Star by Star (29 page)

She glanced around the room expectantly. When no one responded, Han bit his tongue and waited for his brother-in-law to shoot down the plan.

Luke was very patient. Han counted the seconds, determined to heed his wife’s warning, yet just as determined to keep his family safe.
All
of it.

Han made it to five seconds before his brother-in-law’s silence grew unbearable. “What are you waiting for, Luke?” Han shook off Lando’s hand and stepped into the Jedi circle. “Tell him why this isn’t going to work.”

Anakin’s blue eyes darkened to angry amethyst. “Why don’t
you
tell me, Dad?”

“All right, I will.” He spun toward his son. “It won’t work because …” Han was so angry he found it difficult to think of a reason. “Because you can’t be certain you’ll escape.”

“Actually, I think I can—at least reasonably certain.” Despite the indignation in his eyes, Anakin’s voice remained calm. “I went behind Yuuzhan Vong lines to rescue Tahiri, and I have this.” He touched his lambent-modulated lightsaber. “But most of all, I know how they think.”

“
We
know how they think,” Tahiri corrected.

“You know how they
think
?” Han stormed. “They aren’t going to be
thinking
thud bugs at you.”

Leia took his arm. “Han—”

He shook her off. “And I’ll give you another reason. You can’t do it because it’s crazy.” He shook a finger in his son’s face and was vaguely surprised to realize he was shaking it at the height of his own nose. “Because you’re not going, that’s why.”

“Han!” Leia pulled him away. “This isn’t your decision.”

Han turned to scowl. “It sure isn’t Anakin’s!”

When he turned back to Anakin, he was surprised to find his son glaring at him, more hurt than angry, yet unyielding and completely sure of himself. It was so teenage, so classically rebellious. But there was also a stoniness that even Han could not miss, a hardness born of battles already lost and won, tempered by the anguish of fallen comrades and missing friends. At seventeen, Anakin was as much a man as Han had been at thirty, had probably seen as much combat and spilled more blood than Han had in the Rebellion. And he was still so young.

“Han, the decision is Luke’s,” Leia said. “Not Anakin’s, not yours.”

She interposed herself between father and son, then gently turned Han away, leaving him to wonder where he had been when his son, when
all
his children, had grown into adults. The answer, of course, was lost—lost and wallowing in his grief as the object of that grief would never have wanted.

But the old Han Solo was back now, and the old Han Solo was not about to let the Yuuzhan Vong—or anyone else—take his family from him. He turned to Luke.

“This isn’t a mission, it’s a sacrifice. You can’t send him in there—not Anakin, not any of them.”

Luke studied the floor for a moment, then turned to Anakin. “It feels right, Anakin, but I’ll lead the strike team. You stay here.”

Anakin’s face fell—and with it Han’s heart, but that did not stop him from feeling relieved. Luke had done this sort of thing before. Han had been there helping, and, despite the queasy look on Mara’s face, he knew Luke would come back—especially if Han went along to keep him out of trouble. He looked over to Mara to reassure her and saw that no reassurance was needed. Mara’s jaw was set and her eyes were hard, but there was a calmness in her expression that Han found difficult to understand—a knowledge of the danger and all it might cost her, and yet a stoic acceptance of fact.
Somebody
had to kill the voxyn, and if it had to be Luke, then it had to be.

Anakin studied his uncle for moment, then managed a curt nod and stepped back into his group. He refused to meet his father’s eye. For a time Han thought Anakin would leave the chamber, but his son had grown into a man in so many more ways than he realized. Seeming to sense how his reaction would dictate that of his large circle of friends, Anakin remained with the group, ready to offer Luke his full support.

After a tense moment of silence, Tenel Ka stepped forward, her usual Dathomir warrior’s dress now covered by the ubiquitous vacuum emergency suit still necessary everywhere on Eclipse. “Master Skywalker, forgive me for speaking so candidly, but have you lost your mind?”

The young woman’s customary bluntness filled the room with uneasy chuckles.

Even Luke smiled. “I don’t think so, why?”

“Because you must know that Anakin’s plan would never work for you,” she said. “It depends on the Yuuzhan Vong taking us for granted, and that would never happen with
any
Jedi Master. Even if they did not kill you on the spot, they would take every precaution to render you helpless.”

