Part 24 (1/2)

His future...

He glanced back at Artoo, the memory of their time with Yoda drifting to mind. Luke's Jedi training, and that first time he'd gotten a glimpse into the future.

A glimpse that had nearly resulted in disaster. He'd rushed off madly to Cloud City to try to save Han and Leia, and had instead nearly gotten all of them killed.

But he'd learned so much about the Force since then. And he had been able to draw other visions of the future without doing anything rash. Lately his efforts in that direction had been strangely unrewarding; but as long as he was supposed to take it easy for an hour or so anyway, it wouldn't hurt to give it a try.

”Artoo, I'm going to meditate for a while,” he told the droid, slipping out of the chair and settling himself cross-legged on the floor. ”See if I can get some direction. Don't let anyone disturb me, all right?”

The droid buzzed an affirmative. Taking a deep breath, Luke closed his eyes and stretched out to the Force. His thoughts-his emotions-his entire being-slipped into the proper pattern.

And suddenly the whole universe exploded in front of him into a brilliant kaleidoscope of color and motion.

He gasped, the vast image wavering momentarily like desert heat-s.h.i.+mmer as he nearly lost control. It was like no vision he'd ever had before. Like nothing he'd ever seen before. A hundred different scenes, a thousand different possibilities-brilliant colors, sharp-edged sounds, joy and contentment and fear and death-all of it swirled together with the fury and randomness of a Tatooine sandstorm. Lines of possibility wove around each other or else crashed together, sometimes merging, sometimes bouncing apart again, always forever changed by the encounter. Familiar faces were there among unfamiliar ones, pa.s.sing in front of him or else flickering behind other events unfolding at the edges of his sight.

He caught a glimpse of Wedge and Rogue Squadron as they swept past in the fury of battle; saw his Jedi students inexplicably fanning out across the New Republic, leaving the Yavin academy all but deserted, saw himself standing on a balcony against the wall of a darkened canyon, gazing down at a sea of th ousands of tiny stars; saw Han and Leia facing a huge mob&mdash Han? Leia? With an effort, he grabbed on to that last line, trying to stay with it long enough to see more. For a moment he succeeded, the image sharpening into focus: Leia standing in a wide hallway, her lightsaber blazing in her hands, as a ma.s.s of bodies pushed through a tall door; Han, standing on an outside balcony with drawn blaster, looking down' at the crowd. The crowd inside flowed mindlessly forward-a hidden rooftop sniper lined up his blaster rifle&mdash And then they were gone, vanis.h.i.+ng into the swirling ma.s.s of sights and sounds. For a moment Luke tried to join the flow himself, the taste of fear mixing with the other sensations of the vision as he tried to catch up and see what was going to happen to them.

But they were gone, and with a sense that came from outside himself he knew that he'd seen all of that vision that he was going to. Easing out of the flow, he made his way back to the single fixed point in the storm, the solidness of his own being. He'd learned all he could here, and now it was time to leave. He began to draw back, the vast array of images beginning in turn to recede and darken.

And then, abruptly, one final vision appeared in front of him: Mara, surrounded by craggy rock and floating in water, her eyes closed, her arms and legs limp. As if in death.

Wait! he heard himself shout But it was too late. Mara's image faded with the rest of the vision&mdash And with a sudden gasp of air he found himself back in his room, gazing out the window at the hills.

Hills that no longer glowed golden, but were instead outlined by the subtler gloss of starlight.

”Whoa,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. He would have sworn that vision had only lasted a few minutes.

Beside him, Artoo twittered in obvious relief. ”Yes, it took longer than I expected, too,”

Luke agreed. ”Sorry.”

The droid warbled questioningly. Getting to his feet, wincing at the sudden p.r.i.c.kling sensation in muscles left too long in one position, Luke looked at the question scrolling across the computer display. ”I don't know,” he had to concede. ”I saw a lot of things.

But I didn't see anything that seemed to have anything to do with our search.”

Which might mean, he realized suddenly, that hunting for clones was no longer what he was supposed to be doing.

But then what was he supposed to do? Go to wherever Han and Leia were and warn them? Go find Mara and warn her?

He took a deep breath, s.h.i.+fting tired muscles. Always in motion is the future, Yoda had told him after that first vision on Dagobah. At the time Luke had wondered about that remark, his vision of Han and Leia in Cloud City had seemed so simple and straightforward.

But if Yoda had instead seen something more akin to this last vision, with all its tangles and complications, then it all made sense.

Or had he seen something like that? Could it be that what Luke had experienced here was something entirely different? A special event reserved for special occasions?

It was an intriguing possibility. But for the moment, it was an issue he could put aside.

