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41

Inside the dining hall of the Great Temple, Cilghal stood silent and firm, studiously showing no reaction to Ackbar’s insistence.

Clad once again in his white admiral’s uniform, Ackbar leaned closer to Cilghal. He placed his splayed hands firmly on the shoulders of her watery-blue robe. She could feel the heavy musculature in his hands as he pressed down. She flinched, afraid of what he would demand of her.

“You cannot surrender so easily, Ambassador,” Ackbar said. “I will not accept that this task is impossible until you prove to me it is impossible.”

Cilghal felt small under the probing gaze of his large eyes. No human would recognize it, but she could see the effects of long-fought stress on his face, in the mottling of his dark-orange color. Ackbar’s skin looked dry, and his lobes had sunk deeply into the sides of his head. The small tendrils around his mouth looked frayed and cracked.

Since the terrible crash on the planet Vortex and his resulting disgrace, Ackbar had lived with an enormous weight on his conscience. But now he had come back to himself, returning to serve his people and the New Republic with greater determination—and coming to speak with her on Yavin 4.

“There have been no Jedi healers since the great purges,” Cilghal said. “Master Skywalker believes I possess some aptitude in this area, but I have had no appropriate training. I would be swimming in murky waters, uncertain of my course. I don’t dare—”

“Nevertheless,” Ackbar interrupted sharply. He released her shoulders and stepped back so that his clean white uniform dazzled her eyes in the dimness of the Massassi temple’s dining hall.

Dorsk 81 stepped into the chamber, looking surreptitiously at Ackbar. His eyes widened as he recognized the commander of the New Republic Fleet. The cloned alien muttered his apologies and backed out, flustered.

But Ackbar’s gaze did not waver from Cilghal. She raised her head to meet his stare but waited for him to speak.

“Please,” Ackbar said. “I beg you. Mon Mothma will die within days if you do nothing.”

“I made oaths to myself, both when I became an ambassador and when I arrived here to train as a Jedi,” Cilghal said, bowing her head with a sigh, “that I would do everything in my power to serve and to strengthen the New Republic.”

She looked down at her spatulate hands. “If Master Skywalker has faith in me, who am I to question his judgment?” she said. “Take me to your ship, Admiral. Let us go to Coruscant.”

In the former Imperial Palace, Cilghal reviewed the situation with growing dread.

Mon Mothma no longer remained conscious. The infestation of nano-destroyers filled her body, tearing her cells apart one by one. Without the life-support systems that kept her lungs filling, her heart beating, her blood filtered—the human woman would have died days earlier.

Some Council members had begun advising that she be allowed to die, that forcibly keeping Mon Mothma alive in such a state was a lingering torture. But upon hearing that one of Master Skywalker’s new Jedi would come from Yavin 4 to attempt healing her, Chief of State Leia Organa Solo had insisted that they wait for this last chance, this slim hope.

Arriving in Imperial City, Cilghal was flanked by Ackbar and Leia as they ushered her down corridors to the medical chambers where Mon Mothma lay surrounded by the growing stench of death.

Leia’s dark gaze flicked from Mon Mothma to Cilghal. Her human eyes glittered with gathering tears, and Cilghal could sense her hope like a palpable substance.

The smells of medicines, sterilization chemicals, and throbbing machines made her amphibious skin feel irritated and rubbery. She wanted to swim in the soothing waters of Calamari, to wash the disturbing thoughts and poisons from her body—but Mon Mothma needed that purging even more than Cilghal did.

She stepped to Mon Mothma’s bedside, leaving Leia and Ackbar behind her. “You must realize that I know nothing specific about the healing powers of the Jedi,” she said, as if offering an excuse. “I know even less about this living poison that is