Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 07_ Fury - Aaron Allston [57]
Some radiated too brightly. They would be too strong for her to merge with. Others were too dim—they would not anchor her as she needed to be anchored.
One stood out. It was bright with power, but very pure, not marked by anger or sophistication. She circled in toward it, charmed by its simplicity, its innocence.
As she touched it, she decided that it was a child—a human girl, asleep. The child stirred as Alema reached her, almost coming awake, but Alema poured out comforting thoughts through the Force—emotions of safety and security, of being in the nest, surrounded by thousands like her, all clicking and whirring on their many legs, all nearly identical.
Her emotions did not so much soothe as stifle the child, but that was enough. Alema wrapped herself around the girl.
Now she was fixed in that place. She had a base from which to go hunting.
She went looking for Han Solo.
ABOARD THE ANAKIN SOLO
Caedus strode into his Command Salon. Only officers were there. “Where are Jedi Solo and the guard?”
Captain Nevil pointed toward the stern doors out of the salon. “Princess Leia asked for some privacy. The guard accompanied her to your private office.”
The chill in Caedus’s heart intensified. Without answering, he dashed toward the doors. Moments later, he entered his private office.
The guard, a muscular man with yellow skin, was there, slumped in Caedus’s desk chair, unconscious. A bruise was already beginning to appear on his chin. Leia was nowhere to be seen.
Caedus shoved him and the rolling chair aside, hearing but not looking as the chair toppled and deposited the guard on the floor. Caedus brought up his desk monitor and clicked it over instantly to his secret chambers, where Allana now lived.
There she was, curled up on a little daybed. Nearby, an entertainment monitor flickered, unwatched, its screen displaying an entertainment broadcast in which Ewoks spoke Basic and befriended shipwrecked little girls. Caedus tensed, remembering the deception he had perpetrated in Tenel Ka’s palace, but saw her features and relaxed. This was the real Allana.
He thumbed his comlink to life. “Security. Find Jedi Solo and report her location to me.”
“At once, sir.”
But it wasn’t at once. Thirty agonizingly long seconds went by, then the voice returned. “Sir, she’s approaching your personal hangar bay.”
“Alone?”
“Alone, sir.”
“Alert the guards there. Secure both the internal and external bay doors. If she tries to perform a bypass on the internal doors or begins to cut through them with her lightsaber, unsecure the outer doors, open them, and vent the hangar to space. I doubt she’ll want to play in hard vacuum.”
“Yes, sir.” There was a pause. “Doors secured remotely, sir. But the door guards aren’t responding. There’s no sign of them on holocam.”
Thoughts clicked through Caedus’s mind like sabacc cards going through an automated shuffler.
She was under observation until moments ago, so she couldn’t have gotten rid of the guards herself.
Conclusion: she has allies aboard, or she smuggled in allies on her yacht. Probably the latter.
She doesn’t have Allana, so Allana was not the goal of her mission. He pulled out his datapad and used it to transmit a query to YVH-908, the combat droid serving as Allana’s bodyguard. The droid sent back an immediate response, indicating no intrusions, no problems.
But to be sure, Caedus moved to the wall panel concealing the secret door that led to those chambers. It opened before him, and he stepped through into one of the best-kept secrets aboard ship. The narrow corridor led aft, to a succession of small rooms that almost no one living knew about. A few steps later, another door opened for him, presenting him with the same happy view of Allana he had seen on his monitor.
She opened her