by Greg Keyes
They're no danger to us."
Jaina's voice crackled over the comm. "That's Rogue Squadron! I can't
believe they would-"
She was interrupted by a hail that came simultaneously to the Jade
Shadow,
Gavin Darklighter's image appeared on the Shadow's display.
"Jade Shadow-it looks like you could use some help."
"This is unwise, Gavin," Luke responded carefully. "Those are Coruscant
security forces pursuing us."
"I've explained their mistake to them," Gavin replied. "They won't
trouble you again."
"They'll just send for more ships. This could really develop into a
situation."
"Maybe the sort of situation the New Republic needs," Gavin replied.
"First Corran, now you? Enough is enough. Fey'lya is selling us off to the
Yuuzhan Vong a piece at a time."
"No, he's not. I have my disagreements with him, obviously, but he's
trying to save the New Republic, in his own way. A civil war can only make
us weaker."
"Not if we make it quick and painless. Not if we have real leadership
when it's over, rather than the fractured, squabbling crowd that's got us
sitting on our thumbs."
"You're referring to democracy," Luke replied. "Something we all fought
very hard for. We can't throw it away
simply because it becomes inconvenient. Gavin, we aren't having this
conversation."
"Okay. I just wanted you to know you have support."
"And I appreciate it. But now is the time for you to flame out of this
situation. If we go right now, we'll get a clear jump. Then you start
talking your way out of this mess."
"You're sure you don't want an escort?"
"Positive."
Gavin nodded. "Understood. Take care. Mara, you too."
His face vanished from the screen, and Luke suddenly felt his fingers
trembling,
"Luke?" Mara said, concern in her voice.
"That was too close," he said. "Too close. I won't be the excuse for a
coup. Am I doing the right thing?"
"Absolutely. Let them arrest you, and you think this resistance won't
come backup?"
"Did you know the squadron would do this?"
"I'd guessed it."
"And you think if we give up . . ."
"An attempted coup within a week, my guess. At the very least an
extremely volatile situation. Skywalker, you were seeing clearly earlier. We
have to go. For the New Republic's sake, for the Jedi's sake-and not least
by a long shot, for the sake of ourselves and our son."
Jaina answered the private hail from Gavin Darklighter, trying to keep
composed.
"Yes, Colonel," she said. "How may I help you?"
"Watch after Master Skywalker, Jaina. He needs you."
"I'll do my best, sir. Is that all?"
"No." Gavin's voice crackled. "I made a mistake not putting you back on
duty once your vision was recovered. I let you down, and I'm sorry for that.
I'd like you to consider yourself still a part of the Squadron."
"I appreciate that, Rogue Leader," she said quietly. "You understand
that right now-"
"As I said. Master Skywalker needs you now. You're still on leave, as
far as I'm concerned. Go, and may the Force be with you."
"Jaina, I need you to do something," Luke said. Corus-cant was
light-years behind them. There was room for an X-wing on the Shadow, but
that space was already occupied by Luke's starfighter. Thus, they chatted
over the comm. Mara and Luke had filled her in on the details of their
flight from Coruscant, and Jaina in turn had explained her continued
detachment from Rogue Squadron.
"Yes, Uncle Luke?"
"I need you to find Kyp Durron for me. I need to talk to him."
"He didn't have much good to say at the last meeting. Why should things
be any different now?"
"Because things are different now," Luke replied. "Now I may have some
things to say he might want to hear."
"Unless you're going to join him in guerrilla warfare against the
Yuuzhan Vong, I doubt that," she replied.
"Be that as it may. It's imperative that the Jedi start drawing
ourselves back together."
"If you ask me to find him, I'll find him," Jaina said. "I found
Booster Terrik, didn't I?"
"This will be a lot easier than that, I should think," Luke replied. "I
know exactly where Kyp is."
"How?"
"Kyp worries me. I took the liberty of placing a tracer on his ship."
"What? If the Yuuzhan Vong pick that up-"
"I didn't endanger Kyp. It's something new one of Karrde's people came
up with to help us find each other without leaking our positions to the
Yuuzhan Vong or their collaborators. Booster has one, too, so we'll be able
to find the Errant Venture with relative ease. It's a fixed-signature
signal, passed through relays and the HoloNet, and gives an off-read within
a range from ten to fifty light-years. No one without the encryption key can
use it to track him, in other words. At short range it sounds like engine
noise, and if Kyp cuts his power to hide from sensors, it'll go off, too."
"Wow. Have I been fitted with one of those?"
"No, but the Shadow has, and I'll give you that encryption, too, along
with Booster's."
"Sounds good. Where's Kyp now?"
"That's the disturbing thing. He's near Sernpidal."
A shiver feathered along Jaina's neck.
Sernpidal. Where Chewie had died. Sernpidal was as deep in Yuuzhan Vong
territory as one could go.
This wouldn't be another little fetching mission. This could get very
nasty indeed.
