Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 01_ Outcast - Aaron Allston [138]
She sighed. She'd just turned around to speak to her friends when she found herself caught up in a nearly crushing hug. A grin curved her lips despite herself and she hugged Barv back.
“Thanks, Barv,” she said, using up the last bit of air he'd left in her lungs.
He released her and she gulped oxygen, smiling up at him. Yaqeel embraced her now, all warm, slightly spicy-scented fur and a softness that most people never really got to know. “You'll feel better once you're doing something,” Yaqeel said.
Barv allowed that he himself always felt better when he was doing something. Usually that involved attacking bad guys. Yaqeel patted Jysella's cheek. “Sure you don't want us coming in with you?”
“No, it's okay. You two have done enough. I—I don't know what I would have done without you, honestly,” Jysella said, the words burbling out of her. “Mom and Dad have been so focused on Valin—and I mean, of course they should be focused on him. I am, too. Just—”
“You don't need to say it,” Yaqeel interrupted her gently, sensing, as Jysella now did, that if the human girl continued she'd lose what tenuous control she had. “We're the Unit. And the Unit can always rely on each other. You'd have done the same for us.”
Barv nodded vigorously. And it was true. Jysella and Valin would have done the same for either of these two friends and fellow Jedi Knights. Done a lot more, as she knew they would have if they had to.
“Well,” she said, trying to put a brave face on it, “with you two and the whole Jedi Order, I'm sure we'll have Valin out of that carbonite slab in no time. Though I have to admit, when I was a kid, there were plenty of times when I'd have loved it if he'd been a coffee table that didn't talk back.”
It was a feeble attempt at humor, but they all seized it and laughed. Gotta laugh or I'll cry, Jysella thought. And Valin wouldn't want her to cry. She'd done altogether too much of it in recent days.
Grinning, Yaqeel slipped her arm through Barv's. “Come on. I'll buy you a caf. We still on for lunch, ’Sella?”
Lunch. She'd forgotten about that. She seemed to be forgetting a lot these days, except the overwhelming longing for everything to be all right again.
“Oh, right. Yes, come back in a few hours. I'm sure Cilghal will want me out of her …” She paused and laughed, a genuine laugh this time. “Except Mon Calamari don't have hair, do they?”
It was a good note to end on, and the three remnants of the Unit waved at one another. Jysella watched Barv and Yaqeel walk off, then sighed and turned to enter the Temple. She smiled politely at the five apprentices who were stationed there as guardians.
How many times had she been here before? She had lost count. It had always been a special place, as it was to every Jedi. For long stretches, when she was not out on assignment, it had been home. But now it seemed even more to her to be a bastion of hope. Somewhere within this vast repository of knowledge, some information that could help her brother had to be housed. Some clue as to what had happened to him, and how to put it right.
Barv thought so. She clung to that hope as well.
Jysella's booted feet rang in the vast, open space of the Temple entrance hall as she headed toward the turbolift that would take her to the First Wing of the archives. She crossed her arms, fidgeting slightly, as the turbolift hummed softly and bore her to the top floor.
She found Cilghal in a small alcove in the depths of the stacks, seated at one of the tables and surrounded by tall piles of glowing blue data tapes and datacards. Her smooth brown head was bent over an ancient text, and her flipper-like hands were encased in gloves to protect the