"Things come and go, Jacen Solo," Sekot said. "We both know that."
"Are you reading my mind?" he asked. "Perhaps. You still wonder, sometimes, why I woke you first when you arrived here. This, and many other things, you will understand in time."
He stared at his hands for a moment. "I wish you wouldn't appear to me in that form. I find it disconcerting." "Like this, then?" asked the child who would one day become Darth Vader.
He met the disturbingly blue stare of his grandfather as directly as he could. "Why do you have to take on any form? Why can't you just be who you are?"
"Because you couldn't begin to comprehend who I am," Sekot said, returning to the image of Vergere. "There are limits to your understandingjust as there are limits to mine. Mine, however, are an order of magnitude removed from yours. Take no offense, Jacen Solo, but my talking to you now is like you talking to a dust mite that crawled across your skin. Do you believe that such a mite could understand you if you were to speak to it normally? Do you think you would even hear a reply if you listened with your normal ears?" Sekot shook Vergere's head in answer to its own question. "Of course not. In order to communicate between such diverse scales of existence, one or both sides must change. For the moment, I am prepared to make that change."
"Only for the moment?" Jacen repeated.
"We'll see what the future holds." Sekot's expression was concerned, not threatening, yet Jacen felt distinctly unsettled by the conversation. What were they getting themselves into? They were bargaining with a creature literally beyond their comprehension. Who knew what its motives or goals were? Or whether it had some hidden agenda? . . .
"Do you know what it is I crave?" said the living planet through the image of Vergere.
Jacen shrugged. "Peace? Knowledge? A clear conscience?"
"All those things are required for a good life. And all of them have a price."
"That's what you want, then? To pay the price and earn a good life?"
Sekot smiled with Vergere's face. "I think that's what we all want, Jacen Solo."
With those few words, Sekot slowly melted away, and Jacen was left alone to ponder them.
Tahiri was in one of the Selonia's empty holds, exercising. She wasn't hiding as such, but was definitely trying to keep out of the way. It gave her an excuse to work on her technique. Since merging the two halves of her self, she'd been struggling to assimilate more than just ways of thought, speech, and being. The old Tahiri and Riina had fought in very different ways, and she needed to refine the techniques so she could more effectively incorporate both the next time she had to go into combat.
As she sparred with shadows, tossing her lightsaber from hand to hand and kicking powerfully, leaping gracefully, striking the air with unerring accuracy, her mind kept a ceaseless running commentary Jedi Force leap, asth-korr throat hold, Sand People high kick, Kwaad double punch. . .
"Why'd you let him go?"
The voice came from behind her and echoed through the hold. Tahiri didn't break her rhythm even for a moment. She'd known he was coming twenty seconds before he appeared in the entrance.
She performed one last fluid leap and landed firmly on both feet, her body now fully facing Han Solo. Tahiri extinguished her lightsaber, returning the pommel to her belt. She walked casually toward Han.
"Let who go?" she asked, even though she knew who he was referring to.
"Droma!" Han's voice was thick with frustration. "I was getting worried because I hadn't heard from him since we docked, so I started asking around. Captain Mayn told me that a Ryn ship called Fortune Seeker docked briefly with the Selonia not long ago, and now Jag informs me that Twin Suns escorted that ship to its hyperspace jump point. He didn't know whether or not Droma was on board, of course, but I'm guessing that you doseeing as you wer e the one who requested the escort for the ship in the first place. So I'll ask you again why did you let him go?"
Tahiri offered a slight shrug. "Because he asked me to."
Han took two steps into the room. His expression was cloudedhurt, too, although he would never admit to that. He would claim that he was angry at having been deceived. But really, there had been no deception. He just hadn't been told.
"Why you?" Han asked. "Why wouldn't he talk to me?"
That was the core of it, she knew. He was transparent to her. She could see through his reserve with the cold clarity of an alien warrior and read his innermost thoughts with the sensitivity of a Jedi. She felt for him, in her own way.
