Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi II: Omen

by Christie Golden

  “When Ship came to us with the news of the near extinction of the Sith,” she said, her voice clear and strong, “we did not fall victim to despair. We acted. Vessel by vessel, we are assembling a fleet with which we will eventually take back the galaxy from the Jedi, who spread like vermin throughout system after system. Such is our goal.

  “Some will say, one man cannot hold a whole galaxy together. True. But one man can lead and inspire. If the head is cut off, the body will follow. Luke Skywalker has done much to fight the Sith, the dark side. He was at one point the last Jedi, and now he has re-created the Order with hundreds of them.” She was so disgusted by this she was almost spitting the words. “And now, somehow, he has broadcast his presence into the Force. And we can take him down.

  “Lord Vol and I have handpicked a single strike team to bring against this Skywalker. He—”

  “A moment,” said Yuvar Xal, Ahri’s Master. “The Grand Master of the Jedi cannot possibly be simply wandering off alone. He must be on a mission of great importance, and it is logical to believe that he has many vessels under his command. A single strike force would do nothing against that.”

  “There was something about his presence—I do not think so. For whatever reason, my instincts are telling me that he is, if not alone, at least unaccompanied by any sort of fleet,” Lady Rhea said. Vestara understood what she meant. There had been a sense of isolation in Sky-walker’s presence.

  “Regardless, if such does turn out to be the case, we will be able to make that determination and call for reinforcements. A huge fleet will announce our presence. One or two smaller vessels will be able to glean information much more readily,” Lady Rhea continued.

  Xal looked unhappy, but fell silent.

  “Now,” Lady Rhea continued. “We—”

  It rocked through them like a wave. Vestara actually stumbled. It was at once almost overpowering and nourishing. Pure dark side energy crackled through the room, piercing their hearts, like an embrace that was welcomed but too tight to be truly comfortable. Vestara extended a hand, as if she could physically reach out and touch whatever it was that was permeating her entire being. She wanted it, ached for it, felt tears suddenly stinging her eyes—

  And then a rush of joy flooded her.

  Ship. He was all but singing, a devoted pet racing to his beloved master, following that call of the dark side energy.

  “No!” cried Vestara. “Ship!”

  She blinked, recovering as the strange pull suddenly ended. Lady Rhea was staring at her.

  “Vestara, what is it doing?”

  Vestara licked lips suddenly gone dry. She felt intensely, terribly bereft. Abandoned, left behind, empty. Her connection with Ship had always been acknowledged as the strongest among any of the Sith. He had contacted her first, and had maintained that level of—intimacy, almost—through the last two years. Now he had left them, left her, without even a twinge of regret or a farewell.

  “He—he’s gone,” she said in a voice that trembled. “He’s following that—that—call.”

  For a dreadful moment, everyone was still. Horror, anger, and anguish flooded into the Force. And then Lord Vol rose. His body was frail, but his power was not, and he gut-punched them with his determination.

  “We had planned to send a strike force after Luke Skywalker,” he said. “Now we have a more important mission—follow Ship and recover it.”

  Him, Vestara thought. Ship’s male.

  “The strike force will prepare to launch after Ship as soon as you are prepared under the command of Lady Rhea.”

  Lady Rhea turned her eyes to Vestara and nodded. Excitement and fear both clutched at Vestara, but she forced them back. If she was to be of any use on this mission, she would need to be calm, be in control of her emotions, not let them dominate her.

  They would find Ship, and find out what had been so compelling that he had felt it necessary to abandon those he had once come to.

  LEIA AND HAN SAT ON ALLANA’S BED, TUCKING THE COVERS GENTLY IN around her. The little girl was proving to have a backbone of durasteel, given how well she bounced back from things. She seemed to have recovered fully from the incident at the Livestock Exchange and Exhibition, except she seemed unusually thoughtful. Whenever Han or Leia tried to gently coax her into talking, she said she was fine and smiled at them.

  But tonight, she looked up at them just before they each leaned in turn to kiss her forehead. “I have been thinking,” she said.

