The Joiner King (47 page)

Luke turned to Han. “Sorry to interrupt you earlier, but we don’t know how much the Dark Nest might be able to glean from Ben’s mind.”

“No problem,” Han said. “I got a little carried away when I saw how well the plan was working.”

“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” Leia said. “Alema is still a Jedi. Once Cilghal let her regain consciousness, there was never any question she could escape. The tricky part is going to be following her.”

“How did you know which vessel she’d steal?” Mara asked.

“We didn’t,” Leia said. “We bugged them all.”

“Speaking of bugs, we’d better get going,” Han said. “That
transmitter only has a subspace range of fifty light-years. We can’t be too far behind when Alema hits Colony space, or we’ll be stuck guessing where she went.”

Luke followed Han and the others toward the door. Their intention was to follow Alema to the core of the Dark Nest, then undermine its influence over the Colony by eliminating Welk and—assuming she had survived the Crash—Lomi Plo. Cilghal and Jacen were convinced that at least Welk had survived—and that a Dark Jedi now led the Gorog in much the same way Raynar led the Unu. It was a somewhat ruthless plan, especially in the way it placed Alema’s life at risk without her consent. But it seemed to Luke to be consistent with the nature of modern Jedi themselves. The war with the Yuuzhan Vong had taught the Jedi the folly of valuing sentiment over effectiveness, the wisdom of striking quickly and fiercely at the heart of a problem. Sometimes, Luke wondered whether it was a lesson the Jedi had learned too well; whether in defeating their enemies they had not become a little too much like them.

At the door, Han ran headlong into a short, gawky man with a heavily tattooed face and unruly blue hair. Without apologizing for—or even seeming to notice—the collision, the newcomer pushed past Han and stopped in front of Luke. R2-D2 followed close behind.

“Here you are,” the man said. “I’ve been looking everywhere.”

“I don’t understand why, Ghent,” Mara said. “We told you we were leaving on Jedi business.”

Ghent furrowed his brow. “You did?”

“Several times.” Luke saw Han tapping his wrist impatiently. “And we have to leave soon.”

“Oh.” Ghent’s eyes dropped, then slid back toward R2-D2. “I guess this can wait.”

“
What
can wait?” Leia asked. Luke had told her about the holo hidden in the sequestered sector in R2-D2’s memory, and she was as eager as he was to learn more about the mysterious woman. “Did you find something?”

Ghent shook his head. “Just a few seconds of holo that I managed
to relocate before I tripped a security gate. What I wanted to ask is if I could—”

“Holo of what?” Luke asked. “A brown-eyed woman?”

“That’s right,” Ghent said. “But it’s really not very much. If I can—”

“Can you show it to us?” Leia sounded even more excited than Luke felt. “Before we leave?”

Ghent frowned. “Of course.”

An uneasy silence fell as Luke and the others waited.

“Ghent, we want to see the holo,” Mara said. “Now. As Luke said, we haven’t got much time.”

Ghent’s brow rose. “Oh.”

He squatted and inserted the plug of a homemade diagnostics scanner into one of R2-D2’s input slots, then hastily typed a command.

“Show them.”

R2-D2 piped an objection, and Han groaned and looked at his chrono.

“Don’t make me scramble your sector tables again,” Ghent warned. “This time, I won’t restore them.”

R2-D2 let out a long, descending trill, then activated his holoprojector.

The hand-sized profile of the same brown-eyed woman that Luke had seen before appeared on the control room floor. She seemed to be standing alone, facing someone outside the hologram.

“
Has Anakin been to see you?” asked a male voice.

“Wait a minute,” Han said. “That guy sounds familiar.”

“He should,” Luke replied. The voice was much younger than when they had known him, but there was no mistaking its clarity and resonance. “That’s Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Ghent tapped a key on his diagnostics scanner, stopping the holo. “Do you want to see this or not?”

“Of course—we’re sorry,” Leia said. “Please continue.”

Ghent punched the key again, and R2-D2 restarted the holo from the beginning.

“
Has Anakin been to see you?” Obi-Wan’s voice asked.

“
Several times.” The woman smiled, then said, “I was so happy to hear that he was accepted on the Jedi Council.”

