Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 07_ Conviction - Aaron Allston [158]
She shook her head, trying to get rid of that thought. Grandma Leia often chided her for thinking when she needed to be feeling. She let her thoughts drift away.
She felt Anji nearby, happy and strong and primitive. She let herself stretch beyond the nexu.
She felt many touches of the Force below, in the direction of camp. She ignored them.
She felt … darkness. Almost in a trance, she moved in that direction.
It was not far by the standards of a healthy little girl, the equivalent of a few city blocks. And then, ahead, she saw him—at the edge of the overlook, a datapad on the sand before him, macrobinoculars beside it.
Slowly, she withdrew herself from feeling his presence. She withdrew into herself, making herself a tiny dot in the Force as she had before. And step by step she approached, silent as Anji.
She had to get close if she were to throw herself on his back. She didn’t know exactly how that would help, but it was what her vision had shown her.
The man set something down on the sand beside him and picked up his datapad, fiddling with it. Allana moved closer, barely daring to breathe.
She could see Tenel Ka on the datapad’s small screen, a broadcast from the event going on right now in camp.
It came to her then, the thought that was hovering around the dark-aura man. She’d been wrong. He was not the fiery man.
C-3PO was.
She covered her mouth to keep from making a noise that would alert the man.
C-3PO was the fiery man, and the little thing the dark-aura man had set down beside him was the key to C-3PO’s death. To Tenel Ka’s death.
Allana took another step forward.
Leia reached the top of the sloping trail and checked her comlink again. It gave her a new direction, a new distance. Barely five hundred meters away.
But curiously, she could not feel her granddaughter’s presence in the Force. Anji’s, yes, dim, ahead. And something else.
Something dark.
Leia sprinted.
Dei stood and turned.
Standing just three meters from him, the remote in her hand, was Amelia Solo. She stared up at him, defiant.
He gestured for the remote. “Give me that.”
She shook her head. “You’re not going to kill her.”
“I’m not going to kill—your mother?”
There was just a flicker of surprise in the little girl’s eyes. She didn’t answer.
Dei gave her a sympathetic nod. “I do apologize. I suspect you would have grown up to be much like your mother. I approve of intelligence and beauty in all their forms. But duty comes first. I’m going to kill you now, and then your mother. It will be painless if you let it be so.” He drew forth his lightsaber and activated it.
She turned to run.
Faster than she could hope to move, he charged, bringing his blade up.
He didn’t see the attack coming. One moment he was at the start of his slash. Then he was off-balance, falling, his face on fire.
His attacker was made up of fur and sharp protrusions and rage. It bit, clawed, raked. Dei hit the sand, rolled awkwardly up onto his knees, and grabbed for his tormenter with his free hand. His fingers closed on a furry extremity and yanked.
The thing didn’t come free. It held on, digging its sharpness deeper into his cheek and forehead and eye. Dei howled and yanked again. This time he pulled the monster off. He flung it out into the darkness.
Blood poured down the right side of his face. He suspected, though he was not sure, that the eye on that side was lost. Burning with anger—anger, fuel of the dark side—he stood. It would take one step, one swing, and the little girl would be done, and then he’d take care of her pet. He turned toward Amelia.
Between him and the little girl stood Leia Solo, her lightsaber unlit in her hand. Now it snap-hissed into life. Beyond her, pale, Amelia stared at him, the remote still in her hands.
Leia was pale, too, panting, a spectral image