The informality bothered Ben. The Hidden One was effectively a king, though his kingdom was tiny, and yet he was not accompanied by advisers for an important meeting with a fellow Master.
Luke seated himself opposite the Hidden One. “Thank you for seeing us.”
Ben slid into place beside his father.
The Hidden One offered a toothless smile. “It is no inconvenience. The opportunity to talk with those fresh from the surface world is one of our few pleasures. As I understand it, you wanted to know about Jacen Solo.”
“Yes.”
“He came here—that is, to the temple in Dor’shan—about nine years ago, very full of life, very sure of himself. He wanted knowledge of the Force, especially as it was understood by those outside his Order.”
“Did you see any sign in him …” Luke paused to consider his phrasing. “Of what he was to become?”
“I think there were scars on his spirit, but they seemed to be well healed. From my many conversations with him, I concluded that his childhood had been an unsettled one, and that he had severed himself from much of it, as though it were dead flesh that needed to be cut away lest it endanger his life.” He looked at Ben. “You are his cousin, no? Is it the same with you?”
Ben shook his head. “You’re not going to have a normal childhood in this family, and I guess I have some things in common with Jacen. Separated from our parents for long stretches. I was tortured, too, but not as long as Jacen was.” He saw his father suppress a wince. “I don’t know if, when I get to be Jacen’s age, I’ll want to cast my childhood off, but I don’t think so. If only because, if he did, he’s a bad example to follow.”
“Interesting.”
Luke continued, “And you taught him the lightning-rod techniques.”
“First, I taught him techniques of weather anticipation and the ability to sense energy piling up in the natural world. You can feel heat in the water in the seas, heat that will become cyclonic storms, for instance. But he heard rumor of the lightning-rod techniques and asked about them.”
“Did he teach you anything?”
“I trained against him in combat.”
Luke’s eyebrows rose. “You’re one of the Baran Do with combat training?”
“I am. In life, I was the teacher of Charsae Saal, who is now Chara. The Baran Do who study combat train mostly in unarmed and staff combat, and I was interested in learning to defend against the lightsaber.”
“What was your conclusion there?”
“The lightsaber is a weapon of the Force and, if you are not similarly armed, must be countered with the Force.”
Luke nodded in agreement. “Did you have any sense of a problem Jacen might have been dealing with, an overriding fear or concern?”
“No. I think he was a man at peace. I would not say he was happy—but he was at peace.”
Luke sat back to think.
Ben asked, “When he left Dorin, did he say or give any indication as to where he was going next?”
“No, I believe not.” The Hidden One’s eyes looked back through the years. “He had been talking about returning to Coruscant. I think his search for knowledge was finished for the time being. But there was something … One day he asked me what I knew about places where the energies of the Force concentrate and linger, though there is no indication as to why they do so.”
Luke sat forward again. “I trained in one such place. A nexus of Force energy on a small swamp world.”
“Late in his stay, he evidenced a sudden interest in such things. I believe he had found something in his studies of written materials, though not ours—perhaps something he had brought along from one of his other stops.”
“But he mentioned no names or places.”
“No.”
Luke glanced at his son. “That’s about it for me. Does anything else occur to you?”
“Well, on another subject.”
“Go ahead.”
Ben looked the Hidden One square in the eye. “Are you going to kill the Jedi who come looking for me and my dad?”
The Hidden One’s eyes widened. “Kill them? That is not what we do.”
“But they will come. And when they don’t get answers that help them, they’ll send someone like Master Horn, who’s trained in investigation. He’ll figure things out. So my question is, how many are you going to kill in order to keep your little secret?”
