the dissenters."
"What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I said. We were all wrong. This ship isn't a museum, or
a temple full of treasure, or a lifeboat--or a monument, either. It's
a tool kit, Doctor--a tool kit for rebuilding a destroyed world."
Turning, Luke grabbed both of Eckels's hands in a fervent grip. Joy
and wonder together animated his smile. "They had time to do more than
prepare this ship, Doctor--they had time to prepare themselves.
That planet is not dead--there are millions of Qella buried in the
ground, awaiting the thaw. And we can give them that."
As soon as Mud Sloth cleared the opening the vagabond had created for
it, Luke gave the thrusters one hard kick, then turned the skiff around
so that all could watch the Qella vessel fall away behind them.
"Are you sure you don't want to cloak us, like you did before?" Eckels
said worriedly to Luke. "I'd really rather not contribute personally
to the warming of Mal-tha Obex."
"The vagabond will not harm us," Lobot said with quiet assurance.
"Don't worry, Dr. Eckels," said Lando. "Lobot here spent so much time
in the tubules that he got promoted to honorary egg."
Luke chuckled. "If you want something to worry about, Doctor, worry
that your friends back at the Institute reversed two digits and dropped
a decimal."
"Our very best planetary climatologist personally supervised the
modeling of the Qella glacial epoch," Eckels said with stiff
professional pride. "If Lobot communicated his recommendations
accurately--" "It understands," said Lobot. "The task required the
building of a new strand of memory code, but it understands."
"I'm still surprised at how small an energy input it's supposed to
take," Luke said. "I thought at first we'd have to bring. in half a
dozen Star Destroyers and keep them here a month."
"Small inputs, and time," said Eckels. "This planet teetered on the
edge--it would probably have recovered on its own, as the Qella must
have expected it would, but for the orbital wobble caused by the loss
of the second moon."
"Look," said Lando. "It's starting."
The hull of the vagabond had begun to glow, crawling blue snakes of
energy snapping along its length as the capacitance charge built up to
a cascade. Then triple beams of energy stabbed downward from each end
of the ship, creating ionized tunnels through the atmosphere in which
precious chemicals began to be renewed. The beams converged at the
surface of the half-frozen ocean below, creating massive explosions of
steam, with towering, scalding plumes rising amidst the ice floes.
"Pretty good light show," Lando said lightly.
"Kind of a shame there's only the six of us to see it."
"Quite the contrary, General Calrissian," said Eck-els.
"That soup will have to simmer a long time, and it would be best for
the Qella if it did so undisturbed."
The bombardment of the planet went on throughout Mud Sloth's long climb
toward its rendezvous with Lady Luck. When the two craft finally met
and docked, Lando and Lobot both eagerly escaped the crowded skiff for
the luxury accommodations of the yacht.
Threepio went with them, chasing a promise of an oil bath.
But Luke and Eckels lingered, looking down on Maltha Obex as the
vagabond, now a small thing in the distance, fell silent. Neither man
spoke of his thoughts, but they shared a single mood of lingering awe
and curiosity.
When Luke closed his eyes and began breathing in deep, slow waves,
Eckels noted it without comment. But he was not wholly surprised when,
a short time later, the vagabond disappeared completely from view.
"You have been practicing," Eckels said, clapping Luke's shoulder
approvingly. "I confess I want to stay and document it almost
especially the day when the Qella begin to emerge. But this is best,
to leave them alone. Tell me, what will you have done last?"
"I don't know how long it will last," Luke said, gazing down on the
planet. "Maybe not long at all. The forces affecting the ship are
complex, and my teacher said that my touch is still too heavy. I had
to try, though--try to draw the curtain and give them back their
privacy, give them some time to heal, to build." He looked toward
Eckels. "But I want to come back, to meet them. I wonder how long
we'll have to wait."
There was more than a touch of sorrow and regret in the archaeologist's
answering smile.
"Give them a hundred years," Eckels said, knowing as he spoke that that
meant he would never return to Maltha Obex. "Or a thousand. We will
let this place stay on the charts as a dead, frozen world with nothing
worth stealing or exploiting. The Qella will not miss us.
Their lives will be full without us. You have given them a great gift,
Luke-a future." He looked out toward the pale white disc of the
planet. "Somehow I know they will make the most of it."
Coruscant, Eight Days 'Later
A damp, cold wind blowing out of a broken sky buffeted Luke Skywalker
as he stood on the cliff above his seacoast hermitage. He stood there
a long time, thinking Of all the reasons he had raised it from the
rocky sands, of the work he had thought to do there.
He had taken the broken pieces of his father's fortress retreat and
tried to remake them into something that could redeem them from their
history. But he saw now that all he had managed to build was a prison,
and that he had been fortunate to escape it.
Extending his hands and his will, Luke found the points of greatest
stress within the structure and pressed upon them, found the points of
greatest fragility and sundered them. With a roar that momentarily
rivaled the wind, the hermitage collapsed in on itself, crushing the
fighter still sealed within it.
