Exile Page 5

  As their account of the events ran down, Lando shook his head, almost unwilling to believe what he was hearing. “I’m sorry. I’ve been up on the holonews; I knew about his promotion to head of the Galactic Alliance Guard, but all this … I don’t know what to say.”

  Finally Han looked up from his plate. “Can you help us fix the Falcon?”

  Lando nodded. “Consider it done. This place is an old repair station I—we—picked up in a corporate merger. It’s not cost-efficient, so we’ve transferred most of the personnel to other locations and are going to be closing it down. I’ll keep this repair dock open long enough to make the Falcon shipshape. Better than new.” He winced again. “It’ll take some time, though.”

  Han and Leia exchanged a look, and Leia said, “We’ll need a fast transport for the interim, too. Something that can get us through the Corellian exclusion zone if we need to. And something that doesn’t scream The Solos are back whenever it’s noticed.”

  “I’ve got you covered.”

  They were silent for several moments. Then Leia asked, “And how are you doing, Lando?”

  “I don’t want to tell you.”

  That got the attention of both Han and Leia. “Why?” Han asked.

  “Because it’s all good.”

  Leia managed a little smile. “I appreciate you not wanting to make us feel worse by gloating. We know that’s not what you’re going to do. We could use some good news. Really.”

  “Oh. Well, then.” Lando heaved a sigh. “I’d have to say that all my wishes from when I was a young man have pretty much come true. I’m rich. I can travel wherever I want and do whatever I want. I’m married to a smart, beautiful woman who doesn’t worry about where I am every second of the year. I can visit a gambling den and lose a fortune and not catch any heat; Tendra knows that at some point I’ll win another fortune or a patent or a planet and make up the loss. Tendrando Arms isn’t as big as it was during and right after the Yuuzhan Vong war, but it’s doing very well selling to security forces in the private sector, and we’ve diversified. We’re very healthy.”

  Leia frowned. “You almost sound … sad.”

  Lando paused, groping for the right words. “No … but there’s no risk in my life. The years aren’t going to make me old, but sitting around being successful, popular, and responsible is.” He scowled. “Do you know how long it’s been since a bounty hunter came after me?”

  Leia offered him a wan smile. “For us, not so long.”

  Lando heaved himself to his feet. “I’m going to show you to your quarters. You get some rest. I’ll arrange for a suitable transport to be brought up here.”

  CORELLIAN EXCLUSION ZONE ANAKIN SOLO

  Jacen sat cross-legged in his cabin, floating a meter above the floor, tranquil.

  For once, he was fully open to the Force, letting it flow through him, sustain him, support him in the air. He let the Force do as it wished, showing him pictures, flicking little traces of thought and emotion through him … and all the while he searched, peering as if the entirety of the Force were an ocean and he wanted to find one distant, familiar face among its waves and currents.

  He found it. Very far away, tiny in the distance, but demonstrably still alive … Lumiya.

  And suddenly she was nearer, much nearer. She appeared in his physical vision as well, no more than two meters before him. She looked as though she were a two-dimensional being who had been at right angles to his line of sight, then suddenly rolled over and into plain view.

  As she had in years past, she wore a dark pants-and-tunic ensemble, and on her head she wore a wrapped headdress. One portion of it concealed her nose and mouth, ending in a sharp point oriented down toward her chest, and two other portions radiated from her forehead as if concealing a Devaronian’s horns, giving her head an oddly triangular cast.

  She lay on her side as if resting on a couch. There was no couch to be seen; she floated in the air as Jacen did. Her head was lifted and her eyes were unfocused. They took a moment to orient on him. “Jacen?” Her voice was distant, echoing as though she were in a large room with hard walls.

  For a moment he was nonplussed. He’d known about her ability to project realistic Force phantoms from her home, an asteroid suffused with concentrated Force energy. But he hadn’t imagined her using the technique for simple communication. He envied her the technique. Perhaps she would someday show him how she did it. “Lumiya,” he said. “I’m happy to know that you’ve survived.”

