Part 31 (1/2)
”What?” Luke asked. ”Me trying to be available when my son needs guidance?”
”Not that,” Ben said. ”Always knowing.” knowing.”
”Sorry.” A familiar Skywalker smile crept across Luke's lips, and Ben's heart immediately felt a thousand kilos lighter. ”I can't help it. Sort of comes with the territory.”
”Yeah.” Ben sighed. After a pause, he asked, ”Hey, as long as you're awake, do you mind if I ask you a question?”
”What are we still doing here, hanging out in the Maw, when we're completely out of food and medicine?”
”Naw-I already figured that one out.” Ben traced a finger along the cut across his father's nose and cheek. ”You put a blood trail on that Sith girl. We're just waiting for her to get her act together and leave Sinkhole Station, so we can follow her.”
Again, Luke smiled. ”Well, then, it seems you have all the answers.”
”Not all all of them,” Ben said, shaking his head. ”There's one question that's really been bugging me.” of them,” Ben said, shaking his head. ”There's one question that's really been bugging me.”
Luke's expression grew serious. ”You can always always ask.” ask.”
”I know,” Ben said. He took a deep breath. ”When Jacen asked what you had seen on the Throne of Balance ...”
”I remember,” Luke said. ”I told him that I'd seen Allana, surrounded by friends from all species.”
”Right ...,” Ben said. ”And then you asked Jacen what he he had seen.” had seen.”
Luke nodded. ”I remember. He told me it wasn't me.” His gaze grew distant, and he looked away. ”I'm not entirely sure I believe him.”
”Because you know know what he saw?” Ben asked. what he saw?” Ben asked.
”Because I know part of it,” Luke replied, continuing to look away. ”Just enough to make me wonder.”
”Okay,” Ben said, ”then here's my question: what did Jacen see?”
Luke looked back to Ben. ”What Jacen saw on the Throne of Balance doesn't matter-not to you.” His smile returned, this time filled with equal parts sadness and hope. ”And you know what's really wonderful about that? It never never will.” will.”
Read on for an excerpt from Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Backlash by Aaron Allston Published by Del Rey Books
THE RAINFOREST 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. 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 whose home 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 catalogue 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 compet.i.tive 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 big life, close ahead, with malicious intent- life, close ahead, with malicious intent- From a thick nest of magenta-flowered underbrush twice the height of a man, just to the right of Luke's path ahead, emerged an arm, striking with great speed and accuracy. It was humanlike, gnarly, gigantic, long enough to reach from the flowers to swat the forward tip of Luke's speeder-bike as he pa.s.sed.
Disaster takes only a fraction of a second. One instant Luke was racing along, intent on his distant prey and enjoying moments of compet.i.tion; 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.
He came free of the speeder-bike as it rotated beneath him from the giant creature's blow. He was still headed for the tree trunk. He gave himself an adrenaline-boosted shove in the Force and drifted another couple of meters to the left, allowing him to flash past the trunk instead of into it; he could feel its bark rip at the right shoulder of his tunic. A centimeter closer, and the contact would have given him a serious friction burn.
He rolled into a ball and let senses other than sight guide him. A Force shove to the right kept him from smacking into a much thinner tree, one barely st.u.r.dy enough to break his spine and any bones that hit it. He needed no Force effort to shoot between the forks of a third tree. Contact with a veil of vines slowed him; they tore beneath the impact of his body but dropped his rate of speed painlessly. He went cras.h.i.+ng through a ma.s.s of tendrils ending in big-petaled yellow flowers, some of which reflexively snapped at him as he plowed through them.
Then he was bouncing across the ground, a dense layer of decaying leaves and other materials he really didn't want to speculate about.
Finally he rolled to a halt. He stretched out, momentarily stunned but unbroken, and stared up through the trees. He could see a single shaft of sunlight penetrating the forest canopy not far behind him; it illuminated a swirl of pollen from the stand of yellow flowers he'd just crashed through. In the distance, he could hear the roar of Ben's speeder-bike, hear its engine whine as the boy put it in a hard maneuver, trying to get back to Luke.
Closer, there were footsteps. Heavy, ponderous footsteps.
A moment later, their origin, the owner of that huge arm, loomed over Luke. It was a rancor, humanoid and bent.
The rancors of this world had evolved to be smarter than those elsewhere. This one had clearly been trained as a guard and taught to tolerate protective gear. It wore a helmet, a rust-streaked cup of metal large enough to serve as a backwoods bathtub, with leather straps meeting under its chin. Strapped to its left forearm was a thick durasteel round s.h.i.+eld that looked ridiculously tiny compared to the creature's enormous proportions but was probably thick enough to stop one or two salvos from a military laser battery.
