The Joiner King (29 page)

Her reflexes were so slowed by the paralyzing poison that, by the time she ignited her lightsaber, the insect had already hit the ground. It took three strikes before she finally detonated it.

Saba turned instantly upslope, but her prey had already vanished into his exit crevice. Feeling half dead from poison already and not wanting to take yet another shot of venom, Saba remained motionless for a long time, trying to listen through her deafness, trying to taste the air with her dead tongue, trying to see outside her narrow cone of vision. She felt nothing, only the dark loneliness of the underworld.

Recalling that there had been three cells and only two Killik attacks, Saba went to the escape crevice and peered inside.

Nothing.

Her prey was gone, and so was the third Killik.

Every Barabel instinct urged her to continue the pursuit, to follow the quarry’s blood trail until she ran it to ground. But the rational part of her mind knew better. A hunter needed a quick wit and sharp senses, and Saba’s injuries had taken a toll on both. She was slow and beginning to tremble, and soon she might not be able to move at all.

Besides, Saba had a sinking feeling that the third Killik had left the nest early, and she could think of only one reason it would have done so: the departure of
Jade Shadow.

“Ben!”

Mara’s voice came over the
Shadow
’s intercom so sharp and loud that Luke nearly dropped the micropoint he was holding in R2-D2’s deep-reserve data compartment.

“Ben, come to the galley this instant!”

“Uh, that might not be such a good idea,” Luke said into the intercom. He flipped up his magnispecs and looked across the utility deck to where Ben sat, surrounded by crate covers and spacing rods, covered head-to-toe in servomotor lubricant. “At least not until he’s had a good saniscrubbing. He’s on the utility deck with me.”

“Doing what?” Mara demanded.

Luke caught Ben’s eye and pointed his chin toward the intercom wall unit.

“Working on my Killik,” Ben said meekly. His expression struck Luke as both guilty and worried. “Nanna said I could.”

“Stay where you are!”

Luke cocked a brow at his son. “It sounds serious.”

Ben nodded. “I guess.”

“Any ideas?”

Ben returned to working on his “Killik” droid. “Maybe.”

Deciding they would
both
find out what was troubling Mara in a minute, Luke returned to the sequestered sector he had found on one of R2-D2’s deep-reserve memory chips. Judging by the tarnished break in the service circuit, the fault had occurred years—maybe decades—earlier, and had been entirely benevolent until a microscopic sliver of casing bridged the
break. Given that R2-D2 had been functioning well with the fault for most of his service life, Luke was wondering how long it had been since anything was written to the sector.

The access hatch iris opened next to Luke, and Mara stepped through with an empty gelmeat container in her hand. Her irritation was obvious in the briskness of her step—and in the turbulent aura she projected in the Force.

“Hold on a second, Artoo,” Luke said, setting the micropoint on the workbench. “This looks important.”

R2-D2 tweedled a worried response.

“Of course you’re important,” Luke said. “But I need a break anyway. I’ll want to be sure my hands are steady.”

R2-D2 whistled his encouragement.

Luke started across the deck toward his wife and son, where Ben was still sitting inside his crate-cover Killik shell, looking up at Mara.

“Did Nanna say you could have a whole can of gelmeat, young man?” Mara asked.

Ben’s eyes grew round. “She said I could have a slice.”

“Does
this
look like a slice to you?” She held the empty container down for him to see.

Ben shrugged—rather bravely, Luke thought. “I thought she meant one can.”

Luke felt Mara’s patience snap. When she started to wave the container at Ben, he gave her a gentle Force tug and urged her to calm down.

Mara paused, collecting herself while she pretended to examine the container label.

“Nanna is the one who found the container, Ben,” Mara said, handing it to him. “She says we’ve gone through a whole case since we left Jwlio—and I don’t think anyone else eats this.”

“Tesar might.”

“Gelmeat?” Mara asked doubtfully.

“Maybe,” Ben said hopefully. “He eats anything.”

“Anything
alive
,” Mara corrected. “But we could ask him. Should I have him come down?”

Ben hesitated, then shook his head. “No.”

“I didn’t think so.” Mara’s voice softened. “Ben, I don’t know
how you can eat all this without making a mess of my decks, but you have to stop. It’ll make you sick.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Ben said, sounding relieved. “You don’t have to worry about that. I haven’t been
eating
it.”

