Specter of the Past

by Timothy Zahn

The sniper rolled instantly to the side, leaning his head into the relative protection of his arms and rifle, the weapon now spitting its deadly fire on repeater mode as it tracked toward her. But in this case the old bounty hunters’ reflex had betrayed him. The knife spun precisely into its intended target: not the dodging sniper himself, but the flicker of blaster fire from his weapon. It cut across right in front of the gun barrel, the bolts catching the blade and blasting it apart in a blaze of molten shards and reflected light.

  And for the next pair of heartbeats the sniper would be effectively blind.

  Two heartbeats was all Shada needed. She came all the way up off the roof, leaping over the sputtering blaster fire now tracking blindly toward her, fingers darting into her plaited hair for one of the lacquered zenji needles. It came free in a cascade of loosened coils; and as her feet hit the roof again, she threw it.

  And with a muffled clatter the blaster fell silent.

  She was beside the sniper in an instant, twisting the weapon out of the dead man’s hands and running across the roof. If the sniper was merely the backup and not the main attack, she might still have failed. Skidding to a halt beside the skylight, she crouched at its edge and peered down into the high-ceilinged room below.

  She hadn’t failed. Three meters below her was an ornate decorated table, with Mazzic and Griv on one side and the Kubaz and a rough-looking human on the other. The two sides had already exchanged cases and were in the process of checking their new prizes. The Kubaz shut his case after what seemed to be a cursory examination, standing stiffly behind the table with an obvious air of expectation about him. It took Mazzic another minute to be similarly satisfied with his side of the trade, then he too closed his case. He nodded pleasantly to the Kubaz and took a step back from the table, his mouth moving with what were probably his usual farewell remarks. The Kubaz remained where he was … and as Mazzic and Griv took another step back, his air of expectation gave way to one of puzzlement. His long snout twitched in indecision, clearly wanting to look up but just as clearly not wanting to telegraph the surprise ending he was still expecting.

  Still, if a surprise was all he wanted, Shada could oblige him. Lining the blaster rifle up on the base of the alien’s long snout, she tapped the barrel lightly against the skylight.

  All four of them looked up. The Kubaz’s expression was impossible to read, but his companion’s more than made up for it. His mouth fell open in stunned disbelief, his hand dropping to the blaster belted at his side. Shada shifted her aim to his forehead; slowly, he raised the hand—empty—to his chest. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mazzic throw her an abbreviated salute, and then he and Griv walked out of her field of view.

  Shada kept her weapon trained on the Kubaz and his friend for a count of thirty. Then, throwing them the same salute Mazzic had just given her, she backed away from the skylight.

  “It’s over?” Karoly’s voice asked from behind her.

  Shada turned to look. The younger woman was standing beside the dead assassin at the edge of the upper roof, her expression impossible to read. “Yes,” Shada told her. “Your client decided not to go back on the deal after all.”

  Karoly looked down at the body at her feet. “The Eleven aren’t going to be happy about this.”

  “I’m used to people not being happy with me,” Shada sighed, lowering the blaster rifle to the rooftop. “I’ll get by.”

  “This is not a joking matter, Shada,” Karoly growled. “You’ve been given a direct order. You stay with Mazzic now and they’ll have a squad on you before the week’s over.”

  “I’m not staying with Mazzic,” Shada said. “As I told you, I’ll resign as his bodyguard tonight.”

  “And you think that will fix this with the Eleven?” Karoly scoffed.

  “I suppose that depends on whether any of them still remembers who we are,” Shada said, a deep sense of sadness flowing into her. A sadness that felt as if it had been collecting around her heart for a long, long time. “The Mistryl that I joined twenty-two years ago was an honorable clan of warriors fighting to preserve what was left of our people. Honorable warriors don’t knowingly deal in murder. I would hope at least some of the Eleven remember that.”

  “Maybe the Eleven have changed.” Karoly looked away across the dark rooftops of the city. “Maybe the Mistryl have changed.”

  “Maybe they have,” Shada said. “But I haven’t.” She studied her friend. “But then, neither have you.”

  Karoly looked back at her. “Really. I’d like to know what I said to give you that impression.”

