Outcast

by Aaron Allston

  In silent response, he pointed up. She looked that way and saw what he had found: two small thermal detonators, one affixed to the ceiling above the blast-door controls, one in the ceiling twenty meters down the tunnel.

  “He brings Valin out, shuts the door if he can, and if there’s pursuit, he triggers the detonators,” Jag explained, “bringing the roof down and preventing further pursuit. There’s another one, past the hole he cut, that will keep security station personnel from following.”

  Winter nodded. “So that’s his plan. What’s ours?”

  “This tunnel is a perfect trap. We follow him in here—the two of us and Tahiri. We confront him, capture him, and spirit him back to the Jedi Temple.”

  “Which is simple and brilliant as long as everything goes right. Now let’s get out of here and start planning for everything that might go wrong.”

  Jag signed. “I really thought that when I got out of flying for my living, I’d also get out of mission planning.”

  “You aren’t that lucky.”

  CALRISSIAN-NUNB MINES, KESSEL

  Seated around the table was a who’s who of New Republic-era piloting history, and Leia was so cheered to see them all that she could not stop smiling.

  Wedge Antilles sat to Han’s right. More relaxed now since his retirement was proving to have some staying power, he had his feet up on the table before him—scuffed, ancient boots on the elegant stone top, much to Lando’s unspoken dismay. Wedge sipped from a tumbler of Corellian brandy. Lean and graying, he still had the sharp, angular features and piercing gaze of his youth. He was dressed in the flight uniform of a New Republic X-wing pilot, orange jumpsuit and mostly white accoutrements—but then, most of the pilots present had been dressed in the service uniforms appropriate to their starfighters when they arrived, and not all had had time to change into civilian clothes. Not all wanted to.

  Next to Wedge was Derek “Hobbie” Klivian, still somber—some said mournful—of appearance, on a brief break from his duties as a Coruscant spokesman for the Zaltin Corporation, the bacta manufacturer.

  Beside Hobbie sat Inyri Forge, a former Rogue Squadron pilot who had been born on Kessel—her parents and surviving siblings were among those who had been evacuated from the planet as the ground-shakes grew worse. They were temporarily quartered in old Imperial barracks on the garrison moon. Brown-haired and fine-boned, she looked almost too delicate to be a pilot, but her kill record made a lie of that assumption.

  At the far end of the table was Kell Tainer. A large man about Leia’s age, he was bald on top; he wore his long gray hair in a ponytail and had a drooping mustache. He looked far more like a pirate than a former member of New Republic Starfighter Command, but his experience as a pilot, demolitions expert, and mechanic made him invaluable for the process of converting thermal detonators into warheads for other types of missile systems.

  Then there was Cheriss ke Hanadi, an Adumari pilot who was said to be deadlier with her vibroblade than with a starfighter; short, darkhaired, and freckled, she looked like she should be managing a farm goods store.

  Next to Cheriss was Nrin Vakil, a Quarren whose watertight flight suit sloshed because it was filled with salt water kept in constant circulation by a backpack processor. Beside him sat Rhysati Ynr, a human woman living on Coruscant; her husband was Nawara Ven, currently Coruscant’s best-publicized advocate. She seemed a little uncomfortable sitting beside Maarek Stele, who was still brooding and vital despite the complete loss of his hair; he was an Imperial retiree who had served, among other roles, as an officer on Kessel’s garrison moon and later as a TIE fighter pilot in the famous 181st Imperial fighter group.

  And, Leia reflected, the pilots sitting with her and Tendra at the head of the table—Han, Lando, and Nien Nunb—weren’t exactly slouches themselves.

  Lando rapped a shot glass on the table to divert everyone from catching-up talk and bring them back to the subject at hand. “So we have a mixed bag of starfighters—X-wings, A-wings, a Blade-Thirty-six, an Eta-Five acquired under circumstances I won’t discuss, and a TIE bomber whose owner wants it kept in the exquisite condition it now enjoys, so don’t even think about scratching the paint.

