by Jude Watson
What mattered was Ferus Olin.
The Emperor laughed. All Masters tested their apprentices from time to time.
This would test Darth Vader most of all.
Quintus—or whoever was posing as the deceased Quintus—was behind the door. The question was how to get in.
“Why don’t we just knock?” Clive asked in a whisper.
“They’ll have an exit plan,” Ferus said, disagreeing. “Can’t you break in?”
“I’m insulted. I’m not a thief! Do you really think I can break a security door?”
“Just do it.”
“All right.” Clive reached into the pocket of his tunic. He withdrew a small fusioncutter, a coin, and a sharpened piece of plastoid. He bent over the security keypad with the items. Within seconds, the door clicked open.
They entered silently. They were in a short hallway. A door to a fresher was off to their right.
Ferus waited, listening, searching for evidence of the Living Force.
“No one is here,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“I know.” He walked inside the apartment. It was sparsely furnished. He carefully looked around, then crossed to the small kitchen and opened cabinets.
“Hungry?”
“No one is living here. But someone is trying to make it look that way.”
“So it’s a dead end.”
Ferus crossed back to the living area. He looked out the window to the skeletal unfinished tower next door. “I know where to look,” he said.
The turbolift shafts had not been completed. There was only an exterior lift for the workers to access the roof. Ferus and Clive took the stairs. The workforce was on the roof today. They could hear the noise of turbohammers dimly echoing through the building.
Ferus followed the trail as though he was tracking someone through the woods. He saw the imprint of work boots in the dust from the construction, but he was looking for something unique—the footprints of a child.
He found them on a landing on the twenty-second floor. He lost them on the thirtieth and found them again on the thirty-sixth. At last he stopped on the sixty-second floor.
There were only four apartments per floor. One had no door and was still being worked on. They were now on the highest partially completed floor. Ferus listened at the door of the remaining three apartments. “This one,” he said. “Open it.”
Again Clive worked his magic and the door slid open silently. They took a few cautious steps into the empty hall.
They heard something, a murmur of a female voice.
They moved closer.
“…And that doesn’t mean you don’t keep up with your lessons.”
A boy’s voice. “But I don’t have any teachers.”
“I’m your teacher now. Do it or you’ll turn into a horned hairy urchin toad.”
The boy giggled.
Ferus and Clive exchanged a look. It sounded like a typical exchange between a mother and a child. Could this be the home of the daring saboteur? Ferus risked a quick look around the corner.
The room was bright with light and furnished with only a table and bright cushions on the floor. On the floor sat a young boy of about eight years, with dark hair. He was bent over a datapad. Cross-legged next to him was a woman with close-cropped dark hair. She was dressed in a flight suit.
She looked up, and there was no fear in her gaze when she saw Ferus. Her hand drifted to her side.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said softly.
Her hand stopped. He saw the glint of a blaster, concealed in the pocket of her flight suit.
Something about her face was familiar. What was it? He knew her. He had a sudden memory of a woman with tumbling dark curls.
“You’re Astri Divinian,” he said. “Bog’s wife.”
She rose smoothly. “I’m Astri Oddo. Bog is no longer my husband. This is my son, Lune. Who are you—and how did you get in?”
“We met once, years ago. Very briefly. At the Galactic Games on Euceron. I was with the Jedi team that supervised the games. Ferus Olin.”
He saw her response in her quickened breathing. “A Jedi? That’s impossible. They were all…wiped out.”
“I left the Jedi Order years ago.”
He watched as she moved to block Lune. She did it casually, as though she were edging closer to study him. Astri had been a great friend of the Jedi. Why would she consider him a threat? He felt something.…
Something…He reached out with the Force, searching…
“Have you come to arrest me?” she asked. Behind her back, she put a hand on Lune’s shoulder.
“I don’t work for the Samarian government, or for the Empire,” Ferus said. “But I was asked to find you.”
“By whom?”
“That’s not important.” Ferus crouched down in front of Lune. He held out his hand. The laser lasso was in his palm. “Did you lose this?”
“You found it!” The boy took it from him. “I didn’t know where it was.” He unfurled it, and it snaked around the room, fast and agile. He lassoed a small cushion and sent it flying, somersaulting through the air. He laughed.
“Lune! Don’t do that.” Astri’s voice was tight.
Ferus turned to her. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“The kitchen.” Astri turned to Lune, and in a soft but firm voice said, “Stay here and finish your lesson.”
The three adults moved into the tiny kitchen. Ferus could feel Astri’s fear. He just wasn’t sure what, exactly, she was afraid of.
Despite her fear, she turned to them defiantly. “Did Bog hire you?”
“No,” Ferus said. “Does he know you sabotaged the computer system of this planet?”
She was at first surprised, but then shook her head. “He doesn’t know I’m involved. I doubt he’d think I was capable of it.”
“Lune is Force-sensitive.”
She bit her lip. “Yes.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since he was four. I had my suspicions, let me say. He was different…the way he anticipated things. Obi-Wan once told me the story of Anakin Skywalker. I remembered.”
“Does the boy know?”
