Reunion (29 page)

“Nonsense. You’re as good as dead—”

“Not me, you idiot: Shimrra. You’re never going to convince him to give your freedom and honor back. Why would he listen to you? Why would he care the slightest atom about what you want? You can’t see what’s going on under your misshapen nose, let alone in the court of a ruler a million times more powerful than the Prophet will ever be—irrespective of who wears the mask. Whatever power you gain tonight will vanish upon your death, and the death of everyone tainted by your foul stench. Your life was forfeit from the moment you entered this room. My only sadness is that I won’t be there to see it happen.”

Instead of showing doubt, the Shamed One smiled back. “Don’t think you can trick me, Amorrn. I know you’re only trying to—”

Something jolted Shoon-mi from behind, causing him to fall forward and lose his grip on the coufee. Nom Anor twisted to avoid the razor-sharp edge as Shoon-mi fell across him, dropping the lambent and turning the world to darkness.

Sudden commotion in the blackened room renewed Nom Anor’s desperation to survive. He struggled wildly, ineffectually, under the heavy weight of Shoon-mi’s body. Voices in the dark, the sound of painful grunts, the slashing of blades, the soft, wet sound of tearing fabric and flesh, the clash of weapons—all filled the air in a grisly cacophony. The hands that had been holding his shoulders down and his plaeryin bol closed had gone, but he was still pinned beneath Shoon-mi, who was breathing heavily, painfully. An agonized cry came from someone nearby, followed by the sound of a body crumpling to the floor.

Nom Anor finally rolled from under Shoon-mi’s limp body, removing the coufee from the Shamed One’s hand as
he did. Shoon-mi hit the ground with a grunt and whimper, but didn’t make any attempt to move or defend himself. Then Nom Anor collected the lambent and cast the light in the direction of the fighting. The sudden light upon the two combating warriors was enough to startle one into turning marginally. It was all Kunra needed to gain the advantage and dispose of his opponent. Crouching low, he swung his long blade and buried it deep in the other warrior’s side. The eyes of the Shamed One died as they stared at Nom Anor, then the body sagged to the ground with the others, cut virtually into two halves.

Kunra straightened, wiping the flat of his blade clean on his robes.

“You all right?” he asked.

Nom Anor nodded, glancing around at the bodies lying about his chamber. “I will be now.”

“Sorry it took me so long,” the ex-warrior said. “Three of them jumped me in my room. I figured when they didn’t kill me right away that it wasn’t me they were after. They just wanted to keep me out of the way until Shoon-mi had finished with you. I guess they thought I might decide to join up with them once he’d taken over role of leader.”

Nom Anor put a hand on Kunra’s shoulder. “Either way, that was astoundingly good timing.”

“Not really. I stood outside for a while, listening.” Kunra’s flat, gray eyes looked away.

Nom Anor studied the ex-warrior. “Of course you did. You thought about letting Shoon-mi kill me. Then you could have killed him at a later date and taken over as Prophet yourself, right?”

“Perhaps.” Kunra placed his weapon beneath his robes. There was no sign of an apology, but Nom Anor didn’t want one. He didn’t mind treacherous thoughts, as long as the end result was loyalty.

“You would have made a better Prophet than Shoon-mi could have ever hoped to.” Nom Anor looked down at the Shamed One on the floor, moaning piteously with the handle of a coufee protruding from his back. The blade had severed his spinal column, rendering his limbs useless.

“What you said to him just then,” Kunra started, then stopped, unsure of either himself or the question he was about to ask.

Nom Anor faced him. “What about?”

“You told him the plan to reclaim our honor couldn’t work,” he said. “That the Supreme Overlord would never listen to us.”

“I was merely bluffing.”

Kunra shook his head. “No, I could tell from your voice that you meant it.”

Nom Anor nodded, understanding Kunra’s doubt.
Was
their quest a hopeless one? There were very real uncertainties in his mind—particularly after seeing Shimrra in all his splendor in the palace again.

“Who knows, Kunra? Shimrra is powerful; there’s no questioning that. But maybe we can convince him. If I had a thousand more warriors as loyal as you by my side, I would have no doubts whatsoever.”

