Exile

by Aaron Allston

  “Coruscant,” Luke answered instantly. “We need all the good sense and sharp thinking we can get at the Temple. But for now, Mara and I will be heading to the main engagement to see what good we can do for the Alliance forces. You want to come along or head back to the Temple?”

  “I’ll fight.”

  Wedge said, “Luke, you’re Ganner One now. Best of luck.”

  “Likewise.”

  As Wedge peeled off from their formation and set a course for the Errant Venture, Luke opened his comm board to listen across military frequencies to find out what was happening and where.

  DODONNA

  Admiral Limpan retreated to the command salon, which was smaller, quieter, and less frantic than the bridge. Now she could hear herself think again—and could more easily track the battle’s progress.

  And Dodonna’s probable death. The Galactic-class battle carrier, commissioned less than a year before, was being chewed to pieces by the Bothan forces pursuing her; she might not last long enough to flee the solar system. The constant pounding by the laser batteries of enemy cruisers—and just as damaging, the missiles and torpedoes of enemy starfighters—was taking a terrible toll on Limpan’s flagship.

  “Ready to enter hyperspace, Admiral,” her navigator announced.

  “Launch,” she said.

  The exterior view, brought in by the salon’s displays, showed the stars twist, become streaks of light—and then instantly revert to stars again, because this hyperspace jump was very short, not even leaving the system.

  Centerpoint Station and the furious fight being waged around it appeared on the main display.

  “Navigation,” Limpan said, “plot a course to send us on an approach close to the station—at optimal range for our batteries. We’ll make one pass and pour as much damage as we can into her. Then we’re outbound. Our next jump will take us to—Fenn, what’s the designation for the muster point you used for your initial assault on the system?”

  Colonel Fiav Fenn, a female Sullustan, turned from her station computer. “Point Bleak,” she said. Fenn had been the aide to Limpan’s predecessor, Admiral Klauskin; Limpan had her own aide, but had transferred Fenn to starfighter coordination duty and was pleased with her work in that role.

  “Once we’re past Centerpoint”—if we survive, Limpan thought—“our next jump will take us to Point Bleak. Communicate with all other Alliance forces, tell them to break off the engagement and join us there. Tell Errant Venture they have the option of joining us there.”

  “Recommend against that course of action, Admiral,” Fenn said.

  Limpan fixed her with a harsh look. “Explain that, Colonel.”

  “If every Alliance force at the Centerpoint engagement zone jumps to the same spot in space, fine—the enemy can plot our direction but not the distance of our jump, so following us would be pointless. But if Alliance ships from six different engagement zones jump to the same location, all the enemy needs to do is triangulate, and they can find us within minutes.”

  Limpan seethed quietly for a moment. She’d been promoted to admiral from captain during the peacetime after the Yuuzhan Vong war. During that war, she’d had to lead New Republic forces in retreat on more than one occasion, but she’d only commanded one ship at a time then. She knew the tactics of a full task force retreat in theory, intellectually, but they weren’t second nature to her.

  Into the silence that had fallen in the command salon, Limpan said, “You’re right, Fenn. Good call. Navigation, relay the Point Bleak order to all our forces in this engagement zone. Communications, tell the coordinator of each separate engagement zone to find its own arrival spot just outside the system and communicate with us from there. Tell the same thing to the blasted gambling ship.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Limpan settled into her command chair and scowled at the main display, scowled at Fenn’s back. The chair vibrated beneath her as Dodonna sustained another torpedo hit. More red lights flashed on the diagnostic displays.

  Whole banks of turbolasers were failing. Shields were down to 68 percent efficiency and weakening. Life support was out on a dozen decks, the personnel there scrambling to get to safer areas. Several thruster banks had been destroyed, and more were being stressed past their operational limits. Persistent vibrations shook the Dodonna, a sign that accumulated damage was twisting her very framework.

  Dodonna might survive this engagement, but she would do so in such bad shape that she would have to return to the shipyards immediately for repairs. She would be out of commission for months.

