Outcast

by Aaron Allston

  “It didn’t happen that way.”

  “No, but the next one might. If I just shed my responsibilities and run off to the Remnant to play schoolteacher, what happens when the Sword is needed next?” Something occurred to her. “You want to spend more time with me? Over the years, instead of just the next few days or weeks?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Then resign as the Head of State of the Empire. There are plenty of men and women eager to take that position.”

  He was silent a long moment. “I … can’t.”

  “Because it’s your responsibility.”

  His “Yes” was almost inaudible.

  “So don’t try to convince me to abandon mine.”

  “All right.”

  “We’ll try to make this work. If we can’t … well, at least we’ll have this time.”

  He leaned down to kiss her, but her comlink beeped, a distinctive pattern of two-then-two tones. Jaina sagged and she let her forehead thud down into his chest.

  “What is it?”

  “Dab. The observers all have to run checks on their Jedi twice a day, at random times, to make sure we’re where we’re supposed to be. I have to run upstairs and show him I’m still here.”

  “I could kill him for you.”

  “I said it before—don’t tempt me.”

  ABOARD JADE SHADOW, DORIN SPACE

  Ben decided that Dorin was just about the ugliest inhabited planet he could remember, and he had seen quite a lot of them. It was also one of the strangest star systems in his experience. Even after having read up on it in advance of arrival, he found that foreknowledge did not reduce the effect of seeing the system through Jade Shadow’s viewports.

  The Dorin sun was a small, orange thing, and it was situated directly between two large and proximate black holes. The net effect, looking at the system from a stopping point less than a light-year away, was of seeing a dim and distant light illuminating a precarious path with bottomless cliffs on either side. Except Ben, smoothing down the hair on the back of his neck, did not perceive the black holes as dangerous drops, but as lifeless eyes staring at him. “Kind of gets to you, doesn’t it?”

  His father looked up from the task of inputting the last hyperspace jump. Calculations here had to be very precise. Situated between two such powerful gravity wells, the Dorin system was very complex, and any mathematical error was even more likely than usual to endanger a ship.

  Luke nodded. “Black holes are an interesting astronomical phenomenon to scientists, and a vaguely unsettling image for most other people … but Force-users and Force-sensitives have a real dislike or dread of them.”

  “Why?”

  His father shrugged. “The Force derives from life. Even death is not all that disturbing to a Force-user, since it is a part, a necessary consequence, of life. Black holes are something else. A cessation outside of life. Maybe the way they draw in all energy and trap it forever runs against our instincts. I’m not sure. I do know that the Force-sensitive children we hid at Shelter during the Yuuzhan Vong War did not like being in the Maw, surrounded on all sides by black holes. You’re too young to remember, but the Jedi caretakers at Shelter said there was a lot of crying.”

  “Did I do a lot of crying?”

  “I don’t think so. You were pretty much shut off from the Force in those days.”

  “Well, good.”

  Luke grinned and returned his attention to his calculations. “Ready to jump in ten seconds … five, four …”

  When space untwisted around them, they were well within the Dorin system. The sun ahead was bigger but no more cheerful, and its dull hue seemed almost dirty. Ben could see stars above and below the sun, but looking rightward and leftward through the yacht’s ports, there was nothingness, no welcoming gleam of stars. He suppressed a shudder.

  It took a few minutes for Luke to raise Dorin starship control on the comm. The distant officer spoke Basic with an odd, slightly muffled accent, but she rapidly authorized Luke to land his craft at the spaceport in the capital city of Dor’shan and assured him that replacement air bottles for his breath masks were readily available for purchase.

  As Dorin grew in the forward viewport, it became no more appealing to Ben. Dark and mottled, it had a gloomy aspect to it. But he reached out with the Force and felt no such emotion emanating from it. In fact, it was as alive as any low-population world he had visited, and far cheerier under the surface than the malevolent Ziost. He relaxed. Dorin was not a place of hidden dread and evil intent.

