Reunion (46 page)

“Congratulations, to all of you,” Leia said. “That’s the best news I’ve heard for months.”

The image flickered, then strengthened.

“Sorry about that,” Leia said. “We’re still fine-tuning here. We might have to cut this short so they can recalibrate the antennas.”

Sad though he was to bring the communication to an end, Luke felt profoundly reassured on one level. His family and home were safe. Leia would have mentioned if there was anything wrong with Ben or if the Maw was under threat. When the antennas were fixed properly, he would patch through to his son’s safe refuge and do his best to catch up.

And when the war was over, he promised himself he would make up for the time he’d lost with his son. He knew what it was like to grow up without his father; he didn’t want Ben to go through the same thing.

“What about Tahiri?” Jacen asked, a note of seriousness dampening his otherwise buoyant tone. “How is she?”

Han and Leia exchanged a glance. “That’s a little hard to explain, too,” Leia said.

“She’s … changed,” Han said.

“For the better?” Jacen asked grimly.

Leia nodded. “She’s still finding out who she is, but I’m sure she’ll get there.”

“What name did she choose?” Luke asked.

“She still calls herself Tahiri, but—” Leia stopped suddenly, her eyes narrowing as she studied her brother. “Don’t tell me you knew what was going to happen to her.”

“I suspected,” Luke said. “I thought she just needed time to work things out—and the opportunity to prove herself.”

“Well, she’s certainly done that,” Leia said.

Relief washed through him at the news. “Then all’s well that ends well, I guess.”

“Seems so,” Han said. “We’re heading back to Mon Cal now to refit and check in with our esteemed leader. He might have new orders for us.”

“And the Ryn have to be integrated into the intelligence network,” Leia said. “I don’t know how our usual spies are going to react to working with the likes of our new friends, but I’m sure we can bring them around.”

“Travel safely,” Luke said. “And we’ll see you at Mon Cal within the next couple of weeks.”

Leia nodded. “May the Force be with you, Luke.”

The hologram flickered and died entirely.

“And you, sister,” he mumbled to where Leia’s image had been a moment earlier.

He sat silent for a long while, holding Mara’s hand and thinking about his family, scattered in so many directions
across the galaxy. One day, hopefully, he’d see them reunited in peaceful times—if everything went well with Zonama Sekot.

“One step at a time,” Mara said, as though reading his mind.

Perhaps she was, he thought. Sometimes it seemed to him that his wife’s green eyes could see right into his soul.

“The journey is changing us, Mara,” he said. “We’re not the same people we were when we set out.”

“But that’s life, my love,” she said. “Without change, then we may as well be dead.”

Luke smiled, feeling himself filled with the warmth of her affection. There were so many things he wanted to experience in the future, and all of them were with her. All they had to do was fix the problem of the Yuuzhan Vong and everything else, he was sure, would fall into place.

“Jacen, would you—?”

Luke turned to ask his nephew to make sure Sekot and Jabitha weren’t growing restless outside the ship, but Jacen was already gone.

“Do you think we embarrass him?” Luke said.

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe he’s just jealous of what we have together.”

Luke was silent for a moment. “Somehow, I don’t think so.”

Danni was talking to the young Ferroan girl, Tescia, under the eaves of a looming boras. The afternoon sun made the air heavy with heat, but in the shade it was almost cool. There was a pregnancy to the undergrowth, as though it might part at any moment to reveal some strange new form of life.

Jacen paused to lean on a root elbowing out of the ground nearby and listened in.

“And then,” the Ferroan child was saying, “I want to see where Anakin came from, and Obi-Wan.”

“You mean Coruscant?” Danni asked, glancing at Jacen and offering a fleeting smile before returning her attention to the girl.

“Yes,” Tescia said. “It must be the most amazing place!”

“It was,” Danni said. “I don’t know what it looks like now.”

“We’ll go there,” Tescia said. “We’ll go there and get rid of the Far Outsiders and rebuild the world of cities.”

“I hope you’re right, Tescia.” Danni smoothed a stray lock of golden hair from the girl’s forehead. “I really hope you are.”

