“Droids can’t handle everything,” Mara said. “You’re going to need some people down there. Who will you get to run a miserable operation like that?”
“Miserable to humans maybe,” Lando said, locking his hands behind his back and sitting straight, “but not to some other species. In particular, I’ve got in mind an old friend of mine, Nien Nunb, who was my copilot on the Falcon during the Battle of Endor. He’s a Sullustan, a little creature who grew up living in tunnels and warrens on a tough volcanic world. He’d consider the spice mines a luxury resort!” Lando shrugged at Mara’s skeptical look. “Hey, I’ve worked with him before and I trust him.”
“Sounds like you’ve got most of the answers, Calrissian,” Mara said. “But so far it’s all just talk. When are you planning to go to Kessel and get to work?”
“Well, I lost my ship there. I’ve got to get back to Kessel to pick up the Lady Luck and start my operations.” He raised his eyebrows. “Say, you wouldn’t be willing to give me a lift to the system, would you?”
“No.” Mara Jade stood up. “I would not.”
“All right, then. Will you meet me on Kessel in one standard week? By then I should have a good feel for how things are going to go. We can lay down the foundation for a long and lasting relationship.” He smiled at her again.
“Business relationship,” she said, but not quite as sharply as she might have.
“You sure you won’t have dinner with me?” he asked.
“I’ve already eaten a ration bar,” she said, and turned to leave. “One standard week. I’ll see you on Kessel.” She turned and left.
Lando blew her a kiss, but she didn’t see him … which was probably a good thing.
At the keyboards the tentacled musician played a mournful tune of unreciprocated emotional resonances.
In the stuffy Council chambers Han Solo swallowed a lump in his throat before he addressed the gathered senators and generals and Mon Mothma herself.
“I don’t often talk to this”—he tried to think of the appropriate flowery language Leia would use in front of politicians—“this, um, august assemblage, but I need some information fast.”
Mon Mothma sat up weakly. Nearby a medical droid tended the silent monitoring and life-support systems attached to the Chief of State’s body. Her skin looked grayish, as if it had already died and was waiting to fall off her bones. As she declined, she had given up all pretense of hiding her failing health.
According to Leia, Mon Mothma had only a few weeks to live with her strange, debilitating disease. Seeing the woman now, though, Han wouldn’t have laid odds she would survive even that long.
“What exactly,” Mon Mothma began—then paused to heave a deep breath—“do you need to know, General Solo?”
Han swallowed again. He couldn’t hide the truth, though he hated to admit it. “Kyp Durron was my friend, but he went wrong somehow. He attacked Luke Skywalker. He took the Sun Crusher and blew up the Cauldron Nebula to destroy Admiral Daala’s fleet. Leia and all the Jedi trainees on Yavin just experienced what they called ‘a great disturbance in the Force,’ and she’s convinced that Kyp might have done something else.”
General Rieekan spoke in his gruff voice, looking at Han with weary eyes. Rieekan had been the commander of Echo Base on Hoth, and he had seen many hard times. “Our scouts have just come back, General Solo. Your friend did use the Sun Crusher again. He destroyed the Caridan star system, site of the Imperial military academy.”
Han felt his throat go dry, though the news was no great surprise, considering how much Kyp hated the Empire.
“This slaughter must stop. It goes beyond even the Emperor’s atrocities,” the aging tactician, General Jan Dodonna, said. “The New Republic does not employ such barbarous tactics.”
“Well, he does!” interrupted Garm Bel-Iblis. “And he has obliterated two crucial Imperial targets. While we may not agree with Durron’s methods, his success rate is nothing short of astonishing.”
Mon Mothma interrupted, somehow finding the energy to speak a harsh sentence. “I will not allow this young man to be portrayed … as a war hero.” She paused for a deep breath and raised her clenched hand to signal that she had not yet finished. “His personal crusade must stop. General Solo, can you halt Kyp Durron?”
“I’ve got to find him first! Give me the reconnaissance information your scouts gathered from the Cauldron Nebula and Carida. Maybe I can track him down. If I could just talk to him face-to-face, I’m sure I could make the kid see reason.”
