She came to him, clambering over the bed and into his lap. She put her arms around his neck. “Daddy.”
“Yes. Your daddy, forever and ever.” He held her to him, stroked her hair. “And when the war is over and the bad people have been taught how wrong they were, and everyone is happy again, we can tell everyone that I’m your daddy. And you can sit right next to me and help me decide how things are going to be for everyone. Won’t that be nice?”
KORRIBAN, WORLD OF THE SITH
On a ruin of a planet, they stood in the ruins of a citadel—themselves the ruins of an ancient organization, the Sith Order.
In a circular meeting chamber, its stone walls darkened by age and weathering, they stood in a circle, dark hooded robes obscuring their identities. It was an unnecessary precaution; there was no one present who was not part of their Order. But legends and records had taught them the merits of caution, of maintaining customs of secrecy and self-preservation even when in their safest havens.
One of them, a dark-skinned human female whose pale geometric-patterned tattoos stood out in sharp relief on the skin of her cheeks, bowed to the assembly. Her voice was surprisingly light and musical, considering her somber appearance, as she answered the question put to her. “Yes, my lord, I have news and even speculation concerning Alema Rar.”
“We will hear them, Dician.” The words came from the man guiding this conclave, a human whose fully white eyes suggested blindness but whose alert mannerisms said otherwise.
Dician continued. “The ersatz Sith Holocron provided to her traced her path back to her point of origin. It is an asteroid belt in a star system near Bimmiel. When a cloaked ship comes available, I will requisition its use to pinpoint her location exactly.”
The white-eyed leader’s voice suggested skepticism. “You think her significant enough to devote important resources to such a mission?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
Dician took a long breath, a delaying tactic allowing her a few more seconds to compose her argument. “By offering the Jedi aid in their search for this woman—”
A buzz of offended comments from the others brought her up short. She glanced around, assessing the mood of the assembly, and decided that she would lose respect if she yielded to their outrage. Before the white-eyed man could bring them to order, she continued, her voice rising to cut through their complaints: “In one of my assumed identities, of course, as a Confederation Intelligence operative. I would not aid the Jedi, but they must think of me as an ally.” The others quieted. “And having proved myself a legitimate intel officer, I received a considerable amount of information on their hunt for Alema Rar…which must necessarily include information and speculation about her.
“It seems that among the resources she inherited from Lumiya is a Force technique permitting her the projection of phantoms across space. It appears in every way to match the lost technique of Darth Vectivus.”
At those words, the murmur rose again. “Vectivus’s history is clear. He was a fraud,” someone muttered.
“A fraud with an art that would benefit us all,” said someone else.
“I was not here for her visit—could this Alema Rar be turned to our ends?” yet a third questioned.
“I think not. She seemed as insane as a piranha-beetle with a needle through its brain.” The voice was barely audible above the other voices.
The white-eyed man cleared his throat, and the others went silent. “We must recapture the woman, extract the secrets of the technique from her, and seize the power source she utilizes.”
There was regret in Dician’s tone as she replied. “I think not, my lord. The Jedi are now homing in on her location. Knowledge is much easier to obtain than to contain—once they know where her base is, we will never be able to preserve that secret.”
The white-eyed man considered. “Very well. You were correct, Dician. This is of highest priority. We will not concern ourselves with a cloaked ship, but assign a fully armed warship to the task. I am recalling the Poison Moon and assigning it to you for this mission. It will be equipped with explosives sufficient to destroy an asteroid. You will use it to locate the dark side energy source used to power Vectivus’s Force phantom technique and obliterate it. You will obtain any Sith artifacts in Alema Rar’s possession. You will also capture Alema Rar, or, if circumstances warrant, kill her.”
Dician bowed again. “It will be my pleasure.”
SANCTUARY MOON OF ENDOR
They made a curious parade, Luke decided. Not that he hadn’t been part of many curious parades in the course of his curious life.
