Scourge

by Jeff Grubb

  “A moment,” said Reen. “The ship’s taken some hard knocks, and Eddey and I should start repairs immediately.”

  Mander looked at her and raised an eyebrow. She had practically insisted on meeting with the Hutts back on Makem Te, but was now passing on meeting with the Corporate Authority. “Very well,” he said, but the Bothan was already examining the long gouges in the side of the New Ambition, shaking his maned head. Mander motioned for the pilot to proceed. Two security officers fell in behind the Jedi, while the others stationed themselves at the dock exits. As he walked, the flight officer punched information into his wrist datapad. Mander knew there would be little small talk.

  The interior of the CSA ship was spotless, of course, the halls patrolled by mouse droids searching for any speck of dust or hint of the untidy. There was no doubt that this was a warship, though—distant klaxons sounded for drills, speakers belched out muddled Basic, and the personnel—all neatly uniformed and used to sudden inspections—moved about with purpose. No one gave a robed Jedi following an officer fresh off the flight deck a second look.

  Three long hallways and a turbolift later, Mander was ushered into the command conference deck. The room was spacious but neatly appointed, with only a few personal items hanging on the wall. A holo-chess set, one of the few additions that showed a personal touch, idled along one wall, its creatures repeating themselves in looping animations. An impressive readout desk was parked in front of the viewport, three chairs set up in front of it. The commanding officer faced away from them, staring out the viewport at the planet below. The planet was a swirl of reddish brown clouds, but a major storm blazed like a white scar across its northern hemisphere.

  “Lieutenant Orrel Lockerbee reporting, Commander,” said the flight officer, saluting, and Mander was sure this time his heels clicked. “I’ve brought the Jedi from the surviving vessel.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” said the commanding officer, and turned to regard them both. She was a tall young woman, her blood-red hair pulled back in a stern bun. Her uniform was regulation issue, but its creases were pressed to vibroknife-edge sharpness. This one had risen far and fast in the meritocracy of the Corporate Sector, Mander thought, and wondered if this was a first command for a capital ship. She pressed the glowing symbols on the translucent desktop and said, “The other vessel?”

  “A Ghtroc Seven-twenty light freighter, retrofitted as a raider,” responded the flight officer. “It was destroyed in the engagement.”

  “It belonged to the Bomu clan, if that helps,” said Mander. “Rodians. I don’t suppose there were any survivors to question?”

  The commanding officer gave Mander a stern look, then said, “Good job, Lieutenant. That will be all.” Lockerbee saluted again and retreated. Mander wondered if they had done a time study to calculate how much profitable work was lost due to saluting, and if the commensurate increase in better discipline merited it. Knowing the CSA, someone probably had.

  “Lieutenant Commander Angela Krin,” said the officer, “in command of the CSA ship Resolute, and overseeing the quarantine on Endregaad.”

  “Mander Zuma of the new Jedi Order,” responded Mander, hands folded patiently in front of him. “My companions are currently checking out the damage to our ship. We would like to thank you and your pilots for the timely rescue out there.”

  “You were lucky,” said the commander. “We don’t run as many deep patrols as I would like.”

  “Fortune favors the prepared,” said the Jedi. “We were aware of the situation on Endregaad, and trusted that if we had difficulty, your well-organized and well-equipped forces would be able to come to our aid.”

  The corner of Commander Krin’s mouth tugged slightly in what Mander could only ascribe to bemusement. She motioned for the Jedi to take one of the seats, and settled herself down across the table from him. “If you are aware of the situation on the planet, then you know that the CSA is not allowing anything on or off that rock until the disease is under control.”

  “Have you had any problems?” asked the Jedi.

  “Early on, there were a number of attempts to get off the planet. Fortunately, there weren’t a lot of vessels present at the time. Ships were intercepted, disabled, and impounded. There were a few spacers with pressing business, too, but as word spread of the interdict, that trailed off as well.”

