JEDI TEMPLE, CORUSCANT
CORRAN WALKED INTO THE MASTERS’ COUNCIL CHAMBER WITH ITS circles of high-backed stone chairs. The screens over its exterior exits and viewports were closed, making the interior dimmer than usual. It was not dim so that a broadcast holocomm message could appear brighter and crisper, but because the chamber was nearly unoccupied. Only Saba waited there, standing, staring at the center as if expecting a hologram to appear and offer advice.
Corran waited until the door had slid shut behind him before he spoke. “Master Sebatyne?”
She didn’t turn to look at him. “You wished to speak to this one?”
“Yes. The Errant Venture is back in system. Mirax is going up to see her father. I wanted to make sure you could spare me for a few hours or a day. I want to go with her.”
“She still worries about your children?”
“Yes, of course.” Corran didn’t add a comment about his own worries. It was understood that he had them. It was also understood that he would stand apart from them when on matters of Jedi business.
“Yes. Go. This one will try not to call on you for at least a day.” Finally Saba did turn to look at him. “But this one will need you. With Jedi Solo gone to Klatooine, with Master Hamner dead, you have become invaluable. You understand more of human-dominated politicz than many Jedi. This one may need your analytical powerz.”
He offered her an expression of sympathy. “Your new duties are giving you grief?”
Saba uttered a hiss of vexation. “Not enough grief, perhapz.”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Each day, this one visitz the office of the Chief of State for duties shared with Senator Treen and General Jaxton. Problemz are brought before us. The economy of Ushmin, a small world near the borderz with the Imperial Remnant, is faltering. The Senate is doing nothing—proposing few billz, voting on fewer. The Senate will do nothing about Ushmin.”
Corran nodded. “The Senate is going limp on you. A way of saying, Anything that goes wrong while you hold office is your own fault; we won’t help. Get out.”
“This one understandz that. But we find a way to solve the problem, we three. Jaxton sayz that he is evaluating sites for new bases. He could put Ushmin at the top of the list for the next base in that sector. Treen sayz she can bring Disbursementz in on that plan. She commz; others fall into line. In minutes, it is done. We move on to the next problem.”
Corran frowned, not certain he understood what he was hearing. “You’re bothered because the job isn’t harder?”
“Yes.”
“If you were to announce your objection in front of the Senate, you’d probably be assassinated.”
Saba sissed in mild amusement. “This one thought Jaxton and Treen were being very, very efficient to encourage this one to leave the office more hastily. But it feelz like there is more to it than that. As though they work with the confidence of some great momentum behind them.”
“I’ll … keep my eyes open for any other sign of that.”
There was a musical beep from Corran’s pouch, a minor alert tone from his datapad. He pulled it out and flipped it open.
The words on the screen sent a little chill through him. “There’s news. But it’s a problem the Jedi and the Chief of State’s office have decided not to intervene in.”
“What is it?”
“The sentence is in for Tahiri Veila.” He snapped the device closed, put it back in its pouch. He lifted his gaze to meet Saba’s. “It’s to be death.”
KESLA VEIN PUMPING STATION, NAM CHORIOS
Vestara was the first to emerge, peering out from beneath the partially raised hatch to make sure no one was in sight outside, then raising the hatch and slipping out onto the dusty enclosure within the town limits of Kesla Vein. The woven durasteel-netting fence around the enclosure seemed intact—at least as intact as she and her companions had left it. Late-afternoon winds still swirled dust throughout the enclosure and beyond, and the wind and chill of the air hit her like an unexpected plunge into an icy stream.
Ben was out next, then Luke, who lowered the metal hatch and spun the heavy metal ring atop it to seal it. He gave the teenagers a look that was half rueful and half encouraging. “One more down.”
Ben’s own expression was more exasperated. “One more experienced. Dad, if I never see another underground water pumping station or one more droch, I’ll be happy.”
Vestara patted her increasingly voluminous backpack. “We still have plenty of cans of droch spray.”
“Yeah, but do we have any bottles of brain bleach?”
Luke grinned and led the way to the hole they’d cut in the fence. Keeping to back alleys where possible, they made their way through the small town to its border and out onto the crystalline sands beyond, to the hill that lay between town and the spot where they’d hidden their stolen speeder.
Kesla Vein had been an easy site to investigate. Its pumping station was completely automated, and was visited for maintenance and diagnostics only occasionally by the Oldtimer workers who managed it. There had been no sign of encampment by Abeloth or any Theran Listeners. There had been some drochs, but chiefly of the tiny variety.
