Refugee: Force Heretic II (18 page)

“During which time you kept digging for more dirt, I presume,” Jaina said. “Which means that if they don’t genuinely think you kidnapped Cundertol, then you must have uncovered something new that they very much wanted kept quiet.”

“If we did, then I honestly have no idea what it could’ve been.” Malinza shook her head again. “We were tracing some financial deal that went through just after the P’w’eck arrived. An awful lot of money went offworld, but we couldn’t work out who was behind it or where it was going. It looked like some sort of commercial transaction, and may well have been just that. The fact that the endpoints had been obscured made us wonder.” She looked at Jaina, eyes narrowed slightly. “Your Galactic Alliance isn’t looking for money now, is it?”

“No. Not from Bakura, anyway.” Taking money from Bakura would have been like taking small change from a child in order to finance a starship purchase. “It could have been legit, as you say.”

Malinza nodded, taking in the confines of the cell with one sweeping gesture. “Nevertheless, here I am.” She paused, fixing Jaina with a sober stare. “I’m not responsible for Cundertol’s kidnapping, I swear. But that’s not
going to stop the people behind this. They never let the truth get in the way of what they want.”

“If you didn’t do it, they won’t be able to make the charges stick.”

Malinza laughed. “You’re assuming I’m going to get a fair trial.” She shook her head. “There’s bound to be circumstantial evidence.”

Perhaps the young woman was right, Jaina thought, recalling Blaine Harris’s certainty over Malinza’s guilt on announcing the news of her capture. On the other hand, though, there was also Cundertol’s reaction on hearing the news to consider. Clearly, he hadn’t been as convinced as Harris had.

“The Prime Minister’s testimony will count for something,” she said by way of reassuring Malinza. “He was there, after all. If
he
doesn’t think it was you, then I doubt they’d ever be able to convict.”

“Maybe,” Malinza said faintly. Some of the fire had gone out of her; she looked more than ever like a lonely, frightened teenager caught out of her depth. “I just have to have faith in the Balance. If a wrong is done to me now, then some good will come of it another day. That’s some comfort, at least.”

A very lonely one
, Jaina thought. But then, perhaps Malinza’s belief in the Balance was no less lonely than Jaina’s own faith in the Force.

She stood, glancing at her chronometer. It was well past midnight, and her parents would be starting to get worried. “I should go now.”

“But you haven’t told me why
you’re
here yet,” Malinza protested.

“I’m just doing my job,” Jaina said with a smile. “You know what Jedi are like: we’re always getting in the way.”

“As well as always getting their way.” The smile was
halfheartedly returned. Then it was lost altogether. “I have to admit I would be glad to be out of here.”

Jaina nodded sympathetically. “I’ll see what I can do about that.” She palmed the green
CALL
button and faced Malinza one last time. “Maybe we can apply some pressure to get your hearing processed more quickly and—”

She broke off. The door had opened onto an empty corridor.

“That’s strange,” she muttered.

Malinza peered past her. “What is?”

“The guards said they’d escort me out of here.” Jaina stepped cautiously out of the cell, every nerve screaming
trap
. “But there’s no one. Not even so much as a droid.”

Malinza joined her outside the cell. Jaina could tell from the girl’s expression that she was as surprised as Jaina that no sirens sounded when she did this. Surprise soon became excitement, though.

“It’s Vyram!” she said. “It has to be!”

“Who?”

“He’s one of Freedom’s core members,” Malinza said. “In fact, he’s what you’d call the brains behind the group. If anyone could slice into the system and get me out of here, it would be him.”

“I don’t know, Malinza,” Jaina said, glancing around uneasily. “This doesn’t feel right to me.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You get to walk out of here no matter what happens.” Malinza straightened until they were almost eye to eye. “I’m going for it.”

Jaina grabbed her sleeve as she went up the corridor. “Wait! That’s the wrong direction.” She was unable to shake her suspicions; something told her that what she was about to do was what someone
wanted
her to do. Nevertheless, her options were limited. “At least let me show you the way.”

