Heir to the Jedi (33 page)

“No. But based on available cover, spatial geometrics, and his prior movements, the statistical probability he is there is quite high.”

I wasn’t going to argue. Even if we missed it would most likely flush him out. “Shoot the center of it?”

“Just to the right of center. I will shoot slightly right of that, nearer the tree. Let us steady our hands, aim carefully, and fire together on my count.”

Drusil counted down from three and we fired in tandem into the foliage. We were rewarded with a pained cry of surprise and followed up with a few more shots to make sure. I looked at the Givin, incredulous that she could figure his position so precisely, and she shrugged.

“What can I say? Math.”

A GRISLY YET RELIABLE
fact about custom bounty hunter ships is that you can always count on them to have body bags stashed somewhere for the easy transport of their kills. They often had built-in refrigerated storage, too, and a small chamber that served as a brig for those bounties they needed to bring back alive.

Much as it hurt, I searched for and found a body bag for Nakari in one of the ships that had its bay open, then I trekked back into the forest and finally set eyes on her, visually confirming what I had already felt. I couldn’t just leave her on Omereth. Fayet Kelen had already had his wife ripped from him with no way to say good-bye and let go. It was the very least I could do to take his daughter home; I owed her far more.

Nakari had ragged holes in her from shrapnel, but I was relieved that she was at least still in one piece and her eyes were already closed. Artoo waited nearby, still smoking from where a
bolt had destroyed his ion blaster and part of the socket where it had been attached. The rest of him was coated in a thin layer of black grit and carbon scoring. He greeted me with a morose moan instead of his usual burble.

“We’ll get you fixed, Artoo,” I reassured him, and then I dropped to my knees next to Nakari, eyes welling up already, and in a strange way I welcomed the blur to my vision and let the tears come; I’d never done so before because it had never seemed the proper time to mourn. Ben had been there when I discovered the burnt bodies of my aunt and uncle and I’d bottled everything up in shock, telling myself that the Empire was hunting us and we had to get to Alderaan. When Vader cut down Ben, there was no time to mourn him, either, only time to escape the Death Star and then join the Battle of Yavin. I lost my old friend Biggs to a TIE fighter during that battle, but I could hardly allow myself to think of that when I had to make my firing run down the trench. Then, incredibly, we won the day and everyone was happy, and there was always more work to do after that. It was never the right time to stop and feel all that I’d lost. But I had the time now: The Empire didn’t know where I was, Drusil would wait until I returned, and Artoo wouldn’t judge me. So I finally opened up that bottle inside and let the grief pour out. Nakari’s smile, Ben’s teaching, my aunt and uncle, joking around with Biggs, and so much more—all of it had been ripped from me by the war and I’d repressed it all because I thought I had to. But no more. My throat constricted with emotion and I lowered my head to Nakari’s shoulder and allowed myself to feel it all, the complete tragedy that none of them would ever speak to me again—even Ben’s voice was gone now.

Though it took a while, eventually I was spent and sat up, brushing a lock of hair away from Nakari’s face and hooking it behind her ear. “I’m so sorry. You were more than just good for me. I should have said so.” It was wholly inadequate, but I couldn’t think of what else to say.

Recalling our conversation last night on Kupoh, I wished I could go back to the Luke of a few hours ago and say,
Tell her how you feel
now,
Luke, while you still have the chance. Because you’ll always regret never saying the words
.

I’m not sure why I have such trouble with that. I don’t know if it’s a natural thing or something I learned from Uncle Owen. I know he had strong feelings, but he wasn’t in the habit of giving them words. He would do small things for Aunt Beru, surprising kindnesses, and whenever she came across them her eyes would light up and she would smile and say softly, “Owen.” That’s how she knew, and that’s the example I grew up with: You don’t tell people you love them, you show them. Or maybe I’m just terrified of sounding like an idiot when I try to tell someone they make me glad to be alive. I hope my friends know that I would fight and die for them. And I also hope that is enough, though I’m afraid maybe it isn’t.