  “And raiders like the Bomu clan trying to pick off ships coming in-system.” Mander let his voice trail off. “Endregaad is more dangerous than I had presumed.”

  “Yet you came here in any event.”

  Mander nodded. “A mission of mercy, as I told your officer.”

  Angela Krin pushed a few glowing squares on her desk. Their arrangement made Mander think of the holo-chess board. “We don’t have your ship on any of our registries,” she said.

  “It is new,” said Mander. “Maiden voyage. More of a trial by fire, it turned out.”

  Again, the tug at the corner of her lips. Mander could imagine, in another circumstance, she would have a pretty laugh. “Indeed. You are far from Yavin Four, Jedi. Why is the Order interested in Endregaad?”

  “They aren’t,” said Mander, and Angela Krin’s neat eyebrows rose in surprise. “Or rather, they are not any more or less interested in Endregaad than in any other planet. I am here on behalf of Popara of the Anjiliac clan of the Hutts. They provided the ship. I hired the crew.”

  Lieutenant Commander Krin’s jawline tightened and her brow furrowed at the mention of Popara’s name. “The Hutts, then. That’s a surprise. You’re working for them?”

  “With them,” said Mander. “And you know why Popara is interested in Endregaad. His son is somewhere on the surface.”

  “I know,” said the commander, and she slumped a bit in her chair. “I have received numerous requests as to his status, ranging from the demanding to the insulting. I will tell you what I told them: I have no information of this Hutt, and no spare resources to find him. Not with a planet already weakened by the plague. I am afraid you came all this way for nothing. The Hutts wasted your time—and mine.”

  “It was not something I could turn away from, regardless of its likely outcome,” said Mander.

  “Now, about your cargo …,” began the commander, leaning forward and tapping a few symbols on her desk.

  “It is yours,” said Mander, simply.

  Again, Krin was surprised, but tried not to show it. “We have to confiscate it.”

  “No you don’t, since I just gave it to you,” said the Jedi. “You and your organization are better established to distribute the medicinal spice than three people in a damaged freighter. I assume you can add it to your own supplies.”

  Angela Krin smiled now, a sad smile of someone who has been dealing with her own bureaucracy. Mander saw it at once: there were no additional supplies, at least not yet. “Help is on the way,” she said.

  “And some of it is here, now,” said Mander. “With the heartfelt wishes of Popara Anjiliac, and with the hope of creating a lasting trust in these trying times.”

  The commanding officer ran a slender finger over the glyph-dotted desktop. After a moment, she said simply, “I can’t let you land on Endregaad.”

  “I understand. We will conduct what investigations we can from here.” Mander tilted his head slightly and smiled.

  “We can provide some support, in particular in repairing your ship. Payment in kind for your … donated spice.”

  “That is greatly appreciated,” said Mander. “If we are fortunate, perhaps we can find Mika Anjiliac before we have to return.”

  Angela Krin smiled now in agreement. “We will do what we can. Would you and your crew be interested in joining me for mess this evening?”

  “I would love to,” said Mander, “but I will have to ask the others.”

  * * *

  “You did what?” said Reen, her face flushing to a richer blue, her bruised eye taking on a violet hue. They were standing in the crew lounge of the New Ambition. Eddey
had one of the gyros disassembled on the table and was going over it with a fine-tipped vibro-pick, pulling away the worst of the scorched metal.

  “I gave her the spice,” said Mander. “After all, that is one of the reasons we came here—to help relieve the plague.”

  “That was our only bargaining chip!” said Reen, “And you gave it away at the very start!”

  “It was not as if they would let us keep it,” noted Mander. He had returned to the docking bay to find that Reen Irana was already in a tense standoff with Lieutenant Lockerbee and the security squad. She was adamant about not letting the CSA on board her ship, and only relented when Mander gave the approval to off-load the cargo. Polite security team members cleaned out the cargo in record time and retreated to their positions at the doors.

  “They also have been more helpful in giving us supplies and equipment,” said Eddey, slipping on his data goggles and grimacing at the readout. “I think you sufficiently convinced the commanding officer that we are not raiders ourselves.”