  “It’s not what you said,” Shada told her. “It’s what you did. After I kicked your blaster away, when you pulled that knife on me.”

  “Pulling a knife convinced you I was on your side?”

  “Yes,” Shada said. “You still have my blaster.”

  Karoly put her hand to her side. “Yes, I suppose I do. I imagine you want it back.”

  Shada shrugged. “It might be harder to explain what happened here if you still have it when you get back to Emberlene.”

  “Point,” Karoly conceded. She flicked her wrist, and the blaster sailed in a flat arc to drop neatly into Shada’s waiting hand. “Speaking of Emberlene, I’d stay away from there if I were you. For that matter, I’d stay away from any other Mistryl, period. For the next ten years, if you can manage it.”

  “I won’t need to hide that long,” Shada said, sliding the blaster back into its holster. “Looks like the galaxy is coming to a boil again over this Caamas thing. The Eleven will soon have more important things than me to think about.”

  Karoly spat something. “Caamas. Caamas, and Alderaan, and even that mudwater Noghri planet Honoghr. It almost makes me laugh sometimes when I think about which worlds get cried over.”

  “Being bitter about it won’t help,” Shada said.

  “So what will?” Karoly retorted. “At least being bitter proves you’re not dead yet.”

  “Perhaps,” Shada said. “If that’s what you’re willing to settle for.”

  “I suppose you’ve found something better?”

  “I don’t know,” Shada said. “There has to be something, though.” She pointed to a small rectangular shedlike structure on the far side of the skylight. “That the exit over there?”

  “One of them,” Karoly said. “If you don’t mind taking a chance on running into the Kubaz and his pals on the way down.”

  Shada smiled tightly. “They’ll make room for me.”

  Almost unwillingly, Karoly smiled back. “I’m sure they will.” The smile faded. “But understand this, Shada. Whatever I did here, I did it for—well, the reasons are complicated. But if the Eleven send me after you …”

  “I understand,” Shada nodded. “I’ll try not to put you in this position again.”

  “Never mind me,” Karoly said. “You just be careful of you.” She cocked her head slightly. “You have any idea what you’re going to do?”

  Shada looked up at the stars. “As a matter of fact,” she said quietly, “I do.”

  “Hold still, please, sir,” the Emdee droid said in its deep voice, its mechanical fingers wielding the probe with microscopic precision as he lined it up. “I expect this to be the final pass.”

  “Good,” Luke said, taking a deep breath and cultivating his patience. He’d been sitting here for nearly half an hour now, but it was almost over.

  The droid eased the probe into Luke’s right ear, with a sensation that oscillated between an itch and a tickle. Luke braced himself; and then, with a loud slurping sound it was over.

  “Thank you, sir,” the Emdee said, lowering the probe into the reclamation container beside him and discharging a final few drops of bacta into it. “I again apologize for the time and inconvenience this has caused you.”

  “That’s all right,” Luke assured him, sliding off the table and rubbing the last vestige of the itch/tickle away with a fingertip. “I know it’s easy to say there’ll never be another bacta s
hortage like the one during the war. It’s not always so easy to believe it.”

  “I was with this facility during that time,” the Emdee said gravely. “We could not afford to buy the black market bacta, even if it had been available to us. I saw many die who could have been saved.”

  Luke nodded. And as a result, for the past twelve years the medics in charge here had made it a rigid policy to conserve every single drop of bacta, even to the point of siphoning it out of patients’ ears when necessary. “I can’t say this last part was very pleasant,” he said. “On the other hand, I’d hate to have arrived and found out you didn’t have enough bacta to treat me.”

  “Perhaps it is simply the path of old habit,” the droid said. “Still, I am told it is wise to remember the past.”

  “It is indeed,” Luke agreed soberly, nodding to the bacta reclamation container. “And even wiser to learn from it.”

  Artoo was waiting in their assigned room, plugged into the desk and warbling softly to himself as he conversed with the medical facility’s main computer. His dome swiveled as Luke came in, the warbling changing to an excited whistling. “Hi, Artoo,” Luke said. “Keeping busy?”

