SEVEN

Luke usually sensed when the outer door to his office suite in the Jedi Temple was about to open. Today, however, he was so engrossed in Ghent’s work that he did not realize he had a visitor until someone stopped at the entrance to the inner office and politely cleared his throat. The micrograbber in Ghent’s hand jerked ever so slightly, and a tiny tick sounded somewhere deep inside R2-D2’s casing. The slicer uttered a colorful smuggler’s oath—something about Twi’lek Hutt-slime wrestlers, which he had no doubt learned during his stint in Talon Karrde’s smuggling syndicate. Then he slowly, steadily backed the micrograbber out of R2-D2’s deep-reserve data compartment.

“That didn’t sound good,” Luke said. Without turning around, he motioned whoever was at the door to wait there. “How bad is it?”

Ghent turned his tattooed face toward Luke, his pale eyes appearing huge and bug-like through his magnispecs. With his unkempt blue hair and tattered jumpsuit, the scrawny man looked more like a jolt-head from the underbelly of Talos City than the Alliance’s best slicer.

“How bad is what?”

“Whatever it is you’re swearing about,” Mara said. She was kneeling beside Ghent, holding a handful of ancient circuits they had taken from the R2 prototype Aryn Thul had given them. “It sounded like you dropped the omnigate.”

“I heard it hit inside Artoo,” Luke said helpfully.

Ghent nodded. “Me, too,” he said, as though it were an everyday occurrence.

He retrieved a penglow from his tool kit and shined it down into R2-D2’s casing, slowly playing the beam over the internal circuitry without answering the original question. Luke accepted the neglect as the price of genius and reluctantly turned toward the entrance to his office, where his nephew Jacen was waiting in his customary garb of boots, jumpsuit, and sleeveless cloak. Now that he had shaved off the beard he had grown during his five-year absence, he looked more than ever like his parents, with Leia’s big brown eyes and Han’s lopsided smirk.

“Twool said you wanted to see me.” Jacen glanced toward Ghent and Mara. “But if I’ve come at a bad time—”

“No, we need to talk.” Luke motioned him toward the outer office. “Let’s go out here. I don’t want to disturb Ghent.”

“That’s okay,” Ghent said, surprising Luke by reacting to a remark that wasn’t directed at him. “You’re not disturbing me.”

“I think Luke needs to talk with Jacen privately,” Mara explained.

“Oh.” Ghent continued to work, peering through his magnispecs into R2-D2’s data compartment. “Doesn’t he want to see if the omnigate works?”

“Of course,” Luke said. The omnigate was a sliver of circuitry Ghent had found inside the prototype droid. Supposedly, it was a sort of hardware passkey that would unlock all of R2-D2’s sequestered files. “You mean you’re ready?”

“Almost,” Ghent said. “And you’d better not leave. The omnigate is pretty deteriorated—it might not last long.”

“You’ve figured out a way to unlock Artoo?” Jacen started across the room without seeking permission from Luke. “You can bring up a holo of my grandmother?”

“Sure.” Ghent pulled his micrograbbers out of R2-D2’s data compartment, then flipped up his magnispecs. “Either that or lose Artoo’s entire memory to a security wipe.”

“At least the risks are clear,” Luke said, following Jacen back over to the slicer’s side. This was hardly the reason he had sent for his nephew, but Jacen had almost as much right to see the lost holos as Luke himself. “Which is more likely?”

Ghent shrugged. “Depends on how much you trust the Thul woman. Her story makes sense.”

Luke waited while Ghent’s gaze grew increasingly distant…as it often did when the slicer actually had to discuss something.

After a moment, Luke prompted, “But?”

Ghent’s eyes snapped back into focus, and he restarted the conversation where he had left off. “But if that isn’t the real Intellex Four prototype in there, the omnigate will trigger every security system your droid has. We’ll be lucky if our memories aren’t erased, overwritten, and reformatted.”

“So it depends entirely on whether Aryn Thul is being honest with us?” Mara asked.

“And on whoever sold her the prototype,” Ghent said. “Droid antiquers are always getting crisped by counterfeit prototypes.”

“That’s one thing we don’t have to worry about,” Mara said. “Nobody is going to swindle Aryn Thul. That woman is a business rancor.”

Luke turned to Jacen. “What do you think?”

Jacen finally looked surprised. “Me?”

“You have an interest in this, too,” Luke said. The conversation he wanted to have with his nephew would be difficult enough, so it seemed wise to reassure Jacen that he was still held in high regard. “You should be part of the decision.”

