Fate of the Jedi: Backlash (13 page)

She was out there, at a greater distance than before, in the densest part of the Raining Leaves crowd.

A man moved through the crowd toward them, distinct from the others because of his height—he stood eye-to-eye with Han—and his features, which were exceptionally handsome, ideally suited to the stage or to holodramas. Some of the Raining Leaves women before him moved out of his path only grudgingly, resentfully. As he came close, Luke could make out blond hair, eyes the same blue as Redgill Lake when they had first spotted it a couple of hours ago, and garments that were an odd mix of Dathomiri hide vest and boots combined with offworld trousers in a distinctly civilized shade of purple.

Luke extended a hand. “Tasander Dest, I assume.”

“Master Skywalker.” Dest’s voice was flavored with the refined accent of the Hapan noble families. “A pleasure to meet you at last.” His attention wandered to the speeder hood, where Kaminne now told of the scrap between the Witches and the offworlders in the pass. Her tone made it sound as though the exchange had been a romp rather than a potential tragedy.

“Kaminne told us what this gathering was for.” Luke gestured across the group. “You have some interesting challenges ahead of you.”

“So do you, if you’re here for anything other than watching tribal customs. The clans have not changed their ways much since you first came to this planet.”

Luke shrugged. “So how do we get them to open up?”

Dest smiled, an expression that exposed what seemed to be a broad panorama of perfect teeth. “The Games start tomorrow. Win some of them. You gain respect, others will talk to you. I’ll be competing. Beat me at something … if you can.” The good cheer in his manner seemed to rob that statement of all the arrogance that should have come with it.

Half an hour later, once Luke’s party was settled down at a new camp-fire of its own, Kaminne led Luke and Ben across the campgrounds to a dark patch of ground near a stand of trees.

“Nice place for an ambush,” Ben told her.

Luke gave his son an admonishing look, but Kaminne merely smiled. “I only plan one ambush a day. And today’s was not so successful.”

With the mood eased, Ben changed the subject. “I know this is your family business, but it also relates to what my father and I are doing here, so I was sort of hoping to ask a question.”

Kaminne’s expression went from amused to neutral, unreadable. “Go ahead.”

“Why has your sister taken such a stong interest in the Sith girl? She’s known her for, what, a day or two and is already considering adopting her?”

Kaminne didn’t answer immediately. Clearly she was considering her answer, deliberating how much to tell, how much to withhold. “A few months ago, Olianne’s only child, Sesara—she was eight—died of a fever. When Vestara stumbled out of the forest, helpless, nearly in a state of collapse, into the midst of Olianne’s hunting party, and all but fell into Olianne’s arms, something about her plight touched my sister’s heart. It is as simple as that.”

Luke exchanged a look with his son. Ben’s thoughts were so easy to read at this moment, no skill in the Force was called for.
What an interesting coincidence that Vestara should first find the clan member who might be most sympathetic to her situation. But was that a matter of luck … or foreknowledge?

From ahead, they could hear conversation—just the rise and fall of speech, two female voices, resolving within moments into comprehensible words. The first voice was recognizable as Olianne’s: “… not have to speak with them.”

The second voice was lighter, younger. “I want to.”

“You were running from them before.”

“I was alone before. Now I am among family.”

The voices stopped. Luke knew that neither he, Ben, nor Kaminne had made noise on their approach, but Olianne and the Sith girl probably had very acute senses.

And Luke could see them now, Olianne’s outline with her distinctive hair illuminated by moonlight, a slighter, leaner silhouette standing beside her. As they came within a couple of meters of the two women, Luke got a clear look at the girl without environment suits or attempted murder getting in the way.

She was a teenager, about Ben’s age or a trifle younger, slender, with long straight hair that looked as though, out of the moonlight, it would be a light brown. Her eyes were dark. There was no fear or apprehension on her face; in fact, she seemed to be wearing a half smile until Luke realized that the expression was an illusion, caused by the small scar at the corner of her mouth.

Luke gave Olianne a courteous nod. “Could we have some time alone with this young woman?”

“No.”

Luke restrained a sigh. “Very well.” He gestured toward the ground. “Shall we sit?”