Nom Anor glanced down again at Shoon-mi. With his foot he rolled the Shamed One over, pushing the coufee in Shoon-mi’s back even deeper. Shoon-mi cried out in discomfort, his pathetic features staring up pitiably at Nom Anor.

“Forgive me, Master,” he whimpered. “I was a misguided fool! You truly are one of the gods!”

“No, Shoon-mi,” he said. “You were right the first time. I’m not one of the gods. I spurn them as readily as I spurn you. I prefer the company of the living.”

With that he reached down and took the Shamed One’s
throat in his hands and crushed the remaining life out of him. The terror of death in Shoon-mi’s eyes lasted no more than thirty seconds before being replaced by an almost serene emptiness.

Standing upright, Nom Anor faced Kunra.

“Get rid of the bodies,” he said dispassionately. “I don’t want anyone knowing about this. The last thing I need is for others to get the idea into their heads that the Prophet is vulnerable.”

“I understand,” Kunra said, and immediately began to drag the corpses to the door.

Nom Anor reached up to touch the seeping wound at his throat that Shoon-mi had inflicted. “I need to see to this,” he said. Before he left the room, he faced Kunra one last time. “You did well this night, Kunra. I won’t forget it.”

Kunra nodded solemnly, then continued with his grisly work.

Luke listened to the news from the boras network with a feeling of foreboding.

“Senshi’s made no attempt to talk to anyone,” he said when the latest reports came to an end. “But he’s up to something.”

“I agree,” Mara said. “Did he give you any idea what that might be?”

“Something dramatic, decisive, attention getting.” Luke steepled his fingers under his chin and tried to think. They were seated on the upper floor of one of the mushroom-shaped habitats. Large pores in the ceiling and walls admitted air and light into the domed space. Bowls of aromatic tea had been served on a table around which they had gathered to consider their next move.

“It would help if we knew where they were going, at least,” Mara said, scowling into her bowl. Both she and
Luke had tried to sense Jacen through the Force, but they had given up after an hour; the eddying life fields of the planet simply proved too difficult to penetrate. It was now afternoon, and Luke had yet to ascertain whether such interference was normal, or somehow manufactured artificially.

“We are narrowing down the possibilities,” Darak said from the edge of the habitat. She had taken to pacing nervously, worrying at her hands as she pondered the Magister’s fate. “It’s not easy; the tampasi is very dense in that region, and the trail isn’t marked, but I believe I can guess at his destination.”

Mara looked up hopefully. “Where?”

“To the northeast of here lies a stand of rogue boras. Sekot permits their existence in order to encourage genetic diversity.”

“Rogue?” Mara frowned. “How?”

“Boras can be very dangerous and territorial when allowed to grow wild,” Darak explained. “They are as strictly contained as they can be.”

Hegerty’s expression was one of incomprehension. “Wild
trees
?”

“Boras are more than mere trees.” There was rebuke in Rowel’s words. “Boras seeds are mobile. They migrate to a nursery every summer, where lightning called down by the boras launches them on the next stage of their life cycle. There are many different types of boras, and correspondingly many different ways that mutants can be harmful.”

“Particularly during a thunderstorm,” Darak added. “So why would Senshi be taking them there, then?” Mara asked.

“Maybe he’s unaware that the mutant stand is in his path,” Hegerty suggested.

“It’s not important why,” Luke said. He fixed Darak with a sober gaze. This was the best lead they had had in
hours. “Is it possible to cut them off before they reach it?”

Darak shook her head. “Even our fastest runners couldn’t get there in time. They’ll be there within two hours.”

“What about airships?” Luke pressed.

“The boras will prevent them from landing.”

“
Jade Shadow
could do it,” Mara said. “I can summon her here with the slave circuit. If you’ll release her from the landing field, we could be there in less than an hour.”

“We can try to ask Sekot,” Rowel said, “but it will be difficult without the Magister.”

“Try anyway,” Luke said. The Ferroan bowed and left the habitat.

Luke’s comlink buzzed, and he answered it. The voice at the other end belonged to Captain Yage.

“Master Skywalker, telemetry is picking up gravitation readings on the third moon of Mobus.”

“Source?”

“Unknown. But M-Three is little more than a rock. There can’t be anything big enough down there to generate gravity waves.”

“It could be a damaged coralskipper,” Luke said.

“Or one that’s working just fine,” Mara added.