  They slid through a murky atmosphere and descended toward a twilight city of buildings that were small and isolated by Coruscant standards. Many were domes, ziggurats, trapezoids—all forms much wider at the base than at the summit, and Ben was reminded of what he had read of this world, that its architecture and even, to some extent, the abilities of the Baran Do Sages had developed in response to the ferocious storms that frequently swept across the planet’s surface. Ben decided that these squat, unlovely buildings were ideally suited to a population that needed to hunker down and wait out bad weather.

  And perhaps they weren’t so unlovely after all. Even from a great altitude, he had seen the city as a sea of lights blazing in many colors, and as they got low enough to glimpse details on the face of the buildings illuminated by those lights, Ben saw the Kel Dor geometric and organic patterns painted onto those buildings, disguising their rudimentary shapes with patterns of well-matched colors. Some structures bore tawny browns and golds in color waves that suggested sandstorms, while others were in dappled aquatic hues that would probably half convince someone standing beside them that he was resting at the bottom of a shallow bay.

  Then they were over the spaceport. Each building had a domed terminal or hangar, with simple arrows on the roofs pointing to a specific landing circle or set of circles. Luke set the Jade Shadow down on a circle of permacrete next to a smaller white and tan dome. Then he taxied slowly on repulsorlifts, following blinking lights embedded in the permacrete surface, into the adjacent domed hangar, whose doors slid closed and sealed once the yacht was settled. Inside, the hangar was well lit but bare.

  Ben unbuckled and rose. “This place isn’t as ugly as I thought at first.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Luke pointed at Ben’s seat. “Sit.”

  “Huh?”

  “Postflight checklist.”

  “Oh.” Exasperated, Ben sat again and brought up his checklist on the monitor. “Engines cooling within standard rates. I notice there’s no one here.”

  “No one here, check.”

  “Running engine diagnostics now. And the hangar doors are …” Ben bounced a comm query from his control board to the hangar’s. “Locked. We’re locked in.”

  “Locked in, check.”

  “Stop that.”

  Luke smiled. “We’re supposed to stay here until they complete a routine inspection.”

  “Inspection.” Ben felt a touch of outrage. “You’re the Grand Master of the Jedi Order.”

  “And the brother-in-law of a smuggler.”

  “Well, your rank should count for something. Uh, prelim diagnostics run checks out in the green.”

  “Full diagnostics on all systems, please.”

  Ben initiated the program. As he did so, he saw an oval section of wall stretch itself toward them, elongating slowly toward a side coupling ring. “Here they come.”

  Ben and Luke met them at the air lock. It cycled open to reveal two humanoids, lean to the point of emaciation, dressed in black robes decorated in vertical black and sky-blue striping patterns. They were bald, with intelligent eyes that seemed very human, but their lower faces were obscured by breath masks. One carried an apparatus in a black backpack; a metal cable ran from it to a wandlike device, numerous sensor intakes along its length, which he held in his hand. The other had only a small card reader.

  The one with the card reader extended a hand, palm up. “Identicards, please.” His Basic was unaccented.

&nbs
p; Ben handed his card to the Kel Dor an instant after his father. The inspector slid each one for a moment into his reader. “I am Lieutenant Dorss, customs. This is Sergeant Vult. He will conduct a brief inspection of your craft. Are all compartments accessible?”

  Luke nodded. “They are.”

  Again Ben felt the urge to protest, to tell them, Don’t you understand, this is Luke Skywalker. Why are you bothering? But his father seemed unperturbed, so he pretended to be as well. Still, he wondered what good it would do to travel under a name as famous as his father’s if it didn’t at least lubricate the wheels of bureaucracy.

  The second Kel Dor disappeared aft, waving his sensor wand.

  Now Dorss began his ritual interrogation. “Purpose of visit to Dorin?”

  “Research,” Luke said. “We seek an audience with the Baran Do Sages.”

