by Kathy Tyers
“Possibly.” Firwirrung twitched his tail. “We might have to modify an apparatus … yes. Modify it to keep this strong one alive in a fully magnetized state, calling energies from outside.”
Admiral Ivpikkis’s tail quivered too. “A pipeline to humans. We could own all known space, not merely this empire.”
Catching their excitement, Dev interlaced his fingers and squeezed hard.
“I observe,” said Admiral Ivpikkis, “the need for another shift in strategy. First we secure the strong one. Then we test this theory. If in practice it works, we can call back to the main force of our fleet.…”
They spoke hurriedly among themselves. Ignored by Bluescale, Dev wilted. He could barely follow their speech. He had always been their special pet, their beloved human. Would they tail-sweep him aside?
He touched his throat. He might get his battle droid at last, but at what cost? His anticipation curdled like the slop he’d cleaned off the bulkheads. Entechment was to have been his reward, not …
They might entech him simply because they no longer needed him. He wanted his battle droid, but he craved their love.
They turned around simultaneously. Firwirrung stroked Dev’s arm, lovingly raising red welts. “Help us now. Stretch out to the unseen universe. Give us a name, a place. Help us find him.”
“Master,” Dev whispered. “Will you always put me first?”
Firwirrung stroked harder, bringing tears to Dev’s eyes. “We have never doubted your devotion. Surely you don’t mean to make us question it.”
“No, no.” Dev felt his face go pale. He had made Firwirrung his family, Firwirrung’s cabin his home. He had given up his humanity. If Firwirrung replaced him, what was left?
Bluescale lurched forward. “Dev Sibwarra, we need your service as never before.”
Dev couldn’t tear his eyes off Firwirrung. The entechment chief had always implied that he loved Dev, but had he ever actually sang the word, love? Shaken, Dev took a step backward.
A P’w’eck wrapped brown foreclaws around Dev’s shoulders and held him toward Bluescale. The elder lifted a hypospray.
They couldn’t be doing this. The hypospray wouldn’t hurt much, but he remembered now what would follow. How could they be so unkind, after all he had done? Didn’t they love him? Didn’t Firwirrung? Recognition filtered up out of Dev’s memory. They’d been unkind before, and before that too.
This was his right mind. This was Dev Sibwarra, human, restored by touching the Outsider … but he couldn’t beat his masters’ drugs or Bluescale’s direct domination. He was slipping.
The hypospray relaxed him as before, though he fought it for the sake of his secret. Firwirrung bent close. “Look outward, Dev. Serve us now. Where is this one? What is his name? How can we find him?”
Firwirrung’s head blurred. Dev squeezed a salty river out of each eye. Then he closed out his grief and his awareness of the Shriwirr’s deck, and escaped into the Force. He let the swirling universe carry him past his masters’ dim auras.
The Outsider felt as strong and as close as before, undeniably masculine and kindred, though a second, diffuse feminine presence hung close by. The first one’s sharply focused light almost washed out the second: an echo, perhaps? He didn’t understand. All that he knew was that love and security came from Firwirrung. He avoided touching the Outsider’s Force presence. “In the capital city,” he murmured, half-conscious. “Salis D’aar. The man’s name is Skywalker. Luke Skywalker.” Distracted by the effort of speaking, he opened his eyes again. Firwirrung’s shallow happy breathing tore at his heart. The master didn’t care—maybe didn’t even know!—how jealous their attention to the Outsider made him. Perhaps Ssi-ruuk never were jealous.
“Skywalker,” repeated Bluescale. “An auspicious name. Well done, Dev.”
Dev relaxed into the Force. Their glee and greed vibrated around him. With an unlimited supply of enteched humans, Admiral Ivpikkis could rapidly conquer known space. Dev would be part of it.
Yet he felt humiliated. As much as he resented the Outsider, he opened himself to a bare touch, almost a Force caress, of farewell.
Firwirrung bent close and sang, “Are you unhappy, Dev?”
His sentiments had seesawed so many times in the last few minutes that he was sure of only one thing: if they manipulated him once more, he might lose his sanity. He shut his eyes and nodded. “I am content, Master.” I hate you I hate you I hate you. They would not twist his humanity. No more games with his mind.
