Do not trust him or accede to any demand that he makes. Above all, do not
,go to the Meridian sector.
Callista
His heart was a slow battering ram against the inside of his ribs.
He barely heard the quick, soft beeping at his side as the astromech droid
Artoo-Detoo emerged from around the airfoil of the modified B-xwing that
rose like a suspended wall in the rear corner of the deck-six shuttlecraft
bay. See-Threepio, protocol droid extraordinaire, followed close behind,
golden carapace shining in the soft light. "According to Artoo, all systems
appear to be in flying order, Master Luke," stated the protocol droid in his
prissy mechanical tenor. "But personally, I should be much happier were you
to take a larger craft with greater oxygen capacity."
Luke nodded absently, "Thanks, Threepio." But in fact his attention never
left the slip of plast in his hand, the bold, firm, slightly old-fashioned
writing across its face.
He was seeing the snows of Hoth, and the way Callista's lightsaber had vied
with the ice planet's dim sunlight for brightness. Seeing the ruined bunker
there and how the ice had glittered in the smoke-brown tousle of her hair.
Remembering what it had been to fight at her side, more a part of him than
his own hand or arm; knowing which way she'd turn, or lunge, or drive the
snow monsters into his blade.
With the memories of the snow were the warm scents of night on Yavin Four,
and of lying in each other's arms on the hillside above the jungles,
counting stars. Callista had explained to him with great solemnity why it
had seemed so logical for her and two other Jedi apprentices, thirty-three
years ago--in another body, another life--to try to concoct the illusions of
ghosts haunting an old drift station on Bespin to puzzle their Master and
why this had turned out to be not such a good idea after all.
He hurt with wanting her. Missing her. Needing her.
i realized I could not come back to you. I'm sorry, Luke.
The blazing glare of the monster ship, the Knight Hammer, and all the hopes
of the renegade Admiral Daala's fleet, crashing in flames . . .
His own voice crying Callista's name. I have my own odyssey . . .
The warm, boyish, husky voice coming to him from the recording, the gray
eyes in the ghostly oval of her face.
I'm sorry, Luke . . .
The shuttle deck of the Borealis was quiet. Only a few security officers
stood around the antiquated Seinar system brig that had brought Seti Ashgad
over from the Light of Reason, talking with the brig's graying,
downtrodden-looking pilot, their white-and-silver ceremonial blaster rifles
slung on their backs. Ashgad had arrived with only his secretary, his pilot,
and three synthdroids; and Luke could have reassured his sister's guards
that it was not physically possible for a Seinar brig to carry more than six
humans. Seinar brigs--particularly the old H-10s like that one--were the
staple of small-system personnel transport.
Luke had taken apart and put together enough of them in his youth on
Tatooine to know there wasn't a compartment big enough to tuck a Ranat into,
let alone anything human or human size.
The vessel was in good shape, but the metal was patched, pitted, and old. If
Seti Ashgad, who according to Leia was one of the wealthiest men on Nam
Chorios, could obtain no better, it was little wonder he was willing to join
up with the Rationalist Party to try to better conditions on the planet.
He turned the message in his fingers again.
The music box, a cheap and ingenious mechanical contraption without a chip
in it, had been forwarded from Atraken, but analysis of the peculiar
crystalline dust beneath the nailheads securing the panel behind which the
message had been found had revealed that it had been put together on Nam
Chorios.
Callista was on Nam Chorios.
Or had been, when she sent the message.
Artoo beeped again, more quietly. Artoo-Deetoo was the only droid Luke had
ever encountered who seemed to be able to sense human moods.
See-Threepio would catch on eventually if the problem were translated into
binary and jacked at full-blast into his receptors-and would then feel and
express genuine sympathy--but Artoo just seemed to know'.
Luke sighed and patted the little droid's domed cap, as if it were a
pittin's head. Through the gaping maw' of the magnetically shielded shuttle
port, the violet-white speck that was Nam Chorios's primary glimmered
against the powdery banners of starlight and galactic dust.
There was something about it. A curious tingling in the Force that Luke
could feel even at this distance. What it might be, he didn't know.
Do not meet with Ashgad Do not go to the Meridian sector.
"Can I be of any further assistance, Master Luke?" Threepio's voice was
diffident. Luke made himself smile, and shook his head.
"No. Thanks."
"According to my internal chronometers, Her Excellency's meeting with Master
Ashgad should be concluding now. Normal departure protocols occupy on the
average twenty minutes, and you did express a desire to be away from the
Borealis before Master Ashgad returns to the shuttle bay."
Luke glanced at the chronometer on the wall, an automatic gesture, since he
knew- Threepio's internals were accurate to two or three beats of atomic
vibration. "Right. Thank you. Both of you." He hesitated, then slid the
plast into the pocket of his gray flightsuit.
