The Crystal Star (15 page)

She was untrained and inexperienced, but she had the ability. Jaina imagined herself and her friend as Jedi

Knights, traveling through the galaxy and defeating evils.

Evils like Hethrir, and his Empire Reborn.

Hethrir's power slipped over Lusa. It blocked her talent. The bulb of the fake lightsaber remained dark.

"No fair!" Jaina cried.

Hethrir's cold wet blanket fell around her. She gasped. Lusa dropped the test machine and sprang to help

Jaina. Halfway through the leap, Hethrir's power flung her to the ground. Struggling to get up, she

whimpered.

"You have failed," Hethrir said to Lusa.

Two of the helpers pulled Lusa to her feet and dragged her away.

"No." Lusa's voice rose. "No!" "Do not defy me," Hethrir said. "I'm doing this for your own good." Jaina

struggled up and ran to Lusa and flung her arms around her neck. The wyrwulf ran back and forth,

confused and upset and growling.

Lusa hugged Jaina and pressed the warm soft knobs of her horns against the top of Jaina's head. Hot

angry tears burned Jaina's eyes.

Slowly, slowly, Hethrir's force drew them apart. No matter how hard Jaina tried to stay in one place,

Hethrir's power easily overcame her. She felt like she was falling off the edge of a cliff. Jaina's hands slid

from Lusa's neck, and down her arms. Lusa braced all four feet. Her hooves dug stripes in the sand as

Hethrir pulled her away from Jaina and Jaina away from her.

They grabbed hands and held tight.

As long as I hold her hand, Jaina thought.

It will be all right, as long--Their hands slipped apart.

Lusa screamed. Jaina reached to her--and Hethrir's power fell around her again, like a heap of wet sand.

Jaina's reach vanished, and Jaina lost her balance and fell down.

She could not get up. She lay on the sand crying with rage and despair. Jacen cried out and ran toward

her and Hethrir made him fall down, too.

Hethrir made them stay there while he tested all the rest of the children. A few could turn on the little light.

More failed. Under the pile of invisible wet sand, Jaina could not tell if Hethrir was cheating with some of

them.

Hethrir used his test to divide the children into two groups, one with Jaina and Jacen, the other with Lusa.

Lusa stood shivering in the heat, with her head down. Mr. Chamberlain's wyrwulf leaned against her front

leg, panting. Hethrir did not test the wyrwulf. He just pointed at it without looking at it, and two helpers

came and fastened chains to the heavy collar and dragged the wyrwulf away.

All the children were terrified, crying or keening or hunkering down within their body armor or shaking

their fur, however their own people expressed fear and grief.

All the children in Jaina's group were human beings. A few human children had been sent to Lusa's

group, but mostly Lusa's group was other species. Jaina thought that was weird. All the Proctors and all

the helpers were human, too. Jaina thought that was even weirder.

Lusa looked back over her shoulder at Jaina.

"Take me," Jaina said to Hethrir.

"Take me instead, don't take Lusa away, don't cut off her horns!" Hethrir ignored Jaina. The Proctors

marched down the stairwell. Their medals and epaulets glittered. Some of the helpers marched Lusa's

group away. Two of them dragged the growling wyrwulf.

Lusa's cry echoed up out of the tunnel.

"Lusa!" Jaina cried.

Vram pointed at Jaina. "You're so dumb, you're so dumb!" Maybe they're just going back to their places,

Jaina thought desperately. Maybe it is me that Hethrir is sending away--and Jacen too! and probably

Anakinff--because we're too much trouble! We don't have horns to cut off.

If Lusa's staying and we're going, she'll be safe!

Hethrir strode over to Jaina. He glanced down at her. His gaze flicked briefly over her face. The

smothering sensation of wet sand all around her disappeared. She stood up. Jacen climbed to his feet,

too. They hugged each other. Jaina felt very heavy and very tired.

"There," Hethrir said, using his kind voice.

