Vision of the future swhot-2

by Timothy Zahn

  "But everything you were doing was the Emperor's work," Luke said. "If he was on the dark side, shouldn't you have been, too?"

  Mara shook her head. "I don't know," she admitted. "But I wasn't." Her gaze came back, and Luke could sense the protective barrier going up again, as if she'd suddenly realized her private feelings had been a little too visible. "You're the Jedi Master. You figure it out."

  "I'll work on it," Luke promised. Yes, the barriers were back up. But not as high as they'd once been. Not nearly as high.

  "In the meantime," she said, "do those sustained control techniques you taught me work on arm muscles as well as lightsabers?"

  Luke focused on her arms, noticing for the first time that they were trembling slightly with muscle fatigue. "They do okay," he said. "But for muscles there's a better technique. Let me show you..."

  * * *

  It was another hour before the swarm of fire creepers finally finished its migration beneath them and disappeared down the cavern passageway. In their wake they left Artoo and everything metal or otherwise indigestible from their packs, though the packs themselves had vanished. And, of course, Builder With Vines's remains.

  Mara glanced once at the scattered bones, then firmly turned her eyes away. Yes, it was the Qom Jha's own fault that he'd gotten himself killed; and yes, on one level it was merely the balance of nature at work; and yes, she'd tried her best to keep Luke from taking any of the blame on himself. But none of that meant she had to like what had happened, or wanted to look at the results. "Good thing the food bars were in metal boxes," she commented, massaging her fingers as she prodded what was left of their equipment with the tip of her boot. "The water bottles didn't hold up nearly as well, though."

  "There's plenty of water down here," Luke reminded her. He was standing near their cut, looking up at Child Of Winds. "We just won't be able to carry extra supplies with us. It's all safe now, Child Of Winds. You can come down."

  The young Qom Qae didn't budge, that almost-voice going again. "I understand," Luke said gently. "But you have to come down. You're in the way up there, and we don't want to hit you with our lightsabers."

  For a moment Mara thought Child Of Winds would decide he preferred to stay high up off the floor and take his chances with the lightsabers. Then, with clear reluctance, he spread his wings and fluttered down to a slightly awkward perch on top of the droid's dome.

  "What now?" Mara asked, crossing to Luke's side. "Back to hack and slash?" Luke shrugged. "The wall's not going to fall apart on its own," he said. "Unless you think we ought to risk using the grenades."

  Mara peered down the passageway. Nothing was visible, but after that fire creeper swarm she was feeling a little spooked herself. "Let's stick with the lightsabers for now," she suggested. "If Splitter Of Stones gets back with the reinforcements before we're finished we'll consider it."

  "Sounds good," Luke agreed, pulling his lightsaber from his belt and igniting it. "Artoo, keep an eye out for any more trouble."

  The droid warbled a slightly nervous acknowledgment and extended his sensor unit again, nearly knocking Child Of Winds off his perch as he did so. "Okay," Luke said, taking his position to the side of their cut again. "Let's get started."

  "Right," Mara said, igniting her own lightsaber. Luke's lightsaber slashed and died; Mara's followed similarly—

  And that, she realized, was that. They'd had the conversation she'd known was coming, and had been dreading, since he first arrived here. And while he'd obviously not exactly been thrilled by the realization of how badly he'd wrecked the past few years, he'd taken the news better than she'd expected him to.

  The question now was what he would do with this newfound knowledge. Whether he would take it solidly to heart and commit to what he now knew was right, or whether the lure of power and quick solutions would eventually drag him back to the easy path. The dark path. She would just have to wait and see.

  CHAPTER

  16

  From behind him came the sound of an opening door, and Han turned his head to see Lando step into the Lady Luck's bridge. "Okay, it's done," the other announced, his tone tense and decidedly grumpy. "Everything's been shut down to standby. Engines, sensors, computer system—the works." He crossed the bridge and dropped into the pilot's seat beside Han. "And I'd like to go on record right now as saying I hate this."

