Abyss (12 page)

“Han, why don’t you see if you can find a stool or something to stick between Bazel’s teeth?” she asked. “With those tusks of his, he’s got to be chewing the inside of his mouth to ribbons.”

Han glanced at her briefly, then shifted his stare back to Kenth. “Okay,” he said. “But if this guy keeps talking to you like you’re some sort of—”

“Han!”
Leia turned him toward the control booth. “Please go. I have this.”

Han reluctantly allowed her to push him away, but continued to scowl back over his shoulder. Leia returned her attention to Kenth and waited in silence. She had learned a long time ago never to apologize for Han … especially when he wasn’t the one at fault. Besides, maybe a few sharp words from a hothead smuggler were just what Kenth needed to help him regain control of his temper.

But it wasn’t to be so. When Kenth finally spoke, his voice was as sharp as ever. “Jedi Solo, are you
trying
to get the Order disbanded?”

Leia cocked her brow, then calmly said, “I’m sure you know better than that, Master Hamner.”

“Then why the
kriff
would you ignore a GAS arrest warrant, and do it on a live holocam?” He was nearly shouting. “Daala herself has been on the comm telling me that she can’t allow this kind of public defiance, and I’m starting to agree with her. You know how bad our image is right now, and live feeds of you and Han ignoring a valid warrant only add to our problems.”

Leia remained silent until she was certain he had finished, then allowed a little durasteel to come to her own voice. “And what would you have preferred we do? Serve Bazel and Yaqeel up to be frozen in carbonite?”

“Yes, if that’s what the law demands,” Kenth retorted. “The Jedi aren’t going to survive, not if we keep trying to hold ourselves above the government—and above the
beings
—that we claim to serve.”

Leia shook her head sadly, wondering how such a principled man could be so blind to what was right. “Kenth, I know you’re in a tough spot, but think about what you’re saying. Law
isn’t
justice. We can’t start turning young Jedi Knights over to Daala just because they’ve fallen ill—especially not when her solution is to freeze them in carbonite.”

The flash of pain in Kenth’s eyes suggested that Leia had hit a nerve, but he was not ready to yield. “
That
, Jedi Solo, is not a Jedi Knight’s decision to make.” He pointed up the access tunnel, then said, “If we’re lucky, Captain Atar and his squad are still—”

Leia was saved by the
ding-swoosh
of the arriving turbolift, and this time it
was
Master Cilghal and Tekli who stepped out. The Mon Calamari took one look at Bazel’s shuddering form and gave a medication order to her assistant, then came over to stand with Leia and Kenth.

“I came as soon as I heard,” she said to Leia. “
Both
of them?”

Leia took a calming breath, then nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

Cilghal raised a finned hand. “No, don’t be afraid,” she said. “Now we have learned something.”

“Learned
what
?” Han asked, returning with the stool Leia had requested. “You know what’s wrong with them?”

“Not yet.” Cilghal waved a hand vaguely toward Bazel, who already had Tekli’s medication dart protruding from his throat. “But
with Bazel and Yaqeel both ill, we can begin to draw some conclusions.”

“Such as?” Kenth asked. While not sounding relieved, he at least sounded hopeful. “The Jedi could really use some good news about now.”

“I said
begin
, Master Hamner.” Cilghal turned to Han and Leia. “Captain Solo, if you’ll assist Tekli with Yaqeel, Jedi Solo and I can handle Bazel.”

Han looked to Kenth, indicating that the acting Grand Master had other ideas about how to handle the situation.

Cilghal rolled a huge eye toward Kenth. “Do you have an objection?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Kenth said. “There’s a GAS squad outside with a warrant for their arrest.”

Cilghal dropped her gaze, and a sense of guilt began to fill the Force. “I see.” She turned to Leia. “How many did they hurt?”

It was Han who answered. “
Hurt?
No one. We tranqed ’em right outside. GAS is only after them because the commotion got caught on holocam.”

Cilghal’s mouth fell open. “Then why would GAS want to arrest them?”