  The pair exchanged glances and sat down on either side of her bed. “About what, honey?” Leia asked.

  “About … what happened at the show.”

  Leia reached and stroked the girl’s soft, round cheek. “Go on.”

  “You … you had to kill some of the animals to save people.”

  Leia nodded. “That’s right.”

  “But they were just animals. They had been bred to be mean.”

  “It wasn’t their intention, not like with sentient beings,” Leia said, wondering where this was going. “That much is true. But a threat to a being is the same, whether it’s done with intention or not.”

  “But … the nexu. She had cubs.”

  Ah, now Leia understood. “Yes, she did.”

  “And you killed her. Because she was hurting people. So now the cubs have no mother, no one to look after them.” She lifted her calm gaze to theirs. “I think we should take responsibility.”

  “What?” Han exploded.

  “One of the cubs. Radd Minker said you could tame them if you found a good trainer for them. We took their mother away. We should take care of at least one of them. It’s the right thing to do. It’s justice.”

  Han gave Leia a what-the-stang-do-we-do-now look. Leia suspected she had a similar expression on her own face. But she was also unspeakably proud of their granddaughter. Her instincts, her moral compass—they were dead-on. She was an amazing little girl, and would grow into a remarkable woman.

  “You’re right, honey. It is the right thing to do.”

  Han’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought we were getting her a nice little kybuck,” he said. “You know … gentle, small, no mouthfuls of sharp teeth.”

  “We might not be able to keep one for ourselves,” Leia continued as if she had not heard Han at all, “but we can certainly make sure they all go to good and loving homes.”

  “Or how about a tauntaun?” Han said, desperation creeping into his voice. “Threepio can give it a bath every other day.”

  “Can we try to keep one?” Allana asked, slightly wistful, also ignoring Han.

  “We’ll see,” Leia said.

  TAHIRI SAT ALONE IN HER APARTMENT, MECHANICALLY FORKING WHAT passed for dinner into her mouth, chewing and swallowing. It was technically eating, but she paid no attention to the process. Her mind was elsewhere.

  She wondered how Jaina Solo was doing. Several days had passed since that reporter Javis Tyrr had done his “exposé” on the evils of the Jedi. As part of the team that had been responsible for nabbing Seff Hellin, Tahiri was relieved that Daala had agreed not to extradite him or Natua Wan. But it was clear that the Chief of State was smarting, and had decided to do everything she could to humiliate the Jedi if she couldn’t have her prize.

  The interview with Jaina was painful to watch. Knowing the other woman as well as she did, Tahiri could feel Jaina straining to utter acerbic responses to the utterly inane questions Tyrr was asking. Or—which would probably please the Solo daughter even better—pop the reporter one. She was sorry, too, for Cilghal and Tekli, although both came off well. The former’s quiet dignity and composure made Javis Tyrr look tawdry, and the latter’s obvious distress and extreme cuteness were certain to make any viewer root for her.

  The only reason Tahiri was not on holocam with them was that she was no longer officially a Jedi, and therefore Jaina Solo had not been ordered to give her name. For that, Tahiri was intensely glad. There were days when her decision to keep apart from the Order completely felt like the righ
t one. And others when it felt utterly and completely wrong.

  She put down the fork, stared at the half-eaten food, and rested her face in her hands for a long moment. She thought back to the words Seff Hellin had hurled at her, thinking she was a doppelgänger: Murderess, traitor, pathetic slave to her emotions—that’s what she is.

  They’d hurt. They’d hurt more than she would ever have expected. They’d hurt because they were true. She had been all those things … and perhaps still was the latter. She had told Jaina she was trying to figure things out, and she was. Jaina had responded at the time with a hug, and later showed faith in Tahiri by asking her to participate in the Darkmeld conspiracy. Maybe there was a way back from this after all.

  The door chime sounded. Tahiri sighed, shoved aside the half-full plate of food, and padded to the door on bare feet.

  Three GA officers stood outside. Two had weapons. The third was dressed in a suit and carried a datapad atop which was folded a small card.

