by Troy Denning
Leia was starting to wonder why there were so many Jedi in the hangar, instead of out fighting, when she sensed her former Master approaching. She turned to find Saba Sebatyne emerging from a doorway on the near side of the room, her scaly face showing none of the surprise that Leia could feel in the Barabel’s Force aura.
Accompanying Saba were Bazel Warv and Mirax Horn. Bazel wore a combat harness loaded with a couple of casefuls of grenades. Mirax wore space marine battle fatigues, with a general’s insignia attached to the collar. The rank, Leia assumed, was provisional—no doubt bestowed by Nek Bwua’tu so Mirax would have the proper authority to oversee the search for Sith sleeper agents.
When Saba had approached to within a couple of paces, she stopped and peered over Leia’s head toward Jayk, Ramud, and all the other new Jedi Knights.
“This one thought apprentices were to go to Shedu Maad,” she said.
“That was the plan,” Leia admitted. “But these apprentices have been promoted. They’re Jedi Knights now.”
“The Masters Solusar say they’re ready,” Han added. “And since we had to drop by anyway, we thought we’d bring you some reinforcements.”
Saba shifted her gaze to Han, her forked tongue flicking out between her lips. “Yes, reinforcementz are good.” She looked back to the Jedi Knights, giving them a slit-eyed Barabel appraisal. Finally, she nodded and pointed across the hangar to where a towering wall of Yuzzem fur stood dressed in a Jedi robe. “Master Barratk’l is charged with lair security. Present yourselves to her.”
The young Jedi Knights bowed as one. “Yes, Master.”
Saba waited until they were gone, then pointed a talon in Allana’s direction. “This one is surprised to see your foundling with you. She is small for a fight, is she not?”
Han nodded. “Yeah, but she’s stubborn enough to be a teenage Wookiee.”
Allana smiled, clearly recognizing a compliment when she heard one. She stepped closer to Saba and said, “I need to talk to you about something.”
Saba studied the girl with a huge eye. “Yes?”
Allana didn’t flinch. “I can’t tell you here.” She glanced past Saba toward Bazel’s mountainous green bulk, then spoke more quietly. “That would be breaking a promise.”
“What promise?” Saba asked, following Allana’s gaze toward Bazel. “Does it concern Jedi Warv?”
“It’s the reason we came to see him,” Allana answered. “Grand Master Skywalker was supposed to tell him to meet us.”
Saba turned her head and studied Allana out of one eye, a gesture of Barabel suspicion. “To meet you?” she asked. “Really?”
Allana let her chin drop, clearly realizing she had been caught in an exaggeration. “Well, to meet my parents,” she corrected. “Master Skywalker wasn’t expecting me to be here, but I had to come. I’m the one who had the vision.”
“And Jedi Warv was in your vision?” Saba asked, going from suspicious to confused. “A vision about breaking a promise?”
“Actually, Amelia’s vision concerned a Barabel nest,” Leia said. The time had come to cut to the chase. “The Sith were attacking it.”
Saba’s scales bristled, and she glared down at Allana with bared fangs. “What nest?”
Allana surprised Leia by ignoring the menace in Saba’s voice. Instead she stepped forward until she was nose-to-abdomen with the Barabel, then said, “I think you know what nest. Do I need to say names?”
“Tesar?” Saba gasped. “Dordi?”
Allana nodded. “And Wilyem and Zal. Now can we talk?”
Saba stumbled back a step, clearly astonished. “You know?”
“Master Sebatyne,” Leia said, “we all know.”
Most Jedi understood why the younger Barabels had disappeared, and Leia had assumed that Saba realized that. But it was growing apparent that the Master had been fooling herself about how well the secret of the nest was being kept.
“It’s really not that difficult to figure out,” she added.
“Yeah, give us some credit,” Han added. “Your son disappears with a bunch of other Barabels for a few months. You get all grouchy and nervous. What else could it be? They’re making a nest.”
Saba let her shoulders slump. “This one hoped that you would believe they were on a secret mission.”
