Children of the Jedi

by Barbara Hambly

  "Roganda... didn't you have a son?"

  Roganda looked quickly away. Her voice was almost inaudible under the musical chatter of the market. "He died."

  Turning swiftly, she vanished into the mist, the white swirl of it absorbing her like a white-robed ghost.

  Silent in the narrow alleyway, Leia recalled the day the Rebels had taken Coruscant. The Emperor's palace- endless, gorgeous maze of crystal roofs, hanging gardens, pyramids of green and blue marble shining with gold... summer quarters, winter quarters, treasuries, pavilions, music rooms, prisons, halls...grace-and-favor residences for concubines, ministers, and trained assassins--had been shelled hard and partially looted already, Rebel partisans having killed whichever members of the Court they could catch. These had included, if Leia remembered correctly, not only the President of the Bureau of Punishments and the head of the Emperor's School of Torturers, but the court clothing designer and any number of minor and completely innocent servants of all ages, species, and sexes whose names had never even been reported.

  As Leia walked back across the market square she thought, No wonder she was twisting her hands in fear.

  And stopped, to be cursed at by the driver of a puttering mechanized barrow of cheap shoe kits from Jerijador, but she hardly noticed. She was seeing, suddenly, the topaz ring on Roganda's hand--a hand smaller even than her own, childlike, and completely innocent of either bandages, small cuts, or purple stains.

  "You can't pay for much elegance on a fruit packer's wages..."

  Oso Nim's old pal Chatty had had at least three bandages on his fingers. So had half the clientele of the Smoking Jets and most of the people she passed in the market. Bandages on their fingers, and purple hands--or red, or yellow, depending on whether they were packing bowvine, brandifert, lipana, or vine-coffee... And podon and slochan were sturdy enough to be packed by droids.

  Leia found herself wondering, as she walked quickly back toward the house on Old Orchard Street, what would have happened to her if she'd gone with Roganda to her rooms for coffee.

  Chapter 14

  Who are you?

  The words glowed in amber silence in the almost-darkness of the quartermaster's office on Deck 12. Somewhere in the distance a sweet, complex humming echoed in the labyrinth of corridors and rooms: the Talz singing in their hidden enclave of junior officers' staterooms. Threepio, before he'd shut down, had tried to tap into the Will on this terminal and had reported that though power still functioned in some of its circuits, cable-greedy Jawas had torn out the computer connections somewhere up the trunk line.

  Perhaps, thought Luke, that was one reason he felt instinctively safe here.

  The far-off wailing halted, then resumed with transmuted rhythm. Even the air circulators were silent. The rooms smelled of Jawas, Talz, the vanilla whiff of the Kitonaks clumped like podgy mushrooms at the end of the corridor, chatting endlessly in their soft, squeaking voices. Luke gazed into the onyx well of the screen and felt suddenly tired unto death.

  Who are you?

  He felt that he already knew.

  The word swam up out of the depth, whole, not letter by letter--as if it had existed there for a long time.

  Callista His breath paused. He hadn't actually thought this would work.

  Then...She's all right. They haven't harmed her. Not beyond what she'd take in a rough training session Relief was a flood of sensation so violent it was almost like a headache, release bordering on physical pain.

  Thank you, typed Luke. He was struck by the absolute bald inadequacy of the words on the screen; something you'd say to someone who moved a chair out of your way when your hands were full. Nothing to do with the interrogator droids in the Detention Area; nothing to do with the bruises on Cray's face, or the dead, bitter look in her eyes. Nothing to do with the Gamorreans holding the screaming Jawa over the shredder.

  "Thank you," he whispered aloud, to the no-longer-quite-empty darkness of the room. "Thank you."

  They're on Deck 19, in the starboard maintenance hangar. They've dismantled half a dozen TIE'S to make their village--or Mugshub has, anyway. It's the sows who do all the work There was a pause.

  Fortunate, since the boars are about as smart as the average cement extruder and aren't good for much besides getting into fights and making little Gamorreans

  Can you get me up there?

  I can take you to the cargo lift shaft they're using as a communications tunnel. They've got it booby-trapped and guarded. Can you levitate?

