by Troy Denning
After the Rover had descended to an altitude of two hundred meters, Ioli circled around to the front of the ruins, where a cluster of flooded craters sat in what had once been the villa’s foreyard. Ben suddenly experienced a sensation of frustration, so faint and muted that he thought at first he might be imagining it. As they swooped over the craters, however, the feeling grew stronger, and he recognized it as a reverberation in the Force.
“They were here,” he said.
“Who?” Tanogo demanded over the headset. “Be precise, son!”
“Sorry,” Ben said. “Jaina and Zekk. Those craters were a big problem for them.”
“I’ll say.” Tanogo’s voice was sarcastic. “Getting blasted back to your molecules is always a big problem.”
“Chief!” Ioli brought the skiff’s nose up and wheeled around to land. “That’s his cousin you’re talking about.”
“It’s okay—death isn’t what I’m sensing,” Ben said. As they swung back toward the villa ruins, the feeling of frustration and anger began to grow weaker. “Turn back to our old heading, Lieutenant. I think that’s the way we need to go.”
Ioli started to swing the skiff back around.
“Ma’am, we don’t have time for the kid’s guessing games,” Tanogo said. “If we’re going to look around, we need to get on the ground now. That squadron is only twenty minutes out, and it just went from bogey to bandit.”
“Why?”
“The squadron leader answered your inquiry about what happened here,” Tanogo said. “She’s saying a pair of Jedi bombed the place.”
Ioli glanced over at Ben. Her Duros face remained unreadable, but he could sense her uncertainty through the Force.
“We need to resume our previous heading,” Ben said. “Jaina and Zekk aren’t here. I’d feel them if they were.”
“Even if they’re dead?” Tanogo’s tone was not cruel, just pragmatic. “Ma’am, if we can’t locate these two Jedi, our orders are to determine what happened to them.”
“And to use Ben as a resource,” Ioli said, continuing to bring the skiff’s nose around to the heading Ben had requested. “Are you going to be the one who tells Colonel Solo we didn’t trust his apprentice’s instincts?”
Tanogo fell instantly silent, suddenly pouring uncertainty and worry into the Force. Ben felt both secretly thrilled and vaguely unsettled by the response—thrilled to realize that he had been invested with a certain measure of power simply by being associated with Jacen, unsettled to realize that the reaction to this power was fear instead of respect.
Once the Rover had returned to her original heading, the sensation of frustration and anger grew more discernible in the Force. Ben twisted around in his seat and looked back at Tanogo’s age-flaked face.
“I’m not imagining this, Chief Tanogo,” he said. “The Force is real.”
Tanogo rippled his cheek flaps in what seemed to be amusement. “It’s your call, son. You don’t have to explain it to an old spacecan like me.”
“Okay,” Ben said, still wondering whether he had smoothed things over. “Thanks.”
He turned back around to find a rain-blurred plain of mud and grass sweeping past beneath the skiff. It was impossible to see how far the terrain extended ahead, but Ben knew from the intelligence file that the bog extended for more than three hundred kilometers in every direction—farther than even Jedi could trudge through soft mud in so short a time.
He closed his eyes and pictured Jaina’s face, at the same time focusing his attention on the frustration he felt in the Force. The ripples grew stronger almost instantly, striking him more noticeably from a direction about twenty degrees to their starboard. Without opening his eyes, he pointed. “That way.”
Ioli hesitated for only an instant before swinging the craft in the direction he indicated. The ripples grew even stronger, but now it seemed to Ben that they were coming from about ten degrees to port. He pointed back in that direction.
“More that way.”
Tanogo’s snort came over the headset, and Ioli hesitated a little longer before correcting their course. Ben tried not to let their doubts trouble him, but the ripples began to grow weaker and more difficult to sense.
“Back the other way, I think.”
This time, Ioli did not correct the course at all. “Ben, you’re moving us back and forth,” she said. “If you don’t know where they are, we need to go back to the villa.”
Ben opened his eyes and frowned at Ioli. “Trust me, Lieutenant. It’s not like I’m seeing a waypoint, but they are out there.”
