Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Conviction

by Allston, Aaron

  Tekli heaved a sigh. “So far, so good.”

  Cilghal offered a noncommittal rumble. “Time will tell.”

  Josat moved to Valin and then Jysella, offering drinks. His voice was crisp over the monitor speakers. “We gave you the farthest room from the turbolifts and offices and waiting room. Much quieter here. If there’s an emergency, though, it’s safer to head to the stairs instead of the turbolifts. Right next door, take a left when you leave this chamber, it’s the door straight ahead, you can find it in pitch darkness. That can be important. I never used to pay attention to things like that, but since I started studying nursing, I have to know these things. Jedi Tekli will make me run laps if I ever don’t know where the emergency exits are from any of my stations. Were your Masters always assigning you exercise when you messed up? Don’t answer, the monitors need quiet.”

  Cilghal blinked, pleased. “He worked that in very well.”

  “About the punishment?”

  “About the stairs.”

  “I know.”

  Cilghal sighed. “Mammalian humor. Deliberate misinterpretation.”

  “Tends to drive a Master crazy, doesn’t it?”

  Josat now stood beside Valin’s gurney, his lightsaber swaying on his belt within Valin’s easy reach. The apprentice eyed one of the wall monitors. “Slow progress on your evaluation. No matter. Nobody will come back to bother you until it’s run its course. Half an hour at least, I’m guessing.”

  Cilghal nodded. “The last of the bait. He is not a bad actor.” Under ideal circumstances, Valin or Jysella might feel a trace of deceit from him through the Force, but now, still suffering a little from the aftereffects of carbonite freezing, they were unlikely to.

  They were, however, likely to add up four important details. First, they were in a room at the end of the corridor, away from most visitors and medical personnel. Second, they were next to stairs that would allow them to reach any level of the Temple while bypassing well-traveled turbolifts. Third, they had half an hour before their absence would be noticed. And fourth, they had ready access to a lightsaber.

  If they were still mad, and merely concealing the fact, could they resist the bait?

  But neither Horn made a grab for the lightsaber.

  If they had done so—well, it wouldn’t have been too damaging. The lightsaber would not have ignited. Switching it on, or having Cilghal or Tekli press a button on the comlinks they carried, would cause the false lightsaber to emit a powerful stunning gas. The Horns would have been felled without violence, never having even reached the corridor. Josat would have been felled as well, but it would have been easier on him than being thrashed by two experienced Jedi Knights.

  But clearly, escape was not a priority for them. Which meant that they, too, were sane. Cured.

  Valin had felt nothing but warmth and relief from his parents—

  From the man and woman masquerading as his parents.

  As he lay listening to Josat’s endless, maddening blather, Valin forced himself to remain calm. Any distress might send a signal through the Force to his captors, a signal that their deception had been detected.

  And perhaps, perhaps, the man and woman who wore the faces of Corran and Mirax Horn didn’t even know that they were imposters.

  What a horrible thought. Perhaps they were clones, implanted with memories that caused them to believe, in their heart of hearts, that they were the real Corran and Mirax. What would happen to them when the truth was revealed? Would they be killed by their secret masters? Were they even now implanted with strategically placed explosives that would end their lives when they were no longer useful?

  Valin clamped down on that thought, suppressing it.

  Again Josat came near, chattering about his studies, about politics, about the best mopping techniques for apprentices assigned to clean Temple corridors. Again his lightsaber swung invitingly just within Valin’s reach.

  But, no. He and Jysella needed to know much more than they did now if they were to stage a successful escape. They needed to be rested, informed, and somewhere other than deep in the enemy-occupied Jedi Temple before they struck out on their own.

  So he looked at his sister and offered her a smile full of reassurance. That emotion, at least, was real. In all the universe, the one person he knew to be true was Jysella. He’d known it from the moment they had reached for each other in the Force. Dazed, barely conscious, dreading what they would find, they had still connected, and they knew they were not alone.

  She smiled back at him, an expression he felt more than saw.

  They had each other, and for now, that was enough.

