Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 07_ Conviction - Aaron Allston [143]
She gave him a startled look. “I’m not in contact with her. But I know all the normal protocols. Comm frequencies they monitor, alert codes my people customarily use. If I were to transmit a message a handful of ways, one or all of them would reach her.”
Luke handed her the datapad. “Please do. Tell them where we are and that Abeloth is here.”
She took the datapad but looked at him, uncertain.
“Come on, Vestara. You did summon the Sith to Nam Chorios, didn’t you? Because you knew that without the power they could muster, we could never contain and destroy her.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not angry, not disappointed. You made a tactically sound decision in the interest of the galaxy, in the face of what you thought of as a bad decision on my part. I’m not offering criticism. In fact, I was hoping you’d do that. I was counting on the Sith following us here for that purpose, but your involvement made sure that their arrival was faster and more certain.”
She turned her attention to the datapad and began entering a message. “My only concern was destroying Abeloth. I endangered myself by bringing the Sith here.”
“I know.”
Her task done, Vestara returned the datapad to Luke. He tucked the device and its cabling into a shadowy crease in the natural stone wall. Then he led the way down the tunnel.
KLATOOINE
IT WAS ALMOST A PICNIC. THE CREW OF THE CRYPTIC WARNING SAT ON a large flimsiplast blanket in the shadow cast by the ship. The ship itself, convincingly the color of local sand, could have been an unusually smooth boulder projecting up from the desert floor. The crew members were happy to bask in the desert heat if it meant some time outside the cramped conditions the ship had to offer.
Fardan operated the portable holoprojector lying at the center of the blanket. Above it materialized the familiar images of a protocol droid and an astromech. “These are designated See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo. They’ve belonged to the Jedi Solo, and her father before her, for about sixty standard years. They appear in the background of a tremendous number of holorecordings about Han Solo and Leia Organa Solo, and the astromech with Jedi Master Skywalker. It’s not inconceivable, after all those decades, and knowing how the cultures we are studying are fond of pets of all sorts, that these two have been accorded special privileges.”
Dei nodded. “We’ll need money for bribes—money in excess of what we have available. Fardan, I want you to find nonessential systems aboard Cryptic Warning, redundant systems, any other items of value, and sell them in camp to give us some operating capital. Tooley, I need an explosive charge that will fit in these dimensions.” He passed a flimsi diagram over to his machinist and engineer. “At minimum, it needs to be able to burn to carbon any life-form within three to five meters. I don’t want an explosion throwing chunks in all directions—I want a burn.”
Tooley, a burly human male whose pallor suggested that this trip had seen his first-ever exposure to any sun, nodded. He studied the diagram. “I can do that.”
“I need it fast. End of day. Rumors are circulating around camp that things will be changing soon. It would be painful … fatally painful … if all these elements came together just in time for us to see the Queen Mother lift off and go home.”
Tooley gave his commander a steady look. “It’ll be today. I’ll have to scavenge one of our missiles and scale down the warhead charge.”
“Do it.”
Kyp Durron tucked his helmet under his arm and dropped to the sands, waving off the Klatooinian worker approaching with a ladder. A few meters away, the other members of his party likewise dropped from their X-wing cockpits, helmets in hand.
Sothais Saar, dark-haired, in a dark pilot’s jumpsuit instead of his preferred dark robes, was a face the Klatooinians and members of freedom movements present