Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Conviction

by Allston, Aaron

  Khai glared at the man. “Lieutenant?”

  The sensor operator shouted before the lieutenant could reply. “Foreign device on sensors, device passing astern—”

  The weapon detonated. Sound systems integrated with the sensors interpreted the attack as an explosion, nearby but not immediate, so all aboard heard a boom astern as if the attack had been made in atmosphere. The frigate lurched from the impact. Minor-damage alarms began wailing.

  The lieutenant turned to face Khai. “Multiple signals. Starfighters out of nowhere. Our sensors aren’t tracking them effectively. Between us and open space. The entire flotilla’s under attack, sir.”

  “See to its defense, Lieutenant. Gauge respective strengths. If they’re too much, get us out of here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Khai fumed. There had been nowhere near enough time for Nam Chorios’s commanders to transmit a report, for distant commanders to launch a military response, for that response to reach this system. His attackers had already been here. That meant this was an ambush.

  A Jedi ambush. It had to be.

  Luke, Ben, and Vestara assumed a triangular back-to-back formation and moved out into the more open area of the chamber, where the bodies of Theran Listeners were not so numerous. The Listeners themselves seemed to have lapsed from agonized dreams into true sleep.

  Sith began raining down from the two platforms. They moved to surround Luke and his companions, their lightsabers springing to life. There was no mistaking their intent—at least not for Luke and Ben.

  Tola Annax, still on the platform, did have words for Vestara. “Care to surrender, dear? I’d really enjoy seeing you try to talk your way out of your current situation.”

  Vestara’s reply was resolute and haughty enough to impress Luke. “How about you surrender to me? I might let you live.”

  “No, thank you, dear. But I appreciate the courtesy.”

  Over her shoulder, Vestara stage-whispered, “Brace yourselves. We’ll be hit by a major Force attack in ten seconds. Nine.”

  The Sith attacked.

  Their assault was simple and effective: overwhelm by sheer number of simultaneous assaults. Two Sith confronted and swung at each of them. Beyond the enclosing triangle of hand-to-hand fighters, more Sith gestured, shoving at the defenders, attempting to use telekinetic techniques to move them out of line, into the paths of red blades. More Sith leapt over the fight, one after another, inverting, striking at the Skywalkers and Vestara below; at the end of his or her leap, each landed on the far side, turned, and leapt again.

  Conserving his depleted strength, Luke fought a defensive battle, deflecting his attackers’ blows into the floor, into open air. Seeing, feeling the Force being marshaled to shove him, he resisted, but did so soft-style, turning away from the shove or letting it propel him in a direction he wanted to step, never fighting it with pure strength.

  He had to fight that way. He could barely stand. His injured knee was beginning to tremble again; his leg nearly buckled beneath him.

  He heard Ben’s more energetic defense, heard the snap and crackle of his lightsaber blade against Sith blades. There was a sizzle from above Vestara; something meaty dropped behind Luke and then rolled out where he could see it. It was the head of one of the leaping Sith, a man; the rest of his body crashed to the floor atop a Theran Listener.

  The distant sounds of battle were not diminishing—just changing. The echoes of blasterfire were being replaced by the distinctive crackle of Force lightning, a counterpoint to the constant drone and snap of distant lightsabers. The Sith had reached Abeloth. She was no longer screaming. But others were, as Abeloth slew Sith.

  And all the while Vestara was counting. “Eight … seven … six … five …”

  One of Luke’s opponents mistimed a strike, slashing when his partner was in midretreat. Luke minimally sidestepped, kept his blade from being engaged, brought its tip beneath the attacker’s hand. The attacker’s own momentum brought his wrist down across Luke’s green blade. The man groaned as his severed hand and the weapon in it slapped to the permacrete floor. Clutching his wrist, he retreated, only to be replaced by a lavender-skinned female. She smiled, clearly relishing her opportunity to cut down the legendary Jedi Master.

  “Four … three …”

  Luke tensed. He did not know what sort of Force attack the Sith were bringing to bear against him, but he was grateful that Vestara knew it was coming, knew down to the exact second. He would do his best to withstand it. He guided an incoming slash from his new opponent away from him, flicking it laterally. It grazed the thigh of his other opponent, who hissed as the blade cut through his robes and into his skin.