“She has a point,” Ganner said. “The leader has to be someone they won’t be too worried about—and someone they’ll believe could be duped by a traitor.” He flashed a white smile beneath his mustache. “Someone like me.”

Even Han could sense the reluctance of the other Jedi.

When no one volunteered to join the handsome Jedi Knight, Jacen said, “Maybe
none
of us should be going.”

This drew a frown from both of his siblings, and Anakin said, “Jacen, this is no time to stand around debating good and evil. Either we kill those things, or those things kill the Jedi.”

“And if we destroy the queen, the Yuuzhan Vong will retaliate against New Republic citizens even more severely,” Jacen replied. “Do we want that on our heads?”

“Jacen, the blood is not on
our
hands,” Alema said, lekku trembling angrily. “It is on theirs.”

“A convenient position, but will it save more lives than it costs?” Ulaha asked. “As Jedi, that must be our only concern.”

And they were off, voices rising and gestures growing sharp as they argued the same point they had been contesting since the destruction of the
Nebula Chaser
. Alema spoke most forcefully against Jacen, no doubt because she could not bear the burden of New Plympto’s destruction and her sister’s death. Ulaha and Jacen led the argument for Jedi responsibility; they were supported by a surprisingly large number, including Streen, Cilghal, and, most astonishingly, the Barabel hatchmates.

In the end, the debate grew so heated that C-3PO had to be summoned to take a crying Ben to his nursery, and Luke was forced to call repeatedly for quiet. Finally, he used the Force to project his voice directly into the mind of everyone present, and a silence as tense as it was embarrassed fell over the room.

Luke glanced over the Jedi calmly, then spoke in barely a whisper. “It comes down to a simple question: How do we fight a brutal, evil enemy without growing brutal and evil ourselves?”

“This is so,” Tenel Ka confirmed.

Luke looked at her for a moment, then shook his head wearily. “I wish I had the answer, but the Force has refused to guide me in this—as it has all of you, I think.” He waited a moment, and when no one denied this, continued, “What has grown clear to me is that the time has come for us to choose one path. I assume there is no one among us who believes we should actually surrender to the Yuuzhan Vong?”

Though Jacen alarmed Han by briefly looking as though he might disagree, he remained as silent as the rest of the Jedi.

Luke nodded. “As I thought. So, do we destroy the voxyn and risk more retaliation? Or do we accept our losses in the hope that doing so will save the New Republic many more lives than it costs us?”

“What are you asking for?” Ganner demanded. “A vote?”

“Your opinion,” Luke clarified. “Whatever I decide, I want to know that everyone has been heard.”

Ganner considered this for a moment, then nodded. “All right, I say we go after the queen.”

“Accept our losses,” the first Barabel, Tesar Sebatyne, rasped.

His female hatchmates echoed his sentiment, and Luke started around the circle. Though Han felt in his heart that they should go after the queen, he could not help giving a silent cheer every time someone supported accepting their losses. Tenel Ka had been right about a Jedi Master not being able to lead the strike team, which meant that Anakin—and no doubt Jaina, too—would be trusting their lives to a plan almost as foolhardy as trying to break Leia out of the Death Star’s detention center. If the Jedi opted for accepting their losses, at least he and Leia would be close by in the
Falcon
to keep an eye on their children—until a pack of voxyn caught them. Sooner or later, somebody was going to have to destroy that queen. Han just did not see why it had to be
his
children.

By the time the question came around to Leia’s end of the circle, opinion was divided almost evenly, with a slight edge toward destroying the voxyn.

Lando leaned close to Han. “You can breathe easy, old buddy. Leia and Mara will want to go after the queen, but Cilghal and Streen are against it.”

Though Han knew no gambler in the galaxy could read faces as well as Lando Calrissian, he did not feel as relieved as he might have. The way Leia looked at him made clear enough how she felt about Anakin’s injured pride, but there was more to it than her anger. Han was being selfish and she knew it—and she knew what his selfishness might cost the Jedi in the end.

“Han?”

Caught by surprise, Han looked from Leia to her brother.

“Yeah?”

“Your opinion?”

“
Mine
?”

“You’re part of this,” Luke said. “You have a say.”

Han glanced back to Leia and, seeing the silent plea in her eyes, wondered how she could be so strong.