First went the Hapan Security vanguard, four spectacular-looking women. They wore the most stylish body armor imaginable, its graceful lines broken up by green-and-brown camouflage patterns that made the armor difficult to pick out amid Endor’s forest vegetation.
Behind the security guard by some ten meters, walking side by side, came Luke and Queen Mother Tenel Ka, dressed completely inappropriately for their surroundings—Luke wearing his black Jedi Grand Master garments, Tenel Ka sporting a flowing gown in shimmering, metallic shades of blue. Luke suspected that beneath it Tenel Ka probably wore traditional Dathomiri battle dress, but he would never know, unless an attack was staged against them and she felt the need to move freely.
Ten meters farther back were the droids C-3PO and R2-D2—the former to deal with any Ewoks who might approach, and the latter, inasmuch as any droid could, representing a comfortable and friendly “face” for Tenel Ka.
The main body of the odd safari walked behind the droids—Jedi Masters Saba Sebatyne and Cilghal, along with half a dozen advisers to the Queen Mother.
At the rear of the party were four more Hapan security specialists.
Luke pitched his voice as a whisper. “Quite a retinue for a little walk in the woods. How many do you have to take with you when you just want to go to the refresher?”
Tenel Ka had not smiled in the brief time since her arrival on Endor, but she almost did now. Almost. To Luke, it seemed that the facial muscles that permitted such an expression no longer knew how to perform. Her whispered answer was matter-of-fact: “In my own palace, none. In foreign palaces, a minimum of four.”
“And if you’re visiting Dathomir, where the only thing available is a bush?”
“It’s the best-defended bush within a dozen parsecs.”
“I thought so.”
They walked in silence for a little while. Luke could feel the tension within Tenel Ka—it roiled at the surface of her thoughts, like water just beginning to boil—but he did not feel it appropriate to hurry her toward the conversation to come.
Tenel Ka waited until they found a broad clearing. At its center was a wide, nearly flat stone, some four meters across, the only spot of the clearing visited by shafts of sunlight. She raised her voice so that all could hear. “This will do.” As she and Luke moved toward the stone, her guards scattered, forming a defensive perimeter around the clearing, while the Jedi Masters, Hapan advisers, and droids stood in a tight knot well away from its center.
Luke sat at one edge of the stone. It was warm under him, even compared with the warmth of the forest air. He extended his senses through the Force to seek out any intelligences that might be close enough to listen and found none—except for Tenel Ka, who was doing just as he was.
She finally sat next to him. “One of the problems with dealing with Jedi Masters is that they’re so patient. It’s enough to drive you crazy. They just wait you out.”
Remembering his own time on Dagobah with Master Yoda, Luke nodded. “You’re right. Now I’ve become exactly what used to make me insane with frustration. I wonder when that happened.”
Tenel Ka took a deep breath. “You know that I turned my back on the Alliance, demanding that Jacen be removed from power. Then I withdrew from the war altogether and did not pursue my agenda against Jacen any longer.”
“Yes. I assumed you had a good reason.” That was the trut
h. Luke felt no anger or censure. Tenel Ka was the Queen Mother. She would not have wavered on this matter without cause.
“I don’t know if it’s a good reason. It’s a very personal reason. Jacen kidnapped my daughter, Allana. He threatened to kill her if I did not resume my duties as an Alliance member.”
Luke winced. “I wish I could say I was surprised.” He almost added, He kidnapped Ben, too, and tortured him. But he clamped down on the words before they left him. Tenel Ka did not need to experience mental images of Jacen torturing Allana. She did not need the additional fear and worry his words would cause.
“I thought—I think—that he could probably do it. Kill…my baby. The situation cut me in two. The Queen Mother arguing one course of action, Allana’s mother arguing another. Allana’s mother won.”
“I understand.”
“But after what happened a few days ago…the firing of Centerpoint Station…” Tenel Ka’s voice wavered. Luke could feel her anguish growing within the Force, and, detecting her distress, Saba and Cilghal glanced over at the two of them. “It shows the ends the Confederation is willing to go to. It shows how insane this war has become. The Hapes Consortium has been rebuilding for more than fifteen years from the damage caused the last time the station was fired. The Corellians can use it to destroy whole worlds if they want.”