“Public endangerment,” Leia supplied. “And even that is overstating it. We had them inside in two minutes.”

Cilghal turned back to Kenth, her expression changing from guilty to confused to upset. “And you want to turn them over?”

“We were served a warrant, and we’re required to submit to it,” Kenth insisted. Judging by the color rising into his cheeks, Leia guessed that Daala had not bothered to tell him the charge when she commed to complain about the Solos’ defiance. “But this might even work to our advantage. When the circumstances are reviewed in open court, I’m sure Nawara Ven can make the public see that the charges are completely unjustified.”

“No,” Cilghal said. “We will not allow Daala to freeze my patients in carbonite so you can try to score a public relations point.”

Kenth’s face grew stormy. “Master Cilghal, the decision isn’t yours—”

“Nor is it yours alone. It is the Council’s. And if you want to honor a frivolous warrant simply out of expediency, I will insist that you seek approval.” Cilghal motioned the Solos toward the patients, then continued, “Until you have
that
, Master Hamner, I will be keeping the patients in the Asylum Block.”

Not wanting to give Kenth a chance to countermand the order, Leia immediately pointed Han toward Yaqeel and turned to deal with Bazel herself. Tekli’s medication dart had already put a stop to the convulsions, so she used the Force to lift the big Ramoan from between the wrecked speeders.

Leia had heard many times that “size matters not” when levitating an object, and perhaps that was true … for whoever had said it. But for her, it was all she could do to start Bazel floating toward the turbolift, and she was already beginning to tire when Han’s voice cried out behind her.

“Hey, I think we just lost another two!”

Leia’s concentration failed almost instantly, and Bazel hit the floor so hard it shook. Hoping a few more bruises would not make a difference to him, she spun toward the control booth and saw Han standing over Yaqeel’s unconscious form.

The Bothan was still slumped against the control booth, but her hands had been resecured to the collision bar by a new pair of wrist restraints. To Leia’s dismay, the only signs of Reeqo and Melari were a pair of gray apprentice robes lying on the floor next to Yaqeel, each neatly folded with a lightsaber on top.

“What happened?” Kenth asked, stepping over to the booth. To Leia’s relief—and maybe her surprise—there was no accusation or anger in his voice, only weariness and sorrow. “Did you see?”

Han shook his head. “Sorry. I was busy watching the, uh,
discussion
over Barv.” He gestured at the robes and lightsabers. “I didn’t even notice Reeqo and Mel were gone until I saw this stuff.”

“Well, they can’t have made it far.” Kenth pulled his comlink and started into the access tunnel. “Maybe we have time to stop them before they hurt someone.”

“That isn’t necessary, Master Hamner,” Cilghal said. She extended a flipper-hand toward Kenth, using the Force to prevent him from breaking into a run. “Those two aren’t a danger to anyone.”

Kenth spun on her, frowning. “Cilghal, if you want to take the warrants to the full Council, fine. But we can’t have any more crazy Jedi running loose on Coruscant.”

“They’re
not
crazy, even in the way you use the term, Master Hamner,” Cilghal said. “At least, I’m ninety-eight percent sure they aren’t.”

Kenth’s brow shot up. “Because?”

“Because they were never at Shelter,” Tekli answered. “They’re too young.”

“And all the other patients
were,
” Leia said, recalling their conversation when she and Han went to visit Seff Hellin. “Are you saying you’ve established a definite correlation?”

“A definite
statistical
correlation,” Cilghal corrected. “Not cause-and-effect, but when we factor in Bazel and Yaqeel, the margin of error falls to less than two percent. Only Jedi who were hidden in the Maw during the war with the Yuuzhan Vong are in danger of falling ill.”

Han’s brow arched in alarm, and Leia knew what he was thinking even before he asked, “What if they weren’t exactly
hiding
?”

Cilghal could only shrug. “I wish I could reassure you, Captain Solo, but the truth is we just don’t know.”