"Because he knew you would ask questions," she said. "You're too much a part of the system he is trying to work around. There can be only so much overlap before the members of the Ryn network lose the thing that makes them special and become like you blind in subtle ways, vulnerable when you can't afford to be. For now, you and he must stand apartuntil the day that peace comes."
Han shook his head. "Droma wasn't a part of that network. They turned him down."
She smiled at his naivete. "Do you remember Onadax?"
"Onadax? What's that got to?"
"Droma gave me a message to give to you," she cut in smoothly. "He said to tell you that he hopes your timing's better next time. And that he still doesn't want your money."
"Timing? Money?" Confusion quickly became realization. "The creep who interrogated me at that bar! That was Droma'?"
She didn't take any pleasure in the way Han had been fooled.
"He encouraged the riot on Onadax to cover your getawayand his, too. He'd been running the Ryn network through that operation, the bar, for six months. That was about three months longer than he would have liked, he said, but it was necessary to take that much time to make sure everything was running properly; once he was sure it was, he could move on. When you're the head of such a secretive organization, he said, you don't want to sit still too long. Their strength lies in their"
"Wait a minute," Han said, shaking his head in bewilderment. "The head of the organization? Droma? The Ryn?"
"It makes sense if you think about it. Your involvement with him gave him a very high standing with all the Ryn. His species has been leaderless for a very long timenot that they want what we would traditionally regard as a leader. They're nomads, born to be wanderers and therefore endlessly exploited. They're expected to wander all over the galaxy, so few security people will stop them, beyond the usual harassment. And if someone sees Ryn working, they'll usually leave them alone. The Ryn go everywhere, see everything, and talk endlessly to each other by notes, songs, and rumors carried by trading ships. They're frequent stowaways, so few people would become suspicious at finding Ryn where they
weren't meant to be." She shrugged. "What he's done is take what most people regard as being the Ryn's weaknesses and turned them into strengths."
"Who'd have thought?" Han mused with a smile curling one corner of his mouth. She nodded.
Han shook his head, losing the smile. "I still don't understand why he had to leave so soon. Or why he couldn't tell me all this himself."
She faced his incomprehension squarely. "The more people who know about him and his Ryn network, the greater the risk he runs. The less evidence exists that he runs the whole thing, the safer he becomes. His family won't betray him, and neither will you, but there are people farther removed he can't necessarily trust. The Ryn have learned the hard way not to place their faith in strangers."
"And what about you?" Han said. "I'd have thought you were more of a stranger to him than me."
"Given the reports he'd received from Goure on Bakura, as well as the Ryn on Galantos, Droma offered to adopt me into the movement."
"The fact that you're telling me this now suggests you didn't accept his offer."
She shook her head. "I was tempted, briefly, but I decided against it. For the moment, anyway."
The truth was, it was too early to decide what she was going to do with herself. She was no longer trying to walk two divergent paths simultaneously, tearing herself apart in the process; she was finally walking the
one path, and she enjoyed the idea of continuing down that path until she figured out just what she wanted to do no matter how long that took.
With a sigh, Han's hurt softened and became disappointment. "I would've liked the chance to tell him how good it was to see him again. You know?"
"I do know," she said. "And so did he."
"I don't like the idea of not saying good-bye to my friends. These days you can't be sure that you're ever going to see them again."
"I don't think you have to worry about that," she said. "You'll see Droma again. Maybe sooner than you think."
Han's smile returned, then. He didn't look convinced by Tahiri's words of comfort, but he clearly appreciated them.
"Thanks, Tahiri," he said.
"All wounds heal with time," she said. The words rang with a truth that made her shiver. After so long, she could finally say them with absolute conviction. "All guilt fades, and opposites become one."
"Is that so?" he said with a perceptive look. "Perhaps you should try telling that to the people who made you like this."
She thought about this as she watched Han walk out of the room and return to his ship. Yun-Yammka, the Slayer, hung around her neck in the form of the small silver pendant that she had found on Galantos, It held no significance for her now at all, except as a symbol. It served as a remindersometimes grim, more often triumphantof everything she had endured while finding her new self.
