Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (56 page)

That final shudder as Jaina eased off the repulsorlifts and settled the shuttle onto
the docking bay floor stirred Mara from her rest. She opened her eyes and, seeing
where they were, rose quickly.

And then she swayed and seemed as if she would fall.

Leia and Jaina were there in an instant, catching and steadying her.

She regained her balance and took a deep breath. “Maybe next time you can dial down
the inertial compensator to
ninety-seven instead of ninety-five,” she said jokingly, straining a smile.

Jaina laughed, but Leia’s face showed her deep concern. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Mara eyed her directly.

“Perhaps we should find a place where you can rest,” Leia said.

“Where we all can rest,” Mara corrected, and her tone told Leia to back off, a reminder
that Leia was intruding on a private place for Mara, a place she had explicitly instructed
all of her friends, even her husband, not to go. This disease was Mara’s fight alone,
to Mara’s thinking, a battle that had forced her to reconsider everything she thought
about her life, past, present, and future, and everything she thought about death.

Leia held her stare for a moment longer, but replaced her own concerned expression
with one of acceptance. Mara did not want to be coddled or cuddled. She was determined
to live on in an existence that did not name her disease as the most pressing and
important facet of her entire life, to live on as she had before, with the illness
being relegated to the position of nuisance, and nothing more.

Of course, Leia understood it to be much more than that, an internal churning that
required Mara to spend hours and tremendous Force energy merely holding it in check.
But that was Mara’s business.

“I hope to meet with Nom Anor tomorrow,” Leia explained, as the three, with C-3PO
and Bolpuhr in tow, headed for the lower hatch, then moved down to the landing bay.
A contingent of New Republic Honor Guard stood waiting there, along with Commander
Ackdool, a Mon Calamarian with large, probing eyes, a fishlike face, and salmon-colored
skin. “By all reports, we should all be rested before dealing with him.”

“Believe those reports,” Mara said.

“And first, it seems I get to meet with our savior Jedi,” Leia
added dryly, looking back behind the
Jade Sabre
to see the X-wing gliding in to rest.

“Wurth Skidder,” Jaina remarked, recognizing the markings under the canopy on the
starfighter.

“Why am I not surprised?” Leia asked, and she blew a sigh.

Ackdool came over to them, then, and extended his formal greetings to the distinguished
guests, but Leia’s reaction set him back on his heels—indeed, it raised more than
a few eyebrows among the members of the
Mediator
’s Honor Guard.

“Why did you send him out?” Leia snapped, motioning toward the docking X-wing.

Commander Ackdool started to answer, but Leia continued. “If we had needed assistance,
we would have called for it.”

“Of course, Princess Leia,” Commander Ackdool said with a polite bow.

“They why send him out?”

“Why do you assume that Wurth Skidder flew out at my command?” the cool Commander
Ackdool dared to respond. “Why would you assume that Wurth Skidder heeds any order
I might give?”

“Couple o’ ridge-head parachutes floating over Osarian, if those Rodians had any luck,”
came the singsong voice of Wurth Skidder. The cocky young man was fast approaching,
pulling off his helmet and giving his shock of blond hair a tousle as he walked.

Leia stepped out to intercept him and took another quick step for no better reason
than to make the Jedi stop short. “Wurth Skidder,” she said.

“Princess,” the man replied with a bow.

“Did you have a little fun out there?”

“More than a little,” the Jedi said with a wide grin and a sniffle—and he always seemed
to be sniffling, and his hair always looked as if he had just walked in from a Tatooine
sandstorm. “Fun for me, I mean, and not for the Rodians.”

“And the cost of your fun?” Leia asked.

That took the smile from Wurth Skidder’s face, and he looked at Leia curiously, obviously
not understanding.

“The cost,” Leia explained. “What did your little excursion cost?”

“A couple of proton torpedos,” Wurth replied with a shrug. “A little fuel.”

“And a year of diplomatic missions to calm down the Osarians,” Leia retorted.