“Thanks…I think.” Jacen furrowed his brow, then said, “Madame Thul certainly has reason to be suspicious of you—even angry. But I don’t see any advantage to her in erasing Artoo’s memory.”

“So you think we should try?” Luke asked. The answer had been exactly what he wasn’t looking for, relying as it did on calculation and logic instead of the insight and empathy that had been Jacen’s special gifts before the war with the Yuuzhan Vong had changed him. “You want to take the chance?”

Jacen nodded. “I don’t see that Madame Thul could gain anything by slipping you a counterfeit omnigate.”

“That’s not what Luke asked,” Mara said, apparently sensing Luke’s disappointment. “He wants to know how you feel about it.”

“How I feel?” Jacen’s eyes lit with comprehension. “That’s a silly question. How do you think I feel?”

Luke smiled. “I’ll take that as a go-ahead.” He turned to Ghent and nodded. “Do it.”

“Okay, nobody even breathe for a second.” Ghent flipped his magnispecs down. “I need to seat the omnigate.”

As Ghent lowered his micrograbbers into R2-D2’s data compartment, Luke’s heart began to beat so hard that he half feared the pounding would break the slicer’s concentration. As much as he wanted to learn his mother’s fate, more depended on the omnigate than filling the gaps in his family history.

During his stay on Woteba, the Dark Nest had insinuated that Mara might be trying to hide her involvement—during her days as the Emperor’s Hand—in the death of Luke’s mother. Of course, Luke had realized even then that the insinuation was unfounded. But the known facts left just enough room to keep doubt alive, and doubt could be a very stubborn enemy…especially when it was bolstered by the Dark Nest.

Lomi Plo thrived on doubt. If she sensed any doubt in a person’s mind at all, she could hide behind it in the Force and make herself effectively invisible. That was how she had nearly killed Luke the last time they met…and if he hoped to defeat her the next time, he had to cast aside all doubt—in Mara, in himself, in his fellow Jedi. To a greater extent than he had admitted to anyone except Mara, that was one of the driving forces behind his reorganization of the Jedi order. He simply could not allow any doubt in his mind about where it was going.

A few moments later, Ghent let out a sigh of relief and pulled the micrograbbers from the data compartment.

“Okay, you can breathe now,” he said. “The gate is attached to the sequestered circuit.”

He flipped Artoo’s primary circuit breaker, and the little droid came to life with a sharp squeal.

“It’s okay, Artoo,” Luke said. “Ghent has just been working on those memory problems you’ve been having.”

R2-D2 swiveled his dome around, studying the stacks of prototype parts surrounding him, then trained his photoreceptor on Ghent and beeped suspiciously.

“He didn’t add anything you need to worry about,” Luke said. “Now, show us what happened between my mother and father after he finished in the Jedi Temple.”

Artoo started to squeak a refusal—then let out an alarmed whistle. He spun his photoreceptor toward Luke and reluctantly chirped a question.

“Your parameters are too vague,” Ghent chastised. “He probably has a thousand files that fit that description.”

“I mean after the file he showed to Han and me in the Saras rehabilitation center.” Luke tried to remain patient; he suspected R2-D2 was just stalling to buy time to defeat the omnigate, but it was possible that the droid really did need a more specific reference. “It’s the record you stole from the Temple’s security system, where my father supervised the slaughter of the students.”

Though Luke had already told Jacen and everyone else in his family about the record, he still felt a jolt in the Force as Jacen and the others were reminded that the deaths and screams of the innocents had actually been caught on holo.

When R2-D2 still failed to activate his holoprojector, Luke said, “I think my request is clear enough, Artoo. Stop stalling, or I will have Ghent wipe your personality. You know how important this is.”

R2-D2 gave a plaintive chirp, then piped a worried-sounding trill.

“I’m sure,” Luke said.

The droid emitted an angry raspberry, then tipped forward and activated his holoprojector.

The veranda of what looked like an elegant, old-Coruscant apartment appeared in the holo. Padmé Amidala rushed into view, followed closely by a golden protocol droid that looked very much like C-3PO. A moment later, Anakin Skywalker appeared from the opposite direction and embraced her.

“Are you all right?” Padmé asked, pulling back a moment later. “I heard there was an attack on the Jedi Temple…you can see the smoke from here!”

Anakin’s gaze slipped away from hers. “I’m fine,” he said. “I came to see if you and the baby are safe.”

“Captain Typho is here. We’re safe.” Padmé looked out of the holo, presumably toward the Jedi Temple. “What’s happening?”