Malinza’s grin was both appreciative and mischievous. “I thought you’d never offer,” she said.

Tahiri moved through the canyon, tired and weary, every muscle in her body aching terribly. It felt as though she’d been running for years. Fifty meters away on either side of her were mighty, craggy walls curving up and around her, making her feel as though she were walking in the palm of some impossibly immense fist. She paused for a moment to look up, and saw the stars twinkling overhead. No, not stars! These glistening specks were too close for that. They were no more stars than the blackness that held them was the night sky.

A sudden howl and a cry reminded her that her pursuers weren’t far behind. Across the vast and empty plain she could make out nothing but varying degrees of darkness; there was no sign of the thing with her face or the lizard creature. But they were out there somewhere; she knew that without a doubt. And if she ever stopped moving, stopped running, then they would catch up with her and—

She pushed the thought down, turning back to the task of continuing through the darkness in search of the light. However, where moments before there’d been nothing but barren ground, now trees crowded around her from every side. For a moment she felt strangely comforted by this, believing that nothing could possibly find her amid such a tangle of branches, limbs, and trunks. But this comfort was short-lived. Her pursuers didn’t need to see it, she realized; they could
smell
her. That’s how they’d been able to follow her all this time—and how they would continue to follow her until she finally relented and surrendered to their hunger.

The howl of the lizard beast rang out through the spindly foliage, its cry carried on a wind that rustled the daggerlike leaves hanging down from the trees around her. She moved faster, wincing as each leaf she brushed aside cut into her arms and hands.

The bitter forest gave way to a rock face that rose sharply into the dark. For a moment, she panicked that she had nowhere left to run, but then off to her right she noticed a small crevice in the rock.

“Tahiri …”

The voice came as a whisper on the breeze. It seemed far away, but not so far off that she could afford to relax.

Sucking in her stomach and bringing her arms in close to her side, she managed to make herself small enough to be able to squeeze through the narrow opening, the mildew covering the rocks expediting her movement. She closed her eyes, forcing out the disquieting thought of
being swallowed
as she wriggled between stone. Better that, she thought, than face what was following her.

The narrow crack widened around her. It had brought her safely out on the far side. She opened her eyes and her heart sank at what she saw: the path ahead was narrow and straight and lined with trees filled with ysalamiri. She climbed out of the crack and stood trembling for the longest time, too scared to move or even breathe. But her fear came not from the idea of passing between the trees, but rather from what she thought she could make out in the distance beyond them: a dark, reptilian figure, silhouetted against the sky.

“Tahiri …”

Crying out in fright, she spun around to see the thing with her face glaring through the crevice in the mossy rock. Its arm was reaching out to her; its bloodied fingers clawed for a touch of her sweat-soaked skin.

“You can’t leave me here, Tahiri …”

Tahiri woke with a half-formed cry on her lips. Her hand was halfway to her lightsaber before she realized where she was: Bakura. She sighed in relief. It wasn’t the worldship orbiting Myrkr. She was safe.

Safe?
Was she
really
safe?

She groped in the darkness for the light panel, relaxing as a yellow ambience filled the room. The bed rocked beneath her as she sat up and swung her legs over the edge. Almost everything on Bakura floated; wherever repulsors could possibly be included, they were—lifting chairs, counters of food, almost everything, it seemed.

As unsettling as it was to have things floating around her, it wasn’t this that troubled her most right now. Neither was it the tension suffocating her like a thick fog. No, the discomfort she felt now was like a tingling at the back of her mind—a suspicion that those around her, the “family” that Jacen had assured her she was a part of back on Mon Calamari, were conspiring against her.

Jaina had talked to her mother before going off to find Malinza. Leia had gone into Jaina’s room to stir her daughter from a Jedi trance and hadn’t emerged for some time. When she had, she had carried in her eyes a stare that was both wary and distant. Leia was seeing something that troubled her—something in
Tahiri
.

Tahiri felt it keenly, like ice water trickling down her spine. No matter how she tried to ignore it, the feeling simply wouldn’t go away.