On their walk back to the speeder, Vestara checked her comlink, set to receive the intermittent locator pulse broadcast by the vehicle. It came about a minute into their walk, just a couple of degrees off the course they had taken. They corrected and kept going. A few minutes later the hill, somewhat obscured by a cloud of dust flowing past like a river, came within sight. They skirted its north face and then descended into the cleft where they’d left the speeder. Visibility was better in this ravine; dust no longer driven by the wind drifted down like a thin haze, but it was nowhere near as bad as the dust clouds on the unsheltered surface above.
The speeder was still where they’d left it, some fifty meters away when they rounded a bend. But on the ridge above it, perhaps twenty meters up, was a blue airspeeder, a wide-bodied model designed for carrying entire families or a pilot and a fair amount of cargo. It was not running, and had been set down on the lip of the ravine, perhaps a meter of its front end protruding over empty air. A line descended from the winch on the front of the speeder down to within four meters of the ravine floor.
Yet there was no sign of anyone about. Ben glanced in all directions and put his hand on the hilt of his lightsaber, which was hung out of sight at the back of his belt. “Not good.”
Vestara pulled her lightsaber from its clip. With some reluctance, she opened herself to the Force—reluctance because the usual result on Nam Chorios, a paranoid sense of being watched by hundreds of aloof observers, did not give her an improved understanding of her surroundings or the probable dangers around her. This time she got the usual result.
Luke continued to lead the way to the speeder. “If there are snipers, we’re already in their sights. So be—”
“Vestara Khai.” The voice was a distant wail, high-pitched, like a keening ghost from a spooky holodrama. It echoed from the ravine walls.
Ben glanced back at her. “It’s for you.”
She scowled at him. “You’re not helping.”
There was a blur of motion, and then a woman landed atop their airspeeder, clearly having jumped up from ground level behind it. She was of average height, lean, a little broad in the shoulder, with dark skin and short black hair. Like Luke, Ben, and Vestara, she wore garments suited to Newcomers—pants and a lined jacket of hard-wearing cloth, sturdy leather boots, an overcloak and hood, goggles.
Vestara gave her a close look, as close as she could at this distance. “Who are you?”
“You know me, traitor.” The woman raised her arms high, stretching, then put her hands down on her hips. She twisted her body back and forth, a loosening-up exercise. “And it’s time for your companions to die, and for you to be taken to your father for questioning.”
There was something familiar about the woman’s voice, and Vestara finally recognized it. The woman should have had flawless lavender skin and hair as white as snow. Clearly she was in makeup and a wig, disguised to be able to move among the people of Nam Chorios without standing out. “Tola Annax.”
“Your brains haven’t seized up completely, Vestara. Now surrender like a good girl. We need to take you back to your father so you can experience only the most carefully thought-out torture and explain which of you cut down Lord Taalon. If you didn’t do it, you clearly conspired with his killer—you’re not their prisoner.”
Vestara ignited her lightsaber and began moving forward again. “He had to die. He was … changing. He was no longer fit to lead us.” She had not the slightest faith that her words would be believed, but it was something to talk about while making her approach.
“Oh, we’re aware of the genetic mutations he was experiencing. Accelerated changes, grotesque mutations … you might even be acquitted of complicity because of them. If you surrender.”
“Of course. Come down here and I’ll give you my weapon personally.” As she spoke, Vestara was aware of, and curiously glad of, the footsteps of the Skywalkers following her.
Tola’s words meant the Sith didn’t know who had killed Taalon. Therefore her father had not told them what he had overheard. That realization struck Vestara with the same effect that stepping out into the cold wind had a few minutes earlier. Gavar Khai was … protecting her? Showing concern for her fate? She felt a sudden confusion, not sure for a moment whether her father was the man she had grown up with or the one to whom she had been writing her ridiculously emotional, never-to-be-sent letters.
She was now thirty meters from the speeder, and still Tola had not drawn her own lightsaber. Tola did seem to have something in the palm of her hand, but it was nowhere near the size of a lightsaber hilt. Now she changed subjects. “Have you found Abeloth yet? We have some justice in mind for her, too.”
Vestara didn’t answer.
Apparently Tola didn’t expect her to. Suddenly three men charged from behind the airspeeder, coming to a halt halfway between the speeder and Vestara. All were human, in good shape, dressed like Tola, and carrying lightsabers. One after another they ignited their weapons, and the red blades sprang into life.
Vestara heard Ben’s and Luke’s weapons snap-hiss into readiness behind her.
There were no further attempts at negotiation. The Sith in the center of the enemy line bounded forward toward Vestara. The other two went right and left, circling to engage the Skywalkers.
Vestara recognized her opponent. He was a Saber, a petty officer under her father’s command. He was big, physically imposing, a handful of years older than her. More experienced, if one went only by number of years.
