Exile

by Aaron Allston

  Surely Lavint understood that.

  ZIOST

  “Ben … save girl.”

  “Ben … protect girl.”

  “I have to get her offworld,” Ben murmured in his sleep. “I need a ship.”

  “Ship!”

  “Ben ship.”

  “Learn ship.”

  “Ben learn ship.”

  “I already know how to pilot a ship,” Ben protested. He struggled against the hold sleep had on him, but something reminded him he mustn’t move right now. If he moved, he would—what? Fall down.

  “Learn ship.” The voice was unusually emphatic, and in Ben’s mind a picture appeared—the image of a ball-shaped craft.

  It was odd and organic, with a rough red surface texture. In the center of the sphere facing him was a transparent hatch or canopy.

  Red spars stretched upward and downward from the craft. They seemed articulated, insectile. But this vehicle was no living thing, not like a Yuuzhan Vong craft; Ben sensed it was machinery, but machinery that was aware of him, waiting for him.

  He woke up with sunlight, broken up by the branches above, streaming into his face, and he knew where the red ship was.

  Or rather, he knew the direction to take to find it.

  If it was real.

  The TIE fighter did not find them at noon. That was because Ben snipped the long leg of the tracking device in his pouch, assuming that it was the unit’s antenna. He must have been right. Starting an hour and a half beforehand and waiting until some time past noon, he, Kiara, and Shaker rested in a small ravine, a place where infrared traces would be harder to detect from any angle but straight up. He distantly felt the eye in the sky, but it did not come near him.

  If he ever needed to, he could reattach the antenna.

  That was one good result of the day. Other events were not so promising.

  Their food was beginning to run short. They had two cans of preserved rations, which would last as long as they chose to stretch them. Ben could happily have eaten both cans himself at a single sitting.

  Water was in good supply. All they had to do was pack snow into Faskus’s canteen and wear it against their bodies to melt—which was chilly and uncomfortable, but simple. Occasionally they wandered across a frozen stream; at those times, Ben used his lightsaber to cut through the ice and give them access to the water.

  He wondered, though, about the snow and the water on this world. He’d now seen a few bird-like creatures—their wings were webbed rather than feathered—and they were often distorted, with one leg bigger than the other or possessing a misshapen beak. Was there something in the water causing high levels of mutation? For his sake and Kiara’s, he hoped not.

  Worst of all, he was sure that the neks were following them. They stayed out of sight, but he could sense them pacing him and Kiara to the right and left, following their trail.

  He and Kiara were meat to the neks, he knew. He didn’t much like being considered meat. He hoped he’d have enough strength to do something about it when the time came.

  CORUSCANT SYSTEM

  ERRANT VENTURE

  In one of the ship’s great lobbies, where lights were bright and visitors mingled well away from the expensive attractions of casinos and shops—but not far from the expensive attractions of several surrounding bars—Alema spent a few minutes in a data kiosk, downloading the last several lists of new arrivals.

  Of course, not everyone who came to Errant Venture consented to be listed. But many did, so that an automated search code would detect their names and announce their arrival to friends.

  She had scanned through several hundred names, recognizing none, when she felt a flicker in the Force.

  Then it was more than a flicker. It was a light, a signal. She looked toward its source.

  Entering the grand lobby was a human man—unusually tall, light-skinned, his long black hair tied back in a pony-tail. He wore dressy civilian clothes—black slacks and boots, a dark blue tunic with yellow striping angled across the chest, a black vest and belt.

  Alema knew him at once. He had once been a Joiner, had once belonged to a Killik nest. He was Zekk.

  But his actions confused her. He moved slowly through the lobby, smiling and nodding at everyone he passed, speaking briefly to several, especially young females. As he passed, a few of them turned in his wake, moving to keep him in sight.

  Alema thought she understood, but it made no more sense than before. Zekk was radiating vitality and power through the Force, in a fashion that would be appealing to just about everyone but the most Force-blind. And if there were any Force-sensitives in the crowd, they might be drawn especially strongly to him.

