The Unseen Queen (30 page)

“I think the worst is over,” Luke said. The Gorog nest ship was now directly in the center of the
DR919a
’s viewport and rapidly beginning to swell. “But you need to pull up a little. I think the collision dropped our nose.”

“I
am
pulling up,” Juun gasped.

Luke glanced at the yoke and saw that the Sullustan had pulled it back almost into his lap. Tarfang unstrapped and started aft, sputtering in alarm and motioning to Han.

“Hey, it’s not my fault,” Han said, following. “I didn’t touch the attitude thrusters.”

The
DR919a
passed under the pirate frigate and continued toward the Gorog nest ship.

Han’s voice came over the intercom. “It’s only a smashed relay box. We’ll have it fixed in …”

The rest of the sentence was drowned out by a sudden, painful pop in Luke’s ears.

R2-D2 began to whistle in alarm, and C-3PO said, “Are you sure?”

R2-D2 tweeted in irritation.

“Oh, my!” C-3PO said. “Master Luke, Artoo says the ship is losing cabin pressure.”

“I know.” Luke’s ears popped again. “Han—”

“Did you feel that?” Han said over the intercom. “We’ve got a hull breach!”

“Where?” Juun demanded. His eyes were glued to his damage control console. “I’m blind!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Luke said. The Gorog nest ship was filling the forward viewport now. “Even if you
could
seal off the breach, there’s no time.”

Juun looked up at him. “What are you saying?”

“I guess I owe you a new ship,” Luke said. “If we live that long.”

In Leia’s mind, daybreak was forever.

She was floating on the edge of a purling river, relishing the soft brush of a warm breeze on her face, watching Alderaan’s sun stand on the canyon rim. She had been watching it for hours, days perhaps, and it never moved. That was the point of the meditation, to still all: thoughts, emotions, mind.

But the water was growing rough. There was anger between Jacen and Jaina, a feeling of betrayal and … acceptance. Leia reached out to them in the Force, hoping that her love might help them heal the chasm that divided them. They were so far away, so deep in the Unknown Regions, where only the Killiks and the Chiss could find them. This was all she could do for them. They had to rely on each other. They needed to take care of each other … for Leia, if not for themselves.

The sense of acceptance—Jacen—closed itself off, and Jaina’s sense of betrayal began to grow less bitter. For Leia, she would watch over her brother.

Leia relaxed again, trying to return to her meditations, but the water started to lap at her, to lift her and pull her out into the current. She did not try to stay close to shore. There was a familiar warmth in the water’s grasp, an honest
strength that she recognized as her brother’s presence in the Force. She surrendered to the river, and the canyon walls began to rush past. The yellow sun climbed high into the sky, the breeze vanished and the air grew still and stale, and suddenly Leia was back in her detention cell, sitting cross-legged on her bunk, staring at the same empty place on the wall that she had been watching for … she checked her chrono … eighteen standard hours.

Leia started to respond to Luke, but he had already sensed her return to the realm of the temporal and was warning her that something was escaping, that things were terribly wrong inside the nebula. She could sense that he was in some kind of turmoil, and that Han was with him—but not much more. Her heart rose into her throat, and she pictured Saras nest in her mind and wondered if they were still on Woteba.

The only reply was the overwhelming impression that a threat was coming, that Leia had to sound the alarm. She reached for more, trying to find out if Han and Luke were in danger and needed help, but all she sensed was a raw fear that might have been her own—and then Luke’s presence was gone.

Leia remained on her bunk, taking a moment to collect her thoughts. Han and Luke were in the middle of a bad situation, and she could not help chastising herself for letting Bwua’tu detain her and Saba. She had remained imprisoned aboard the
Admiral Ackbar
out of concern for the deteriorating relationship between the Jedi and the Galactic Alliance, and now Han and Luke might pay the price.

But Luke had not asked her for help. He had contacted her as a Jedi Knight, directing her to take action on behalf of the order. She was to sound the alarm, and soon.

Leia started by reaching out to Mara, who was still
in a Force-hibernation. Whether Leia and Saba convinced Bwua’tu of the danger or merely departed in the
Falcon
, Mara and the other StealthX pilots would need to be ready.

