Fate of the Jedi: Backlash (37 page)

“I did.”
But you didn’t. You were already gone. You just knew the call would be coming
.

“You could help, too.” She swung around to face the forest again. The motion caused one of her waterskins to sweep toward Dyon. He ducked beneath it, stood again once it was past.

She gave him a smile of apology. “Sorry. There, where you see the line of clan members headed into the trees? In that direction is a creek.”

“Thanks.” Dyon waited until she continued on her way, to the central
spot on the hill where water containers were collected. Then he headed down the slope and brought out his comlink. He’d better tell Luke and Ben right away of his failure to keep track of the Sith girl. That was the sort of information that could become more dangerous as it aged.

T
HE SCOUTS AND HUNTERS OF THE
B
RIGHT
S
UN
C
LAN LEARNED SEVERAL
things in the morning hours. Before noon, they, the chiefs, and the offworlders gathered at the foot of the hill to tell what they’d learned and concluded. Ben kept his eye on Halliava and Vestara as they separately arrived, but the two did not interact any more, or with anything that looked like hidden meaning, than any other two clan members.

The Nightsisters had taken away their dead. There were no bodies from Luke’s rock bombardments for them to identify, only bloody patches. In his visions, Luke had not seen their faces well enough to describe them for identification. Their identities remained secret.

The Nightsisters had withdrawn, and without laying in any traps that had been detected. Some Bright Suns took this as a sign that they had fled for good. Kaminne, Tasander, and other wiser heads, the Skywalkers among them, dissuaded the optimists of this notion. “They knew we’d be looking for their traps today,” Tasander told them. “They’re changing tactics. Not allowing us to predict them.”

“We must do the same to them.” That was Halliava, who had evidently ranged many kilometers in her search for the Nightsisters. “They expect us to stay on the hill and endure another assault. I say we leave hunting parties out after dark to visit death upon them from behind.”

There was a general murmur of assent at her words, and after a few moments of consideration, Tasander and Kaminne nodded. Kaminne called, “Come to me to volunteer for those hunter duties. I will assign units so that you can be in place well before dark.”

Luke spoke into Ben’s ear, too quietly for others to hear. “That’s what we’ll be doing.”

Ben nodded. “Too noisy and rocky on the hill to sleep anyway.”

It was a near-perfect re-creation of the meeting of the previous day—Daala, Dorvan, Han, and Leia, sitting in the same chairs. Leia, in her Jedi robes, Daala, in her admiral’s uniform, and Han, in another set of his iconic trousers, shirt, and vest, looked identical. Only Dorvan—his suit shirt a coral hue, matching the handkerchief in the pocket opposite the one holding his sleeping pet—seemed to have been altered. Too, Dorvan now held a datapad and consulted it more frequently than he looked at the other attendees, a mannerism Han found irritating. But then, he found most politicians and politics irritating.

Daala tapped a fingernail against her desktop as if nervous. “Aren’t the Jedi worried about recourse?”

Leia looked professionally curious. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ll spell it out. They give me their mad Chev Jedi for study. We don’t freeze him. We unfreeze the Horns. We study them. We exchange data with the Jedi. Perhaps even allow one of their scientists to be present during our tests and scientific meetings.”

Leia nodded. “Right.”

“But I know that I’m the pragmatic, unfeeling opponent who might at any moment say,
Well, we’re done cooperating. Freeze the lot of
them
. The Jedi seem to have built in no recourse against a sudden reversal of opinion on my part.”

“Well, this is only the first exchange of many through which we intend to build a greater relationship of trust between you and the Order. If it goes as planned, we proceed to the next set of concessions, compromises, and agreements. We …” A sudden thought occurred to Leia. She narrowed her eyes. “You’re stalling. Why are you stalling?”