“But they shot first,” Wurth protested.

“Do you even understand that your stupidity likely escalated an already impossible
situation?” Leia’s voice was as firm and cold as anyone present had ever heard it.
So cold, in fact, that the always overprotective Bolpuhr, fearing trouble, glided
closer to her, hanging back just behind her left shoulder, within fast striking distance
of the Jedi.

“They were attacking you,” Wurth Skidder retorted. “Six of them!”

“They were trying to bring us down to Osarian,” Leia harshly explained. “A not-so-unexpected
response, given my announced intentions here. And so we planned to avoid them. Avoid!
Do you understand that word?”

Wurth Skidder said nothing.

“Avoid them and thus cause no further problems or hard feelings,” Leia went on. “And
so we would have, and we would have asked for no explanations from Shunta Osarian
Dharrg, all of us pretending that nothing had ever happened.”

“But—”

“And our graciousness in not mentioning this unfortunate incident would have bought
me the bargaining capital I need to bring some kind of conciliation from Osarian toward
Rhommamool,” Leia continued, anger creeping in thicker with each word. “But now we
can’t do that, can we? Now, so that Wurth Skidder could paint another skull on the
side of his X-wing, I’ll have to deal with an incident.”

“They shot first,” Wurth Skidder reiterated when it became apparent that Leia was
done.

“And better that they had shot last,” Leia replied. “And if Shunta Osarian Dharrg
demands reparations, we’ll agree, with all apologies, and any monies to be paid will
come from Wurth Skidder’s private funds.”

The Jedi squared his shoulders at the suggestion, but then Leia hit him with a sudden
and devastating shot. “My brother will see to it.”

Wurth Skidder bowed again, glared at Leia and all around, then turned on his heel
and walked briskly away.

“My apologies, Princess Leia,” Ackdool said. “But I have no real authority over Jedi
Skidder. I had thought it a blessing when he arrived two weeks ago. His Jedi skills
should certainly come in handy against any terrorist attempts—and we have heard rumors
of many—against the
Mediator
.”

“And you are indeed within striking distance of surface missiles,” C-3PO added, but
he stopped short, this time catching on to the many disapproving looks that came his
way.

“I did not know that Jedi Skidder would prove so …” Ackdool paused, searching for
the right word. “Intractable.”

“Stubborn, you mean,” Leia said. As they all started away, Leia did manage a bit of
a smile when she heard Mara behind her tell Jaina, “Maybe Nom Anor has met his match.”

C-9PO, a protocol droid, its copper coloring tinged red from the constantly blowing
dusts of Rhommamool, skittered down an alley to the side of the main avenue of Redhaven
and peeked out cautiously at the tumult beyond. The fanatical followers of Nom Anor,
the Red Knights of Life, had gone on the rampage again, riding throughout the city
in an apparent purge of landspeeders on their tutakans, eight-legged lizards with
enormous tusks that climbed right up past their black eyes and curled in like white
eyebrows.

“Ride the beasts given by Life!” one Red Knight screamed at a poor civilian as the
wrinkled Dressellian merchant was dragged from the cockpit and punched and pushed
to the ground.

“Perversion!” several other Red Knights cried in unison. “Life-pretender!” And they
set upon the landspeeder with their tubal-iron pummelstaves, smashing the windshield,
bashing in the side moldings, crushing the steering wheel and other controls, even
knocking one of the rear drive’s cylindrical engines from its mounts.

Satisfied that the craft was wrecked beyond repair, they pulled the Dressellian to
his feet and shoved him to and fro, warning him to ride creatures, not machines—or,
better still, to use the legs that nature had provided and walk. Then they beat him
back down to the ground and moved on, some climbing back atop the tutakans, others
running beside.

The landspeeder continued to hover, though it had only a couple of repulsors still
firing. It looked more like a twisted lump of beaten metal than a vehicle, tilting
to one side because of the unequal weight distribution and the weakened lift capacity.