  “Two … one … now.”

  The Force hit Luke like a sledgehammer.

  He reeled and fell to his knees. As if by reflex, his blade transcribed a defensive pattern that would confound many an attack. But no enemy blade struck at him. All around them, the Sith also spasmed and fell, their eyes widening from the power that had just assaulted them, as well.

  Luke tried to rise, couldn’t. He spun on his knees.

  Vestara was also on her knees. Ben was still on his feet, barely, shaky, at the end of a slash that might, at full strength, have cut his opponent in half through the torso. As it was, it had struck the moment after the Force blast, reduced enough in strength that it was merely fatal. His opponent lay dead, sprawled across one of the Theran Listeners. Ben’s face was twisted in pain and shock.

  In the distance, Abeloth screamed again.

  Vestara forced herself to her feet. “Quick. Before they … recover.”

  The Sith were not all unconscious. Most, in fact, had simply been laid out by the sudden pain and were struggling to straighten from fetal positions, from other poses of pain. Glassy-eyed, their faces twisted, they were for the most part still conscious.

  Ben stumbled to help his father up. But once on his feet, Luke waved him off. “Get … Valin. Vestara, to me.”

  Barely able to walk, Vestara reached Luke, tucked herself under his left arm. They supported each other and stumbled to the stairs. Step by painful step, they ascended to the first landing, turned.

  Now Luke could see Ben. The young man had Valin up over his shoulders in a rescuer’s carry and moved with agonizing slowness after his father. His face was set with his exertion, the act of will transforming him for a moment into a lean, hard man Luke barely recognized.

  Luke paused there for a second, transfixed by this vision of the man Ben would someday be. Pride and sorrow both stirred in Luke. Then the moment was gone. He and Vestara continued climbing.

  At the top of the stairs, one of the Sith who had remained at the top with Tola struggled to sit up. Vestara stepped on his head, slamming it down into the permacrete, breaking his jaw. She didn’t bother to look at him. Together she and Luke stumbled past, getting away from the platform, away from the big chamber.

  Luke straightened, waving away further help from Vestara. He turned back.

  Ben, staggering, made it to the top of the steps. Now away from uneven footing, his steps became more sure, more swift.

  Together they moved toward the entrance by which they’d gained access to the complex.

  Finally Ben had something to say and enough breath to say it with. “What was that attack? It felt like …” His voice, pained, trailed off.

  Luke already knew what it had felt like. He’d experienced it twice in his life before this. He glanced at Vestara. He felt a terrible sense of sadness rise within him. “You know what it felt like, Ben.”

  “It felt like when that tsil was hit by Ship’s attack.”

  Luke kept his eyes on Vestara. “It was, wasn’t it? A tsil. The spook-crystal that went missing. You took it.”

  She nodded. Her face was not entirely impassive. There was an expression to it—not exactly guilt, but perhaps a touch of sorrow. “And a capacitor from the TIE shuttle. And a comm receiver to act as timer and trigger. It was in my pack.”

&nb
sp; “Vestara, you’ve killed an innocent being.” It wasn’t outrage Luke felt, but loss. Not just the loss of the tsil; it was as if Vestara had just taken one tremendous step away from the light, retreating into darkness. He wondered if he or Ben would ever be able to bridge that distance.

  But her reply was not that of a child trying to stave off punishment. “Don’t you dare criticize me for that, Master Skywalker. I can’t destroy Abeloth. Maybe you can. You have to live. We were about to die, and Abeloth would win. You have to do what it takes to win.”

  “If that attack hadn’t hurt every Force-sensitive in the area, would the Sith attacking Abeloth have been able to kill her? Yes or no? You might have just cut down an attack that would have done exactly what we needed it to.” But Luke didn’t know. The future was always in motion, and the future Vestara had just prevented might have been a bad one. Nothing was certain, especially with his Force sensitivity blasted into numbness by the tsil’s death.