  “Tahiri Veila, you are under arrest on the charges of obstruction of justice, complicity in the murder of Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, and treason.”

  Read on for an excerpt from Star Wars® Fate of the Jedi: Abyss

  by Troy Denning

  Published by Del Rey Books

  BURIED DEEP INSIDE THE JEDI TEMPLE ON CORUSCANT WAS THE ASYLUM Block, a transparisteel cube standing in its own hidden atrium, bathed in artificial blue light and surrounded by tidy rows of potted olbio trees. Through a second-story wall, Leia Solo could see Seff Hellin kneeling in his cell. He was in the corner, staring at his bloody knuckles as though surprised that hammering at a fusion-welded seam might actually damage them. In the adjacent cell, Natua Wan was endlessly scratching at her door lock, trying to slip her splintered talons into a magnetic seal that a nanoscalpel could not have breached.

  Seeing the pair in such a state made Leia’s heart ache. It also terrified her, for both of Corran Horn’s children had fallen victim to the same condition. Now, with Temple scientists no closer to identifying a cause, she was beginning to fear that this strange insanity might claim an entire generation of Jedi Knights. And that was something she would not allow—not when every new case reminded her how confused and helpless she had felt losing Jacen to the madness of the Sith.

  The golden outline of an access portal appeared in the invisible barrier field that enclosed the atrium. With Han and C-3PO following behind, Leia stepped into the leafy-smelling interior and was not surprised to feel a subtle pang of loss and isolation. The olbio trees were filled with ysalamiri, small white reptiles that hid from their native predators by creating voids in the Force. The adaptation was an invaluable tool to anyone who needed to incarcerate rogue Force-users—and all too often lately, that included the Jedi themselves.

  As the portal crackled shut behind them, Han leaned close and warmed Leia’s ear with a whisper. “I don’t think cutting them off from the Force is helping. They look crazier than ever.”

  “Seff and Natua are not crazy,” Leia reprimanded. “They’re ill, and they need our understanding.”

  “Hey, nobody understands crazy better than me.” Han gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “People are always calling me crazy.”

  “Captain Solo is quite right,” C-3PO agreed. The golden protocol droid was standing close behind the Solos, his metallic breastplate pressing cold against Leia’s shoulder. “During our association, Captain Solo’s sanity has been questioned an average of three times per month. By the psychiatric care standards of many conformist societies, that fact alone would qualify him for a cell in the Asylum Block.”

  Han shot a frown over his shoulder, but turned back to Leia with his best smirk of reassurance. “You see? I’m probably the only one in the whole Temple who receives on their channel.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt that,” Leia said. She gave him a wry smile, then patted the hand grasping her arm. “But thanks—I just wish you really did know what’s going on with them.”

  Now it was Han who grew serious. “Yeah. Seeing’ em slip away like this brings bad memories. Really bad memories.”

  “It does,” Leia acknowledged. “But it’s not the same thing. By the time anyone realized what was going on with Jacen, he was running the Galactic Alliance.”

  “Yeah, and we were the enemy,” Han agreed. “I just wish we could have stuck Jacen in a deten—”

  “We would have, had there been some way to take him alive,” Leia interrupted. They didn’t turn down this lane often, but when they did, it devastated her—and she couldn’t let herself be devastated now. “Let’s just focus on the Jedi we can save.”

  Han nodded. “Count me in. I don’t need anybody else’s family getting caught in the kind of plasma blast we did.”

  Han was still speaking when Master Cilghal and her assistant Tekli appeared, walking between two rows of potted olbios. In their white medical robes, the pair made a somber impression: Cilghal a sad-eyed Mon Calamari with a high-domed head, Tekli a diminutive Chadra-Fan with her flap-like ears pulled tight against her head fur.

  Cilghal extended a web-fingered hand first to Leia, then to Han, and spoke in her rippling Mon Calamari voice. “Princess Leia, Captain Solo, thank you for coming. I trust you were able to find someone to watch Amelia on such short notice?”

  “No problem,” Han said. “Bazel is keeping an eye on her.”

  “Bazel Warv?” Tekli squeaked.

