“Really? Most reptilian species I’ve ever met have been aggressive and predatory.”
Saba’s tail thumped the floor. She couldn’t help it.
Captain Yage took a step forward at this. “Tell me, Commander, how would you feel if I were to tell you that most Chiss I’ve met have been arrogant and condescending.”
Luke signaled for patience. “Saba is life-sensitive. We hope that she will detect Zonama Sekot by its Force emissions when we are near it.”
“Have you had any luck so far in this?”
“Not yet. That’s why we need to keep searching.”
Irolia nodded after some thought. “Very well, Master Skywalker. I will agree to this only because we, too, would like to see this war brought to an end.” She signaled to her bodyguards, who handed her a flat, rectangular package about the same size as her outstretched hand. “This memory disk contains authority codes and routes sufficient to get you to Csilla. They will remain active for one week. In that time, you must present yourself in person to obtain permission to travel within our boundaries. Without that permission, any trespass will be regarded as an act of aggression, upon which you will be expelled or destroyed. Do I make myself clear?”
Luke accepted the disk with a resigned look. “Abundantly clear.”
“Then my mission here is complete.” Commander Irolia’s gaze briefly swept the room. “Perhaps we shall all meet again on Csilla.”
“That’s all you came here for?” Captain Yage asked. “To tell us to report to your superiors?”
“Not quite,” Irolia answered. “I was ordered to give you the disk only if I thought you trustworthy.”
“And if we weren’t?”
The Chiss commander smiled at this, but said nothing in reply. She simply nodded farewell and, with an imperious gesture, ordered her bodyguards to follow her as she strolled from the bridge.
“Why that trumped-up little—”
Again, Luke silenced Captain Yage with a gesture. “She’s just doing her job, Arien. We can’t blame her for that.”
“Nevertheless, I’ll be happier when she’s off my ship.” She turned away to coordinate the disembarkation of the Chiss shuttle.
“I can understand perfectly where you’re coming from, Captain Yage.” The hologram broke into static, then cleared to reveal the face of Mara Jade Skywalker at the controls of Jade Shadow. “I don’t even want that woman on my scopes.”
“You caught all that, Mara?” Luke asked, facing the image of his wife in the holofield.
“Loud and clear.”
“What gets up my jets,” Yage said, “is the assumption that we’re answerable to them at all. The Empire has been collaborating with the Chiss for years, ever since Thrawn’s day. But there’s no treaty—we don’t owe them anything. Just the idea of having to report our every movement to them makes my hair stand on end.”
“We have to respect that we’re in their territory now, Arien,” Luke said. “And they do things differently than we do.”
“Assuming we are in their territory,” Mara said. “How about looking at that disk?”
Jacen took it from his uncle and put it into a reader. As Irolia had promised, it contained routes and security codes, but nothing else. The Chiss were tight-lipped when it came to doling out information. They were lucky to get this much.
“Thoughts, anyone?” Luke asked. “Do we plow on regardless, or should we comply with their request and report in?”
“It’s your decision,” Yage said.
“Yes, but to reach that decision I would like to hear everyone’s opinion.”
“I don’t think there’s any great harm in doing what they say,” Mara said. “Even though it does irk me.”
“I say to the Maw with them,” Yage put in. “They can’t tell us what to do.”
Luke nodded quietly to both women’s comments. “Jacen?”
“We’ll need access to their information,” his nephew replied. “It would make things much simpler. Soron’s data is accurate but doesn’t cover more than ten percent of the Unknown Regions.”
The xenobiologist had looked slightly bored throughout the political exchange, but seemed to perk up now that she’d been brought into the conversation. “The Chiss have been expanding through this section of the galaxy for decades. Irolia clearly knew of the legend of the wandering planet, so it must be common knowledge among her people. I believe access to their data would be invaluable.”
“But would it actually make the difference, do you think?” Luke folded his hands in front of him, as he so often did when pondering weighty matters.