“Oh, dear me,” the protocol droid said, ducking low as the contingent stormed past.

Tap, tap, tap
came the ringing of metal on metal against the top of the droid’s head. C-9PO slowly
turned about and saw the fringe of the telltale black capes, and the red-dyed hides.

With a screech, the droid stood up and tried to run away, but a pummelstave smashed
in the side of his leg and he went facedown in the red dust. He lifted his head, but
rising up on his arms only gave the two Red Knights a better handhold as they walked
past, each scooping the droid under one shoulder and dragging him along.

“Got a Ninepio,” one of the pair called out to his lizard-riding buddies, and a cheer
went up.

The doomed droid knew the destination: the Square of Hopeful Redemption.

C-9PO was glad that he wasn’t programmed to experience pain.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” Leia said firmly.

“Wurth thought he was helping us,” Jaina reminded, but Leia wasn’t buying that argument.

“Wurth was trying to find his own thrills,” she corrected.

“And that hotshot attitude of his will reinforce the ring of truth to Nom Anor’s diatribes
against the Jedi,” Mara said. “He’s not without followers on Osarian.” As she finished,
she looked down at the table, at the pile of leaflets Commander Ackdool had given
them, colorful propaganda railing against the New Republic, against the Jedi, and
against anything mechanical and technological, and somehow tying all of these supposed
ills to the cultural disease that engulfed the society of the planet Osarian.

“Why does Nom Anor hate the Jedi?” Jaina asked. “What do we have to do with the struggle
between Osarian and Rhommamool? I never even heard of these planets until you mentioned
that we’d be coming here.”

“The Jedi have nothing to do with this struggle,” Leia replied. “Or at least, they
didn’t until Wurth Skidder’s antics.”

“Nom Anor hates the New Republic,” Mara added. “And he hates the Jedi as symbols of
the New Republic.”

“Is there anything Nom Anor doesn’t hate?” Leia asked dryly.

“Don’t take him lightly,” Mara warned yet again. “His religious cry to abandon technology
and machines, to look for truth in the natural elements and life of the universe,
and to resist the joining of planets in false confederations resonates deeply in many
people, particularly those who have been the victims of such planetary alliances,
like the miners of Rhommamool.”

Leia didn’t disagree. She had spent many hours before and during the journey here
reading the history of the two planets, and she knew that the situation on Rhommamool
was much more complicated than that. While many of the miners had traveled to the
inhospitable red planet voluntarily, there were quite a number who were the descendants
of the original
“colonists”—involuntary immigrants sent there to work the mines because of high crimes
they had committed.

Whatever the truth of the situation, though, Leia couldn’t deny that Rhommamool was
the perfect breeding ground for zealots like Nom Anor. Life there was tough—even basics
like water could be hard to come by—while the prosperous Osarians lived in comfort
on white sandy beaches and crystal-clear lakes.

“I still don’t understand how any of that concerns the Jedi,” Jaina remarked.

“Nom Anor was stirring up anger against the Jedi long before he ever came to Rhommamool,”
Mara explained. “Here, he’s just found a convenient receptacle for his wrath.”

“And with the Jedi Knights scattered throughout the galaxy, and so many of them following
their own agendas, Nom Anor might just find plenty of ammunition to add to his arguments,”
Leia added grimly. “I’m glad that my brother is thinking of reestablishing the Jedi
Council.”

Mara nodded, but Jaina seemed less convinced. “Jacen doesn’t think that’s such a good
idea,” she reminded her mother.

Leia shrugged. Her oldest son, Jaina’s twin, had indeed expressed serious doubts about
the course of the Jedi Knights.

“If we can’t bring some sense of order to the galaxy, particularly to isolated planets
like Osarian and Rhommamool, then we’re no better than the Empire,” Mara remarked.

“We’re better than the Empire,” Leia insisted.

“Not in Nom Anor’s eyes,” Jaina said.