"Good luck, Master Luke," said Threepio. He hesitated a moment, then added,
"Given an estimated population of less than one million humans, and no
indigenous life forms on Nam Chorios, chances of locating Lady Callista
within a standard year should be well within the seventeenth percentile."
Luke made himself smile again. "Thanks." And the seventeenth percentile--in
a year--wasn't bad. Not when you considered how vast even the known portion
of the galaxy was. It had been a year already, since the Knight Hammer had
plunged blazing into the atmosphere of Yavin 4.
At least he had it narrowed down to one planet.
If she were still there. Why Nam Chorios?
He was turning toward the ladder that led up to the B-wing's hatch when the
main bay doors opened. His sister entered, golden boot tips flashing beneath
her figured gown and the great state robe of ruby velvet spreading behind
her like a thranta's wings with the speed of her stride. The young Academy
midshipman who accompanied her everywhere fell back and stood near the door;
as Luke held out his hands to
her he glimpsed the Noghri Ezrakh, lurking almost unseen in the shadows.
"So, did he whip out an ion cannon and try to murder you?"
Leia grinned, but the smile was a wan one and disappeared almost at once as
she shook her head. "There's just--I don't know. Maybe it's because he looks
so much like the holos I've seen of his father. I sympathize with his
cause--him and the Newcomers on that planet.
But it's out of our jurisdiction." She looked over at the brig and did a
double take. "He came in that?"
"He's not kidding about those gun stations
." Luke gestured to the long char
on the brig's side. "A b-Wing should be just small enough to get past the
screens."
There was a moment's silence, awkward, neither knowing quite what to say. To
break it, Luke fished in his pocket for Callista's message.
"You need this for anything? Analysis."
"Keep it." She put her hands on his shoulders, drew him down to kiss his
cheek. "We've got all we can out of it. It may tell you something about
where to find her, once you get down there."
There was silence. Then, "She's got to come back," said Luke softly.
"She'll stand a better chance of regaining the ability to use the Force at
the Jedi academy than she will on her own. We have all the records that are
still in existence, all the training aids you found on Belsavis. The Jedi
power has to be still within her somewhere. Cray had it. It isn't as if
Callista's mind went into the body of a non-Jedi. And the Academy needs
her."
Leia was silent.
"I need her."
"You'll find her." Still she held his hands, willing him to feel a
reassurance she did not share. She had never seen her brother happier than
during the time he'd spent with that quirky, silent, gentle lady A Jedi
Knight reincarnated without her powers. A woman who had been a ghost and
lived again.
But she'd been with Callista on Belsavis, when she'd realized that her
ability to use and touch the Force had not carried over into the body that
Dr. Cray Mingla had bequeathed to her. She'd watched the woman's grief,
frustration, and slow-growing despair; had talked to her about things that
could not be said by either one to Luke.
Luke would find her, Leia thought sadly. Somehow she knew that much.
But to what end?
"You'd better go," she said. "Luke--When you're down there, look around,
will you? According to Ashgad, the Theran cultists who control the gun
stations use coercion and superstition to rule the Oldtimer population."
As Leia spoke, she followed Luke to the corner, where he'd stacked the
supplies he'd take with him a water bottle, a small medkit, wheretablets.
They'd chosen a B-wing over the smaller X-wing fighter partly because of the
nearness of the pirate-nests on Pedducis Chorios, but partly because of
Callista's warning. The three systems had been scanned repeatedly, and
reported clear. But Leia still felt uneasy. A B-wing could take on a much
larger ship in a fight, but it was perilously close to the estimated
automatic target mass of the gun stations.
"Now, if it's just superstition, there's nothing we can do about that," she
went on. "It's their free choice, and they voted overwhelmingly to keep the
original trade restrictions in force. But if there's coercion involved, that
may change the Rationalists' case. We may be able to negotiate. Moff Getdies
still rules the Antemeridian sector 'in the name of the Emperor, and it
isn't that far away."
That had been yet another reason for choosing a B-wing.
"If fighting breaks out between the Newcomers and the Therans, he may try to
interfere. We've got a pretty strong force at the Durren orbital base, but
I'd rather not have to use it."
Luke nodded. She stood below, looking up as Luke climbed the long, fragile
ladder up the side of the airfoil and began working the bottles and packets
into every spare cranny of the cockpit. In the days of the Rebellion, and
during the long mopping up of sporadic warfare with the various Moll and
Governors and self-proclaimed Grand Admirals of the Empire, he'd
participated in space battles and dogfights without number. Given the
presence of Imperial Warlords and a sizable Imperial fleet still under the
control of those who longed for the old regime, he supposed he'd take part
in hundreds more. But more and more, in the back of his mind, was a growing
regret, and a terrible sense of waste.