“I’m afraid we know you too well for that, Master Sebatyne,” Leia said. “You’d never go around the chain of command and launch a secret mission.”
Saba eyed Leia as though she were a shenbit, then finally asked, “Everyone knowz?”
Leia nodded. “All of the Masters,” she confirmed. “And a fair number of Jedi Knights.”
“So it’s no use trying to silence everyone who knows,” Han replied. “You can’t kill all of us.”
Saba glared at Han as though contemplating the truth of his assertion, then finally nodded and turned back to Allana. “And you came here to warn Tesar and his nestmates of your vision?”
Allana nodded. “I can’t just let it happen,” she said. “Tesar is my friend.”
Saba let her head drop. “And Tesar is this one’s son,” she said. “But she is sorry—this one does not know where to find the nest.”
Allana frowned. “Really?” she asked. “You don’t where it is?”
Saba shook her head. “Barabelz do not tell nest locationz to anyone,” she said. “Especially motherz.”
Allana exchanged glances with Bazel. They both fell silent, and then Allana glanced away, looking guilty.
Saba’s head bobbed forward. “You know?”
Allana reluctantly said, “I don’t think I can tell you that without breaking my promise.”
The Barabel folded her scaly brow and looked from Allana to Bazel, her head cocking ever farther sideways as she tried to make sense of what she was hearing.
Finally, she drew back. “This one does not understand. You are a strange pair to make a life-promise.” She looked to Bazel, then dropped her snout and bared her fangs, presenting the huge Ramoan with the nearest thing to a sympathetic gesture that Barabels had. “This one does not think it will work.”
“We’re not a promise pair!” Allana exclaimed. “We didn’t mean to find the nest. It was just a big accident!”
“But I can find it again,” Bazel rumbled, “if you think I should?”
“Yes, it must be you,” Saba said, not even hesitating. She looked back to Allana, turning her head to study her out of one eye again, then returned her gaze to Bazel. “This one has not been accepted into the nest.”
The note of admiration in Saba’s voice was hard to miss, and Leia was suddenly hit by the magnitude of what her granddaughter had achieved. Barabels were by nature a fierce and cautious species. Yet Allana had coaxed four of them into trusting her and Bazel—and with a secret they would not share with their own mothers. If Allana could achieve that at nine, perhaps there was hope for a peaceful galaxy, after all. Perhaps Allana was that hope.
After a moment, Bazel nodded. “Good. Then I volunteer.” He paused a moment, then glanced over at Leia. “But how am I going to get into the Temple?”
Han smiled and reached up to slap him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about that, big fella,” he said. “After all the trouble we had smuggling supplies in during the Mando siege, Luke had me set up a secret entrance. We can drop you at the other end of the evacuation route. It won’t be fast going in, but it will get you into the lower levels with no problem.”
“Speaking of problems,” Leia said, eager to change the subject before Allana decided she had to go with Bazel, “I see a lot of Jedi here still being briefed. I thought they would all be inside the Temple fighting by now.”
Saba nodded. “This one, too. The shieldz are not yet down. The blast doorz are still closed.”
“Our first wave of attackers ran into a Sith ambush,” Mirax explained. “We haven’t been able to insert the rest of the company.”
Leia’s stomach went hollow. “How bad was the ambush?”
“B
ad,” Saba replied. “We lost ten Knightz … so far.”
“But Luke and Jaina escaped the initial attack,” Mirax added. “We’re sure of that. Ben, too.”
Leia did not sense any grief in Mirax’s voice, so she felt comfortable asking, “Corran and your children, too?”
Mirax nodded. “They’re okay, the last time they checked in.”
“But no one else remainz,” Saba added. “Master Skywalker and his team are alone.”
“You’re telling me there are six Jedi in there on their own?” Han demanded. “Against four thousand Sith?”
Leia could feel how frightened Han was growing, and she understood why. Jaina was their last surviving child, and the thought of losing her—and Luke, too—was almost more than she could bear.
“And you aren’t doing anything about it?” Han continued.