  She gaped. He was using his Jedi abilities to attract females. It scarcely seemed possible. He had always been quiet and reserved—not to mention pathetically infatuated with Jaina Solo. Alema wondered what had caused the change.

  She also wondered whether she should kill him. He had nothing to do with her current plans. But it was inevitable that when Alema killed Han, Jaina would vow vengeance—or at least seek it, pretending it was just a dispassionate desire for justice. And if Jaina came hunting, Zekk would come with her. If Alema eliminated him now, that was one less thing for her to worry about.

  She, too, drifted toward Zekk.

  She came to a stop twenty meters from him, fingering her blowgun and still undecided. Zekk and two new female friends had paused to watch a fire-breathing Devaronian juggler perform his act for the patrons in the lobby when she became aware of another presence, this one much closer.

  She turned her head to see a thick-chested man with a trim, graying beard and startling green eyes. He stood two meters from her, staring at her, smiling. He wore Jedi robes.

  “Horn,” she said.

  “I’ll say this once,” Corran said. “Give up now.”

  She raised her blowgun and fired.

  Horn plucked the dart from the air. He opened a datapad, dropped the dart onto the screen, and snapped the device closed.

  That gave Alema time to ignite her lightsaber. Corran drew and followed suit, his silver blade contrasting sharply with her blue-black blade.

  Alema became aware of applause. Corran, too, glanced around, not moving his head.

  Patrons of the Errant Venture were drawing back from their standoff, but not very far. Many were clapping. Some were putting down bets. Alema saw Corran silently offer a curse at their stupidity.

  And now Zekk was moving toward the two of them, his lightsaber hilt in hand.

  This was a trap, and Alema cursed her own stupidity.

  And then she disarmed herself. She hurled her lightsaber high into the air, giving it a touch through the Force to direct its flight, to keep the blade ignited.

  Corran and Zekk followed its progress in the second it took to reach the ceiling and shear through the struts holding a huge, elaborate chandelier in place. It dropped toward the crowd beneath, its glows starting to fade, to plunge the lobby into comparative darkness.

  Alema turned and ran as fast as her crippled foot and damaged body could manage. She let her lightsaber turn itself off but continued to pull at it, and a moment later its hilt slapped into her outstretched hand.

  She felt a massive surge in the Force behind her—Zekk reaching for the chandelier, checking its fall. She glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see Corran coming after her, but she was alone; he must have remained behind, yanking people to safety from beneath the falling fixture. She smiled. Her enemies weren’t functioning as a team. Had they been, Corran would have attacked her while Zekk caught the light fixture. She had a chance after all.

  Transparisteel shards from the damaged chandelier rained down on the crowd, and shrieks of surprise and pain joined the noisy confusion behind her. The last of the light died; now the lobby was lit only by glows from the surrounding bars. Alema reached the exit and whipped around the corner, pausing for a moment to retrieve her blowgun from under her left arm and reload it.

&nb
sp; The broad corridor where she found herself was well lit, and the panic from inside the lobby had not yet infected the streams of pedestrian traffic here. So she was quick to notice the figure in the distance ahead of her, running toward her with unusual speed and purpose.

  It was Leia. Leia Solo, looking straight at her. Alema could feel a flash of anger from her through the Force. It was echoed by a similar flash from behind, down the hallway in the other direction.

  Alema grimaced. This wasn’t right. Han should be here. Alema would kill Han, Leia would suffer, Alema would escape.

  But now, with two Jedi behind her and one in either escape direction, Alema would have to be instantly, lethally efficient if she was to get away. Getting away was the most important thing at this moment. She would have to abandon justice in favor of practicality. She would have to kill Leia.

  Alema raised her blowgun to her lips.

  Leia raised one hand.

  Alema felt the blowgun twitch—and the dart within it shot backward, straight into her mouth.

  Alema froze there for one long, terrible moment.