  MELIFLAR STATION, MENDENBATT SYSTEM,

  NEAR ALMANIA

  AT MAXIMUM GAIN, JADE SHADOW’S SENSORS SHOWED THE DISTANT space station as a small, irregular cluster of pods and modules, an ad hoc arrangement familiar anyplace in the galaxy where hardworking spacers made do with less than the newest, shiniest vehicles and habitat components.

  Ben Skywalker, in the pilot’s seat, straightened from scrutinizing the main data monitor. Still faintly visible on his neck and cheek was the wide crisscross pattern so recently cut into his skin by Lord Taalon’s Force net. He looked over at his father, seated at the navigation console. “It’s, uh, uninformative. Nothing in Jade Shadow’s database, either.” He shrugged. “I’m guessing pirates or smugglers.”

  Luke nodded, his thoughts elsewhere. He could feel the space station ahead, both as a small pulse of ordinary Force energy indicating that there were living beings aboard it, and as a separate sensation, a faint but distinct flavor, unsettling and elusive, of dark-side Force energy.

  Which meant, quite possibly, that their quarry was there, as well. The Dathomiri blood trail he’d established between himself and Abeloth had led him here—but it was faint, complicated. The pulse of dark-side energy was reassuring.

  “She’s there.” Vestara Khai currently occupied the copilot’s seat. As always, Ben couldn’t tell if she was smiling slightly, or if it was merely the effect of the small curved scar at the corner of her mouth. This time, he decided, it was probably just the scar. All her concentration was forward.

  Luke looked at her. “You have some special reason to believe she is actually there?”

  Vestara shook her head. “Just shapes and shadows in the Force. I can almost see her and Ship arriving there.”

  “Almost.” With that single word, Luke offered a mild rebuke, cautioning the younger Force-user not to assume too much. Still, she was more closely attuned to the dark side than either Luke or Ben. Perhaps she could detect patterns in it that the light-siders could not.

  He slid into the rear seat and felt a wash of relief. An injury to his knee, sustained on Almania, plagued him. Too intent on pursuing Abeloth to wait for bacta treatment, he was forced to move around on a leg that was damaged, bandaged, and benumbed by medicine.

  He returned his attention to his son. “Set up a transponder signal, one of your mother’s alternate identity packets, way down on the list. A smuggler. Then move in and request docking instructions.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Once again, he was reassured that he had made the right decision to alter so little of the Jade Shadow after Mara’s death. He felt close to her on this ship, despite the sadness the reminders sometimes evoked, and there was no doubt that some of her own tools and supplies could come in quite handy at times. She’d been nothing if not resourceful.

  Ben activated the sublight thrusters and made a smooth, slow approach toward the station. With a touch of a button, he began transmitting, and filled Luke and Vestara in on the necessary information. “We’re the Black Diadem, a courier yacht belonging to a Hapan nobleman under suspicion of piracy and smuggling.” Which was not unusual, as many Hapan males found the freedom their culture withheld from them at home in the more illicit spacefaring trades.

  Ben’s comm board dinged and text scrolled across it. He gave it a look. “We’re cleared to dock on spar three, module
eleven. They’re requesting our trade manifest.”

  Luke offered a little smile. “Transmit ‘three occupants, combat and insurgency skills.’ ”

  Ben looked disappointed. “That’s not even a lie.”

  “Sometimes a Jedi must deal with the disappointment of having to tell the truth.”

  Ben brought the yacht to a smooth dock against the extender boarding tube protruding from an ancient KDY deep-space warehousing module. Luke stood by the air lock, checked and confirmed the boarding tube’s pressure seal, gave a quick look to the atmospheric analysis board to make sure the breathing mix was right for humans and not toxic, and then activated the air lock’s outer door. It hissed open, revealing a cylindrical corridor, once white, now dingy, with sputtering glow rods overhead and a tattered black grip surface below. The air lock hatch at the far end was closed but showing green for readiness.

  No one waited there.

  Luke patted the folds of his robe, making sure his lightsaber was still concealed, and glanced at his two companions. Like himself, they were shrouded in travelers’ robes, their lightsabers out of sight.