Ioli stared at him for a moment, then slowly nodded. “As you wish, Special Agent Skywalker.”
They made two more course corrections before the ripples strengthened again. This time, Ben extended his Force-awareness as far as he could in that direction, picturing Jaina in his mind and trying to touch her through the Force.
Then, suddenly, she was there in his mind with him, full of surprise and joy and relief—and urgency. Something was terribly wrong, and she needed Ben to help her correct it.
“They’re straight ahead.” Ben tried to open his eyes—maybe he did—but Jaina would not release her grip on his mind. All he could see in front of him was her face, looking at once happy and worried and exhausted. “I think they might be in trouble.”
“When you say straight ahead—”
“I mean straight ahead.” Ben extended his arm toward the image of Jaina in his mind. “There.”
The skiff banked … hard.
“I said straight—”
“I see them!” Ioli snapped back. “But I’m not flying into a hillside, no matter who orders me to!”
Jaina’s image vanished, and a pair of tiny colored blades appeared in the rain at about the same altitude as the Rover. They were some fifty meters ahead, on Ben’s side of the canopy and slowly sliding starboard as Ioli turned away.
Through the heavy weather, it was impossible to see the figures holding the blades, but Ben could feel Jaina’s concern as the skiff continued its turn. He reached out to her in the Force, trying to reassure her that her lightsaber beacon had been noticed, and then the blades passed out of sight.
Ioli’s voice came over the headset. “Tanogo, how long before those bandits—”
“We’ve been flying toward ’em, Lieutenant,” Tanogo reported. “The interceptors will be in missile range in two minutes, and they’ll be on top of us in five.”
“Then we’re in trouble,” Ioli said.
“No, we’re not.” Ben unbuckled his crash webbing and stood. Fortunately, the headset was wireless, so he did not have to remove it before starting aft. “They’re Jedi. Just get us within ten meters.”
Ioli brought the skiff around so hard that Ben had to Force-stick himself to the deck to keep from being flung into the fuselage. She decelerated hard and began to creep forward on the repulsor drives, at the same time issuing engagement orders to their weapons tech.
By the time Ben reached the rear air lock and opened the outer hatch, Ioli had the skiff hovering alongside the hill. For a moment, nothing was visible outside but rain, fog, and mounds of mud and grass. Then one of the mounds suddenly flew off the hillside and landed inside the air lock, spraying tear-shaped mud drops across the viewport of the inner hatch. A moment later the Rover rocked noticeably as a second, heavier weight landed inside.
“They’re in!” Ben reported. “But take it easy. They haven’t had time to—”
“Missile range,” Tanogo reported. “Launch!”
The skiff tipped its nose up and shot skyward so fast that Ben had to catch a grab handle to keep from tumbling back into the Twi’lek weapons tech. A pair of dull thumps reverberated from inside the air lock, and for a moment he thought Ioli might have lost Jaina or Zekk.
A moment later the inner hatch slid open and the two Jedi stepped into the flight cabin, sagging in exhaustion and coated head-to-toe in mud. They were covering their ears against the roar of the engines, but even that did not p
revent a torrent of questions that Ben could only half understand by reading Jaina’s lips.
“What’s … hurry?” she asked. “… nearly lost …”
Ben led them to the only passengers’ seats available in the flight cabin—midway between Tanogo’s snoop station and the weapons station at the aft bulkhead—and motioned them to sit. Zekk obeyed gratefully, buckling himself in and donning a headset hanging on a hook behind his seat.
Jaina took the headset hanging behind the other seat, but continued to stand and fire questions at Ben. “What are you doing here?”
The skiff bucked as the weapons tech deployed chaff and decoys.
Jaina’s eyes went round and, before Ben could answer her first question, she demanded, “Are we under attack?”
Ben nodded. “The Terephonians sent some Headhunters—”
“Those lungworms!” She started to step past Ben toward the snoop station. “How many? Are they on a chase vector or an intercept—”
Zekk caught her arm. “Jaina, you don’t have rank here.” He pulled her back to her seat. “And we’ve just been rescued, remember?”