  “Yeah, Amelia just loves the big guy.” Han smiled. “I’m beginning to think that girl’s going to marry a Ramoan when she grows up.”

  The glance that Tekli shot up at Cilghal was almost imperceptible, as was the answering dip from the Mon Calamari’s near eye—but not quick enough to escape the practiced gaze of a former diplomat.

  “Is that a problem?” Leia asked. “Bazel has always been very good with her.”

  “I don’t believe there’s anything to worry about,” Cilghal said. “It’s just that the only link we’ve been able to establish between patients is one of association.”

  “What kind of association?” Han asked.

  “Age and location,” Tekli supplied. “All four victims were among the students hidden in Shelter.”

  Leia nodded. Shelter was the secret base where the Jedi had sequestered their young during the last part of the war with the Yuuzhan Vong. Located deep inside the Maw cluster of black holes and cobbled together from the remnants of an abandoned weapons lab, it had been a gloomy place to care for young Jedi—and now, it appeared, perhaps a dangerous one.

  “Are you thinking environmental toxins?” Leia asked.

  “We decontaminated the place pretty well,” Han added. “But I suppose we could have missed something—the Imperials were making some strange stuff there.”

  Cilghal spread her hands. “It’s impossible to say. At the moment, all we have is a simple observation.” She lowered an admonishing eye toward her assistant. “The sample is too small to establish a statistical correlation.”

  “True, but it’s the only firm link we have among all four,” Tekli countered. “And whether it’s causative or not, Bazel does associate closely with both Valin and Jysella.”

  “Yeah, along with Yaqeel Saav’etu,” Han said. “I’ve heard Bazel call the four of them the Unit.”

  Leia raised a brow. “Did this Unit include Seff or Natua?”

  “Not that I ever heard,” Han said.

  Tekli confirmed this with a shake of her golden-furred head.

  “You see?” Cilghal asked. “There are plenty of facts and connections—but which are significant? Are any?”

  “If anyone can sort it out, it’s you,” Leia said. “In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with being careful.”

  “Of course not,” Cilghal said. “So if you’d rather return to Amelia right away—”

  “No, I don’t think that will be necessary,” Leia interrupted. “Artoo-Detoo is there, and he has standing orders to contact us if anything starts to look out of the ordinary. And we’re
very eager to help you.”

  “Yeah.” Han glanced toward the cell block. “Judging by the looks of those two up there, you need it more than ever.”

  “Thank you.” Cilghal turned and waved them toward the cell block. “But actually, the reason I asked you here is that Seff has begun to improve.”

  Han looked doubtful. “So he didn’t tear up his hands punching walls?”

  “He did,” Cilghal admitted.

  “But he has stopped,” Leia noted. “Is that the improvement?”

  Cilghal nodded. “A few days after we isolated them from the Force, both Seff and Natua began to exhibit symptoms of violent psychological withdrawal. Seff’s present calmness suggests he may have entered a recovery phase.”

  “Wait a minute.” Han cast an uneasy look toward Leia. “You’re saying they’re addicted to the Force?”

  “Only that there’s some connection,” Cilghal said carefully.

  “We’re wondering if the Force acts as some sort of carrier for the madness,” Tekli explained. “Or maybe a trigger.”

  Cilghal fixed an admonishing eye on her assistant. “That’s all speculation at this stage, of course.” The other eye swung toward Leia—a Mon Calamari ability that Leia still found a bit unsettling. “So far, we haven’t been able to confirm either the withdrawal or the recovery.”

  “And that’s why you need us?” Leia surmised.

  Cilghal nodded. “We’d like to conduct a furtive encephaloscan to determine just how calm Seff truly is—”

  “And you want us to distract him,” Han finished.

  “Would you mind?” Cilghal asked. “We can’t establish a baseline stress pattern unless we keep his attention focused elsewhere. And you’re the best con artists in the Temple.”

  “On Coruscant,” Han corrected, a bit too proudly. He hitched a thumb toward C-3PO. “But Goldenrod here isn’t going to be much help tricking anyone. Why’d you want him along?”