Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy I: Jedi Search

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Ackbar nodded his salmon-colored head. “Thank you, and I apologize again for the interruption. I’ll let you get back to work.”

  When he signed off, Leia could do no more than sit with her eyes closed, hoping for a few moments of silence. In quiet times, though, she began to worry too much about Han.…

  The door chime sounded. Leia almost screamed.

  Mon Mothma stood at the doorway in her flowing white robes. “Hello, Leia. Do you mind if I come in?”

  Leia stuttered, trying to regain her composure. “Uh, please!” Mon Mothma had never come visiting, never shown the slightest inclination to make any sort of social call. Though calm and quietly charismatic, the Chief of State had always distanced herself from anyone else.

  During the early days of the Rebellion, Mon Mothma had sparred with Leia’s father Bail Organa on the floor of the Senate. Mon Mothma was a new senator then, a firebrand insisting on rapid and sweeping changes that dismayed the seasoned and cynical Bail Organa. Eventually, though, they joined forces to oppose Senator Palpatine in his quest to become President; when they failed and Palpatine proclaimed himself “Emperor,” Mon Mothma began to speak of open rebellion. A horrified Bail Organa had not seen the need until after the Ghorman Massacre, when he finally realized that the Republic he had served for so long was truly dead.

  The death of Bail Organa and the destruction of Alderaan had affected Mon Mothma deeply. But she had never hinted that she wished to become friends with the daughter of her old rival. “What can I do for you, Mon Mothma?” Leia asked.

  Mon Mothma looked around the private quarters, fixing her gaze on the sweeping landscapes of Alderaan mounted on the walls, the grasslands, the organic-looking tower cities, the underground settlements. The faintest sheen of tears seemed to film her eyes.

  “I learned that your children are sick, and I wanted to offer my consolations.” She fixed a sharp gaze on Leia. “And I have also learned that Han and Chewbacca never returned from their Kessel mission. I wish you hadn’t tried to hide that from me. Is there anything I can do?”

  Leia looked down. “No. Lando Calrissian and my brother Luke have already gone to see what they can find. I hope they bring back news soon.”

  Mon Mothma nodded. “And I also wanted to commend you on the job you are doing. Or perhaps console you is the better word.”

  Leia could not hide her surprise. “The reception for Ambassador Furgan was a disaster!”

  Mon Mothma shrugged. “And do you think anyone could have performed better than you did? You did a perfectly adequate job with the Caridans. Some battles simply cannot be won. Given the Caridans’ potential for galactic mayhem, I think getting a drink thrown in my face is a relatively minor debacle.”

  With a faint smile Leia had to admit that the Chief of State was right. “Now, if only I could find a place to house Luke’s Jedi academy, I’d feel like I’m making some progress through this whole morass.”

  Mon Mothma smiled. “I’ve been thinking about that too, ever since Luke made his speech. I believe I have a suggestion.”

  Leia’s dark eyes widened in surprise. “Please!”

  Mon Mothma indicated the data terminal in Leia’s living chamber. “May I?”

  Leia gestured for her to use the system. Though a lifelong politician, Mon Mothma set to work on the database; she was obviously no stranger to doing her own research.

  When images of the new planet crystallized in the projection zone, Leia felt the tingle of excitement creep through her. The confident feeling that this was the right place grew in her heart. She wondered how she had overlooked something so obvious.

  “Consider,” Mon Mothma said, smiling. “It has everything he could possibly need—privacy, good climate, facilities already in place.”

  “It’s perfect! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself.”

  The message center buzzed again.

  “What?” Leia barked at the caller. She realized she should have been more restrained, but she had reached the end of her fuse. Mon Mothma remained at the data terminal, watching from outside the field of view.

  The caller also dispensed with tact. “We need your report right now, Minister Organa Solo. The orbital debris committee is deliberating on the disposition of wreckage around Coruscant. You were supposed to attend our discussions this morning—”

  Leia recognized the functionary as Andur, the vice-chairman of the committee. “My aide has already canceled my appointments for today. I’m sorry I was unable to attend.”