  “Thank you.” She laid her head down again, as if on a pillow. Her movements suggested exhaustion, even pain. “I am healing. Here I can summon my strength. Your uncle hurt me.”

  “Yet you don’t sound angry.”

  She laughed. The noise was faint. “I’m used to it. Whenever we meet, I expect him to hurt me. He will probably do so until I die … or until you and I have won and he is forced to understand us.”

  “I’m in a holding pattern for the moment, Lumiya. Waiting for negotiations with the Corellians to bear fruit. Thinking about where my studies need to lead me.”

  “Ah.” She was silent a long moment. Jacen watched her breathe—it seemed to be an effort for her. “You have been considering your sacrifice. Sacrificing what you love. Loving what you sacrifice.”

  “Yes. I am becoming … more ready.”

  “Good. And you have been looking for an apprentice?”

  “Ben is my apprentice. Though I realized not long ago that I can sacrifice him if I have to.”

  “Ben is your Jedi apprentice. Not your Sith apprentice.”

  “I’m not a full Sith yet, and therefore cannot have a Sith apprentice.”

  Her sigh sounded exasperated. “You’re stalling. You don’t know whether he will be fit to become a Sith apprentice. The time to learn that is now, not when you reveal yourself. You must test him.”

  “He’s back with his parents, and they don’t want him to see me.”

  Lumiya lay there, silent, unhelpful. She watched him and waited.

  “So …” He considered. “I must separate Ben from Luke and Mara, and test him.”

  Lumiya nodded. “If you wish, I will coordinate the test. But you must decide what it will be.”

  “All right.”

  “And you must decide what to do with him if he fails.”

  “Yes.”

  “If he fails, will you love him less?”

  Jacen paused over his answer. He had to look deep into his own feelings to imagine how he would feel about Ben if the boy failed. “I think … initially it would make little difference. But we would soon grow apart.”

  “So if he fails, he will not long be suitable as your sacrifice. Keep that in mind.”

  “I will.”

  Lumiya rolled over again, away from him, and was gone.

  chapter five

  CORUSCANT, THE JEDI TEMPLE QUARTERS OF LUKE AND MARA SKYWALKER

  Luke and Mara kept an apartment away from the Jedi Temple, but also quarters in the Temple itself—austere chambers for those times when late-night Council meetings or other duties made it more practical to walk a few dozen meters and fall over, rather than board a speeder and fly kilometers to do the same.

  Sometimes those Temple quarters served an additional purpose—such as when the Skywalkers found themselves in command of a surly, defiant, Jedi son who was certain that “unfairness” was a Force power and his parents were its masters.

  The silence and chill radiating from the boy’s room, one door down a common hallway, were formidable. Luke, pacing, was certain he could feel them like air blowing through a wampa’s meat locker. He turned in midpace to look at his wife. “How is it that I feel guilty?”

  Sitting on the bed, Mara looked up from her datapad. “You’re feeling guilty—we are—because he’s unhappy. And he’s going to continue being unhappy until we stop slandering and persecuting Jacen, the perfect Jedi, hero of the people and male model for black uniforms. Or until he grows up enough to revise his thinking about hi
s cousin.” She sighed. “Do you think we can brick him into his room until he does grow up?”

  “Tempting.” Luke resumed his pacing.

  “How long did it take you to stop being a headstrong kid who made as many bad decisions as good ones?”

  Luke shrugged in midstride. “I don’t know. From the time Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were murdered to the time I started calling myself Master. About four years.”

  “I’ll set the timer, then. It should go off when he’s just about to turn eighteen. We can check then and see if he followed your example.”

  That elicited a dry chuckle. “All right. We need to figure out what to do with him now. We’ve got him in the Temple, where dozens of Jedi eyes can keep an eye on him when we’re not around. Which is bound to make him more paranoid and angry. What do we do to make him learn?”

  “Give him a project. Something relevant. Such as, write a history and analysis of his grandfather’s fall to the dark side.”

  Luke stopped again to stare at his wife. “That’s complex psychology to assign to a thirteen-year-old.”

