Remnant: Force Heretic I

by Sean Williams

  “That in part is why I’m here,” Hamner said. “Cal sent me to make sure you wouldn’t go rushing after your brother on some foolish rescue attempt. We need you where you can do the most good.”

  “He’s right, Leia,” Han said, coming up behind her and taking her shoulders in both of his large hands. “Luke and Mara can look after themselves.”

  “And Jacen’s no slouch, either, Mom,” Jaina reassured her with a broad smile. “In fact, the three of them will probably send the Yuuzhan Vong packing in a day or two!”

  The attempt at levity seemed to work. Jaina’s mother took a deep breath and let it out in a gust. “You’re right, of course,” she said, patting her husband’s hand as he squeezed her shoulders. “There’s a bigger picture we need to consider. Until we know for certain that there’s something wrong, we keep going as planned. To the Koornacht Cluster.”

  “What was I thinking?” Han exclaimed. “If it’s not too late to change my mind, I’d like to put in a vote for Bastion. The middle of a Yuuzhan Vong war fleet has to be better than a Yevethan cell.”

  “The only cell there’s likely to be,” Leia said, with a faint smile returning to her attractive features, “is the one we put you in—for disobeying orders.”

  “Whose orders exactly?” Han said with mock indignation. “I’m the captain of this ship, remember?”

  “You just keep telling yourself that, dear,” Leia said.

  “What does that mean?” Han returned.

  Jaina left them to it, confident that the argument had moved from something serious to just play-fighting. She envied them the ease with which they talked to each other now. Chewbacca and Anakin’s deaths seemed to have cemented their relationship stronger than ever. For all their sharp-sounding words, she knew they were really on the same side.

  Not paying attention to where she was going, she didn’t see C-3PO coming around the Falcon’s corridor until it was too late. With a cry, the golden droid staggered backward, tripping over a carton of rations on the floor and dropping the stack of Yuuzhan Vong-detecting mouse droids he’d been balancing, scattering them over the deck. Startled by the impact, many of them bleeped in distress, scurrying off in all directions. C-3PO flailed helplessly in an attempt to right himself, but the droids kept getting under his feet and hands, keeping him off balance.

  “Oh, thank you, Mistress Jaina,” he said as she grabbed him under the arms and helped him to his feet. “Beastly things! I don’t understand why Captain Solo would need so many of them.”

  Jaina snatched at one of the agitated droids as it went past, but it managed to evade her grasp. Catching these things was harder than getting drewood mites from a womp rat!

  “Because, Threepio,” she said, grabbing for another droid and failing again as it darted between her legs, “they’re programmed to look out for Yuuzhan Vong. Wherever we go, we can seed these droids to make sure there are no—spies.”

  This last part was called out as she lunged again, this time managing to scoop one of the mouse droids off its runners. She pressed the shutdown switch on its belly, then pushed the inanimate droid into C-3PO’s arms.

  “Here you go.”

  “Thank you again, Mistress Jaina. But you really shouldn’t trouble yourself with this. I’m sure you must have much more important tasks to do.”

  “No, not really,” she said, sticking out a foot to head off another one. “Besides, it was my fault that you dropped them in the first place.”

  The job was made easier when Kenth Hamner pitched in to help, stopping on his way back from his meeting with her parents. His age made him less nimble than Jaina, but his longer reach easily compensated. Within minutes, they handed the last of the droids to C-3PO, whose thanks as he ambled off were muffled by the stack of droids once again in his arms.

  “Thanks,” Jaina said to Hamner as Threepio disappeared around a corner.

  “My pleasure,” he replied, dusting himself off. Then, just as she was about to continue on her way, he said, “You know, just between you and me, Cal’s more worried about the Empire than he’s letting on.” He glanced at her wryly. “You’ll let us know if you hear anything more definite from Jacen, won’t you?”

  Jaina frowned, confused by Hamner’s conspiratorial tone. “Of course.”

  Hamner hesitated for a moment, then nodded his thanks and continued on his way to the ramp and out of the ship.