  “Did you Voice her?” asked Reen.

  “ ‘Voice’ her?” replied Mander, looking perplexed.

  “You know. Voice her. Jedi Hoodoo. Mind tricks.” She made a theatrical wave of her hand. “Tell her You want to let us land on the planet or something like that. And then she agrees and we go off.”

  “Did Toro tell you we can do that?” asked Mander.

  “I saw it in the holofilms,” said Reen.

  “She watches too many of those,” Eddey put in.

  “It doesn’t work quite like that,” said Mander.

  “So it’s a myth,” said Reen. “Jedi can’t do that.”

  “It is no myth,” said Mander with a sigh. “But it is not as easy as you portray it.”

  “So you can’t change people’s minds,” Reen pressed.

  “We can,” said Mander patiently, “but there are consequences. A person’s mind will be changed, and their immediate actions will be influenced, but it has a long-term effect as well. If it is as simple as getting past a guard or encouraging someone to share information, the damage is minimal. The guard will probably not think about the situation again, or will blame it on a lapse of attention or judgment. We use it to avoid fights or gain information. But when you try to move someone to do something they don’t honestly want to do, they rebel.”

  “And they won’t do it,” said Reen.

  “Worse,” said Mander, “they will. And then the effect will spiral further, as they unconsciously seek to justify those actions to themselves. And that is hard on a lot of people’s minds. It is like an avalanche started from small stones. Your very presence bothers them, since something went wrong when you last saw them. Sometimes using it again against a target will remind them they have been subject to the effect previously, with unpleasant consequences. The Jedi seek not to do damage, so we use the ‘mind tricks’—as you call them—only sparingly, and usually on individuals we don’t think we’re going to encounter again. We don’t know how long we’re going to be here, so no, I did not ‘Voice’ her.”

  “Does it feel like anything?” pressed Reen. “Would the person know if it had happened?”

  “If you’re asking if I have used it on you, the answer is again no, for all the reasons I previously mentioned,” said Mander. “Free will, for all its problems, is easier to work with. When it is attempted—and yes, Jedi are trained to resist this sort of thing—it feels like a pressure against your mind, like a wave passing over you. An impulse, a strong desire, a random thought. And if you are subject to it, when the wave passes, you have little knowledge that it struck in the first place.”

  Reen looked at him long and hard and said, “So what you’re saying is that you didn’t Voice her.”

  Mander let out a deep sigh. “And on that note, you are invited to the commander’s table for dinner.” He gave her a smile.

  Reen did not return it. “No.”

  Mander blinked. “No? Any reason?”

  “I don’t like the Corporates,” she said.

  “You didn’t like the Hutts, either,” Mander said, “but it did not stop you from meeting with Popara.”

  “That’s different,” said Reen. “The Hutts are treacherous, but you can count on them to be treacherous. The Corporate Sector is completely by the book, and when they feel they are right, according to that book, there is no stopping them. One of the reasons I was keeping them off the ship was to give Eddey a chance to pull the navigation unit offline. I didn’t want their slicers getting the coordinates for the Indrexu Spiral.”

  “Before we get a chance to sell them,” added the Bothan.

  “But you managed that, and they are none the wiser,” Mander said. “So you should come to dinner with our gracious hosts.”

  Reen shook her head. “We need to get the ship back together and out of here.”

  Mander cocked his head a moment. “Something else is wrong.”

  “Nothing else is wrong,” said Reen. “We’re just busy. And I don’t want to leave anyone alone in the ship.”

  “No, no, something is definitely wrong,” said Mander. “And I don’t need the Force to tell me that.”

  “Tell him,” said Eddey, not looking up from his work.

  “Nothing is wrong,” said Reen, folding her arms over her chest.

  “Something is wrong,” said Mander.

  “Tell him—or I will,” said Eddey.

  Reen scowled deeply. “I’ve had run-ins with the CSA.”

  “You’ve smuggled,” said Mander succinctly.