Anakin’s response was muffled as the protocol droid blocked their view of Padmé and Anakin, then the droid asked, “What is going on?”

“Is that See-Threepio?” Jacen gasped.

Luke shrugged and motioned for quiet. He would solve the mystery of the golden protocol droid later, after he discovered what had become of his mother.

“You can’t be any more confused than I am!” the golden droid said, replying to a string of squeaks and beeps from R2-D2.

He moved out of the way, and Anakin and Padmé came back into view.

“…Jedi Council has tried to overthrow the Republic—”

“I can’t believe that!” Padmé exclaimed.

A furrow appeared in Anakin’s brow. “I couldn’t either at first, but it’s true. I saw Master Windu attempt to assassinate the Chancellor myself.”

The golden droid’s head filled the holo again. “Something important is going on. I heard a rumor they are going to banish all droids.”

R2-D2 beeped loudly in the hologram, and Mara hissed, “That has to be Threepio. No other droid is that annoying.”

“Shhhh…not so loud!” C-3PO said in the holo. R2-D2 beeped more softly, then C-3PO’s head disappeared from the holo again. “Whatever it is, we’ll be the last to know.”

Padmé was seated on a bench near the edge of the veranda now. “What are you going to do?”

Anakin sat next to her, his face growing resolute. “I will not betray the Republic. My loyalties lie with the Chancellor and the Senate.”

“What about Obi-Wan?” Padmé asked.

“I don’t know,” Anakin replied. “Many of the Jedi have been killed.”

“Is he part of the rebellion?” Padmé pressed.

Anakin shrugged. “We may never know.”

They both stared at the floor for a moment, then Padmé shook her head in despair.

“How could this have happened?”

“The Republic is unstable, Padmé. The Jedi aren’t the only ones trying to take advantage of the situation.” Anakin waited until Padmé met his gaze, and his voice assumed a more ominous tone. “There are also traitors in the Senate.”

Padmé stood, and her expression grew uneasy. “What are you saying?”

Anakin rose and turned her to face him. “You need to distance yourself from your friends in the Senate. The Chancellor said they will be dealt with when this conflict is over.”

“What if they start an inquisition?” Padmé’s tone was more angry than frightened. “I’ve opposed this war. What will you do if I become suspect?”

“That won’t happen,” Anakin said. “I won’t let it.”

Padmé turned away from him and was silent for a time, then she said, “I want to leave, go someplace far from here.”

“Why?” Anakin seemed hurt by her suggestion. “Things are different now! There’s a new order.”

Padmé refused to yield. “I want to bring up our child someplace safe.”

“I want that, too!” Anakin said. “But that place is here. I’m gaining new knowledge of the Force. Soon I’ll be able to protect you from anything.”

Padmé studied him for several moments, her expression changing from disbelieving to disheartened as she contemplated his battle-sullied clothes. Finally, she let her chin drop.

“Oh, Anakin…I’m afraid.”

“Have faith, my love.” Seeming to miss that it was him she feared, Anakin took her in his arms. “Have faith, my love. Everything will soon be set right. The Separatists have gathered in the Mustafar system. I’m going there to end this war. Wait until I return…things will be different, I promise.”

Anakin kissed her, but he must have sensed the misgivings that Luke could see even in the tiny holo—the fear of what he was becoming—because he stopped and waited until she looked into his eyes.

“Please…” His voice assumed just a hint of command. “Wait for me.”

Padmé nodded, lowering her eyes in surrender. “I will.”

Anakin studied her for a moment; then, as he turned and approached R2-D2’s position, the file ended.

Luke and the others remained silent for a moment, he and Mara and Jacen pondering Padmé’s final words, trying to match her expressions to her tone. When she told Anakin that she was afraid, had she been thinking of the anti-war inquisition she had mentioned? Or of what the future held for them?

Mara was the first to break the silence. “No offense, Luke, but your father gives me the shudders.”

“Why is that?” Jacen asked, sounding genuinely puzzled.

Mara raised her brow in surprise. “You didn’t catch the subtext? That little threat when he told her to distance herself from her friends in the Senate?” She frowned. “I know you’re more sensitive than that.”

“What I saw was a man worried about his wife’s safety,” Jacen replied. “That’s all I saw.”

“You didn’t find him a little controlling?” Luke asked. He was really beginning to worry about his nephew’s emotional awareness; it was as though all of the tenderness had evaporated from his soul during his sojourn to explore the Force. “Even when he had completely dismissed her wish to go someplace safe?”

“He promised to keep her safe there.” Jacen gave them a lopsided smile. “From what I’ve heard about Anakin Skywalker and his abilities, he was probably telling the truth.”