  Jaina was about to go and do a double check on the welds of a bank stabilizer her father had installed for the trip when she heard footsteps coming from the common area. She paused, waiting to see if it was her parents coming to find her. Two seconds later, though, there was the sound of her father crying out followed by a loud metallic crash.

  “Oh, my,” she heard C-3PO say from down the corridor.

  “Threepio!” her father yelled, as a handful of mouse droids scooted across the deck from around the corner.

  Gilad Pellaeon had seen too many people die young to feel that he was, or ever would be, too old to live.

  His memories came and went in flashes, as though a searchlight had briefly found them in a thick fog. His life had become a series of fragments, and he could no longer recall how the pieces fit together. There were images of his birthplace, Corellia, and Coruscant, his home during his youth, but these were swamped beneath hundreds of other memories of other worlds he had visited throughout the years; these in turn were buried beneath thousands of memories of the empty gulfs that separated these planets. He had spent almost a century in space, rarely setting foot on solid ground unless circumstances absolutely demanded it. Deep inside, his heart recognized no world as his home—not even Coruscant, which at best he had endured while there, always glad to leave. No, the closest thing to home he’d ever had was the bridge of a starship—and he’d been on too many of those to feel affection for any particular vessel. Even Chimaera, the Star Destroyer that had served him so faithfully for so long, was, in the end, just another ship.

  He frowned, puzzled. The Battle of Bastion, like the rest of his life, lay in pieces in his mind. The sharpest of these pieces, the most painful, was the image of the destruction of the Star Destroyer Superior—riddled with fires and craters, tumbling to its inexorable and terrible fate in the gas giant below. Chimaera had been in almost as bad shape. His last intact memory was of a coral-skipper coming in low and fast to ram the bridge. He recalled nothing after that. How had he survived? No matter how hard he tried, he could find no memory to quell the confusion that throbbed at his temples. There was just blackness and pain.

  Pellaeon’s childhood memories were lost in that same blackness. He had been born before the Empire, before the anti-alien propaganda, before the fall of the Jedi—even before the birth of the child who would grow to become Darth Vader. His first military role had been with the Judicial Forces, which he had joined at the age of fifteen, having lied about his age. From the vantage point of a ship’s deck, he had watched the tide rise and fall on so many politicians, and he had learned to be cynical about all of them—just as he had learned over the years to trust only in himself and his own judgments. That was how he had survived so many dramatic reversals. He was rarely the one at the front of the army, waving the sword and leading the charge. Gilad Pellaeon was the one more often than not standing back, ensuring his soldiers were well fed, well trained, and, above all, content. He had respect for everyone under his command—and for his enemy, too. That, above all, he thought, was why he was still alive today when so many others around him had fallen. You never knew when your enemy would become your new boss.

  And that, ultimately, was the trouble with the Yuuzhan Vong. They didn’t fit into this picture at all. He’d seen what they could do firsthand at Ithor, the forest world that had been utterly destroyed by the invader. He had argued with the Moffs that they should lend all support possible to the defense of the galaxy. They, however, had resisted the idea of fighting alongside the New Republic and had proposed instead to huddle in their own corner of the gala
xy and watch as those worlds around them crumbled and fell to the alien intruders, all the while remaining blithely confident that they were somehow immune.

  But that confidence, that arrogance, had been effectively shaken with Bastion. Ah, yes. Bastion …

  Other details emerged from the fog as the searchlight of his memory flashed across them: the first alarms as the coralskippers and strange, alien capital vessels had appeared in the system, tearing through planetary defenses as though they were made of paper. The surprise couldn’t have been more total. The disorganized way the Imperial Navy had responded to the grutchins had appalled him. After Ithor, he had done his best to ready the Empire for a Yuuzhan Vong attack, but only his Star Destroyer, Chimaera, had responded efficiently and effectively at short notice. His crew had done everything he could have asked of them.