  But she wasn’t dead. The poisoned tip had not come down on her tongue.

  With infinite care, Alema turned her head to one side and spat the dart out.

  Then, as cold fear clawed at her heart, she ran.

  There were too many of them to deal with, and the suddenness of the trap they’d sprung unnerved her. She had to get to a safe place, to recover her bearings.

  Fifty meters ahead of her, striding forward with confidence, radiating anger, came Jaina Solo.

  Alema cried out, a wordless noise of frustration. She turned leftward, toward a bank of turbolifts, and the door into one opened. She ran through and it closed behind her.

  A family of three Duros looked at her, their heads tilted at the same angle of curiosity. The child had a Kowakian monkey-lizard on its shoulder, and the appalling little creature pointed at Alema and cackled.

  “Deck, please?” the lift’s automated voice asked.

  “Down,” Alema hissed.

  But nothing happened. A second passed, and the sense of menace surrounding Alema increased.

  She knew what was happening. Her enemies were all around her, had seized control of the Errant Venture, could use even doors and turbolifts to harry and delay her.

  She reactivated her lightsaber and plunged it into the floor. The Duros drew back, suddenly afraid.

  She took only moments to cut a hole in the floor, then dropped through it into the turbolift shaft.

  * * *

  Minutes later, she was in a cargo hold, hurtling between tall, lashed-together stacks of plasteel containers, continuing to move as fast as she could, certain that the pursuing Jedi were just an instant behind her.

  They had to be using the ship’s holocam system. Alema didn’t understand. She thought that her techniques would defeat it.

  The enemy must have new techniques.

  A door in the bulkhead ahead of her hissed open, and a man stepped through. He wore a full-coverage garment of glistening blue material and a helmet, narrower and closer than a pilot’s. Its faceplate was transparent, and through it she recognized the features of Jagged Fel.

  He extended an empty hand. “Alema, surrender. I guarantee—”

  She raised her blowgun and shot him.

  He pitched forward.

  No—he knelt forward. He was drawing his holstered blaster before she’d realized he wasn’t dead, wasn’t dying. Armor, he had to be wearing armor.

  He raised his blaster and shot her.

  The blast struck her in the left shoulder, spinning her around, throwing her to the ground. Pain lanced through her—pain, and a realization that he’d broken her clavicle, that he’d further mutilated her.

  She rolled to one side as he shot again. The blast missed her. She lashed out at him through the Force, sweeping him aside, hurling him deep into a mass of cargo crates. The wall of crates, held together by tough webbing, folded in on itself as if devouring Jag.

  She got up and ran, staggering worse than ever, through the doorway by which Jag had entered.

  “She’s entering the bow hangar bay for long-term vehicle storage,” Wedge said.

  Han, sitting at another viewing station, nodded. He switched from the view of the storage bay to one of the hangar bay; they could both see Alema running, looking between vehicles as if seeking one in which she could escape. “She’s not messing with the holocams anymore,” he said. “I bet it costs too much energy or concentration.”

  Wedge focused on his own view, which showed the folded wall of crates into which Jag had disappeared. “Jag, do you read me?”

  His response was a series of words Wedge didn’t understand, but they sounded like they were designed to peel rust off durasteel.

  “Sounds like Chiss,” Han said. He activated his comlink again. “Target is now entering the hangar bay for stateroom patrons.”

  Leia was the first of the pursuers to reach the hangar bay used by the Errant Venture customers who had rented compartments for more than a day. The main doors in the floor were open, and a shabby YV-666 light freighter was sinking through them into space.

  Alema Rar was in the cockpit. Leia exchanged looks promising mayhem or death with her for a second, and then the transport was out of sight. “Han, why didn’t you seal those doors?”

  Han’s voice was anguished. “I tried. I couldn’t. The GA military has a program override that prevents Errant Venture or other facilities from locking in military spacecraft. If there’s one lousy Tee-sixteen skyhopper aboard that belongs to the armed forces, those doors stay open.”