  “Information brokerage, then?”

  Luke frowned, perplexed. “I don’t think so. I didn’t plan to offer any credits for the information I’m looking for. Nor would I charge any for information I provide.”

  “No trade goods?”

  Both Jedi shook their heads.

  The Kel Dor hesitated, then handed back the identicards. “Tourism, then.” There was an air of finality to his decision. “Will you require accommodations?”

  “No, for convenience’s sake, we’ll be keeping quarters aboard the yacht.”

  The Kel Dor nodded knowingly. There was something in the gesture, as if he had concluded long before that celebrities were tight with their credits and was happy for Luke Skywalker to reinforce the stereotype, that irritated Ben further.

  The sergeant returned and spoke a few words to Dorss in what must have been the native tongue of Dorin. Dorss nodded. “All personal effects within categorical limits. Enjoy your stay on Dorin.”

  “Thank you.” Luke waved agreeably as they reentered the air lock.

  Ben frowned. “This is worse than traveling incognito. They acted like they’d never heard of you.”

  Luke smiled, and there was just a touch of taunt to it. “You’ve been around, Ben. Wasn’t that much nicer than arriving somewhere and finding that everyone is trying to shoot you?”

  “Well … yes.”

  “Don’t get too used to the benefits of fame, son. You’ll find yourself making mistakes in order to regain them when they’re taken away from you.”

  “I guess.”

  “Now get on the planetary data grid and find us city maps, city directories, the location of the Baran Do headquarters, contact names, for our datapads. I’ll check out our own breath masks to make sure they’re up to the job.”

  “Right.” Ben returned to the cockpit, wondering if, in deciding to accompany his father, he had somehow consigned himself to ten years of dullness.

  No, that was a child’s perspective. He had to continue thinking like an adult. Like a Jedi.

  Even a Jedi in exile.

  CALRISSIAN-NUNB MINES, KESSEL

  “The pit,” Han said, “is what happens when an atmosphere plant sits on one spot for a few years. It digs up stones that have oxygen and nitrogen in them. It cracks the stone, spitting the dust out through the hole onto an ever-growing sand hill and spewing the gases up into the sky. Meanwhile, the hole underneath gets bigger and bigger until they have to dismantle the facility and move it. On Kessel, sometimes those pits punch their way into cavern systems.”

  “And if explorers find spice, a mine is born,” Leia said.

  Han nodded, gloomy.

  Below, the shaft was ringed by a set of lights indicating a specific mine level. Descending past it, their vehicle lights revealed a large metal door in the side of the shaft just above the illuminating ring, suggesting that a side tunnel continued beyond the door. Many meters farther down, they could see another such ring.

  On the passenger-side monitor, Leia brought up a schematic map of the mine complex. “So let me get this straight. The energy spiders feed on energy. Drain it right out of living things.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And they also spin webs to trap their prey.”

  “Well, mostly they sort of spit the webs up on rock surfaces. They don’t usually spin them in the open air. Though they sometimes spin lines to climb.”

  “Where does the mass for the webs come from? And the mass to let the spiders grow? Not from matter–energy conversion. They couldn’t be absorbing that much energy.”

  Han shook his head. “They eat a certain amount of stone. Kessel is laced with veins of ryll, and ryll is one of the major components of glitterstim.” Neither as effective nor as rare a spice as glitterstim, ryll was a mineral found on several worlds, notably Ryloth, home planet of the Twi’leks. As information about the energy spiders had been released over the years by Lando’s mining company, Han had kept up with it, out of a sense of horrified fascination.

  They passed another two light rings during that exchange. Leia tracked their progress on her diagram. “How low are we going to go?”

  “All the way to the bottom, or until you feel something.”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “We could just go back up again, grab Allana, and go home.”

  “I feel something!”

  “What?”

  “Irritation. Stop trying to slither out of this mission.”

  Han sighed.

