Fate of the Jedi: Backlash Page 3

  Leia snickered. “Believe it or not, your grandpa used to own this planet. For a few weeks, and not entirely legally. He had some bad times here. With Witches, and monsters, and an Imperial admiral who just wouldn’t go away, and a rich, handsome prince who wanted to marry me.”

  “You’re making all that up.”

  Leia shook her head. “The prince was your other grandfather, Isolder.”

  Allana’s eyes got round. “Isolder was going to marry you?”

  Leia nodded. “He wanted to. But I was in love with Han, despite his—”

  Han cleared his throat. He looked uncomfortable. “Forget that part.”

  Allana blinked and looked thoughtful. “So, no matter what, you were going to be my grandmother.”

  Leia’s features blanked. Han knew the little girl’s words had caught Leia by surprise and made her really think, something Allana did far more often than most adults of Leia’s acquaintance.

  Finally, she smiled down at the girl. “You know, the Jedi say that the future is always in motion. Meaning, even when we think that things are supposed to happen, sometimes they don’t. But I think you’re right. No matter what, I think I was always destined to be your grandmother.”

  “Good.”

  Han allowed the two to share a tender moment, then suggested, “Allana, go check on Anji. You know how nervous she gets when we come in for a landing.”

  “Yeah.” Allana looked up at her grandmother. “You should have seen all the nexu barf when we landed on Shedu Maad!”

  “I did see it,” Leia reminded her. “I was the one who cleaned out Anji’s traveling crate, remember?”

  “Oh … yeah.” Allana hopped down from Leia’s lap. “I’ll go make sure you don’t have to do it again.”

  Leia smiled. “Thanks.” She waited until Allana had disappeared down the access corridor, then turned to Han. “All right, now tell me what that was about. You know Anji is going to be ill whether or not Allana is with her.”

  “Sure, but you need to call Zekk and Taryn.”

  Zekk had been their daughter’s mission partner—and Jagged Fel’s rival for her affections—until a couple of years earlier, when he went missing in action during the Battle of Uroro Station. After a weeks-long search, the Solos and the entire Jedi Order had finally given up and declared him dead … only to have him show up six months later, fully recovered and romantically involved with an agent of the Hapan throne, Taryn Zel. Neither Zekk nor Taryn would discuss what had passed during those six months—or why Taryn had neglected to inform the Jedi of his survival—but Leia thought it likely they had been on a mission for Allana’s mother, Queen Mother Tenel Ka.

  Given that Taryn was under orders to render the Solos assistance whenever requested, Leia could see why Han wanted to send for the pair, but she did not understand why Han had wanted her to do it out of Allana’s presence. “Is there a reason you don’t want Allana to know we’re calling in a security team?”

  Han nodded. “First, I don’t want her to worry about us while we’re gone. And, second, she needs to learn independence.”

  “Independence, Han?” Leia asked. “At eight?”

  “Hey, she’s already behind the curve,” Han said. “At eight, I was stealing my first starship.”

  Leia shook her head in exasperation, then leaned forward to activate the holonet transceiver. “Why don’t I doubt that?”

  Han smiled with pride, then continued the approach toward Dathomir. It was vaguely possible, of course, that they would find Luke and Ben hanging out at the spaceport cantina and never have to leave Allana behind at all—but he wasn’t betting on it, not when they had come hunting a female Sith on a jungle planet full of Force-witches.

  “I’m not stupid.” And while the man was a touch belligerent, there was indeed no sign he was stupid.

  Han, standing near the man in the shade between the Falcon and Jade Shadow, folded his arms and grinned. “Whatever you say, Darth.”

  “It’s Tarth. Tarth Vames. And I don’t care if your transponder says you’re the Naboo Duckling, that’s the Millennium Falcon and you’re the Solos. And there’s a Report Location Request on you from Coruscant.”

  Han pursed his lips and turned to look at his wife, an expression that meant, You take this.

  Leia frowned. “So you know who we are.”

  Tarth nodded, his motion brisk enough to stir his red hair. “You haven’t gone to any effort to hide it.”

  “Of course we haven’t. It clearly wouldn’t have fooled you. So I can take it that you know something of our histories?”