  Yes. I've been--

  You don't have to keyboard, you know. Internal Surveillance had every room and corridor on this ship wired. Charming people

  "I've been using perigen for my leg," said Luke, still looking at the screen, as if it were a wall or a blacked-out window behind which she dwelled. "It's beginning to interfere a little with my concentration, but I can manage." Even as he said it he shivered. In addition to the painkiller's eventual side effect of reduced concentration, fatigue, exhaustion, and the slow grind of constant pain were eroding still more his ability to manipulate the Force. The thought of self-levitating over a lift shaft hundreds of meters deep was an unnerving one.

  Again he asked, meaning it differently, "Who are you?"

  She didn't reply. After a very long time, more amber words appeared on the screen.

  The droid with her, the droid with the living eyes--What is he? What is this? Is this a new sort of creature Palpatine thinks he can use? What is this, that's happening between them?

  "Palpatine's dead." Laser light showing up the Emperor's bones within his flesh... The pain in his own bones, his own flesh, destroying him. Darth Vader's voice...

  He pushed the images from his mind. "The Empire has broken into six, maybe ten major fragments, ruled by warlords and Governors. The Senate's in control of Coruscant and most of the Inner Rim. A New Republic has been established and is growing strong."

  The screen wiped dark for a moment. Then, spreading and flashing across it, a growing design, a dancing spiral geometry of outflung joy. Her joy, Luke realized. The essence, the heart of what he himself had felt in that tree village on Endor's green moon, when he knew that the first terrible hurdle had been cleared.

  Music by someone who no longer had a voice.

  The joy-dance of the bodiless.

  Triumphal delight and utter thanks.

  We won, we won! I died but we won!

  If she had been here, he knew, she would have flung herself into his arms.

  Like Triv Pothman, she'd been waiting a long time.

  What she said was, you have made this worth it for me The designs whirled themselves across every screen in the room and then away, like a ring of dancing waves moving outward.

  Luke said softly, "Almost."

  Another long pause. He knew it was half jesting, and he laughed.

  You're Master Luke? Is Calrissian your real name?

  "Skywalker," he said. "Luke Skywalker."

  He was conscious of the silence implicit in the suddenly black screen.

  "Anakin's son," he added quietly. "It was Anakin who killed Palpatine."

  There was nothing on the screen still, but as if he looked into another person's eyes, he sensed the changing tides of her thought, the wondering contemplation of the vagaries of time.

  Tell me.

  "Another time," said Luke. "What happened to this vessel? This mission? What started it again? How long do we have?"

  How long we have I don't know. I am... side by side with the Will, but there are things of the Will that I do not and cannot touch. Thirty years I have existed so. I managed to cripple the receptors, and before coming here, damaged or destroyed most of the slaved autoactivation relays that would have triggered the computer's core from a distance. The components of the relay were crashed, shattered, destroyed; no one could have found them to activate this station by that means, but there still remained the danger the station could have been activated manually. That's why I... stayed

  "Then
I was right." Luke felt his scalp prickle. "I knew it, sensed it... those guns weren't fired by a mechanical. On a ship this size—“

  I was the one firing the guns. That's where I've been all these years. In the gunnery computers. I was sure you were the Empire's agent. Before you came on board there was no one, nor is there anyone on board save yourself, and the aliens the landers brought in after the Will was activated again ” I don't understand," said Luke. "If no one came on until the Will was activated..."

  It was the Force. I felt it, sensed it... The broken activation relays were set off, all of these years later, by the use of the Force Luke was shocked silent, the neat amber letters like a hammer blow hitting him over the heart.

  "The Force?" He leaned closer, as if to touch her arm, her hand... "That's impossible."

  I know it is.

  "The Force can't affect droids and mechanicals."

  It can't Luke thought about that for a time, about what it meant or could mean. Ithor came back to him, and the cold flood of dread as he'd sat in semitrance at Nichos's side, the sense of something terribly wrong. The wave of darkness spreading outward, reaching, searching... The random numbers that had led him here--the dream of some terrible attack creeping stealthily through the desert night.

