• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

There were tears on her cheeks again. She scrubbed them away. She waited a moment, listening, making sure that she hadn’t awakened her grandparents, and then she sat up, hugging her knees to her chest, and tried to think.

Anji hopped up on her bunk, padded her way forward, bumped her head against Allana’s shin.

Allana stroked the nexu. “I’m all right. It’s all right.”

But it wasn’t.

In tonight’s dream, the man made of fire was back. Again he had approached Tenel Ka from behind.

But this time Allana had been behind him, watching. When he approached her mother, Allana had shrieked and thrown herself on his back to stop him.

Her scream had not alerted Tenel Ka. But as Allana landed on the man’s back, as her own body had begun to burn, Tenel Ka had felt her pain and turned. Her expression had been one of shock and loss. But she was ready to defend herself. That was Allana’s last view of her mother. Allana had sunk, burning, into the fiery man’s body.

Was that the way it had to be? Either Tenel Ka or Allana would die? That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

And Allana couldn’t go again to Leia. Her grandmother would say it was only a dream, that it was nothing to be worried about.

Well, Allana was going to worry. She just had to figure out what to do in addition to worrying.

ARMAND ISARD CORRECTIONAL FACILITY,

CORUSCANT

IN THE CITRUS-GREEN CORRIDOR LEADING TO THE VISITORS MEETING hall, Daala overtook Tahiri Veila, who was also dressed in a prison-yellow jumpsuit, also on her way to the hall. But Tahiri moved far more slowly than Daala. The Jedi, unlike the deposed Chief of State, was shackled at wrist and ankle with stun cuffs, a concession to the greater theoretical danger a fully trained Force-wielder posed. In addition, while Daala was accompanied by a standard, blocky security droid, Tahiri was escorted by a YVH combat droid—often a match for an armed and unrestrained Jedi, and certainly too great an obstacle for an unarmed and restrained one.

Daala fell in beside Tahiri. “So. Death.”

Tahiri glanced sidelong at her. “You first. Comm me and let me know what it’s like.”

“I don’t think so. I’ll walk out of this wretched place. You’ll be leaving in an urn. You killed a hero.”

“How many have you killed? Including your enemies and your subordinates?”

Daala gave Tahiri a smile that she knew belonged on a toothed, cartilaginous fish. “At least I have friends and allies left. What was it like to receive the death sentence with no one left in the courtroom even pretending to care about you?”

“I expect I’ll have friends again by the time I’m your age.”

Daala resumed her earlier pace, leaving Tahiri behind. Being honest with herself, she considered that conversation no better than a draw, and she wasn’t entertained by it.

Daala and her escort reached the admissions chamber into the visitors hall. Like most transition zones in the prison, this chamber was built along the paradigm of an air lock—heavily reinforced, with only one door, the hall side or the corridor side, capable of being opened at a time. Once she and her guard droid were inside, the hall-side door, built as though for a treasure vault, slid closed, and a hemispherical module studded with glows and readouts extended itself from the ceiling, scanning her. It would, she knew, determine the extent and nature of all prosthetics on her body, sniff for chemical explosives, take a sample brain scan and compare its patterns with those on record for her … time consuming, tedious, absolutely necessary.

Necessary when dealing with dangerous criminals. She fumed, but did not let the chamber’s holocams see that.

Finally the opposite-side vault door opened, admitting her to another short green corridor. The corridor was wide, with ample seating on both sides, hard and uncomfortable-looking chairs in a darker industrial green; prison guards waited in a couple of those chairs. The security droid drew to the side and allowed Daala to proceed alone.

The door at the far end slid up to admit her into the visitors hall.

It was, depressingly, much like