The girl smiled up at her new friend, and together they discussed where they’d visit first, when Coruscant was safe again.

Is this the planet speaking
, Jacen wondered as he listened,
or a girl brought up on stories of far-off places she never dreamed she would see
?

Whatever the source of the urge, Jacen wondered where he would go if Zonama Sekot helped the Galactic Alliance return peace to the galaxy. There was no easy answer. His memories of Coruscant were a mess of good and bad, spanning his entire life. Part of him was tempted to encourage the tearing down of the city-planet from skyhook to deepest basement, so that something new could be built in its place, but who would decide what should take its place? Who deserved that responsibility?

Jacen was distracted by a low chuckle coming from the undergrowth. He looked up to see the image of Vergere standing near him, her feathery fringe dancing in a virtual breeze.

“Things come and go, Jacen Solo,” Sekot said. “We both know that.”

“Are you reading my mind?” he asked.

“Perhaps. You still wonder, sometimes, why I woke you first when you arrived here. This, and many other things, you will understand in time.”

He stared at his hands for a moment. “I wish you wouldn’t appear to me in that form. I find it disconcerting.”

“Like this, then?” asked the child who would one day become Darth Vader.

He met the disturbingly blue stare of his grandfather as directly as he could. “Why do you have to take on
any
form? Why can’t you just be who you are?”

“Because you couldn’t begin to comprehend who I am,” Sekot said, returning to the image of Vergere. “There are limits to your understanding—just as there are limits to mine. Mine, however, are an order of magnitude removed from yours. Take no offense, Jacen Solo, but my talking to you now is like you talking to a dust mite that crawled across your skin. Do you believe that such a mite could understand you if you were to speak to it normally? Do you think you would even hear a reply if you listened with your normal ears?” Sekot shook Vergere’s head in answer to its own question. “Of course not. In order to communicate between such diverse scales of existence, one or both sides must change. For the moment, I am prepared to make that change.”

“Only for the moment?” Jacen repeated.

“We’ll see what the future holds.” Sekot’s expression was concerned, not threatening, yet Jacen felt distinctly unsettled by the conversation. What were they getting themselves into? They were bargaining with a creature literally beyond their comprehension. Who knew what its motives or goals were? Or whether it had some hidden agenda? …

“Do you know what it is I crave?” said the living planet through the image of Vergere.

Jacen shrugged. “Peace? Knowledge? A clear conscience?”

“All those things are required for a good life. And all of them have a price.”

“That’s what you want, then? To pay the price and earn a good life?”

Sekot smiled with Vergere’s face. “I think that’s what we all want, Jacen Solo.”

With those few words, Sekot slowly melted away, and Jacen was left alone to ponder them.

Tahiri was in one of the
Selonia
’s empty holds, exercising. She wasn’t hiding as such, but was definitely trying to keep out of the way. It gave her an excuse to work on her technique. Since merging the two halves of her self, she’d been struggling to assimilate more than just ways of thought, speech, and being. The old Tahiri and Riina had fought in very different ways, and she needed to refine the techniques so she could more effectively incorporate both the next time she had to go into combat.

As she sparred with shadows, tossing her lightsaber from hand to hand and kicking powerfully, leaping gracefully, striking the air with unerring accuracy, her mind kept a ceaseless running commentary: Jedi Force leap,
asth-korr
throat hold, Sand People high kick, Kwaad double punch …

“Why’d you let him go?”

The voice came from behind her and echoed through the hold. Tahiri didn’t break her rhythm even for a moment. She’d known he was coming twenty seconds before he appeared in the entrance.

She performed one last fluid leap and landed firmly on both feet, her body now fully facing Han Solo. Tahiri extinguished her lightsaber, returning the pommel to her belt. She walked casually toward Han.

“Let who go?” she asked, even though she knew who he was referring to.