  More quietly, Limpan added, “Communications, let Blue Diver know that as soon as we reach Point Bleak, she’s to come alongside. I’ll be transferring the flag to Blue Diver.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Limpan saw several spines stiffen at the announcement. Good, she thought, they still have their pride. It was one thing they hadn’t completely lost.

  Dodonna poured damage down onto Centerpoint Station, digging a latitudinal trench of melted metal and scoring to match the longitudinal one Blue Diver had gouged. But the pursuing Bothan and Corellian starfighters, unchecked by a sufficient starfighter screen, continued to hammer away at the battle carrier. Blue Diver broke away from the station to follow the flagship, using her batteries to eliminate as much of the starfighter pursuit as she could, but it was like a novice Jedi trying to protect a haunch of blood-warm meat from a swarm of piranha-beetles.

  Finally Dodonna jumped, joined shortly thereafter by Blue Diver and the hyperdrive-equipped starfighters supporting them. Anakin Solo was the last to enter hyperspace.

  Arriving at Point Bleak, the three capital ships maneuvered close to one another, the better to exchange aid and support with overlapping fields of heavy-weapons fire.

  But no enemy vessels followed them out of hyperspace. They had time to assess damage, to communicate with Coruscant, to gather data.

  It wasn’t long before the HoloNet churned with news reports from Corellia. Prime Minister Dur Gejjen almost glowed with the victory of “casting free the yoke of Galactic Alliance oppression,” and offered praise to the forces of Bothawui and Commenor, and to his own battle coordinator, Admiral Delpin, who was conspicuously commended for doing “what Admiral Antilles could not”—as if she’d had any role in bringing the Bothans and Commenorians to the table.

  Admiral Niathal ordered Dodonna back to Coruscant. She ordered Limpan’s task force to effect repairs, stand by, and use its resources to monitor activity within the Corellian system. She also warned Limpan of possible treachery or sabotage—it was clear that the Bothan fleet’s departure from the Bothawui system had been kept secret owing to some catastrophic failure of the Alliance forces monitoring that system.

  Within a day the Galactic Alliance declared that the state of war previously enacted against Corellia now extended to Bothawui and Commenor as well. Holonews political analysts, sober or gleeful depending on the political and exploitative leanings of their own news services, speculated on which systems would be next to join what they now referred to as the Corellian Confederation.

  Commendations were offered on both sides. Memorial services for the dead took place.

  And with the political climate changed—with a negotiated peace between an isolated Corellia and the Alliance no longer possible—Jacen Solo and the Anakin Solo were ordered back to Coruscant.

  chapter fifteen

  ZIOST

  From high orbit, the world of Ziost didn’t look like a place of evil.

  It was a typical blue-green world, a good mix of land-mass and open water, ice at the poles, white cloud formations everywhere, including the characteristic spiral of a hurricane over one of the oceans. The landmasses at the equator seemed to be almost entirely green, graduating to green-white up through the temperate zones and turning to pure white soon after, giving the world large polar ice caps. There was no hint of desert or any terrain other than forest and tundra.

  It was, in fact, a beautiful pl
ace, if one looked only with one’s eyes.

  But Ben had other senses, and through the Force he could feel something else, something malevolent about the planet. It seemed to be staring at him, as if it were a mottled eye belonging to a hideous, hate-filled face he couldn’t quite make out.

  Ben stared at Ziost, and Ziost stared at Ben. Ben gulped.

  “Shaker, do you pick up any thruster trails?” Ben asked. He didn’t really expect much help there. Thruster emission trails dissipated rapidly, and since a planet’s vehicle and vessel traffic was heavy, all the trails tended to blur into one another.

  The astromech tweetled an affirmative noise, and lines of text popped up on one of the Y-wing’s cockpit displays:

  HEAVY ORBITAL TRAIL INDICATES ONE OR MORE VEHICLES IN SPECIFIC ORBIT FOR CONSIDERABLE TIME.

  VEHICLE(S) LEFT ORBIT APPROXIMATELY EIGHT STANDARD HOURS AGO AND MADE PLANETARY DESCENT.

  The cockpit sensor display switched from a live sensor feed to a diagram of the planet’s surface, with dotted lines showing the abandoned orbit and the descent path.