“
I know.” Obi-Wan walked into the hologram, wearing a Jedi cloak with the hood down. He was still young, with a light brown beard and an unwrinkled face. “He deserves it. He’s impatient, strong-willed, very opinionated, but truly gifted.”

They laughed, then the woman said, “You’re not just here to say hello. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

Obi-Wan’s face grew serious. “You should be a Jedi, Padmé.”

The name shot an electric bolt of excitement through Luke—and he could sense it had done the same to Leia.

“
You’re not very good at hiding your feelings,” Padmé said.

Obi-Wan nodded. “It’s Anakin. He’s becoming moody and detached.” His holoimage turned half away. “He’s been put in a difficult position as the Chancellor’s representative, but I think it’s more than that.” The image turned back to Padmé again. “I was hoping he may have talked to you.”

Padmé’s expression—at least what could be seen of it in the small hologrammic image—remained neutral.

“
Why would he talk to me about his work?”

Obi-Wan studied her for a moment. “Neither of you is very good at hiding your feelings, either.”

Padmé frowned. “Don’t give me that look.”

Obi-Wan continued to look at her in the same way. “I know how he feels about you.”

Padmé’s eyes slid away. “What did he say?”

“
Nothing,” Obi-Wan answered. “He didn’t have to.”

Padmé’s face fell, and she turned and walked out of the hologram. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“
I know you both too well.” Obi-Wan followed her out of the frame. “I can see you two are in love.”

There was no answer, and the hologram ended.

Luke could see Han biting his tongue, forcing himself to remain patient while the distance grew between them and Alema’s skiff, but this was important—at least to him and Leia.

“That’s all?” Luke asked.

Ghent nodded and tapped R2-D2’s silver dome. “Artoo’s
blocking me. When I tripped that security gate, he encrypted the rest of the data.”

R2-D2 whistled an objection.

“It’s not your place to decide what is good for Master Luke,” C-3PO said. “You’re only a droid.”

R2-D2 trilled an angry reply.

“No, I
don’t
know the secret you’re keeping,” C-3PO answered. “And if I did know, I’d tell Master Luke instantly.”

R2-D2 responded with a low, slurpy buzz.

Luke frowned at the exchange, but turned back to Ghent. “Look. We’ve got about two minutes before we have to launch. Is there any way to see the rest now, without Artoo’s cooperation?”

Ghent sighed. “Sure.” He pulled his scanner plug out of R2-D2’s input socket. “All I have to do is overwrite his personality sectors—”

The rest of Ghent’s explanation was lost to R2-D2’s screech of objection.

“Don’t expect me to translate that,” C-3PO said. “That’s what happens to arrogant droids like you. I suggest you extend your cooperation immediately.”

R2-D2 trilled a sad refusal.

Luke glanced at the droid, then asked, “I mean
without
a personality wipe.”

“Not in two minutes—and maybe not in this lifetime,” Ghent said. “This droid hasn’t had a memory wipe in decades. His circuits are one huge personality fault.”

“I know that,” Luke said. “What about the spyware?”

Ghent looked confused. “Spyware?”

“The spyware that’s keeping me from accessing those memories.” Luke was losing patience with the programmer. “The memories concerning the woman we just saw?”

“Oh,
that
spyware,” Ghent said. “There isn’t any.”

“There isn’t?” Luke frowned. “Then how come Artoo won’t give me access?”

Ghent sighed, sounding as exasperated as Luke felt. “That’s what I’m trying to explain—”

“Maybe you can explain on the way to the pilots’ lounge,”
Mara interrupted. She motioned them out the door. “We can finish talking on the way. We’ve still got a Twi’lek to catch, remember?”

“Right.”

Luke was so excited by the hologram that he had let it overshadow their mission for a moment. Anakin—his father—had been in love with a beautiful woman named Padmé. And Padmé did not look so different from Leia. Did they finally know their mother’s name? He could sense that Leia thought so—but she was too afraid to say as much out loud. So was he.

Luke fell in beside Ghent. “You were explaining why Artoo won’t let me access those memories?”

“Because he thinks he’s protecting you,” Ghent said. “He’s a very stubborn droid.”

“But you can get around that, right?” Leia asked. “I’ve seen you slice codes on units far more sophisticated than Artoo’s.”