Kaminne did, followed by Luke and Olianne. The teenagers were last to take their seats.

“I’m Luke Skywalker. This is my son, Ben.”

“I know.” The girl gave a little shrug. “I am Vestara Khai.”

“And you are a Sith.”

“I … was.”

Luke raised a brow. “You are no longer.”

“Now I am Raining Leaves.”

“Then if you’ve chosen to abandon your Sith ways, you wouldn’t mind telling us all about your former life.”

Vestara’s illusory smile became real. “No matter how I regard myself now, my friends are my friends and my kin are my kin. Shall I tell you all about them, so you can go to them and slay them?”

Luke shook his head, dismissing her protest. “All it takes to do evil is to stand aside while others do it—when a single word from you could have stopped it.”

“It’s also hard to talk of them without, in some sense, calling to them. Summoning them. Do you want me to summon them to this place?”

“Yes.” Luke kept his voice matter-of-fact. “If that’s what it takes.”

“I do not wish Olianne hurt. Not her, not my new clan.”

“She’s lying.” Ben’s tone was exasperated. Luke did not have to look at his son to know that Ben was rolling his eyes.

Luke wanted to tell his son,
Of course she’s lying. Yet you can learn almost as much from the lies as you can from the truth
. But he did not. Instead, he let Ben feel a flash of irritation, and outwardly ignored his son’s interjection. “For one who is anxious to be free of the Sith, you fought alongside your companion with exceptional dedication.”

“Of course I did! To do any less than your best effort at any time is to invite punishment. Is it not so with your Jedi?”

Luke ignored the question. “What can you tell us of your home-world?”

“Nothing.”

“And your plans, your aims? Whatever brought you to the Maw cluster in the first place?”

Vestara shrugged. “Nothing.” Vestara leaned toward Luke. “Just let me be. Let me stay among the Raining Leaves. Stop chasing me.”

“Where did you crash your yacht?”

She blinked as if surprised to be asked a question she could choose to answer. “It was in the middle of the jungle. I don’t know where. All the instrumentation was out. After the crash, I wandered for hours before Olianne found me.”

“Where’s your lightsaber?”

“It was in my cabin when I began my landing run. When the crash happened … there was nothing left of the cabin. I couldn’t find any sign of my gear.”

“Are you done?” Olianne did not sound so much worried for Vestara as annoyed with Luke.

Luke considered his answer, but Ben spoke first. “Olianne, this girl is a Sith, and that means she’s pure evil. She’s like a thermal detonator rolling around your camp waiting to go off. When she does, you and all your clan—”

“Evil?” Vestara practically sputtered the word. “Being Sith has nothing to do with good or evil, any more than being Jedi does.”

Ben glared at her, outraged. “How can you say that? People become Sith and they do nothing but evil—”

“Oh, I suppose that explains your Jacen Solo, whom we have heard of—”

“It does. He was Sith.”

“He was Jedi, and you know it!”

“He became Sith,” Ben insisted.

“Be quiet.” Luke spoke softly, but put some extra emphasis on his words through the Force. All four of those near him leaned away as he spoke.

He returned his attention to Vestara, but Olianne spoke first. “Not these Jedi nor any Sith can take you away from us. You need feel no fear.” She leaned over to embrace Vestara.

Knowing that they were not likely to glean anything more that night, Luke rose, gave the Dathomiri women a little bow, and led Ben back toward the offworlders’ campfire.

Once they were far enough away that the women could not hear them, Ben, irritated, kicked a stone. “She’s playing them. Like they’re a sabacc deck. A children’s sabacc deck.”

Luke gave his son a disapproving look. “She played
you
exactly the same way. She drew you into an argument that was all emotion, no logic. And since she’s Sith and you’re Jedi, that means she won hands-down.”

Ben was silent for a long moment. Then he kicked another rock. “Yeah. I know.”

Spying, Allana concluded, was mostly boring.

In the holodramas, a spy would hide herself where she could watch an important door, and a minute would pass, and something would happen at that door, and the spy would have an Important Clue.

