Children of the Jedi

by Barbara Hambly

  CHILDREN OF THE JEDI

  by

  Barbara Hambly

  Copyright 1995 by

  Lucasfilm Ltd .

  All rights reserved .

  The chronicle of the dazzling universe of George Lucas's blockbuster Star Wars films continues in this latest in a series of novels that began with Timothy Zahn's celebrated New York Times bestselling trilogy. Now the bestselling space adventure of all time soars to new heights as the Republic faces its greatest challenge yet.

  Princess Leia, Han Solo, and Chewbacca set out on a mission vital to the survival of the fragile New Republic. They are searching for the long-lost children of the Jedi, a quest that takes them to the once vibrant stronghold of Belsavis--a nearly forgotten frozen world. Leia has heard tales of a Jedi exodus from the dark crypts below the planet's surface. She has also heard that since the time of the exodus no one entering the crypts has returned alive.

  Halfway across the galaxy, Luke Skywalker has undertaken an equally dangerous expedition that, if it fails, could have fatal consequences for Leia, Han, and Chewbacca.

  Haunted by ominous dreams and guided by a force he cannot identify Luke journeys to a remote asteroid field over the planet Pzob. There he discovers the automated Dreadnaught Eye of Palpatine--from the days of all-out war.

  Camouflaged deep within a nebulous gas cloud and dormant for thirty years, Eye of Palpatine is governed by a supersophisticated artificial intelligence system known as the Will. Taken aboard the Dreadnaught, Luke is counseled by the spirit of Callista, a Jedi Knight who gave her life to stop the ship once before. Now Luke must learn from her how to destroy it once and for all. The Will has awakened. The Eye of Palpatine is on the move. Its mission: the total annihilation of Belsavis.

  The mystery of the crypts, the invincible power of the Will, the lost Jedi, and the burgeoning passion between Luke and Callista come together in the stunning climax of Children of the Jedi--the latest chapter in the magnificent Star Wars saga.

  Barbara Hambly's novels range from high fantasies to historical mysteries to vampire tales, most recently including Stranger at the Wedding and The Bride of the Rat-God. She holds both a master's degree in medieval history and a black belt in Shotokan karate. A multiple Nebula Award nominee, she is president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She lives in Los Angeles.

  Chapter 1

  Poisoned rain speared from an acid sky. The hunter scuttled, stumbled a dozen yards before throwing himself under shelter again. A building, he thought--hoped--though for a second's blinding terror the curved shape lifted, writhing, into a toothed maw of terror from which darkness flowed out like the vomited stench of rotting bones. Serpents--tentacles--twisting arms reached down for him with what he would have sworn were tiny cobalt-blue hands... but the burning rain was searing holes in his flesh, so he closed his eyes and flung himself among them. Then for a clear moment his mind registered that they were blue-flowered vines.

  Though the stink of his own flesh charring still choked his nostrils and the fire scorched his hands, when he looked down at them his hands were whole, untouched. Realities shuffled in his mind like cards in a deck. Should those hands be stripped away to bone? Or should they sport a half dozen rings of andurite stone and a thin scrim of engine grease around the nails?

  In what reality were those fingers limber, and where did he get the notion a moment later that they were twisted like blighted roots and adorned with hooked nails like a rancor's claws?

  He didn't know. The sane times were fewer and fewer; it was hard to remember from one to the next.

  Prey. Quarry. There was someone he had to find.

  He had been a hunter all those years in shrieking darkness. He had killed, torn, eaten of bleeding flesh. Now he had to find... He had to find...

  Why did he think the one he sought would be in this... this place that kept changing from toothed screaming rock mouths to graceful walls, curving buildings, vine-curtained towers--and then falling back again to nightmares, as all things always fell back?

  He fumbled in the pocket of his coverall and found the dirty sheet of yellow-green flimsiplast on which someone--himself?--had written:

  HAN SOLO ITHOR THE TIME OF MEETING

  "Have you seen it before?"