He was talking to everybody, not just Jaina. "Go back to your places and study hard. The other children

are going away because they are not as good as you. You may stay, because I expect you to make me

proud of you." "I never will!" Jaina shouted. "I never will, Lusa's just as good as me, and I'll never do

anything to make you proud!"

Alderaan fell out of hyperspace. The scarlet trail led to a cold dark region of space. The nearest star was

light-years away.

A burst of pain and fear and despair obliterated the trail.

Leia cried out.

If they've hurt my children... she thought. If they've harmed one hair--If they've.

The memory of pain faded.

I didn't feel death, Leia thought. It wasn't death! And it wasn't Jaina or Jacen or Anakin. Who was it?

The fear she had felt was not fear of death, but fear of continued life. She shuddered, imagining what

could happen to a person to create such terror.

Bathed in sweat and weak with exhaustion, Leia drew a long, ragged breath.

Leia extended her ship's sensors outward.

She watched and listened.

She found a ship.

"That's it!" she exclaimed. "I have you--!" She fought back the urge to press toward it immediately. It

would not do, to find her children only to fall into a trap.

Artoo-Detoo raced into the cockpit.

"I'm still not speaking to you!" she said.

Artoo-Detoo grabbed the new ship's signature from the sensors and traced it in the air. Then the droid

traced another signature beside it: the record of the kidnappers' ship.

The two ships were nothing alike.

"No!" Leia cried. "No, this has to be them. I followed them here, and there's no trail away! Maybe the

ship was disguised--" She accentuated the visual aspect of the unknown ship. The result struck her silent.

The vessel she had found was a huge, hulking passenger freighter, the kind the Empire had used to

transport unwilling colonists from star to star. It traveled slowly, carrying its sleeping cargo at sublight

speeds. The Empire did not care if the colonists--political prisoners, convicts, and other undesirables-lost touch with families and friends, who lived their lives and aged and died. The colonists slept on,

trapped in dreams of a new world that would welcome them, or in nightmares of a world that would kill

them. They had been slaves in all but name, sent away to prepare a new world until their masters chose

to seek them out again.

We've been looking for these ships, Leia thought. Trying to rescue them. No wonder we couldn't find

them, way out here at the end of nowhere!

Leia frowned. The passenger freighter was derelict, drifting, its engines dead and its interior barely

functioning.

"What's it doing here?" she said. "We couldn't just have stumbled across it, that's too much of a

coincidence to bear." Alderaan's sensors touched a second ship, and a third.

"I don't believe it..." Leia whispered.

Fully two dozen ships lay within her perception.

She had found a graveyard of abandoned starships. They hung in a slowly shifting cluster, circling each

other in a tangled and chaotic dance.

Chewbacca roared, a cry of grief and understanding.

Leia jumped out of the pilot's chair.

"What are you doing up? What are you doing awake? Are you determined to--" She bit off the ^ws

before they left her mouth. If she accused Chewbacca of trying to kill himself, he might agree with her.

He limped forward and lowered himself painfully into the copilot's seat. He gazed at her. She glared at

him, but finally her expression softened.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was blaming you.

I shouldn't have. I don't know what happened, but whatever it was, you couldn't have stopped it. I

couldn't have. Maybe even Luke couldn't have done anything." Chewbacca touched the thick chestnut

fur at his throat. He raised his chin, combed his fingers through his pelt, and revealed a patch of stark

white hair.

He let her look at it for a moment, then lowered his head again.

"Is that--?" He growled in assent.

Chewbacca had been a slave. Not a colonist-slave, but the chattel of an Imperial officer. Leia knew very

little about that part of his life. She knew he had been kidnapped from the deep and magical forests of his

world. He had been chained, and punished for any defiance, and worked nearly to death.

Young Han Solo of the Imperial Navy had freed him. Han had saved Chewbacca's life, for no Wookiee

lived long as a slave.

"Is that what happened here?" Leia said.

"Did the Empire hijack ships, did it steal their passengers? That doesn't make sense!" She gestured

toward the sensor reports. "Those are Imperial colony ships. The Empire wouldn't take slaves from its

own ships, it already considered those people slaves. It wouldn't abandon ships like this. It would take

them away and use them again. It was evil--but it was efficient." Leia looked at the reports more closely.