  Leia could hear Wedge’s voice in the background: “How did she slice the access codes to a transport so fast?”

  “She stole my ship!” Lavint clamped her head between her hands as if trying to prevent an explosion. She spun around as if seeking some corner of her small stateroom where she could find refuge from the truth. “My ship.”

  Han glanced at Leia and shrugged. “Actually, she’s taking it better than I expected.”

  Leia awkwardly patted the captain’s shoulder. “I know you must have loved your ship—”

  Lavint was abruptly still. “Actually, I hated her. But she was still worth something.” She shrugged. “Oh, well. I have another one coming.”

  “Speaking of what you have coming …” Han produced a data card and held it before her.

  She reached for it, but he kept it out of her grasp, and now she eyed him suspiciously. “What is it?”

  “The location of the Confederation meeting you told me about,” Han said. “Place and time.”

  Lavint’s eyes gleamed. “So give it over. I met the terms of our contract.”

  Leia shook her head, smiling with just a little bit of malice. “That was no contract. You made requests, remember?”

  “True.” Lavint didn’t look too disappointed. “But you obtained and brought the information. So it must be on the table.”

  “It is,” Han said. “But among other things, we want to know what it’s for. It cost me a lot of favors to get.”

  “Oh.” Lavint considered, and looked between them. “I’m going to give it to a man. For a ship, and to clear me out of his life. Out of his consideration.”

  “Is he likely to turn it over to the Galactic Alliance government?” Leia asked.

  Lavint nodded instantly. “I’d put the likelihood at about one hundred percent.”

  Leia said, “I don’t think we can—”

  But Han handed Lavint the card.

  Leia finished smoothly, “—protest too much, after all the help you gave us.” She shot Han a bewildered look. “Are we done here?”

  “I think so.” Han gave Lavint a professional, pleasant smile and led Leia to the door. “Try to stay out of trouble.”

  “Soon, soon,” Lavint said. “Nice meeting you at last.”

  Out in the corridor Leia said, “All right, I’m completely confused. As much as you’ve supp
orted the Corellian cause—”

  “—why have I suddenly turned traitor?” Han finished. “Sweetheart, I didn’t have as much trouble as I should have in getting that information. Which means one of two things. Either security’s not what it should be for that meeting, meaning the Galactic Alliance will have it soon anyway, meaning all I’ve done is to give her a couple of days’ head start in getting the information to them, or there’s a lot of disinformation out there. Meaning that everybody who gets deep enough is getting a different wrong answer. If it’s the first one, then Lavint gets her reward from her government contact. No loss to me or to Corellia. If it’s the second one, Lavint and her government contact will wander into a trap, probably a Dur Gejjen trap set up for us.”

  Leia nodded. “You know, if you could apply that smuggler’s brain to real politics, you’d be my equal.”

  “Meaning I wouldn’t be able to just draw my blaster and fire at the politicians? What kind of a deal is that?”

  chapter nineteen

  ZIOST

  This set of ruins was no heap of rubble.

  Which was good, since Ben wasn’t sure he could reach the next place on the map.

  He had been three days without food, Kiara one. Shaker was down to draining energy from the various batteries Ben had brought from Faskus’s camp; of them, he retained only a partial charge in the primary blaster pistol. The datapads didn’t count—their batteries didn’t contain enough energy to permit an R2 unit to walk four steps.

  But this set of ruins—

  It clustered high on a mountain ridge, built just below a cliffside hundreds of meters tall. The cliff looked like a portion of the mountain had been sliced away by a giant lightsaber millions of years in the past, leaving the stone to weather until some species decided to build a citadel here.

  Not some species. The original Sith species.

  The citadel was made of black and mottled gray stone and looked large enough to house a thousand people. But no one lived there now, Ben thought. Not that he could be sure. He detected little flickers of life through the Force, but those impressions were always washed away by the flow of dark side energy that emanated from the place. Like the planet itself, the citadel was suffused in such energy, but more so.