Maybe I will tell them, she thought when Han had gone. Maybe I will. . .
"Begun, this Clone War has!" MASTER YODA
Turn the page
for a sneak preview
of the very first Clone Wars novel,
STAR WARS SHATTERPOINT
by Matthew Stover
an original Star Wars adventure featuring Jedi Master Mace Windu.
ONE
CAPITAL CRIMES
The spaceport at Pelek Baw smelled clean. It wasn't. Typical backworld port filthy, disorganized, half-choked with rusted remnants of disabled ships.
Mace stepped off the shuttle ramp and slung his kit bag by its strap. Smothering wet heat pricked sweat across his bare scalp. He raised his eyes from the ochre-scaled junk and discarded crumples of empty nutri-packs scattered around the landing deck, up into the misty jade sky.
The white crown of Grandfather's Shoulder soared above the city the tallest mountain on the Korunnal Highland, an active volcano with dozens of open calderae. Mace remembered the taste of the snow at the treeline, the thin cold air and the aromatic resins of the evergreen scrub below the summit.
He had spent far too much of his life on Coruscant.
If only he could have come here for some other reason.
Any other reason.
A straw-colored shimmer in the air around him explained the clean smell a surgical sterilization field. He'd expected it. The spaceport had always had a powered-up surgical field umbrella, to protect ships and equipment from the various native fungi that feed on metals and silicates; the field also wiped out the bacteria and molds that would otherwise have made the spaceport smell like an overloaded 'fresher.
Mace wore clothing appropriate to his cover a stained Corellian cat-leather vest over a loose shirt that used to be white, and skin-tight black pants with wear-patches of grey. His boots carried a hint of polish, but only above the ankle; the uppers were scuffed almost to suede. The only parts of his ensemble that were well-maintained were the supple holster belted to his right thigh, and the gleaming Merr-Sonn Power 5 it held. His lightsaber was stuffed into the kit bag, disguised as an old-fashioned glow rod. The kit bag also held what looked like a battered old datapad, most of which was actually a miniature subspace transmitter that was frequency-locked to the band monitored by the light cruiser Halleck, on station in the Ventran system.
The spaceport's probiotic showers were still in their long, low blockhouse of mold-stained duracrete, but their entrance had been expanded into a large temporary-looking office of injection-molded plastifoam, with a foam-slab door that hung askew on half-sprung hinges. The door was streaked with rusty stains that had dripped from the fungus-chewed durasteel sign above. The sign said CUSTOMS. Mace went in.
Sunlight leaked green through mold-tracked windows. Climate control wheezed a body-temp breeze from ceiling vents, and the smell loudly advertised that this place was well beyond the reach of the surgical field. The other passengers who'd gotten off the shuttle were inside already two Kubaz who'd spent the de-orbit fluting excitedly about the culinary possibilities of pinch beetles and buzzworms, and a mismatched couple who seemed to be some kind of itinerant comedy act, a Kitonak and a Pho'pheahian whose canned banter had made Mace long for earplugs. Or hard vacuum. Even incurable deafness. The comedians must have been far down on their luck; Haruun Kal's capital city is a place lounge acts go to die.
Inside the customs office, enough flybuzz hummed to get the two Kubaz chuckling and eagerly nudging each other. Mace didn't quite manage to ignore the Pho Ph'eahian broadly explaining to a bored-looking human that he'd just jumped in from Kashyyyk and boy were his legs tired. The agent seemed to find this about as tolerable as Mace did; he hurriedly passed the comedians along after the pair of Kubaz, and they all disappeared into the shower blockhouse.
Mace found a different cus toms agent a Neimoidian female with pink-slitted eyes, cold-bloodedly sleepy in the heat. The Neimoidian looked over his identikit incuriously. "Corellian, hnh? Purpose of your visit?"
"Business."
She sighed tiredly. "You'll need a better answer than that. Corellia's no friend of the Confederacy."
"Which would be why I'm doing business here."
"Hnh. I scan you. Open your bag for inspection."