"Oh, no..." she whispered.

The ships still contained passengers, and many of them had died. But some were alive. Just barely alive.

Xaverri showed Han the way, along a path that led toward still another dome. The trail led into a dense

thicket of tall, twisting bushes.

Branches tangled together to form impenetrable walls and a leafy ceiling, and to let in nothing but gloomy

deep green light. The path twisted and turned, leading deeper into the thicket.

It feels like a trap, Han thought. I trust Xaverri--I trusted her, with my life, and I was never sorry.

But he had also trusted her with his heart.

That was the old days, he said to himself. Everything's different now.

Han walked behind Xaverri, with Luke and See-Threepio following. The pathway could only

accommodate one person at a time.

I wish, Han thought, not for the first time during this expedition, that Chewbacca was with us.

"Look, Master Luke," Threepio said.

"These leaves are all different shapes. Look how they fall when I touch them." As Threepio's querulous

voice fell a little way behind, Han noticed the leaves for the first time. Threepio was right, they.were

misshapen.

Scabrous colors mottled the irregular shapes. He brushed his hand along a branch, and leaves fell

fluttering to the ground.

"I wonder," Threepio said, "if we should return to the ship and secure some radiation detectors. I believe

more radiation may be penetrating the domes than the station management is prepared to admit." His

voice faded as Han rounded a bend in the path. "Why, I can virtually feel my intelligence circuits

exploding beneath the assault." "Your intelligence sounds normal to me," Luke said.

Han chuckled, and lengthened his stride to catch up to Xaverri. He wanted to speak with her privately.

But when he was walking just at her shoulder, he could not decide what to say. He wanted to know what

had happened in her life, in the years since they had parted, but he felt uncharacteristically shy of asking.

"You recognized Luke," Han said to Xaverri.

"Yes." "He said no one would." "I demanded some proof that he was a true representative of the New

Republic. He removed his disguise." "So he did look different to you, at first?" "Very different. But he

released me from his influence." She shivered slightly. "He is very skilled, Solo. I did not even know he

was affecting me, until he let me go." "He's talented," Han said. "But he never had the chance to finish his

formal training." "Ah," she said. "That's said to be very dangerous." "Yes. And he's had occasion to

realize it." "I had heard... some rumors on that subject," Xaverri said.

"Did you?" Han said. "We thought we'd managed to keep it from public knowledge." "Perhaps you did,"

Xaverri replied. "But I am not precisely the public... and I put considerable energy into cultivating many

lines of communication." "Some of them are better than mine," Han said, annoyed by the realization.

"Some of them are different than yours, Solo," Xaverri said. "There are many people who will speak to a

thief, who might have spoken to a young smuggler. who will not speak to a General of the New

Republic." Han did not like to admit he had changed so much from the old days. Admit it or not, though,

it was true.

"You could be an asset to the Republic," he said.

"Me?" She chuckled. "No. As soon as I became an asset, I would become valueless." "Your work

would be secret." "Nothing is secret. And you know it, Solo." "Then why did you get in contact with us?

What do you want?" "I want nothing from you!" she said angrily.

"The Republic has made my work harder. You are worthless as prey--y are all so honorable--so dull!"

Xaverri glared at him a moment, then her anger eased. Her expression turned to worry.

"I heard about phenomena that are strange and dangerous. I investigated them. I think they are a threat to

the Republic." "You just said you don't like the Republic," Luke said.

Han started. Luke had come up behind him without a sound, without warning. He hoped Luke had not

heard him discussing Luke's frailties with Xaverri.

"She did not precisely say she did not like the Republic," Threepio said, pedantically.

"She said--" "I have no quarrel with the Republic," Xaverri said. "My profits are less, but I do not need

much to live on. Perhaps I shall retire soon." "But you said--" Han said.

"You must remember what it was like!" Xaverri snapped. "When the Emperor ruled, his minions raided