I might have stayed there on my knees staring at Nakari until sunset if I hadn’t had Drusil waiting on me in the lagoon. Pointless, really; it wasn’t like I would forget the sight anytime soon. But somehow, putting her in the bag meant I had to let her go, and I didn’t want to. I needed to, though. I needed to let them all go.

It took some effort and a fresh spring of tears rolled down my face in the process, but I got her inside and asked Artoo if he could make it back to the beach on his own as I gently pulled the zipper closed. He beeped and edged forward as an answer, so I said, “Let’s go.”

The thin plas material crackled as I picked up Nakari and with some effort hitched her over my shoulder. Her physical weight didn’t seem nearly as heavy as the pressure of my grief, and I knew I’d have to carry the grief much longer.

We had the pick of six ships on the beach, but Drusil chose the one I had entered to find a body bag. It was the sleekest design among a heavily armored bunch, a dark-blue, beetle-shaped
crate that may have belonged to the Dressellian whom Nakari had shot off the swoop bike. Drusil avoided the cockpit entirely, searching instead for the guts of the nav computer and the systems service bay. Artoo accompanied her, and I heard him chattering and the Givin mumbling to him as I gently lowered Nakari’s body to the deck.

Seeing the lifeless black lump of plas that represented her now, a surge of anger and the cold that came with it rose up inside me again. But I closed my eyes, focused on my breathing, and remembered laughing with her. The cold gradually turned to warmth and I felt much better. Instead of feeling an impotent rage over all the time we wouldn’t have, I determined to feel grateful for the time we did, because it had all been good and not everyone gets to enjoy times like those. I carefully sat next to her on the deck, folding my legs in front of me, determined to master my emotions. I still had a mission to complete, and it wouldn’t do to be ruled by them. The bounty hunters we’d eliminated here might not be the only ones on the planet; more could be waiting at the island for us.

I didn’t know how much time slipped past, but when Drusil entered the bay and told me the ship’s security had been sliced and was now safe to fly, I was ready and the sun was riding low on the horizon.

“You checked the cockpit, too?” I asked. “There might be additional traps there.”

“Oh, yes. Everything has been seen to.”

“All right. Let’s get to the rendezvous.”

Drusil had fed the coordinates into the computer, and after taking some time to orient myself to the controls, I had the ship rise vertically to a safe height above the ocean before banking west. I didn’t want to become a snack for anything underneath the waves.

The scanning equipment on the ship was serviceable but not near the level of the
Desert Jewel
. We got a look at the island,
much larger than the one we had left behind, and saw that there were plenty of heat signatures and life readings there, along with a Corellian corvette on the ground that could have anywhere from a dozen to hundreds of people on board. It was one of the combat-outfitted CR90s with six dual turbolasers, and I wondered if Major Derlin could still be there.

If he was, he’d probably seen this ship before, which meant he would shoot at us on sight if he could. I spun the ship into evasive maneuvers just in time as a volley of laserfire zipped past us into the sky. I flipped on the deflector shields, cursing myself for not doing so as a routine precaution, and changed my approach to the island. We’d have to land some distance away and walk in, calling to make sure we weren’t ambushed. I didn’t know how to hail Major Derlin from this ship—but then I thought maybe Artoo could figure it out, since he was wired into this unfamiliar system. He wasn’t in the cockpit, though, and I didn’t know which of the auxiliary switches would activiate an intercom link to him. Deciding to go low-tech, I shouted over my shoulder and hoped he would hear me.

“Artoo, can you reach that ship on the island and patch it through if they respond? Tag your query with Alliance codes.”

We had to scramble out of the firing range of the other craft for another minute, but eventually a voice came through to the cockpit demanding to know how we had come to possess Alliance codes.

