Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 04_ Backlash - Aaron Allston [2]
“Yes, well, no. Apparently not anymore. Ben also says—and we’re not to let Luke know that he did—that Luke is exhausted. Really exhausted, like he’s had the life squeezed out of him. Ben would like us to sort of drift near and lend Luke some support.”
“Of course.” But then Han grimaced. “Back to the Maw. The only place gloomy enough to make its next door neighbor, Kessel, seem like a garden spot.”
Leia shook her head. “They’re tracking a Sith girl who’s on the run. So it probably won’t be the Maw.”
“Ah, good.” Han rubbed his hands together as if anticipating a fine meal or a fight. “Why not? After taking off with all those barvy Jedi that Daala wanted to deep-freeze, we probably have an arrest warrant waiting back on Coruscant anyway.”
Finally Leia smiled and looked at Han. “One good thing about the Solos and Skywalkers. We never run out of things to do.”
JEDI TEMPLE, CORUSCANT
Master Cilghal, Mon Calamari and most proficient medical doctor among the current generation of Jedi, paused before hitting the console button that would erase the message she had just spent some time decrypting. It had been a video transmission from Ben Skywalker, a message carefully rerouted through several hypercomm nodes and carefully staged so as not to mention that it was for Cilghal’s tympanic membranes or, in fact, for anyone on Coruscant.
But its main content was meant for the Jedi, and Cilghal repeated it as a one-word summation, making the word sound like a vicious curse: “Sith.”
The message had to be communicated throughout the Jedi Order. And on review, there was nothing in it that suggested she couldn’t preserve the recording, couldn’t claim that it had been forwarded to her by a civilian friend of the Skywalkers. Luke Skywalker was not supposed to be in contact with the Jedi Temple, but this recording was manifestly free of any proof that the exiled Grand Master exerted any influence over the Order. She could distribute it.
And she would do so, right now.
DEEP SPACE NEAR KESSEL
Jade Shadow, onetime vehicle of Mara Jade Skywalker, now full-time transport and home to her widower and son, dropped from hyperspace into the empty blackness well outside the Kessel system. She hung suspended there for several minutes, long enough for one of her occupants to gather from the Force a sense of his own life’s blood that had been in the vicinity; then she turned on a course toward Kessel and vanished again into hyperspace.
JADE SHADOW, IN ORBIT ABOVE KESSEL
Ben Skywalker shouldered his way through the narrow hatch that gave access to his father’s cabin. The auburn-haired teen was a little shorter than average height, but he was well muscled in a way that his anonymous tunic and pants could not conceal.
On the cabin’s bed, under a brown blanket, lay Luke Skywalker. Similar in build to his son, he wore the evidence of many more years of hard living, including old, faded scars on his face and the exposed portions of his arms. Not obvious was the fact that his right hand, so ordinary in appearance, was a prosthetic.
Luke’s eyes were closed, but he stirred. “What did you find out?”
“I reached Nien Nunb.” Nunb, the Sullustan co-owner and manager of one of Kessel’s most prominent mineworks, had been a friend of the Solos and Skywalkers for decades. “That yacht did make planet-fall. The pilot gave her name as Captain Khai. She somehow scammed a port worker into thinking she’d paid for a complete refueling when she hadn’t—”
Luke smiled. “‘The Force can have a—’”
“Yeah, so can a good-looking girl. Anyway, what’s interesting is that she got a galactic map update. Nunb looked at the transmission time and determined that the download was pretty comprehensive. In other words, she didn’t concentrate on any one specific area or route. No help there.”
“But it suggests that she did need some of the newer information. New hyperspace routes or planetary listings.”
“Right.”
“And she’s gone?” Luke asked.
“Headed out as soon as her yacht was refueled.