  The little droid made an affirmative-sounding twitter, which changed to something questioning. “Oh, I’m fine,” Luke assured him, patting his side. “Some of the shrapnel was in pretty deep, but they got it all out. A little dip in a bacta tank, and I’m good as new. The medic said I shouldn’t fly for another hour or so, but it’ll probably take that long to get the ship rolled out and prepped anyway.”

  Artoo whistled again, rotating his dome around in a complete circle. “Yes, I see they did a good job with you, too,” Luke agreed. “Did you ask them to take a look at the X-wing?”

  Another affirmative twitter. “Good,” Luke said. “Then I guess the only question left is where we should go next.”

  Artoo’s dome swiveled back again to face him, a distinctly suspicious note to his next warble. “We’re not out here on vacation, Artoo,” Luke reminded him, pulling up a chair beside the droid where he could keep an eye on the desk’s computer display for more complicated translations. “We’re here to track down those clones and find out where they’re coming from. We’re not going to accomplish that by going home to Yavin or Coruscant.”

  He looked out the window at the hills rising steeply behind his room, their carpet of gold-colored grasses gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Yes, the mission statement itself was perfectly straightforward. Unfortunately, the necessary procedure for completing it was anything but. He’d tried the surreptitious approach to that Cavrilhu base; all he’d gotten for his trouble had been yet another swim in a bacta tank. And, of course, the chance to see Mara again.

  He grimaced. Mara. He’d been expecting to run into her again ever since that pirate raid he and Han had thwarted off Iphigin—in fact, he wouldn’t put it past Han to have had something to do with Mara showing up at the Kauron asteroid field that way. He’d expected to run into her, and had secretly dreaded the prospect.

  And yet, looking back on it, the encounter hadn’t been nearly as tense as he’d feared it would be. She’d been cooperative and polite, or at least as polite as Mara ever got. More significantly, the quiet but strong animosity he’d sensed radiating toward him at their last couple of brief encounters hadn’t been present.

  Or maybe it had been there and he just hadn’t noticed. Maybe his deliberately diminished use of the Force these days had simply prevented him from sensing that deeply into her mind without a deliberate probe.

  He scowled out at the hills. There was definitely some kind of cause and effect at work here—that much he was sure of. The question was, which was the cause and which the effect?

  Artoo warbled questioningly. “I’m trying to figure it out,” Luke told him, glancing at the translation. “Just relax, okay?”

  The droid warbled again and fell into an expectant silence. Luke sighed and settled back into his seat, gazing out at the hills. Mara was a puzzle, but she was a puzzle that would have to wait. At the moment, his immediate future was focused on this cloning question.

  His future …

  He glanced back at Artoo, the memory of their time with Yoda drifting to mind. Luke’s Jedi training, and that first time he’d gotten a glimpse into the future.

  A glimpse that had nearly resulted in disaster. He’d rushed off madly to Cloud City to try to save Han and Leia, and had instead nearly gotten all of them killed.

  But he’d learned so much about the Force since then. And he had been able to draw other visions of the future without doing anything rash. Lately his efforts in that direction had been strangely unrewarding; but as long as he was supposed to take it easy for an hour or so anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try.

  “Artoo, I’m going to meditate for a while,” he told the droid, slipping out of the chair and settling himself cross-legged on the floor. “See if I can get some direction. Don’t let anyone disturb me, all right?”

  The droid buzzed an affirmative. Taking a deep breath, Luke closed his eyes and stretched out to the Force. His thoughts—his emotions—his entire being—slipped into the proper pattern …

  And suddenly the whole universe exploded in front of him into a brilliant kaleidoscope of color and motion.