  “We received your cancellation, but we didn’t receive your report. You agreed to write a summary and distribute it to us at this session. It’s past due! Sick children do not make the New Republic stop functioning.”

  Seeing red, Leia remembered standing in Jabba’s palace, holding the pulsing thermal detonator in her hand, waiting for it to explode and kill them all. Five, four, three, two …

  Somehow she restrained herself. Perhaps spending a day with Ambassador Furgan had toughened her calluses. “I may be the Minister of State, Mr. Andur, but I am also a mother. I have to do both jobs—I can’t sacrifice one for the sake of the other. My children need me now. The committee can wait.”

  Miffed, the vice-chairman raised his voice. “It would have been much easier to complete our deliberations if you had been here rather than home playing nurse—couldn’t you hire a medical droid to take care of your kids’ runny noses? This is an important issue we’re dealing with, affecting the fate of all space traffic approaching and leaving Coruscant!”

  Leia stiffened. “This is an important issue I’m dealing with here, too! How can you expect me to care about the whole galaxy if I don’t even care for my own family? If you wanted mindless devotion to duty without caring about people, then you should have stayed with the old Empire!” She reached for the controls. “My report will be issued to you in due time, Mr. Andur.” She switched him off before he could say another word.

  At the end of her outburst, Leia slumped into her self-conforming chair, suddenly remembering her guest. Her face turned scarlet with embarrassment.

  “That committee meets weekly, and there’s no reason why they couldn’t have waited until next time,” she said in a simmering, defensive voice. “I’m really not going to let any important negotiations go down the drain. I know my duty.”

  Mon Mothma nodded, sharing one of her placid, heartfelt smiles. “Of course you won’t, Leia. I understand. Don’t worry about it.” The Chief of State looked at Leia with what seemed to be a new and surprising respect.

  Leia sighed and stared at the planetary image on the data terminal. “Maybe I should go off and spend a few months at the Jedi academy myself as soon as Luke gets it under way—though I know that’ll never happen. Taking a vacation from Imperial City is about as easy as walking away from a black hole. Affairs of state swallow up my entire day.”

  She caught herself complaining and quickly added, “But of course restoring the order of the Jedi Knights is very important. I have the potential to use the Force and so do the twins. But thorough training will take a lot of time and concentration—two commodities I don’t seem to have.”

  Mon Mothma looked at her gravely, then squeezed Leia’s shoulder. “Don’t worry too much. You have other important things in store for you.”

  25

  Han rolled over with a groan in the detention cell. The hard ridges on the surface of his bunk—Han thought of them as “discomfort stripes”—made sleep itself a nightmare.

  He awoke from a dream about Leia, perhaps the only enjoyment he had experienced in three weeks. The dim reddish light filtered down, hurting his eyes without providing useful illumination.

  He blinked his eyes open, hearing people move outside his cell door, the clank of stormtrooper boots on the floor gratings, muffled voices. The cyberlock clicked as someone activated the password code.

  He sat up, suddenly alert. His body ached, his mind still buzzed from the interrogation drugs, but he tensed as the
door opened. He had no idea what this was, but he felt certain he wouldn’t like it.

  Corridor light flooded in, and Qwi Xux stood beside an armed stormtrooper. She looked battered and abused by her own thoughts, which gave Han a smug grin. He hoped she had lost a lot of sleep after learning of the devastating use to which her inventions had been put. She might be able to fool herself, but she couldn’t fool him.

  “What, have you come back to discuss a few more moral issues, Doc? Am I supposed to be your conscience?”

  Qwi crossed her pale-bluish arms over her chest. “Admiral Daala has given me permission to interrogate you again,” she said coldly, though her body language did not match her tone. She turned to the guard, her pearlescent hair sparkling in the dim corridor. “Would you accompany me inside for the interrogation, Lieutenant? I’m afraid the prisoner might not cooperate.”

  “Yes, Dr. Xux,” the guard said, following her into the cell. He slid the door partially closed behind him.

  While his back was turned, Qwi withdrew a blaster from the utility pocket on her smock, pointed it at the guard, and fired a stun blast. Rippling arcs of blue fire surrounded him, then faded as he crumpled to the floor.