  “The next two crews of pilots I’ll be briefing in here are the rescue vehicle crews and the subsonics crews—those are the airspeeders you saw lined up outside. Each of you will be paired with one of them. Their job is to precede you into the cavern, activate the monstrous sonic systems we’ve mounted on their speeders, and drive out the animal life. Sometimes they’ll be doing it at the same time as your missile pass, or after, if you’re firing detonators on timer. If your detonator’s supposed to go off on impact, they’ll be preceding you.”

  Wedge took another sip of his drink. “Who’s acting as mission control?”

  “Tendra—”

  Tendra looked at her husband and shook her head.

  Lando continued smoothly, “—or someone else. I’ll make sure it’s someone with plenty of experience. Nobody’s going to be forgotten.”

  Han stepped in. “The subsonics pilots are going to be doing more flying than the rest of us. They’ll fly several passes in each cavern, driving the animal life in one direction. They’ll be notifying mission control when each cavern is done.”

  Cheriss raised a hand. “What if the bogeys knock down a subsonics speeder?”

  “That’s bound to happen,” Leia confirmed. “We have a whole net of sensors set up down there. If any vehicle goes down, it shows as being offline on our computer. We send in a rescue transport. Since the detonators are on mechanical timers we can’t abort, we’re trying to make sure there’s plenty of time between the end of a subsonics run and the scheduled detonation—time to get any stranded pilots out. We’re trying to preserve the lives of as many of the animals as we can, but the overriding goal is to save Kessel and keep our pilots alive.”

  Wedge offered Lando a slightly malicious smile. “A hundred to one says you weren’t able to secure insurance for this little operation.”

  “True.” Lando looked regretful. “I knew better. I didn’t even try.”

  “So if a starfighter goes down and gets blown up, you’re paying for it out of pocket, correct?”

  Lando’s expression went from regretful to mournful. “Dodging the bogeys is better for all of us. I can’t stress that enough.”

  Tendra leaned forward. “Each of you will be responsible for hitting between twenty and thirty of the munitions devices. In most cases, you’ll be targeting a spot near the device and your warhead will not be set to explode on contact. It will go off on timer. Sometimes, though, it will be on impact. We’ll try to remember to tell you which is which.”

  “Considerate of you,” Hobbie said.

  “Also, if one of you goes down,” Lando continued, “that is, one of us goes down, as I’ll be doing what you are in Lady Luck, and Han in the Falcon, then the uncompleted targets on your list will be assigned to other pilots—the pilots with the nearest routes. Launch time is still holding at oh six hundred local time tomorrow.”

  Though these veteran pilots were twenty, thirty, or forty years older than green recruits, they groaned just like newly commissioned fliers.

  Lando offered them a bright smile. “Suffer. I have a toddler. I’ll be up then anyway. We’ll see you in the morning. And, again, really: Thanks.”

  “No,” said Allana.

  Leia remained firm, at least on the outside. Looking down into Allana’s anxious face, she didn’t feel anywhere near as decisive. “It’ll just be for a few hours. Chance is going to be there. He’ll be with Nanna.”

  Han, standing behind Leia’s chair, gave his wife’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Leia and I can’t keep you safe while we’re firing off bombs in the caverns. You need to be on the garrison moon. Especially if there are more groundquakes.”

  “No.”

  Leia took a deep breath. Arguing with Allana was so much like arguing with Jacen had been. The child was very bright and she int
ellectualized, rationalized like someone far beyond her seven years. Sometimes the only thing Leia could use to win was pure willpower. “Allana, this isn’t open for discussion. Han and I have decided.”

  “The garrison moon is up in space. There’s something waiting for me up in space.”

  Leia looked up at Han, but he seemed as baffled as she was. She turned back to Allana. “Something what?”

  “Something scary.”

  “Allana.” Han’s voice was not harsh, but there was a warning tone to it. “You shouldn’t try to get out of things you don’t want to do by fibbing.”

