Star Wars: I, Jedi

by Michael A. Stackpole

  I tried to tamp down my anger, but I found it very difficult to do. “I’ve been called out to a domestic disturbance and walked into an apartment where the woman of the house is lying there on the floor, in a pool of blood and vomit. Her nose has been pulverized. Her eyes have been blacked and are swollen shut. Her throat has bruises that show a hand and fingers, and fading bruises cover the rest of her body. Standing over her are two teary-eyed toddlers the age of your niece and nephew. And lying there, on the couch a room away, is her glitbiting husband, his fists still raw and bloody from the beating, his clothes spattered with her blood. His snores are enough to cover her sobs. I’ve seen that and had every fiber of my being wanting me to give that animal the rudest wake-up he’s ever had. I’ve wanted to beat him so badly he’d look like a rancor’s chew-toy, but I didn’t. I pulled back.

  “I’ve walked into a warehouse and arrested a spicelord in his office. He opened a case and it had over a million credits in it. A million—more money than I’ll ever see in my lifetime. It was mine, he said, if I’d just take it and walk away. No one would ever know.” I narrowed my eyes. “But I’d know, and I didn’t do it.”

  He started to say something, but I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “My father died in my arms, his life leaking out of him. I had no good-bye. I had no chance to tell him I loved him. I had to hold him, feeling his life fade, hoping for a response, anything to let me know I’d not failed him, and I didn’t get it.

  “I went out and I found the bounty hunter scum that killed my father, and I arrested him. There wasn’t a person in CorSec that would have whispered in protest if I’d shot him ‘resisting arrest.’ I could have marched Bossk into One CorSec Plaza, right there in the lobby, and blown his head off in front of hundreds of witnesses, and they’d have all said the prisoner was escaping and a threat to others. I could have killed him, I could have avenged my father, and I didn’t. And when our Imp liaison officer let Bossk go, I didn’t hunt either one down.”

  I tapped myself on the breastbone again. “I don’t know if you think that makes me weak or just stupid. Maybe by not taking revenge I can’t be the kind of Jedi you want, maybe by not having wallowed in the dark side and returning you can’t be certain of me. I don’t know, but don’t tell me I don’t know the dark side, that I don’t know its temptations. I’ve been there, and I’ve walked away.”

  Luke looked ashen-faced, then glanced away from me. “I don’t think you are weak or stupid. I think you will make a fine Jedi Knight.” He hesitated for a moment, then plunged on. “I am concerned, though, that you think I’m an incompetent idiot. You don’t like how I run the academy, my choices concerning other students and my view of the way the universe works.”

  I shook my head slowly. “No, I just don’t think those things work for me. Couple of points here. You were trained to be a Jedi Knight, and you have become a Jedi Master. I accept that and respect you for all you’ve been through and learned. What you’ve done I never could do.” I softened my tone as I realized I was jumping all over him while he was at a low point. Though I had problems with the academy, he didn’t deserve to be beaten up.

  “Despite all that, there’s no guarantee you’re going to be an ace at teaching, especially the first time out. That said, you’ve done a fine job with the majority of the students. Even tossing Gantoris, me, Mara, Cilghal and Kyp into the mix, your first class only has three failures out of fifteen. That’s only a twenty percent failure rate, and I don’t think Mara was really a failure. Me, neither.

  “As for what I said, that’s just one opinion. As we used to say in CorSec, if one guy calls you a Hutt, ignore him. If a second calls you a Hutt, begin to wonder. If a third calls you a Hutt, buy a drool bucket and start stockpiling spice.”

  The Jedi Master smiled for a second. “You really are going to leave?”

  “I have to.” I closed my eyes for a second, then opened them again. “You told me, Tionne has told me and even the Holocron told me about how the Corellian Jedi tradition was different from other traditions. We have the Jedi credits and tended to keep more to our home system. You invited me here to bring part of that tradition with me, but I’m not truly following it unless I head out and discover more about it myself.”