“Droma!” Han’s voice was thick with frustration. “I was getting worried because I hadn’t heard from him since we docked, so I started asking around. Captain Mayn told me that a Ryn ship called
Fortune Seeker
docked briefly with the
Selonia
not long ago, and now Jag informs me that Twin Suns escorted that ship to its hyperspace jump point. He didn’t know whether or not Droma was on board, of course, but I’m guessing that you do—seeing as you were the one who requested the escort for the ship in the first place. So I’ll ask you again:
why
did you let him go?”

Tahiri offered a slight shrug. “Because he asked me to.”

Han took two steps into the room. His expression was clouded—hurt, too, although he would never admit to that. He would claim that he was angry at having been deceived. But really, there had been no deception. He just hadn’t been told.

“Why you?” Han asked. “Why wouldn’t he talk to me?”

That was the core of it, she knew. He was transparent to her. She could see through his reserve with the cold clarity of an alien warrior and read his innermost thoughts with the sensitivity of a Jedi. She felt for him, in her own way.

“Because he knew you would ask questions,” she said. “You’re too much a part of the system he is trying to work around. There can be only so much overlap before the members of the Ryn network lose the thing that makes them special and become like you: blind in subtle ways, vulnerable when you can’t afford to be. For now, you and he must stand apart—until the day that peace comes.”

Han shook his head. “Droma wasn’t a part of that network. They turned him down.”

She smiled at his naïveté. “Do you remember Onadax?”

“Onadax? What’s that got to—?”

“Droma gave me a message to give to you,” she cut in smoothly. “He said to tell you that he hopes your timing’s better next time. And that he still doesn’t want your money.”

“Timing? Money?” Confusion quickly became realization. “The creep who interrogated me at that bar!
That
was
Droma
?”

She didn’t take any pleasure in the way Han had been fooled.

“He encouraged the riot on Onadax to cover your getaway—and his, too. He’d been running the Ryn network through that operation, the bar, for six months. That was about three months longer than he would have liked, he said, but it was necessary to take that much time to make sure everything was running properly; once he was sure it was, he could move on. When you’re the head of such a secretive organization, he said, you don’t want to sit still too long. Their strength lies in their—”

“Wait a minute,” Han said, shaking his head in bewilderment. “The
head
of the organization? Droma?
The
Ryn?”

“It makes sense if you think about it. Your involvement with him gave him a very high standing with all the Ryn. His species has been leaderless for a very long time—not that they want what we would traditionally regard as a leader. They’re nomads, born to be wanderers and therefore endlessly exploited. They’re
expected
to wander all over the galaxy, so few security people will stop them, beyond the usual harassment. And if someone sees Ryn working, they’ll usually leave them alone. The Ryn go everywhere, see everything, and talk endlessly to each other by notes, songs, and rumors carried by trading ships. They’re frequent stowaways, so few people would become suspicious at finding Ryn where they
weren’t meant to be.” She shrugged. “What he’s done is take what most people regard as being the Ryn’s weaknesses and turned them into strengths.”

“Who’d have thought?” Han mused with a smile curling one corner of his mouth.

She nodded.

Han shook his head, losing the smile. “I still don’t understand why he had to leave so soon. Or why he couldn’t tell me all this himself.”

She faced his incomprehension squarely. “The more people who know about him and his Ryn network, the greater the risk he runs. The less evidence exists that he runs the whole thing, the safer he becomes. His family won’t betray him, and neither will you, but there are people farther removed he can’t necessarily trust. The Ryn have learned the hard way not to place their faith in strangers.”

“And what about you?” Han said. “I’d have thought you were more of a stranger to him than me.”

“Given the reports he’d received from Goure on Bakura, as well as the Ryn on Galantos, Droma offered to adopt me into the movement.”

“The fact that you’re telling me this now suggests you didn’t accept his offer.”

She shook her head. “I was tempted, briefly, but I decided against it. For the moment, anyway.”

The truth was, it was too early to decide what she was going to do with herself. She was no longer trying to walk two divergent paths simultaneously, tearing herself apart in the process; she was finally walking the one path, and she enjoyed the idea of continuing down that path until she figured out just what she wanted to do—no matter how long that took.

With a sigh, Han’s hurt softened and became disappointment. “I would’ve liked the chance to tell him how good it was to see him again. You know?”