Yet he could not hate Firwirrung, the only family he had known for five years. The emotion softened. He dared to reopen his eyes. “Master,” he whispered, “my highest pleasure is to help those who love me.” He forced himself to gaze fondly at Firwirrung.
Firwirrung honked thoughtfully. Plainly the entechment chief’s pleasure was not compassion this time, but control. He touched Bluescale with one foreclaw. “Elder, Dev has grown close to having true love for our kind. Let him stretch a little. Let the decision to serve me be of his own free will. That is higher affection.”
Dev shuddered. Firwirrung had already enslaved him, spirit and soul. Now he wanted Dev willingly to tighten the cords of his own bondage. That might be Firwirrung’s mistake.
Dev laid a hand on Firwirrung’s upper forelimb, making the gesture as Ssi-ruuvi as he could. “This is my master,” he crooned. At any moment, Bluescale might look into his eyes or smell the deception.
“You see?” said Firwirrung. “Our relationship broadens.”
“Take your pet and go,” said Admiral Ivpikkis. “Abuse it as you will. We have work to do, as do you. Busy your mind with the modifications … for Skywalker.”
Firwirrung rocked his head gravely and swept a foreclaw toward the hatch.
Every step away from Bluescale took him that much farther from enslavement. Dev reached the hatchway, then the corridor. The hatch slid shut behind Firwirrung.
An hour later, forgotten as Firwirrung busied himself with schematic drawings, Dev curled up in the sleeping pit’s warm center. How had his mother taught him to open contact? It had been five years. His ordeal had exhausted him. He wanted to lie still and fondle sweet memories.
But he must try before Bluescale renewed him again, and there wasn’t much time. The Ssi-ruuk would catch him eventually. They “renewed” him every ten or fifteen days, even if he didn’t feel needy. He’d pay for this with the deepest renewal of his life, but he owed humankind one effort.
He closed his eyes and emptied himself of hope, repentance, and bitterness. Fear wouldn’t leave. It tinged his control, but he touched the Force through it.
Almost instantly, he felt that brilliance again. He flicked at its edge for attention, then formed an urgent warning in his mind.
Luke flung thermal covers away into darkness. One slithered off the edge of his bed’s repulsor field. For a cold, sleepy instant, he couldn’t remember what had awakened him. Then he recalled a dark, urgent sense of fear and warning. Humanity was in peril because of him. The aliens meant to take him prisoner, and …
Whoa.
Exhaling, he lay back down. Artoo burbled at him from the foot of the bed. “I’m all right,” he insisted. What a dream. He had to guard against inflating his ego. He might be the last—and first—Jedi, but he was no focal point for humanity’s enslavement.
Yet the memory didn’t fade as a dream would. Perhaps someone had honestly warned him of something.
Ben? he called. Obi-wan? Why is this happening?
Forget questions, he commanded himself. There is no why. Search your feelings.
He cast aside fear and false humility and reconsidered the warning in light of the Ssi-ruuk’s known intentions and methods. In that context, the concept felt chillingly real.
What kind of terrible mistake had Ben Kenobi made, sending him here? Jedi masters weren’t perfect. Yoda had believed Luke would die at Cloud City. Ben had thought he could train Anakin Skywalker.
He curled his arms around his knees.
If Yoda and Ben could make mistakes, Luke Skywalker could too. Fatal ones.
If the warning were real, some trace would show in the future. Like ship sightings from a distance, visions of the future sometimes conflicted, but any hint that he could help the Ssi-ruuvi war effort would confirm the eerie warning.
He calmed himself, steadied his breathing and heartbeat, and reached forward to scan the future in his mind. Some things were hidden from him, and some possibilities he glimpsed looked ludicrously unlikely. Seconds, minutes, months later, he spotted the possibility: a map of the future showing the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium stretching into the Core worlds. As Han feared, they had blundered into a trap—but it was worse than they’d anticipated.
And the Ssi-ruuk were about to invade Bakura.
• • •
Dev rolled over, clutching cushions. It was a Jedi out there. This time he’d felt the unmistakable, trained control—even when barely awakened.
Firwirrung’s cabin gleamed under brilliant lights, but he didn’t feel rested. “Master?” he murmured. “Is it time to get up?”