  Vestara shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know you have more power than anyone else I can think of. You were hard enough to trick me into luring my own people here, knowing it would probably get some of them killed—or me. How can you object to me being hard enough to sacrifice one tsil to save the galaxy?”

  “Vestara.” That was Ben, his breathing labored. “Enough. Dad, enough. She has a point, too.”

  Grim, Luke kept his mouth shut.

  They reached the exit hatch. Vestara went first, opening it for the Skywalkers. Ben, with a little help from Luke, slowly carried Valin up the rungs and out into the cold twilight daytime of Nam Chorios.

  Into a war zone.

  The first thing they saw was a shuttle streaking by overhead, trailing smoke. It descended in a ballistic arc, disappearing behind a distant dust cloud well away from Crystal Valley. They heard the impact of its crash, its explosion; they saw the black-and-orange cloud of its death rise above the dust storm.

  A StealthX shot by overhead, firing quad-linked lasers at a distant target—a hardy little gunship. They could see more red flashes in the dim daytime sky, signs of a battle raging out to a distance of several kilometers.

  Panting, Ben took in the scene. “The StealthX wing. Talk about a nick-of-time arrival.”

  “Not nick of time.” Vestara slammed the hatch closed, spun the dogging wheel. Then she lit her lightsaber and plunged its tip into the security keypad. “How long have they been in system, Master Skywalker?”

  Luke held her gaze. “Days.”

  “You had me summon my people, and you summoned yours and told them to wait. To hide. As soon as Abeloth and the Sith were exposed, you brought them in.”

  “Yes.”

  She deactivated her weapon and hung it from her belt. Then she reached over to give Luke a pat on the cheek, a gesture that was unduly familiar, oddly affectionate. “You’re more like a Sith than I realized. Probably more than you’ll acknowledge.”

  He offered her a noncommittal shrug. Then he raised his comlink. “Owen Lars to Kandra Nilitz.”

  There was no hiss of jamming, but Kandra did not reply.

  “She’s probably halfway to Hweg Shul by now. I hope so.” Then, his next words … Jedi were supposed to distance themselves from self-serving emotions and thoughts, but, blast it, it felt good to say them after so many months. “Grand Master Skywalker to StealthX wing. Come in.”

  “Gray One to Grand Master, I copy.” It was a woman’s voice. Jaina’s voice.

  Luke couldn’t help but grin. “Requesting immediate dust-off for four Jedi, one unconscious.”

  “You’ve got it, Uncle Luke.”

  Now Ben smiled, too. “Finally. Dad’s in charge again. We’re back to business as usual.”

  KLATOOINE

  WITH GROWING SATISFACTION, DEI WATCHED, ON HIS DATAPAD SCREEN, the transmission from C-3PO’s optics. They mostly showed the backs of taller, broader beings, many of them Klatooinian, but occasionally the protocol droid would glimpse the stage and those on it—the little Klatooinian Jedi, the Klatooinian woman speaking to her, and, mere steps away from them, Tenel Ka Djo.

  It had been a fast, efficient operation. Grab the protocol droid, send a charge through him to power him down, slap a restraining bolt into place, hustle him into a tent rented from a weapons vendor happy to earn credits any way he could. A quick bit of mechanics to install the explosive charge and relays that would send the droid’s sensor data to Dei’s datapad. Directly load a forged message into the droid’s comm queue. Finally, hand the droid off to a well-bribed representative of the Manumission Mandate Militia. Then it was merely a matter of waiting for the proper time. As luck would have it, the Solos’ little girl had found the droid a bare two minutes before Dei would have transmitted the order to release him anyway.

  The Solos’ little girl …

  At the moment, the datapad was receiving a close-up of Tenel Ka Djo’s features. The woman was smiling, a polished, political smile, clearly offering support for the events transpiring at the center of camp, but there was something about her expression, a touch of tension, that Dei found familiar.

  Kneeling on the sand of the eastern overlook, Dei set the remote detonator down beside him and picked up the datapad. Ignoring for a moment the live feed on the screen—C-3PO would take two minutes at least to get to the raised stage—Dei backed up through the last half hour’s worth of recordings from the droid.