Beside her, Han looked over his shoulder at the door. Leia knew her husband didn’t have a blaster on him, not even a hold-out, in the Chief of State’s office; it was a significiant sign of trust on Daala’s part that the Solos could be in here without bodyguards being present. But Han was doubtless figuring out what to do if the door opened and security agents swept in to arrest them. Which one he’d hit, how he’d take the agent’s blaster away, whom to shoot first.

Now it was Daala’s turn to seem surprised. “When do I get that power?”

“Which power?”

“The power to read the minds of Chiefs of State. Did you get yours when you left the office, or is it a Jedi thing?”

“I’ll bet you my husband’s Bloodstripes that I’m right.”

Han shot her a dirty look. “Hey.”

“Well, you
are
right. I’m stalling.” Daala gave Leia an apologetic look. “But I’m not springing some trap. While we’ve been talking, Wynn here has been putting a poll into the field. Wynn?”

Dorvan looked up from his datapad. “‘Should Chief of State Natasi Daala release the insane Jedi from carbonite imprisonment?’ In different polls, it’s phrased different ways. For instance, in one it’s ‘the Jedi who went on a violent rampage and attempted to kill fellow Jedi and GA citizens.’ Another poll narrows it to ‘Jedi who have not been convicted of a crime.’ We’re charting public opinion and measuring variations in response based on things such as former Alliance or Confederation loyalty, planet of origin, species, age, gender, the variant forms of description of the Jedi I mentioned, what they had for their last meal, political party affiliation, occupation, and what news broadcast they usually watch.”

“And you were waiting for early results to your poll before saying
yes or no?” Han sounded outraged. “Whatever happened to doing what feels right?”

The smile Daala turned on Han was not a friendly one. “What feels right is banning the Jedi altogether and setting up an order of Force-users loyal to the government. Should I proceed with that approach?”

“Well, I meant what feels right and what’s also not monumentally stupid.”

Daala’s smile faded. “You’re insolent, General. And insubordinate.”

“Yeah, the truth has a way of sounding that way.”

“Han, please.” Leia caught his eye, shot him what to Daala and Dorvan would have looked like a warning expression. Only Leia and Han knew they were playing good-guard, bad-guard. She returned her attention to Daala. “Now you know why Han never pursued a career in public office. He’s much better at shooting people. But he’s coming close to the truth here. Aren’t you worried about letting the tail wag the nek?”

“No.” Daala looked unconcerned. “The poll data is just one of many variables I’ll be using to come to a conclusion. Not even a particularly important one. But one we can sample while we’re sitting here. One most people wouldn’t have noticed I was stalling to sample.”

Han turned to Dorvan. “Well, since it’s not a crucial element in the decision … what sort of early results
are
you getting?”

Dorvan glanced at Daala for permission and, receiving her nod, returned his attention to his datapad. “A simple majority favor unfreezing the Jedi. Expected variations based on the various personal factors I mentioned.” He blinked several times. “Variations based on the language describing the Jedi are not as extensive as I would have expected. Well within the range of, say, mathematical rounding errors.”

“Interesting.” Daala didn’t sound in the least interested. “All right. Doing what seems right. Here’s my counteroffer. The Jedi turn Sothais Saar over to the government. He won’t be frozen. He will be studied. He will be allowed standard prisoner access to an advocate, plus unrestricted access will be permitted to one medical scientist provided by the Order and one Jedi liaison. If, after thirty days, he has demonstrated no unusual facility for escape or mayhem, we will unfreeze one of the Horns under the same terms. If, after another
month, the situation remains unchanged, we’ll unfreeze the other Horn.”

Leia exchanged a look with Han. He gave a little conciliatory shrug.

Leia turned to Daala. “I’ll take your counteroffer to Master Hamner.”

“Do you think he’ll accept?” Daala wasn’t asking Leia; she looked to Han for a reply.

Han shrugged. “I can’t speak for the Council. I don’t think the way Jedi Masters do. But, yeah, I’d bet a pot on
Hamner
agreeing to it.”

“Good.” Daala rose, signifying an end to the meeting. “Let me known when you have the Masters’ agreement, and we’ll move on to the next phase.”

