Exile

by Aaron Allston

  Anxiety began to grow within Ben. The woman and the astromech had to be reaching the end of their duty. Soon she would be removing the R2 from its housing behind the cockpit. Ben needed to decide right away what he was going to do about the woman.

  Well, he certainly wouldn’t cut off her head. But he would have to incapacitate her. When both she and the R2 unit were looking away, Ben leapt up into the rafters, made his way to where his holocam was strapped and retrieved it, then worked his way over to a spot directly above the hangar door and waited. When it seemed that both woman and droid had their attention fixed elsewhere, he dropped silently to the permacrete and used that momentum to roll outside the hangar.

  Then he walked right back in again, datapad in hand. The astromech was still behind the cockpit; the woman was now readying the refueling vehicle to be driven away. “Hello,” Ben said.

  The woman looked him over. “Hello. Aren’t you a little young for a port worker?”

  “Trainee.” Ben made his voice sound sullen. “All I’m good for is delivering messages, I guess. And I have one for you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The owner of the Y-wing says his astromech went through a messy programming breakdown and is having its memory wiped. So he needs another one temporarily. He’d like to rent whichever one was used for the vehicle’s computer calibration.”

  She wiped her hands on a rag and shrugged. “So why are you telling me?”

  “So you can leave the droid here.”

  “Oh, he’s getting here that soon.”

  Ben nodded.

  She looked back over her shoulder at the droid. “Looks like you get to go tootling around the solar system for the rest of the day, Shaker. Lucky rodder.” She tossed the rag aside and returned her attention to Ben. “Got the authorization code for that?” She retrieved her datapad from the refueling tanker’s front seat and held it toward him.

  “Right here. Prepare to receive.” Then Ben scowled at his datapad. “Stang. My screen light’s gone out. We have to do it in the sunlight.”

  With a sigh—whether for the reliance of others on inferior devices or for the inconvenience of having to walk ten paces, Ben didn’t know—the woman headed toward Ben and the door out.

  He led the way and turned left past the door, stopping when they were just out of sight of the R2 unit. In the second he had available before the woman reached him, he took a look around. The closest person he could see, a jumpsuited worker, was at another hangar more than fifty meters away. That was good.

  “All right,” the woman said. “Transmit.”

  Ben pressed a button on his datapad, though he’d switched the device off. “Transmitted. Anything I need to do to prep the droid?”

  “Just take the restraining bolt off. And I’ll do that. Hey, I didn’t get the code.”

  Scowling with pretended annoyance, Ben pressed the button again. “How about now?”

  “No.”

  He stepped closer and was now within arm’s reach of her. “One more time,” he said, and drove his fist into her solar plexus.

  Her eyes got big, all the air went out of her in a painful-sounding “Oooosh,” and she involuntarily bent forward.

  This time he struck upward, an open-palm blow that caught her on the chin. He felt her jaw break under the impact. She went down as limp as a cloth bag full of bantha fodder, her datapad clattering against the duracrete beside her.

  He felt bad, even nauseated, for a brief moment, then elation replaced that feeling. There, he told himself. Not too much damage. Jacen would have forgiven me if I’d killed you, and I didn’t even do that. Moving quickly, he hoisted her up to a sitting position, then drew her up and onto his shoulders, a basic rescuer’s carry that all Jedi apprentices were taught.

  He carried her around to the side of the building, into the narrow alley between two hangars, and laid her down there. Then he went back to the front of the hangar, retrieved the woman’s datapad, and got behind the controls of the refueling tanker.

  In the few moments it took him to familiarize himself with the controls, the droid tweetled at him.

  “Everything’s set up,” Ben assured the R2 unit. “She’s doing the last details and asked me to move this.” He powered up the vehicle, then carefully backed out of the hangar and immediately parked the tanker where it would block any line of sight on the unconscious woman.

  He had a stroke of luck then. The woman had apparently opened her datapad to the job file for the task of maintaining the Y-wing. All the data he needed, including full maintenance specifications for the Y-wing and data on the R2 unit, was there.