  They descended in silence for a while. Eventually the speeder’s lights illuminated rough stone all around and below: the end of the shaft, and there were no tunnels, artificial or natural, branching from it. Han increased power to the repulsors and they rose toward the next light ring up, the lowest tunnel entrance.

  As they hovered outside the metal door, Leia touched a control on the board before her. The door slid open, revealing a dark tile-floored chamber beyond.

  “Still,” Han said, “it’s much better than the first time I was down here. Doors open when you want them to, and the mine manager gives you drinks and weapons instead of sending someone to kill you.”

  “That’s progress.”

  The tile-floored chamber was a ready room. Banks of lockers held equipment the miners would use in their work. There was no one present—Lando had said he was keeping all personnel out of the mine until the situation was resolved—and for some reason Han found the lack of people additionally unsettling. If he and Leia had to run from a monster they couldn’t kill, there would be no nasty guards to distract the beasts. Han preferred to have slower-moving people behind him in situations like that.

  They moved out of the ready room into a chamber where mine cars waited. The little train of six open-top cars sat on the dusty stone floor but if activated, they would rise on repulsorlifts, resembling a flying centipede. The cars looked like original equipment from Han’s first visit to Kessel.

  Another large metal door at the far end of the chamber slid open at Leia’s transmitted signal, giving them access to the mine tunnels themselves.

  “Don’t worry,” Leia said. “This isn’t one of the feeding regions. Reduces the odds that we’ll run into a spider here.”

  “Feeding regions.” The last door slid shut behind them. Now only the speeder’s lights kept total darkness at bay. Hair tried to stand up on the back of Han’s neck; he smoothed it down.

  “To help control the movements of the energy spiders and give the miners some predictable sites to look for spice, Lando and Nien Nunb send processed ryll and incendiary devices into specific shafts in rotation. While the spiders are eating in one area and spinning new webs there, the miners go to areas where they were before and get fresh spice. This”—Leia gestured, indicating their surroundings—“is not one of the tunnels in rotation.”

  “All that’s on the map?”

  “No, the map just says where the feeding zones are right now. I looked up what it meant in the prospectus Tendra gave me.”

  “Prospectus.”

  “You know, a business plan document. Used, among other things, to persuade people to invest.”

  H
an looked at her, alarmed. “Did you want to invest in this?”

  Leia sighed. “No. It was a convenient source of information, and that’s why Tendra gave it to me. But I suppose I could invest in all the businesses that have brought you so much happiness over the years. For instance, Jabba the Hutt’s trade empire.”

  “He’s dead. You killed him.”

  “Yes, but his business lives on. Or how about some of the Death Star manufacturing subcontractors.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Maybe just the folk who make trash compactors. Everyone needs trash compactors. Oh, and frozen-in-carbonite dream vacations.”

  Han just gritted his teeth, determined to wait her out.

  Ahead, the tunnel forked. Leia consulted her map, tracing the two routes with a fingertip. “This one, the lower one, Lando has marked as one of the places Tendra and Nien planted sensors. This other one, which doesn’t go as deep but heads off westward at an odd angle, hasn’t been recently explored. Let’s try that one.”

  “Is that just random interest, or a presentiment in the Force?”

  “Random—” She paused, and a look of mild surprise crossed her face. “Both, maybe.”

  Han turned left, into the tunnel she indicated.

  CITY OF DOR’SHAN, DORIN

  Ben did not often feel like a complete outsider, but this world seemed bent on convincing him that he was.

  It started with his breath mask, a full-face rig that kept the planetary atmosphere, mostly helium with some other gases in the mix, at bay. It was attached to a backpack rig that included canisters of oxygen–nitrogen mix and a converter that broke a proportion of the carbon dioxide emerging from human lungs back into its component elements, reintroducing the oxygen into the breathing mix. A human could go for most of a day on a planet like this on only one charge, but Ben wasn’t impressed with the rig’s convenience. It was like being chained to his luggage.