To Ben’s surprise, Jaina did not jerk her arm away or tell Zekk she wasn’t asking or even flash him a dirty look. She simply sat down and reached for her crash webbing. “Sorry,” she said. “Guess I’m not used to being a civilian.”
“I need to return to my station,” Ben said into his microphone. “Lieutenant Ioli will want to jump as soon as we’re clear of the gravity well, and I’m the navigator.”
Jaina nodded and waved Ben toward the cockpit. “Go. Let us know if we can help.”
Ben started forward, shaking his head in amazement. Jaina was acting like she actually liked Zekk. Maybe Ben’s mother was right about those two after all—clearly, something had changed between them.
The skiff shook as the first concussion missiles fell prey to the countermeasures and began detonating. Ben sneaked a glance at the threat display as he passed Tanogo’s station, then slipped into his own seat feeling immensely relieved. The wily chief had been exaggerating their danger just enough to assure a safe escape. The Terephonian missiles had begun to burn out and drop away almost as soon as they had reached the chaff wall, while the old Headhunters would not even leave the atmosphere until long after the Rover had entered space and hit maximum acceleration.
After strapping himself in, Ben activated the navi computer display and brought up a schematic of the route they had taken to Terephon. “Retrace our inbound jumps, Lieutenant?”
“Do we have a choice?” Ioli asked.
Ben studied a maze of narrow, twisting hyperspace lanes that disappeared into the Transitory Mists with no indication of where they led. “We’ve got a gazillion choices,” he said. “There’s just no way to tell where any of the others lead.”
Ioli nodded. “That’s what I thought,” she said.
Ben plotted a bearing to their first jump and transferred it to Ioli’s display, then set up a course retracing their route out of the Transitory Mists. By the time he finished, the Rover had entered space and escaped Terephon’s gravity well. Ioli sounded the jump alarm, then a faint shudder ran through the skiff and the stars stretched into lines.
“I can handle it from here, Ben,” Ioli said. “Why don’t you get our passengers cleaned up and debriefed? Colonel Solo will expect a full report as soon as we can make contact again.”
Ben removed his headset—the Rover’s engines had fallen silent the moment they left Terephon’s atmosphere—and collected Jaina and Zekk, leading them through a bulkhead into the crew quarters. This cabin was as cramped as everything else aboard the little skiff, with a small galley and a sanisteam unit tucked into the two front corners and four bunks stacked behind a sleeping partition in back.
Ben motioned Jaina and Zekk to the small table in the center of the cabin. “You must be hungry,” he said, turning to the galley. “What do you want?”
Jaina raised her brow—dislodging several flakes of mud—then looked down at her filthy jumpsuit and snorted. “I’m glad to see Jacen hasn’t trained the teenage boy out of you completely,” she chuckled. “Until I have a chance to clean up, a cup of caf will be fine.”
“Then you can have first sanisteam,” Zekk said, rising. “Because I’m starved. I’ll have anything—as long as it’s hot and there’s plenty of it.”
He stepped into the sanisteamer to clean his hands and face, squeezing Jaina’s shoulder as he slipped past behind her. She did not wince or roll her eyes or anything—until she caught Ben staring at her shoulder.
“What?” she asked.
“Uh … nothing.”
Ben turned to the caf dispenser.
“We’re just friends,” Jaina said.
Ben shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
“He’s not even in love with me anymore.”
“Sure,” Ben said, filling her cup. “Whatever you say.”
He turned to give Jaina her caf and found her staring at the sanisteamer’s closed door. Wishing the cup had taken a little longer to fill, he turned back around and reached for one of the sipper lids the crew used at their duty stations.
“Ben—I don’t need a lid.” Jaina’s tone suggested she. knew exactly why he had turned away. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”
Ben put the caf on the table. “Jacen sent us.”
“No kidding,” Jaina deadpanned. “Why?”
“Because you disappeared after you went to Terephon,” Ben said. “And then Tenel Ka started to feel like she couldn’t trust anyone, so she asked Jacen to send us out to see what happened.”
“Then at least we gave her some warning,” Zekk said, emerging from the sanisteam unit. His face and hands were clean, but he smelled more than ever like a bog. “Good.”