  “Almost fourteen. I’m thinking that if he does his homework, he’ll recognize a similarity in the decisions made by Anakin Skywalker … and Jacen Solo.”

  Luke moved over to sit beside her. “That could be helpful. But how do we make sure he does his homework? What do we use to motivate him?”

  Mara took a deep breath. “We tell him that if we like his work enough to submit it to the Jedi library, we’ll let him resume his duties as Jacen’s apprentice.”

  Luke whistled. “Very chancy.”

  “Yes. But several things might happen by the time Ben has finished his project to our satisfaction. We might become convinced that Ben can see Jacen’s flaws, his problems. Jacen might recognize his mistakes and become a fit teacher again. Jacen might … die.”

  “I could feel Jacen in the Force a few minutes ago. That’s a rare thing these days. He hides from it whenever he wants … and just now he was channeling it, very strongly. I wonder what he’s up to.”

  Before Mara could reply, Luke’s comlink beeped. He pulled it out and thumbed its switch. “Yes?”

  “Grand Master Skywalker, this is Apprentice Seha in the Reception Hall.” The voice was female, young, breathlessly enthusiastic. “There is a man here who wishes to see you. He won’t see any other Master.”

  “What’s his name and his business with me?”

  “He says his name is Twinsins Thlee. He doesn’t have any identification to corroborate that. He says his mission concerns a lightsaber with a silver blade.”

  Luke and Mara exchanged a look. Luke thumbed the comlink microphone off. “Twinsins—Twin Suns Three?”

  Mara nodded. “That’s what it sounds like.”

  Twin Suns Squadron was an X-wing unit formed by Luke during the Yuuzhan Vong war more than a dozen years before. He had led it for a while, then turned command over to Jaina. It had been decommissioned after the war had ended, but in the years since, Luke had occasionally given the designation temporarily to ad hoc squadrons he’d commanded.

  “Who was Twin Suns Three?” Mara continued.

  “At various times, several different people.” Luke thought back to a recorded holocam message he’d viewed only a few days before, a message sent by Han describing his and Leia’s recent encounter on Telkur Station. “Jag Fel,” he said. “Han said he was back. As for a silver lightsaber—” Silver blades were rare on lightsabers, and a woman who had once owned one of them had recently been of serious concern to Luke, though her new lightsaber had a different blade color.

  “Alema Rar,” Mara said.

  “Right.” Luke thumbed the comlink back on. “Tell our visitor we’ll be right up.”

  Their visitor was only a little over average height but stood so straight that he seemed much taller. Dressed in a black flight suit and engulfed by a dark gray traveler’s cloak, his face shadowed, he looked more like a forbidding figure from a cautionary children’s tale than a peaceable visitor. The darkness of the lofty Temple Reception Hall, with most of its glow rods extinguished because of the late hour and shadows gathering in every corner, reinforced his somber manner.

  Seha, the receiving apprentice on duty, bowed to Luke and Mara as they entered. She twirled a lock of red hair around nervous fingers. At Luke’s gesture, she moved out into the main corridor.

  Luke and Mara approached the visitor. Luke could read very little from him—no sense of menace, but also not one of friendliness. Perhaps a trace of anger, deeply buried. “Colonel Fel,” Luke said.

  Jag bowed and offered a little heel-click. “At your service,” he said. He reached up to throw back his cloak hood, revealing the features Luke remembered. His was a lean face with startlingly bright green eyes and a scar leading up from his brow to his hairline. His hair was still dark, a bit longer than the military haircut he had once typically worn, with a mop of it hanging almost into his right eye; where his scar entered his hairline, one stripe of hair was white. The trim, rakish beard and mustache were new, and gave him an even greater resemblance to his father, the famous Soontir Fel.

  Luke stepped forward to stretch out a hand. “Why the secrecy? You could have visited us officially, with your credentials.”

  “There are no credentials.” Jag shook Luke’s hand, then Mara’s when she offered it. “I’m no longer a colonel, no longer an ambassador. No longer a citizen of the Chiss, no longer even a member of my father’s house. Technically, that suggests I’m no longer even Jagged Fel. I’m as much Twin Suns Three as I am anything else.”

