Star Wars: Children of the Jedi

by Barbara Hambly

  Again he asked, meaning it differently, “Who are you?”

  She didn’t reply. After a very long time, more amber words appeared on the screen.

  >The droid with her, the droid with the living eyes—What is he? What is this? Is this a new sort of creature Palpatine thinks he can use? What is this, that’s happening between them?<

  “Palpatine’s dead.” Laser light showing up the Emperor’s bones within his flesh … The pain in his own bones, his own flesh, destroying him. Darth Vader’s voice …

  He pushed the images from his mind. “The Empire has broken into six, maybe ten major fragments, ruled by warlords and Governors. The Senate’s in control of Coruscant and most of the Inner Rim. A New Republic has been established and is growing strong.”

  The screen wiped dark for a moment. Then, spreading and flashing across it, a growing design, a dancing spiral geometry of outflung joy. Her joy, Luke realized. The essence, the heart of what he himself had felt in that tree village on Endor’s green moon, when he knew that the first terrible hurdle had been cleared.

  Music by someone who no longer had a voice.

  The joy-dance of the bodiless.

  Triumphal delight and utter thanks.

  We won, we won! I died but we won!

  If she had been here, he knew, she would have flung herself into his arms.

  Like Triv Pothman, she’d been waiting a long time.

  What she said was, >You have made this worth it for me<

  The designs whirled themselves across every screen in the room and then away, like a ring of dancing waves moving outward.

  Luke said softly, “Almost.”

  Another long pause. >98%<

  He knew it was half jesting, and he laughed.

  >You’re Master Luke? Is Calrissian your real name?<

  “Skywalker,” he said. “Luke Skywalker.”

  He was conscious of the silence implicit in the suddenly black screen.

  “Anakin’s son,” he added quietly. “It was Anakin who killed Palpatine.”

  There was nothing on the screen still, but as if he looked into another person’s eyes, he sensed the changing tides of her thought, the wondering contemplation of the vagaries of time.

  >Tell me<

  “Another time,” said Luke. “What happened to this vessel? This mission? What started it again? How long do we have?”

  >How long we have I don’t know. I am … side by side with the Will, but there are things of the Will that I do not and cannot touch. Thirty years I have existed so. I managed to cripple the receptors, and before coming here, damaged or destroyed most of the slaved autoactivation relays that would have triggered the computer’s core from a distance. The components of the relay were crashed, shattered, destroyed; no one could have found them to activate this station by that means, but there still remained the danger the station could have been activated manually. That’s why I … stayed<

  “Then I was right.” Luke felt his scalp prickle. “I knew it, sensed it … those guns weren’t fired by a mechanical. On a ship this size—”

  >No. I was the one firing the guns. That’s where I’ve been all these years. In the gunnery computers. I was sure you were the Empire’s agent. Before you came on board there was no one, nor is there anyone on board save yourself, and the aliens the landers brought in after the Will was activated again<

  “I don’t understand,” said Luke. “If no one came on until the Will was activated …”

  >It was the Force. I felt it, sensed it … The broken activation relays were set off, all of these years later, by the use of the Force<

  Luke was shocked silent, the neat amber letters like a hammer blow hitting him over the heart.

  “The Force?” He leaned closer, as if to touch her arm, her hand … “That’s impossible.”

  >Yes, I know it is<

  “The Force can’t affect droids and mechanicals.”

  >No, it can’t<

  Luke thought about that for a time, about what it meant or could mean. Ithor came back to him, and the cold flood of dread as he’d sat in semitrance at Nichos’s side, the sense of something terribly wrong. The wave of darkness spreading outward, reaching, searching … The random numbers that had led him here—the dream of some terrible attack creeping stealthily through the desert night.

  “But why? Why bomb Belsavis now? There’s nothing there.”

  Nothing except Han and Leia and Chewie and Artoo. Nothing except thousands of innocent people—and the usual handful of the not-so-innocent. And Han and Leia hadn’t arrived there yet, when he’d felt that first dark surge. To his knowledge nobody had known they were going.