But here, though she hid herself well among hedges that gave her a good view of the front door of one of the domes, a minute could turn into fifteen or thirty without anything happening. Anji would come back and curl at her feet and fall asleep. Allana would wait some more, then finally grow frustrated. She’d get up and trot to another vantage point … and wait there for an endless amount of time in which she learned nothing.

Well, not
nothing
. She learned that the dome nearest to where the
Falcon
and
Jade Shadow
were parked was a communications center. She could have guessed that by all the antennas, including hypercomm antennas, that crowded its roof, but it was good to catch a glimpse of the dome’s interior through a briefly opened door and see lots of comm equipment and one bored-looking man about Ben’s age yawning on duty there.

Another dome, the largest, turned out to be a hostel. People wandered in and out all the time, and through the constantly opening door Allana could see a cramped lobby like many she had visited. It was from this dome that all the intriguing food smells emerged.

It occurred to her that if R2-D2 had been looking for a yacht, he wouldn’t find it in a hostel.

That gave her something to think about. A space yacht would only be parked in some kind of dome. Not in a restaurant, not in a playground, not in a hall of records.

She decided to wander past the front doors of all the domes and read the signs this time. And it was the fourth sign she read, affixed to one of the largest of the domes, that bore the words,
MONARG’S MECHANIC WORKS
.

She set herself up a little nest among a stack of two-hundred-liter
hydraulic fluid drums, waited half an hour, and sighed. Spying was dull. She hoped she’d find R2 soon.

The viewports of the dome were, at their bottom rims, about four meters above the ground, far too high for her to see into. But she gave the fluid drums around her an experimental push. They moved easily; they were clearly empty. Of plastoid construction, they were also very light.

Her heart racing, she picked up and carried a drum to the dome, carefully placing it directly beneath one of the viewports a quarter of the way around the dome’s circumference from the door. Scrambling atop it was no challenge, but she was still too low to see in. So she brought up another, placing it flush against the first one, and brought a third. That one took some work, because she had to lift it to rest atop the other two.

Now she could scramble up, and as she stood, wobbling, atop the third drum, she could peer in through the viewport.

Most of her view was blocked by a curtain, but it was tattered. There were holes and gaps she could see through.

She saw the gray tail end of a yacht. It looked a lot like Uncle Lando’s, but older and more beaten-up.

There were droids all over the place, small spindly ones. Most of them did not walk on legs; they glided around on wheeled tripod rigs. Most seemed to be rolling trays or racks for tools and parts; each had two skeletal arms and a sensor station where a head should be, and stood about a meter and a half tall.

There was a man present. Allana did not see him at first; he moved into her field of view from someplace along a wall. He was tall and gaunt, wearing a stained gray jumpsuit. When he turned to track and speak to one of the rack droids, Allana saw that he had a patch over his left eye.

There was no sign of R2-D2, but along one wall in the shadow of the yacht was a blue drop cloth draped over something that could have been an astromech droid. It did not move, and Allana was struck with the sudden worry that her droid friend was hurt or dead. She’d have to find out.

“Miss Amelia? May I inquire, where are you?” C-3PO’s voice seemed to erupt from the pocket where Allana kept her comlink.

Allana ducked. Even as she did so, she saw the man’s head begin to turn up in her direction.

She hadn’t heard much noise from within the dome; even a hydrospanner dropped on the permacrete floor had barely been loud enough for her to hear. So the man probably hadn’t heard much of C-3PO’s voice. But Allana was suddenly afraid and didn’t want to count on that. She scrambled down the drums as fast as she dared and ran to hide among the drums she hadn’t moved. Then, finally, she activated her comlink. “I’m right here,” she whispered.

“Here, where, precisely?”

Should she tell C-3PO now? No, she needed to do that once she could trick him into coming with her. Which might mean tomorrow. “I’m playing hide-and-seek.”

“Ah. Am I to find you, then?”

“Yes. But don’t hurry. I have to, uh, hide better. Count to a thousand.”

“Very well.”

The door into the dome had not opened. Her heart in her throat, Allana sneaked back to the dome and carefully brought the three drums to their places in the stack, then raced across the spaceport grounds to the
Falcon
.