He came at her with the speed and lack of grace of a fast-moving crawler tank, slashing with his greater reach at her midsection. She darted to the right, putting a waist-high outcropping between the two of them, angling her blade to protect what the projection of stone didn’t. She caught his slash on her blade, the force of the attack nearly throwing her back despite the leg she’d braced against the impact; she felt her arms shiver under the blow. It irritated her that she hadn’t taken the blow at the correct angle to cause his blade to skid along hers, which would have reduced the impact. She shoved the thought from her mind but let the anger linger. Being too analytical at a time like this could be fatal.
She continued around the outcropping and slashed at the back of his knee, but the impact from that previous blow had robbed her of forward momentum; the man was able to catch her slash on his blade. He disengaged smoothly, just barely enough to get his blade clear of hers, and popped the tip up toward her in a rising slash. She merely skipped back a pace and let the energy blade pass harmlessly in front of her.
Vestara reversed direction—continuing to circle as she had been would eventually have presented her back to Tola. Her opponent switched to a one-handed grip on his lightsaber and made a forward sweeping gesture with his free hand. Vestara expected something to come flying out of that hand, a small cloud of dust perhaps, but nothing did.
Instead, from behind him, a cluster of rocks, some of them the size of a fist, hurtled off the ravine floor and arced up at her.
Vestara nearly winced. An overt use of the Force—somewhere on Nam Chorios, a Force storm would soon arise, possibly injuring or even killing people—and the realization that this mattered in the least to her was a second unwelcome surprise. Ruthlessly, she suppressed that emotion.
She could have sidestepped the cloud of stones. Perhaps her opponent expected her to, or perhaps he intended to lunge in the direction he anticipated her to take. And she did spin to her left, just not far enough to be completely safe from the stones. She continued the twirl into a spinning side kick.
She was still more than a meter from her adversary, but her boot sole connected with one of the incoming stones, sending it hurtling back toward the man’s face.
He flinched, bringing his blade up to deflect the stone.
She followed the stone, felt an impact against her left shoulder, felt her body twist from the blow, but continued into a single-handed lunge with her blade. Her lightsaber slid into her opponent’s body just beneath the heart. She planted her forward foot and dragged her blade up. Its red tip slashed through the heart.
Wide-eyed, her opponent staggered back and fell, dying.
Vestara straightened. There was pain in her left shoulder where one stone had connected, and in her right foot where she’d kicked the other, but her injuries seemed minor, manageable.
She gave a cautious glance back over her shoulder. Luke’s opponent was already down, in two large pieces, severed at the waist. Luke was hurtling toward Ben, but Ben was already in the follow-through of a horizontal slash that sent his own opponent’s head leaping off his neck.
Vestara turned her attention back to Tola. The woman hadn’t moved or drawn a weapon. Vestara gestured toward the ground with the tip of her blade. “How about you surrender to our justice?”
“Some other time.” Tola held up the object in her hand—it looked like a comlink of some sort—and pressed a button on its top surface. Then she leapt laterally to grab the bottom of the cable leading up to the speeder winch above. Already retracting, the cable drew her up the ravine wall at a rapid clip.
Ben gestured as if to drag her or the speeder down through use of the Force, but Luke slapped his arm down. “Not worth it, Ben. Consequences.”
Ben looked irritated. “I forgot.”
Tola got to the top and sprang up into the pilot’s seat of the speeder. She offered Vestara and the Skywalkers a mock salute. Then she pressed the button on her comlink again.
Vestara was hit from the side—it was Luke, bearing her and Ben to the ground behind her outcropping.
Their own airspeeder exploded, throwing durasteel and plastoid and flame in all directions. The shock wave from the blast hammered Vestara’s ears but not her body—the outcropping, a durable blast shield, caught all debris headed their way.
The three of them rose. Tola’s speeder was gone. So was their own airspeeder, but not the same way—it existed now as a crater of burning junk and a column of smoke that, as it reached the top of the ravine, was caught by a crosswind and torn to shreds.
Ben sighed. “You know her, huh?”
“She works for my father.” Vestara collected her lightsaber, which she’d dropped when Luke hit her.
“Dad, she was doing what you did with me at the temple on Dorin. A Master hanging back to watch her students fight an enemy so she’d learn about them.”
Luke nodded. “Though she seemed perfectly content to sacrifice them.”
Vestara replaced her lightsaber on its clip. “You’re a big prize, Master Skywalker. Well worth the sacrifice of a few Sabers and apprentices.”
Ben frowned. “I wonder how they traced us here.”
Luke grinned at his son. “It doesn’t matter how they did. I’m just grateful that they did.”
Ben looked his father over. “You weren’t hit by debris to the head, were you, Dad?”
Luke shook his head. “Trust me on this, Ben. Sometimes it’s actually a good thing to run into your enemies.” He glanced around. “People from Kesla Vein are going to be here in a few minutes to investigate the blast. We’d better be gone when they arrive. Let’s get going.”