“This one is doing something, Captain Solo,” Saba said. “She is obeying orderz. Master Skywalker has told her he needz more time to open the blast doorz.”
“And if that doesn’t happen?” Han demanded. “You could be waiting for—”
“Then they go in the hard way,” Mirax said, putting a little durasteel in her voice. “But you know as well as I do, that has to be a last resort. If we start lobbing baradium bombs into the Jedi Temple, no one has control over who gets killed.”
Mirax’s stern tone and good sense seemed to bring Han back to his senses. He fell silent for a moment, then spoke in a calmer tone. “Okay. You gotta wait for Luke—when it comes to long shots, nobody is better than him. But six against four thousand is pretty bad. Why don’t we use the evacuation tunnel and send in a little help?”
“The entrances are in the undercity, yes?” Saba asked. “That is fine for the lower levelz, but it would take dayz to fight up into the main part of the Temple. We would lose too many Jedi Knightz.”
“And we don’t have days,” Mirax said. “Admiral Bwua’tu’s troops don’t have the fuel or ammunition to continue their assault that long.”
“Nor is that the only problem,” Leia said, recalling the admiral in command of the Regalle task force. “Nek Bwua’tu can’t keep the rest of the military sidelined forever. Sooner or later, the Sith impostors in the officer corps will start convincing their subordinates to ignore the admiral’s order. Then they’ll start bringing their assets into action around the Temple.”
Leia saw Han’s hand close in a fist and knew she was getting through to him. When he felt helpless, he started to look for soft walls to punch. Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to find any in an undercity industrial hangar. She took his arm.
“Han, I just don’t think there’s any way we can help them,” she said. “If Luke and the others can’t get those blast doors open, their only chance will be to escape before the baradium drops.”
Han tensed as though he had found his wall, then glanced at Allana and merely lowered his chin. “Yeah, I know.” There was more resignation than resentment in his voice—but the resentment was there. “They’re Jedi. They’re on their own.”
Han had barely finished speaking before Allana stepped to his side. “They’re not just any Jedi, Dad. They’re two of the best Masters ever—and they’ve got four really good Jedi to back them up. And that means they’re going to be okay.” She took his big hand in hers, then added, “Trust me.”
DOWN THIS DEEP IN ITS SUBLEVELS, THE JEDI TEMPLE SEEMED MORE cave than building. The corridors were so crusted in yorik coral that Vestara sometimes had to turn sideways to squeeze through narrow sections. Fungi grew everywhere, clinging to the walls and ceilings in long shelves and stringy curtains. The air reeked of mildew and vermin. The glow panels still activated on approach, but the light they cast had to pass through several centimeters of grime, resulting in a gloomy pall that usually seemed more shadow than illumination.
Even so, Vestara wasn’t lost. The guidance beacons were chirping steadily in the earbud of her salvaged comlink, so this had to be the evacuation route. According to the mission briefing, the route led to a secret access tunnel that Han Solo had developed after the Mandalorian siege. Everyone in the assault company had been shown how to use his or her comlink to access a special chirp-code that could be used to find the tunnel entrance.
Of course, Vestara’s original comlink had been confiscated after she’d been taken prisoner. But it had been easy enough to Force-summon a new comlink from a dead Jedi Knight while her captors were busy in the water treatment plant, trying to lure Ben into their trap. It had been even easier to slip away during the confusion following the Jedi survivors’ daring escape into the freight-handling system.
What had not been easy, however, was staying ahead of her own pursuers. She had expected the Sith to fixate on the Skywalkers. So she had fled in the opposite direction, with the intention of rejoining them later—if it served her. Vestara had barely finished cutting her way through the floor before some Sabers started to give chase, and she had been running ever since.
They seemed to anticipate her every move. They fired at her from intersecting corridors. They sprang out of hidden alcoves. They dropped out of the ceiling or appeared mysteriously ahead. There had to be a dozen of them by now.