  “All personnel, report to your section lounge.” The computer’s voder contralto broke abruptly into his thoughts. “All personnel, report to your section lounge. Abstention or avoidance will be construed as …”

  >Better go< flashed the orange letters on the screen.

  >Can’t let your actions be construed as sympathetic to the ill intent of the etcetera. Watch your back<

  For that moment he could almost see her grin.

  • The Imperial Military Code Section 12-C classifies as capital offenses, among others: Incitement to mutiny against duly constituted authority; participation in mutiny; concealing known or suspected mutineers from central authority of the vessel; concealing evidence of planned or executed acts of mutiny or sabotage from chain of command, physical plant, or automatic self-checking devices on board any Fleet vessel

  • After examination of all evidence, the defendant has been found guilty of mutiny against the central authority of this vessel, and of inciting by her participation further mutiny and acts of sabotage by persons unknown

  “What, are they blaming the Jawas on Cray now?” murmured Luke to Threepio, who had switched on again to accompany him to the section lounge. They stood in the portside doorway, half hidden by the Kitonaks who had been brought yesterday to observe Cray’s trial and had remained there, chatting, ever since.

  Closer to the screen, the Gakfedd tribe squealed and snarled and yelled, “So it’s her fault, the witch!” and “She’s the one behind the festerin’ Rebels!”

  • Despite the excellent record of the accused, it is the decision of the Will that Trooper Cray Mingla be executed by laser enclision at 1600 hours tomorrow. All personnel are to report to their section lounges …

  “Luke …” Cray raised her voice above the voder monotone of the Justice Station. Her face was gray and haggard under the bruises, her dark eyes exhausted and sick with inner pain. “Luke, get me out of here! Please get me out! We’re on Deck Nineteen, Starboard Front Sector, Maintenance Bay Seven, we came up Lift Shaft Twenty-one, it’s guarded and booby-trapped—”

  The Gakfedds hooted and yelled, and in the Justice Chamber the nearest Klagg guard snapped, “Zip it, skag-face,” and Cray flinched—Cray, who despite her makeup and stylishness had never, to Luke’s knowledge, shown physical fear in her life. Hot rage flooded him, blotting the pain in his leg.

  But she went on, fast, as the guards seized her arms, dragged her to the door, “Lift Twenty-one! Ten guards, they ricochet blaster bolts down the shaft to hit the lower doors, there’s a booby-trap ten meters down the corridor—”

  “Yeah, tell us about it, Rebel tramp!” “Blow this laser enclision, steam her!” “Dump her in the shredder!” “Throw her in the enzyme tanks!” “Hey, toss her to the garbage worms …”

  “Sixteen hundred hours tomorrow,” whispered Luke, icy chill fighting the red rage in his veins. “We can—”

  “Hey! You.”

  Ugbuz, Krok, and three or four other boars stood before him, heavy arms folded, yellow eyes glittering evilly in the reflected glow of the emergency lights that were at this point the only illumination in most of the sector. As more and more systems failed, the ship was growing dark. Since the Jawas were stealing power cells out of the emergency lamps, and any glowrods they could find, someone had set burning wicks in red plastic bowls
of cooking oil all around the lounge—there’d already been one fire in a nearby rec room from the same source. The MSEs and SP-80s were still cleaning up the sodden mess left by the overhead sprinklers—when Luke had passed on the way to the section lounge, he’d seen Jawas, like myrmins at a picnic, carrying away several MSEs and looting the power cells out of the larger droids.

  The whole section smelled now of Gamorreans and smoke.

  “I put your name through Central Computer, Calrissian.” Ugbuz planted himself between Luke and the doorway.

  Exhausted as he was, Luke found it a strain even to focus the Force on Ugbuz’s mind. “I’m not Major Calrissian.”

  “That’s what the computer says, pal,” snarled Krok. “So who are you and what’re you doin’ on this ship?”

  “We know what he’s doin’ …”

  “You’re thinking of someone else.” But Luke felt the cold shadow of something else in their minds, the ugly certainty of the Will.

  Turning to the nearest Kitonak, Threepio reeled off an endless chain of whistles, buzzes, and glottal stops, to which all the Kitonaks listened intently while Ugbuz growled, “There’s somethin’ funny goin’ on here since you first came on board, mister. And I think you and I need to have us a little talk about it.”