“Though, if it’s something environmental, there’s a good chance the risk would be related to length of exposure,” Tekli added, glancing toward Leia. “And the fact that neither of the Masters Solusar has fallen ill may suggest that adults aren’t as susceptible. You and Princess Leia are probably fine.”

Han’s expression remained anxious, and Leia knew he wasn’t worrying about himself, or even about her. He was thinking about a certain red-haired little girl, wondering who would protect
her
if her grandparents suddenly set course for the nearest black hole.

“Han, relax,” Leia said. “You’ll be the first to know if I start feeling crazy.”

An embarrassed smirk came to Han’s face. “That’s not much comfort, Princess,” he said. “After hanging around with me all these years, you wouldn’t feel the change.”

“Oh, I’d feel it,” Leia said, smiling. “Trust me.”

“If you ask me, you’ve
both
been crazy for a long time,” Kenth added, probably only half joking. “But I’m not sure I have faith in this new theory. If those apprentices didn’t fall ill, why did they run off?”

Han glanced over at the folded robes and abandoned lightsabers, then frowned.

“If I had to guess,” he said, “I’d say they quit.”

In space ahead floated a distant cluster of fiery whorls, each about the size of a finger ring and rapidly growing larger as the
Eternal Crusader
approached. With the edges of every whorl just touching the edges of those adjacent, the cluster was too uniformly dense to be natural. Yet with a diameter of more than a billion kilometers, it was too immense to be anything
but
natural. Around the middle of the strange formation, resembling a belt around a big belly, ran a line of larger, brighter whorls. In the middle of this belt, one pair hung close, connected by the distinctive curved accretion bars of a tight binary system.

The binary was the sole imperfection in the homogeneous formation. It had drifted out of place and seemed to be in danger of crashing into several of its neighbors. On the side opposite the impending collision, a small crescent of darkness had opened between it and the adjacent whorls, and through this crescent, burning deep inside a hollow
shell of darkness, Vestara Khai could see the hot blue ember of a distant star.

Vestara’s Master, Lady Olaris Rhea, pointed toward the dark crescent. “There.”

A pale blond woman with pale blue eyes, Lady Rhea had a regal, lithe frame and an austere beauty as imposing as it was striking. Her manner tended to vacillate between self-assured and arrogant—not that she cared what Vestara or anyone else thought of her. She was a Sith Lord of Kesh, and it was others who needed to worry about what she thought of
them
.

“Do you see?” she demanded. “That must be where Ship went.”

“Yes, Lady Rhea. I’ll see if he’s there now.”

Vestara did not say she would
try
to locate Ship, nor did she ask if she should. Sith apprentices did not
try
, and they did not ask permission before acting. They were expected to know what their Masters required of them and then
do
it. If they failed in either regard, they suffered for it; if they failed too often, their suffering ended—permanently.

Vestara focused her attention on the dark crescent, then reached out in the Force and sensed a murky, tireless presence that she immediately recognized as Ship. He seemed surprised to feel her touch, yet this time he did not flinch or try to hide, as he had so many times before. He simply allowed her to maintain contact and feel his joy, as though he had passed beyond the Lost Tribe’s reach and no longer feared being taken back to Kesh.

And perhaps that was so. Vestara felt another presence deep in the crevice beyond. Even more ancient and alien than Ship himself, this new presence was filled with the hunger and longing of the dark side, and powerful beyond comprehension. Though Ship had never actually
spoken
to her across such great distances, she could sense that he wanted her to understand his connection to this strange presence. Ship was a creature of service. When a being of strong will commanded him, obeying became his greatest joy, his
only
joy. Ship could no more disobey than Vestara could stop breathing.

Vestara understood. She had felt the ancient presence reach out to Kesh, the same as Ship had—the same as the entire Tribe had. But
Ship should have waited for Lord Vol to assign a pilot before leaving. The
Sith
had created Ship, and his duty was to the
Sith
. Therefore, Ship
would
return to the
Eternal Crusader
and accept Vestara as his pilot, and they would all proceed together.