Mace thought about the "old-fashioned glow rod" stashed in his bag. He wasn't sure how convincing its shell would be to Neimoidian eyes, which can see deep into the infrared.
"I'd rather not."
"Do I care? Open it." She squinted dark pink up at him. "Hey, nice skinjob. You could almost pass for a Koran."
"Almost?"
"You're too tall. And they mostly have hair. And anyway, Korunnai are all Force freaks, yes? They have powers and stuff."
"I have powers."
"Yeah?"
"Sure." Mace hooked his thumbs behind his belt. "I have the power to make ten credits appear in your hand."
The Neimoidian looked thoughtful. "That's a pretty good power. Let's see it."
He passed his hand over the customs agent's desk, and let fall a coin he'd palmed from his belt's slit pocket. The Neimoidian had powers of her own she made the coin disappear. "Not bad." She turned up her empty hand. "Let's see it again."
"Let's see my identikit validated and my bag passed."
The Neimoidian shrugged and complied, and Mace did his trick again. "Power like yours, you'll get along fine in Pelek Baw," the Neimoidian said. "Pleasure doing business with you. Be sure to take your PB tabs. And see me on your way offworld. Ask for Pule."
"I'll do that."
Toward the back of the customs office, a large poster advised everyone entering Pelek Baw to use the probiotic showers before leaving the spaceport. The showers replaced beneficial skin flora that had been killed by the surgical field. This advice was supported with gruesomely graphic holos of the wide variety of fungal infections awaiting unshowered travellers. A dispenser beneath the poster offered half-credit doses of tablets guaranteed to restore intestinal flora as well. Mace bought a few, took one, then stepped into the shower blockhouse.
The blockhouse had a smell all its own a dark musky funk, rich and organic. The showers themselves were simple autonozzles spraying bacteria-rich nutrient mist; they lined the walls of a thirty-meter walk-thru. He stripped off his clothes and stuffed them into his kit bag. There was a conveyor strip for possessions beside the walk-thru entrance, but he held onto the bag. A few germs wouldn't do it any harm.
At the far end of the showers, he walked into a situation.
The dressing station w
as loud with turbine-driven airjet dryers. The two Kubaz and the comedy team, still
naked, milled uncertainly in one corner. A large surly-looking human in sunbleached khakis and a military cap stood facing them, impressive arms folded across his equally impressive chest. He stared at the naked travellers with cold unspecific threat.
A smaller human in identical clothing rummaged through their bags, which were piled behind the large man's legs. The smaller man had a bag of his own, into which he dropped anything small and valuable. Both men had stun batons dangling from belt loops, and blasters secured in snap-flap holsters.
Mace nodded thoughtfully. The situation was clear enough. Based on who he was supposed to be, he should just ignore this. But, cover or not, he was still a Jedi.
The big one looked Mace over. Head to toe and back again. His stare had the open insolence that comes of being clothed and armed and facing someone who's naked and dripping wet. "Here's another. Smart guy carried his own bag."
The other rose and unlooped his stun baton. "Sure, smart guy. Let's have the bag. Inspection. Come on."
Mace went still. Pro-bi mist condensed to rivulets and trickled down his bare skin. "I can read your mind," he said darkly. "You only have three ideas, and all of them are wrong."
"Huh?"
Mace flipped up a thumb. "You think being armed and ruthless means you can do whatever you want." He folded his thumb and flipped up his forefinger. "You think nobody will stand up to you when they're naked." He folded that one again and flipped up the next. "And you think you're going to look inside my bag."
"Oh, he's a funny one." The smaller man spun his stun baton and stepped toward him. "He's not just smart, he's funny."
The big man moved to his flank. "Yeah, regular comedian."
"The comedians are over there." Mace inclined his head toward the Pho Ph'eahian and his Kitonak partner, naked and shivering in the corner. "See the difference?"
"Yeah?" The big man flexed big hands. "What are you supposed to be, then?"
Star Wars - New Jedi Order - Force Heretic III - Reunion - Book 19 Page 35