“That was my thought,” Yage said. “We’d like to send a couple of TIEs to investigate.”

A glance at Darak confirmed to Luke that their hosts would be less than happy at the thought of Imperial fighters swarming over the small moon. “I’ll get back to you on that, Arien,” he said, and clicked off the comlink.

Before he could speak, Darak was shaking her head. “We will not permit what you are about to ask.”

Luke sighed, fighting to keep his tone even and reasonable when he spoke. “Please understand that we wish
you no harm. We have done nothing so far to hurt you or your world. In fact, we may have found a security breach that you missed. All it would take is one ship to escape from here, and your Sanctuary will be shattered. Instead of being afraid of us, you should be letting us help you.”

“Perhaps.” Darak still wasn’t convinced, but at least she was listening. “We shall check our own observations. If there really are gravity waves coming from that moon, we will detect them and take action for ourselves.”

Luke nodded. “That sounds reasonable.”

“But don’t take too long,” Mara said as the Ferroan woman exited the room. “I don’t like being stuck here while who knows what might be warming up their drives over our heads.”

“Sekot will protect you,” Rowel assured, returning to take Darak’s place.

“And who’ll protect Sekot?” Mara’s words were steeped in annoyance and frustration, although beneath them Luke sensed a genuine sympathy for the Ferroans. “You’ve been out here too long. You’ve forgotten how big the galaxy is. Maybe Sekot has forgotten, too. I admire your faith in this planet you live on, but I’d hate you to get a rude reminder of how things really are.”

“You know little about Sekot,” the Ferroan said. “Your information is decades old, scavenged from rumors and legends. You have no concept of what Sekot is capable of.”

“Which is why we’re here,” Luke said. “We
want
to know, because Sekot is at the core of our solution. With that knowledge, perhaps we can find peace in a way that won’t involve the death of trillions.”

“We’re going in circles,” Hegerty said. “And until Sekot decides to trust us, we’re just going to keep on going that way.”

“Sekot has no
reason
to trust you,” Rowel stated flatly.

“Then we’ll just have to give it one,” Mara said.

Luke nodded in agreement, thinking:
But
what?
What would Obi-Wan do in my place
?

The thought that Obi-Wan and his father had been here, long ago, still nagged at the back of his mind. If there were any way to summon the spirit of his lost teacher, he would have done so immediately.

What happened to you when you were here, Ben? Does it have any bearing on what’s happening to us now? And what of my father? Was his fate bound in any way to what happened to him here
?

His thoughts, of course, received no answer, so he released them with a sigh. He returned to the discussion with the others, empathizing fully with Mara’s growing frustration …

The corridors of the Esfandia Long-Range Communications Base were narrow but surprisingly tall. Obviously, Leia thought, it had been designed that way with its Gotal commander in mind, whose twin energy-sensing horns stretched a meter above Leia’s head. On the
Millennium Falcon
, Ashpidar would have had to crouch at all times; here the commander had to duck only occasionally on her tour of the base.

The heights of the rest of the crew, however, were on the whole decidedly below average. Three slight Sullustans made up the core engineering and technical expertise on the base, while five stocky Ugnaughts were there for grunt work. There was a Noghri security chief called Eniknar who came up to Leia’s shoulder; his assistants were two squat Klatooinians. Two human communications specialists and a Twi’lek science officer defended the average.

The tour, given by the commander and her security chief, shouldn’t have taken long, but Ashpidar insisted
on introducing Leia and Droma to everyone they met. Her Noghri bodyguards hovered close behind at all times. They were quiet and unobtrusive, but Leia could always sense them there.

Droma had chosen to accompany her to the base because he’d said he needed to get out of the
Falcon
for a while. After what they’d just been through, he was feeling a little claustrophobic. Han had opted to stay back with his ship, because he felt that someone needed to keep an eye on her. Besides which, he said it would give him the chance to do diagnostic checks on the engine and shield generators.

“This is our extravehicular bay.” Ashpidar opened an internal air lock to reveal five speeder bikes. Next to them stood a cupboard containing enviro-suits suitable for the dense, frigid atmosphere outside. “Although the base itself is mobile, there are times when we must travel individually to the sensor stations to perform minor repairs. The sensors are temperamental devices, requiring frequent maintenance.”