Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [119]
The only positive point about the change was that I found it very easy to hire a speeder-cab. I gave him the directions to my grandfather’s home and the driver, a Klatooinan, graced me with a smile that was all tooth. I sank back into the rear seat, but refrained from drawing in a deep breath to relax myself. A Jedi might not know pain, but the scents in the back seat of a speeder-cab could gag a Gamorrean.
I hoped I was not on a fool’s errand. While in the bacta tank I had realized that I’d taken my father’s message to be encouragement to join the Jedi academy. What Luke had told me about the Force allowing one to see pieces of the past or present or future suggested my father had somehow known the academy would come into being. That was an unwarranted assumption. Moreover, my father always hedged his bets. Knowing the future was mutable, he couldn’t be certain the academy would exist. As a result, I had to assume that he had made arrangements for information to be left behind for me so I could recover my heritage.
I smiled slowly. Even if my father had left nothing behind, seeing my grandfather again would be fun. Nearing his home, back in the hill district where I had grown up, I began to realize how much I missed him and Corellia. I had gone away—had been forced to flee—to avoid Imperial entanglements and death. From that point I had pretty much been in hiding or up to my neck in missions with Rogue Squadron. While we had exchanged holographic greetings, the Diktat’s censors had chopped the messages up enough that little of my grandfather’s wit or warmth had gotten through.
The speeder-cab came to a halt at a gate that blocked the whole street on which I’d grown up. My father had purchased a house across a circle from my grandfather, and there had been eight other houses scattered around that circle. We’d never had a wall surrounding the area and certainly no gate. “Are you sure this is the right place?”
The Klatooinan nodded and tapped the display unit on his vehicle’s local navicomp. He reached out, plucked a wired comlink from its holder beside the gate and threaded it back to me. “Hello?”
A stiff and formal voice answered back. “The Horn Estate.”
Estate? “I’d like to speak with Rostek Horn, please.”
“Director Horn has asked not to be disturbed.”
I ducked my head and tried to peer through the gate’s bars at the houses further in, but I couldn’t see my grandfather’s place. Nor could I see the home I’d grown up in. Instead all I could see was a huge, sprawling building of very recent manufacture. It gleamed brightly against the green of the hills behind it, all white and silvery where tinted transparisteel sheets took the place of walls.
“Please, tell him it’s his …” I hesitated. If I said grandson, I could cause trouble since I still had murder warrants out for me in the Corellian system. “Tell him it’s an old friend. Keiran Halcyon.”
“Director Horn knows no one by that name.”
I put an edge into my voice. “You clearly have not been with him long. I grew up in this neighborhood. He was like a grandfather to me. Tell him that.”
“Just a moment.”
The Klatooinan passed the time by bringing me up to speed on the local Zoneball league standings. He tried to impress me with the fact that Staive Pedsten, the local star—who, did I know, had once been romantically linked with Princess Leia—had sat where I sat. I was assured the athlete was not as handsome as I was, but the Klatooinan remembered him because he was a most generous tipper.
I smiled back at my driver and nodded, but before he could regale me with Pedsten’s latest scoring coup, the gate opened. The Klatooinan hit the accelerator, which jolted us forward and tore the wired comlink from my hands. It clipped him in the back of the head as it snapped out his window. He grumbled a bit as he rubbed at the rising lump, but managed to run