Feeling like she was still dreaming, she stood up and crossed the room to the doorway. Opening it, she crept into the hallway linking their rooms. Unlike on Galantos where they had five rooms all opening onto a central common area, on Bakura they occupied rooms designed as though in a hotel. Han and Leia’s was the largest, with an adjoining area that could be used as a common room. Tahiri and Jaina were up the hall, adjacent but not connecting.

Tahiri stopped outside Jaina’s room, pressing her ear against the door to listen. There was no sound whatsoever; Jaina must still be out on her mission, even though it was
well past midnight. A distant concern for Jaina’s well-being penetrated the fog. But not for long. Jaina was one of the ones who suspected her, who constantly watched her for any sign of—

What? What was it Jaina searched for when she looked at Tahiri? The truth, perhaps, of who she really was?

The thought hit her like a blow from behind.
No!
She performed a mental forward somersault, rolling with the punch and coming up fighting.
That’s
not
who I am!
In her mind, she slashed at the thought with her lightsaber, cutting the notion to ribbons.
You can’t make me be someone I’m not!

Then the terrible moment of clarity faded and the fog fell around her once again. She embraced the vague dream state, letting it dissolve her concerns and reduce her anxieties to just one. She could still feel it tugging at her, as though a hook had pierced her soul and some dreadful angler was reeling her in.

It
had
to stop. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take before she snapped—or something altogether worse happened.

She moved from Jaina’s door, silently walking the short distance to Han and Leia’s room. There she repeated the same process, pressing her ear against the door to listen for any movements. She couldn’t hear anything.

Keying the access code into the lock, Tahiri eased open the door. It surprised her that Leia’s Noghri bodyguards were nowhere to be seen. But she didn’t have time to dwell on it. The fact was, they wouldn’t be too far away, and if they returned now they’d be sure to question her late-night activities in the Princess’s room …

From the darkness inside, C-3PO’s glowing photoreceptor eyes turned toward her.

She raised a finger to her lips. “Not a word, Threepio,” she whispered. “I just need to get something from the other room, okay?”

“As you wish, Mistress Tahiri,” the droid replied, making no effort to speak in a voice lower than he normally would. “But shouldn’t you—”

“Shhh,”
she insisted with a hiss. “I promise not to be long.”

C-3PO nodded uncertainly in the gloom as Tahiri continued through to Han and Leia’s bedroom. They were asleep when she entered, their restful breathing the only sound. She stood there motionless, extending herself into the shadows, feeling for the thing that called to her. And there it was; she could
feel
it, pulling her ever closer …

I must destroy the evidence
, she breathed to herself.
Destroy it, and the problem will go away
.

Using the Force to guide her through the darkened bedroom, she made her way to a small table containing a bowl of flowers and a glass of water. There was something else there, too—something that the Force couldn’t reveal to her. Now that she was closer she could see it, the small object caught in a fine sliver of moonlight from the open window. And just as on Galantos when she’d first found it, every one of her physical senses was tingling from the echoes emanating from the small pendant.

She reached out with her hand to pick up the silver totem molded into the likeness of Yun-Yammka, the slayer. At the very moment her fingers touched it, a hand reached out of the blackness to grab her wrist, and a voice called out her name in a language that disgusted her.

If the voice said anything else, she never heard it, as darkness suddenly swirled around her and swallowed her senses.

“Here we are,” said the librarian, a thin, shorthaired woman whose name was Tris. She had brought them to two broad, solid doors deep in a secure installation buried deep under the ice in an isolated sector of the Chiss home-world. Soontir Fel had ferried them there on the back of
a large, black ice barge, an armored craft that used powerful repulsors to sweep across the icy planetary crust. It was big enough to hold fifty people, but the passengers had consisted solely of Luke and his entourage, Commander Irolia, Chief Navigator Peita Aabe, and Fel himself. There appeared to be neither pilots nor any security staff, so either they were keeping carefully out of sight or Fel had supreme faith in automatics.

Upon arrival, they had been introduced to their guide from the Inrokini family, who had whisked them deep underground via a turbolift that seemed to take forever, while Fel and the others went off on official business.