  Han leaped to his feet. “What are you doing!”

  Qwi stepped over the fallen stormtrooper. The previous day she had seemed more fragile; the Imperial-issue heavy blaster pistol looked huge in her delicate hand. “Admiral Daala is mobilizing this entire fleet in less than a day. She plans to take the Sun Crusher and her four Star Destroyers to wipe out the New Republic. Your friend Kyp Durron is also scheduled for termination this afternoon.” She raised her feathery eyebrows. “Does that add up to enough of an excuse to escape as soon as we can?”

  Han’s mind reeled. At the moment all he could think of was seeing Kyp and Chewbacca again, then getting back to Coruscant so he could be reunited with Leia and the twins. “I don’t have any appointments I couldn’t be persuaded to cancel.”

  “Good,” Qwi said. “Any questions?”

  Han smirked as he began to pull on his disguise of stormtrooper armor. “No, I’m used to doing this sort of thing.”

  Kyp could sense the difference in the air—his first indication that his efforts to focus the Force were actually accomplishing something. He studied every slight change in air currents, in the sluggish odors around the cell, the myriad tiny sounds that echoed through the metal walls.

  Stretching his mind through invisible webs of the Force, Kyp could feel a surge from the guards when they walked past his cell. He could sense a twinge each time someone dispensed the food tray through the door. But their attitudes had changed. Over the whole ship he could catch faint ripples of activity, tension, growing anxiety.

  Something was about to happen.

  Closer at hand, he understood a deeper gut-wrenching truth. The emotions had been so clear in the guard stationed beside his door the previous sleep period. Kyp Durron was not to be part of whatever activity the Star Destroyers were preparing. A young man from the spice mines of Kessel could provide no useful information; they had no reason to keep him alive.

  Admiral Daala had already scheduled Kyp’s termination. He had not much longer to live. His lips curled back in an angry snarl. The Empire had been trying to destroy him all his life, and now they were about to succeed.

  When he heard voices outside his door, he sensed the barrage of their uneasiness, the curdling plans of violence behind the forefront of their minds. He had no way to defend himself! Despairing, Kyp slid his head against the cool metal wall of the door, trying to pick out a few select words of the conversation.

  “—scheduled for execution this afternoon.”

  “… know that. We are … take him. Admiral … authorization right here.”

  “… irregular. Why … want him?”

  “Weapons test … target … new concept … vital to the fleet’s new armaments … right away!”

  “… need specific … only a general authorization.”

  “No … good enough!”

  The voices rose, but Kyp couldn’t make out more of the words. He tried to decipher three voices talking all at once.

  Kyp made ready to lash out the moment the door slid open. He knew he would be cut down by blaster fire in no time—but at least it would be over, and he would be shot on his own terms, not the Empire’s.

  “… check with … first. Wait—”

  Suddenly Kyp heard a thump and a muffled blast. A heavy object smashed against the doorway. Kyp flinched back as the door whisked open.

  The dead stormtrooper guard sprawled backward into his cell with a clatter of white armor. A smoking hole oozed steam from the waist joint in the brittle uniform.

  Another stormtrooper stepped inside holding the stillwarm blaster pistol. Beside him stood a willowy alien woman, looking delicate but outraged at the same time.

  “I hope that was sufficient authorization,” the stormtrooper said, then pulled off his helmet.

  “Han!” Kyp cried.

  “I really hate red tape,” Han said, nudging the dead guard with his foot. “Think you can fit into that uniform, kid?”

  “No, I don’t want one of the slow old ones!” Qwi snapped at the keeper of the Wookiee work detail. Through the narrowed field of view in his stormtrooper helmet, Han watched the delicate woman play the part of a tough, impatient researcher.

  The rotund man glanced at his hairy charges, unintimidated as if he were accustomed to being shouted at by prima donna scientists. The keeper’s face looked like pale, wet clay.

  Han fidgeted, sweating in the cramped uniform. The helmet had nose filters, but the suit still smelled of body odor from its former owner. The stormtroopers at Maw Installation lived in their uniforms and likely disinfected the interiors much less often than they polished the exteriors.