  Pain stabbed through him, as though someone had rammed a force pike into his side. The memories fled as his insides exploded with fire. His back arched, his mouth opened wide to scream out his protest at the terrible agony flaring through him. He bucked and writhed to try to reposition himself in such a manner that the pain might stop, but nothing seemed to help. Nothing, that is, except for the voice calling out to him. It wasn’t necessarily what the voice said, either, just the distraction it offered.

  But then the pain closed in again, accompanied now by images of the Yuuzhan Vong’s weapons flashing murderously around his ship, and the brilliant, almost blinding explosion of TIE fighters against the night sky.

  Eventually these horrific images dissolved back into the blackness, leaving just the scattered pinpoint lights of the galaxy shining against the infinite darkness of space. The sight was one he had seen many times before, and one he’d thought he could never get tired of. He had always believed the idea of a galactic empire to be slightly ludicrous, since so much of it was empty space. The planets, moons, and asteroids comprising such an empire were just handfuls of sand thrown into a vast ocean of nothingness. No emperor could rule such an ocean, no matter how many of those grains of sand he might call his own. Such vastness defied capture by any means.

  And yet this time, he sensed a difference. The gulfs didn’t seem so empty anymore. There was something—something he couldn’t find words to describe. A web, perhaps, stretching from system to system. A halo. A current running deeper than what lay visible on the surface. A truth, maybe?

  Whatever it was, it made it seem as if the galaxy itself was alive.

  Then even that began to fade as darkness crept in at the edges of his vision, taking the pain away along with everything else that had ever been him. Part of him fought it, as was his nature, but another part was happy to let it go. He had fought so hard and for so long against death that he had, perhaps, not spent enough time really living. He had no family apart from the navy; he had no home beyond the bridge of Chimaera. What was the point of living when he had nothing to live for?

  The darkness opened up beneath him and he fell into it like a stone sinking into the depths of an impossibly deep sea. He could feel fluid all around him, and in his lungs; and yet, strangely, he wasn’t drowning.

  Bacta, he managed to think. They’ve got me in a bacta tank.

  Then that voice again, calling to him.

  Gilad Pellaeon, it said. Admiral, can you hear me?

  He struggled to reply, fighting the darkness that pulled him down like thick tangles of seaweed. All he could manage was a single, choked syllable:

  “I—”

  Is that you, Admiral? Can you talk to me?

  “I-I’m here.”

  With every word, the darkness receded just a little bit more. And as it ebbed, the pain returned.

  “It … hurts.”

  I know, said the voice.

  “Where—?” He wanted to ask where he was, but it didn’t seem as appropriate as, “—are you?”

  I have installed a neural shunt into your inner ear, the voice explained. My voice is coming to you directly through your auditory nerve. Please forgive the intrusion, but we had to take drastic steps to keep you alive.

  “Who—are you?”

  My name is Tekli, Admiral. I am a healer.

  Agony ripped through him like a solar flare, burning every nerve fiber to cinders. Or so it felt.

  “Are you healing me,” he gasped, “or killing me?”

  The pain is unavoidable. The only way to avoid it now would be for you to die. But you must stay with your body, no matter what it’s telling you.

  “I—can’t—”

  Yes you can, Admiral. We need you. If you die now, many others will follow. I’m not about to let that happen.

  He wasn’t used to being spoken to that way, as though by an insistent schoolteacher. “You’re not—?”

  I’m sorry. There are times when we all must endure the hurt in order to survive. Yours is now. The Force requires it.

  Realization came to him then. The Force. This Tekli was a Jedi! But what was a Jedi doing in the Empire? And where—?

  Another memory came to him. He had spoken to the Skywalkers in Bastion shortly before trying to break out of the gas giant’s mass shadow. He remembered they had shown him some new tactics they believed would help in his fight against the Yuuzhan Vong. This Tekli, she must have come with them.

  But what was he doing here with her? Superior was destroyed. He recalled ordering the evacuation of the dying hulk as it plunged into the gas giant. How had Chimaera avoided the same fate? If he had been injured and his crew had evacuated him to safety while they died, he couldn’t live with himself. A good captain went down with the ship. He should be dead.