“It certainly might.” Hegerty nodded at the map. “This small amount of data has already told us something interesting. Note the outer edge of their territory. See how it has held firm against the Yuuzhan Vong incursion? They have either developed similar jamming and combat techniques as your own fighters, or the enemy has withdrawn its offensive in order to concentrate on other areas. I would imagine that the answer to this mystery would be of interest to your tacticians back home.”
There was a general murmur of agreement following that observation. The heads of the Galactic Alliance seemed an awfully long way from the Unknown Regions, but Hegerty—and Irolia—was quite right. Luke’s mission was military at least in the sense that any information of military value would immediately be added to the war effort. Even though galaxywide communications didn’t reach into the Unknown Regions, subspace transmissions could be relayed through an isolated holocomm on the edge of Galactic Alliance space. All communications from the mission were relayed to Cal Omas immediately.
Luke nodded. “You might be right. But tell me, Saba: have you detected any sign of Zonama Sekot in this vicinity? If we are hot on its scent, then we might not need to contact the Chiss at all.”
Saba straightened, her nostrils flaring involuntarily. “I sense nothing. If Zonama Sekot iz here, it iz well hidden.”
“I thought as much. It’s like looking for a droid in a desert: something’s more likely to find us before we find it.” He nodded again. “I’m of the opinion that we should do as Irolia says and check in with the local authorities. As Soron said, it couldn’t hurt. And who knows; it might actually help.” He glanced around to everyone, as though waiting to see if there were any objections to his decision. When no one spoke up, he said, “Okay, then. I’ll leave the details of the course with Mara and Arien to prepare. Those of us who just came back from Munlali Mafir will need a break before we take on anything else.”
Captain Yage smiled. “I’m sure you won’t get any argument from Doctor Hegerty on that score.”
The meeting broke up, then, leaving Mara Jade Skywalker and Captain Yage to discuss the finer points of the Chiss map. Luke motioned to Saba, Jacen, and Hegerty, and they joined him for a quiet discussion near the bridge’s exit.
“How did Tekli get on with the Jostran?” was the first thing he asked his nephew.
“It was touch and go for a while,” the young Jedi replied. “Another centimeter and it would have been too late. But she caught it.”
“That’s good,” the Jedi Master said with a solemn expression. “I would have hated to lose someone else.”
The reminder of the two stormtroopers killed on Munlali Mafir was sobering. “This one has examined the data you gathered, Master,” Saba said. “There iz a correlation with the other regionz through which Zonama Sekot iz recorded to have passed. The Jostran/Krizlaw symbionts are not technologically advanced, so they do not pose an immediate threat. But they are aggressive by nature. The living planet seems to have exhibited similar avoidance tacticz elsewhere.”
“The Krizlaws are certainly aggressive,” Luke agreed. “That the Jostrans gave them intelligence only made them worse. I wonder, then, could this be what it’s running from? After all, we know Zonama Sekot has a strong presence in the Force. It might be simply trying to hide itself from anything it associates with violence.”
“It iz possible,” Saba said.
There followed a moment of pensive silence. Saba suspected the silence was due more to weariness than anything else. Her sensitive nostrils could smell the exhaustion emanating from the three humans around her—especially Master Skywalker and his nephew.
“You must rest,” she said to them. “You will be no good to anyone if you do not.”
“You’re quite right, Saba,” Luke said. “I was just thinking about Dif Scaur. He’s obviously told his side of the story to the Chiss.”
Saba nodded. Scaur was the head of New Republic Intelligence; he had worked extensively with the Chiss scientists on the virus Alpha Red, which would have completely wiped out the Yuuzhan Vong and all their biotechnology had it been brought into play. That the Jedi had put a stop to the plan irked Scaur. He might not be above taking steps to thwart the Master’s own plans in return.
“We’ll see what’s waiting for us at Csilla,” Jacen said, his gaze drifting to where Danni Quee stood on the far side of the bridge. “Forewarned is forearmed.”
“But forearmed can lead to a foregone conclusion,” Luke pointed out. “We shouldn’t jump ahead of ourselves. The last thing we need now is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“Just the usual sort,” Saba said, hissing with amusement.
But, as so often happened when she attempted a witticism, nobody laughed. They just looked at her strangely.