Firwirrung climbed out of the pit. “Hatch alarm,” he whistled. “It’s for me. Go back to sleep.”
Dev curled up tighter but kept one eye open. When the hatch slid aside, a massive blue shape appeared. “Come in.” Firwirrung’s greeting warbled with surprise. “Welcome.”
Bluescale marched toward the bed pit. Dev tried to uncurl, but his muscles stayed taut. He guessed what was coming: The elder had changed his mind and doomed him. The rounded rim guard of a paddle beamer protruded from his shoulder bag.
“Admiral Ivpikkis has conceived a new mission for our young human ally,” Bluescale sang. “He must be freshly renewed before it begins.”
Panicking, Dev wanted to spring up and run away. But where would he run?
Firwirrung blinked slowly. “Then it is my honor to submit Dev to you.”
Bluescale closed a massive foreclaw around Dev’s right arm and yanked him upright. Dev kicked and tried to settle his feet on the firm deck.
Bluescale released him. “Precede me,” he whistled. “Firwirrung shall follow.”
Dev plodded out the hatch and up the dim, nightshift-lit corridor. He could fight this. He could survive a little longer, free to think if not to act … but for only a few minutes. And if Bluescale bullied, cajoled, or hypnotized him into confessing what he’d just done, the Ssi-ruuk might kill him outright. Waste his life energy in their justifiable anger. He’d seen them beat a P’w’eck to death, just using their broad muscular tails.
Worse, if the Ssi-ruuk knew Skywalker expected them, they’d find a way to take him anyway: more force, greater numbers, inventive technology. Even a Jedi didn’t stand a chance. The galaxy would fall.
Dev could think of only one escape. Using what little he knew of the Force, he could plunge willingly into the renewal trance, bypassing Bluescale’s hypnotic awareness.
He recoiled from the idea. Renewal would mean the death of Dev Sibwarra, human. He would forget all that had made him free.
Free for how long? Hanging his head, he grimaced. He had thrown down his life countless times already, for no purpose. This time, he could save dozens of millions of humans … including one Jedi. His was a small, poor unsung sacrifice to buy so many lives. But he’d help them if he could. He’d honor his mother’s memory.
Standing straighter than he had stood in five years, Dev led Bluescale through a too-familiar hatchway.
“Are you awake, small thing?”
Dev blinked. He lay on a warm, nubbly deck near a pair of massive, clawed hind feet. He knew that whistling song and the scent of that breath. A narrow-faced blue head bent close to him. He felt pristine and fresh, like a hatchling emerged from its egg.
“I have healed you,” said …? Dev struggled to remember the name. “Welcome back to full joy.”
Dev reached up and wrapped his arms around … around … Bluescale! … and squeezed embarrassing moisture out of his eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“You have only the thoughts, emotions, and memories that will strengthen you. None of the overburdening clutter that complicates life for your masters.” Bluescale crossed slender forearms over his chest.
Dev inhaled deeply and gladly. “I feel so clean.” He couldn’t remember how Bluescale did this. He never could remember. Obviously, then, that memory wouldn’t have helped him continue his life of selfless service. Anything that gave someone this much peace had to be right. Anyone who gave it must be wholly good. It must be long, hard work.
Master Firwirrung waited outside Bluescale’s chamber, muscular tail flicking anxiously. Dev cringed at the concern narrowing his warm black eyes. Evidently Firwirrung had worried for him. That made him guess something evil had been cleansed away. “I’m much better, Master,” Dev volunteered. “I’ve thanked our dear Elder. Thank you, too.”
Firwirrung touched his left shoulder with his right foreclaw and bobbed his great head, scent tongues extended. “You are welcome,” he answered.
“Now we will go to Admiral Ivpikkis,” sang Bluescale.
Yes, the mission! He remembered that, now, too: a supreme privilege for the sake of the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium. Dev walked between the elder and his master with his head bowed and clawless hands clasped. He had white eyes, furred skin, and a small stinking tailless body. Who was he to deserve such effort on their part, such happiness in service, such important life work?
Jangling noises jostled Luke out of a fitful doze. A light blinked at his bedside, but other than that the room remained dark. “What?” he asked drowsily. There’d been a macabre nightmare … no, a warning. “What is it?”
