Outcast

by Aaron Allston

  Would Corran be able to see through the deception? Would Jysella? Surely, they had to be able to. But what if they couldn’t? Valin would accuse this woman and be thought insane.

  Were Corran and Jysella even still at liberty? Still alive? At this moment, the Not-Mirax’s colleagues could be spiriting the two of them away with the true Mirax. Or Corran and Jysella could be lying, bleeding, at the bottom of an access shaft, their lives draining away.

  Valin couldn’t think straight. The situation was too overwhelming, the mystery too deep, and the only person here who knew the answers was the one who wore the face of his mother.

  He stood, sending his chair clattering backward, and fixed the false Mirax with a hard look. “Just a moment.” He dashed to his room.

  His lightsaber was still where he’d left it, on the nightstand beside his bed. He snatched it up and gave it a near-instantaneous examination. Battery power was still optimal; there was no sign that it had been tampered with.

  He returned to the dining room with the weapon in his hand. Not-Mirax, clearly confused and beginning to look a little alarmed, stood by the stove, staring at him.

  Valin ignited the lightsaber, its snap-hiss of activation startlingly loud, and held the point of the gleaming energy blade against the food on his plate. Hotcakes shriveled and blackened from contact with the weapon’s plasma. Valin gave Not-Mirax an approving nod. “Flesh does the same thing under the same conditions, you know.”

  “Valin, what’s wrong?”

  “You may address me as Jedi Horn. You don’t have the right to use my personal name.” Valin swung the lightsaber around in a practice form, allowing the blade to come within a few centimeters of the glow rod fixture overhead, the wall, the dining table, and the woman with his mother’s face. “You probably know from your research that the Jedi don’t worry much about amputations.”

  Not-Mirax shrank back away from him, both hands on the stove edge behind her. “What?”

  “We know that a severed limb can readily be replaced by a prosthetic that looks identical to the real thing. Prosthetics offer sensation and do everything flesh can. They’re ideal substitutes in every way, except for requiring maintenance. So we don’t feel too badly when we have to cut the arm or leg off a very bad person. But I assure you, that very bad person remembers the pain forever.”

  “Valin, I’m going to call your father now.” Mirax sidled toward the blue bantha-hide carrybag she had left on a side table.

  Valin positioned the tip of his lightsaber directly beneath her chin. At the distance of half a centimeter, its containing force field kept her from feeling any heat from the blade, but a slight twitch on Valin’s part could maim or kill her instantly. She froze.

  “No, you’re not. You know what you’re going to do instead?”

  Mirax’s voice wavered. “What?”

  “You’re going to tell me what you’ve done with my mother!” The last several words emerged as a bellow, driven by fear and anger. Valin knew that he looked as angry as he sounded; he could feel blood reddening his face, could even see redness begin to suffuse everything in his vision.

  “Boy, put the blade down.” Those were not the woman’s words. They came from behind. Valin spun, bringing his blade up into a defensive position.

  In the doorway stood a man, middle-aged, clean-shaven, his hair graying from brown. He was of below-average height, his eyes a startling green. He wore the brown robes of a Jedi. His hands were on his belt, his own lightsaber still dangling from it.

  He was Valin’s father, Jedi Master Corran Horn. But he wasn’t, any more than the woman behind Valin was Mirax Horn.

  Valin felt a wave of despair wash over him. Both parents replaced. Odds were growing that the real Corran and Mirax were already dead.

  Yet Valin’s voice was soft when he spoke. “They may have made you a virtual double for my father. But they can’t have given you his expertise with the lightsaber.”

  “You don’t want to do what you’re thinking about, son.”

  “When I cut you in half, that’s all the proof anyone will ever need that you’re not the real Corran Horn.”

  Valin lunged.

  Valin swung his blade in a lightning-quick circle, low backward to high forward, a move that would cut the imposter in two vertically.

  The Not-Corran’s lightsaber blade was suddenly alive and raised horizontally, blocking his blow. Like the real Corran’s, it shone silver. Perhaps the man had seized the real Corran’s weapon; it certainly looked identical. Valin felt his heart sink further.