“Okay, give me a minute.”

He closed his eyes and, wishing someone could teach him one of those Jedi relaxation techniques, tried to calm himself with a few deep breaths. It didn’t help, not really. He knew why his son wanted to lead this mission, why Anakin had fought in every major Jedi battle since the invasion began, why he had charged off alone to rescue Tahiri.

Chewbacca.

No matter how much Anakin claimed otherwise, it all came down to Chewbacca.

“Dad,” Anakin said. “Just do what you think’s right.”

“I didn’t need to hear that—I really didn’t.” Han opened his eyes and found his son standing in front of him. He started to take the boy by his shoulders, but realized how ridiculous he would look spreading his arms so wide and clasped a forearm instead. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“I know.” The hurt in Anakin’s face was instantly replaced by an alarming brashness. “But I’m going to.”

With the uneasy feeling that he had seen the same cocky look in the mirror thirty years before, Han turned and found Leia staring at him openmouthed.

He shrugged and gave her a lopsided grin. “Kids. What can you do?”

“I take it you favor destroying the queen,” Luke said.

He finished the polling, which came out exactly as Lando had predicted—except that, with Han behind the mission, Luke decided to go after the voxyn queen.

“I expect everyone present to support this decision,” he said. “We’ll do what we can to protect the innocent, but we
will
be sending a strike team to Myrkr.”

Jacen turned to his brother. “Then let me be the first to volunteer.”

“You?” No one looked more surprised than Anakin. “But you’re against it.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Jacen said. “Nobody is as good with animals as I am. If you have to track down the queen or something, you’re going to need me.”

“When he’s right, he’s right, Little Brother,” Jaina said, stepping to her twin’s side. “And I believe we’ve already agreed that I’m coming.”

“Like I had a choice.” Anakin smiled, then turned to the other young Jedi around him. “Anyone who wants to volunteer, see me later—after we’ve put together some kind of plan.”

Han felt like his knees would buckle. All three of them were going, all of his children on the same crazy mission—and he wouldn’t be there to protect them, couldn’t even consider going along because he wasn’t a Jedi.

Leia looked no happier than he. Her face was pale, her lip trembling, and still she somehow found the strength to hold her head up and look proud. “There is one condition,” she said, turning to Lando. “I want you to deliver them.”

For the first time in a very long while, Lando looked surprised. “Me?”

“You’re the only one who can make this work,” Leia said. “I know I wasn’t much help with Borsk, but if you’ll do this—”

Lando raised his hands. “We’re way past favors here,” he said. “I’ll help any way I can.”

The hulking war droid rotated two hundred degrees on his waist coupling and pointed the business end of his blaster arm at Raynar Thul. “Plan point fourteen, Private.”

“I’m not a private.” Raynar was dressed as usual in the colors of his family’s merchant house, in this case scarlet breeches, purple waist sash, and a golden tunic that matched the color of his bristly blond hair. “We’re not in the military.”

“Point fourteen,” 1-1A insisted.

Raynar rolled his eyes. “The crew bursts into the dining area and gets the drop on the Jedi,” he said. “Point fifteen. The Jedi yield their weapons.”

“Lightsabers,” 1-1A corrected. “And I did not ask for point fifteen, soldier.”

“I’m not a soldier,” Raynar said wearily.

Anakin and the sixteen members of his strike team were sitting on the lush conform couches on the observation deck of Lando Calrissian’s private space yacht, rehearsing the plan Anakin had worked out with Luke, Lando, his father, mother, and about half the Jedi on Eclipse. There were a thousand little details, but basically the scheme called for the
Lady Luck
’s crew to “surprise” the Jedi when the Yuuzhan Vong boarded. As the invaders took their prisoners away, a pair of YVH war droids would slip out of the disposal lock with an equipment pod and attach to the bottom of the enemy boarding shuttle. When the shuttle returned to its mothership, the droids would ride along, concealed from view by the shuttle itself. To make certain the droids went undetected, the strike team would stage a diversion.

“Point thirty-two, sir.”

Recalling that the droid considered him the group officer,
Anakin looked up to find 1-1A’s blaster arm leveled at his face. As usual, staring down the black tunnel of death brought his thoughts into sharp focus.