  “Some,” Reen said, shrugging. “A little. Nothing bad, nothing major, nothing that a Jedi would blow a circuit about.”

  “Small package trade, really,” said the Bothan calmly. “Personal items, artifacts of dubious provenance, objects of art. That sort of thing.”

  “Nothing bad or horrible,” Reen added quickly. “Nothing like hard spice. Nothing like … Tempest.”

  Mander nodded and thought he understood. Reen and her partner were part and parcel of the shadowy world of spacers, the great majority of whom wouldn’t think twice about bringing contraband through planetary customs if there was a bonus in it. But it was that same evasion of authority that made the spice trade possible, and the same avenues may have been used to bring in the Tempest that killed her brother.

  She knows how smugglers think because she has been one herself.

  He said, “The Jedi are not religious leaders. We don’t provide absolution or forgiveness. The best we can do is help others come to terms with what they have done, and help them make amends. But that does not explain why you wouldn’t want to meet with a CSA lieutenant commander who doesn’t even know you.”

  “Ah,” said Eddey. “There’s the rub.”

  “The original Ambition,” started Reen.

  “The one probably being sold for scrap on Keyorin to pay for the docking fees,” clarified Eddey.

  “The Ambition was,” Reen continued, “for lack of a better word, damaged as result of escaping a CSA corvette, conveniently parked behind a moon near a rendezvous point.” Her cheeks flushed dark again.

  “Ah.” Mander mimicked Eddey. “I understand. And even though it is unlikely that anyone will make the connection, you aren’t sure if you are in a database somewhere, the information just waiting to leap onto Lieutenant Lockerbee’s datapad and surprise you.”

  “That sums it up,” said Reen, but she didn’t look up at the Jedi. The Bothan let out a small cry of triumph as he pulled away a particularly stubborn gasket, now reduced to a tattered black mass.

  “Very well—I will be dining with Lieutenant Commander Angela Krin,” said Mander. “And if your name comes up, I will take note. In the meantime, though, I intend to avail myself of the hospitality her command offers, and try to persuade her that she should trust us enough to let us go planetside. Three days. I think three days should do it, one way or another.”

  “We can get things operating in three days,” said Eddey. “If we can
get the parts. Tender our regrets to the good commander,” he added to Mander, “and both of you can leave me to my work in peace.”

  “Indeed,” said Mander Zuma. “I think it is time to renew my research in CSA standard operating procedures.”

  Three days passed with a glacial slowness. Most of the planetary transceivers were in Tel Bollin, and as far as Mander could tell most of their operators were stricken by the plague or just laying low until the pestilence had passed over. From what little Mander could gather, general society—always a rough-and-tumble affair on mining planets—had collapsed entirely in the wake of the disease. Looting and fires were common; what civil authority was left had its hands full surviving on its own, and therefore had precious few resources to help offworlders. One of the few full holoconversations Mander managed took place with a tired, exhausted officer with white crusts at the corners of her eyes and mouth, her hair an unruly tangle. She didn’t know anything about Hutts onplanet, but said that any exomorphs should have gone to ground, since the survivors were looking for something to blame and nonhumans fit that bill. Then the officer terminated the call in the middle of a prolonged coughing jag.

  Once further attempts to contact anyone on the ground proved equally problematic, the Jedi turned to the ship’s library. It was a smart little operation consisting of a set of military histories and CSA law, the former well thumbed while the latter apparently pristine since the ship was first launched. He mixed the two, in particular checking out the regulations and specifications of the Corporate Sector Authority’s navy.

  Each evening, Mander would present himself, in clean and formal robes, to the Commander’s Galley. The first night was with senior officers, and Mander got the standard array of questions directed at the Jedi in the wake of the fall of the Empire: Is the Order starting again? What are your intentions? Will you rule from Coruscant? How have things changed? He deflected them as politely as he could, and got the officers talking about their own experiences in space instead. The nature of the Force was forgotten in stories of running down raiders and recovering contraband.