“This is Lieutenant Luke Skywalker. We destroyed all the bounty hunters that came to kill us and I have commandeered this ship. I have Drusil Bephorin on board ready to reunite with her family. Please stop shooting at us and let us land.”

After a pause, a different voice replied. There was the unmistakable sound of cheering going on behind him. “Lieutenant Skywalker, this is Major Bren Derlin. So good to hear your voice, sir. Drusil’s family is alive and well. You’re cleared to land.”

“Copy that. Coming around, see you soon.”

A noise in the ship startled me—something like a bantha horking up a glob of phlegm the size of a small moon. It turned out to be Drusil reacting to the news; she’d been listening in. Givin don’t have mucous membranes similar to humans or even tear ducts, so her loud expression of raw emotion was nothing I would have encountered before.

Bren Derlin’s team—a couple of squadrons of experienced troops—was waiting for us outside the ship, weapons ready but lowered, just in case a bounty hunter walked out after all, but they smiled and put away their weapons when I emerged. They looked tired and Derlin’s legendary mustache drooped a bit, but they were otherwise in good shape. He signaled to one of his troops and she waved someone forward who was out of sight on the ship, and that turned out to be Drusil’s family. Her husband and two children clattered down the landing ramp with excited steps and Drusil ran to meet them. They collided together with outstretched arms and many awkward noises.

“What happened?” I asked Major Derlin. “The bounty hunters followed you here?”

Chagrined, he nodded. “Unavoidable. Just bad timing. We were in the middle of extracting the family when word went out about the bounty on Drusil. Suddenly the family got checked on and we were discovered. We had a firefight getting out of there—I lost three men—and four hunters followed us out of the system. We lost the Empire once we jumped but picked up more hunters as we went—I think some of them called in their friends.”

“But they didn’t call the Empire?”

“The bounty on the family was too small to fight over, but the money for Drusil was worth a stakeout and splitting the proceeds. We hoped you’d be here waiting and we could take off right away, but instead we had to fortify and try to hold them off.”

“Clearly you succeeded.”

The major shrugged his shoulders and managed to do the same with his mustache. “They never attacked. They just jammed us to prevent us from broadcasting any messages and waited for you to show up. We couldn’t leave the family here on their own or it would have become a hostage situation, and if we tried to pick a fight, we’d have been outgunned.”

“Why didn’t they just attack you, then? We were coming regardless.”

“We made it clear that if they did attack we’d take a couple of them with us. And they made it clear we weren’t allowed to leave and change the venue. The smartest choice for everyone was to wait for you to arrive. And since they weren’t letting the Empire know we were here, I thought you had a good chance of winning through, and you did.”

“Not without cost, though,” I said. I bobbed my head back at the ship. “We lost the
Desert Jewel
back there, and lost Nakari Kelen, too.”

Derlin’s face fell. “Nakari was with you? They didn’t tell me. I’m very sorry, Luke. We met her not long ago. She was a topshelf sniper, taught me and the boys a few things.”

I nodded, keeping my emotions firmly reined in. “She taught me a lot, too.” I waved a hand at his corvette. “Are you in good shape? Okay to head back to the fleet?”

“Yeah, we have some scorch marks, but that’s about it.”

“Can I ride along?”

“Of course.”

Drusil came over with her family, elated, and introduced me to her husband and children. They were clothed in something like long, colorful tapestries with a hole for the head and belted at the waist, and underneath were simple black shirts and pants. Her son started to ask me a math question, but Drusil interrupted him. “That’s very polite of you, Pentir, but you can dispense with pleasantries in this case.”

“Oh. Apologies,” he said.

“Not to worry. It’s my pleasure to meet you all,” I said.

“I’m so very grateful to you and the Alliance for engineering a successful escape,” Drusil said. “I’m well aware of the sacrifices you have made to free us. And I have promised you a significant amount of intelligence regarding Imperial codes and search patterns in return. The slicing programs for low-level Imperial encryption that I mentioned, as well as others. Where would you like me to download this information?”