Astri shook her head. “He knows he’s different. That’s all. Bog didn’t know for a long time. I left him shortly before the Clone Wars, after the attack on Chancellor Palpatine. I knew Bog was involved. I knew he’d tried to discredit the Jedi in the Senate. And I knew,” Astri said, her eyes dry, her mouth tight, “that he would take my son to punish me.”
“What happened?”
“My father, Didi, died during the war, and we came here. Bog somehow got into power again and he used that power to find me. I let him see Lune against my better instincts. One day they were playing, and Lune…he suspended a laserball in midair. Bog realized what it meant. Now he wants him…for something, something for the Emperor, I don’t know what. I only know he wants to take him away.”
“Wait a minute,” Clive interjected. “You sabotaged the records of an entire planet so that your ex-husband won’t get his hands on his own son?”
Astri’s dark eyes flashed. Ferus had forgotten how lovely she was. He remembered that she’d been very close to Obi-Wan. He wished he could tell her that Obi-Wan was still alive. But that was a secret he could not share with anyone.
“Bog fathered that child but did not raise him,” she said angrily. “He had no interest in him except as a bargaining chip to keep me in line. We haven’t been able to leave the planet. Now he wants to take him from me to curry favor from the Emperor. He is to be raised on Coruscant, he told me.”
“But you’ve thrown the whole planet into chaos, endangered lives,” Ferus said. “Medical records have been lost, financial records…”
“All to protect one boy,” Clive said.
“Yes,” she said. “I would do that to protect one boy.”
Ferus leaned against the kitchen counter. What was he going to do? How could he sacrifice Lune? Astr
i didn’t know the Emperor was a Sith. If she knew that, she would fight even harder.
If he turned them in, Lune would be raised with evil. He could even become a Sith…or killed like the Jedi had been killed.
“I’m begging you,” Astri said. “Can you please let us go?”
Ferus suddenly felt off balance. He crossed to the window and looked out but saw nothing. Yet he knew. The Force was warning him.
Since they’d been in the building, background noise had hummed—the noise of airspeeders landing in the adjacent parking garages, of turbohammers on the roof.
Clive had noticed it, too. “It’s awfully quiet.”
“Something is wrong,” Ferus said. “The dark side has arrived.”
Ferus left Clive with Astri and took the stairs. He Force-leaped down, going from one landing to another. He could feel the heavy, enveloping dark side of the Force like a shroud over the building. He had one overwhelming thought: A Sith was near.
He stood inside the stairwell and cracked the door to the unfinished lobby. The work vehicles were gone, as were the gravsleds and the camis. Suddenly he caught a glimpse of a prowler droid. He followed the droid’s flight until it landed…
…and found Darth Vader leading a squadron across the courtyard.
They must have just arrived. Darth Vader, his cloak billowing out behind him, was instructing teams of stormtroopers and giving orders to droids. Prowlers were sent flying in the air.
Ferus took the stairs again, soaring into Force-leaps that brought him back up to Astri’s door faster than a turbolift.
He hurried inside. Astri and Clive were still in the same place in the kitchen.
“We’ve got trouble,” he said. “It’s Darth Vader. He’s directing a door-to-door search. Stormtroopers are guarding the exits, and droids are conducting the search and entering the hangars. There looks to be at least fifteen or twenty prowlers, too.”
“There are hundreds of apartments,” Astri said.
“This is Darth Vader,” Ferus said. “It won’t take him long. The good news is that he’s starting with the inhabited buildings.”
“So, how do we get out of here?” Clive asked.
Astri looked at both of them. “You won’t turn me in?”
“We won’t,” Ferus promised. He tried not to think about Roan. He had to have hope that he had already been rescued.
“If we can get to the Tower One hangar, I have a star cruiser,” Astri said.
“The droids will be all over the hangars,” Clive said. “And if we go out the front, the stormtroopers will get us.”
“There is always a way,” Astri said.
Ferus looked at her, surprised. “That’s what Obi-Wan used to say.”
“He was my friend, too,” she said with a sad smile.
“We have a problem,” Oryon said. “I’ve checked the comm system, and there’s no way we can send a message to Ferus. It will get picked up by Sauro.”
Solace leaned over the holographic map. “We’re close to Samaria. We could just go there.”
“It’s closed to everything but Imperial traffic.”
“We are Imperial traffic.”
“I have no doubt,” Oryon said, “that they know we’ve hijacked the ship. I’ll change the ID profile and hope for the best.”
“Change it to an Imperial diplomatic ship,” Solace advised. “Come on, Trever. Let’s find some uniforms.”
Trever left the cockpit with Solace. They searched several storage rooms and came up with Imperial officer uniforms for everyone. Quickly, the group pulled them on.
It wasn’t long before they approached the landing platform at Sath. Oryon transmitted their identification. They waited. They all knew that if their ruse didn’t work, they could be blasted right out of the sky.
“If they don’t answer soon, we go in anyway,” Solace muttered.
Just then the confirmation code flashed. “We’re in,” Oryon said.
Trever looked down as Sath drew closer. The city looked impossibly big. “How are we going to find Ferus?” he asked.