  "I'm not exactly happy about it myself," Han had to admit. "But this is the way it has to be." Lando snorted. "Says a self-admitted Imperial clone TIE pilot," he added accusingly. "You know, Han, I've done some crazy things in my time, but this one takes the prize." Han grimaced, gazing out at the stars. It was crazy, all right. Somewhere out there, a hyperspace microjump away, was an Imperial Ubiqtorate contact station, with all the security and firepower and just plain nastiness that that implied.

  And here they were, probably well within its defensive perimeter, sitting around like a belly-up gornt with their systems cranked way back to keep from being too visible to any auto-rovers the station might have out wandering the area. Waiting for an Imperial clone to come back and tell them where in the shrunken Empire the capital of Bastion was located. "Leia said he was all right," he told Lando.

  "She said he was sincere and not planning to betray you," Lando corrected darkly. "She didn't say he was a competent enough liar to pull this whole thing off. Especially not in front of some congenitally suspicious Ubiqtorate agent."

  Han eyed him. "You don't like clones, do you?"

  Lando snorted again. "No, I don't," he said flatly. "Palpatine may have talked about alien species as being subhuman, but clones are really down there."

  For a minute the bridge was silent. Han gazed out at the stars some more, rubbing his fingertips over his blaster grip and trying not to let Lando's nervousness get to him. Leia had agreed to let him come out here, after all, and Leia was a Jedi. Surely she'd have seen or felt or guessed if something bad was going to happen. Wouldn't she?

  "Tell me about this Baron Fel," Lando said suddenly. "I mean the original one. What was he like?" Han shrugged. "Typical Corellian, I suppose. Well, no, actually he wasn't. He was a farm boy, for one thing, who got bribed with an academy appointment to stop him testifying in a legal action against some big agro-combine official's son. We were at Carida together for a while, though I didn't hang around with him much. He was an honorable sort, I suppose—even a little stiff-necked about it sometimes—and a pretty fair pilot."

  "As good as you?" Lando asked.

  Han smiled tightly. "Better," he said, a little surprised he was actually admitting that out loud. "At least, with something the size of a TIE fighter."

  "So how did he wind up getting cloned?" Lando asked. "As I remember the history, he quit the Empire, joined Rogue Squadron, then got recaptured. So the question is, why would anyone clone a guy who'd already turned once? I don't care how good a pilot he was."

  "Leia and I asked Carib the same question on Pakrik Minor," Han said. "He told us he didn't know, that it wasn't part of the flash-learning they'd been given in the cloning tanks." Lando grunted. "Look. They would have had to hold him for three or four years, minimum, before Thrawn got his cloning tanks up and running. Right?"

  "They didn't need all of him," Han murmured. "C'baoth cloned Luke from the hand he lost at Bespin, remember?"

  "Yes, but Luke's hand was one of Palpatine's trophies," Lando pointed out. "Why would anyone bother keeping parts of Fel in storage? No one even knew Palpatine had all those cloning tanks hidden away, let alone that Thrawn would show up and get them running again."

  "Point," Han conceded. "So they probably kept him alive somewhere."

  "Right," Lando said. "The question is where?"

  "I don't know," Han said. "No one ever found records about him at any of the Imperial prisons or penal colonies we liberated. With his connections to Rogue Squadron, we would have heard if they had."

  He hesitated. "The other thing you might not know is that a month or two after his recapture, his
wife pulled the same sort of vanishing act."

  Lando frowned. "I remember Wedge talking about that once. But you say 'vanishing'—I thought it was the Empire who snatched her."

  "That's what everyone thought at the time," Han agreed. "But once they started sifting through the evidence, it was a lot less clear what had happened. Anyway, no one ever found a trace of her, either."

  Lando shook his head. "If any of this is supposed to reassure me, it's not. The only way Isard could have gotten Fel back on the Empire's side would have been to braintwist him. You want to tell me what kind of clone is going to come from that?"

  Han sighed. "I don't know. All I know is that Leia cleared him." Lando nodded. "Yeah. Sure."

  Again, silence descended on the bridge. This time, it was Han who broke it. "What are Lobot and Moegid doing back there?" he asked.

  "They were practicing their slicing techniques before you had me shut the computer down," Lando said, still sounding grumpy. "They're probably checking over Moegid's equipment now."