“Warning about what?” Ben asked. He punched an order for a nerfloaf sandwich into the multiprocessor—then remembered how low Zekk had needed to duck when he stepped out of the sanisteam unit. He added a bowl of brogy stew to the order and turned back around. “Terephon’s not exactly on Tenel Ka’s side, is it?”
Jaina shook her head. “The Ducha was already mustering her fleet when we arrived,” she explained. “And when we asked to see her, she tried to have us killed.”
“She must have thought we were coming to arrest her,” Zekk added, keeping a watchful eye on the multiprocessor.
“And that’s why you bombed her villa?” Ben asked.
Jaina frowned. “We didn’t bomb anything. Her Miy’tils did that after the battle droids didn’t work.”
“The Ducha bombed her own villa?” Ben asked. “She really must have wanted you dead!”
“It was the only way to protect the sister she has spying on Tenel Ka,” Jaina said. “She could strand us here by destroying our StealthXs, but now that Tenel Ka is the Queen Mother, I’m sure the Ducha has done enough research on Jedi abilities to realize we can touch each other through the Force across great distances.”
The multiprocessor dinged, but Ben barely heard it. He was too confused by what Jaina had said. If he understood the Hapan kinship system correctly—and he kind of doubted he did—the Ducha Galney’s sister was Tenel Ka’s chamberlain, Lady Galney.
“Ben?” Zekk asked, studying the multiprocessor with a worried expression. “Doesn’t that chime mean my snack is ready?”
“Uh, sorry.” Ben placed the “snack”—it was two standard ration packs—on a tray and set it in front of Zekk. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Tenel Ka used to be a Jedi Knight, right?”
“A very good one,” Jaina said.
“Then wouldn’t she be able to tell when someone was lying to her?” Ben asked. “She’d know if Lady Galney was spying on her.”
“Are you saying she doesn’t?” Zekk asked. Without rising, he leaned toward Ben and began opening drawers beneath the counter. “Where are the spoons?”
Ben retrieved a set of silverware from the sterilizing bin and handed it to Zekk. “Lady Galney was sti
ll with Tenel Ka when Jacen sent me on this mission.”
Jaina’s expression grew alarmed. “Then Tenel Ka doesn’t know the Ducha is a traitor?”
Ben shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The last I heard, she was counting on the Galney fleet to bolster her defenses.”
“Blast it!” Jaina pounded the table so hard a gob of purple stew slopped out of Zekk’s bowl. “That’s why the Ducha didn’t want to talk to us—she’s pretending to be on Tenel Ka’s side, and she knew two Jedi would sense the lie.”
“So Tenel Ka will think she’s rushing to the defense—and then the Ducha can attack from inside. That makes sense.” Zekk nodded, then frowned. “What I don’t get is why Tenel Ka can’t sense that her chamberlain is a spy.”
“Maybe Lady Galney can hide it when she’s lying,” Ben said. “If Jedi can do it—”
“Most can’t,” Jaina said, frowning at Ben. “At least not from each other.”
Ben cringed inwardly, realizing too late that hiding lies was one of those special techniques that Jacen probably did not want him talking about.
“Well, maybe Lady Galney can,” he countered. “She wouldn’t need to be a Jedi. All she has to do is make herself believe she’s telling the truth when she isn’t.”
“Or not know she’s lying at all,” Zekk added between mouthfuls.
Jaina turned to Zekk and asked, “You think Lady Galney’s not in on it?”
Zekk shrugged. “You don’t have to be a spy to be a security leak,” he said. “Carelessness is all it takes.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, growing excited. “Sort of like the Blind Woolamander, only in reverse.”
“The Blind Woolamander?” Jaina asked.
“You know—when you use someone innocent to put out false intelligence,” Ben explained. “Only this way, you’re collecting the information from someone innocent, and since she doesn’t know what’s happening, she’s her own cutout, too. It’s a perfect setup against someone like Tenel Ka.”
Jaina looked vaguely worried. “Where are you learning all this stuff?”
Again, Ben winced inwardly. Weren’t other apprentices learning anything Jacen was teaching him?