  They moved along the corridor, feeling their own body weight diminish as they passed out from the simulated gravity of Jade Shadow, through a border area, and into the grav effect of the station. The far air lock opened to admit them. Moments later it was cycling, the door behind them sealing, the indicator in the door ahead going from red to green. Except for the hiss of the atmosphere pumps, all was silent.

  Ben glanced at his father, an I-don’t-like-the-feel-of-this look. Luke gave him a little shake of the head, cautioning him to silence. There was no telling how many sensors might be active around them.

  The air lock opened into a large chamber, poorly lit by more sputtering or flickering glow rods inset in the ceiling six meters up. The chamber was thick with shelving twice the height of a human, but few of the shelves were loaded with stores or wares. Luke saw shipping containers from dozens of worlds, many of them marked with the names of their contents—mainly preserved foods.

  And still there were no people to greet the three travelers.

  No people to be seen. Luke could feel a growing sense of anticipation, not his own emotion—something felt by others, not too far away. He could tell from their faces that Ben and Vestara, too, detected the rising tide of emotion.

  He sighed. This was not going to go well. Perhaps an appeal to common sense—reinforced by his reputation—would save some trouble and a few lives.

  He threw back the hood of his cloak and raised his voice. “My name is Luke Skywalker. I’m the former Grand Master of the Jedi Order. We’re not here to close down your operation … but it would be best for everyone if you dealt with us peacefully.”

  Ben dropped his own voice to a whisper. “Nicely intimidating, Dad. Very aggressive.”

  “Shhh.”

  Vestara merely grinned.

  Two shelves over, a blue-and-white container labeled NERF LOAF collapsed. It was not a collapse into ruin; the lid flew up, the front panel fell forward on a hinge, the two side panels swung away. Revealed within was a squad-level blaster cannon and a crew of two humans, men wearing dark pseudo-military jackets and bandoliers of vibroblades and extra blasters.

  Three lightsabers were in hand and igniting as the blaster crew opened fire.

  Ben went left, Vestara right. Luke stayed where he was, both to act as a focus of the enemy attention and to favor his injured knee.

  A stream of blasterfire poured toward him. Luke braced himself, partly with his good leg and partly with the Force, and got his blade between his body and the bolts, deflecting the first one up into the ceiling, angling his weapon so that the rest followed. Each bolt—and they came in an automatic-weapons barrage—hammered at his control of the lightsaber, threatening to knock it aside and plow through into his body, but he held fast.

  Vestara vectored, effortlessly tucking and rolling across the nearly empty shelf unit between her and the blaster nest. Ben skidded, then was gone—Luke glimpsed his son going high, leaping straight up to the top shelf of the closest unit.

  The blaster crew jerked the tripod-mounted weapon left and right, trying to put bolts into the bodies of both Luke and Vestara. They had no luck; the tactic gave Luke split seconds to recover, and Vestara was simply too fast and agile for them.

  Luke realized he was deflecting stun bolts, not blasterfire. That was not too surprising. Missing living targets with blasterfire in an environment this old and rickety would surely punch holes in exterior surfaces, causing decompression. Stun bolts hitting the same surfaces would do no harm. These attackers, successful or not, were at least disciplined.

  Vestara came to her feet in the gap between shelves. The blaster crew turned its entire attention on her, as she was now closest and therefore most dangerous. Their choice freed Luke to act. He gestured, a heaving motion, an instinctive directive for an outpouring of the Force, and a small crate one shelf up hurled itself off the near shelving unit straight into the blaster cannon. The weapon slammed into the two operators, who momentarily ceased fire.

  Luke could hear Ben now, or at least infer his position from the volley of small-arms fire sounding from off to his left. He could see the flashes of more stun bolts, but none came near him.

  Vestara leapt to land in front of the tripod blaster. She lashed out, her lightsaber moving almost too fast to see, and the blaster fell into two pieces, severed just in front of the trigger housing. She instantly positioned the tip of her red blade under the man’s chin, allowing portions of his black beard to fall into it, sizzle, and vaporize. “I suggest you call off the attack.”

