HWEG SHUL, NAM CHORIOS
IN THE MOST STILL PREDAWN HOUR, THEY LANDED THE SHUTTLE, SHUT it down, and, bundled as well as they could be against the chill, hiked the few remaining kilometers in to Hweg Shul.
From a hilltop a kilometer off, Luke studied the town through his macrobinoculars. He could make out the government center, mostly domes and other raised buildings, and the area near the spaceport where the Admirable Admiral was located. But many things had changed in the couple of days they had been away. Nighttime overhead lighting was out in several sections of town; only when Luke switched the macrobinoculars over to starlight-vision mode could he make out details.
In the Oldtimer sections of town, there were men or women on the occasional street corner, dressed for the chill, standing stationary or pacing to keep warm. All were armed with blaster rifles.
There were also sentries on street corners in the Newcomers’ and Latecomers’ portions of town—uniformed police.
Everywhere there was to be seen the aftermath of Force storm damage. There were smashed landspeeders and speeder bikes here and there, one landspeeder atop another in a ruined heap just in front of a garage, another speeder nose-first halfway into a raised dome. One building in ten showed damage characteristic of battering by flying junk; one in twenty had collapsed entirely.
He handed the macrobinoculars to Ben. “They’ve been through a lot.”
“They have.” That was Vestara. She had her comlink in hand and an earpiece in place in her left ear, occasionally visible when she turned her head and her cloak hood gaped. Clearly, she was listening to broadcasts. “And we’re being sought by the authorities.”
“That’s crazy.” Ben studied the damaged town. “They’re blaming us for the storms?”
“No, for the murder of Dr. Wei. We let a lot of people know that we were searching for him. Then we disappeared and someone else found his body out in the wilderness. The whole matter of trumped-up evidence suggesting he was engineering a new species of drochs seems to have been forgotten. Then there’s the assault on Mayor Snaplaunce. He was stabbed at the site where he handed over the shuttle to us—most people seem to think we did it to steal his shuttle.”
Luke glanced at her. “Did he survive?”
“Yes, and he’s out of the hospital now. But he doesn’t remember the circumstances of his stabbing, or whether it happened before or after we left.”
Luke grimaced. “Force techniques may have been used to mess with his memory.”
“Probably.” Vestara hesitated before suggesting something Luke knew she never would have proposed a few weeks earlier. “Perhaps you should bring in some more of … your people.”
Luke and Ben exchanged a look. Luke was still behaving according to the dictates of his plea bargain, not issuing orders to the Jedi. Ben, under no such restrictions, had listened to his father and, before planetfall on Nam Chorios, sent off a holocomm transmission with some suggestions. But none of that would lead to Jedi coming to this world to aid in a ground search. The Jedi were needed elsewhere.
Luke merely shook his head. “We’re on our own.”
Ben raised the macrobinoculars to his eyes again. “Besides, it’s a planet with an itty-bitty population. Two Jedi and a Sith should be able to handle anything they throw at us.”
Vestara snorted. “Not necessarily including Abeloth.”
Luke pulled his cloak more tightly around him. “Come on. Let’s go in.”
It was slow, careful work entering Hweg Shul. The task was made easier by the fact that it wasn’t a walled community and by the fact that the damage to the lighting grid made it harder for the locals to detect them.
Staging their movements, remaining alert in all directions, and never yielding to impatience, the three made their way through the city outskirts and to the Newcomers’ district, avoiding guards and eluding the views of elevated security holocams.
That brought them, half an hour before dawn, to the front of Teselda’s dome.
Ben and Vestara kept an eye out while Luke leapt up to the entryway and ran a bypass on the entry keypad. A moment later the door slid open and the three of them entered.
The dome interior was mostly dark, illuminated only by colorful lights gleaming from various electronics, with only the hum and hiss of a heater to be heard—and then, from above, Sel’s voice. “Is someone there?”
Luke gestured for the others to remain quiet.
A spiral metal stairway descended from the ceiling near the living room’s back wall, unfolding like a musical squeeze box, and Sel descended. She was dressed in a downy nightshirt and leggings all in dark blue, and in her hand was an unlit lightsaber. When she caught sight of Luke and the others, she visibly relaxed and lowered the weapon. “Master Skywalker. I was worried about you.”
Luke loosened his cloak, allowing some of the room’s warm air to flow over him. “We’re fine. We weren’t quite shot down.”
Sel reached the first-floor level. “They’re looking for you. The authorities.” The staircase rose behind her until it was flush with the ceiling again.
“Just the authorities?”
She cocked her head, puzzled. “I’m sorry?”
“Never mind. As you might expect, we didn’t do it—whatever it might happen to be that they suspect us of.”
“I knew that. Would you—would any of you like some breakfast?”
Luke cleared his throat. “Forgive me, but …” And he began to sing. The song had a gentle melody spanning a narrow range of notes, well suited to the average parent. “Green grasses beckon, soft and warm / My arms will keep you safe from harm / As thrantas dance across the sky / As stars smile down and south winds sigh / The scent of flowers fills the air / And sleep comes for Teselda fair …”
As he sang, he could feel the perplexed gazes of Ben and Vestara on him. But the song’s effect on Sel was more dramatic. With the first few notes, she stumbled, her eyes fluttering, and dropped the lightsaber. It bounced on the carpet. Sel staggered over a meter and slumped onto her sofa.