“General Solo, you will have access to everything you desire,” Mon Mothma said, spreading her palms on the synthetic stone surface in front of her, as if to support herself. “Do you require … a military escort?”
“No,” he said, “that might scare him off. I’ll take the Falcon and go myself. If I’m lucky, maybe I can bring the Sun Crusher back, too.” Han gazed slowly around the Council chamber. “And this time let’s make sure we destroy it completely.”
Packing the Falcon, Han had almost finished his last-minute emergency preparations when he heard a voice behind him. “Han, old buddy! Need some help?”
He glanced over his shoulder to see Lando Calrissian striding toward him across the hangar bay, ducking under the flat aerofoil of an X-wing starfighter.
“Just leaving, Lando,” he said. “Don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
“I heard,” Lando said. “Hey, why not let me come along? You’ll need a copilot, with Chewbacca gone on the Maw mission.”
Han hesitated. “I’m doing this by myself. I can’t ask anyone else to go with me.”
“Han, you’re crazy to fly the Falcon alone. You don’t know what sort of hostile situations you’re going to get into. Who’ll be at the controls if you need to go up into the gun well?” Lando flashed his most winning smile. “You’ve got to admit, I’m the obvious choice.”
Han sighed. “Chewbacca would be my first choice—I miss that fuzzball, you know? At least he doesn’t try to gamble the Falcon away from me.”
“Awww, we don’t do that anymore, Han,” Lando said. “We promised, remember?”
“How could I forget?” Han groaned. Lando had beaten him in their last round of sabacc, claiming ownership of the Falcon—and then he had given the ship back to Han, just to impress Mara Jade. “But what’s your take on this, you old pirate?” Han said, raising his eyebrows. “Why do you want to come along so bad?”
Lando shuffled his feet on the polished floor of the landing bay. At the other end of the chamber a sublight engine started up, blatted, then coughed as a team of mechanics scrambled over the fuselage of a dismantled A-wing.
“To be honest … I need to get to Kessel within a week.”
“But I’m not going anywhere near Kessel,” Han said.
“You don’t know where you’re going yet. You’re looking for Kyp.”
“Point taken. What’s at Kessel?” Han asked. “I didn’t think you’d want to go back there soon, after what happened last time. I sure don’t.”
“Mara Jade’s going to meet me there in a week. We’re partners in a new spice-mining operation.” He beamed, tossing his burgundy cape over his shoulder.
Han tried to cover his skeptical smile. “And does Mara herself know about this partnership, or are you just talking big?”
Lando looked hurt. “Of course she knows … sort of. Besides, if you get me to Kessel, maybe I can find the Lady Luck again, and I can stop hitching rides with people. This is getting old.”
“That’s for sure,” Han said. “All right, if we go near Kessel, I’ll take you there—but my priority is tracking Kyp.”
“Of course, Han. That’s understood,” Lando said, then mumbled under his breath, “just as long as I get to Kessel within a week.”
7
As a disembodied spirit, Luke Skywalker could only watch as his Jedi trainees and his sister Leia filed into the grand audience chamber. Artoo-Detoo trundled ahead, like an escort, silently coasting to a stop
before the platform on which he lay.
The other Jedi trainees stood in a row in front of the motionless form. They stared respectfully at his motionless body as if they were attendees at a funeral. Luke could sense emotion pouring from them: grief, confusion, dismay, and deep anxiety.
“Leia,” he called in his echoing otherworldly voice. “Leia!” he screamed as loud as he could, trying to break through the other-dimensional walls that restrained him.
Leia flinched, but didn’t seem to hear. She reached forward to grip the arm of his cold body. He heard her whisper, “I don’t know if you can hear me, Luke, but I know you’re not dead. I can sense you’re still here. We’ll find a way to help you. We’ll keep trying.”
She squeezed his limp hand and turned away quickly. She blinked to cast away the tears welling up within her eyes.
“Leia …,” he sighed. He watched as the other Jedi candidates followed her back to the turbolift. Once again he found himself all alone with his paralyzed body, staring at the echoing walls of the Massassi temple.