  Leia schooled herself to remain absolutely impassive. The number of times Han had gotten out of things he didn’t want to do by lying … well, not to Leia, but to just about everyone else …

  “I’m not fibbing! There really is something up there. It talked to me.”

  Leia frowned. “When?”

  “When I—when I was outside the main building the other day. While you were underground.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It wanted to know who I was. It was sad but scary.”

  “Did anyone else hear this?”

  Allana shook her head. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It talked through the Force.” Searching her grandparents’ eyes, she continued, more desperately, “I know the difference between what’s real and what’s not. This was real.”

  “Give us a minute.” Han gestured for Leia to accompany him outside Allana’s temporary bedroom.

  Once they were in the hallway with the door shut, Han whispered, “What do you think?”

  “She’s telling the truth as she understands it. Which means there may actually be something out there.” At a loss, Leia shrugged. “With the time we have available, we have three choices, none good. Leave her here in the main building, which means danger if the ground-quakes get bad during our operation, which they very well may. Take her on the Falcon, where we’ll be dealing with high explosives, potentially dangerous animal life, bogeys, and perhaps collapsing caverns. Or send her to the garrison moon, where, if she’s right, something may come after her.”

  Looking unhappy, Han considered. “If we have to choose one of those, I’d choose the one where we can watch after her ourselves.”

  “Me, too.”

  Han punched the door button. The door slid aside.

  Allana stood just inside, looking up at them, her face shining as though she’d heard the entire exchange. “I can go?”

  Han stooped to pick her up. He straightened without even a fake groan or a you’re getting too heavy comment. “You can,” he told her. “If you promise to be a good member of the crew. That means following orders, even the ones you hate.”

  “I promise.”

  “All right.”

  “And we fib all the time. Every time you call me Amelia, that’s a fib, isn’t it?”

  Han scowled at her. “Don’t confuse the issue with facts. Leia does that all the time, and I hate it.”

  ARMAND ISARD CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, CORUSCANT

  Seff Hellin stepped through the hole he’d burned in the permacrete mere days before and pulled the metal sheet into place again. With luck, this was the last time he’d have to do that, the last time ever.

  He was so close to his goal that he could feel himself trembling. The isolation he’d felt for so long might at last come to an end. He still wasn’t sure how he’d recognized Valin over the holorecordings of the man’s trial—how he’d instantly realized that it was the true Valin, not some imposter—but he had.

  Soon he would free his fellow surviving Jedi Knight. And maybe, just maybe, Valin would have answers that Seff lacked.

  The tunnel was as he’d left it, the near end still rigged with his bypass equipment. Something was different, though, which he could recognize even at the distance of twenty meters: the main light indicator on the console now glowed green instead of red. It had completed its task; it had cracked the door’s access code. He breathed a sigh of relief and headed that way.

  Something else was different, too, and he was in midstride, halfway between his entrance and the door, when he felt it. This was a faint stirring in the Force, more subtle than most he had felt in recent times. There were presences nearby. They weren’t workers in adjacent tunnels or prison personnel beyond the door; he could feel that they were waiting for him.

  He stopped and slowly turned, unsealing the front of his workman’s jumpsuit, and pulled his lightsaber from beneath its folds.

  The metal patch he’d set over his access hole was gone, pulled away so quietly that he hadn’t heard it. From this angle, Seff could not see much through the gap, but the intruder wasn’t waiting. She stepped through into his view.

  He knew her, all right. Tahiri Veila—or, actually, the imposter in her form. She was not dressed as a Jedi; she wore a tight-fitting jumpsuit all in black, almost featureless. Nor was she barefoot. Her lightsaber, unlit, was in her hand. Her expression was grave.

  He gave her a look of scorn. “You could do better than that. At least get the footwear, or lack of it, right.”

  Her answer was almost a whisper: “Just like Valin.” She moved sideways, all feline grace, until she was in the center of the tunnel.

  “Which is why I have to be stopped, yes?”

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  “Tell your comrades to come on in. I want to see who they’re impersonating.”