By the time Luke finished the first stanza, Sel’s eyes were closed. She breathed deeply in untroubled sleep.
Luke drew a hand over his brow, a mock expression of relief. “We’re lucky that worked. I’m not known for my singing.”
Ben moved over to look down on Sel. “What was that all about?”
“It’s her trigger for the mnemotherapy technique. She gave it to me.” Luke stepped beside his son and helped position Sel more comfortably on the sofa. “I need to know if she’s been meddled with.”
Vestara handed him Sel’s lightsaber. “It looks old.”
“Four centuries at least.” Luke set the weapon aside and knelt. “Sel, can you hear me?”
Her eyes did not open, but she spoke, her voice low and languid. “I hear you.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“You are Master Luke Skywalker. Leader of the Jedi. Enemy of the Listeners. Enemy of the Lady.”
Luke smoothed down the hair on the back of his neck. It was abruptly threatening to stand up. “Where is the Lady now?”
“How about Master Nenn? Do you know where he is?”
She turned her head, suddenly fretful. “I don’t want to go there.”
“You don’t have to go there. You can stay here where it’s safe. But I have to go there. Where is Nenn?”
“Below.”
“Below, where?”
“In the pumping station. With the Listeners. With the drochs. In the dark.”
This time Luke felt gooseflesh rise on his skin. He had bad memories of being in the dark with drochs.
“Here in Hweg Shul?”
“No, somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. The only pumping station I’ve ever seen is here. It isn’t that one.”
Luke sat back and sighed. “Of course Abeloth would be in a place like that … Sel, you welcomed us when you realized who it was. You pretended there was no problem. What were you going to do with us?”
“Delay you. Keep you here. Alert the Listeners.”
“So you have not alerted them?”
“No.”
“Sel, you will sleep now. You’re very, very tired. You will hear no voice but mine until you awaken. No voice, no alarm, no beep from your comm board, nothing. When you awaken, you will feel very good, refreshed, and you will marvel that you slept so long. But you will not recall that we were here with you.”
“I understand.”
Ben settled on a chair. “In the future, I suggest that we only ever fight guys who set up their lairs in posh hotel suites. With sunlight and buffets and sanisteams and dancers.”
“Son, if you could figure out how to make that a reality, I’d make you the head of the Jedi Order.”
Ben shuddered. “Pretend I never said that.”
Vestara looked over the quiescent Sel. “Three of us to search a planet, and now it’s more or less ruled, or at least influenced, by Abeloth, and we can’t rely on our Force powers … Are you sure it isn’t time to bring in your Jedi?”
Luke gave her a thoughtful look. Her words suggested that she really was dedicated to the elimination of Abeloth as a threat above all other concerns. That was a good sign. But still he shook his head. “The Jedi are needed elsewhere now.”
“ ‘One Jedi, one planet’ is not a realistic motto to try to live by.”
Ben grinned. “But we have two Jedi and one Sith. We have them outnumbered.”
Vestara looked skyward as if seeking inspiration, and Luke wondered whether the frustration-infused word flying around in her mind was Jedi, men, or both.
ABOARD THE SHUTTLE VERNUS, DEEP SPACE
Kandra sighed, frustrated. “You’re not being very forthcoming.”
Opposite her, in a rear-facing chair in the shuttle’s passenger compartment, Valin Horn shrugged. “Some things are better experienced than spoken of. Jysella and I are taking you and your cam operator somewhere you can experience something remarkable.”
“Where?”
“Nam Chorios.”
The name sent a little thrill of childhood fear through Kandra. What had come out of Nam Chorios thirty years earlier had been the stuff of bedtime horror stories for those of her generation. “Does it involve the Death Seed plague?”
“Perhaps. It certainly involves a menace endangering our galaxy. Our very existence.”
“But you won’t tell me what it is, or how it relates to the Fireborn explosion, or to the Jedi takeover of the Senate Building …” She now knew, from scattered hypercomm reports picked up during their flight from the Coruscant system, that the Jedi had ousted and imprisoned Chief of State Daala. But Valin’s hints, vague, tantalizing, and maddening, suggested that there was something far, far bigger going on. Some other reason the Jedi needed to be in charge.
“Correct. I won’t. Some things are better experienced—”
Valin rose. “It’s about time for me to take over piloting duties from my sister.” He moved forward, entered the shuttle’s small flight deck, and shut the door behind him.
Valin settled into the copilot’s seat with a sigh of relief. “She won’t stop asking questions.”
Jysella gave him a cool, emotionless look. “She is one of them. You could just space her.”
“No, she may be useful to us when we get to Nam Chorios. As a distraction.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Just stay patient. We’ll get through this. Even if we’re the only real Jedi left in the galaxy, if we stay smart and let the Force guide us, we’ll prevail.”
Jysella gave him a troubled glance, clearly not convinced. “If you say so.”