  Leaning one shoulder on the curved oval of the window, Han Solo shook his head. "I went to one of the Meetings out in deepspace, halfway from the Pits of Plooma to the Galactic Rim," he said. "All I cared about was sneaking in under the Ithorians' detection screens, handing off about a hundred kilos of rock ivory to Grambo the Worrt and getting out of there before the Imperials caught up with me, and it was still the most... I dunno." He made a small gesture, slightly embarrassed, as if she'd caught him out in a sentimental deed of kindness. ”"Impressive" isn't the right word."

  No. Leia Organa Solo rose from the comm terminal to join her husband, the white silk of her tabard billowing in her wake in a single flawless line. "Impressive" to the smuggler he'd been in those days, navigationally if nothing else: She'd seen the Ithorian star herds gather, the city-huge ships maneuvering among one another's deflector fields with the living ease of a school of shining fish. Linking without any more hesitation than the fingers of the right hand have about linking with the fingers of the left.

  But this today was more than that.

  Watching the Meeting here, above the green jungles of Ithor itself, the only word that came to her mind was "Force-full": alive with, drenched in, moving to the breath of the Force.

  And beautiful beyond words.

  The high, thick masses of raincloud were breaking. Slanting torrents of light played on the jungle canopy only meters below the lowest-riding cities, sparkled on the stone and plaster and marble, the dozen shades of yellows and pinks and ochers of the buildings, the flashing, angled reflections of the antigrav generators and the tasseled gardens of blueleaf, tremmin, fiddleheaded bull-ferns. Bridges stretched from city to city, dozens of linked antigrav platforms on which thin streams of Ithorians could be seen moving, flowerlike in their brilliant robes. Banners of crimson and lapis fluttered like sails, and every carved balcony, every mast and stairway and stabilizer, even the wicker harvest baskets dangling like roots beneath the vast aerial islands were thick with Ithorians.

  "You?" Han asked.

  Leia looked up quickly at the man by her side. Here above the endless jungles of Bafforr trees the warm air was fresh, sweet with breezes and wondrous with the scents of greenness and flowers. Ithorian residences were open, like the airy skeletons of coral; she and Han stood surrounded by flowers and light.

  "When I was little--five, maybe six years old--Father came to the Time of Meeting here to represent the Imperial Senate," she said. ”He thought it was something I should see."

  She was silent a moment, remembering that puppyfat child with pearls twined in her thick braids; remembering the smiling man whom she'd never ceased to think of as her father. Kindly, when it sometimes didn't pay to be kind; wise in the days when even the greatest wisdom didn't suffice. Bail Organa, the last Prince of the House of Alderaan.

  Han put his arm around her shoulders. "And here you are."

  She smiled wryly, touched the pearls braided in her long chestnut hair. "Here I am."

  Behind her the comm terminal whistled, signaling the receipt of the daily reports from Coruscant. Leia glanced at the water clock with its bobbing amazement of glass spheres and trickling fountains, and figured she'd have time to at least see what was happening in the New Republic's capital. Even when embarked on a diplomatic tour that was three-quarters vacation, as Chief of State she could never quite release her finger from the Republic's pulse. From bitter experience she had learned that small anomalies could be the forerunner
s of disaster.

  Or, she thought--scrolling through the capsule summaries of reports, items of interest, minor events--they could be small anomalies.

  "So how'd the Dreadnaughts do in last night's game?" Han went to the wardrobe to don his jacket of sober dark-green wool. It fit close, its crimson-and-white piping emphasizing the width of his shoulders, the slight ranginess of his body, suggesting power and sleekness without being military. From the corner of her eye Leia saw him pose a little in front of the mirror, and carefully tucked away her smile.

  "You think Intelligence is going to put the smashball scores ahead of interplanetary crises and the latest movements of the Imperial warlords?" She was already flipping through to the end, where Intelligence usually put them.

  "Sure," said Solo cheerfully. "They don't have any money riding on interplanetary crises."

  "The Infuriated Savages beat them nine to two."

  "The Infuriated...! The Infuriated Savages are a bunch of pantywaists!"

  "Had a bet with Lando on the Dreadnaughts?" She grinned across at him, then frowned, seeing the small item directly above the scores. "Stinna Draesinge Sha was assassinated."