  He threw a series of short slashes at Not-Corran’s head, left shoulder, and left side, but his opponent blocked each one with minimal arm motion, with little effort. Then the imposter’s brown boot was slamming into Valin’s chest, hurtling him backward and to his right. Valin crashed down painfully atop the water-filled sink, his ribs bruising against the faucet, his right buttock shattering soaking dishes. Disoriented, he spun his blade in a defensive circle. But Not-Corran did not immediately follow up; instead, he was shouting, “Mirax, out now,” and the woman impersonating his mother was leaving the room at a dead run, tears and a bewildered, pained expression on her face.

  Valin heaved himself off the sink, his rear end wet, and landed on his feet. He pointed his blade at Not-Corran, an informal salute of grudging respect. “You’ve studied. Where?”

  “Put the blade away, boy. I don’t know what you’re seeing or feeling, but we can get people in here whom you trust. We can even get Luke Skywalker here.”

  “Sure, I’ll happily give you time to call your reinforcements. Tactically, that’s a good solution for me.”

  “You make the calls, then.”

  Valin paused as if hesitating but took that moment to assess his options.

  Not-Corran was at least as good a swordsman as Valin, and Not-Mirax was clearly off calling in more help. Soon enough, Valin would be overmatched.

  To Valin’s right were the sink and stove, cabinets above, wall behind. To the left was a wall between him and the living room; against it stood a sideboard and the small table where Mirax’s carrybag rested. Ahead was the only path out of this chamber, and Not-Corran was in the way.

  Well, that was all right. In rental quarters like these, lightly constructed for ease of remodeling and for the sake of cheapness, Valin didn’t need a door.

  He darted to the left and boosted his speed with a touch of the Force. He aimed for the open spot between table and sideboard, and the wall there was suddenly wreckage filling the air with white powder, falling away from him in pieces, barely registering as an impact against Valin’s body; it gave way as readily as a flimsi barrier would to a normal man.

  Now he was in the main living chamber. Ahead was a sofa; in the wall behind it was a large picture viewport with a real waterfall cascading by a few meters beyond. To the right was the door out and another window beside it—

  Also to the right was a blur, Not-Corran in Force-speeded motion, paralleling him, now between him and the door.

  Valin didn’t alter his trajectory. He dived forward into the viewport, counting on the minimal-expense construction of this property to mean that the transparisteel there was thin, or that the mountings holding it into the wall were not the stoutest …

  He was right on both counts. Again he barely felt the impact as he punched through the viewport. The thin transparisteel folded around him. Together they hurtled into sunlight, through the waterfall downpour, and into open air beyond.

  Valin exerted himself, throwing the oversized sheet of transparent foil away, and dropped into what looked like a bottomless city canyon bordered on two sides by soaring, gaudily decorated banks of skytowers.

  This was a vacationers’ district, the vast lengths of skyrises occupied mostly by hostels, restaurants, spas, and other businesses catering to travelers and celebrants from all over Coruscant and the Alliance. The gap separating this bank of skytowers from the one facing it was about thirty meters wide, farther than h
is leap would carry him, but there were multiple streams of speeder traffic above and below. As he dropped, he took note of a blue-and-yellow-striped speeder approaching below; he twisted, angling toward it, and he came down on the hood of the vehicle, landing in a deep crouch.

  The front end of the speeder dipped precipitously under the force of his impact. The pilot was an Ortolan, rotund and blue-skinned, his broad ears and snout suddenly being snapped back by the wind; Valin saw the pilot’s eyes open wide. The repulsorlift of the speeder shrieked under the sudden demand imposed by Valin’s landing. It tried to bring the speeder’s nose back up.

  It succeeded, and as it did, Valin sprang up and forward, leaping as far as the opposite traffic lane. There he came down atop a long bus, which did not budge under his landing. Valin flipped forward again, somersaulting, and this time landed on the deck of an open-air tourist conveyance that was beginning to fill up with vacationers boarding via a short ramp from the adjacent hostel patio. The vacationers started with surprise at the sudden appearance of a drenched, insufficiently clothed Jedi with a live lightsaber in his hand.

