Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 11_ Dark Journey - Elaine Cunningham [108]
The queen smiled like a sabacc player about to place a winning hand on the table. “You misunderstand, my dear. In these brutal times, Hapes needs a warrior queen—not Teneniel, not Tenel Ka, not Princess Leia. A queen who seeks to understand the enemy, and attack boldly.”
Her meaning hit Jaina like a Yuuzhan Vong thud bug. Unaccountably, she began to giggle. “I can just picture my father’s reaction to this idea. We’re talking about Han Solo here—I’m surprised your ambassadors didn’t have to kill him in self-defense!”
“This is quite serious,” Ta’a Chume insisted.
With difficulty, Jaina composed her expression. “I can see that. I didn’t mean to offend—really, even the suggestion is an enormous honor. But I’m just not interested.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” she echoed. “For starters, I’m too young.”
“Nonsense. You’re eighteen, about the age your mother was when she set her heart on an older man.”
“Speaking of my father, how many days did your ambassadors spend in a bacta tank?” she said pointedly.
“I’m sure he’ll come around to the idea. He is a reasonable man.”
“He’s never been accused of that before,” Jaina retorted. “But that’s neither here nor there. I don’t know about Hapan customs, but no one tells me who to marry. Not my parents, not my friends.”
“And not me,” Ta’a Chume concluded with a faint smile. “At least consider it.”
Jaina promised she would and went to look for Jag Fel, intending to question him about the fight he’d interrupted.
Her initial certainty had faded. She hoped that her father had just been acting predictably, but her danger senses prickled. What if he did not “respond reasonably”? What if Teneniel Djo did not step aside? How far would Ta’a Chume go to get her way?
Since landing on Hapes, Jaina had been convinced that Ta’a Chume had a plan in mind for her. She didn’t want to believe this of Ta’a Chume, despite all she knew and sensed of the older woman.
She couldn’t find Jag anywhere, though she eventually tracked his ship to an extremely inconspicuous corner of the city docks. Nor could she find anyone who had seen him recently.
She considered, briefly, reaching out with the Force to find him. Jacen had gone into deep meditation to find Corran Horn after the attack on Yavin 4, but this had never been her strong suit, and even those Jedi gifted with perception had difficulty finding specific people—unless, of course, they had some deep connection.
She decided instead to seek answers in a Jedi trance, and made her way to the quiet of her palace room.
As she sank deep into thought and out into the current of the Force, an image began to emerge as if from a dark mist. Jaina saw a small, slim girl in a brown flight suit. The girl’s shoulders were hunched in tense anticipation, and she clasped an unfamiliar lightsaber in both hands.
Jaina’s heart jolted as she recognized herself, and understood the context of this vision. And then she was swept deeper, leaving the detachment of the spectator behind as she entered fully into the Force-inspired memory.
A tall, black-clad figure strode toward her, his red lightsaber ready for attack.
The image of Darth Vader did not inspire the fear her infamous grandfather had earned, but a very different sort of terror.
Once again she relived the moment of horrified realization that she’d fought Jacen, cloaked in a holographic disguise.
“Jacen?” she whispered.
The specter advanced. She rose to her feet, reluctantly, and switched on the blade the Shadow Academy Masters had given her. The battle swept over her on dark wings, fierce and fast and desperate. Jaina threw all her skill into parrying the blows and landing none. The nascent skill Jacen had possessed from an early age made this a difficult task.
In this vision, however, she was not a trained Jedi Knight, but a young