  "Who?"

  "She used to teach at the Magrody Institute-she was one of Nasdra Magrody's pupils. She was Cray Mingla's teacher."

  "Luke's student Cray?" Han came over to her side. "The blonde with the legs?"

  Leia elbowed him hard in the ribs. ""The blonde with the legs" happens to be the most brilliant innovator in artificial intelligence to come along in the past decade."

  He reached down past her shoulder to key for secondary information. "Well, Cray's still a blonde and she's still got legs.... That's weird."

  "That anybody would assassinate a retired theoretician in droid programming?"

  "That anybody would hire Phlygas Grynne to assassinate a retired theoretician." He'd flipped the highlight bar down to Suspected Perpetrator. "Phlygas Grynne's one of the top assassins in the Core Worlds. He gets a hundred thousand credits a hit. Who'd hate a programmer that much?"

  Leia pushed her chair away and rose, the chance words catching her like an accidental blow. "Depends on what she programmed."

  Han straightened up, but said nothing, seeing the change in her eyes.

  "Her name wasn't on any of the lists," he said as Leia walked, with the careful appearance of casualness, to the wardrobe mirror to put on her earrings.

  "She was one of Magrody's pupils."

  "So were about a hundred and fifty other people,” Han pointed out gently. He could feel the tension radiating from her like gamma rays from a black hole. "Nasdra Magrody happened to be teaching at a time when the Emperor was building the Death Star. He and his pupils were the best around. Who else was Palpatine gonna hire?"

  "They're still saying I was behind Magrody's disappearance, you know." Leia turned to face him, her mouth flexed in a line of bitter irony. "Not to my face, of course," she added, seeing Who says? spring to her husband's lips and hot anger to his eyes. "Don't you think I have to make it my business to know what people whisper? Since that was back before I held any power in the Alliance they say I got my "smuggler friends" to kill him and his family and hide the bodies so they were never found."

  "People always say that about rulers." Han's voice was rough with anger, seeing the pain behind the armor of her calm. "It was true about Palpatine."

  Leia said nothing--her eyes returned for a moment to the mirror, to readjust the hang of her tabard, the braided loops of her hair. As she moved toward the doorway Han caught her arms, turning her to face him, small and slender and beautiful and not quite thirty: the Rebel Princess who'd turned into the leader of the New Republic.

  He didn't know what he wanted to say to her, or could say to her to ease the weight of what he saw behind her eyes. So he only brought her to him and kissed her, much more gently than he had first meant to do.

  "The awful thing is," said Leia softly, "that a day doesn't go by that I don't think about doing it."

  She half turned in his grip, her lips set in that cold expression that he knew hid pain she could not show even to him. The years of enforced self-reliance, of not giving way in front of anyone, had left their mark on her.

  "I have the lists. I know who worked on the Death Star, who Palpatine hired in his think tanks, who taught at the Omwat orbital training center--and I know they're out of the Republic's jurisdiction. But I also know how easy it would be for me to juggle credits and Treasury funds and hire people like Phlygas Grynne or Dannik Jericho or any of those "smuggler friends" they talk about to find these people and just... make them disappear. Without a trial. No questions asked. No possibility of release on a technicality. Just because I know they're guilty. Because I want it so."

  She sighed, and some of the pain eased from her face as she met his eyes again. "Luke talks about the power that lies in the dark side. The Force isn't the only thing that has a dark side, Han. And the tricky thing about the dark side is that it's so easy to use--and it gets you what you think you want."

  She leaned close and kissed him again, thanking him. Outside the movement of wind filled the sky with light and the sound of chimes.

  Leia smiled. "We're on."

  The herds ingathered. Cities themselves, they linked and joined to form one great shining city of bright stone, dark wood, flashing glass, exuberant with greenery. Segmented bridges stretched like welcoming hands to join clan platform to clan platform, house float to house float. Balloons, gliders, kites skated the air between the platforms; arborals, tree skimmers, the gaudy fauna of the jungle's top canopy clambered insouciantly up the harvest baskets from the trees below, chattering and whistling on trees and balconies while the Ithorians made their way to the Cloud-Mother's central square.

