Fate of the Jedi: Backlash (2 page)

Leia shook her head. “They’re tracking a Sith girl who’s on the run. So it probably won’t be the Maw.”

“Ah, good.” Han rubbed his hands together as if anticipating a fine meal or a fight. “Why not? After taking off with all those barvy Jedi that Daala wanted to deep-freeze, we probably have an arrest warrant waiting back on Coruscant anyway.”

Finally Leia smiled and looked at Han. “One good thing about the Solos and Skywalkers. We never run out of things to do.”

Master Cilghal, Mon Calamari and most proficient medical doctor among the current generation of Jedi, paused before hitting the console button that would erase the message she had just spent some time
decrypting. It had been a video transmission from Ben Skywalker, a message carefully rerouted through several hypercomm nodes and carefully staged so as not to mention that it was for Cilghal’s tympanic membranes or, in fact, for anyone on Coruscant.

But its main content was meant for the Jedi, and Cilghal repeated it as a one-word summation, making the word sound like a vicious curse:
“Sith.”

The message had to be communicated throughout the Jedi Order. And on review, there was nothing in it that suggested she couldn’t preserve the recording, couldn’t claim that it had been forwarded to her by a civilian friend of the Skywalkers. Luke Skywalker was not supposed to be in contact with the Jedi Temple, but this recording was manifestly free of any proof that the exiled Grand Master exerted any influence over the Order. She could distribute it.

And she would do so, right now.

Jade Shadow
, onetime vehicle of Mara Jade Skywalker, now full-time transport and home to her widower and son, dropped from hyperspace into the empty blackness well outside the Kessel system. She hung suspended there for several minutes, long enough for one of her occupants to gather from the Force a sense of his own life’s blood that had been in the vicinity; then she turned on a course toward Kessel and vanished again into hyperspace.

Ben Skywalker shouldered his way through the narrow hatch that gave access to his father’s cabin. The auburn-haired teen was a little shorter than average height, but he was well muscled in a way that his anonymous tunic and pants could not conceal.

On the cabin’s bed, under a brown blanket, lay Luke Skywalker. Similar in build to his son, he wore the evidence of many more years of hard living, including old, faded scars on his face and the exposed
portions of his arms. Not obvious was the fact that his right hand, so ordinary in appearance, was a prosthetic.

Luke’s eyes were closed, but he stirred. “What did you find out?”

“I reached Nien Nunb.” Nunb, the Sullustan co-owner and manager of one of Kessel’s most prominent mineworks, had been a friend of the Solos and Skywalkers for decades. “That yacht did make planet-fall. The pilot gave her name as Captain Khai. She somehow scammed a port worker into thinking she’d paid for a complete refueling when she hadn’t—”

Luke smiled. “‘The Force can have a—’”

“Yeah, so can a good-looking girl. Anyway, what’s interesting is that she got a galactic map update. Nunb looked at the transmission time and determined that the download was pretty comprehensive. In other words, she didn’t concentrate on any one specific area or route. No help there.”

“But it suggests that she did need some of the newer information. New hyperspace routes or planetary listings.”

“Right.”

“And she’s gone?” Luke asked.

“Headed out as soon as her yacht was refueled. By the way, its name is
She’s a Chancer.”

“Somehow appropriate.” Finally, Luke did open his eyes, and Ben was once again struck by how tired his father looked, tired to the bone and to the spirit. “I can still feel her path. I’ll be up in a minute to lay in a course.”

“Right. Don’t push yourself.” Ben backed out of the cabin, and its door slid shut.

Luke stared at the mottled, multicolored world of Dathomir through the forward viewport. He nodded, feeling slightly abashed. Of
course
it was Dathomir.

Ben, seated to Luke’s left in the pilot’s seat, peered at him. “What is it, Dad?”

“I’m just feeling a little stupid. There’s no world better suited to be the home of this new Sith Order than Dathomir. I should have realized it long before we were on our final leg here.”

“How so?”

“There are a lot of Force-sensitives in the population, most of whom are trained in the so-called Witchcraft of Dathomir. There’s not a lot of government oversight. It’s the perfect place for a Force-user to hide. And eventually, if she figures out that I’m following my own blood straight to her, she may get rid of it and elude us entirely.” Luke paused to consider. “There are mentions in ancient records that there was a Sith academy here long, long ago. I wonder if she’s looking for it.”

Ben nodded. “Well, I’ll prep Mom’s Headhunter and get down there. I’ll be your eyes and ears on the ground.”

Luke gave his son a confused look. “I’m not going down with you? I’m feeling much better. Much more rested.”

“Yeah, but there’s a Jedi school down there. The terms of your exile say that you can’t—”

Luke grinned and held up a hand, cutting off his son’s words. “You’re a little bit behind the times, Ben. Maybe you need your own galactic map updated. More than two years ago, when the Jedi turned against Jacen at Kuat?”

“Yeah, and we set up shop on Endor for a while. What about it?”

“We pulled everyone off Dathomir when Jacen’s government shut the school down. The Jedi have yet to reopen it.”

Comprehension dawned on Ben’s face. “So there’s no school, and it’s legal for you to visit.”

“Yes.”

“That’s kind of getting by on a technicality, isn’t it?”

“All law is technicality, Ben. Get authorization for landing.”

Half an hour later, Luke had to admit that he was wrong.
Most
law was technicality. The rest was special cases, and he, apparently, was a special case.

He stood on the parking field of the Dathomiri spaceport. Perhaps
spaceport
was too generous a term. It was a broad, sunny field, grassy in some spots, muddy in others, with thruster scorch marks here and there. Dull gray permacrete domes, most of them clearly prefabricated, dotted the field; the largest was some sort of administrative building, the smaller ones hangars for vehicles no larger than shuttles and starfighters. A tall mesh durasteel fence surrounded the complex, elevated watchtowers dotting its length, and Luke could see the wiring leading to one of the permacrete domes that marked it as electrified.