  There she was, the little girl in the last moments C-3PO had stared down into her face. Her hair was a familiar red, her eyes a familiar gray. Her expression bore a familiar seriousness.

  Dei flipped back and forth between images of Amelia Solo and Tenel Ka Djo. A wash of realization went through him like a cold stream.

  Jedi Queen. Perhaps Tenel Ka had already borne a second daughter. Or perhaps this girl was the child believed dead years ago. It made sense. Tenel Ka’s association with the Solos, the need of a Hapan queen to keep an heir away from murderous rivals …

  Dei would just have to kill both of them. But now it was Tenel Ka’s turn. He flipped back to the live feed.

  The screen showed a veiled Hapan woman speaking directly to C-3PO, nodding. She stepped aside to let him pass. The next person ahead, not five meters away, was Tenel Ka Djo. Dei reached for the remote.

  His fingers encountered sand. He groped around, surprised. He was usually spot-on accurate, remembering exactly where he placed items. But his fingers felt nothing but sand.

  He looked down.

  The remote was gone.

  * * *

  Reaching the top of the trail ascending the eastern ridge, Allana gulped and looked back down at the camp. It had seemed so large when she was in it, and now it was a tiny thing. The Millennium Falcon, at one edge, its surface bathed in lights set up by the Alliance guards, gave her a sense of scale. Even at this distance, she could hear occasional roars from the crowd in front of the central stage. She could also hear the faint hum from the nearest shield generator, hundreds of meters away.

  But the camp was not her concern now. She turned to look over the dark desert. It occurred to her, belatedly, that this close to the uneven overhang, a single misstep could cause her to fall dozens of meters—to be badly injured or even killed.

  Well, there was nothing to be done except be careful. If time allowed.

  Anji walked a few steps away, then, graceless for a nexu, fell over on the warm sand and began grooming the fur on her side.

  Allana ignored her and, as well as she knew how, opened herself to the Force.

  Here, where there were no people around, perhaps she could feel the man she was looking for. It was sometimes like looking for glowbugs—specific ones. When there were clouds of the things flitting around in front of city lights, it was hard to see any, impossible to pick out a specific bug. But when there were only two or three hovering over a dark pond, it was much easier.

  She shook her head, trying to get rid of that thought. Grandma Leia often chided her for thinking when she needed to be feelin
g. She let her thoughts drift away.

  She felt Anji nearby, happy and strong and primitive. She let herself stretch beyond the nexu.

  She felt many touches of the Force below, in the direction of camp. She ignored them.

  She felt … darkness. Almost in a trance, she moved in that direction.

  It was not far by the standards of a healthy little girl, the equivalent of a few city blocks. And then, ahead, she saw him—at the edge of the overlook, a datapad on the sand before him, macrobinoculars beside it.

  Slowly, she withdrew herself from feeling his presence. She withdrew into herself, making herself a tiny dot in the Force as she had before. And step by step she approached, silent as Anji.

  She had to get close if she were to throw herself on his back. She didn’t know exactly how that would help, but it was what her vision had shown her.

  The man set something down on the sand beside him and picked up his datapad, fiddling with it. Allana moved closer, barely daring to breathe.

  She could see Tenel Ka on the datapad’s small screen, a broadcast from the event going on right now in camp.

  It came to her then, the thought that was hovering around the dark-aura man. She’d been wrong. He was not the fiery man.

  C-3PO was.

  She covered her mouth to keep from making a noise that would alert the man.

  C-3PO was the fiery man, and the little thing the dark-aura man had set down beside him was the key to C-3PO’s death. To Tenel Ka’s death.

  Allana took another step forward.

  Leia reached the top of the sloping trail and checked her comlink again. It gave her a new direction, a new distance. Barely five hundred meters away.

  But curiously, she could not feel her granddaughter’s presence in the Force. Anji’s, yes, dim, ahead. And something else.

  Something dark.

  Leia sprinted.

  Dei stood and turned.

  Standing just three meters from him, the remote in her hand, was Amelia Solo. She stared up at him, defiant.

  He gestured for the remote. “Give me that.”