Star Wars - Thrawn Trilogy - Dark Force Rising 02 (25 page)

Leia took a careful breath, not daring to believe what she was hearing. However it was the Grand Admiral had learned about Khabarakh's capture, he'd taken that fact and run in exactly the wrong direction with it. They'd been given a second chance : if Khabarakh could, hold on to his wits and poise a little longer.

Perhaps the maitrakh didn't trust his stamina, either. "My thirdson would not lie about such matters, my lord," she said before Khabarakh could reply. "He has always understood the duties and requirements of honor."

"Has he, now," the Grand Admiral shot back. "A Noghri commando, captured by the enemy for interrogation-and still alive? Is this the duty and requirement of honor?"

"I was not captured, my lord," Khabarakh said stiffly. "My escape from Kashyyyk was as I said it."

For a half dozen heartbeats the Grand Admiral gazed in his direction in silence. "And I say that you lie, Khabarakh clan Kihm'bar," he said softly. "But no matter. With or without your cooperation I will have the truth about your missing month : and whatever the price was you paid for your freedom. Rukh?"

"My lord," the third Noghri voice said.

"Khabarakh clan Kihm'bar is hereby placed under Imperial arrest. You and Squad Two will escort him aboard the troop shuttle and take him back to the Chimaera for interrogation."

There was a sharp hiss. "My lord, this is a violation-"

"You will be silent, maitrakh," the Grand Admiral cut her off. "Or you will share in his imprisonment."

"I will not be silent," the maitrakh snarled. "A Noghri accused of treason to the overclan must be given over to the clan dynasts for the ancient rules of discovery and judgment. It is the law."

"I am not bound by Noghri law," the Grand Admiral said coldly. "Khabarakh has been a traitor to the Empire. By Imperial rules will he be judged and condemned."

"The clan dynasts will demand-"

"The clan dynasts are in no position to demand anything," the Grand Admiral barked, touching the comlink cylinder pocketed beside his tunic insignia. "Do you require a reminder of what it means to defy the Empire?"

Leia heard the faint sound of the maitrakh's sigh. "No, my lord," she said, her voice conceding defeat.

The Grand Admiral studied her. "You shall have one anyway.

He touched his comlink again-

And abruptly the interior of the dukha flashed with a blinding burst of green light.

Leia jerked her head back into Chewbacca's legs, squeezing her eyelids shut against the sudden searing pain ripping through her eyes and face. For a single, horrifying second she thought that the dukha had taken a direct hit, a turbolaser blast powerful enough to bring the whole structure down in flaming ruin around them. But the afterimage burned into her retina showed the Grand Admiral still standing proud and unmoved; and belatedly she understood.

She was trying desperately to reverse her sensory enhancement when the thunderclap slammed like the slap of an angry Wookiee into the side of her head.

She would later have a vague recollection of several more turbolaser blasts, seen and heard only dimly through the thick gray haze that clouded over her mind, as the orbiting Star Destroyer fired again and again into the hills surrounding the village. By the time her throbbing head finally dragged her back to full consciousness the Grand Admiral's reminder was over, the final thunderclap roiling away into the distance.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes, squinting a little against the pain. The Grand Admiral was still standing where he'd been, in the center of the dukha:and as the last thunderclap faded into silence he spoke. "I am the law on Honoghr now, maitrakh," he said, his voice quiet and deadly. "If I choose to follow the ancient laws, I will follow them. If I choose to ignore them, they will be ignored. Is that clear?"

The voice, when it came, was almost too alien to recognize. If the purpose of the Grand Admiral's demonstration had been to frighten the maitrakh half out of her mind, it had clearly succeeded. "Yes, my lord."

"Good." The Grand Admiral let the brittle silence hang in the air for another moment. "For loyal servants of the Empire, however, I am prepared to make compromises. Khabarakh will be interrogated aboard the Chimaera; but before that, I will allow the first stage of the ancient laws of discovery." His head turned slightly. "Rukh, you will remove Khabarath clan Kihm'bar to the center of Nystao and present him to the clan dynasts. Perhaps three days of public shaming will serve to remind the Noghri people that we are still at war."