  Apparently a bit mollified, Tarth nodded again. “Who doesn’t?”

  “So, historically, when the government has disagreed with us on some minor matter, how has it turned out?”

  “Well, um, they’re mostly out of office now. Or dead. The ones who disagreed with you. And you’re still here. Right here.”

  Han caught Tarth’s eye. “It’s because the politicians are in it to save their jobs, while we’re in it to save some little guy.”

  “Or a lot of little guys,” Leia offered.

  “Or a family member. Or a bunch of family members,” Han added.

  Clearly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking, Tarth grimaced. “I’m the deputy director of operations here. The fact that you have, eh, a history of success in your confrontations with the government doesn’t mean I can just abandon my duty. Neither does the fact that your husband has a blaster on his belt. Oh, I’m certainly not going to take a swing at him. But—”

  “We’re not asking you to abandon your duty.” Leia shook her head. “We’re asking you to do it. Just in a different way.”

  “Uh … what way?”

  Han grinned. Tarth was doomed. He’d taken Leia’s bait, and the hook would be set long before the man realized it was there.

  “Come with us.” Leia put on her brightest, welcome-to-the-company smile. “Since they’re not answering our comm, we’re going to look for my brother and my nephew. We need local guides and a local coordinator. That’s you. You make sure that all local ordinances are obeyed—”

  Han suppressed a snicker.

  “—and you can testify to that effect when it’s time to deal with the authorities.”

  “And you’ll have a great story to tell … or sell.” Han mimed typing on an imaginary datapad. “How I Saved Luke Skywalker. By Darth Vames.”

  “Tarth Vames.” Tarth’s grimace continued unabated. “I don’t know …”

  Leia pointed up toward the Falcon’s cockpit. Allana was visible there, in the canopy, with her nexu beside her, staring down at her grandparents. “See that little girl? My adopted daughter. She’s already grief-stricken at the thought that something might have happened to her uncle Luke.”

  From behind Tarth, Han looked up at Allana, made a sad face, and stroked both his cheeks as if tears were running down them. Obligingly, Allana put on a child’s expression of tragedy and rubbed at one eye with a knuckle.

  Tarth’s expression turned to one of defeat. “Oh … forget it.”

  Leia’s tone became brisk. “We’ll need a couple of airspeeders, camping supplies, preserved food, and guides with experience with the local terrain and clans. We’ll pay the going rate, but if you show me the public rate sheets of everyone and everything you hire, and you’ve negotiated them down below those numbers, you get half the difference in addition to your own fees.”

  “Good man.” Han nodded approvingly. “Well done, Tarth.”

  When Tarth was gone, Han glanced at his wife and shook his head. “I can’t believe that you, of all people, pulled out the sad-little-girl card.”

  “I know, I know. My husband is a bad influence on me.”

  Allana’s eyes went wide. “Alone?” she gasped, looking up from the cockpit captain’s seat. “Have you guys gone barvy? I’m eight!”

  “So?” Han shrugged. “When I was your age—”

  “Han!” Leia shook her head. “You
don’t need to give her any ideas.”

  Han scowled. “Come on, she’d never—”

  “She might,” Leia insisted. “Just tell her when we’ll be back.”

  Han sighed. He looked back to Allana. “We don’t know when we’ll be back. It could be awhile.”

  A disbelieving expression came to Allana’s eyes. “Like an hour?”

  “Longer,” Leia said.

  “A day?”

  “Longer,” Han said.

  Allana’s jaw dropped. “A week?”

  “Yeah,” Han said. “More like a week.”

  “Maybe even longer,” Leia said. “It’s hard to be sure. So don’t be worried if we’re not back, all right?”

  Allana looked back and forth between them, then began to giggle. “Good one! You guys really fooled me.”

  Leia dropped to her haunches and took Allana’s hands. “Sweetheart, your grandfather and I have to go find Luke and Ben. They need our help, and their lives may be in danger. So we’re counting on you to stay aboard the Falcon and keep yourself and the ship safe. Can you do that?”

  Allana’s face grew serious. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  Han shook his head. “Not in the slightest, kid. Think you can handle this?”