  The false Tahiri glanced toward the hole and nodded. A man stepped through, but Seff did not recognize him; though not tall, the man was burly, clad in loose-fitting pants and tunic in black, with dull silver gloves protruding from the cuffs of his garment. He wore a black hood that cast his face into shadow. He looked unarmed, though he could have been hiding a multitude of weapons under the tunic.

  On second glance, his burliness was not natural. Seff was sure the man wore some sort of breastplate under the cloth. Coming through the gap in the wall, he had not bent properly at the waist; he was stiff in his movements.

  That sent a jolt of alarm down Seff’s spine. “A Mando. Of course, they’d send a Mando against me.”

  The hooded man said nothing. And whoever else was beyond the gap did not enter, did not come within sight.

  With at least three-against-one odds, speed and aggression were of the essence. Not waiting for any irrelevant declaration of intent or repartee from his opponents, Seff threw up a hand, exerting his will through the Force. The false Tahiri merely narrowed her eyes as she used her own powers to adhere to the permacrete beneath her, but the unknown Mando staggered backward and slid for many meters, flailing. Perhaps he wasn’t a Mandalorian after all; he seemed too awkward.

  The false Tahiri waited only a moment, until Seff’s surge flagged, and then ignited her lightsaber and charged forward. Seff lit his own blade.

  “Seff, things will be a lot better if you just surrender.” She twitched her blade, a feint designed to lure him into a premature attack.

  Seff pretended to fall for it, striking down at her, a classic cleaving blow, but he jerked the blow to a halt and redirected it down at an angle against her left side. Halfway into a block against the anticipated blow, Tahiri had to leap frantically back and maneuver her blade into the path of Seff’s, a successful block that nevertheless left her off-balance and on the retreat.

  “You’re lucky,” Seff told her. He struck again, throwing a series of attacks to keep her off balance. “Whoever you are, I have far less contempt for you than for the real Tahiri. Murderess, traitor, pathetic slave to her emotions—that’s what she is.”

  Seff was surprised to feel a jolt of anger and hurt from his opponent. Could it be that she identified so strongly with the woman whose face she wore? Interesting. He kept up his attack.

  He felt the Mando reenter the fight before there was any visual evidence of it. The black-clad man was on one elbow, as if hurt and struggling to rise, and then Seff saw that the man had drawn a blaster pistol, built oversized to accommodate h
is crushgaunts, but had concealed the action behind the sleeve of his other arm. The Mando swept his obscuring arm out of the way and fired; a blue stun bolt headed toward Seff.

  Seff felt a jolt of jubilation. He caught the bolt on his blade and deflected it down into the false Tahiri’s leg. Tahiri’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second, then rolled up into her head. She fell backward.

  Now to take advantage of the situation before his enemies could regroup. Seff dashed back to the blast door into the prison and hit two buttons—one to open the door, one to trigger the thermal detonator toward the center of the corridor.

  Nothing happened. He wasn’t too surprised. If his enemies had found his work here, they could easily have sabotaged his computer.

  He glanced back. The Mando was on his feet, headed Seff’s way, pistol in hand.

  Seff glanced up to where he’d planted the nearest thermal detonator. With an exertion of telekinesis, he yanked it free and let it drop to the floor of the tunnel. It made a metallic sound as it hit. He made sure he could visualize the triggering button; then he sent the small canister-shaped weapon rolling toward the fallen Tahiri.

  The Mando skidded to a stop beside Tahiri. Stooping, he picked up the unconscious woman then turned and ran, sheltering her with his body.

  Grinning, Seff kept the detonator rolling after them, even allowing it to bounce once or twice for additional noise.

  But he let the Mando gain on his rolling weapon. His task was not to kill these enemies.

  When the detonator was halfway down the tunnel, when the Mando and the unconscious woman were far enough ahead that the blast might not kill them, Seff dropped into a crouch, turned away from the detonator, clamped his hands over his ears, and telekinetically pressed the trigger.