  "Did you tell them where we were going?"

  Lando's lips compressed briefly. "I told them we were going into the Empire. I didn't tell them exactly where. Or why."

  "Maybe you'd better go do that," Han suggested. "Moegid may need to brush up on Imperial computer systems or something."

  "I don't think Verpine ever have to brush up on anything," Lando said. But he nevertheless levered himself out of his seat. "Sure, why not? We might as well all be worried together. It's better than sitting around waiting for the hammer to drop, anyway."

  "Don't worry," Han called after him as he left the bridge. "It'll work out. Trust me." There was no response but the metallic thud of the door as it slid shut behind him. Sighing again, Han turned his attention back to watching for Carib's freighter to return. Trying hard not to worry.

  * * *

  The Ubiqtorate agent seated at his console gazed up at his visitor from under bushy eyebrows.

  "All right," he said in a voice that somehow reminded Carib of a thousand prasher worms scratching their wings against tallgrain leaves. "Your ID checks out."

  "Glad to hear it," Carib said, trying to put some righteous indignation into his tone. To his ears, though, he sounded merely plaintive. "Does that mean you're finally ready to listen?" The agent leaned back in his seat, regarding Carib coolly. "Sure," he said. "Provided you're ready to hear a list of charges against you if this big news of yours isn't as flacking urgent as you seem to think it is."

  He slammed his stylus down on the desk in front of him. "Blast it, Devist, you know you're never supposed to come here yourself. All you people are supposed to know that. Everything you have to report goes through channels. Everything."

  Carib remained standing at attention, listening to the reprimand with half an ear and waiting with all the patience he could muster for the other to run out of words. The self-generated tirade, he knew, was one of the Ubiqtorate's classic tactics for rattling someone they wanted to be vulnerable. But no. That wasn't something he knew. It was something Baron Soontir Fel had known. Something that had been artificially transferred along with his piloting skill to Carib and his brothers. Memories that were not his own, from a person who was not him.

  And yet, on some level, was indeed him.

  It was a mind-numbing thought, a painful and depressing blurring of identity that had cost Carib many a sleepless night back on Pakrik Minor before he'd finally made the conscious decision to bury it as far back at the edge of his mind as he could.

  And he'd done a fair job of keeping it there... until the long-awaited, long-feared orders had come in from the remnants of the Empire—could it really have been only two weeks ago?—reactivating his TIE combat unit. Then, all the old uncertainties and questions and self-doubts had surged back to the front of his mind. He was a clone. A clone. A clone...

  Stop it, he snarled at the word. I am Carib Devist. Husband of Lacy, father of Daberin and Keena, tallgrain farmer of the Dorchess Valley of Pakrik Minor. Where I came from and how I came to be don't matter. I am who I am.

  He took a careful breath... and as he did so, the doubts once again returned to their uneasy sleep in the deep crevices of his mind. He was Carib Devist; and despite what anyone might say or believe, he was indeed a unique individual.

  The Ubiqtorate agent was starting to wind down now, and with a flicker of private amusement Carib realized that for once the old intimidation tactic had backfired. Far from unnerving its intended victim, the tirade had instead given him the time he needed to collect his thoughts and his nerve and to prepare for verbal combat.

  "So let's hear it," the agent snarled. "Let's hear this vitally important news of yours."

  "Yes, sir," Carib said. "There was an Imperial attack on New Republic High Councilor Leia Organa Solo over Pakrik Minor five days ago. It failed."

  "Yes, thank you, we know that," the agent said sarcastically. "Are you telling me you broke security—?"

  "The reason it failed," Carib continued, "was because—"

  "I'm talking here, Devist," the agent snapped. "You broke security for a story we could have pulled off Coruscant Hourly—?"

  "—was because," Carib went on doggedly, "they were assisted—"

  "Will you shut up? I'll have your skin pickled in—"

  "—by an unknown alien ship," Carib finished.

  "—a Hutt's slimy—" He broke off. "What do you mean, an unknown alien ship?" he demanded.