“Commander Skywalker?” spoke a male voice out of his bedside console. “Are you awake?”
“Getting there,” he answered. “What’s wrong?”
“This is Salis D’aar Spaceport Authority. There’s been a disturbance with some of your, uh, troops. We have several speeders at the Bakur complex for official use. How quickly could you get to the roof port?”
Could this be a trap? Did it have anything to do with the dream warning? He jumped out of the warm, comfortable bed. At least he felt rested, and his aches had left him. “I’m on my way.”
He dressed hastily and decided to wake Chewbacca and take him along. Chewie wouldn’t need to waste time getting dressed, and he’d be extra eyes, brain, and especially muscle. Han had to stay with Leia, though. She’d said something about a breakfast appointment with Gaeriel’s uncle.
A disturbance. He couldn’t imagine Rebel troops making trouble—
Well, yes. He could. He clipped on his lightsaber.
He dashed out his bedroom door and around the corner into Chewie’s, then stepped back from the bed. He didn’t want to tangle with a suddenly roused Wookiee. “Chewie,” he whispered, “wake up. We’ve got trouble.”
“Slow down, Chewie.”
Chewbacca steered the landspeeder around the spaceport’s outer-arc access road. Luke peered ahead and to the right. Pad 12, the temporary Alliance ground base, lay just beyond the next radial road outward from the control tower. Spaceport lights gleamed on this side of the radial, but on the other side, dark night was lit only by occasional flashes that looked like blaster fire. Either someone had shot out Pad 12’s lights, or someone had shut them down. Where was Spaceport Security?
They swooped left, past Pad 12, then onto its access road through an open gate in its high metal-chain fence. Unguarded, Luke observed. Maybe the guards had gone in to settle the disturbance. He pulled down the hitched-up back of his parka. Out here in the night, between two rivers, damp air wasn’t so pleasant.
Four multiship launching/landing pads lay in a cluster between these radial roads and the spaceport boundary, and in the middle of that cluster sat a small, unattractive cantina that looked like two bungalows joined at right angles. Someone standing next to it waved them down.
Chewie grounded the speeder in the angle between bungalows. With the repulsor e
ngine shut down, eerie silence rang for about ten seconds. Then another whizz of blaster fire brought up the hair on the back of Luke’s neck and lit the silhouette of a tall repair gantry. The dark-haired person sprinted toward them. “Manchisco!” Luke exclaimed. “What’s happening?”
The Flurry’s captain shook her black braids. “Our allies—right over there—insist they’ve got a pair of Ssi-ruuk trapped behind one of our ships. I can’t get in close enough to confirm it. They’re shooting everything that moves.”
“Nobody has any macrobinoculars?” Han had a pair on the Falcon, a quarter of a kilometer away.
Manchisco shook her head.
“Well, c’mon. You too, Chewie!” Luke ran toward the gantry, unhooking his saber.
Before they reached it, a voice shouted, “You! Get down! Get back, if you’re unarmed—the aliens have landed! They’ve killed two of us!”
Manchisco ducked into the pitiful cover of an Artoo-size recharge unit. Chewie edged closer to the gantry.
“Ssi-ruuk wouldn’t kill people,” Luke muttered. “They’d take prisoners. Chewie, cover me.” If the Ssi-ruuk were here, he’d rather deal with them himself—despite that eerie warning.
But he had an unsettling hunch. He drew and ignited his lightsaber. By its glimmer, he spotted Chewbacca aiming his bowcaster into the darkness. “Stay there,” Luke said softly. “That’s close enough.”
Eerie silence had fallen again. “Everybody hold your fire,” Luke shouted. Step by step he advanced, holding the saber upright in front of him. Although its light was dim compared with the spaceport beacons, it was all the light in Pad 12.
He rounded an Alliance gunship. Two human bodies lay sprawled on that odd, rough glassy surface. He paced past them, listening hard for hostile intent. All he felt was panicked fright.
Geometric forms sparkled ahead, metallic surfaces of another repair gantry reflecting the light of his saber. “Who’s there?” Luke shouted. “Show yourselves!”
A domed Calamarian head appeared behind the gantry. Then another.
Luke groaned and sprinted toward them. “What are you doing down here?” he demanded.