The first thing Tahiri noticed as she stepped over the threshold into Sentinel was the tension. It was like an overwhelming odor emanating from everything around her: the air, the walls, the floors, the light fittings—even from the people themselves. She winced; it was more a physical reaction to something she was sensing through the Force. What caused it, however, she couldn’t tell. She just knew it was there.
The second thing she noticed was the briskness of the salute Princess Leia and Han received as they stepped through the air lock. The guards, dressed in dark green uniforms, fairly jumped to attention like wires snapping taut.
She didn’t think the reaction came from any Palpatine-style discipline, though; Bakura was a peaceful world, with no history of dictators since the last Imperial governor, Nereus, had been overthrown during the Ssi-ruuvi crisis. More likely, she thought, the guards were reacting to the same tension in the air that she had detected. Something was making everyone jumpy.
A short, stiff-backed man with thinning red hair and a mustache stepped through the lines of Bakuran security guards.
“Grell Panib,” he said by way of introduction, bowing sharply first to Leia, then Han. The rest of the party—herself, Jaina, C-3PO, Leia’s Noghri bodyguards, and a small honor guard from Pride of Selonia—were acknowledged with a curt nod. “Welcome to Bakura.”
“It’s been a while,” Han said dryly.
“You served under Pter Thanas, didn’t you?” Princess Leia didn’t miss anything.
A glimpse of sadness passed across General Panib’s face. “You have a fine memory, Princess. We barely met.”
“It was a memorable trip.” She smiled as though at some private joke, then introduced the rest of the party.
“Thank you all for—” Panib began, but a commotion from behind the security guards interrupted him. There was the sound of scuffling as someone pushed forward. “I told you to wait for me to call you!”
Not someone, Tahiri thought, her heart suddenly pounding as, through the tangle of people, she glimpsed a reptilian creature bounding toward them. Something!
She instantly drew her lightsaber as the memory of her dreams lifted to emphasize her fears. Tahiri … Tahiri … Tahiri … The godlike lizard creature from her dreams beckoned her.
She blinked once, twice, to clear her head as her lightsaber crackled in front of her.
“A trap!” Jaina shouted. She, too, withdrew her lightsaber. At the same time, the stormtroopers raised their blasters and the Noghri guards stepped forward to protect the Princess.
“No!” Panib quickly put himself between the reptilian creature and their weapons. “His intentions are not hostile!”
The creature emerged from the line of security guards, its claws skittering piercingly on the corridor floor as it came to a halt behind the general.
The alien was a beaked reptile with a long, muscular tail. Its scales were a dull brown, and beneath prominent ridges its golden eyes danced alarmingly. It wore a leathery harness to which were strapped numerous items that could have been either tools or badges of rank.
“This is Lwothin,” General Panib said, clearly unsettled by the visitors’ reaction. “I assure you that—”
A sudden burst of piercing tones from the creature interrupted him.
When it was over, Han pretended to clean out his ear. “Did anyone catch that?”
“I did, sir,” C-3PO answered, oblivious to the fact that it had been a rhetorical question. “He says that he is the advance leader of the P’w’eck Emancipation Movement, and that he welcomes us. He refers to us as ‘allies of the free.’ ”
Tahiri felt the uncertainty of those around her as more loud fluting sounded from the creature.
“ ‘I mean you no harm,’ ” 3PO translated.
“Well, that makes me feel a whole lot easier,” Han said in a tone that suggested the exact opposite.
“I do apologize for this,” Panib said. “The P’w’eck are unaccustomed to advanced protocol—human or otherwise. They’ve only recently thrown off their shackles and started speaking for themselves, as it were.”
Leia called for everyone to put their weapons away as she eased past the Noghri bodyguards, who parted for her without protest. She stepped up to Lwothin, wearing a thin, perhaps nervous, smile.
“Threepio, tell Lwothin that we are pleased to meet him,” she instructed the protocol droid. “If indeed he is a ‘him.’ ”
“He assures us that he is,” Panib said. “And there is no need for your droid to act as mediator in your dialogue with him, either. He can understand what you’re saying perfectly well. We don’t like using droids much here, so if you prefer we can supply you with earpiece translators that will do the job equally as well.”