Luke nodded.
“Awhile back, I thought that Allana and I could perhaps run away. They’d hunt us down, of course. The Alliance, or my political opponents from Hapes. Allana and I would die, but we’d die together, in each other’s arms. Now it looks like we won’t even have that tiny comfort. We’re going to die never having seen each other again.”
“You don’t know that. If you saw something like that as a Force vision, it isn’t necessarily the true future—”
“I don’t see visions of the future anymore. Not really. I just feel death and failure all around us. Consuming us like a fire.” Tenel Ka looked down at her hand, resting palm-up in her lap. It twitched, and Luke sensed she longed for her lightsaber to be there, lit, with enemies in front of her—enemies she could attack personally, physically. “I have to be the Queen Mother, Master Skywalker. I have to decide what’s right for my people.”
“Yes.”
“I have to turn my fleets against the evil Jacen represents. And then I have to watch him kill my baby.” An overpowering wave of grief rolled off Tenel Ka. Luke almost reached for her to comfort her, but in the sight of so many others such a gesture would be utterly inappropriate. He saw Cilghal take an involuntary step toward them, but the Mon Cal healer caught herself and stepped back again.
“Has your intelligence service determined where Allana is? To stage a rescue?”
“They don’t have to. I can feel her. Sometimes she’s on Coruscant, sometimes elsewhere. Her movements match those of the Anakin Solo.”
The events of just a few days earlier clicked together in Luke’s thoughts. The little girl Jacen had been using as a human shield—that had to have been Allana. Luke decided not to mention it. “A grief-stricken Queen Mother is of no more use to the Hapans than a grief-stricken Jedi is to the Order. What if we just go in and retrieve Allana for you?”
She looked at him, a new dread in her eyes—this time, an unwillingness to let herself hope for something so tremendous. “If I thought it could be done, I’d have done it already.”
“One former Jedi and limitless wealth can accomplish a lot of things.” Luke’s gesture took in all of the Sanctuary Moon, back to his outpost and beyond. “A whole Order of Jedi can accomplish other things.”
“I couldn’t ask you to.”
“And you didn’t. But I think it’s the right thing to do. The right thing from a personal and military point of view. Without Allana, Jacen loses his influence over the Consortium. With the revelation of his threat to kill Allana, Admiral Niathal may reconsider her alliance with Jacen. With the odds shifted away from the Alliance, Jacen and Niathal may have to sue for peace. Rescuing Allana could end this war, Tenel Ka.” He offered his hand to her. “The Jedi Order offers.”
Slowly, as if not daring to believe her luck, Tenel Ka took it. “The Hapes Consortium accepts. With gratitude.”
chapter twenty-three
STAR SYSTEM MZX32905, NEAR BIMMIEL
The Millennium Falcon dropped out of hyperspace well outside the asteroid belt of Star System MZX32905, well away from the floating, tumbling hazards to navigation its asteroids constituted. Han and Leia could see the belt on their sensors, though, as a broad line of irregular lumps, demonstrating widely different masses, shapes, and rotations.
A moment later a starfighter appeared nearby, trailing the Falcon by a few dozen kilometers—Jag’s X-wing. This meant that Jaina and Zekk’s StealthXs were there, as well. Han didn’t bother searching for them on his sensors. He might pick up traces, but it would be a pointless exercise.
Leia activated the comm board, adjusted the transmission to its lowest power setting, and directed it precisely toward Jag’s starfighter. “We’ve begun the passive sensor scan. And we’re running computations on all observable asteroids of the appropriate size, plotting their locations when Jacen and Ben visited.” She didn’t get a word or click in response, but hadn’t expected one. She could feel Jaina and the other two in the Force and knew them to be patient, unalarmed, waiting. They had to be receiving her.
