Rebel Dream: Enemy Lines I (15 page)

Tsavong Lah glanced at him without moving his head and beckoned. The shaper moved to the side so that they might speak privately, but Maal Lah could feel that one’s eyes on him.

“I require your insight, my servant,” Tsavong Lah said. “An interpretation of events.”

Maal Lah nodded, not speaking. He preferred not to speak much before his warmaster. Those who did inevitably said too much and earned Tsavong Lah’s ire; Nom Anor was constantly on the receiving end of that displeasure.

“I dispatched Wyrpuuk Cha’s fleet to Borleias to retrieve it from the infidels. We had assumed that the garrison there was simply intent on dying well.

“It was, however, a trap. The infidels demonstrated unusual precision, daring, and savagery in a brilliantly conceived and executed plan. They dropped their largest spacecraft, one that we did not know was part of the fleet there, into the heart of Wyrpuuk Cha’s formation and used it to destroy both yammosks. That spacecraft
became a lure for our fleet’s other ships, which descended upon it, allowing enemy reinforcing vessels to arrive almost unnoticed and fall upon them from all sides.” The warmaster was silent for a long moment. “That fleet is all but destroyed. The designated successor to Wyrpuuk Cha’s command leads many of the survivors back to us now. A pilot of Domain Kraal has commandeered some of the survivors to bolster his efforts to harass the infidels. Of course, those survivors disobeyed a direct order from the designated successor when they chose to remain with him.

“I have settled on a plan of action,” the warmaster concluded. “But I welcome your thoughts.”

Maal Lah remained silent for long moments. It would not do to offer half-considered ideas, and Tsavong Lah neither disparaged nor was made uncomfortable by long silences.

Finally he said, “If the ambush was as precisely conducted as you describe, it was unquestionably the work of their greatest tactician, Garm bel Iblis.”

“No. Bel Iblis appears to be in command of an entire fleet group, elsewhere. The vessels in Pyria system seem to belong to the command of Wedge Antilles.”

Maal Lah fell silent again as he recalculated. “I will need to evaluate the reports of the survivors. But it seems inevitable that bel Iblis planned that ambush. Meaning that he is working very closely with Antilles. Meaning that there is great importance to that site. Before we destroy it, we must learn what that importance is. And then we must destroy it so savagely that every infidel who once smiled at the success of that ambush will flinch in dread.”

“Yes.”

“Which means, in turn, that you must personally lead the conquest of Borleias.”

Tsavong Lah shook his head. “I cannot. It will be too great a demand on attentions needed elsewhere. But you are correct. It does need a warmaster’s touch.”

Maal Lah frowned, not understanding, then he straightened as the significance of Tsavong Lah’s words hit him. “He will not do it.”

“He will.”

“I think he is the finest possible choice. If he can be persuaded to go.”

Tsavong Lah nodded. “Prepare a ship to take me to Domain Lah.”

“It shall be done.” Maal Lah took the warmaster’s tone as a dismissal and turned away.

Old scars on his back began to itch, scars dealt by the one whose services Tsavong Lah was about to employ.

When Maal Lah was gone, the warmaster gestured for the shaper to resume his duties, and said, “What do you conclude?”

Master Shaper Ghithra Dal took a moment to compose his answer before offering it. “There is no sign of change. The tissue where the radank claw joins your original flesh continues to decay, continues to heal.”

“There is no sign of rejection with my other implants?”

“None.”

“What does that mean to you?”

“I do not know.”

“Where your shaper’s knowledge fails you, you still have instincts, opinions. I want them. Do not fear my anger on this point. I can distinguish between fact and opinion.”

“Were I to offer an opinion, Warmaster, it would be that the true cause of this malady does not lie with the shapers’ science … but with the will of the gods.”

Tsavong Lah felt a little thrill as another piece of
reality clicked into place in the pattern Viqi Shesh had suggested. “Which gods?” he asked.

Ghithra Dal cocked his head, his gesture suggesting that he was not sure. “Any god could manifest anger this way. But in my experience the one most likely to do so is Yun-Yuuzhan. Still, if I might dare to suggest a course of inquiry for you to take …”

“Show me no fear, Ghithra Dal, and make your suggestion.”