"Yes, my lord."

There was the sound of footsteps, and the opening and closing of the double doors. Hunched against the ceiling above her, his sense in unreadable turmoil, Chewbacca rumbled softly to himself. Leia clenched her teeth, hard enough to send flashes of pain through her still throbbing head. Public shaming : and something called the laws of discovery.

The Rebel Alliance had unwittingly destroyed Honoghr. Now, it seemed, she was going to do the same to Khabarakh.

The Grand Admiral was still standing in the middle of the dukha. "You are very quiet, maitrakh," he said.

"My lord ordered me to be silent," she countered.

"Of course." He studied her. "Loyalty to one's clan and family is all well and good, maitrakh. But to extend that loyalty to a traitor would he foolish. As well as potentially disastrous to your family and clan."

"I have not heard evidence that my thirdson is a traitor."

The Grand Admiral's lip twitched. "You will," he promised softly.

He walked toward the double doors, passing out of Leia's sight, and there was the sound of the doors opening. The footsteps paused, clearly waiting; and a moment later the quieter paces of the maitrakh joined him. Both left, the doors dosed again, and Leia and Chewbacca were alone.

Alone. In enemy territory. Without a ship. And with their only ally about to undergo an Imperial interrogation. "I think, Chewie," she said softly, "we're in trouble."

One of the first minor truths about interstellar flight that any observant traveler learned was that a planet seen from space almost never looked anything at all like the official maps of it. Scatterings of cloud cover, shadows from mountain ranges, contour-altering effects of large vegetation tracts, and lighting tricks in general, all combined to disguise and distort the nice clean computer-scrubbed lines drawn by the cartographers. It was an effect that had probably caused a lot of bad moments for neophyte navigators, as well as supplying the ammunition for innumerable practical jokes played on those same neophytes by their more experienced shipmates.

It was therefore something of a surprise to find that, on this particular day and coming in from this particular angle, the major continent of the planet Jomark did indeed look almost exactly like a precisely detailed map. Of course, in all fairness, it was a pretty small continent to begin with.

Somewhere on that picture-perfect continent was a Jedi Master.

Luke tapped his fingers gently on the edge of his control board, gazing out at the greenish-brown chunk of in is X-wing's canopy. He could sense Jedi's presence-had been able to sense it, in fact, since first dropping out of hyperspace-but so far he'd been unable to make a more direct contact. Master C'baoth? he called silently, trying one more time. This is Luke Skywalker. Can you hear me?

There was no response. Either Luke wasn't doing it right, or C'baoth was unable to reply : or else this was a deliberate test of Luke's abilities.

Well, he was game. "Let's do a sensor focus on the main continent, Artoo," he called, looking over his displays and trying to put himself into the frame of mind of a Jedi Master who'd been out of circulation for a while. The bulk of Jomark's land area was in that one small continent-not much more than an oversized island, really-but there were also thousands of much smaller islands scattered in clusters around the vast ocean. Taken all together, there were probably close to three hundred thousand square kilometers of dry land, which made for an awful lot of places to guess wrong. "Scan for technology, and see if you can pick out the main population centers."

Artoo whistled softly to himself as he ran the X-wing's sensor readings through his programmed life-form algorithms. He gave a series of beeps, and a pattern of dots appeared superimposed on the scope image. "Thanks," Luke said, studying it. Not surprisingly, most of the population seemed to be living along the coast. But there were a handful of other, smaller centers in the interior, as well. Including what seemed to be a cluster of villages near the southern shore of an almost perfectly ring-shaped lake.

He frowned at the image, keyed for a contour overlay. It wasn't just an ordinary lake, he saw now, but one that had formed inside what was left of a cone-shaped mountain, with a smaller cone making a large island in the center. Probably volcanic in origin, given the mountainous terrain around it.

A wilderness region thick with mountains, where a Jedi Master could have lived in privacy for a long time. And a cluster of villages nearby where he could have emerged from his isolation when he was finally ready to do so.

It was as good a place to start as any. "Okay, Artoo, here's the landing target," he told the droid, marking it on his scope. "I'll take us down; you watch the sensors and let me know if you spot anything interesting."