“You haven’t?” Mara asked. “Then what have you been doing with it?”

Ben’s expression grew worried again, and he reluctantly said, “Feeding it to my Killik.”

Mara was silent for a moment, then she asked, “Ben, what did we say about lying?”

Ben’s eyes dropped. “That if I lie, I have to stay with Kam and Tionne the next time you and Dad go on a mission.”

“Right,” Mara said. “Let’s remember that.”

“Okay,” Ben said. “I didn’t forget.”

“Good.” Mara stooped down and took the empty container from him. “And no more gelmeat.”

Ben’s eyes grew wide.
“None?”

“Not until we get home.” Luke hoped he sounded stern. “You’ve had enough to last you ten trips.”

As he and Mara returned to the engineering station, he continued to feel a general irritation from her.

“Okay, this wasn’t just about gelmeat,” he said softly. “What’s wrong? Tired of hearing about how much Tahiri and the others miss Jwlio?”

Mara shook her head. “It’s not that.”

“Tired of growling Ewoks?”

“It’s not Tarfang, either,” Mara said. “I’m not sure yet whether the Killiks are enemies or just dangerous friends, but I
am
certain we need to learn everything we can about them.”

Luke remained silent, sensing more was to follow.

“It’s just this uneasiness I have,” Mara said. “I keep feeling like we’re about to be attacked again.”

Luke paused and consciously opened himself to the Force. “I can sense it, too, but not as strong as you. We could do another stowaway sweep.”

“And find something we missed the last six times?” Mara shook her head and smiled. “Go back to your droid, Skywalker. You’re just trying to get me into our cabin again.”

“I’m predictable that way,” Luke said. “But pay attention to this feeling. Whatever’s causing it, you seem to have a special connection to it.”

“Lucky me.” Mara opened the hatch, then looked over her shoulder before stepping through. “And about that cabin.”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe later.”

R2-D2 trilled a worried objection.

“Don’t worry,” Luke said, chuckling. “I’m a Jedi Master. I can still concentrate.”

He picked up his tools and carefully repaired the break in R2-D2’s deep-reserve chìp. Once the solder was cool, he flipped his magnispecs up again and turned to the diagnostic display above the workbench.

“All right, Artoo. Let’s see what your deep-reserve memory shows now.”

A list of headings and numbers began to scroll down the screen, but suddenly stopped as it approached the location of the repaired sector.

“Don’t stop,” Luke said. “I need to see if you can access that sector.”

R2-D2 whirred a moment, then the scrolling resumed. The missing sector number appeared, but the descriptive heading looked like nothing but random characters.

“Stop,” Luke said.

The scrolling continued until the heading vanished off the top of the screen, then stopped.

“Now your
response
time is slow,” Luke complained. “Bring it back.”

R2-D2 piped a question.

“The sector I’ve been trying to repair. Two twenty-two.”

The list scrolled down until the lower half of the entry appeared at the top the screen.

“And you’re having
roll
problems.” Luke sighed. “It looks like you’ve got a bug in your system. I may need to get out the blast degausser.”

The entry dropped toward the middle of the screen, one letter in the heading changing with each line it sank.

“Stop! Why are you randomizing the heading?”

The droid whistled a denial.

“You are, too,” Luke said. “I saw the letters change.”

R2-D2 whirred a moment, then displayed a message on diagnostic screen.

It must be encoded.

“Encoded?” Luke began to wonder if perhaps the sector had been sequestered on purpose. R2-D2 had seen a lot of action even before the Rebellion, and Luke was always curious about what secrets the little droid might have locked away. “Then slice it.”

R2-D2 grated an objection.

“Artoo, you’re an
astromech
droid,” Luke said. “You have enough computing power to slice a triple-key, double-blind randomizer. I think you can solve a simple substitution code.”

The droid buzzed in resignation, then began to whir and hum. A few moments later, the heading vanished altogether. Luke waited for it to return in legible form, then finally gave up and groaned.

“Don’t tell me you lost the heading.”

R2-D2 trilled an apology.

“No problem,” Luke said, losing his patience with the little droid’s excuses. He lowered his magnispecs. “I’ll just fuse it to a sector that
is
in the directory.”

