Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [129]
Irek had been implanted at the age of five, before the debris from Alderaan had even settled into its permanent, ragged orbit around what had been that planet’s sun.
Had she planned it herself in her most malicious daydreams, Leia could have evolved no more wretched vengeance upon the man who had taught the Death Star’s designers.
Nasdra Magrody had been kept, drugged with mild doses of antidepressant just sufficient to rob him of any will to leave, in a comfortable villa on a planet so inhospitable, so dangerous, so teeming with bizarre insect-borne viruses, that to step outside the magnetic field that surrounded the gardens would have resulted, within hours, in his death.
I can only be thankful I had already been soothed with Telezan before they demonstrated this fact to me [he wrote sadly]. I still don’t know the name of the man they tied up outside the boundaries of the field, or his crime, if he’d committed one—the commander in charge assured me he had, but of course that could have been a lie. The bullyboys who took him out there wore t-suits, which they then cut to pieces in front of me. The man himself lasted two hours before he began to swell up; his decomposing flesh didn’t begin to slough until nearly sunset, and he died shortly before dawn. If it hadn’t been for the drug I don’t think I’d have slept at all, either that night, or any night in the four years that I remained there.
They supplied me regularly with holos of my wife. I was comfortable, and studied, and perfected the techniques by which subelectronic synapses could be controlled. I think that in spite of the drugs I was aware that in those two years there was no alteration of Elizie’s face—nor of the length of her hair—in the holos. Of Shenna, who would have grown from girl to woman in that time, they never sent me anything at all. I did my best not to think about what that meant. The drugs made that easy.
When Irek was seven, his training began. It was obvious to Leia, from what Magrody said, that the boy had already had training in the use of the Force, the swift and easy simplicities of the dark side. With the less punitive accelerated learning procedures Magrody had developed for the Omwat orbital station, he learned enough, by the age of twelve, to qualify for an advanced degree in subelectron physics or a position as a droid motivator technician—at what cost Leia, recalling Cray’s desperate measures to accelerate learning, could only guess.
Every now and then a tree feeder will go mildly amok and wander through the streets of the town squirting nutrient at passersby …
Bizarre enough when Jevax had told her of it last night, but clear as daylight, Leia realized, when she understood that a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy was developing his powers to alter the behavior of droids.
Visualize the schematic, Roganda had said …
Leia thought about the mechanical intelligences behind every ship in the Republic’s fleet, and shivered again.
Chewbacca had repaired Artoo, obviously not rewiring in the same fashion … and Irek had lost his power over the droid.
Han, she thought desperately. Like Drub McKumb, even if she lost her own life, she had to get word out to them of the danger they faced, and how to circumvent the boy Irek’s powers. They’re there … they’re gathering …
Going to kill you all.
More of that night at the Emperor’s reception returned to her. Aunt Celly, plump and pink-faced with her fading fair hair looped into the sort of lacquered confection of twirls, pearls, and artificial swags popular twenty-five years previously, had taken her aside and whispered conspiratorially, “It’s a hotbed of intrigue, dear; just terrible.” She’d glanced across at the slender exquisite concubines. “I’m told they’re all at daggers-drawing, my dear. Because of course, whoever can provide him with a child, that child is going to be his heir.”
Leia particularly remembered Roganda, like an enameled image of crimson and gold, moving from dignitary to dignitary with that same