  So he was whistling when he returned to the hangar. He used the woman’s own tools to remove the restraining bolt from the droid. “I’m supposed to take the Y-wing out on a test flight,” he told the R2. “That way, if it blows up, the owner isn’t inconvenienced.”

  The droid whistled and chirped at him, its musical tones suggesting that it was indifferent to the change in plans but more than happy to go.

  “Good. Let me get my backpack and we can start the preflight checklist.”

  CORELLIAN SYSTEM EXCLUSION ZONE ERRANT VENTURE

  In the first few days after Errant Venture was authorized to ply its trade for Alliance military personnel in the Corellian system, its casinos and other entertainments did great business. Booster Terrik, the Grand Old Man of the operation, though he was theoretically retired from day-to-day duties, was often seen in the casinos, flitting around in his hover-chair, greeting patrons and encouraging workers, his eyes alight in the way that only commerce could make them.

  His new, unpaid workers didn’t hurt things, either.

  Iella and Myri worked as dealers. Iella wore enough makeup to disguise her true identity; Myri did not need that precaution, but did change her hair color with spray-on hues and combinations each day, just because it was her custom. Two attractive women a generation apart, skillful conversationalists and card handlers, they drew good-sized crowds at their tables each day, and their tips were grand enough to make Myri wonder whether intelligence was the career she wanted for herself after all.

  Lando and Han worked the casinos, too, but not as dealers. Each day they set up, in different casinos, at sabacc tables. Lando maintained his Bescat Offdurmin identity, and Han continued to put on his yellow-skinned, thin-mustache makeup each morning. At the end of each day they compared their winnings; after the first week Lando was slightly ahead.

  Mirax spent most of her time with her father. During years of retirement on Corellia, she had cheerfully ignored her father’s efforts to bring her to the Errant Venture to learn and perhaps take over its operations. Now her homeworld was for the time hostile to her and she had nothing to do more suited to her talents, so she threw herself into these new studies with typical Mirax obsessiveness, delighting her father.

  Leia, Wedge, and Corran concentrated on the data interpretation side of things. Seldom venturing into the ship’s public areas—each such trip, however short, would cause them to have to don disguises—they confined themselves to an auxiliary computer cabin provided by Booster and began meticulously assembling and analyzing the data the others provided them.

  Data came from the drunk patrons and the sober ones, from the happy ones and bitter ones, from the officers with marital problems and straying eyes, from the personnel with accumulated resentments and inadequate filters between their brains and their mouths.

  The most valuable data often came from patrons who, at the end of their rest-and-recreation leaves, were dead broke and too drunk to stand. The special circle of Errant Venture employees took care of them, letting them sober up in quiet little lounges, giving them enough credits for a return shuttle flight to their military units—assuming they hadn’t bought round-trip fare in the first place, which often they hadn’t—and even half carrying them to the shuttle docks for their outbound flights. Han, Lando, and the other data gatherers became new best friends to an immense number of young soldiers,
pilots, and technical personnel.

  But the information they farmed was frustratingly tenuous. One week into their operation, the data gatherers assembled to see if there were any informational gemstones to be found.

  “I say we start with you,” Lando said, pointing to Wedge. “You look unhappiest. And that means results.”

  Wedge did look surly, and the look he shot at Lando did nothing to diminish that impression. “Unhappy, yes,” he said. “Results, not really. Syal is here today, gambling in the Maw Casino.” Syal, Wedge’s eldest daughter, was a pilot with the Alliance forces, and Lando felt a rush of sympathy for Wedge—to be so close to her, yet unable to approach her, all for the silly little reason that he was technically regarded as enemy personnel.

  Then Wedge added, “With a boy.”

  Lando snorted. “A boy? What, twelve, thirteen years old?”