  “Ah.” Luke considered. Jag wasn’t awash in self-pity, wasn’t seeking sympathy with his words; he was just letting Luke in on things the Jedi Master needed to know. “And if I understand correctly, your mission here has something to do with Alema Rar.”

  “Everything to do with her.”

  “Take a walk with us,” Mara said.

  They walked through the halls of the Temple, which were mostly dim and little-trafficked at this hour, and Jag told the Jedi Masters, in unemotional tones, of the events of his last few years. How, during the Dark Nest missions, he had guaranteed the parole of Lowbacca, how Lowbacca had violated that parole, how the damage done by Lowbacca and his Jedi friends had become the responsibility of the Fel family … how Jag had been exiled from that family, as a matter of consequence and honor. How Jag had been shot down on the world of Tenupe and had survived there, a lean and dangerous existence, for two years. How Alema Rar, mad as a half-crushed bug and carrying within her mind the dual imperatives to re-create the Dark Nest and avenge herself on Luke and Leia, had also survived, also escaped.

  “In those two years,” Jag concluded, “I gave a lot of thought to Alema Rar, to what she was, what she could do. Afterward, I continued researching her … and investigating ways to counter her Killik abilities. She can scrub herself from the short-term memory of people, meaning that you can run into her and, if you survive, moments after the encounter you have no memory of meeting her. It makes her terribly hard to track. Her Killik abilities and remaining Jedi powers make her an extreme danger to you and your sister—and to the galaxy.”

  “So you’ve come here to warn me,” Luke said. “I appreciate that.”

  “More than that, I come with gifts.” From a tunic inner pocket Jag drew two items. One was the shape and size of a large credcoin, but silvery and featureless; no portrait of a long-dead hero or deserved-to-be-dead tyrant graced its faces, though a blob of some whitish substance adhered to one side. The other item was a common data card.

  He handed the card to Mara. “This is a graphical interpreter and communications program,” he said. “It operates in concert with most security holocam programs found in government installations, capital ships, any secure building. Basically, it evaluates every humanoid figure the cam sees, comparing them with a database of Alema Rar’s unusual physical characteristics, and when it finds a match, it notifies the security department and sends a coded mess
age to any data repository you specify. If you can get this installed on enough systems, we can perhaps plot her movements, find out her whereabouts before she does any more harm.”

  “That may not be as useful as you think,” Luke said. “Alema probably knows the technique of the Force-flash, a method by which a Jedi can cause interference with holocams—even ones she’s unaware of—in order to avoid being recorded.”

  Jag frowned, but he did not seem daunted. “This technique—does it make her invisible?”

  Mara shook her head. “No. It creates a little static on the recording. Causes a sort of timing hiccup.”

  “That’s not so bad,” Jag said. “Part of the code involves analyzing incidence progression along a sequence of holocams—tracking an identified target. If we extend its analysis to these ‘hiccups’ and assign a probability that they indicate a single Force-using individual, the code could still plot her movements in observed areas.”

  “That might be useful in detecting Lumiya, too.” Mara pocketed the card. “Thank you.”

  “Also on that card are complete schematics for this, so you can reproduce it.” Jag handed the coin-like object to Luke. “You use the sticky material to affix this to your neck, or to a shaved spot on your skull. You activate it by saying ‘Alema.’ Deactivate it by tapping it twice with a fingernail.” He demonstrated, tapping it as it lay in Luke’s open hand. “From the time it’s activated until it’s deactivated, it sends electric shocks through your nervous system at one-standard-minute intervals.”

  Luke grinned. “That’s helpful. Did you also bring me a brooch that will pinch my skin from time to time?”

  “The shock,” Jag continued humorlessly, “is very precisely attuned to human nervous systems. I haven’t had the resources to determine the exact frequency needed by other species. The specific pain generated helps cause whatever is in your short-term memory to be transferred into longterm memory.”