Fate Of The Jedi_ Outcast Part 16

They were not from the tomb. She stared up into the pinkish sky, seeing only the distant sun and a sliver of the former garrison moon. The thought came from there there.

Who is there? I felt you. Please ... please ... There was such a yearning desperation to the words, such a hunger, that Allana wanted to reply, wanted to rea.s.sure whoever was there. But caution and fear and a hundred lessons she had learned at her mother's knee kept her from doing so. There was such a yearning desperation to the words, such a hunger, that Allana wanted to reply, wanted to rea.s.sure whoever was there. But caution and fear and a hundred lessons she had learned at her mother's knee kept her from doing so.

What is your name? The question sent a tingle of dread down Al-lana's spine. She had the eerie sensation that if she responded, if she offered her name, it would be s.n.a.t.c.hed away and never returned, leaving her to wander forever not knowing who she was. She hugged herself for warmth and, keeping her head low, reined her senses in. The question sent a tingle of dread down Al-lana's spine. She had the eerie sensation that if she responded, if she offered her name, it would be s.n.a.t.c.hed away and never returned, leaving her to wander forever not knowing who she was. She hugged herself for warmth and, keeping her head low, reined her senses in.

The voice did not return, and a couple of minutes later Allana no longer felt any hint of it. She breathed a sigh of relief.

She almost b.u.mped into C-3PO. As she rounded a particularly wide stone rise, he was suddenly there, splendidly metallic and modern, R2-D2 beside him. The astromech whistled a musical greeting, sounding not at all perturbed.

"Miss Amelia! You really mustn't go off alone."

She nodded and, not slowing, began heading back toward where she thought the mine buildings must be. "I know, I know."

C-3PO hurried to keep up, the faint whining sound of his arm and leg servos increasing as he did so. "Thank the maker you're unhurt. If I'd had to report to Master Han and Mistress Leia that you had come to some harm, I'm sure I'd find myself doomed to an eternity of opening ale bottles in the filthiest taproom in Coruscant's sublevels-"

"You keep talking about a maker. Who made you?"

"Actually, I don't quite recall. But I was made, so the existence of my maker is beyond question. And since I consider my existence to be a good thing, he was without a doubt benevolent and forward thinking."

"I guess."

In a large natural cave, one with several tunnels splitting off at various angles, Leia studied the sensor board, considered their options, and shook her head. She pointed straight up. "That way."

Han looked up as though he could see through both the speeder's opaque roof and the impenetrable darkness, then turned his attention to the sensors. They showed a recess in the ceiling, one that could easily be interpreted just as a natural depression in the rock. But Leia had sensed otherwise. Han put the speeder into a careful vertical ascent.

The cleft was easily wide enough to accommodate the speeder at its base, but it narrowed, becoming a not-quite-straight chimney of sorts. As they rose, something b.u.mped onto the roof, then scrambled free with a skittering noise. Han froze for a moment, then realized it could not have been one of the energy spiders-a spider would have attacked rather than fled.

Twenty meters up, the chimney widened into a broad cave, one that sloped downward to the southwest. At Leia's nod, he put the speeder on a slow, gentle course down that decline.

Leia returned her attention to the sensor board, where topographic lines, constantly changing, showed the irregularities of the channel they were following. "I swear, this is all natural caves and tunnels. Worn by water."

"Do you think Kessel had more water once upon a time?"

She shook her head. "I think Kessel used to be a chunk of some other planet, a much bigger one, with seas and a thicker atmosphere. The life-forms we know of here, the spiders and the avians, must have developed at that time-can you imagine a big avian developing on this world, with an atmosphere so thin they can barely fly? But then some calamity destroyed that world, and the chunk that became Kessel is all that remains of it."

"Maybe the rest of the debris fell into the Maw."

The tunnel they followed continued laterally and downward for several kilometers. It was a winding course but remained broad, clearly the remains of a long-dead underground river. Eventually, Leia spotted signs on the sensor screen of fissures, vertical cracks in the rock. They shone the speeder headlights on those spots and saw that the breaks in the rock were far more recent than the surrounding stone. "Groundquakes," Han said.