  Wedge’s glare did not waver. “About her age. And a pilot. There are two types of male pilots. Good men, such as the ones I never tried to break or run out of my squadrons, whom I would shoot before I ever trusted them with my daughter. And worse men, whom I would shoot if I caught them looking at my daughter.”

  “Thirty seconds in,” Corran said, “and we’ve already strayed from our topic. War, right? People are still interested in war and puppet masters?”

  Wedge sighed and turned his glare onto the tabletop.

  “I know this is going to sound strange,” Leia said, “but I haven’t found any indication that this war was precipitated by outside forces. I’ve been reviewing news reports, historical analysis, all the data we have on hand, and it looks like the central conflict between Corellia and the GA was the inevitable conclusion of their respective political directions.”

  “Fewer syllables, please,” Lando said. “Remember, your husband is at the table.”

  Han gave him a faintly amused you’re-next look, then turned his attention back to his wife. “So that means no puppet master?”

  She shook her head. “It means that war itself is not the puppet master’s original plan, or at least not his fault. But the manipulations we think we’ve detected do add up to something. We can see a cause-and-effect relationship … we just have to figure out the motive.”

  Iella opened her datapad. “Events like the Corellian ambush of the GA Fleet that came in to intimidate it. The outcome? Corellia remained independent awhile longer. If it hadn’t, another world would probably have become the focal point of the independence movement. Bothawui or Commenor would be likely candidates, but Corellia had something they didn’t.”

  Wedge nodded. “Centerpoint Station and a secret assault fleet.”

  “Correct,” Iella said. “Then we have Admiral Klauskin, who pretty clearly was meddled with, if we’re right that these Force ghost manifestations are evidence of our puppet master. The result of that interference? The situation here was worsened, the Alliance was cast in a bad light, Corellia received a lot of sympathy.”

  “Speeding up the process by which other worlds considered coming in on Corellia’s side,” Leia said. “Then the whole thing at Toryaz Station, the death of Prime Minister Saxan. It caused a change in Corellian leadership, permitting Thrackan Sal-Solo to boost himself from Minister of War to President. And with war preparations accelerating, he had to put his secret fleet on the resources list.”

  Her voice quiet, as though she was hesitant to speak up in this exalted company, Myri said, “It also scattered the Jedi.”

  Leia frowned. “What?”

  Myri looked uncomfortable. “Well, it didn’t scatter the Jedi, really. I mean, the Jedi Council on Coruscant wasn’t affected. But if you look at family ties, which have made so much of a difference over the years with the Solo-Skywalker extended family, one minute you were all together, and then, boom, you were scattered across the galaxy. Some of you at odds. It was like a secret grenade.”

  Leia and Han exchanged a suspicious look, and Iella regarded her daughter with interest.

  “That’s an interesting interpretation,” Leia said. Her tone suggested caution, reserve. “I hadn’t considered that as a factor.”

  Myri, her idea not having been shot down by the accumulated aces, began to look more comfortable. “At school, we were taught the follow the principle. Follow the money. Follow the lover. Follow the resources. The trick is sometimes in identifying the resources.”

  Corran had been nodding ever since the first follow the left Myri’s lips. “You’re saying the Solo-Skywalker clan is a significant resource, and that it has been eliminated.”

  “Yes.”

  Leia wasn’t able to keep a little anger out of her voice. “We have not been eliminated.”

  “Not as individuals, no.” Corran gave her a sympathetic look but didn’t yield. “But as a family—tell me that you can send out a call, as you could have done six months ago, and focus the attention and skills of your entire family on a single problem or enemy. Tell me that.”

  Leia thought about it, then seemed to wilt just a little. “I can’t.”

  “You’ve been taken out of the picture. As a united force.” Corran gave Myri a little nod of respect. “Good work, girl.”

  “Thanks.” Myri seemed both pleased and uncomfortable with the praise. “So maybe we assume that breaking your family into pieces that don’t fit together anymore was one of the puppet master’s major goals. Because in the long run, if recent galactic history is any evidence, that will make a big, big difference.”