  Allana scowled at him. “Of course I can. What do you think I am, a kid?”

  “Yeah, but a pretty darn tough one,” Han answered. He glanced out the cockpit canopy, at a small Batag Needle Ship resting on its struts about fifty meters away. Standing beneath it, pretending to work on a stuck cargo hatch, was a tall, dark-haired man in an expensive eletrotex jumpsuit: a Jedi Knight named, simply, Zekk. “Still, you and Anji are going to be on your own here, so stay aboard the Falcon, keep everything locked up tight, and don’t let any strangers aboard. Got it?”

  Allana gave him a crisp salute. “Got it, Captain.”

  “All right, then.” Han continued to look out the canopy, this time at a pair of airspeeders that were crossing toward the Falcon. “It looks like Tarth finally has everything ready. Time for us to go.”

  He leaned down to give Allana, who was seated in the captain’s seat, a kiss, then waited as Leia did the same.

  “Do as Threepio says,” Leia instructed. “And call us on the comlink if you have any problems.”

  “Grandma, I’ve got it,” Allana said, waving them toward the back of the flight deck. “Now go save Uncle Luke and Ben!”

  Han took Leia’s hand and led her down the corridor. “Come on, Grandma. Can’t you tell when we’re not needed?”

  * * *

  Outside, they found Tarth waiting with two airspeeders—one a lumbering yellow hauler with a large flatbed cargo area in back, and one that must have been a sporty red model when it had been first manufactured, about the time Han was being born, both open-topped—and four men and women.

  Ignoring Zekk and his Batag Needle Ship, Han and Leia stepped away from the Falcon to greet them. Seeing an almost familiar face, Han approached the man, who was young, clean-shaven, brown-haired, dressed in dark shorts and a vest of hard-wearing green cloth. The vest had many pockets and attachment points and was festooned with tools, knives, and items of electronic gear; his knee-high boots were a hardy brown leather, and he wore matching belt and wrist braces.

  Han gave him a curious look. “I know you, don’t I?”

  The man extended a hand. “You have a good memory for faces. I was only a kid then.” His accent was Coruscanti. “Dyon Stadd. We met during the Yuuzhan Vong War. I was a Jedi candidate.”

  Han glanced over the man’s gear but saw no lightsaber. “Candidate?”

  Dyon offered a grin with some self-deprecation in it. “I didn’t quite have what it took to be a Jedi. More a Force-sensitive than a Force-user. But I took firsts in xenopology and language studies on Coruscant. Here, I help with trade negotiations between merchants and the Dathomiri clans.”

  Leia shook his hand. “And you know how to dress for the climate.”

  Dyon flexed a bare arm, showing well-defined biceps. “That, and the Dathomiri ladies like to see skin. Helps with negotiations.”

  Han snorted. “Introduce us around, will you?”

  The smallest member of the assembly, smaller even than Leia, was a Dathomiri woman named Sha’natrac Tsu, nicknamed Tribeless Sha. Dark-haired and unsmiling, built lean as if she were artificially constructed of cables and bone under skin, she had on interestingly vented trousers and a tunic of imported rust-colored ironcloth; in addition to an authentic Dathomiri knife with a hilt made of carved tusk, she wore a blaster pistol at her hip and went barefoot.

  The second male, introduced as Carrack, was huge, two meters or more in height, muscled as if an exercise regimen were his sole intellectual pursuit. He was fair-skinned and fair-haired, but his face was all Han or Leia could see of him; he wore a full set of what looked like repurposed Imperial stormtrooper armor, painted in a green-and-black camouflage pattern, as were his oversized blaster rifle and the blaster pistols he carried on a baldric across his chest. His armor gave off the quiet but distinctive whine of a built-in cooling system.

  “I take it you’re the valet,” Han said.

  Carrack grinned. When he answered, he was soft-spoken. “The Witches respect shows of strength.” He shrugged. “Mostly, I blow stuff up.”