As soon as Leia had alerted Mara, she reached out to Saba and felt … nothing. Either the Barabel did not wish to be disturbed, or she was not awake. Leia hesitated to try again. Saba had once confided that when she sensed someone’s presence while she was sleeping, she often awoke with a terrible urge to hunt them down.

Still sitting on her bunk with her legs folded, Leia reached out in the Force and grabbed the security cam hidden inside the ceiling light. She located the signal feed and pulled. A soft
clack
sounded from inside the fixture, and then she sensed the mild irritation of a guard stationed in the processing area at the front of the cell block.

Moving quickly now, Leia unfolded her legs and went to the door. She could not sense any living presences on the other side, but she felt sure there would be an EverAlert droid—a Justice Systems variant on Lando’s highly successful YVH series—standing in the corridor between her cell and Saba’s. She pressed her ear to the door, then looked up toward the side wall of her cell, fixing her attention approximately over the last cell on the block, and used the Force to project a loud
boom
into the ceiling.

A series of muffled hisses and metallic thunks sounded outside her door as a massive droid charged down the corridor to investigate the noise. Leia placed her hand over the magnetic lock she had seen when her door was open, then reached out with the Force and disengaged the internal catch. The door slid open with an all-too-audible hiss.

She stepped out and found the EverAlert swinging around to face her.

“Your cell door has malfunctioned.” The droid planted
its foot and began to bring up the heavy stun blaster in its right arm. “Return to your cell and remain—”

Leia flicked her finger at the EverAlert’s head and used the Force to flip its primary circuit breaker. The switch lay hidden beneath its neck armor, but that was no hindrance to a Jedi.

“—staaaationaaaar …”

The droid’s chin slumped against its chest, and the stun bolt it had been preparing ricocheted harmlessly off the floor.

A metallic
clank
sounded behind Leia as the blast door at the front of the cell block retracted. She spun around to see a pair of astonished guards standing on the other side of the threshold, their blaster pistols still holstered.

“Stang!” the older one said. “She’s—”

Leia swept her arm in their direction, using the Force to jerk both guards forward. She slammed them into the blast door, then dropped them across the threshold so the cell block could not be sealed off without crushing them.

The older man, a grizzled human sergeant, snapped the comlink out of his sleeve pocket. His companion, a Duros with smooth blue skin and red eyes bulging in alarm, made the mistake of reaching for his blaster.

Leia reached out with the Force and slammed his head into the wall, then summoned the blaster from his open holster. By the time she got the muzzle pointed in the sergeant’s direction, he was raising the comlink to his lips.

“Everything’s fine here,” she said, touching his mind through the Force. “There’s no need for alarm.”

“W-whatever you say, P-princess.” The sergeant was careful to keep his finger away from the comlink’s activation switch. “You’re the one holding the blaster.”

Leia sighed. She was going to have to work on her Force-persuasion skills with someone besides Saba. Force intimidation
was fine for Barabels, but humans needed something a little more subtle.

She gestured at the comlink. “Tell the watch officer—and no funny business. I’m a Jedi. I’ll know if you use an alarm code.”

The sergeant nodded, then activated the comlink. “Everything’s fine here, Watch.”

“Then how come she’s holding a blaster on you?” came the tinny reply.

Leia looked up at the security dome in the ceiling. “Because Junior was dumb enough to reach for it.” She pulled the power pack out of the blaster’s handle, then tossed the pistol aside. “I’m not interested in harming anyone. I just need to talk to Admiral Bwua’tu. I have important information for him.”

“Fine,” the watch officer said. “Return to your cell and I’ll ask for an audience.”

“I’m not
asking
.” Leia raised a hand toward the security dome, then located the power feeds in the Force. “And I’m not waiting. It’s urgent.”

She jerked the lines free, then stepped over to Saba’s cell. Keeping one eye on the sergeant and his assistant, she placed her hand on the cold door and used the Force to disengage the internal catch.

The cell was empty, save for a couple of broken claws on the floor and a comlink lying on the bunk. A section of durasteel panel was hanging down at one end of the ceiling, leaving just enough room for a Barabel to squeeze through.