"That's a long way," she said. "I hope you have some extra juice over
there for me."
"Plenty. We'll hook you up, and I'll transfer some supplies as well."
He grimaced, and she could tell that sending her off like this wasn't
something he did without reservations.
"Thanks, Jaina," he said. "And may the Force be with you."
PART II
PASSAGE
TWELVE
"Oh!" Tahiri exclaimed, wrinkling her nose. "It stinks."
"Yep," Corran agreed. "Welcome to Eriadu."
Anakin agreed, as well, albeit silently. But it was a complex stink. If
he imagined this stuff Eriaduans sucked in every day as a painting, an oily,
bitter, hydrocarbon stench would be the canvas. Sulfury burnt yellow swirled
over it, interspersed with starbursts of white ozone spangles and green
chloride stars, all under a gray wash of something vaguely organic and
ammoniac.
A light rain was falling. Anakin hoped it wouldn't burn his skin.
"Is Coruscant like this?" Tahiri asked. She had already forgotten the
smell and was tracing with eager eyes the clunky but sky-reaching industrial
buildings on all sides of the spaceport. Low leaden clouds dragged over the
tallest structures, though the canopy opened in places to a more distant,
pastel yellow sky.
"Not really," Anakin said. "For one thing, the buildings on Coruscant
aren't this ugly."
"It's not ugly," Tahiri said. She sounded defensive. "It's different.
I've never been on a world with this much . . . stuff."
"Well
, Coruscant's got more 'stuff,' and now that I think about it, the
lower levels make this look like a cloud city. But at least the air is
clean. They don't muck it up like this."
"You mean this isn't natural, this smell?" Tahiri asked.
"Nope," Corran said. "They make things cheap and dirty here. The
perfume you've noticed is one of the byproducts. If they don't watch it,
Eriadu will become another
Duro. Well, what Duro was before the Yuuzhan Vong got
hold or it, anyway.
"I don't think you ought to go barefoot here, Tahiri Anakin remarked.
Tahiri looked down at the grimy duracrete landing field and grimaced.
"Maybe you're right."
Off to their right, a bulk freighter cut its underjets and settled on
repulsorlifts.
"Okay," Corran said. "I'm going to arrange for the supplies we need.
You two-'
"Stay and guard the ship, I bet," Anakin muttered.
"Right."
Tahiri's brow ruffled. "You mean I came all this way and don't even get
to see the place?"
"No," Corran said. "When I get back, we'll go into town and find
someplace to eat. We'll do a little exploring. But I don't want to stay
long; there's no reason for anyone to double-check our transponder code, but
if they do, we could run into a little trouble."
"Well . . . okay," Tahiri assented. She sat on the landing ramp, legs
folded underneath her. Together she and Anakin watched Corran flag a ground
transport and enter it. A few moments later, the blocky vehicle vanished
from sight.
"Do you think people from here think clean worlds smell weird?" Tahiri
asked.
"Probably. What did you think of Yavin Four, after all those years on
Tatooine?"
"I thought it smelled weird," she concluded, after a bit of thought.
"But in a good way. Mostly in a good way. I mean, part of it smelled like a
kitchen midden or a 'fresher sump. But the blueleaf, and the flowers ..."
She trailed off, and her expression changed. "What do you think the Yuuzhan
Vong did to Yavin Four after we left? Do you think they changed it, you
know, like they did some of the other planets they captured?"
"I don't know," Anakin said. "I don't want to think about it." It had
been hard enough to see the Great Temple where so much of his childhood had
been spent destroyed. To imagine that the verdant jungle and all of its
creatures also gone was more than he was willing to put himself rough
without proof.
Tahiri' face stayed long.
"What?" Anakin asked, when she didn't say anything for a while-
"I lied a minute ago.
"Really? About what?"
She nodded at the cityscape. "I said it wasn't ugly. But part of me
thinks it is." "Weil, / don't think it's all that attractive," Anakin
replied.
"No," Tahiri said, her voice suddenly husky. "It's not like that. It's
just that part of me sees this and thinks abomination"
"Oh."
The Yuuzhan Vong had done more to Tahiri than cut her face. They had
implanted memories in her-of their language, of a childhood in a creche, of
growing up on a worldship.
"If you hadn't rescued me;, Anakin, I would be one of them now. I
wouldn't remember any other life."
"Part of you would have always known," Anakin disagreed. "There's
something in you, Tahiri, that no one could ever change."
She shot him a startled frown. "You keep saying things like that. What
do you mean? Is it good or bad? You mean I'm too stubborn, or what?"
"I mean you're too Tahiri," he said.
"Oh." She attempted a smile and half succeeded. "I guess I'll take that
as a compliment, since you never give me any obvious ones."
Anakin felt his face warm. He and Tahiri had been best friends for a
long time. Now that she was fourteen and he was sixteen, things were getting
very confusing. It was like her eyes had changed colors, but they hadn't.
They were just more interesting somehow.