And why? It just didn’t make sense. An entire division of space marines was pounding the Temple exterior, and Luke Skywalker himself was loose in the interior. Surely the Circle of Lords had more important things to worry about. Vestara was one little Sith girl, fleeing for her life. Not much of a threat. So either the Grand Lord believed punishing her to be more important than defending the Sith foothold on Coruscant—or they believed recapturing her to be worth the drain on their defenses.
But again, why? She was just one girl.
A cloaked silhouette appeared ahead, stepping out from the shadows along the wall. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and Vestara feared for a moment that he had gotten ahead of her and been lying in wait. But the man turned in the opposite direction and started down the corridor away from her, and the shadow from which he had come broadened into an intersecting passage.
Vestara did not even break stride. She just raised her hand and unleashed a blast of Force energy. The man’s spine arced backward, and he flew down the passage with limbs flung wide. By then, she was five steps from the intersection and wishing she had a grenade—because her pursuers never came alone, and they were seldom fools or cowards.
When no one else emerged from the intersection, Vestara slipped close to the same wall and launched herself into a high, arcing dive over its entrance. She landed hard in a forward roll that was more of a forward slam and still managed to come back onto her feet. She extended one leg and pirouetted on the other, coming around just as an emerald-eyed woman stepped from the intersection. Vestara hit Emerald-Eyes with a Force shove and sent her stumbling into the wall.
Then a lightsaber snapped to life behind Vestara. She finished her pirouette and found the Force-blasted man rushing back, his crimson blade already sweeping down at her knee.
Vestara sprang into a one-handed cartwheel, landing a vicious roundhouse kick on the way past his head, then ignited her own blade and brought it sweeping up to finish the fight.
Her moves would have been perfect—except her attacker wasn’t there.
He was standing just beyond her reach, shaking his head clear and holding his lightsaber in a low guard that seemed a little too careless. Vestara should have killed him anyway, but that would have taken time—and time she did not have. Back at the intersection, his companion was leaping to her feet, and the sound of running boots was beginning to build in the corridor beyond the intersection. Vestara flashed the man a wry smile and shook her head.
“Sorry.” She was winded, so winded she could barely gasp the words. “Not that … dumb.”
She gave him a Force shove that failed to rock him on his heels, then turned and sprang away. He was after her in a heartbeat, trailing a few steps behind, so close she could hear the weapon sheaths rasping against his trouser legs.
&nbs
p; “This is foolish.” He was not out of breath at all. “Surrender now, and you won’t suffer.”
Vestara did not waste her breath on a reply. She had been running and fighting for hours. The only thing keeping her on her feet was the Force itself, and even the Force would fail her soon. Her legs burned and her lungs ached. She had coughed so much phlegm her chest felt like a volcanic eruption. Her vision narrowed at bad moments, and her hearing faded even at good moments, until all that remained was the steady chirping of the guidance beacons.
“There’s no escape,” her pursuer called, only two paces behind. “Not for you.”
Vestara lengthened her stride and pumped her arms harder.
Her pursuer laughed. “You are doing our work for us, little girl,” he called. “How long before even the Force betrays you?”
The next time Vestara’s right arm came forward, she turned her shoulder to hide her hand from view. She flipped her lightsaber around, pointing its emitter nozzle to the rear. When her hand swung back, she grabbed him in the Force and pulled hard.
She activated her blade.
Her pursuer screamed. Vestara flicked her wrist, dragging the blade through his body. She did not break stride.
Three steps later, she dared to glance back. Emerald-Eyes was a dozen paces behind, pushing hard but not overtaking, running Vestara down.
Twenty meters beyond followed a whole column of dark-cloaked Sith. They were running two abreast, jostling and twisting in the narrow confines, a stream of angry eyes, all fixed on Vestara. There had to be twenty of them now, with a Keshiri woman in the second row whom Vestara recognized as Lady Sashal.
Twenty warriors and a High Lord, all to chase down a single girl. Had the Circle gone mad?
Emerald-Eyes put on a burst of speed, and Vestara felt the hand of the Force close around her. Knowing she needed to break free while she still could, she stopped, changed directions, and launched herself down the corridor behind a Force-enhanced side kick.