The spaceport facilities offered little shade, so the Skywalkers stood in the darkness cast by
Jade Shadow
, but even without the heat of direct sunlight, the moist, windless air was still as oppressive as a blanket.

Luke poured thoughts of helpfulness and reasonability into the Force, but it was no use. The man before him, nearly two skinny meters of redheaded obstructiveness, would not yield a centimeter.

The man, who had given his name as Tarth Vames, again waved his datapad beneath Luke’s nose. “It’s simple. That vehicle—” His wave indicated
Jade Shadow
. “Neither it, nor anything with an enclosed or enclosable interior, can be inland under your control or your kid’s.” He turned his attention to Ben, who stood, arms folded across his chest, beside his father. Ben glared but did not reply.

Luke sighed. “Is any other visitor to Dathomir operating under that restriction?”

“Don’t think so, no.”

“Then why us?”

Vames thumbed the datapad keyboard so that the message scrolled downward several screens. “Here, right here. An enclosed vehicle, according to these precedents—there’s about eight screens of legal precedents—can be interpreted as a mobile school, especially if
you’re
in it, especially if its presence constitutes a continuation of a school that’s been here in the past.”

“This is harassment.” Ben’s words were quiet, but loud enough for Vames to hear.

The tall man glowered at Ben. “Of course it’s not harassment. The order came specifically from Chief of State Daala’s office. Public officials at that level don’t harass.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

“Ben.” Luke added a chiding tone to his voice. “No point in arguing. Vames, are you also prohibited from answering a few questions?”

“Always happy to help. So long as it’s within latitudes permitted by the regulations.”

“Within the last couple of days, have you seen any sign of a dilapidated yacht called
She’s a Chancer
?” Luke knew the yacht had to be here; he had run his blood trail to ground on Dathomir, and the girl had not departed this world. But anything this man could add to his meager store of knowledge might help.

Vames entered the ship name in his datapad, then shook his head. “No vehicle under that name made legal planetfall.”

“Ah.”

“Dilapidated, you say? A yacht?”

“That’s right.”

Vames keyed in some more information. “Last night, shortly after dusk, local time, a vehicle with the operational characteristics of a SoroSuub yacht made a sudden descent from orbit, overflew the spaceport here, and headed north. There was some comm chatter from the pilot about engines on runaway, that she couldn’t cut them or bring her repulsors online for landing.”

Ben frowned at that. “Last night? And you didn’t send out a rescue party?”

“Of course we did. As per regulations. Couldn’t find the crash site. No further communication from the vehicle. We still have searchers up there. But no luck.”

“Actually, that
is
helpful.” Luke turned to his son. “Ben, no enclosed vehicles.”

“Yeah?”

“Get us a couple of speeder bikes, would you? Beg, borrow …” Luke glanced at the spaceport official and decided that the man wouldn’t grasp that
steal
would have been a joke. “Or rent them.”

Ben grinned. “Yes, sir.”

Fifteen minutes later they were on their way, equipped with two rented speeder bikes and one piece of useful information that they had
not possessed before, courtesy of questions asked and credcoins dropped by Luke.

The model of SoroSuub yacht the Sith girl had taken from Sinkhole Station was not one that normally came equipped with a hypercomm system. From the time it had left the Maw Cluster to its arrival on Dathomir, it had not lingered at any star system long enough for its pilot to make any substantial contact with locals. And in the time since its arrival on Dathomir, the planet’s sole hypercomm system, based out of this spaceport, had not been utilized to send any message packet large enough to include the complex navigational data required to instruct someone how to enter the Maw and find Sinkhole Station.

What that meant, ultimately, was that the Sith girl had likely not been able to communicate instructions to her Sith masters on how to reach the station or the powerful dark-side Force mystery it held. Luke probably did not have to fear that the Sith would find that power—until and unless they retrieved the Sith girl.

For once, if only temporarily, time was on Luke’s side.

T
HE RAIN FOREST AIR WAS SO DENSE, SO MOIST, THAT EVEN ROARING
through it at speeder bike velocity didn’t bring Luke Skywalker any physical relief. His speed just caused the air to move across him faster, like a greasy scrub-rag wielded by an overzealous nanny droid, drenching all the exposed surfaces of his body.

Not that he cared. He couldn’t see her, but he could sense his quarry, not far ahead: the individual he’d crossed so many light-years to find.

He could sense much more than that. The forest teemed with life, life that poured its energy into the Force, too much to catalog as he roared past. He could feel ancient trees and new vines, creeping predators and alert prey. He could feel his son, Ben, as the teenager drew up abreast of him on his own speeder bike, eyes shadowed under his helmet but a competitive grin on his lips, and then Ben was a few meters ahead of him, dodging leftward to avoid hitting a split-forked tree, the
recklessness of youth giving him a momentary speed advantage over Luke’s superior piloting ability.

Then there was more life,
big
life, close ahead, with malicious intent—

From a thick nest of magenta-flowered underbrush twice the height of a human male, just to the right of Luke’s path ahead, emerged an arm, striking with great speed and accuracy. It was human-like, gnarly, gigantic, long enough to reach from the flowers to swat the forward tip of Luke’s speeder bike as he passed.

Disaster takes only a fraction of a second to bring about. One instant Luke was racing along, intent on his distant prey and enjoying moments of competition; the next, he was headed straight for a tree whose trunk, four meters across, would bring a sudden stop to his travels and his life.