  "But why? Why bomb Belsavis now? There's nothing there."

  Nothing except Han and Leia and Chewie and Artoo. Nothing except thousands of innocent people--and the usual handful of the not-so-innocent. And Han and Leia hadn't arrived there yet, when he'd felt that first dark surge. To his knowledge nobody had known they were going.

  "All personnel, report to your section lounge." The computer's voder contralto broke abruptly into his thoughts. "All personnel, report to your section lounge. Abstention or avoidance will be construed as..."

  Better go flashed the orange letters on the screen.

  Can't let your actions be construed as sympathetic to the ill bent of the etcetera. Watch your back For that moment he could almost see her grin.

  -- The Imperial Military Code Section 12-C classifies as capital offenses, among others: Incitement to mutiny against duly constituted authority; participation in mutiny; concealing known or suspected mutineers from central authority of the vessel; concealing evidence of planned or executed acts of mutiny or sabotage from chain of command, physical plant, or automatic self-checking devices on board any Fleet vessel -- After examination of all evidence, the defendant has been found guilty of mutiny against the central authority of this vessel, and of inciting by her participation further mutiny and acts of sabotage by persons unknown

  "What, are they blaming the Jawas on Cray now?" murmured Luke to Threepio, who had switched on again to accompany him to the section lounge. They stood in the portside doorway, half hidden by the Kitonaks who had been brought yesterday to observe Cray's trial and had remained there, chatting, ever since.

  Closer to the screen, the Gakfedd tribe squealed and snarled and yelled, "So it's her fault, the witch!" and "She's the one behind the festerin' Rebels!"

  -- Despite the excellent record of the accused, it is the decision of the Will that Trooper Cray Mingla be executed by laser enclision at 1600 hours tomorrow. All personnel are to report to their section lounges...

  "Luke..." Cray raised her voice above the voder monotone of the Justice Station. Her face was gray and haggard under the bruises, her dark eyes exhausted and sick with inner pain. "Luke, get me out of here! Please get me out! We're on Deck Nineteen, Starboard Front Sector, Maintenance Bay Seven, we came up Lift Shaft Twenty-one, it's guarded and booby-trapped--”

  The Gakfedds hooted and yelled, and in the Justice Chamber the nearest Klagg guard snapped, "Zip it, skag-face," and Cray flinched--Cray, who despite her makeup and stylishness had never, to Luke's knowledge, shown physical fear in her life. Hot rage flooded him, blotting the pain in his leg.

  But she went on, fast, as the guards seized her arms, dragged her to the door, "Lift Twenty-one! Ten guards, they ricochet blaster bolts down the shaft to hit the lower doors, there's a booby-trap ten meters down the corridor--”

  "Yeah, tell us about it, Rebel tramp!" ”Blow this laser enclision, steam her." "Dump her in the shredder!" "Throw her in the enzyme tanks." "Hey, toss her to the garbage worms..."

  "Sixteen hundred hours tomorrow," whispered Luke, icy chill fighting the red rage in his veins. "We can--”

  "Hey! You."

  Ugbuz, Krok, and three or four other boars stood before him, heavy arms folded, yellow eyes glittering evilly in the reflected glow of the emergency lights that were at this point the only illumination in most of the sector. As more and more systems failed, the ship was growing dark. Since the Jawas were stealing power cells out of the emergency lamps, and any glowrods they could find, someone had set burning wicks in red plastic bowls of cooking oil all around the lounge--there'd already been one fire in a nearby rec room from the same source. The MSE'S and SP-80'S were still cleaning up the sodden mess left by the overhead sprinklers--when Luke had passed on the way to the section lounge, he'd seen Jawas, like myrmins at a picnic, carrying away several MSE'S and looting the power cells out of the larger droids.

  The whole section smelled now of Gamorreans and smoke.

  "I put your name through Central Computer, Calrissian." Ugbuz planted himself between Luke and the doorway.

  Exhausted as he was, Luke found it a strain even to focus the Force on Ugbuz's mind. "I'm not Major Calrissian."