“This is not a little secret.” The Hidden One seemed almost embarrassed by his outburst; he looked back and forth to see if anyone had witnessed it, then returned his attention to Ben. He leaned forward. “This is the seed of the Baran Do, the seed that must take root if the Order itself dies. You have never lived in a time when the threat of extinction of an entire way of life was very real—”
Ben laughed outright. “I was born halfway through the Yuuzhan Vong War. Remember that? Maybe, as far out as you are, you didn’t hear much about it. Some of my earliest memories are of hiding, surrounded by darkness, knowing that if we were found we’d be wiped out. Here I am again, same situation.” He gestured at the gray-black stone walls of the chamber. “People are still afraid of it, afraid of annihilation by some unknown enemy. War trauma. Civilians and soldiers both get it. I think it’s what you’ve got.”
“You little larva.” The Hidden One was almost spitting in his anger. “Are you too stupid to realize that you Jedi are facing a new purge?”
Ben gave him a scornful look.
“There’s the arrogance of youth.” The Hidden One turned to Luke. “Surely you know better. You’re about to experience another purge. If you’re unprepared for it, the Jedi may wink out once again, this time forever.”
Luke shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve dealt with Chief of State Daala directly. She has no agenda of destruction.”
“She has none, perhaps. What of her subordinates? What of her military planners, all of whom came to power in the wake of a war made so much more horrible by a Jedi? Recent history is not unknown to me; we get the holonews feeds here.” The Hidden One began counting off on his fingers. “One, the leader of the Jedi Order, once immensely popular, is discredited. The Jedi Order is weakened. Two, he is sent off into exile, depriving the Order of his strength and wisdom. The Order is weakened again. Three, each Jedi is accompanied by an observer who tells the government where he or she is at every moment. The Jedi are suddenly more vulnerable to a mass attack, a mass extermination. How soon before the Jedi are wearing tracking devices? How long before they are implanted with explosives? All in the name of Alliance safety?”
Luke gave him a flat, hard stare. “You’re wrong.”
“You’re wrong! You have made your own Order vulnerable. The fate of the Jedi now rests with leaders who are weaker and less experienced than you. That decline will continue until the Order is locked in a hopeless struggle with its government and all but helpless. Then it will die again.”
Ben smiled at him, a scornful smile. “And do you oppose the destruction of the Jedi Order?”
“Of course I do!”
“Even though you’re helping it along by keeping us prisoner.”
The Hidden One stood, and Ben thought for a moment that the Kel Dor would attack him. Then the Hidden One stepped away and departed, walking so fast that his robes whirled around him.
When he was gone, Luke gave Ben a look of mild reproach. “You really need to work on your adolescent confrontational impulses.”
“That wasn’t adolescent, Dad. It was an investigational impulse.”
Luke looked quizzical. “It’s true, you’re not demonstrating the emotions I’d expect of a testy sixteen-year-old.”
“Questioning can’t always be polite and courteous, Dad. I learned that from Lon Shevu. At a certain point, you push and you see how they respond.” He gestured in the direction the Hidden One had taken. “And what did he react to? Enemies. The Alliance government possibly destroying the Jedi. The Jedi looking for us and possibly finding him. Everyone’s out to
get him, Dad.”
“In other words, he’s paranoid.”
“At least. He might even be crazier than a piranha-beetle with a pin through its head.”
“Possibly. The problem …” Luke thought about it. “The problem is, he may also be right. The Jedi Order is vulnerable, and it may be in genuine danger.”
“We need to see if we can reach Jaina or Aunt Leia through the Force.”
Luke shook his head. “I tried, last night, several times. There’s some interference here … either the first Hidden One chose this spot very well, because it naturally concealed his followers from searchers using the Force, or the Baran Do have perfected some technique that accomplishes the same thing. Either way, contact seems unlikely. We’re on our own.”
UNDERGROUND ACCESS SHAFT, KESSEL
“Mission control to Rogue. Report. Over.”
Wedge, hovering in his X-wing only a few meters from the new shaft in the chalk-white soil ahead of him, activated his helmet mike. “Rogue here. I’m getting too old for this.”
“Copy that, too old.” Koyi Komad, Nrin Vakil’s Twi’lek wife, acting as mission control, sounded amused. “Begin your decline.”