  The Gamorreans closed in around Luke at the same moment that the Kitonaks, with a sudden burbling ripple of interest, closed in and as one entity seized the Gamorreans, each Kitonak grasping a Gamorrean’s arm in huge, stubby hands. And they began to talk.

  Luke darted between them—“Grab him!” yelled Ugbuz between the two portly mushrooms that held him in a grip like stone. He tugged furiously at their hold, but he might as well have tried to un-embed his hand from fast-set concrete. The Kitonaks, having found an audience for whatever it was they had to say, were not letting go. “And somebody get these stinkin’ yazbos off me!”

  Two ersatz troopers were already trying to free their compatriots with axes—as he ducked through the lounge door, yanking Threepio after him, Luke saw the ax blades bounce harmlessly off the Kitonaks’ rubbery hides. Then the door hissed down behind him with a furious snap.

  >Deck 6, laundry drop< appeared on the narrow monitor plate where the door’s serial combination would usually be shown.

  Luke grabbed Threepio by the arm and hobbled. Behind them the door jerked in its tracks, rising half a meter or so. There was furious pounding, curses, the sizzle of blaster bolts that sang and zapped and ricocheted wildly in the section lounge and—a moment later as the Gamorreans finally got out—in the hall. The fugitives ducked down a cross-corridor and across an office pod, hearing behind them a mellifluous treble outcry of “After them! After them!”

  Luke swung around, gathered all the waning strength of the Force to sweep every desk and chair in the room like the blast of some huge hurricane at the multicolored riot of Affytechans who came barreling through the door. They tripped, fell, tangling in comm cords and terminal cables—Luke’s mind flashed out, transforming the cables for a moment almost into the semblance of living things, grabbing snakelike at his pursuers.

  He staggered, his mind aching, and Threepio dragged him on.

  “You go first,” he gasped, not knowing if he could levitate Threepio down eight decks of repair tube. He fell to his knees, trembling in a sweat of exhaustion before the open panel.

  “Master Luke, I can remain behind—”

  “Not after that trick with the Kitonaks you can’t,” gasped Luke. “What’d you say to them?”

  Threepio paused halfway through the panel—an incredible display of trust considering that he was not flexible enough to use the ladder rungs. “I informed them that Ugbuz had expressed an interest in their ancestors’ recipe for domit pie. That’s what they’ve been discussing all this time, you know. Exchanging recipes. And genealogies.”

  Luke laughed, and the laughter gave him a kind of strength. Closing his eyes, he called the Force to him, lifting the golden droid within the dark confines of the shaft. Lowering him … There is no difference between that leaf and your ship, Yoda had said to him once. Raising a single yellow-green leaf the size of Luke’s thumbnail, making it dance in the warm, wet air of Dagobah. No difference between that leaf and this world.

  Luke saw the leaf—small, light, shimmering, shiny gold—descend the blackness of the shaft.

  Voices in the corridor behind him. The Gamorreans’ curses and squeals, the stern soprano yammering of the rainbow Affytechans.

  He dragged himself into the shaft, hung for a moment on the ladder of staples, trying to summon the strength to levitate himself down. Trying to summon even the physical strength to hang on while he shifted his good leg down one rung, then one rung more …

  You can. He felt her, knew she was there with him. Luke, don’t give up …

  He couldn’t levitate. In the corridor he heard Ugbuz swear, Krok yell, “That way, Captain …”

  Feet thundered away. Rung by rung, one aching drop at a time, Luke descended, the shaft falling away bottomlessly below him. He felt the warmth of her, the awareness, beside him every agonizing meter of the way.

  Deck 6 was utterly dark. The dead air stank of Jawas, of oil, of insulation, of Luke’s own sweat as he dragged himself along its lightless corridors, his shadow and Threepio’s lurching like drunkards in the dim flicker of the glowrods on his staff. Even those were failing—he’d have to cannibalize a power cell from somewhere and the thought of that niggling little chore made his whole aching body revolt. Ahead of him, and in all directions, he heard the squeak and scuffle of Jawa feet, saw the firebug glimmer of their eyes.