  You’re not dead, Admiral. Tekli’s voice was compassionate but firm. Like I said, I’m not going to let that happen. You and Chimaera are both banged around a little, but recoverable. Just hang in there a little longer, okay?

  He gritted his teeth and resigned himself to living a little longer yet. After all, what choice did he have?

  When Jacen felt some of the tension ease in the tiny Chadra-Fan healer, he leaned forward expectantly.

  “He fights with us now,” she said, her soft voice barely audible over the mechanical buzzing of the droids assisting her. “He no longer works against us.”

  “You’re sure he will live?” he asked, needing something more definite before he would allow himself to feel relief.

  She craned her neck to look up at Jacen, something approximating annoyance in her dark eyes.

  “Yes,” she said simply. “But not if I continue to be interrupted. I need to concentrate to help him.”

  Her head dropped, and she fell silent again to devote her attention fully to healing the Grand Admiral of the Imperial Navy. Jacen felt subtle movements in the Force around her. He backed away in order to avoid disrupting her concentration further. The Chadra-Fan were renowned for their short attention spans as it was, without his interference making matters worse.

  He stayed close enough to lend her a hand if needed—shoring up her relatively weak Force sensitivity with his own—but he did keep to the rear of the small medical bay, just to stay out of Tekli’s fur.

  Pellaeon had been removed from the bacta tank and now lay on his back on the room’s operating table, attended by the frigate’s 2-1B medical droid as well as Tekli. His numerous wounds stood out starkly in the harsh white light. Jacen could see far more than he actually needed to know that the man before him had come extremely close to death. His hips and abdomen had been half impaled, half crushed upon a control console when Chimaera’s bridge had been rammed by an enemy fighter. One of his junior officers had pulled him from the wreckage and into a medical frigate with survivors of Superior. Under cover of wreckage from the dying Star Destroyer, the frigate had managed to slip away relatively unharmed—although not before a dozen TIE fighters had sacrificed themselves to ensure the Grand Admiral’s escape. The commander of the shuttle who had brought him to Yaga Minor didn’t doubt that it was worth it.

  For a while, though, it had seemed a meanin
gless sacrifice, for Pellaeon had very nearly died anyway. Sizing up the situation in Yaga Minor with admirable speed, the shuttle’s commander had contacted Captain Yage rather than his direct superior in the navy. Yage had ordered the shuttle to dock with Widowmaker immediately to transfer the patient. Tekli and Jacen, weighed down by the healer’s equipment, had stayed with the Imperial commander while Jade Shadow withdrew to a discreet distance. As soon as Pellaeon had arrived, wrapped tightly in a life-preserving cocoon, the Chadra-Fan had gone to work.

  Jacen marveled how close it had been. First, the shock of removing the ageing admiral from the cocoon had stopped his heart. Then his body had failed to respond to bacta when they had finally gotten him into the tank. Tekli had ordered him to be removed so they could go to work directly on his more serious injuries, such as the ragged gashes and splintered bones of his abdomen and upper legs. Dripping blood and fluid, the old man on the operating table had seemed to deflate under the bright lights, losing substance with every second, until, finally, he began to respond to Tekli’s treatment.

  The pilot of the shuttle who had brought the admiral from Bastion had stayed with him throughout. A lean young man by the name of Vitor Reige, he looked exhausted and drawn. His left arm was clearly injured, but he refused to have any treatment until Pellaeon was stable, insisting that all attention be focused upon the admiral.

  After a few minutes, when it was clear that Pellaeon’s condition was going to continue to improve, the pilot exhaled heavily, gratefully, as if he had been holding his breath the entire time he’d been standing there.

  He looked over to Jacen. “He told me to find you,” he said. “Before he passed out the last time, he insisted I should find you Jedi, if you had come here.”

  Jacen frowned. “Because he thought we could save him?”

  The man’s expression became instantly pinched, as if he was offended by the very notion. “He wanted you to know that we were grateful,” he said stiffly. “If anyone should bear a grudge against the Empire, it would be you. But you helped us, and he appreciated that. We all did. I wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t risked your own lives to show us how to fight those …”