“I would recommend that you speak to the priests of all the myriad gods and ask them which among the great beings might be angry with you. It is a question for priests, not shapers.”

Except
, Tsavong Lah thought,
when the priests are in collusion with the shapers. What will your reward be? A generous portion of land on the world the Yun-Yuuzhan priests receive? A continent, perhaps?

“I will consider this,” the warmaster said. He rose and allowed Ghithra Dal to bring him his garments.
And I will seek a second opinion. I will find someone who can speak as a shaper … but does not owe any loyalty to the main orders of shapers
.

I will bring Nen Yim to me
.

Luke Skywalker sat cross-legged on the floor of the
Millennium Falcon
’s forward cargo hold, which was empty of cargo. It was one place, in this overcrowded military base, where he could be alone, one place where what he was doing was less likely to distress his son.

He opened himself to the Force and floated within it. He did not think of the question he hoped he would answer—thought was counterproductive to intuition.
But this time, the currents of the Force took him where he wanted to go.

He could feel an enduring manifestation of the dark side. It was not waiting for him, not beckoning to him; it had an agenda that had nothing to do with Luke Skywalker. And in the brief moment before he lost his awareness of it, he knew that it still roamed the broken pathways of Coruscant.

Han Solo watched his wife come slowly back to life.

Not long before, the loss of Anakin and Jacen had shattered her, convinced her that all her works and efforts were meaningless. Once she had realized, at an intellectual level at least, that this was not so, their daughter Jaina’s troubles in the Hapes system had reminded Leia that she had duties, obligations. She began to carry them out in her customarily brisk and efficient manner, but without the spark of enthusiasm or the wicked humor that were so much a part of the Leia he loved.

At any time of day or night, her thoughts might return to Anakin, the way he had suffered and died on his mission to the Yuuzhan Vong worldship above Myrkr. Her breath and color would leave her and she would have to lean into Han’s arms or curl into a ball wherever she was sitting until the pain eased. Han, too, felt the stab of Anakin’s loss, but held himself upright, trying not to show it—he was determined to be there for Leia, to never again let her down the way he had after Chewie’s death.

But now, as Leia spent her time with her datapad linked to various ships’ libraries and her personal archives aboard
Millennium Falcon
and
Rebel Dream
—cataloging politicians who owed her favors, reconstructing the measures she and the other founders of the Rebel Alliance had taken when laying the groundwork of their movement more than
two decades before—a semblance of enthusiasm was returning to her. The pain from Anakin’s loss and uncertainty from Jacen’s disappearance were still there, undiminished … but when they did not completely occupy her, she seemed more vital, more alive. More herself.

Han welcomed the change without entirely understanding its cause; as far as he could tell, she was merely doing the sort of political work she’d been doing for decades.

Leia’s exclamation startled him out of his studies: “What happened here?”

He turned and grinned up at her, at the blank expression she directed toward the open space where Chewbacca’s seat had been. “I’m having something Leia-sized put in today.” The grin was half genuine amusement at her surprise, half mask to hide his own lingering feelings of dismay; replacing Chewie’s chair, one of the last tangible mementos of the Wookiee’s life, had been among the hardest things Han had ever done. “Are you through reorganizing the galaxy for now?”

She shook her head, finally turning her attention to her husband. She moved up beside him. “I still have some solar systems to move, and I’ll be laundering the Hapes Cluster—”

“It could use it.” Han dragged her over and onto his lap. “We can start with Isolder, the walking headache—”

But Leia’s attention was focused elsewhere, on the planetary data now displayed on the
Falcon
’s computer screens. “Han, what’s this?”

“Coruscant.”

“I
know
it’s Coruscant. I mean, what are you doing studying it?”

He shrugged as though he didn’t know the answer, a delaying tactic as he tried to sort among any number of lies he could tell. None of them seemed likely to fool her.
Finally he said, “It’s the twins thing, Leia. Twins are sacred to them. They think Jacen and Jaina have meaning to their gods, and that means if you’re right that Jacen is still alive, then he’s going to be in the hands of their most important people. Their command worldship is at Coruscant. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that Coruscant, either on the planet or in that worldship, is the most likely place for Jacen to be.”