"i'll keep an eye out," he said. He climbed back down to her, and
zipped up the light, tough fabric of his suit. "Being incognito should
help." He glanced across at the brig, its pilot still in conversation with
the guards. The dispatch of an escort vessel would rouse very little
curiosity, given the proximity of Pedducis Chorios.
"Just the fact that Callista would send that message, would come out of
hiding to send it, means there's something going on. The fact that she
didn't think it could go subspace means it's serious."
Leia shook her head, the gold finials and cabochon gems of her hairpins
flashing. "It could be .... That's something else I wanted to ask you." She
leaned her shoulder against the airfoil, which rocked just slightly in its
antigray cradle, and lowered her voice. "It isn't generally known, Luke, but
there's some kind of leak in the Council.
information's getting out to Admiral Pellaeon and to the imperial Moffs like
Getelles and Shargael over in I-sector. Minister of State Rieekan thinks it
may be through someone in the Rationalist Party--maybe even Q-Varx himself,
though I think the man's honest. They have adherents both in the Republic
and in nearly every piece of the Empire still big enough to field a fleet."
She hesitated a moment, her mouth wry and her brown eyes suddenly older than
her years. Luke saw- in her eyes the years of bitter wrangling, the
betrayals Mon Mothma poisoned, the Council split by factions, Admiral Ackbar
betrayed, discredited, hounded . . .
"Myself," she said softly, "I think it could be almost anyone. But Callista
knows something about it."
"I'll keep my ear to the ground." He checked the seals on his flightsuit and
the helmet tubes of the emergency systems--not that any system would save
anyone's life in a true emergency in vacuum.
"Leia . . ." He reached out a hand for hers, not entirely certain what it
was he wanted to say.
Her eyes met his. He understood the look in them. Before she was twenty she
had seen her family, her world, everything she knew, casually wiped out as a
demonstration of the Empire's might. Before he had ever met her, she had
lost some essential part of herself.
But that weary hardness in her eyes, that look of steeling herself so as
never to be surprised by even the worst . . .
And she knew it. She felt what she was becoming.
He said, not knowing that he was going to say it, "Keep up with your
lightsaber practice. Kyp or Tionne should be able to help you.
They're the best, the most centered in the Force. You need it. I'm speaking
as your teacher now, Leia."
Surprise wiped the defensiveness from her eyes, but she looked quickly away.
When she looked back it was with a quick grin, to cover her uneasiness. "To
hear is to obey, Master." Turning his seriousness aside.
But in the meeting of their eyes he saw in hers, Please understand.
Although he knew she didn't understand herself the false note in her voice
or the intention, momentarily seen and as quickly buried, to let the turmoil
in the Grand Council, the massive investigation of Loronar Corporation's
abuses in the Gantho system, the Galactic Court trial of Tervig
Ban
die-slavers, the education of her children--anything and
everything-divert her from the Jedi training she knew in her heart that she
needed.
He didn't press her. "You kiss the kids for me." He drew her close for a
quick, warm kiss on the cheek, awkward around the helmet, tubes, and wires.
"Tell the guys at the Academy I'll be back."
"I wish you could take at least Artoo with you."
He climbed a few rungs of the ladder up the airfoil. "So do I. But even if I
took him apart and tucked the pieces into every corner and under the seat of
this thing, there wouldn't be room."
She drew back, and watched as he climbed the rest of that long ladder,
settled himself into the B-wing's cockpit. "I'll subspace you from Hweg Shul
when I need to be picked up," he said, his voice tinny through the helmet
conam as he fastened himself in. "Probably before that, if I can find a
transmitter strong enough that'll take the code."
"I'll be waiting." She reached out with her mind, through the glowing inner
net of the Force, and touched his spirit like the warm clasp of a hand. Felt
his thanks for that final reassurance.
Then she and the droids retreated, and at her signal the security guard, the
shuttle's pilot, and Marcopius joined her at the bay doors.
Ezrakh had already faded into the corridor's shadows. The great leaves of
dull gray metal slid open to let them out. Her last sight of the bay showed
her Luke's B-wing turning with weightless grace to face the
black, star-spattered rectangle of the magnetic portal and the
steady-burning violet eye of the distant world where Callista had taken her
refuge.
The doors slid shut.
'Keep up with your lightsaber practice.
Why had she felt that guilty flinch when he'd said that? You need it.
Why did she feel in her chest that slight sensation of panic, like a woman
deathly sick who fears to ask the doctor what she has.
She knew she needed it.
The comm light was flashing in her stateroom when she reached it, but when
she pressed the toggle and said, "Organa Solo," there was only the faint hum
of an open channel. She frowned, annoyed and a little worried, and kicked
the heavy train of her robe aside as she settled into the chair before the
station.
"If you have no further requirements, Your Excellency," said Threepio,
"Artoo and I will take this opportunity to repower."
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