Ghent turned around and looked at Leia as though she had asked for the name of the last girl he had tried to pick up in a cantina—they
never
told him their name.

“No,” he said. “Artoo units were designed to military standards. That means their security protocols will destroy the data before they let it fall into unauthorized hands. If you try to force access, a doomsday gate will reformat the entire memory chip.”

“And there’s no way to beat that security without wiping Artoo’s personality first?” Luke asked.

“I didn’t say
that
,” Ghent said. “There’s a way—but you’d have to help me, and you probably can’t do it.”

“Try us,” Han said.

“Okay,” Ghent said. “Bring me the Intellex Four designer’s datapad.”

“What for?”

“Because
he
had to have a way to access the data when his prototypes developed glitches like these,” Ghent said. “And if he’s like most droid-brain designers, that hatch became part of the Intellex IV’s basic architecture. It’s a very complicated computer unit, so there’ll be a long list of passwords and encryption keys on that datapad.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult, assuming it wasn’t destroyed in a war,” Luke said. “Who was this designer?”

Ghent shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. The Artoo was originally an Imperial design, and the Imperial Department of Military Research kept the identities of its top scientists secret.”

“You must be joking,” Leia said. “You want us to find this guy’s datapad without knowing anything about him?”

“It’s not quite that bad,” Ghent said. “Do you remember when Incom’s design staff defected to the Rebellion with the X-wing prototypes?”

“Of course,” Leia said cautiously.

“Well, this guy was consulting with them on the Artoo interface,” Ghent said. “And after the defection, Industrial Automaton never made another design modification to the Intellex Four.”

“They were afraid to,” Han surmised. “Because this guy was the only one who could do it right, and he had defected with the X-wing designers.”

“No, not because he had defected,” Leia said. She was studying Ghent intently. “If he had, we’d know who he was. Right?”

“Right,” Ghent said. “He just disappeared.”

Luke had a sinking feeling. “When you say disappeared, do you mean—”

“Nobody knows.” Ghent turned to Leia. “That’s what
disappeared
means, right? Nobody knows.”

The sky had been dark for hours beneath clouds of dartships, roaring into the Taat nest to refuel and refresh life-support systems, roaring back out to await the arrival of the Chiss assault fleet. Jaina had given up trying to estimate how many craft the Colony had assembled for the ambush, but the number had to be over a hundred thousand. The Taat hangars alone were servicing six swarms an hour, and there were three other nests in the Qoribu system.

It makes us proud
, Zekk said through the Taat mind.
No other species could mount such an operation.

The Chiss will be surprised
, Jaina agreed. Somewhere deep in her mind, she knew that this was a bad thing, that it would make her mission as a Jedi more difficult—but it did not feel that way to Taat. To Taat, it felt like their nests were finally going to be saved.
They will pay a terrible price.

Good
, Zekk said.

Good
, Jaina agreed.

The roar of arriving dartships faded to a mere rumble, and the kilometer-long oval of a top-of-the-line Gallofree medium freighter descended out of the rocket smoke. The well-maintained hull was finished in the scarlet-and-gold flames of the Bornaryn Trading Company, with an escort of corporate E-wings providing security.

Jaina wondered what the vessel was doing so far from home, but Taat did not know. Unu wished the nest to welcome
Roaming Ronto
, and so Taat welcomed
Roaming Ronto. Taat
had heard,
though, that similar vessels had landed on Ruu and Zvbo carrying a big surprise for the Chiss.

As the
Ronto
neared the nest, it adjusted course, heading out over the plateau toward the freight yard, where a swarm of Taat workers were already assembling to unload it. Jaina thought briefly about going to see the cargo, but Unu did not want that. Unu wanted her to enjoy the beauty of the nest from the veranda of the Jedi barracks.

That freighter should alarm us
, Jaina said to Zekk.
It can only make war more likely.

It’s too late to stop the war
, Zekk replied.
But we should try.

Jaina started to rise, then suddenly felt too tired and dropped back onto her seat.
Maybe later.

“Yeah,” Zekk said aloud.
We’d rather sit here.

There was something wrong with that, Jaina knew. Jedi were supposed to be dauntless, resourceful, resolute. They were supposed to accomplish the impossible, to keep trying no matter how difficult the mission.