  The last of Tarth’s finds was another woman. Her beauty and the distinctive delicacy of her features proclaimed her a Hapan, and she wore garments that only a Hapan might have considered appropriate for Dathomir: a red mini dress, gold sandals and accessories nearly matching the color of her hair, and a holstered blaster pistol plated in reflective metal so shiny that it dazzled. Her accent, though, was pure backcountry Corellian: “Yliri Consta. I’m your lead driver.”

  Han snorted. “I’m my lead driver.” Then he frowned. “You look a lot like …” He struggled for a moment for the name, then he had it. “Sarita Consta, the holodrama star.”

  “My older sister. I used to do stunt work for her. When she switched to comedy, working for her became just too boring.”

  Leia nodded, sympathetic. “I felt the same way when Han switched to comedy.”

  Han glowered at her. “Hey.”

  Tarth cleared his throat. “The last of your supplies will be here in a few minutes. You have clearance for both speeders to leave the spaceport district.”

  “That’ll give us time to switch to camouflage gear.” Leia turned back toward the Falcon.

  Tarth continued, “But where are you going to begin your search? It’s a big forest … and the Skywalkers never checked in by comm.”

  Leia pointed. “North. They’re somewhere north.”

  “Ah. Well, that’s not exact, but at least it’s an answer.”

  GALACTIC EMPIRE EMBASSY COMPLEX, CORUSCANT

  THE DOOR SLID SHUT BEHIND JAGGED FEL, SEALING THE GALACTIC Empire’s Head of State into his embassy quarters, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  Alone. After a day of negotiations with representatives of the Galactic Alliance, appearances at public events, carefully managed interviews with the press, hypercomm exchanges with ministers and functionaries back home in what most people referred to as the Imperial Remnant, he could use some time alone. It was almost as relaxing, as energizing, as time with Jaina … but sadly, they could not spend every waking hour together.

  He tugged at his dress uniform, popping the seal of the tunic all down the right side of his chest, and felt trapped heat ebb away from him. It was also good not to be in perfect form for the holocams. A well-muscled man of just under average height, he knew he was good looking; the press here and back home often said so. His dark hair and close-trimmed mustache and beard helped give him a brooding look, though he seldom brooded. A lock of white hair emerging at his hairline, just where he’d picked up a scar in years past, gave him a touch of distinction. His choice of dark, militaristic dress clothes added to the impression of a vital leader with valuable wartime experience.

  But it was all for show.
He mostly wanted to be in a pilot’s jumpsuit, flying against an enemy he could shoot. Sadly, that was no longer his life.

  He stood there for a moment, eyes closed, breathing slowly to settle and center himself, and reminded himself of the biggest single word in his life: duty.

  His sense of duty, instilled in him by his father and every facet of the Chiss society in which he’d grown to adulthood, was with him always, but it was sometimes so devoid of a sense of accomplishment, of any sense of reward, that he felt hollow.

  He was the most powerful individual in the Galactic Empire, and yet so often he merely … negotiated, taking, in turn, hundreds of people and trying to persuade each one to tilt his own individual balance a little away from self-interest and a little toward the needs of the Empire. It was often like trying to herd hundreds of greased mouse droids, each one programmed by a different maladjusted child. And at the end of the typical day, he usually felt as accomplished and successful as if he had, in fact, spent hours wallowing with those greased mouse droids.

  He heaved a sigh, expelling the last of the day’s frustrations, and moved through his quarters—through the receiving room with its comfortable furniture, then into the antechamber that gave access to most of the rooms of his suite. He bypassed the door into his bedchamber and moved on to a smaller, narrower portal, one that only his voice could open. He addressed the hidden voice sensor at the top of the door. “Nek and nek.”

  The door slid up, revealing a small chamber almost fully occupied by a black, ball-shaped apparatus the height of a human male: a starfighter simulator. A ladder was affixed to the side facing the door, and it led to an open hatch on top. Energy restored, Jag trotted up the ladder, his heels clanging on its durasteel steps, and dropped through the hatch into the pilot’s chair beneath.

  This simulator was able to duplicate any model of TIE starfighter or similar craft produced since the original TIE fighter, but its default setting was one of Jag’s favorites, the Chiss clawcraft, and as he settled in place the front screens lit up, arranging their view into an accurate simulation of the clawcraft’s forward viewports.