  “And you’ve got to put that clan back together again,” Lando said.

  Han couldn’t keep the pain from his face or his voice when he said, “I’m not sure it’s possible. I’m not sure some of the pieces will ever fit together again.”

  “Lando’s right, though.” Leia’s expression became set, determined. “Han, we’ve been concentrating on the wrong things. Proving our innocence, figuring out which of Dur Gejjen’s cronies need to go down when he does … none of that is really important, not compared with fixing things. I think we need to give up on the Corellian conspirators—”

  “At least,” Wedge interrupted, “until the war trials.”

  “Right. Give up on the conspirators, relegate the puppet master to secondary importance, and concentrate on solving the real problems. Putting the Skywalkers and Solos back into play as a united front.”

  “Sure, why not?” Han offered a crooked smile. “All Luke and Mara have to do is get themselves exiled, too. And then we can cruise the spaceways as one big, happy family.”

  But something in his eyes suggested he had left something unsaid, and Lando was pretty sure he knew what it was: Except for Jacen.

  Dozens of decks below, a small cargo craft rose into the main hangar bay of the Errant Venture.

  It wasn’t a pretty vehicle. About forty meters in length from bow to stern, it had a front end—its main cargo hull—that was as elegant and aerodynamic as a thick nerf steak cut into a rectangle and stood up on its edge. Behind that, constituting about a third of the length of the craft, was the maneuvering shaft, a low cylinder housing the main thrusters and the servos that positioned the maneuvering fins, long wing-like surfaces that stretched laterally from the shaft.

  In short, it looked like the mutant offspring of a bird and a brick, reengineered by Verpines to fly backward.

  This example of the YV-666 line had dents, blast scars, and rust patches all over its hull, making it especially unlovely.

  At the forward portion of the top deck, Captain Uran Lavint carefully maneuvered the awkward craft up into the hangar, then followed the glowing spherical droid above a trail of blinking lights on the hangar floor to her assigned berth. “Soon as we land,” she said, “you’ll want to get into the smuggling compartment. They’ll do a basic scan from outside.”

  “We understand.” Alema’s voice came from a patch of shadow, impenetrable by ordinary sight, at the back of the bridge. “Why do they care if there are undeclared passengers?”

  “It’s all money.” Lavint
set the craft down with only the faintest of thumps, though that noise was joined by the squeal and creak of durasteel components settling. She grimaced at the noise. “If they don’t know about you, they can’t charge you for, well, anything. Soon as I get my cabin assignment, I’ll comm you where it is.”

  “Good. Why this ship, Captain? What is so special about a gigantic casino and shopping complex?”

  “It’ll take too long to explain now. But remind me sometime to give you my speech about Corellian smugglers.”

  “We will.”

  Lavint didn’t see the shadow fade, but the bridge seemed to brighten, and she knew Alema was gone.

  Three stories below, hangar workers came forward. In a moment they’d be plugging into an exterior hull comm port and asking which of their many overpriced services she wished to avail herself of—refueling, de-rusting, painting, transmission of the latest holodramas … She waved and smiled down at them as if she didn’t mind their presence.

  And she wished that the Errant Venture would be where they found the Solos, so she could leave Alema Rar and her craziness behind forever.

  chapter thirteen

  CORUSCANT JEDI TEMPLE

  Mara leaned forward, elbows on the table on either side of the datapad retrieved from Lumiya’s quarters, and rested her chin in her hands.

  From the other side of the table, Luke looked at her. “You cracked the encryption on the data card?”

  “Finally.”

  “But you don’t look happy.”

  “You don’t need a Force-bond to tell that, farmboy.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Some of it’s an invoice. The sender seems to have been a bounty hunter working for Lumiya, and the invoice is an itemized list of expenses: hours worked, fuel expended, blaster shots taken. The main part, though, is a mission status and event report. Even decrypted, it’s hard to puzzle out—everything is referred to by code words. But assuming I’m putting the right names to some of these code words, the information is … interesting.”