  Luke nodded slowly. “I am still concerned about you and your development. There are things, in the future, challenges you will face.…”

  “I know.” I shrugged. “I can only face them as I find them.”

  He sighed. “Well, you have some time to reconsider. It will take a while to get a ship out here to take you away.”

  “I have Mara’s Headhunter.”

  Luke frowned. “I thought the hyperdrive motivator was shot.”

  “True.”

  Before I could finish my explanation, Artoo rolled into Luke’s room, bleating frantically.

  Luke squatted in front of the droid. “What is it, Artoo? What’s the matter?”

  The droid’s holographic display unit glowed. Hovering in the space between us I saw the image of an Imperial Star Destroyer in orbit over the academy.

  The Jedi Master groaned. “What now?”

  I patted him on the shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry too much, Master Skywalker.”

  “An Imperial Star Destroyer shows up here and we shouldn’t worry?”

  “Nope,” I said, letting a smile grow on my face, “that’s just my ride.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  From far enough away, the Errant Venture looked like an Imperial Star Destroyer. There was no mistaking that daggerish shape or the tall bridge. The ship’s stark bone-white color and sheer size invoked memories of the days when the Empire’s need for discipline often dispatched such ships to punish worlds that harbored Rebels. It was truly a sight to behold, and one from which I would have flown as fast as possible if I did not know what the Errant Venture really was.

  I brought the Headhunter up and around in a loop over midships on the ImpStar. Its normal complement of weapons had been stripped down, leaving it two tractor beams, ten ion cannons and ten heavy turbolaser batteries. That amount of firepower left the ship well defended, though as I did a flyby I noticed a couple of the laser batteries were not tracking that well and at least one froze in the middle as it followed my flight.

  Coming over the top, I rolled the Headhunter and chopped the throttle back. I keyed the comm unit. “This is Headhunter 079 requesting permission to board and land.”

  “079, this is Errant Venture control. Please state the nature of your business.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You tell Booster Terrik that he lets me park this fighter on his ship, or he’s going to be down more than just three turbolaser batteries.”

  Silence reigned on the comm channel for a moment, then the controller’s voice returned with a degree of weariness edging into it. “079, you are clear to land in docking slot 1127. Make sure your weapons are powered down.”

  “What?”

  “That is the message, 079.”

  “I copy.” I brought the Headhunter in toward the egress bay and powered up the repulsorlift coils. I throttled back to ten percent of thrust, and slowly worked the fighter into the docking bay. Slot 1127 was back against a bulkhead and would force me to take a long walk around the bay itself to reach Booster’s office. If he knew I’d broken my leg, I’d be parking back in the garbage hold and hiking even further.

  As I closed in on my parking place, the only unusual thing I noticed was that no other ships were parked near me, and the few people on the ground were scurrying away. I ignored them—no one wanted to be caught in the backwash from engine thrust. I concentrated on setting the ship down easily, which I did—giving Booster no reason to complain about my scratching his precious deck. I quickly went through an engine lockdown and provided a security passcode for engine restart. It wouldn’t stop anyone from stealing the ship, but it might slow them down.

  I smiled and keyed in a message on the ignition screen. “This Headhunter is the property of Mara Jade.” An
yone nuts enough to steal it now deserves what he gets.

  I popped the cockpit hatch, which is when I noticed something rather out of the ordinary. Booster’s security detail wore Imperial style uniforms, but they had light green torsos on the tunics and bright yellow sleeves, bright yellow trousers and green caps with yellow buttons. The effect was a touch unsettling, especially with such a crowd of them around ship.

  Their blasters, which were nowhere near as colorful as their uniforms, were all pointed in my direction.

  A Weequay whose face looked as if it were made of flaking ceramics motioned for me to come out of the Headhunter. As I stood and my lightsaber came into view, half the guards crouched while the others moved behind convenient cover. I looked around at the dozen of them and shook my head. “No trouble, no trouble.”