  Valin couldn’t keep anger and a little panic out of his voice. “I need a comlink, quick.” He held out his hand.

  The few seconds that followed crawled like an eternity but gave Valin time to think, to wonder. The vacationers and tourists boarding this vehicle were, to all outward appearance, ordinary beings of the middle class. Most of them were dressed in garments far more colorful, revealing, or both than they would ever wear at home. They seemed normal, but how many of them, too, might be imposters? He had no sense whatsoever of the scale of this deception.

  One of them, a beautiful red-skinned Twi’lek woman, finished struggling to unclip something from her white halter top. She extended the object toward Valin, her hand open. It was a comlink. He reached for it.

  Not-Corran thumped shoulders-first into the deck and rolled to his feet four meters from Valin. His own lightsaber was in his hand but unlit. His voice, raised so all on the vehicle could hear, sounded sad, pained. “Everybody stand back. This man is … not well. I’ll handle this.”

  Valin gestured at Not-Corran. “You’re not well. You’re conspiring against the Jedi Order, and you should know that’s a dangerous, usually fatal mistake.”

  He called on inner resources, on memories of scores of battles endured and won. He let those memories fill him and push out the panic and anguish he’d been feeling. New calmness quieting and deepening his voice, he said, “All right. Your decision. Your fate. I’m just going to cut my way through you and then go find out who’s behind this.” Again he sprang at the man who was not his father.

  This time no concern for self-preservation affected his tactics. He went completely on the offensive, his sole goal to cut down Not-Corran. He threw blow after blow with stuttered-laser speed, backing Not-Corran up against the vehicle rail, then down the ramp to the hostel’s patio restaurant beyond. Restaurant patrons scattered, leaving tables loaded with half-finished meals, drinks, and bags.

  Not-Corran did not take advantage of a couple of openings Valin’s tactics offered him. Valin felt a surge of optimism. Not-Corran’s adherence to the true Corran’s loyalties clearly meant he would not cut Valin down. Valin did not feel the same consideration toward his enemy.

  And though Valin was tiring, Not-Corran had it worse: the older man was beginning to sweat.

  Not-Corran backflipped to the far side of a round white table made of light durasteel. As he landed, he kicked the table toward Valin. Valin ignored the dishes and food hurtling toward him; he slashed at the table itself, cleaving it in two. Had he possessed the full range of Jedi powers, he could have swept it aside with an exertion of telekinesis, but like his father he was deficient in that ability.

  Not-Corran now stood five meters away, breathing heavily, his blade at a single-handed, downward defensive angle.

  Valin gave him a look of grudging admiration. “You know, to exhibit all the Jedi skills but refrain from using telekinesis so that you can maintain the impersonation shows a lot of dedication. Too bad it won’t get you anything. Too bad you have to die.”

  “Boy, this has got to end.” Not-Corran threw up his free hand as if finally to make a telekinetic attack. Valin hesitated, not sure which way to jump. Then he realized something bad.

  Not-Corran hadn’t used any Force power, but had, through his gesture, frozen Valin in place just for an instant. Valin felt a sensation of imminent danger.

  Then it hit him, a blow from behind, a shock felt by every part of his body. His knees gave way. He fell forward, his vision graying.

  But before he lost consciousness completely, he saw, beyond the railing of the patio, a hovering airspeeder—his mother’s speeder, with Not-Mirax standing in the driver’s seat, her military-grade blaster pistol in her hands aimed at him. Tears streamed from her eyes as if to mimic the artificial waterfall that framed her from thirty meters beyond.

  SENATE BUILDING, CORUSCANT

  Luke Skywalker found it amazing that there was a chamber this large in the Senate Building he had never seen. It was six stories in height, and broad and deep enough to hold two thousand spectators. The permanent bench seating was filled almost to capacity, late arrivals moving along the aisles and peering anxiously to find open spots. At the head of the chamber stood an enormous dais with two cloth-draped tables, swivel seats set up behind them, and a lectern between them. On the carpeted floor before the dais were round tables with chairs placed to face the front of the room. It was much like an oversized courtroom set up for a panel of judges, but more informal in its arrangement, and far less somber in its decorative style: the carpets and padding on the bench seats and backs were of soothing blues and purples; the walls were off-white with Galactic Alliance symbols painted large upon them; and the furniture up front was an unthreatening tangold.