“All right,” he said, looking for another solution. If Artoo couldn’t hear him, and if Leia or the other Jedi trainees could not identify his presence, then perhaps Luke could communicate with someone on his own plane of existence—another glistening Jedi spirit he had spoken to many times before.
“Ben!” Luke called. “Obi-Wan Kenobi, can you hear me?”
His voice hummed through the ether. With all the emotional firepower he could dredge from the bottom of his soul, Luke shouted into the silence. “Ben!”
Growing more concerned at hearing no answer, he called for others. “Yoda! Father—Anakin Skywalker!”
He waited, but there was no response.… Until he sensed a coldness ripple through the air like an icicle slowly melting. Words trembled from the walls. “They can’t hear you, Skywalker—but I can.”
Luke spun around and saw a crack form in the stone walls. It grew darker as a tarlike silhouette oozed out and congealed into the shape of a cowled man whose features were distinct now that Luke could see him in the spirit plane. The stranger had long black hair, shadowed skin, and the tattoo of a black sun emblazoned on his forehead. His eyes were like chips of obsidian and just as sharp. His mouth bore a cruel scowl, the expression of one who has been betrayed and has had much time to think bitter thoughts.
“Exar Kun,” Luke said, and the dark spirit understood him perfectly well.
“Do you enjoy having your spirit trapped away from your body, Skywalker?” Kun said in a mocking voice. “I have had four thousand years to get accustomed to it. The first century or two are the worst.”
Luke glared at him. “You corrupted my students, Exar Kun. You caused the death of Gantoris. You turned Kyp Durron against me.”
Kun laughed. “Perhaps it was your own failings as a teacher. Or their own delusions.”
“What makes you think I’ll stay like this for thousands of years?” Luke said.
“You will have no choice,” Kun answered, “once I have destroyed your physical body. Trapping my own spirit inside these temples was the only way I could survive when the final holocaust came. The allied Jedi Knights devastated the surface of Yavin 4. They killed off the few Massassi people I had kept alive, and they destroyed my own body in the inferno.
“My spirit was forced to wait and wait and wait until finally you brought your Jedi students here, students who could hear my voice once they learned how to listen.”
An echo of fear rang through Luke’s mind, but he forced himself to sound calm and brave. “You can’t harm my body, Kun. You can’t touch anything physical. I’ve tried it myself.”
“Ah, but I know other ways to fight,” Kun’s spirit said. “And I have had endless millennia to practice. Rest assured, Skywalker, I will destroy you.”
As if finished with his taunting, Kun sank like smoke through the cracks in the polished flagstones, descending to the heart of the Great Temple. In his wake he left Luke alone but more determined than ever to break free from his ethereal prison.
He would find a way. A Jedi could always find a way.
When the twins suddenly started crying on their cots beside her, Leia woke up with a feeling of dread.
“It’s Uncle Luke!” Jaina said.
“He’s gonna be hurt,” Jacen said.
Leia bolted upright and felt a series of whistling, tingling vibrations through her body, unlike anything she had ever encountered before. She sensed more than heard the howling wind, a gathering storm trapped inside the temple—centered in the grand audience chamber where Luke lay.
She threw on a white robe, cinched it around her waist, and dashed into the hall. Several other Jedi trainees emerged from their quarters, also sensing an indefinable dread.
The twins jumped out of their beds, and Leia called back to them, “You two stay here.” She doubted they would. “Artoo, watch over them!” she shouted to the droid, who was buzzing in confusion down the corridors, lights flashing.
“Come to the grand audience chamber,” Leia cried to the Jedi trainees. “Hurry!”
Artoo spun around in the hall and returned to the children’s quarters; the droid’s confused bleeps and warbles followed Leia down the hall. She rode the turbolift to the top. When it stopped and opened its doors, storm winds howled around the vast, open chamber. Leia stumbled out into a cyclone.
Cold rivers of air gushed through the horizontal skylights high in the walls. Ice crystals sparkled as the temperature plummeted. Wind drawn in from every direction struck the center of the room and spun around, corkscrewing, picking up speed in an irresistible force.