  For the first time I really wished I had skill in the area of Jedi levitation because trying to get out of a fighter that had me a good three meters off the deck while my hands were in the air was not an easy thing to do. I would have just jumped out, but my left leg still wasn’t one hundred percent, and I didn’t want to be limping around on the Errant Venture. What I ended up doing was sitting on the side of the cockpit and sliding down toward the floor, catching my weight mostly on my right leg.

  The Weequay jabbed me in the back with a truncheon which, I imagined, could deliver a nasty jolt to me if he only pushed the red button near his thumb. “Boss Booster wants you.”

  “Good, I want to see him, too.”

  “Surrender lightsaber.”

  I turned slowly on my heels and faced him, setting myself. “Not going to happen, quark-for-brains.”

  He poked me with the truncheon again and hit the button. I felt the tingle of the electricity, but just absorbed it. I smiled as I did so. “Power cells are dead. Really. I don’t feel a thing.”

  The Weequay hit the button again, but my smile did not fade. I bled the energy off into the decking, which raised the fur on the head of a passing Bothan, but none of the guards seemed to notice. The Weequay looked at the stun baton as if it had betrayed him, then pressed his free hand against the tip and hit the button.

  I snatched the truncheon from the air before it could hit the floor, and looked past the Weequay’s twitching form. I reversed the baton and offered the handle to another of the guards. “Clearly, it’s defective. Now if you will take me to Booster …”

  I turned back to head toward his office, when I discovered my quarry had come to me. This wouldn’t have been a bad thing, but the flesh of Booster’s face was as red as his artificial left eye. He grabbed big handfuls of my green flightsuit, hoisted me up off the deck and slammed me into a bulkhead.

  “Where’s my daughter?” His short, bristly white hair and the goatee he’d taken to wearing made him look more like me than I even wanted to think about. “What have you done with Mirax?”

  I groaned, less from the impact than the sheer fury in his words. “Let me explain.”

  He jammed me into the wall again. “You think you’re that persuasive, CorSec?”

  Booster released me and I fell to the floor. He looked at his guards and shook his head. “Fyg and Kruqr, escort him to my office. Now.”

  Another Weequay and a fairly scrawny human grabbed my arms, jerked me to my feet and Rybet-marched me off to the wardroom that Booster used as his docking bay office. It felt odd for me to be conducted to his office in the same manner I’d hauled so many prisoners along in my day. I knew that even without using any Jedi techniques I could break their grips and get rid of them. Because of the unseemliness of being hustled along that way I almost did make a break.

  I didn’t because I realized there was no purpose to my doing so. Yes, I might feel embarrassed at being manhandled so, but what difference did it make? Was my pride worth injuring someone? No. They were conducting me to where I wanted to go anyway. What they or anyone else thought of me was really immaterial.

  I smiled. Some of that Jedi training got through.

  Reverting to type, I studied my surroundings. The docking bay had plenty of room for ships and approached capacity. The old TIE fighter launch racks still had a few TIEs in them, but many of them were missing parts. Other smaller ships had been fitted with unusual suspension collars that allowed them to hang from the racks as well. In that way Booster was able to fit a lot more ships into his hold.

  The vast majority of ships in the docking bay were freighters, though few were as big as Mirax’s Pulsar Skate or the Millennium Falcon. Most ships of that size couldn’t afford docking space on the Errant Venture anyway. The ships present were those of smugglers who dealt in rare, exotic and high priced items, or the idle rich who found slumming on the Errant Venture something of a thrill. Most of the ships bringing goods for trade and transshipment on the Errant Venture just offloaded their items into one of the supply holds and left a crewman or agent on board the EV to handle the transactions.

  Booster’s people brought me to his office, tossed me inside, then shut the hatch. I had to hit a glowpanel switch, and when I did, I shuddered. Clutter filled the room—cracked duraplast boxes leaking streaky red, viscous fluids, piles of datacards leaning precariously one against another, chairs filled with cast-off clothing and in the corner stood a deactivated 3PO droid festooned with a dozen gunbelts complete with blasters. Booster’s desk dominated the room and appeared neat in comparison to the rest of it. The single layer of datacards, datapads, wires and odds and ends had been cleared back from a small cube projecting various holographs of Mirax.