  Threepio, he thought. They’ll be after Threepio if I pass out.

  Now and then he smelled, and heard, the Talz, and breathed a sigh of thanks that the Sand People, being essentially conservative, would defend their own territory rather than explore new corridors at this stage of the game.

  Everywhere he saw torn-out panels, looted wiring, SPs and MSEs lying gutted and derelict along the walls. Helmets, plates, dismantled blasters and ion mortars strewed the halls—Luke checked the weapons and found that, one and all, they’d had their power cells pulled. Limping painfully down the echoing blackness, Luke had the eerie sensation of being trapped in the gut of a rotting beast, a zombie killer still bent on destruction though its body was being eaten from within.

  This section of Deck 6 was dead to the Will. No wonder Callista had directed him here.

  Cray. Somehow they had to rescue Cray. She’d know how to cope with the Will, know how to disable the artificial intelligence that ruled this metal microcosm.

  Sixteen hundred hours. His whole body felt on the verge of collapse. Somehow he’d have to get enough rest to get up the lift shaft tomorrow. Thirteen levels. His mind flinched from the thought. They ricochet blaster bolts down the shaft …

  “Callista …”

  But there was no reply.

  I exist side by side with the Will.

  She had died in the computer core. Luke had seen how the spirit of the Jedi could detach itself from the physical body, could imbue itself in other things, as Exar Kun’s had imbued the stones of Yavin.

  Knowing she had disabled the automatic trigger—knowing the Empire might very well send an agent to trigger the Eye manually—she had stayed in the gunnery computers for thirty years, guarding the entry to the machine that had taken her life, a fading ghost keeping watch on a forgotten battlefield.

  “Come on, Threepio,” he said, and bent to retrieve a hank of cable from the corpse of a gutted MSE. “Let’s find ourselves a terminal.”

  ———

  >On Chad< Callista said, the letters fading in slowly as a single paragraph, as if rising whole from the depths of her recollection, >if our ark were in wystoh territory—and wystoh hunt most of the deep oceans where our ranch was—and we had to make a hull repair, or go out to the herd to help an off-season calving, we’d send out something called a foo-twitter the night before, a floater that made some kind of
hooting or tweeting. Since wystoh are frantically territorial, they’d all head for the thing—which by then would be kilometers from the ark—and that would give Papa or me or Uncle Claine a chance to do what we had to do in open water and get back to safety. Would the Klaggs respond to a foo-twitter long enough for you to get up the shaft? They seem pretty territorial to me<

  “If it sounded like Ugbuz and the Gakfedds, they would.” Luke leaned back into the heap of blankets and thermal vests Threepio had gathered to make cushions for him in the corner of a repair shop, and considered the screen before him. It had taken most of his salvaged batteries and power cells, rigged in series, to fire up even the smallest of the portable diagnostic units in the shop. With the Jawas in control of most of the deck it would be a hard search for more. But it was a trade-off he was willing to make. Not just that he needed Callista’s advice, he realized.

  He wanted her company.

  “Any of the bigger game systems in the lounges will have voders,” he said at length. “Threepio, you know the stats on Gamorrean vocal range, don’t you?”

  “I can reproduce exactly the language and tonalities of over two hundred thousand sentient civilizations,” replied the droid, with perhaps pardonable pride. “Gamorrean verbal tones begin at fifty herz and run up to thirteen thousand; squeals begin at—”

  “So you could help me program the voder?”

  “With the greatest of ease, Master Luke.”

  “Then what we need is a way to get the voder up to Deck Nineteen in time to pull the Klagg guards away from the shaft.”

  A schematic appeared on the screen. Not the precise, every-wire-and-conduit blueprint a ship’s computer would display, but a more or less to scale sketch of a section of the vessel, labeled in one corner DECK 17. A bright circle flashed around a gangway. Then a window appeared in the screen.

  >The gangway’s wired. It leads from Recycling—the area of the ship where only the droids go—to Deck 19. If you make your foo-twitter light enough, you should be able to propel it up fast while you keep the enclision grid misfiring enough to let it through without too many hits<