She looked him in the eye, all levity gone from her expression. “You’re not going to go in there after him.”

“I might,” he said.
I am
, he told himself.

“Han, no. Listen to me.” This was not Leia’s voice of command; it was a plea. “You can’t help him. If you go, I’ll lose you, too.”

“I’m as hard to lose as a bad reputation.”

Leia didn’t bite, didn’t respond with any of a dozen glibly appropriate responses, one more sign of her seriousness. “You have to understand. I can’t see the Yuuzhan Vong in the Force, I can’t see Jacen in the Force … but I’m not cut
off
from the Force. It still shows me things, offers me visions, from time to time. When I see either of us going back to Coruscant while it’s in Vong hands, I see us failing there. Dying there.”

Chilled by the tone in Leia’s voice, Han shook his head. “Someone has to go.”

“Luke. Luke has to go. He has a chance. We don’t.” Leia seemed to deflate, as if the admission that she could offer no help, no comfort to her missing son had reduced her in volume. But she straightened again in a moment. “You can’t help Jacen, but you can help me.”

“How?”

“With politics.”

“You know how I feel about politics. You know how good I am at it.”

Her smile returned. “The Resistance means it’s time
for new politics. The kind where, if the fellow smiling at you is planning to put a vibroblade in your back, instead of smiling in return, you shoot him.”

“Really?” He thought about it. “Shoot him just once, or as often as I want?”

“As long as your blaster’s batteries hold out.”

“Sounds wonderful. What’s the catch?”

“I’ve accepted the assignment Wedge talked about the other night. Pending you signing on, that is. Once we’ve got a plan worked up, we’ll be traveling from system to system setting up Resistance cells. Calling in favors. An extension of the Jedi Underground. Probably blundering into Yuuzhan Vong forces and Peace Brigade units.”

“And shooting them.”

“Yes.”

He opened his mouth to ask if this is what she really wanted to be doing while one of their surviving children was missing and the other was in unknown circumstances on an almost hostile world, but then he caught the look in her eye, the gleam that had often graced Rebel Alliance leader Leia Organa’s expression in the darkest days of the first war with the Empire.

The darkest days brought out the best in some people … people like Leia Organa Solo. Now the days were dark again. Now, in spite of the pain and uncertainty she struggled through, Leia was at her best again.

She was back.

“I’m signing on, lady.”

“Good. We need a scoundrel like you.”

“I don’t have to be a nice man anymore?”

She shook her head and leaned in for a kiss.

From behind them, the singsong voice of C-3PO blared, “Master Solo! The mechanic with your new copilot’s chair is here.”

Han and Leia both jolted, then Leia dissolved into silent laughter.

Han glared at her. “As a reactivated scoundrel, I get to shoot Goldenrod, too, don’t I?”

She shook her head.

“So
that’s
the catch.”

“That’s the catch.”

Danni Quee jumped and straightened in her seat, and in the brief moment after she awoke, she couldn’t remember what had awakened her. But then it came again, a knock at the door. “Come in,” she said automatically, and brushed hair back from her face.

The door slid open and Tam Elgrin stood there, hands held before him as though he wasn’t sure quite what to do with them. He put them on his hips, thought the better of it, crossed them before him, and leaned on the doorjamb. The door hissed partway closed, recognized him as an obstruction, and hissed open again.

“Tam. Hello. I didn’t think you could be on this corridor.”

He offered her an uncertain smile and gestured at the identichip adhering to the front of his shirt. “I’m, uh, doing repairs with the civilian repair group. So I can be here.”

“Ah.”

“Do you have anything you need repaired?”

The door tried to close again. Tam ignored it.

Danni shook her head. “Not really. I’ve been doing most of my own maintenance.”

“Oh. Right. Well, if you ever get shorthanded, be sure to, you know, contact me.”

“I’ll do that.”

Tam waited there, through one more cycle of the door
attempting to close, before appearing to realize that the conversation had probably run its course. “Um, can I get you something? To eat or drink?”

“No, that’s all right. Thank you anyway.”