“We’ll find him,” Solace promised. “We can activate the homing signal on his comlink now that we’re on the same planet.”
The dockmaster gave a quick look at their ID docs and waved them through. “All checked in, watch out in the space lanes, controls not functioning today,” he said in a breath and hurried off.
They went down into the cargo hold and piled into the cruiser. They zoomed out into the chaotic space lanes of Sath. Solace took the pilot seat, confidently zigzagging through the snarled air traffic. As they approached the coordinates, she slowed down, then made a wide turn around the Fountain Towers.
“Something’s going on down there,” she said.
“Those are security vehicles,” Oryon observed.
“Stormtroopers,” Trever said.
The ship dipped down. “I’m going in,” Solace said, parking it close by but out of sight range of the building lobby. They piled out.
“Just act like you belong,” Solace said.
Dressed as Imperial officers, no one stopped them as they headed purposefully into the building. Stormtroopers were stopping any residents and requesting ID docs as they arrived or departed, but Solace’s group was waved through.
“Ferus is here somewhere,” Solace murmured.
Trever suddenly saw something that made him feel as though ice had been dumped down his neck. “Vader,” he said. “Over there.”
They ducked down a hallway. Solace crept back to survey the situation.
“Vader is leading the search,” she said. “We’ve got to find Ferus first.”
“We’ve got to go up,” Ferus said.
“There is no up,” Astri told him. “There are just beams up there. No access to the hangar.”
“That’s where we have to go,” Ferus said. “We’ll just have to figure out a way to get across to the hangar. Can Lune make it?”
“He’s just a boy!” Astri protested.
“I can make it, Mom.” The boy stood in the doorway, looking suddenly more mature than his years.
Astri’s face softened. “I know you can.”
They started as they heard a rapid knocking on the door. Clive reached for his blaster, as did Astri.
But Ferus smiled. He knew that knock.
He hurried down the hall and opened the door. Solace, Oryon, Trever. And Dona and Roan.
He and Roan grabbed each other’s upper arms in their special greeting. “You’re free!” Ferus said.
“Thanks to your friends.”
“We couldn’t contact you from the ship, so we thought we’d just drop by,” Solace said, striding in. “I assume you know Vader is downstairs.”
“I decided to wait before I said hello to him,” Ferus said.
He quickly filled them in on who Astri was and what they had to do.
“Can we all fit in your cruiser?” Solace asked her.
“It will be a squeeze, but I think we can manage it,” she answered.
“Since we’re wearing Imperial uniforms, we might be able to leave with extra passengers,” Solace said. “We’ve got an Imperial ship waiting at the spaceport, but there’s no telling when they’ll double-check our landing docs.”
Astri looked relieved. “That solves the problem of how to get out of the planetary atmosphere. They’ll blast Samarian ships, no questions asked. Luckily everyone has obeyed the order.”
Solace halted and gave Astri a keen look.
“I don’t believe you told us everything,” she said. “Sure, you’d do anything to protect your son. But you wouldn’t put other beings in danger, would you?”
“The people of Samaria are inconvenienced, but not in danger,” Astri admitted. “I acted with the permission of Aaren Larker.”
“The prime minister of Samaria?” Clive asked.
Astri nodded. “Larker was the one who concocted the plan to sabotage the data system. We saved the med records and secretly transported them
to the hospitals and doctors. Larker hired me to do it—ever since leaving Bog, I’ve made a living as a programmer.”
“You’re one of the best slicers I’ve come across,” Ferus said, using the galactic nickname for a talented computer code expert.
“I took the job because I wanted to help, but I also wanted to disappear. One of my conditions was that I could wipe my identity and Lune’s records from the Samarian system. I thought I’d take off right after, but I was delayed, and then the Empire closed the spaceport so fast.…”
“They can be very fast when they want to,” Clive said.
“So why did Larker do it?” Ferus asked.
“He knows that the Empire is planning to take over the planet. He decided to break down the system in order to give the Sathans time to form a resistance cell. When the system comes back up, some records will be gone, such as who fought on the side of the Republic in the Clone Wars, or who criticized Emperor Palpatine when he was still a chancellor. They’ll have to start from scratch to find their enemies.”
“Enough talking,” Solace said. “Let’s move.”
Astri put her hand on Lune’s shoulder. “We’re ready.”
Ferus squatted in front of the boy. “Lune, we’re going to have to climb on the roof and walk across a beam. We’ll be very high.”
“I have good balance,” the boy said.
“I’m sure you do. When we’re up there, I want you to try something. Trust your feelings. Try not to think, only feel. Let the air help you.”
“What he means is—” Astri started.
“I know what he means, Mom,” Lune said. His gray-blue eyes were clear as he nodded at Ferus.
Ferus nodded back. A connection passed between them, one he knew was fueled by the Force. Someday, he hoped, Lune would know what that meant.
They walked out of the apartment. They could hear the whistling of the wind around the girders on the roof.
“Stay back!” Solace suddenly said.
She and Ferus turned at the same moment as two prowler droids crashed through the hallway window. The two Jedi leaped up as one, and slashed through them. Smoking, the droids crashed to the ground.