“The next phase?” Han asked, rising with the others.

“Of course, General Solo,” Daala replied. She offered Han her hand. “Surely, you don’t think we’re going start
implementing
before we finish
planning?”

Han took the hand, but said, “If you want to try to resolve everything at once, this is going to be a long negotiation.”

Daala offered the faintest snort. “You have no idea, General. Try patching together the Alliance and the Empire sometime.” She turned to Leia. “Speaking of which, I understand that you’ll be dining with Head of State Fel today.”

Leia took Daala’s hand after Han released it. “I’m not sure I like the fact that you know about it.”

Daala’s smile broadened. “I run, at a distance, the largest intelligence operation to be found on Coruscant. It ought to be good for something.”

As the Solos reached the far edge of the Senate Plaza, where they’d left their airspeeder, Leia decided they were far enough away that directional microphones would probably not pick up their discussion. “She was lying.”

Han hopped into the pilot’s seat. “Well, sure. She’s a Chief of State.” Then he realized what he’d just said to his wife. “As opposed to, say, a
former
Chief of State.”

“Not
everything
she said was a lie.”

“So which part
was?”

Leia shook her head. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Maybe the poll results are more important to her than she’s letting on. Or maybe she was stalling us for some other reason.”

Han scowled. “You think she’s got something else in play?”

“I think she
could
have,” Leia said. “Or maybe the polls are just an excuse. Maybe she’s just trying to drag negotiations out, buying time for public opinion to change—or to get a firmer grasp on the military. It’s clear that she doesn’t trust them, or she would have sent a company of space marines to raid the Temple instead of Mandos.”

“A company of space marines wouldn’t have done it,” Han said. “They’re under Gavin Darklighter’s command right now.”

“Yes, Han,” Leia said.
“That
’
s
my point.”

Night had fallen, and the streams of airspeeder traffic had gone from torrents of metal and plasteel in innumerable colors to floods of running lights in an even greater range of hues. Tourists visiting Coruscant from other worlds often stood for hours on elevated pedwalks just to watch the flowing colors wax and wane in their mesmerizing aerial display.

Thirty meters below one such tourist-populated walkway, in a middle level of a skeletal airspeeder parking structure, a very specialized speeder waited. It was huge and stretched across eight normal parking spots at the end of one parking lane. It was black and boxy, fully enclosed, with heavily tinted viewports and circular hatches atop its rear compartment in addition to the standard doors to either side of its cockpit. Anyone who had seen the funeral procession of Admiral Niathal would recognize it as one of the official speeders of the Mon Calamari embassy on Coruscant.

But despite the fact that its identity tags claimed it to be that vehicle, it was not. The ersatz diplomatic vehicle was only a durasteel foil shell rigidly mounted to a slightly smaller enclosed cargo speeder, also black. And within that vehicle’s main compartment were banks of
comm equipment, stools for four communications officers, and comfortable chairs at either end, two of which seated Moff Lecersen and Senator Treen.

“It seems very conspicuous.” Treen did not sound in the least worried.

Lecersen nodded and passed her a saucer and a cup of caf. “It is. Very conspicuous indeed. And should anyone note and recall its presence where it should not be, all questions will go to the Mon Cal ambassador.”

Treen took the cup and saucer. She passed the cup beneath her nose and gave the most delicate of sniffs. “And if, by chance, a security agent should wish to interrogate the driver or enter the vehicle?”

Lecersen glanced toward the pilot’s compartment. “Our pilot is a Quarren whose identicard matches that of one of the Mon Cal embassy’s employees. And if she can’t bluff her way past a security guard, we strap in and she roars off in an attempt to escape. If she can get clear of the direct line of sight of pursuit for a second or two—and believe me, she can, she’s a former A-wing pilot—she just has to hit a button to blow explosive bolts holding the shell in place around this vehicle. Suddenly we’ll be a completely innocent speeder headed in a completely different direction and the security agent would be diving after wreckage.”