“You mean descent.” Wedge eased his X-wing forward until he was directly over the shaft. Other starfighters ringed the shaft at the same altitude; their pilots were waiting for similar authorization from Koyi.
Wedge reduced power on his repulsors and began to descend. In moments he was surrounded by stone wall, so recently drilled that his repulsor wash constantly kicked dust and pebbles free. He activated his landing floods so he could lean to either side and see through the canopy into the depths below.
Over his comm board came the next exchange: “Mission control to Homegirl, report.”
“Control, Homegirl.” Inyri Forge sounded crisp and alert, not affecting the unconcerned drawl that so many retired pilots including Wedge, did. “Everything’s in the green.”
“Homegirl, start your descent.”
It was a quick two kilometers down for Wedge; he spent it listening to the others reporting and being issued their go orders. There was no diminishment of comm signal strength, as Lando’s crews had situated communications repeater units in the tunnels. Wedge had been warned that the farther away from the entry point he ventured, the more likely it became that signal strength would periodically wane or be lost; Lando’s crews had not had the time or resources to saturate these tunnels with the repeaters.
At the bottom of the shaft, Wedge found himself in a broad, high-vaulted tunnel as straight as a proton torpedo’s trajectory. He consulted his navigation screen, brought his X-wing around to starboard, and kicked in the thrusters.
Of course, in this environment, a starfighter would not ridiculously outclass an ordinary speeder in velocity. They couldn’t afford full starfighter speed in a place where sudden turns, debris, and even dangerous life-forms might pop up every kilometer or two. But with high explosives and Han’s anecdotal energy spiders around, he’d much prefer to be surrounded by composite armor and shields than a thin durasteel carapace.
He followed the route indicated on his nav board, a dotted line that led him far away from the entry point. Each pilot would be doing the same, heading off to a distant start point widely separated from the others. Then each would begin an even more complicated route back, dropping a lethal demolition package in each cavern he or she visited. Pilots would be making rearming stops, too; Wedge’s X-wing could only carry a total of six missiles, so he’d be making one or two such stops.
Wedge felt the old familiar tightening of his gut and shoulders. This wasn’t a combat mission, but people could die … and if they failed, a world would perish.
Han and Leia, in the cockpit of the Falcon, watched the last starfighter, Nrin Vakil’s A-wing, begin its descent. The Falcon would be up next. Han turned to look over his shoulder at Allana, who was in the rear seat. “All strapped in, kid?”
Allana nodded, solemn.
“As am I,” C-3PO assured him from beside Allana. “I assume your failure to ask the same of me means that you assumed I would be properly restrained.”
Han turned forward again. “You should always be properly restrained, Goldenrod.”
“I’m sorry, sir?”
Leia shot Han a reproachful look. “Han means you should always be safe, Threepio.”
“Obviously what I meant.” Han tapped a button on his comm board. “You secure, Artoo?”
An affirmative whistle emerged from the speakers. R2-D2 was back in the engineering space, ready to deal with any mechanical problems that might occur.
“Millennium Falcon, this is mission control. Report status.”
“We’re having a party here,” Han reported, prompting a giggle from Allana. “How about you?”
“Wishing I were. You are cleared to go.”
Han eased forward, then began a careful descent. The hole dug for this purpose, spacious by starfighter standards, barely accommodated the Falcon or the two ships to follow. Han cautiously eyed the distance-to-obstacles readouts as he descended.
But soon enough he was at bottom level again and taking a route that would gradually lead the Falcon to the southeast.
The first several caverns went without incident for Wedge. He’d hovered in the entryway to a cavern, armed his proton torpedo system, taken careful aim at the explosives mound in the center, and fired. The missile, with its comparatively inexpensive thermal detonator warhead instead of an expensive, ship-crippling proton torpedo, had flashed across the intervening space and buried itself in the ground a few meters from the mound. Within moments, sparkly balls of light, bogeys, had arrived from floor or ceiling or distant banks of machinery. Wedge had turned away and kicked in his thrusters, and that was it.