Han watched as data began accumulating on his sensor board. Red shapes, each one designated with an alphanumeric code decided on by the Falcon’s navigational computer, indicated where the relevant asteroids were now. Yellowish shapes with corresponding designations began appearing, showing where those asteroids had been many months earlier. Han adjusted the scale of the sensor image to display the system’s entire asteroid belt. “I’m going to prioritize these targets so we can figure out what order we visit them in.”
Leia gave him a dubious look. “Based on your extensive knowledge of ore yields and mining techniques, I suppose.”
“Of course not. Based on my knowledge of how corporate stiffs think. For instance, they like big round things. So we’ll focus on the biggest, roundest asteroids first.”
Leia put her head down in her hands. “That wouldn’t hurt so much if I didn’t suspect you were right.”
LUMIYA’S SATELLITE HABITAT
Alema felt a little ripple in the Force. It was of no more consequence than if a normal person had had a dream in which a menacing shape stood over her bed as she slept.
But Alema had long ago learned to trust incidents that seemed to be of little consequence. She threw off her bed-sheet and rose, then dressed hurriedly—as hurriedly as a being could with only one working arm.
The habitat was silent except for the hiss of atmosphere conditioners. Her chambers—rooms that had once been Lumiya’s—were dimly lit by night-intensity glow rods and held no terrors for her while she was awake. Casting out in the Force, she could feel nothing but the beautiful, malevolent furnace of power hundreds of meters beneath her, the wellspring of energy with which she would someday be able to balance the galaxy.
There was nothing to cause the ripple she had felt, but she had felt it.
She took one of the few working turbolifts up to the habitat’s top level, the observatory, with its curved shelves full of artifacts and its transparisteel dome facing the stars.
Reclining on a comfortable sofa, she relaxed into the Force, seeking any hint, any anomaly that would explain what she had felt. It was at times like this that the vast amount of dark side power down below was an impediment instead of a blessing—like a racing thruster engine, it offered many resources but tended to drown out all lesser noises around it.
Then she felt it again, the ripple.
Someone was hunting her. Someone was here to kill her.
She smiled. She had been hunted many times, but this was the first time she had ever been hunted in a place where she made the rules—all the rules.
ABOARD THE FRIGATE POISON MOON
Dician stared through the bridge’s forward viewports, which offered a view of stars—and irregular black patches obscuring expanses of stars. The black patches, she knew, were the largest of the asteroids in this field, receiving little or none of the light from this system’s sun.
Navigating an asteroid field in a 150-meter-long frigate using only passive sensors was not the easiest of tasks. Dician did not unnecessarily intrude on the concentration of Wayniss, her chief pilot. A male human, gray-haired and bearded, Wayniss was an aging pirate and smuggler who knew nothing of the Force, and who would have reacted incuriously to the news that his commander was a member of the Sith Order. He gave good value for his pay and remained loyal so long as the credits kept coming, making him reliable and predictable. Dician approved of him.
Now Wayniss tapped a command sequence into his keyboard. The main bridge monitor, just above the forward viewports, darkened into a view of the starfield before them, then began zooming. Moments later, it displayed a view, heavily pixilated at extreme magnification, of a roughly spherical asteroid—visible only as a crescent of faint sunlight.
Wayniss looked up to catch Dician’s attention. “Your target, Captain. Confirmed as the source of your tracer transmissions.”
“Excellent. Plot a course to the vicinity of that asteroid. Keep other asteroids between it and us as long as possible—I want little or no direct line of sight on us.”
“Stealth approach. Understood.” Wayniss turned back to his keyboard and began plotting out the complicated approach.
“Sensor reading.” That was Ithila, the Poison Moon’s sensor officer. A Hapan woman of middle years, she was lean and beautiful—but for the pattern of livid burn scars that crisscrossed the right side of her face, the result of an explosion aboard a Battle Dragon during the Yuuzhan Vong War. An allergy to bacta had prevented her from eliminating the scars, and the Hapan cultural revulsion for anything damaged had sent Ithila into self-imposed exile.
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury Page 18