Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [180]
“Yet.”
I nodded and opened my eyes again. “Yet.”
“We shall have to remedy that, then.” The Caamasi smiled again, slyly this time, giving him just a hint of predator. “How will we proceed?”
I brushed a bandaged hand over my mouth. “Every good operation starts with Intelligence. The Invids draw ships and crews from all over, but those based here are definitely the spine of Tavira’s operation. If we shatter them and drive them away, she’ll have to take greater and greater risks, which means she’ll make mistakes.”
“Destroying a planet of pirates is a tall order for a lone Jedi Knight and a lightsaber.”
“True, especially since I don’t have a lightsaber.” I frowned. “Don’t think I can download the plans for one from the HoloNet, and I don’t think sending Luke Skywalker a message inquiring after how to build one will bring a favorable response.”
“Even on Kerilt we had heard of his Jedi academy. He would not teach you?”
I winced. “I was there, but didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms with him. Do the Caamasi have the equivalent of the Corellian ‘Strafing the spaceport you’ve just left?’ ”
“Uprooting a plant after you have plucked a single blossom.”
“It works. Can’t be a Jedi without a lightsaber.”
Elegos shrugged. “Perhaps you can re-root the plant.”
Something in the back of my brain clicked. “Not re-root, just grow a new one.” I got up and jogged into my bedroom. There on a night table I had a datapad and a stack of datacard journals. I picked them up and started sorting them clumsily by pitching the ones I didn’t want onto the bed. Finally I got down to the ones I needed and handed them to Elegos.
He frowned. “Corellian Horticultural Digests?”
I nodded. “Nejaa’s best friend, the man I grew up thinking of as my grandfather—the man who is my grandfather—was wise enough to know I’d need the sort of information I’d declined to take with me. These journals have in them columns he has written. I thought he gave them to me when I was leaving because he wanted to share his work with me, but I never even got all the way through any of them. Too much plant stuff, and annotations that reference the genetic codes of the hybrids. In those codes he has encrypted Nejaa’s journals and teachings, and the instructions for creating a lightsaber have got to be in there.”
Elegos scooped the datapad up. “If you will permit me, I will go through these journals and see what I can find.”
“Good.” I held my hands up. “Since I can’t fly for a bit, I have ample reasons for wandering about all over the place. I know a lot about operations here, but not as much as I should. Once I know where the support structures are for the Invid organization, I can take them apart. It won’t be easy, but it’s got to be done.”
“As my uncle often said, ‘There are attempts, and there are accomplishments. Histories only praise one.’ ”
I laughed and clapped my hands, then bit back the pain. “You accomplish some decoding and I’ll accomplish some healing, then we’ll go from there.”
I actually managed to do a lot during the time I was healing, and my imminent elevation to Tavira’s side helped me immeasurably. When I was asked, for example, why I didn’t use the bacta tanks on Courkrus to speed my healing, I said Tavira would think me weak if I could not endure the pain. That satisfied most folks, while the Jedi healing techniques Elegos uncovered from the journals actually allowed me to speed my healing. I knew, however, that having my hands continually wrapped in bandages would be helpful since it made me decidedly less threatening to most folks.
I made the rounds of the myriad groups stationed on Courkrus, and was greeted warmly by all the various leaders. They clearly felt courting me would be good for them in the long run. I spent some time in the Warren with Riistar’s Raiders and the Red Nova crew. Aside from wanton cruelty