  "I mean a ship with a completely unknown design," Carib said. "It had four outboard panels like the two on a TIE fighter, but the rest was definitely non-Imperial." For a long moment the agent measured Carib with his eyes. "I don't suppose you happened to pull any records of the battle," he said at last, his tone challenging.

  "Not of the battle itself," Carib said, pulling a datacard from his side pouch. "But we did get something of the ship afterward."

  The agent held out his hand. Carib dropped the datacard into it, mentally crossing his fingers. Solo had cobbled this thing together during the trip here from a pair of records he and Organa Solo had had with them in their ship. Where they'd gotten the originals Carib didn't know. And really didn't care, either. Combat, intrigue, galactic security—none of those were matters he and his brothers wanted anything to do with anymore. All they wanted was to be left alone to raise their families and tend their farms and live their lives.

  And all he cared about at this immediate moment was that Solo's gimmicked record be good enough to fool this glowering bit-pusher into believing it. If it was... The agent whistled under his breath, peering at his reader. "Tarkin's teeth," he muttered, shaking his head. "Are these energy readings correct?"

  "That's what was there." Carib hesitated, but he couldn't resist. "So was it worth breaking security for?"

  The agent looked up, but it was clear he wasn't really seeing Carib anymore. "I'd say so, yes," he said absently, keying his board furiously. "Sure. Just watch it when you head home, and keep with the zigzag. Dismissed."

  And that was it. No thank-yous, no well-dones, no nothing. Just a petty little Ubiqtorate agent on dead-end duty at the edge of nowhere with visions of promotion dancing through his head. But that was okay, Carib knew as he headed down the corridor. His part was done now, or almost done, and Solo would take it from here. He could go back to Lacy and his brothers and sink back into the quiet anonymity that was all any of them desired.

  Unless...

  He grimaced as a thought belatedly struck him. Yes, the Ubiqtorate' agent back there had swallowed the bait in a single eager gulp. But that was no guarantee the military analysts on Bastion who would take the record apart would do the same.

  And it was no guarantee at all that Grand Admiral Thrawn wouldn't see instantly through the scam. If he did, and if Solo was still in Imperial space at the time...

  He shook his head once to clear it. No. He'd done what they wanted, and had risked his own neck to do it. What happened now was in their hands, not his. His part was do
ne. Period. Quickening his pace, he headed toward the docking tunnel where his freighter was berthed. The faster he got out of here and back to his farm, the better.

  * * *

  From off to the side, the speaker suddenly crackled. "Solo?"

  Hastily, Han dropped his feet off the edge of the control board where they'd been propped and keyed the comm. "Yeah, I'm here, Carib," he said. "You got it?"

  "Yes," Carib said. "He sent the droid probe off on vector forty-three by fifteen." Behind Han, the bridge door opened. "Is that Devist?" Lando asked.

  "Yeah," Han said as he punched up a chart. "You sure this is the vector to Bastion?"

  "It's the direction the probe went," Carib said. "I'm sending you a copy of the recording."

  "What I meant was are you sure he was sending it to Bastion," Han said as a beep from the board acknowledged receipt of the transmission.

  "He didn't say anything one way or the other," Carib said. "But from the shining vision of promotion in his eyes, I can't see where else he would have sent it."

  "How about to the main Ubiqtorate base at Yaga Minor?" Lando countered. "Isn't that his proper chain of command?"

  "Usually, yes," Carib said. "But matters of immediate military importance go directly to the high command. Your unknown alien ship should come under that heading."

  "We hope," Lando muttered.

  "Besides which, there are military politics involved," Carib added. "Anyone stuck out on a contact station like this is here because the upper echelons have basically written him off. The only way to get out is to impress someone higher up in the military. Again, that means sending it straight to Bastion." Han lifted his eyebrows at Lando. "Sounds reasonable to me."

  "I suppose," Lando said suspiciously, peering with narrowed eyes at the freighter hanging in space outside the Lady Luck's viewport. "So Baron Fel was pretty good with military politics, was he?" Han winced. Whatever Lando's feelings about clones might be, there was no reason to go out of his way to antagonize Carib. Especially when the man was trying to help them. Even more especially when they were sitting at the edge of Imperial space within spitting distance of a Ubiqtorate station. "Carib—"