The creature stared down at Luke. Its mouth opened and it offered a challenging growl.
Luke glared at it. ”Do you really want to make me angry right now? I don't recommend it.”
It reached for him.
SEVERAL DAYS EARLIER.
EMPTY s.p.a.cE NEAR KESSEL.
It was darkness surrounded by stars-one of them, the unlovely sun of Kessel, closer than the rest, but barely close enough to be a ball of illumination rather than a dot-and then it was occupied, suddenly inhabited by a s.p.a.ce yacht of flowing, graceful lines and peeling paint. That was how it would have looked, a vessel dropping out of hyper-s.p.a.ce, to those in the arrival zone, had there been any witnesses: nothing there, then something, an instantaneous transition.
In the bridge sat the ancient yacht's sole occupant, a teenage girl wearing a battered combat vac suit. She looked from sensor to sensor, uncertain and slow because of her unfamiliarity with this model of s.p.a.cecraft. Too, there was something like shock in her eyes.
Finally satisfied that no other s.h.i.+p had dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce nearby, or was likely to creep up on her in this remote location, she sat back in her pilot's seat and tried to get her thoughts in order.
Her name was Vestara Khai, and she was a Sith of the Lost Tribe. She was a proud Sith, not one to hide under false ident.i.ties and concealing robes until some decades-long grandiose plan neared completion, and now she had even more reason than usual to swell with pride. Mere hours before, she and her Sith Master, Lady Rhea, had confronted Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker. Lady Rhea and Vestara had fought the galaxy's most experienced, most famous Jedi to a standstill. Vestara had even cut cut him, a graze to the cheek and chin that had spattered her with blood-blood she had later tasted, blood she wished she could take a sample of and keep forever as a souvenir. him, a graze to the cheek and chin that had spattered her with blood-blood she had later tasted, blood she wished she could take a sample of and keep forever as a souvenir.
But then Skywalker had shown why he carried that reputation. A moment's distraction, and suddenly Lady Rhea was in four pieces, each drifting in a separate direction, and Vestara was hopelessly outmatched. She had saluted and fled.
Now, having taken a s.p.a.ce yacht that had doubtless been old when her great-great-great grandsires were newborn, but which, to her everlasting grat.i.tude, held in its still-functioning computer the navigational secrets of the ma.s.s of black holes that was the Maw, she was free. And the impossible weight of her reality and her responsibility were settling upon her.
Lady Rhea was dead. Vestara was alone, and her pride at Lady Rhea's accomplishment, at her own near success in the duel with the Jedi, was not enough to wash away the sense of loss.
Then there was the question of what to do next, of where to go. She needed to be able to communicate with her people, to report on the incidents in the Maw. But this creaking, slowly deteriorating Soro-Suub StarTracker s.p.a.ce yacht did not carry a hypercomm unit. She'd have to put in to some civilized planet to make contact. That meant arriving unseen, or arriving and departing so swiftly that the Jedi could not detect her in time to catch her. It also meant acquiring sufficient credits to fund a secret, no-way-to-trace-it hypercomm message. All of these plans would take time to bring to reality.
Vestara knew, deep in her heart, and within the warning currents of the Force, that Luke Skywalker intended to track her to her homeworld of Kesh. How he planned to do it, she didn't know, but her sense of paranoia, trained at the hands of Lady Rhea, burned within her as though her blood itself were acid. She had to find some way to outwit a Force user several times her age, renowned for his skills.
She needed to go someplace where Force users were relatively commonplace. Otherwise, any use by her of the Force would stand out like a signal beacon to experienced Jedi in the vicinity. There weren't many such places. Coruscant was the logical answer. But if her trail began to lead toward the government seat of the Galactic Alliance, Skywalker could warn the Jedi there and Vestara would face a nearly impossible-to-bypa.s.s network of Force users between her and her destination.
The current location of the Jedi school was not known. Hapes was ruled by an ex-Jedi and was rumored to harbor more Force sensitives, but it was such a security-conscious civilization that Vestara doubted she could accomplish her mission there in secrecy.
Then the answer came to her, so obvious and so perfect that she laughed out loud.
But the destination she'd thought of wouldn't be on a galactic map as old as the one in the antique yacht she commanded. She'd have to go somewhere and get a map update. She nodded, her pride, sense of loss, and paranoia all fading as she focused on her new task.
TRANSITORY MISTS.