  And Luke had never seen the place before. Had it always been here? Were there many more such chambers in this gargantuan building?

  The dais tables were fully occupied, and the male Bothan sitting in the most central chair, his red and tan fur rippling with the consequence of the moment, nodded to an aide who had just whispered to him. The Bothan stood and took the lectern beside his seat. “Only forty-five minutes late,” he said, his amplified voice booming across the chamber. “Not bad for a Galactic Alliance event, yes?”

  His remark drew a faint laugh from the crowd. Encouraged, he continued, “I am Senator Tiurrg Drey’lye, chair of the Unification Preparations Committee, and the organizer of this event. Over the next several days, in both private and public sessions, we will be examining the relationship between the Galactic Alliance, the states of the Confederation, the Galactic Empire, and individual planet-states with the aim of restoring our great planetary union to levels of strength and security equaling, even surpassing, those it enjoyed before the recent war.”

  Ben, Luke’s sixteen-year-old son, sat to Luke’s left. Redheaded, athletic, he was dressed in the black tunic and pants that were his trademark whenever Jedi dress was not absolutely called for. Now he frowned, curious. “What about the Hapans? They were invited.”

  Luke gestured for Ben to lower his voice, though the remark had not been loud enough to carry beyond the Jedi table. “They were invited, but they were invited incorrectly, so they didn’t come.”

  “Huh?”

  The Bothan’s renewed speech checked Luke’s reply for a moment. “This morning, we’ll be hearing opening remarks from some of the session organizers and speakers offering a sense of what we hope to accomplish …”

  Luke tuned him out and turned toward Ben. “The Hapans were issued an invitation, but its language suggested very faintly that their presence was less critical than that of the Remnant and the Confederation. They couldn’t agree to attend without appearing to accept a lower status than the others. So, knowing that there will be later Unification Summits where they can be the stars, they claimed a prior commitment.”

  Ben frowned
. “Why was the invitation worded that way? Was it an accident?”

  Leia Organa Solo, Luke’s sister, sitting to Luke’s right, looked toward father and son. A slightly graying dark-haired, diminutive woman dressed in brown Jedi robes, she currently blended in with her company, but as a former Chief of State of the New Republic, she could have dressed to be the equal of the most extravagant politician present and not been ill thought of because of it.

  She offered Ben a knowing smile. “No written invitation sent to an important leader has accidents like that in it. Of course, the Alliance diplomatic corps claims that no insult was intended. They claim ‘Regrettable misinterpretation of figures of speech,’ which subtly puts the blame on the Hapans for being touchy.”

  “I still don’t understand why the Alliance wouldn’t want them here for this,” Ben pressed.

  Luke shrugged. “Actually, I don’t have any idea.”

  Leia nodded toward the dais, gesturing at the table to the right, to the Bothan’s left. “They don’t want to dilute the Imperial presence or to interfere with Imperial cooperation.”

  Startled, Luke gave the table another look.

  Galactic Alliance Chief of State Natasi Daala sat at the end of the table. A woman of late middle years, she had copper-colored hair and lovely features made less appealing by her rigid, military bearing. She wore a white admiral’s uniform with broad swaths of service medals across the tunic. A onetime protégée of the Empire’s Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin—and uncharitably assumed by many to have achieved her military rank because she was also his lover—she had been leader of the Galactic Alliance for two years and had done a fine, measured job of restoring the union’s economies and networks of political alliances, which had been shattered by the recent war.

  To her right sat Jagged Fel, the young Head of State of the Imperial Remnant. Raised among the Chiss, proven in battle as a combat pilot in the Yuuzhan Vong War, he was a reluctant leader who had shown himself to be adept at keeping the Imperial Moffs in line and in managing difficult Imperial–Hapan relations.