What mattered was that he'd received the guidance he'd sought, and needed to act on it.

All he had to do was figure out exactly what that guidance was.

Stepping over to the window, he looked up at the stars. You will know, Yoda had also told him, when you are calm, at peace. Taking a deep breath, Luke set about calming his mind.

Artoo's soft warbling was starting to take on a concerned tone by the time he turned back around. ”All right,” he told the droid. ”I saw a world with a wide, deep canyon that had buildings built into the sides and a lot of lights at the bottom. Check the main computer and see where that might be.”

Artoo warbled an acknowledgment and jacked into the computer outlet. Luke stepped to his side and watched as a planet name and description came up on the display. ”No, it wasn't Belsavis,” he said. ”The surface wasn't covered with glaciers, and there were no domes. It was also a lot more pleasant.” He frowned, pulling the image back from his memory. ”There were bridges arching all the way across the canyon I saw. There were . . . I saw a group of nine of them, arranged in a diamond pattern: one starting on one level, two more side by side crossing from the next level down, three on the next, then two and then one.”

Artoo whistled and searched some more. A half-dozen more systems scrolled across the display&mdash ”Wait a minute,” Luke said. ”Back up one-Cejansij system. See if there are any pictures in the datafile.”

The display backed up, then altered to a succession of orbital, aerial, and ground pictures. Luke watched as they went past, and by the time the series came to an end, he knew it was the place. ”That's it,” he said. ”The Canyonade on Cejansij. That's where we're going.”

The droid twittered uncertainly, his question scrolling across the bottom of the display.

”I don't know why,” Luke told him. ”I just know I need to go there.”

There was another twitter, this one sounding slightly incredulous. ”To be honest, I don't understand it myself,” Luke conceded. ”I saw a lot of things in that vision, things that are happening or maybe are about to happen. I saw my students leaving the academy-why, I don't know. I saw Leia and Han in some kind of trouble-”

The droid warbled anxiously, and another question appeared. ”No, I don't know if Threepio was with them,” Luke told him. ”The point is that there are a lot of places out there we could go where I might be able to affect things. Too many places.”

He pointed at the view of the vast canyon. ”But the Canyonade is the only place where I actually saw myself. The one part of the vision where I felt peace.”

He looked out at the stars again. ”So that's where we'll go.”

For a moment there was silence. Then Artoo warbled again. ”Point taken,” Luke agreed with a smile. ”If we're going to go, let's stop dithering and go.”

Besides which, he told himself as they headed for the docking bay, Leia's a Jedi in her own right. She can take care of herself. And Han's got a long history of beating the odds, too. And Rogue Squadron could manage without him, and wherever his Jedi students had been going they surely had a good reason for doing so. Whatever this trip to Cejansij was all about, all of them could do without him for a while.

Forty minutes later, once again in s.p.a.ce, he pulled the hyperdrive lever and sent the X-wing jumping to lightspeed. Trying hard not to think about the vision he'd had of Mara.

CHAPTER 13.

Ceok Orou'cya, First Secretary of the Combined Bothan Clans, was urbane, polite, and completely gracious. But beneath the polish, as near as Leia could tell, he also seemed genuinely surprised by her visit.

And beneath the surprise, she suspected, was a great deal of worry.

”You must understand my position here, Councilor Organa Solo,” he said for the third time as he ushered Leia, Han, and Threepio past the outer reception station and into the sumptuous three-story lobby/atrium that filled the front third of the Combined Clans Center Building. ”Your visit, unannounced this way, is highly irregular. Your request”-his fur twitched despite obvious efforts to control it-”is even more so.”

”You have the letter from Gavrisom,” Han put in gruffly. ”You have the letter from Fey'lya. What more do you want?”

The secretary threw a sideways look at Han, and despite the seriousness of the situation Leia had to fight to keep from smiling. Han was at his absolutely most intimidating: standing stiff and tall, scowling unblinkingly, his hand resting on the blaster holstered at his side. The knuckles of his gunhand were slightly whitened with pressure as he gripped the weapon, a subtlety she'd suggested to him on the trip here from Coruscant and one that clearly wasn't lost on its intended audience.

He would have been even more intimidating with Barkhimkh and Sakhisakh standing there beside him. But Bothans didn't much like Noghri, and Leia had decided this situation was ticklish enough already without that extra strain. The two Noghri were lurking somewhere outside, a quick comlink call away if they were needed.

But she wasn't expecting them to be. Between the official weight she was bringing to bear and the threat of more physical consequences from Han, they had Orou'cya in a tight squeeze already. With luck, that should give them a good chance of getting to the financial records before anyone was able to hide or alter them.