C-3PO bristled at the suggestion that his talents might be unnecessary, or even distasteful. “With all due respect, sir, I was designed for precisely this kind of situation. I am fluent in over six million languages and—”
“What he’s saying, General,” Leia interrupted, “is that we’ll get by.”
Lwothin’s nostril-tongues tasted the air as he followed the exchange. The P’w’eck was smaller than an average Ssi-ruu, although not by much—but he was still bigger than the average human. Muscles bunched under his leathery skin, and his thick tail swished back and forth in a regular, easy rhythm. It was an alarming presence, made all the more unsettling when Tahiri looked up into the creature’s face to find his three-lidded amber eyes staring out at her—almost as if reading her reservations. She knew that Leia had instructed everyone to lower their weapons, but Tahiri found her thumb still hovering over the activation stud of her lightsaber.
“You bring Jedi Knights,” Lwothin sang through C-3PO. “I had hoped to meet one. The lightsaber is a delightful weapon: an elegant blend of life energy and material design. Our divergent technologies become one in such devices.”
Leia’s cautious attitude became markedly frostier. “You still use entechment?”
Panib stepped forward again. “I don’t think this is either the time or the place for such involved discussions. Perhaps we should move to surroundings more comfortable for all species. Yes?”
“We’re not going anywhere until Leia gets an answer,” Han said, his hand back on his blaster. “I’m not about to have my life energy sucked out of me while my guard is down.”
Lwothin danced agitatedly on the spot, fluting urgently to C-3PO.
“He assures us that the process is not the same as you remember it,” the golden droid informed them. “It has been refined considerably. The P’w’eck come in peace, he says, not war.”
&nbs
p; Han looked around suspiciously. “Leia?”
“As uncomfortable as I am about all of this,” Leia said, “I don’t see the point in turning back now.” She faced Panib. “But understand this: the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances will never sanction any form of alliance with a government that exploits the life energy of its subjects—no matter who they are, or were.”
“You think the P’w’eck are getting back at their old masters?” Panib said. “I can assure you that’s not the case.”
“No one is enteched against their will anymore,” C-3PO continued to interpret. “If you let us, we will explain.”
Leia nodded solemnly. “I’d like to hear that. And then maybe you can also explain what’s happened to Prime Minister Cundertol.”
Panib bowed and Lwothin jigged on the spot.
“Please follow me,” General Panib said.
Han came up alongside Leia and gently put an arm about her, and together they walked in the general’s footsteps as he led them deeper into the Sentinel. Jaina and Tahiri followed, C-3PO between them and the Galactic Alliance guards behind. Jaina was a picture of controlled energy, eyes glancing all around—except at Tahiri. It was as if she was deliberately avoiding her eyes.
That hurt Tahiri. Jaina had exchanged barely a monosyllable with her since Galantos. And Jag Fel was no better. Every now and then, she felt as though they were watching her from afar. They hadn’t had to say anything; she could feel their distrust in her, and that hurt her more than any words could ever hope to.
As they walked off together, Tahiri felt the scars on her forehead itching. She fought the urge to scratch. She felt self-conscious about them as it was, without drawing any more attention to the unsightly markings. The self-inflicted ones on her arm had all but healed, and remained hidden beneath the sleeve of her tunic. She had considered getting rid of them, but had decided to keep them, for now, out of an instinct she didn’t entirely understand and didn’t want to think about too closely. There were far more important things to dwell upon.
Sentinel boasted a large meeting hall on an outer level, with a transparent ceiling that afforded a magnificent viewport to the stars. During combat, steelcrete shields would slide shut over the top for protection, but during more tranquil times it offered a wonderful view of Bakura. The green-blue world hung like a fat moon above a ring-shaped conference table that floated on a bed of repulsors. There were enough seats for everyone who had entered the hall, but only those who’d be involved in the discussions were invited to sit around the table.
Refugee: Force Heretic II Page 5