“I guess that’s one way of looking at it.” Mara’s tone implied that she chose to look at the exchange another way. “But maybe Luke and I are reading too much into it, as you suggest. There’s not much detail in a holo that size.”

“And maybe you have more context to place it in than I do,” Jacen allowed. “I’m not saying it was the right thing—just that I understand what he was thinking.”

“Good point—sometimes we forget that Anakin Skywalker was only human.” Luke turned to R2-D2. “Artoo, show us the next—”

“Uh, you might not want to do that,” Ghent interrupted.

Luke frowned. “Why not?”

Ghent frowned back. “Didn’t I tell you that the omnigate is pretty…” He glanced at R2-D2, then apparently decided it would not be wise to mention how deteriorated the gate was in front of the droid. “…that it was used?”

“Yes,” Mara said. “That doesn’t explain why we shouldn’t view the next file, though.”

“In fact, it tends to suggest we should,” Jacen said, “while everything is still working.”

Ghent just stared at them blankly.

“Well?” Luke asked impatiently.

Ghent shrugged. “It’s your omnigate, I guess.”

Luke furrowed his brow, waiting for an explanation, but Mara—who knew the slicer far better from their days working for Talon Karrde—said immediately, “You’ll have to tell us the problem, Ghent. Why is a used omnigate so risky?”

“Oh.” He knelt beside R2-D2 and deactivated the droid again, then said, “You don’t want to overheat a deteriorated gate. It’s too easy to melt it.”

“So we just have to wait for it to cool off?” Jacen asked.

“That would help,” Ghent said.

“Only help?” Mara asked.

“Well, we’re probably overheating the gate every time we use it,” Ghent said. “It was in pretty bad shape.”

“You’re saying it’s just a matter of time before it goes?” Mara clarified.

“Yeah—it could go the next time you use it, or the time after that,” Ghent said. “I don’t think it will last three times.”

Luke exhaled in frustration. “Is there anything we can do about that?”

Ghent thought for a moment, then nodded. “I could try to copy its architecture.”

“How risky is that?” Mara asked.

“It’s not,” Ghent said. “Unless, of course, I make a mistake.”

“But then we’d have a backup in case the first gate melted?” Luke asked.

Ghent looked at him as though he had just asked a very foolish question. “Well, that is the idea of making a backup.”

“Then why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” Jacen demanded, growing uncharacteristically impatient with the communicationally challenged slicer. “What’s the drawback?”

“Time,” Ghent said. “It takes a lot of time—especially since I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“Time could be a problem,” Luke said.

So far, he had been content to let the Jedi continue on the sidelines of the war, trying to rebuild Chief Omas’s confidence in the order by hunting down pirates and adjudicating quarrels among the Alliance’s member-states. But he was not willing to continue that approach forever. Sooner or later, the Jedi would need to take action…and a deepening tickle in the base of his head was beginning to suggest it would be sooner.

Luke hated to let his personal history interfere, but before the Jedi went into action, he needed to be free of his doubts. Mara had assured him that she had never been involved in anything concerning Padmé Amidala, and Luke believed her. But the possibility remained that the Dark Nest’s insinuations were true: that Padmé might have lived under an alias for fifteen or twenty years, and that Mara—then Palpatine’s assassin—might have been sent to track her down without knowing her true identity. If Luke were to have any chance at all of defeating Lomi Plo, he needed to know what had happened to his mother—to banish utterly from his heart the last ghost of doubt about Mara’s involvement.

When Ghent merely continued to look at him without speaking, Luke sighed and asked, “How long would it take to build the backup?”

Ghent shrugged. “It’ll be faster than trying to figure the algorithm and original variables for the universal key you used last—”

“Okay, I understand.” Luke closed his eyes and nodded. “Copy it—but don’t do anything that would prevent me from taking the original back and using it in an emergency.”

“Emergency?” Ghent seemed confused. “How could looking at a bunch of old holos be an emergency?”

“It could,” Mara told him. “You don’t need to know why.”

Ghent shrugged. “Okay.” He flipped his magnispecs down and reached for his micrograbbers. “No problem with the emergency thing.”

Luke waited until the slicer had started work, then turned to Jacen. “Let’s move to the outer office and leave Ghent to his work.”

“Oh yeah—the conversation.” Jacen started toward the door, then stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “Aren’t you coming, Aunt Mara? After all, you’re the really angry one.”

“I wouldn’t say angry, Jacen.”

“No?” Jacen gave her a crooked Solo smile. “I would.”