She had cut her hair, right before they left for Eriadu- that had been
a shock. She now wore it in a kind of bob, with wispy little bangs that
tickled at her eyebrows.
She noticed his regard. "What? You don't like my hair?"
"It's fine. It's a nice cut. About the same length as my mom's is now.
"
"Anakin Solo - " Something inside her cut her sentence off short.
"Did you feel that?" she asked in a hushed voice.
And at the moment, he did. Something in the Force. Fear, panic,
resolution, resignation, all bound up together.
"It's a Jedi," he murmured.
"A Jedi in trouble. Bad trouble." She uncoiled like a released spring.
"Where are those shoes?"
"Tahiri, no. I'll go. Someone has to stay with the ship."
"You do it then. I'm going." She stood up and went into the ship.
Anakin followed. She found a pair of walking slippers in her locker and put
them on.
"Just wait a second. Let me figure this out."
"I don't need you to figure anything out for me. One of us is in
trouble. I'm going to help."
She was already on her way out and down the landing ramp.
Repeating some of his father's more inventive expletives, Anakin
hurriedly sealed the ship and ran after her.
He caught up with her at the customs-and-immigration line. She breezed
past everyone else, but was stopped at the force gate, where a gray-haired
official frowned down at her.
"You have to go to the back of the line,"
"No, I don't," Tahiri said, passing her hand impatiently.
"You don't," the woman agreed. "But I need to see your identification."
"You don't care about that," Tahiri insisted.
"Never mind; don't bother," the official replied. "What's the purpose
of your visit to Eriadu?"
"Nothing that would interest you. I have to get through, now
The woman shrugged. "Okay. Go on through." She dropped the force
barrier, and Tahiri dashed past.
"Next."
"I'm with her," Anakin informed her. "You need to let me through, right
now," he added.
"You need to be with her," the official said, dropping the force gate
again, long enough for Anakin to get through.
Behind him, he heard the next person in line say, "Why don't you just
let me through, as well?"
"Why would I do that?" the official wondered caustically.
Naturally, he'd lost sight of Tahiri, but he knew where she was going.
The Jedi they were both feeling was in more distress than ever.
Anakin pushed his way through the rain-slickered portround crowd,
through vendors and street performers, past long rows of cantinas and
tapcafs and souvenir shops full of mostly fake lacy shellwork and grossly
caricatured statuettes of Grand Moff Tarkin.
Three streets in, the crowd seemed to dissipate, and the grubby lanes
were almost empty, except for the occasional six-legged rodent. Here the
scent of hot metal was overpowering, though the streets were relatively cold
and the rain had increased. And ahead of him somewhere, a Jedi's feet were
slowing.
Anakin turned into a long cul-de-sac formed on the left by a
> chrome-facade skyscraper and on the right by the ribbed-steel wall of a
ten-story-high heat sink, steaming in the rain. The end of the alley was the
back of another building faced in blackened duraplast. A crowd of vagabonds
was gathered, watching a murder about to happen.
The victim was a Jedi, a Rodian. He stood against the heat sink, trying
to keep his lightsaber up. Five beings faced him-two with blasters, three
with stun batons. All had just turned to face Tahiri, who was about six
meters from them, arriving at a dead run, her lightsaber swirling bright
patterns over her head.
Anakin saw all of this from a distance of fifty meters or so. He tried
to coax his feet to lightspeed.
Taking advantage of Tahiri's distraction, the Rodian lurched forward.
One of the men with a blaster shot him, and the descending screech of the
bolt reverberated in the alley.
Tahiri's blade sheared through a stun baton, nearly taking the hand of
the thickset woman wielding it. Anakin winced; Kam had been working with
Tahiri on her lightsaber technique, and she was a quick learner, but still a
novice.
Novice or not, the thugs with the stun batons backpedaled, drawing
blasters instead of taking up the fight hand to hand. Tahiri pressed on,
catching one of them and snipping the end of his weapon off. The next man
back fired at her and missed. They started to encircle her.
Finally, Anakin arrived. He recognized the Rodian Jedi as Kelbis Nu.
The man who had shot the Rodian saw him coming, took careful aim, and fired
twice. Two bolts winged into the alley walls, courtesy of Anakin's
lightsaber. He was running past the man, deftly slicing the blaster in half
as he went, when he felt a gun pointing at him. He dropped and rolled as the
bolt screamed over his head.
A person screamed, too-the man who had shot Kelbis Nu. The blast meant
for Anakin had struck him high in the chest, and he fell, legs kicking.
Anakin came back to his feet and found Tahiri facing two men still
armed with blasters and two unarmed. They looked uncertain.
It was only then that Anakin realized, by their patches and uniforms,
that they were Peace Brigade.
The thugs started backing out of the alley in a small knot, blasters
pointed defensively. Anakin stood about a meter to Tahiri's right and a
little in front of her.
"Let's take 'em," she said. Her voice had a furious, cold quality to it