Leia summoned the comlink to her hand, then turned the volume down so that the sergeant and his assistant would not be able to hear Saba’s end of the conversation.

“Master?” Leia whispered into the microphone.

There was a short pause, then Saba answered. “Blast! You scared them away.”

“Scared who?” Leia asked.

“The gankerz,” Saba answered. “This one is hungry.”

“You couldn’t have asked for a … never mind.” The last thing Leia wanted to do was start a discussion about detention-center cuisine with a Barabel. “Can you meet me at the bridge? We need to talk to Bwua’tu.”

“No.” Saba touched Leia through the Force, initiating a combat-meld. “That will do no good.”

“Saba, Luke reached out to me,” Leia said. She opened herself to the meld, and an impression of vast openness appeared in her mind. “Something’s happening in the nebula.”

“Yes,” Saba said. “The Killiks are leaving.”

“And we must warn the fleet,” Leia said. She recognized the vast openness as a hangar and realized that Saba was leaving the truth unspoken—no doubt because she feared some Alliance comm tech was eavesdropping on their conversation. “Luke was very clear about that.”

“Bwua’tu won’t believe you.”

“We must try,” Leia said.

The image of the
Falcon
, sitting on the hangar deck surrounded by a squad of Alliance troops, flashed through her mind.

“Then try,” Saba said. “This one is still hungry. She is going to continue her hunt.”

The slag that had once been the
DR919a
lay thirty meters in, an unrecognizable mass of blindingly bright metal glowing out from the crater it had blasted into the Gorog nest ship. A steady torrent of flotsam was pouring into the immense hole from the surrounding decks, dead Killiks and stony hunks of spitcrete and three lengths of twisted
durasteel that looked suspiciously like turbolaser barrels. Gushing out of the surrounding walls were several cones of white vapor—air or water or some other vital substance shooting out of broken conduits into the cold vacuum of space.

Luke felt nothing from the crater itself, but the Force was filled with ripples from the surrounding area, all very sharp and erratic as stunned Gorog struggled to figure out what had just happened. Unfortunately, the confusion did not extend to Lomi Plo. She was still touching him through the Force, filling him with the same cold ache he had been experiencing since they entered the Tusken’s Eye.

Luke stepped away from the escape pod’s viewing port, then pulled up his tunic and turned his back to Han.

“Do it, Han.”

“You sure about this?” Han asked. “Even on stun, at this range you’re going to get burned.”

“
Now
, Han!” Luke ordered. “Before Gorog starts to sort things out.”

“All right,” Han said. “No need to get—”

A searing pain exploded across Luke’s back, and he dropped to his knees. Even calling on the Force to bolster himself, it took all of his willpower to remain conscious. He let the pain fill him, gathering it up and directing it down into the pit of his stomach where he felt Lomi Plo’s chill touch.

Something released inside, like a knot coming undone, and the cold ache vanished all at once. Luke reached out to his companions, gathering their presences into a single bunch, then shut them all off from the Force.

They let out a collective gasp of surprise. Tarfang suddenly slumped down in his crash couch and began to babble in a frightened tone.

“Tarfang is convinced we died in the crash and don’t know it yet,” C-3PO explained. “And I must say, I feel something odd in my own circuits.”

“I’m hiding us from Lomi Plo,” Luke explained. He let his tunic down. His back was still racked with pain, but at least the cold weight inside had vanished. “With any luck,
she’ll
think we died in the crash, too.”

Tarfang eyed Luke warily, then sat up and began to jabber angrily, alternately pounding his fists and stabbing a furry finger at the air.

“I most certainly will
not
say that to Master Luke,” C-3PO replied. “And I fail to see the harm if he
is
trying to make us feel better. It’s certainly better than dwelling on a negative.”

“We’re
not
dead,” Luke said between gritted teeth. He went to Juun’s side and pointed out the pilot’s viewport toward a section of deck hanging free just inside the rim of the crater. “Put the pod over there. We need to get out of this thing before Gorog sees it.”

Juun dropped them into the crater. The temperature inside climbed rapidly as they drew closer to the molten remains of the
DR919a
, and the pod gave a noticeable jerk when it entered the nest ship’s artificial gravity.