  I shifted stuff from the chair in front of the desk to the floor and sat, watching the ever-changing display. Though Booster would deny having a single sentimental bone in his body, his projector cube had arranged the images by chronology and subject. They flashed up every ten seconds or so. The display might follow a theme, like images of Mirax working on the Skate, then move along through her life, forward or back, until it shot off again on a themed tangent. It wove a web of her life—a web in which I felt fully ensnared.

  In watching the display I realized the detachment I had felt before, when she vanished, had finally faded. The “flash-blindness” Luke had diagnosed had lifted, and I might have noticed it sooner, but on Yavin 4 I had so little to remind me of her. It was probably just as well that the detachment existed while I started my training because I would have gotten nowhere while distracted.

  Now, though, watching her images, the full weight of her disappearance crashed in on me. I had felt her presence that night in the grotto, and Exar Kun had showed her to me, but I knew I could not trust what I had seen through his power. The fact that I had sensed her when Luke took us on a sojourn through the universe helped sustain me, but now I realized just how alone I felt.

  And how alone she must be feeling. She was out there, somewhere, waiting for me to find her, to help her, and I had done nothing. I sighed. Perhaps Booster should have smacked me against the wall even harder.

  The hatch to the office slid open and Booster stalked in. He looked hard at me, then sat down at his desk. Fire burned in his brown eye just as brightly as in the electronic one. He watched me, then his head slowly nodded as he pressed his hands flat against the top of his desk.

  Like a mute referee, Mirax danced from image to image between us.

  “It is for her sake that I don’t just twist your head off, CorSec.” He kept his voice low and barely under control. “She’s been missing for how long?”

  I swallowed hard. “Ten weeks.”

  “Ten weeks!” His right fist hammered the desk, making the holocube bounce and the datacards ripple like loose tiles in a groundquake. He caught himself and slowly opened his hand. “Ten weeks, and you didn’t come to me and tell me.”

  I calmed myself, just barely bringing my racing heart under control. My mouth felt dry and tasted like I’d been licking a bantha. “One, I knew then and know now your daughter is alive. In consulting with a variety of people it was determined that keeping knowledge of her disappearance
quiet would be the best course.”

  Booster arched a pale eyebrow. “ ‘It was determined?’ By whom? What coward decided I shouldn’t know my little girl was missing?”

  I raised my chin. “I made that decision, Booster.”

  “Did you, CorSec, did you now?” Booster sat back. “Not your General Cracken? Not your Luke Skywalker? Not Wedge? You made it?”

  I nodded. “I weighed their opinions. I went over the scenarios they suggested and how best to handle the situation, then I made the decision.”

  “So then you take full responsibility for it?” I could hear in his voice that he was setting a trap for me. “You take full responsibility for whatever happens to her?”

  “I do.”

  Booster hesitated, then smiled coldly. “I think you’ll find you don’t much care for the consequences of your actions.”

  Something struck me as odd about Booster at that point. He’d managed to fix blame fully and squarely on me, which meant he should have been venting all of his anger and frustration on me, but he wasn’t. He’d identified me as a target and had me dead to rights, and he held back. Why?

  Then the answer slammed into me and I leaned forward. “I accept the consequences of my actions, and you want to know why? Because Mirax is my wife. Our vows make her life and happiness and safety my responsibility, and I’ve done what I could to acquit that responsibility. I would have liked nothing better than to have headed out after her immediately, but there was nowhere to go, nothing to do. General Cracken and his people were stymied, as was I. All I knew was that your daughter lived, and as long as she lived, I could take the necessary steps to save her.”

  Booster’s expression hardened against the challenge in my words. “You may think of her as your wife, but she’s my daughter, my flesh and blood, which makes me just as responsible for her as you are, CorSec. Don’t try to steal that part of my life the way your father stole five years from me. If you do, you’ll regret it.”