  Ben felt a wash of relief. Of course, Ziost was a dead world, in terms of planetary civilization. Few vehicles ever arrived here, and thruster trails would be distinct for a longer time. That changed the prospect of finding a single vehicle in an area the size of a planetary surface from “crazy” to “possible.”

  He switched the R2 unit’s data over to his navigation computer and plotted his own descent.

  From an altitude of a few kilometers, traveling slowly enough that the Y-wing would neither cause sonic booms nor pull contrails visible from the ground, Ben studied the vehicle that must have brought Faskus back to Ziost.

  It was a Corellian YT-2400 light transport—diskshaped, like Uncle Han’s venerable Millennium Falcon, but with its cockpit at the end of a starboard-side outrigger-style projection.

  At least it had once been a YT-2400. Now it was a scorched heap of buckled durasteel, blackened in numerous places by fire; smoke still curled up into the sky from spots where the hull had ruptured. The cockpit and its access tube had separated from the transport’s main body and had rolled, or been hurled, down a gentle incline, putting them twenty meters from the main hull. A light snowfall drifted down across the two main portions of the destroyed craft.

  Had it crash-landed? Ben increased the magnification on his visual display and shook his head. No, the scorch patterns on portions of the hull showed clear sign of turbo-laser strafing. The transport had been fired upon multiple times, and then had burned.

  Ben quickly switched back to primary sensors, but there was no sign of other air traffic in this area. The attacker was long gone.

  Ben spiraled down to a landing in the same clearing Faskus had chosen. He set the Y-wing down well clear of the burned wreckage, then investigated on foot.

  Portions of the transport were cool enough to approach, and he was even able to enter one or two places where hatches had been blown off or the hull had gapped open wide enough to admit him. There was nothing within but lingering smoke and the smell of burned plastics and pseudo-leathers.

  Seeking more clues, he opened himself up to the Force … and shivered. The sensation of being stared at was stronger here than it had been in orbit. He tried to set that sensation aside, to feel around and beyond it, and he could detect no hint of death. He didn’t think the pilot had died in the transport.

  Where was he then? Ben wasn’t an accomplished tracker. He didn’t think he could follow a target-particularly one who had recently been fired upon, and was probably cautious and deceptive—through heavy forest.

  And then he felt it, just at the periphery of his Forcesenses, a little hint of wicked glee, just as he’d felt it at the display case on Drewwa.

  That glee remained steady, if distant, as he returned to his Y-wing. “Shaker, I’m going extravehicular for a while. Maybe days,” he told the astromech.

  Shaker offered him a musical interrogative. Ben didn’t need to pull out his datapad and read the transmitted text to understand. What do you want me to do?

  He thought about it. On this hostile world, an R2 unit’s sensors, tools, and other capabilities could be very useful, assuming the little droid didn’t become stuck in a bog or something. But Ben didn’t have the winch needed to remove Shaker from his housing on the Y-wing. Some astromechs had modifications that would let them climb free and make a safe descent, but Shaker seemed to be a stock model, with no mods of any consequence.

  Still, Ben did have the Force available to him. He just wasn’t sure he could manage a precise feat of telekinesis with something as heavy as an R2 unit.

  “Hold on a moment, little guy.” Ben closed his eyes and concentrated.

  Through the Force, he could feel the looming mass of the Y-wing, even trace its contours. And there was Shaker, too, but he couldn’t separate the droid in his mind from the starfighter. He didn’t want to pick up the whole starfighter, didn’t even want to try.

  Then Shaker made a noise of curiosity, and suddenly the droid was distinct from the starfighter, its own lines clearly defined. Ben grinned and focused on the astromech.

  He gently pulled upward, as if trying to extract a plug from an engine. The plug proved to be stubborn, so he pulled harder.

  Shaker’s sudden squawk of alarm almost broke Ben’s concentration, but he frowned and kept at it, and could sense the astromech rising into the air and floating free of the Y-wing. Ben gestured laterally, and Shaker drifted to one side.

  Carefully, Ben brought the droid down to the ground and opened his eyes. Swaying a little, tired from his effort, he said, “I guess you’re coming with me.”