  The keeper shrugged, as if Qwi’s impatience did not concern him. “These Wookiees have been worked hard for over a decade. What do you expect from them? They’re all slow and worthless.”

  Han could see that most of the other Wookiees wandering around the hangar bay had patchy fur and stooped shoulders, bringing them almost to the height of a human. These slaves looked as if their will had been crushed over years of harsh servitude.

  “I don’t want to hear your excuses,” Qwi said. She tossed her head, making the feathery pearls of her hair shimmer. “We’ve been ordered to get a lot of work done before the fleet departs, and I need a Wookiee with some energy. Give me that new prisoner you have. He’ll do the work.”

  “Not a good idea,” the keeper said, wrinkling his pasty forehead. “He’s unruly, and you’d have to double-check his work. Can’t trust him not to try sabotage.”

  “I don’t care how unruly he can get!” Qwi snapped. “At least he won’t fall asleep on the job.”

  On the far side of the bay a tall Wookiee stepped out of a gamma-class assault shuttle. He straightened from the cramped quarters and looked around the bay. Han had to force himself not to yank off his helmet and call out Chewbacca’s name. The Wookiee seemed ready to strike, barely restraining himself from flying into a suicidal rage. With his bare hands Chewbacca could dismantle five or six TIE fighters before the stormtroopers took him down. The keeper glanced at Chewbacca, as if considering.

  “I have authorization from Admiral Daala herself,” Qwi said, holding out a curled hardcopy bearing Daala’s seal. Han glanced at the other stormtroopers standing guard in the engine pool. He could not invoke the same violent “authorization” he had used to spring Kyp Durron from his cell.

  Beside Qwi Xux, Kyp—wearing the smaller of the two stolen stormtrooper uniforms—stood stock-still. Han knew the kid must be terrified, but Kyp had snapped to attention and done everything Han suggested. Han felt a rush of warmth inside, and he hoped Kyp could get out of here to the normal life he deserved.

  “All right, but you take him at your own risk,” the keeper finally said. “I won’t be responsible if he ruins whatever you have him working on.” H
e whistled and motioned for a pair of stormtroopers to bring Chewbacca over.

  The Wookiee growled in anger, glaring around with hard, dark eyes. He did not recognize Han, nor did he know Qwi Xux. Chewbacca glared at them, resenting another assignment.

  “A little more cooperation!” the keeper yelled, then struck out with his energy lash, burning a smoking welt across Chewbacca’s shoulder blades.

  The Wookiee howled and snarled but somehow restrained himself as the other stormtroopers hauled out their blasters, ready to stun him if he went wild. Han tensed, clenching his fists as much as the armored gloves would allow. More than anything he wanted to shove the generating handle of the energy-lash down the keeper’s throat and switch it on full power.

  But instead Han stood at attention, doing nothing, saying nothing. Like a good stormtrooper.

  The four of them marched out of the hangar bay. The keeper ignored them as he strode to the other captive Wookiees and began to strike left and right with his energy-lash, venting his anger. Han felt his stomach knotting.

  Chewbacca kept looking from side to side, as if searching for his chance to escape. Han just hoped they could get someplace private before the big Wookiee decided to tear them all apart.

  The doors closed, leaving them in a harshly lit white corridor. “Chewie!” Han said, pulling off his stormtrooper helmet. After breathing through the sour nose filters, even the musky scent of a Wookiee smelled sweet to him.

  Chewbacca bleated in delighted surprise and grabbed Han in a huge hug, wrapping hairy arms around him and lifting him off the floor. Han gasped for breath, grateful for the protection of the armor. “Put me down!” he said, trying to stop himself from chuckling. “If somebody sees you, they’ll think you’re killing me! Wouldn’t that be a stupid reason to get blasted?”

  Chewbacca agreed and lowered him back to the floor.

  “Now what?” Han asked Qwi.

  “If you can pilot us out of here, we can escape,” Qwi said.

  Han grinned. “If that’s our only problem, we’re home free. I can pilot any ship—just give me the chance.”