Artoo beeped a somewhat nervous question. "Yes, or anything suspicious," Luke agreed. Artoo had never fully believed that the Imperial attack on them the last time they'd tried to come here had been purely coincidence.

They dropped in through the atmosphere, switching to repulsorlifts about halfway down and leveling off just below the tops of the highest mountains. Seen up close, the territory was rugged enough but not nearly as desolate as Luke had first thought. Vegetation was rich down in the valley areas between mountains, though it was sparse on the rocky sides of the mountains themselves. Most of the gaps they flew over seemed to have at least a couple of houses nestled into them, and occasionally even a village that had been too small for the X-wing's limited sensors to notice.

They were coming up on the lake from the southwest when Artoo spotted the mansion perched up on the rim.

"Never seen a design like that before," Luke commented. "You getting any life readings from it?"

Artoo warbled a moment: inconclusive. "Well, let's give it a try," Luke decided, keying in the landing cycle. "If we're wrong, at least it'll be a downhill walk to everywhere else."

The mansion was set into a small courtyard bordered by a fence that appeared more suited for decoration than defense. Killing the X-wing's forward velocity, he swung the ship parallel to the fence and set it down a few meters outside its single gate. He was in the process of shutting down the systems when Artoo's trilled warning made him look up again.

Standing just outside the gate, watching them, was the figure of a man.

Luke gazed at him, heart starting to beat a little harder. The man was old, obviously-the gray-white hair and long beard that the mountain winds were blowing half across his lined face were evidence enough of that. But his eyes were keenly alert, his posture straight and proud and unaffected by even the harder gusts of wind, and the halfopen brown robe revealed a chest that was strongly muscled.

"Finish shutting down, Artoo," Luke said, hearing the slight quaver in his voice as he slipped off his helmet and popped the X-wing's canopy. Standing up, he vaulted lightly over the cockpit side to the ground.

The old man hadn't moved. Taking a deep breath, Luke walked over to him. "Master C'baoth," he said, bowing his head slightly. "I'm Luke Skywalker."

The other smiled faintly. "Yes," he said. "I know. Welcome to Jomark."

"Thank you," Luke said, letting his breath out in a quiet sigh. At last. It had been a long and circuitous journey, what with the unscheduled stopovers at Myrkr and Sluis Van. But at last he'd made it.

C'baoth might have been reading his mind. Perhaps he was. "I expected you long before now," he said reproachfully.

"Yes, sir," Luke said. "I'm sorry. Circumstances lately have been rather out of my control."

"Why?" C'baoth countered.

The question took Luke by surprise. "I don't understand."

The other's eyes narrowed slightly. "What do you mean, you don't understand?" he demanded. "Are you or are you not a Jedi?"

"Well, yes-"

"Then you should be in control," C'baoth said firmly. "In control of yourselt, in control of the people and events around you. Always."

"Yes, Master," Luke said cautiously, trying to hide his confusion. The only other Jedi Master he'd ever known had been Yoda : but Yoda had never talked like this.

For another moment C'baoth seemed to study him. Then, abruptly, the hardness in his face vanished. "But you've come," he said, the lines in his face shifting as he smiled. "That's the important thing. They weren't able to stop you."

"No," Luke said. "They tried, though. I must have gone through four Imperial attacks since I first started out this way."

C'baoth looked at him sharply. "Did you, now. Were they directed specifically at you?"

"One of them was," Luke said. "For the others I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe the right place at the right time," he corrected.

The sharp look faded from C'baoth's face, replaced by something distant. "Yes," he murmured, gazing into the distance toward the edge of the cliff and the ring-shaped lake far below. "The wrong place at the wrong time. The epitaph of so many Jedi." He looked back at Luke. "The Empire destroyed them, you know."

"Yes, I know," Luke said. "They were hunted down by the Emperor and Darth Vader.

"And one or two other Dark Jedi with them," C'baoth said grimly, his gaze turned inward. "Dark Jedi like Vader. I fought the last of them on-" He broke off, shaking his head slowly. "So long ago."