  The droid chirped, its tones suggesting relief.

  Heading westward, the direction in which Ben felt the distant glee, they plunged into the forest of Ziost.

  It was a cold day. Though Ben had felt comfortable out in the clearing, in the cloud-muted sunlight, here the forest canopy cut off most of the sunlight, and Ben felt a chill. The massive, dark, twisting tree trunks, looking like painracked bodies flash-frozen and preserved in their agonies, added to his unease. He pulled his Jedi cloak from his backpack and donned it, grateful for both its warmth and the symbolic protection it offered.

  There were no trails through this forest, just dense undergrowth. Shaker’s limitations in the environment—the droid could move briskly on its wheels on flat, hard surfaces, but had to waddle slowly on legs on uneven terrain—kept their progress slow. But in the first hour of travel, Ben did not feel the glee he was pursuing become more distant. If anything, he and Shaker seemed to be closing, very slowly, on his quarry.

  Then he heard sounds from the direction they’d come. The sounds were far away, muffled by distance and the oppressive forest, but Ben thought he recognized the scream of ion engines, the thoom of laserfire.

  Shaker began tweetling a complicated message. With a sinking feeling, Ben pulled out his datapad and opened it. A series of diagnostic reports scrolled by on the screen too fast to read, but then the message scrolled to a stop.

  The last line read:

  Y-WING DIAGNOSTIC SUMMARY: ASSESSED DAMAGE PRECLUDES FUNCTIONING. COMMUNICATIONS ENDED. PROBABILITY 84% THAT Y-WING HAS BEEN TOTALLY DESTROYED.

  Ben sank down to sit on the powdery snow cover on the forest floor. Faskus’s enemies had come back and destroyed his transportation, the only way he knew to get back off-world.

  The files he had suggested that no one was sure of any sentient beings still left on Ziost. There might not be anyone to help him get offworld, ever … and no one who cared about him knew he was here.

  He was going to die alone on Ziost.

  He forced himself to stiffen up. Whether he died or not, he had a mission to finish. And once it was done, he had a second mission, a personal one.

  To punish the people who had tried to exile him on this lonely world.

  CORUSCANT JEDI TEMPLE, COUNCIL CHAMBER

  They met in their circle of chairs—elegant stone
seats, far short of thrones in lavishness, and not comfortable enough to encourage meetings that lasted for hours. The others—Mara, Corran, Kyle Katarn, Cilghal, Kyp Durron—waited for Luke to sit, a tradition they’d informally adopted and which he wished, just a bit, that they’d abandon.

  When all were seated, Luke said, “Cilghal, I’d appreciate it if you’d take the role of taras-chi for this gathering.”

  The Mon Cal Jedi Master blinked at him. Her protruding eyes made the action more impressive than it would be from a human. “I’m sorry, Grand Master. Take the role of what?”

  Kyp made a tiny noise. It could have been a noncommittal grunt. Luke glanced over to see that Kyp’s face was locked up with the effort not to laugh. Luke continued, “Taras-chi. A tradition we haven’t observed recently. You find a challenge for any idea or proposition you think isn’t being adequately tested.”

  “Ah,” Cilghal said. “Yes, of course.”

  Kyp twitched just once, a final suppression of laughter, and then relaxed.

  “We have several items to consider,” Luke said. “In no particular order … Though we have no restrictions on how many Jedi Masters there should be, the war has clearly taken up additional time from each Master, and the worsening of the war will probably take still more. This means the teaching will suffer. I propose, then, that we consider whether any senior Jedi Knights are suitable for advancement. We don’t need to debate candidates today, but you should all prepare lists of those you think are suitable.” Most of the Masters present nodded, all but Cilghal, who considered the question, her bulbous eyes elevated to different levels, but offered no objection.

  “Second,” Luke continued, “as many of you know, Ben is missing. He may have run away to reach Jacen. He may have left on some personal mission to prove himself. He may …” It took him a moment to force the words out. “He may have been taken. Evidence Mara and I have uncovered suggests that he may have injured a woman who later died from her injuries … and that the woman’s mother was Lumiya.”