Streen!
The old Bespin hermit stood on the outskirts of the storm with his brown Jedi robe flapping around him. His wild gray hair writhed around his head as if charged with static. His lips mumbled something incomprehensible, and his eyes remained closed as if he were having a nightmare.
Leia knew that even powerful Jedi could not manipulate large-scale phenomena like the weather; but they could move objects, and she realized that was what Streen did now. Not changing the weather, but simply moving the air, drawing it in from all directions, creating a self-contained but destructive tornado that struck toward Luke’s body.
“No!” she shouted into the starving wind. “Streen!”
The cyclone struck Luke, buffeted his body, and lifted it into the air. Leia ran toward her paralyzed brother, feet barely touching the ground as the powerful winds knocked her sideways. The storm wrenched her off balance, and she found herself thrown through the air, flying like an insect toward the stone walls. She spun around and reached out, calming herself enough to use her own abilities with the Force, to nudge her body away. Instead of being crushed against the stone blocks, she slid softly to the floor.
Luke’s body continued rising, tugged upward by the hurricane. His Jedi robe wound around him as the winds spun him like a corpse launched out of a star-freighter air lock into the grave of space.
Streen didn’t seem aware of what he was doing.
Leia staggered to her feet again and jumped. This time she rode the circling air currents, flying around the fringe of the cyclone toward her helpless brother. She reached out to grab the tail of his robe, felt her fingers clutch rough fabric, and then burn as the robe was snatched away from her. She fell back to the floor.
Luke had been drawn up into the tornado’s mouth, rising toward the skylights.
“Luke!” she cried. “Please help me.” She had no idea if he could hear her, or if he could do anything. Gathering strength in her leg muscles, she leaped into the air again. It might be possible to use her Jedi skills of levitation for a brief moment; Luke had done it several times, although she herself had never mastered the skill. Now, though, it mattered more than it ever had before.
As Leia sprang upward, the wind caught her. She rose high enough to grab Luke’s body. She wrapped her arms around his waist, twisted her legs around his ankles, holding him, hoping her weight would drag him
down.
But as they started to drop, the winds picked up in intensity, howling and roaring. Leia’s skin went numb from the blinding wintry cold. They shot toward the roof of the grand audience chamber, toward the widest skylight, where jagged icicles hung like javelins.
Leia suddenly knew what Streen intended to do to them, whether consciously or unconsciously. They would be sucked out of the Great Temple, tossed high into the sky, and then allowed to crash thousands of feet to the spear-pointed branches of the jungle canopy.
The turbolift door opened. Kirana Ti charged out, followed by Tionne and Kam Solusar.
“Stop Streen!” Leia shouted.
Kirana Ti reacted instantly. She wore thin but supple red armor from the scaled hides of reptiles from Dathomir. She had been a warrior on her own world, fighting with untrained and unhoned skill in the Force, but she had also fought in physical combat as well.
Kirana Ti launched herself forward on long, muscular legs, ducking her head as she charged into the cyclonic wind that surrounded Streen. The old hermit stood entranced, spinning slowly around with his arms dangling at his sides and his fingertips spread apart, as if trying to catch something.
Kirana Ti staggered as she hit the wind, but she wrenched her head aside, spread her legs, and dug the toes of her bare feet against the stone floor for traction. She shoved forward into the wind and finally shattered through into the dead zone of the storm. She tackled Streen to the flagstoned floor and locked his arms behind his back.
Streen cried out, then blinked his eyes open. He looked wildly around in confusion. Instantly the wind stopped blowing. The air fell still.
High up at the ceiling of the grand audience chamber Leia and Luke plunged toward the unforgiving flagstones below. Luke fell like a doll, and Leia tried to remember how to use her levitation skills, but her mind went blank with panic.
Tionne and Kam Solusar raced forward, stretching out their arms, using what they had been taught. Less than a meter above the crushing stones, Leia found herself slowed, pausing in the air beside Luke’s body. They drifted gently to the floor. Leia cradled Luke against her, but her brother did not respond.
Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy III: Champions of the Force Page 6