  The Cloud-Mother--the herd best known for its hospitals and glass manufacturing--had been voted the site of the reception of the Republic's representatives, mostly because it had the best guest facilities and the largest shuttleport, though it was also true that it was one of the most beautiful of the herds. Leia had the impression, as she stepped out into the clear, burning sunlight of the top platform of the Meeting Hall's steps, that the huge square before her was a garden, packed with brilliant silks, wreaths of flowers, from which emerged a forest of wide, leathery necks and gentle eyes.

  An ululation of applause and welcome rippled from the crowd, like the song of a million birds at morning. Ithorians waved scarves and flowers, not rapidly but in long, swooping curves. To human eyes they appeared ungainly, sometimes frightening, but here in their home they had a weird, graceful beauty. Leia lifted her hands in greeting, and beside her she saw Han raise his arm to wave. Behind them, solemnly, the three-year-old twins, Jacen and Jaina, released their nurse Winter's hands to do the same; the toddler, Anakin, only stood, holding Jaina's hand and gazing about him with round eyes. The leaders of the herds stepped from the crowd, over a dozen of them, ranging in height anywhere from two to three meters and in color from darkest jungle green to the bright yellows of a pellata bird. Atop the broad necks, the T-shaped heads with their wide-separated eyes had an air of gentle wisdom.

  "Your Excellency." Umwaw Moolis, Ithorian liaison to the Senate, dipped her neck and spread her long arms in a graceful gesture of submission and respect. "In the name of the herds of Ithor, welcome to the Time of Meeting. General Solo--Master Skywalker..."

  Leia had almost forgotten that Luke would be present, too; he must have come out onto the platform behind her. But there he was, inclining his head in response to the greeting. Her brother seemed to wear an inner silence like a cloak these days, a haunted stillness, the burden of being a Jedi and the roads that it had caused him to travel. Only when he smiled did she see again the flustered, sandy-haired farmboy who'd blasted his way into the detention cell on the Death Star in his borrowed shining white armor and said Oh... er... I'm Luke Skywalker....

  In the shadows of the Meeting Hall's columned porch, Leia could just glimpse the others who'd come
with them to the diplomatic reception: Chewbacca the Wookiee, Han's copilot, mechanic, and closest friend from his smuggling days, two meters plus of reddish fur well brushed for the occasion; the golden gleam of the protocol droid C-3PO; and the smaller, chunkier shape of his astromech counterpart, R2-D2.

  All those battles, thought Leia, turning back to the Ithorian delegation. All those stars and planets, whose names, sometimes, she could scarcely recall, though in nightmares she felt again the ice and heat and terror.... And yet, after all the danger and fear, the Republic was alive. Growing in spite of the warlords of the fragmented Empire, the satraps of the old regime, the planets that tasted liberty and wanted total independence from all federation. Here in the clear glory of the sunlight, the utter peace of this alien world, it was impossible to feel that they would not succeed.

  She saw Luke move, swing around as if at some sound, scanning the two-level arcades that flanked the Meeting Hall, and she felt at the same moment the terrible sense of danger...

  "Solo!"

  The voice was a raw scream.

  "Solo!"

  The man sprang from the arcade's upper balcony with the unthinking speed of an animal, landed halfway up the steps, and raced toward them, arms outstretched. Ithorians staggered, taken by surprise, as he shoved his way between them; then they fell back from him in shock and fear. Leia had an impression of eyes rolling in madness, flecks of spittle flying from his dirty beard, even as she thought, He isn't armed, and realized in the next second that this was one to whom that fact meant nothing.

  The Ithorian herd leaders closed on the man, but their reflexes were the reflexes of a thousand generations of herbivores. The attacker was within a foot of Han as Luke stepped forward, with no appearance of haste or effort, and caught the claw-fingered hand, flipping the man in a neat circle and laying him without violence on the pavement. Han, who'd stepped back a pace to give Luke room to throw, now moved back in, helping to pin the attacker to the ground.