  “I’m not in charge.” The man’s wide eyes belied the ferocity suggested by his wild mop of black hair and drooping piratical mustache. His voice emerged as a desperate squeak.

  “Try anyway.”

  “Mates, we’re caught! Shut down, shut down!”

  The black-bearded attacker had told the truth. He wasn’t in charge, and none of the other attackers paid heed. Luke heard them keep up their volley of small-arms fire, heard the hum of Ben’s lightsaber, heard the number of weapons shooting diminish at a terrific rate. There was one scream and the air was suddenly flavored with the odor of burned flesh.

  And then, silence—but for the hiss of air pumps and the hum of lightsabers. Moments later Ben led the other attackers back to his father, five men and two women, one man with an arm severed just above the wrist; pale and shocky, he kept a greasy black bandanna wrapped around his cauterized stump. None of the new prisoners looked too pleased with the situation.

  Luke looked at the assailants. “Which one of you is in charge?”

  They looked at one another. One, a Devaronian male with illuminated glitter decorating his horns, finally spoke. “Hallaf’s in charge.”

  “Take me to Hallaf.”

  “Hallaf’s in the brig.”

  Luke blinked. “Hallaf’s in charge but is in the brig?”

  Another attacker, a rotund dark-haired woman whose crossed bandoliers were now empty of weapons, spoke up. “Hallaf was in charge. He was going to do things the way she wanted them done. Bad business sense, no profits. So we threw him into the brig. I’m in charge now. I’m Cardya.”

  “And who is this she you refer to?” Luke was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  Cardya merely shuddered.

  It took some time to sort out the details. She—a slender woman, brown hair and silver eyes, robed, flying a small ball-shaped vehicle of a type these smugglers had never seen—had arrived and spoken with the band’s leader, Hallaf. She’d left soon after, to the relief of all the others, who were intimidated by her forbidding manner. Hallaf, shaken, emerged to say that three Jedi would be arriving soon—

  “Three Jedi?” Vestara sounded offended.

  Ben grinned at her. “Smugglers know Jedi represent law and order, so that made us three targets they’d want to kill, not just two. Hey, welcome to the Order.”

  She
did not look at all happy with the unofficial membership.

  Three Jedi would be coming, and the crew of this station would kill them in a fast and efficient fashion: by planting explosives on the boarding tube with an automated detonator. When the three visitors were in the tube, the explosives would blow, vaping the Skywalkers and Vestara Khai. Jade Shadow, naturally, would drift away, damaged or destroyed, and perhaps be irretrievable.

  Luke fixed Cardya with a querying look. “Which wasn’t what happened.”

  She shrugged. “We got the sensor data on your yacht. Nice, expensive yacht. We decided we wanted it. Which meant capturing it intact.”

  Luke nodded. “For once, greed was our savior.”

  Cardya shrugged again, unrepentant. “So we threw Hallaf and his daughter in the brig and set up the ambush.”

  “Hm.” During the account, Luke had been broadening his senses again, and now he could once more feel the pulse of dark-side energy that had drawn him to this station. If Abeloth had left, what was the source of the energy? He pointed in that direction. “Take us that way. And if anyone else from the station attacks us, we’ll just let their blaster bolts hit you before we start blocking them.”

  “Understood.” With a long-suffering sigh, Cardya led them from the warehouse module—and took extra moments to activate her comlink and tell others on the station to stand down.

  Luke’s sense of the dark-side energy led them through several other spokes and hubs, until finally they reached a larger module, which Luke recognized as a century-old Corellian module normally used for medcenter stations. It had to have been stolen from somewhere; it was neither old nor damaged enough to have been decommissioned.

  “Our command center.” Stone-faced, Cardya led them into its center and to the station’s brig.

  Only one of the eight cells was occupied. In it, sitting on the cell’s sole chair, was a middle-aged man, short, skinny, and gray-bearded. Beside him, stretched out supine on the cot, was a young woman. Lean, angular, and dark-haired, she might have been as old as twenty. Her eyes were open, but rolled up in her head so only the whites showed, an unsettling look.