrian and speeder traffic.
Luke walked past the CorSec officer, not making eye contact, the slightest gesture of his hand and exertion of the Force keeping the officer from feeling any curiosity about the robed passerby. Once Luke was well past her, almost to the corner where the fence changed from plasteel to smooth stone and marked the beginning of a city library property, he glanced back.
The CorSec woman was facing away. Another few steps and she’d turn and begin pacing back in Luke’s direction. He took a quick look and feel around, detected no one’s attention on him, and leapt over the fence.
He came down, rolling to his feet almost silently, and dashed to the cover of the bushes along the side of the small Jedi enclave.
The transparisteel windows along this side of the enclave looked as though they were permanently inset in the walls and could not be opened, but Luke stopped at the third window, looked around again, and brought out his comlink. He changed frequencies to one routinely used by Jedi on field operations, then whistled three notes into it.
The window hissed as it unsealed. Cooler air from inside flowed out. Luke pulled at the window from the bottom—it remained attached, hinged, at the top—and rolled through it, coming up on his feet in what looked like a small schoolroom beyond. The window sealed itself shut behind him.
The room was darkened but not dark. No glow rods supplied light; the only illumination came from sunlight through the viewport, tinted green by the transparisteel coloration. It revealed chairs and desks, too small for adults, and pictures all over the walls: diagrams showing the angles of attack and defense in lightsaber technique; long-dead Master Yoda, face furrowed in concentration, telekinetically holding an Old Republic gunship weighing many tons over his head; a female Jedi Master—generic and probably fictitious, not a person Luke had ever seen in person or in records—sitting cross-legged in meditation, her eyes closed.
A silver protocol droid, powered down, stood at the head of the room, one arm raised as though to illustrate a point.
The only sound to be heard was the hum of the enclave’s air-cooling machinery. Luke shook his head, regretful. A Jedi teaching facility should never be so silent, so empty. But in the wake of the assault on Tralus and Centerpoint Station, the Corellians had declared the Jedi enemies of the state and had made an effort to close down all Jedi facilities and round up Jedi in the planetary system.
That last part hadn’t gone so well. Determined not to let the teachings of the order come as close to extinction as they had in the time of Emperor Palpatine, Luke had taught his students what he knew of avoiding hunters. He knew a lot.
He moved to the door. It didn’t slide open at his approach. He gripped the edge and gave it a shove; it slid aside on well-lubricated rails.
Just beyond it, a silver lightsaber blade snap-hissed into life. The man who carried it said, “You’re going to find it hard to loot with both your arms cut off.”
Luke grinned. “That’s quite a greeting, Corran.”
The other Jedi turned his lightsaber off just as quickly as he’d powered it on. “Luke! Master Skywalker.” He stepped forward into the faint light admitted by the doorway.
Corran Horn was about Luke’s age and height, but a bit stockier of build, broader in the shoulder. Grandson of a famous Corellian Jedi of the Old Republic era, he’d come into recognition and training of his Jedi powers even later than Luke had—careers as a CorSec officer and Rebel Alliance fighter pilot had come first. As conflicted as he might have been in early days about aptitudes, duties, and careers, he was now a Jedi Master, whose graying hair and beard gave visual support to his reputation as an elder statesman of the order.
He wasn’t dressed as a Jedi now. He wore anonymous blue-and-white pin-striped coveralls, spattered with grease and hydraulic fluids, and a set of welder’s goggles pushed up on his forehead. As he held out his hand for Luke, he looked like a pit
mechanic ready to explain just how much his hyperdrive repairs were going to cost.
Luke took his hand, an embrace of brothers in arms. “How’s your family?”
“Good.” Corran’s voice suggested he wasn’t entirely happy. “Mirax is under house arrest. Quite a flap over that, too. Some in the government want her expertise in smuggling critical materials into the system. Others don’t trust her because she’s married to a Jedi. So she waits at home, under arrest, every need being catered to by government personnel, enjoying a vacation.” He snorted. “As for Valin and Jysella … well, I suspect you’d know better than I would what they’re up to.”
Luke nodded. Corran and Mirax’s children were both Jedi, raised as much by the teachers of the Jedi academy as by their biological parents, off doing the business of the order.
Corran’s face softened. “Thanks for not using them on the Corellian missions.”
“That was an easy decision,” Luke said. He moved forward, Corran stepping aside so he could enter the hall, and slid the door shut. Now they were in deeper darkness, illuminated only by dim emergency glowstrips at the baseboards of this hallway. “I didn’t want any Jedi to be considered traitors by their homeworlds. For most, it’s nice to be able to return home from time to time.”
Corran didn’t comment. Luke knew that he, Luke, was an exception to that generalization. His own homeworld of Tatooine held no lure for him—hadn’t in all the decades since he’d left it to find a new home elsewhere.
Corran gestured down the hallway toward the rear of the enclave. “I’ve set up one of the bolt-holes as a staging area. Your lightsaber components are there. Also clothes, supplies, credits—”
“Thanks.” Together they walked down the hallway and then down a spiral flight of stairs. “So,” Luke said.
“So.”
“So, what’s the attitude of the Corellian Jedi? What do I need to know?”