But that was not enough to satisfy Luke, not enough to forever erase
the temptation. One after another, he raised the pieces of the ruined
hermitage, the broken ship, up out of the sand and into the air,
crumbling them with the force of his thoughts, until it was a dense,
swirling cloud of pebble-sized fragments and metal bits.
Then, with a final, explosive effort of will, he hurled the cloud of
debris far out beyond the breakers, where it rained down on the
churning water and vanished from sight.
"It's not time yet for me to go away," he said to the wind by way of
explanation. "And when the time comes, there will be a better place
for me than this."
Guiding her three children through the gate ahead of her, Leia nodded
to S-EP1 as she passed by. "You can lock down the perimeter, Sleepy,"
she said. "We're in for the night, and everyone else can stay out till
morning."
"Yes, Princess."
Jacen and Jaina ran on ahead along the flower-lined path, and
unexpected laughter and delighted squeals came back to Leia moments
after they were out of sight. Leaving Anakin ambling on alone, she
hurried toward the house to see what the cause of the commotion might
be. But after only a few long strides, she was br
ought up short by the
sight of Luke carrying Jaina in one arm, with Jacen at his other
elbow.
The three of them were all smiles, though Luke's faded quickly when he
saw Leia's expression.
"Been to the Fleet hospital, I hear," Luke said, making room on the
other arm for Anakin. "How's Han doing?"
"Better," she said. "He's out of the tank now, and looking more like
himself. This was the first time I took the children. What are you
doing here?"
"Belatedly accepting an invitation," he said, showing a rueful smile.
"Help me get the children to bed," she said.
That took some time, for Luke's surprise appearance had swept away any
hint of sleepiness. The children would literally not let go of him
without a promise that they would see him in the morning.
"But right now, your mom and I need to talk," Luke said firmly. "So
it's lights out and eyes closed for you. Think about your father and
send him healing thoughts, so that he can come home as soon as
possible."
Leia watched and listened with a passive curiosity.
When she and Luke were finally alone in the warmly lit family room, she
asked lightly, "Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?"
He laughed. "I haven't changed as much as you probably wish."
"Did you find what you were hoping to?"
The laugh faded from his eyes. "No," he said. "But as happens
sometimes, I found something else. I don't know if I can explain
what."
"I can feel a difference in you," Leia said. "You feel--calmer."
"A lot happened," he said. "I learned from some of it. Leia, I still
want to know who our mother was, and what she gave to us. That still
matters to me. Not knowing is an empty hole inside me, and some of
what Akanah told me would fill it so well that I still want to believe
it."
"But you came back."
"It's the one little piece that maybe I did find that brought me back,"
Luke said. "A lesson about love and family from a woman I never met,
and probably never will. Leia, it's crazy for me to be chasing a hope
from Core to Rim when you and these kids are right here, real as can
be. And if you'd still let me be part of loving them, and teaching
them, and sharing your delight at watching them grow-well, I'm the Jedi
uncle you're looking for."
Her eyes misting, Leia went to him and gathered him into a long,
fiercely glad embrace. "Welcome to my family, Luke," she whispered,
both offering and accepting the familiar and comforting warmth of
connection.
"Welcome home."
About the Author
Michael P. Kube-McDowell* is the pen name of Philadelphia-born novelist
Michael Paul McDowell. His highly praised prior works include the
star-spanning 1985 Philip K. Dick Award finalist Emprise and the
evocative 1991 Hugo Award nominee The Quiet Pools. Both of the
preceding "Black Fleet Crisis" books were New York Times, USA Today,
Publishers Weekly, and Washington Post bestsellers.
In addition to his ten previous novels, Michael has contributed more
than two dozen short stories to leading magazines and anthologies,
including Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, After the
Flames, and Alternate Warriors. Three of his stories have been adapted
as episodes of the horror-fantasy television series Tales from the
Darkside. Outside of science fiction, he is the author of more than
five hundred nonfiction articles on subjects ranging from "scientific
creationism" to the U.S. space program.
A popular guest at SF conventions throughout the Midwest, Michael is
also a member of the cheerfully amateur folk-rock group The Black Book
Band, in
* "Kube" is pronounced "CUE-bee."
which he plays guitar, keyboards, and viola. A live album, First
Contact, was released in 1995 by Dodeka Records.
Michael resides in central Michigan with artist and model-maker Gwen
Zak, children Matt, Amanda, and Gavin, cats Doc and Captain, and
"entirely too much stuff." Passions he will admit to publicly include
the Philadelphia Phillies, Michigan State University, New Jersey soul
food (birch beer, pork roll, and Tastykakes), the Hammond B-3, and the
Oregon coast. At various times he has called Fairview Village
(Camden), New Jersey; East Lansing, Sturgis, and Lansing, Michigan; and
Goshen, Indiana, home.
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