R2-D2 withdrew his interface arm from the data socket and whistled in protest.

“Then plug back in and stop making this difficult,” Luke said. “Let me see what’s in that sector.”

The droid warbled a question.

“This
one.”

Luke touched the tip of his soldering filament to sector 222 and was astonished to hear a tinny female voice erupt from the droid’s speaker.

“Anakin …”

Luke caught a glimmer of moving light on the workbench. He flipped up his magnispecs, expecting to find the images of Tahiri and his dead nephew, Anakin, sharing a personal moment R2-D2 had caught with his holorecorder.

Instead, Luke found himself watching a beautiful, hand-sized, brown-eyed woman whom he did not recognize. She walked across the workbench, then stopped beside a sinewy young man dressed, as she was, in nightclothes.

“What’s bothering you?” she asked.

The young man continued to look away from her. “Nothing.”

“Anakin, how long is it going to take for us to be honest with each other?”

Luke’s heart rocketed into his throat. He had not immediately recognized his father. He wanted to call out to Mara, to share with Leia what he was feeling … but he was too stunned. He simply continued watching.

The young man—Anakin—turned to face the woman. “It was a dream.”

“Bad?”

Anakin looked over her head. “Like the ones I used to have about my mother … just before she died.”

The woman hesitated, then finally asked, “And?”

Anakin’s gaze fell. “It was about you.”

The hologram crackled to an abrupt end, and an ominous humming arose deep inside R2-D2’s internal workings. Luke flipped down his magnispecs and peered in to find the recording head bumping against his soldering filament as it attempted to access sector 222.

“Artoo!” Luke reached for the droid’s primary circuit breaker. “Wait!”

The recording head stopped moving, but Luke did not lift the soldering filament.

“What are you doing?”

The droid reinserted his interface arm into the data socket, and Luke had to flip up his magnispecs to read the message on the diagnostics screen. He continued to hold the soldering filament in place.

I need to reformat sector 222. Those data are corrupted.

“Nothing looks corrupted to me.” Luke could not understand why R2-D2 would try so desperately to hide 222’s contents, but he had no doubt that was exactly what the droid was doing. “Who was that woman with my father?”

R2-D2 whistled two notes.

“The woman in the hologram,” Luke said irritably. “Show it to me again.”

R2-D2’s holoprojector obediently came to life, displaying the familiar, three-dimensional figure of an Alderaanian Princess in an elegant white gown.

“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” the figure said. “You’re my only hope.”

“Not
that
woman,” Luke said. “I know my sister. The one talking to
Anakin.
Is that … is she my mother?”

A message appeared on the diagnostics display.

I don’t know what woman you’re talking about. That sector is defective. It should be sequestered.

“It
was
sequestered—probably on purpose.”

Luke studied R2-D2 carefully, touching him through the Force. With most other droids, any hope of sensing the truth would have been lost to the indecipherable Force static generated by its system routines. But R2-D2 had been Luke’s close companion for nearly three decades. The little droid’s static aura was as distinctive to him as was the presence of Mara or Leia or Han.

After a moment, Luke sensed the direction his questions should take. “It didn’t look like they knew you were holorecording. What were you doing?
Spying?”

R2-D2 let out a squeal that Luke took to be a protest of denial—until it ended in a sharp crackle and a surge of electricity melted the filament Luke was using to protect sector 222. He jerked the wire free and started to rebuke the droid for his stubbornness, but one whiff of the acrid fumes pouring from the access panel told him this much damage was nothing the droid would do to himself. Luke used the Force to trip R2-D2’s primary circuit breaker, then opened a second access panel to vent the interior of the casing.

When the smoke cleared, he flipped his magnispecs down and saw that every circuit within a millimeter of sector 222 had been melted. Worse, a bead of hot filament had landed on the sector itself. Luke tore his magnispecs off and hurled them against the wall.

“Kriffing sheers!” He could not help feeling that
someone
had gone to a great effort to prevent him from discovering his mother’s identity, but of course that was just his disappointment. Whoever had booby-trapped R2-D2’s spyware had done it for their own reasons—reasons important fifty years ago, but that hardly mattered now. “Kriffing history!”