  He gasped, the vast image wavering momentarily like desert heat-shimmer as he nearly lost control. It was like no vision he’d ever had before. Like nothing he’d ever seen before. A hundred different scenes, a thousand different possibilities—brilliant colors, sharp-edged sounds, joy and contentment and fear and death—all of it swirled together with the fury and randomness of a Tatooine sandstorm. Lines of possibility wove around each other or else crashed together, sometimes merging, sometimes bouncing apart again, always forever changed by the encounter. Familiar faces were there among unfamiliar ones, passing in front of him or else flickering behind other events unfolding at the edges of his sight. He caught a glimpse of Wedge and Rogue Squadron as they swept past in the fury of battle; saw his Jedi students inexplicably fanning out across the New Republic, leaving the Yavin academy all but deserted; saw himself standing on a balcony against the wall of a darkened canyon, gazing down at a sea of thousands of tiny stars; saw Han and Leia facing a huge mob—

  Han? Leia? With an effort, he grabbed on to that last line, trying to stay with it long enough to see more. For a moment he succeeded, the image sharpening into focus: Leia standing in a wide hallway, her lightsaber blazing in her hands, as a mass of bodies pushed through a tall door; Han, standing on an outside balcony with drawn blaster, looking down at the crowd. The crowd inside flowed mindlessly forward—a hidden rooftop sniper lined up his blaster rifle—

  And then they were gone, vanishing into the swirling mass of sights and sounds. For a moment Luke tried to join the flow himself, the taste of fear mixing with the other sensations of the vision as he tried to catch up and see what was going to happen to them. But they were gone, and with a sense that came from outside himself he knew that he’d seen all of that vision that he was going to. Easing out of the flow, he made his way back to the single fixed point in the storm, the solidness of his own being. He’d learned all he could here, and now it was time to leave. He began to draw back, the vast array of images beginning in turn to recede and darken.

  And then, abruptly, one final vision appeared in front of him: Mara, surrounded by craggy rock and floating in water, her eyes closed, her arms and legs limp. As if in death.

  Wait! he heard himself shout. But it was too late. Mara’s image faded with the rest of the vision—

  And with a sudden gasp of air he found himself back in his room, gazing out the window at the hills.

  Hills that no longer glowed golden, but were instead outlined by the subtler gloss of starlight.

  “Whoa,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. He would have sworn that vision had only lasted a few minutes.

  Beside him, Artoo twittered in obvious relief. “Yes, it took longer than I expec
ted, too,” Luke agreed. “Sorry.”

  The droid warbled questioningly. Getting to his feet, wincing at the sudden prickling sensation in muscles left too long in one position, Luke looked at the question scrolling across the computer display. “I don’t know,” he had to concede. “I saw a lot of things. But I didn’t see anything that seemed to have anything to do with our search.”

  Which might mean, he realized suddenly, that hunting for clones was no longer what he was supposed to be doing.

  But then what was he supposed to do? Go to wherever Han and Leia were and warn them? Go find Mara and warn her?

  He took a deep breath, shifting tired muscles. Always in motion is the future, Yoda had told him after that first vision on Dagobah. At the time Luke had wondered about that remark; his vision of Han and Leia in Cloud City had seemed so simple and straightforward. But if Yoda had instead seen something more akin to this last vision, with all its tangles and complications, then it all made sense.

  Or had he seen something like that? Could it be that what Luke had experienced here was something entirely different? A special event reserved for special occasions?

  It was an intriguing possibility. But for the moment, it was an issue he could put aside. What mattered was that he’d received the guidance he’d sought, and needed to act on it.

  All he had to do was figure out exactly what that guidance was.

  Stepping over to the window, he looked up at the stars. You will know, Yoda had also told him, when you are calm, at peace. Taking a deep breath, Luke set about calming his mind.

  Artoo’s soft warbling was starting to take on a concerned tone by the time he turned back around. “All right,” he told the droid. “I saw a world with a wide, deep canyon that had buildings built into the sides and a lot of lights at the bottom. Check the main computer and see where that might be.”

  Artoo warbled an acknowledgment and jacked into the computer outlet. Luke stepped to his side and watched as a planet name and description came up on the display. “No, it wasn’t Belsavis,” he said. “The surface wasn’t covered with glaciers, and there were no domes. It was also a lot more pleasant.” He frowned, pulling the image back from his memory. “There were bridges arching all the way across the canyon I saw. There were … I saw a group of nine of them, arranged in a diamond pattern: one starting on one level, two more side by side crossing from the next level down, three on the next, then two and then one.”