  "That's what the computer says, pal," snarled Krok. "So who are you and what're you doin' on this ship?"

  "We know what he's doin'..."

  "You're thinking of someone else." But Luke felt the cold shadow of something else in their minds, the ugly certainty of the Will.

  Turning to the nearest Kitonak, Threepio reeled off an endless chain of whistles, buzzes, and glottal stops, to which all the Kitonaks listened intently while Ugbuz growled, "There's somethin' funny goin' on here since you first came on board, mister. And I think you and I need to have us a little talk about it."

  The Gamorreans closed in around Luke at the same moment that the Kitonaks, with a sudden burbling ripple of interest, closed in and as one entity seized the Gamorreans, each Kitonak grasping a Gamorrean's arm in huge, stubby hands. And they began to talk.

  Luke darted between them--"Grab him!" yelled Ugbuz between the two portly mushrooms that held him in a grip like stone. He tugged furiously at their hold, but he might as well have tried to un-embed his hand from fast-set concrete. The Kitonaks, having found an audience for whatever it was they had to say, were not letting go. "And somebody get these stinkin' yazbos off me!"

  Two ersatz troopers were already trying to free their compatriots with axes--as he ducked through the lounge door, yanking Threepio after him, Luke saw the ax blades bounce harmlessly off the Kitonaks' rubbery hides. Then the door hissed down behind him with a furious snap.

  Deck 6, laundry drop appeared on the narrow monitor plate where the door's serial combination would usually be shown.

  Luke grabbed Threepio by the arm and hobbled. Behind them the door jerked in its tracks, rising half a meter or so. There was furious pounding, curses, the sizzle of blaster bolts that sang and zapped and ricocheted wildly in the section lounge and--a moment later as the Gamorreans finally got out--in the hall. The fugitives ducked down a cross-corridor and across an office pod, hearing behind them a mellifluous treble outcry of "After them! After them!"

  Luke swung around, gathered all the waning strength of the Force to sweep every desk and chair in the room like the blast of some huge hurricane at the multicolored riot of Affytechans who came barreling through the door. They tripped, fell, tangling in comm cords and terminal cables--Luke's mind flashed out, transforming the cables for a moment almost into the semblance of living things, grabbing snakelike at his pursuers.

  He staggered, his mind aching, and Threepio dragged him on.

  "You go first," he gasped, not knowing if he could levitate Threepio down eight decks of rep
air tube. He fell to his knees, trembling in a sweat of exhaustion before the open panel.

  "Master Luke, I can remain behind--”

  "Not after that trick with the Kitonaks you can't," gasped Luke. "What'd you say to them?"

  Threepio paused halfway through the panel--an incredible display of trust considering that he was not flexible enough to use the ladder rungs. "I informed them that Ugbuz had expressed an interest in their ancestors' recipe for domit pie. That's what they've been discussing all this time, you know. Exchanging recipes. And genealogies."

  Luke laughed, and the laughter gave him a kind of strength. Closing his eyes, he called the Force to him, lifting the golden droid within the dark confines of the shaft. Lowering him... There is no difference between that leaf and your ship, Yoda had said to him once. Raising a single yellow-green leaf the size of Luke's thumbnail, making it dance in the warm, wet air of Dagobah. No difference between that leaf and this world.

  Luke saw the leaf--small, light, shimmering, shiny gold--descend the blackness of the shaft.

  Voices in the corridor behind him. The Gamorreans' curses and squeals, the stern soprano yammering of the rainbow Affytechans.

  He dragged himself into the shaft, hung for a moment on the ladder of staples, trying to summon the strength to levitate himself down. Trying to summon even the physical strength to hang on while he shifted his good leg down one rung, then one rung more...

  You can. He felt her, knew she was there with him. Luke, don't give up...

  He couldn't levitate. In the corridor he heard Ugbuz swear, Krok yell, "That way, Captain..."

  Feet thundered away. Rung by rung, one aching drop at a time, Luke descended, the shaft falling away bottomlessly below him. He felt the warmth of her, the awareness, beside him every agonizing meter of the way.