Approaching his fifth cavern, Wedge saw its entrance tunnel alive with animals—centipedes especially, and one big crimson spider. They were fleeing, some of them attacking one another as they went. He nodded; one of the speeders with a sonic unit had recently been here and accomplished its mission. He approached this cavern cautiously; the speeder’s presence might have stirred up bogeys here, and he’d hate to have one knock out his starfighter’s systems, even temporarily. But as he reached the cavern entrance, there were no bogeys in sight, and only a couple showing up on the X-wing’s sensors; they seemed to be at the cavern’s far entrance.
Wedge hovered, fired his payload, and turned away.
There was a clunk from immediately above and Wedge jumped as a green centipede, a meter long, suddenly appeared on the canopy over his face. The creature coiled and struck, its tail-end stinger hammering the transparisteel.
It did not penetrate. Several cubic centimeters of black liquid that had to be venom oozed out over the canopy. The centipede struck again and again, the successive strikes accompanied by decreasing amounts of venom.
“Sorry, little guy.” Wedge eased his starfighter forward. “Nothing for you to eat here.”
Wedge’s astromech tweetled at him from behind, barely audible through the canopy but easy to hear through the X-wing’s comm system. Wedge checked the comm board translation output to make sure he’d understood. “That’s right, Roll-On. One more missile and we have to rearm.”
The centipede, responding to either the R2 unit’s noise or the rotation of its head, scrabbled its way aft over the canopy toward the droid. Dividing his attention between tunnel ahead and what was transpiring behind, Wedge watched its progress.
The creature came within half a meter of Roll-On and stopped there, raising its tail to strike.
A small panel on the astromech’s front opened. A probe extended and touched the centipede. There was a faint zatt noise and a flash of blue as an electrical charge hit the insect. The centipede spasmed and, stunned, fell off the X-wing. Roll-On retracted its lead and shut the panel.
Wedge grinned. With luck, that would be the most dangerous enemy action he’d have to face today.
Later, at a tunnel intersectio
n broad enough to be considered a cavern itself, Wedge set his X-wing down beside two other vehicles.
One was a cargo speeder with a long bed loaded with plastic crating. In his career, Wedge had seen more of those crates than he could possibly remember. Each held six or eight proton torpedoes. Unloading one crate were a sandy-haired young man, who spared a smile and a wave for Wedge, and a loader droid half again the height of its human partner, its bulky frame designed for lifting strength and slow movement.
Nearby sat the operation’s sole Eta-5 interceptor. Its body was similar to that of an A-wing, sleek and wedge-shaped, but extending port and starboard from the fuselage were struts to which inwardly curved solar wing arrays, like those of the old Eta-2, were attached. The starfighter was painted a deep blue but carried no planetary or other service markings.
Leaning against it was its pilot, Rhysati Ynr, a lean, blond woman dressed in a black variation on the A-wing pilot’s uniform. She pushed herself away from the hull and walked to the X-wing as soon as Wedge popped his canopy. “Awake yet, General?”
“Reluctantly.”
“This’ll wake you up.” Rhysati turned back toward the young man handling her missile rearmament. “Hey, kid, come over here and introduce yourself.”
Obliging, the teenager trotted over. He was compact of frame and wore a tan jumpsuit. He extended a hand up to Wedge. “Good morning, sir. I’m Drathan Forge.”
Wedge shook his head and raised an eyebrow. “Forge. Inyri’s nephew?”
“Great-nephew, actually.”
“And you work for Lando?”
“For now. Mostly as a mechanic. But I’m a good flier. I’ve put in an application to the academy. I have provisional acceptance. I have to keep my grades up for the next year.”
“Good luck with that.”
The loader droid straightened from the Eta-5 and turned its inverted-triangle head toward Drathan. “Twelve missiles loaded and reporting online.” Its voice rang metallically.
“All right.” The young man gestured at the X-wing. “Let’s prep six proton formats for this one.” With a half salute for Wedge, he headed back to resume his work.
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