As if in response, an ominous vibration filled the air. Small rocks dislodged themselves from the tunnel roof overhead and began clattering down all around the speeder and onto its roof. The rumbling, like the galaxy's largest giant tucking into a big bowl full of boulders for his breakfast, did not diminish-it intensified, the rocks crashing down onto the speeder growing from pebble-sized to fist-sized to head-sized. Han kept his hands tight on the yoke, knuckles white, ready to duck one way or another if he had enough warning of disaster.

The flooring beneath them gave way. The speeder's repulsors, set to maintain an alt.i.tude of a meter above the ground, were not strong enough. Han, Leia, and their vehicle dropped into pitch blackness, with more stones and boulders following them.

CITY OF DOR'SHAN, DORIN.

Luke could tell that Ben was finding the temple of the Baran Do both alien and comfortably familiar. The decor was characteristic of the Kel Dors, a constant barrage of symbols and metaphors stylistically representing their natural surroundings and forces of nature, but the chambers had obvious purposes he instantly understood. Training halls. Cla.s.srooms. Meditation rooms. Dining halls. It all operated on a much smaller scale than the Jedi Temple; Luke did not ask Tistura Paan, their student guide, but estimated that there were perhaps six Masters here and no more than twenty students of various ranks.

The combat training hall was comparatively small and very lightly equipped. Staves rested on weapon racks; padded body armor hung on wall hooks. There were padded mats on the floor for practice. The hall could accommodate perhaps two sets of sparring pairs at a time.

Ben asked Tistura Paan, "Don't all your students train in combat?"

"No. The Baran Do are not a militant order like the Jedi."

"We're not that that militant." militant."

She offered him a smile, showing her grinding palates. "You all study fighting. That's militant. Our role is one of advice and advance warning. The first Baran Do were village seers who had a heightened weather sense and could warn their fellows of impending storms. Over the centuries, they and their descendants corresponded with one another, exchanging techniques and philosophies. The best became personal advisers to the rulers of our kind. Eventually the order became a scholarly one, collecting and cataloging knowledge of the arts and sciences, as well as of the ways of the Force."

They pa.s.sed through an angled archway into a meditation chamber furnished only with small circular mats on the floor. The chamber had no viewports and the walls were a soothing, rough-textured gray-white, like the inside of a cloud.

Luke asked, "I've been a.s.suming, but did not ask yesterday, that Master Plo Koon was once a member of your order."

Tistura Paan nodded. She sat on one of the foam circles and, by gesture, invited Luke and Ben to do likewise. They complied. She said, "Over the centuries, many of the Koon family have been Baran Do. The Force runs strong in that line, as, it is said, in the Skywalker line. It is said of Plo Koon that he never grew weary of living among oxygen breathers, of having to cope with claustrophobic masks and strange faces. Me, I would grow weary of it within weeks or months."

Ben tapped the transparisteel mask over his own face. "I know how you feel."

"Your father will be instructed by Master Tila Mong in the ha.s.sat-durr ha.s.sat-durr technique, which I understand you are not learning. Would you like to get in some fighting practice?" technique, which I understand you are not learning. Would you like to get in some fighting practice?"

"You promise not to yank my mask off this time?"

"No promises."

"Oh, well. Sure."

Once the two were gone, Luke did not have long to wait. Tila Mong entered, gestured for Luke not to rise, and sat on a pad opposite his. "One Master to another," she said. "You will not object to an accelerated course, devoid of learning rituals and training artifacts?"

"That would be most agreeable."

"Well, then. The technique you asked to learn is the ayna-seff ayna-seff technique of the technique of the ha.s.sat-durr ha.s.sat-durr family. In our language, the term family. In our language, the term ha.s.sat-durr ha.s.sat-durr means 'lightning rod.'" means 'lightning rod.'"

"Why do you call it that?"

"Because if you are not absolutely perfect in your mastery of the technique and perform ha.s.sat-durr ha.s.sat-durr during a storm, you will be repeatedly struck by lightning and killed." during a storm, you will be repeatedly struck by lightning and killed."

Despite himself, Luke laughed. "You're kidding. Right?"

She shook her head. "The ha.s.sat-durr ha.s.sat-durr techniques suffuse your body with a very low level of electromagnetic radiation. You produce the radiation as an interaction between the Force and your own mental influence over your central nervous system. The energies a student produces early in his study of the technique attract lightning much like a lightning rod. It is for this reason that this skill, like that of dismantling high explosives, is best perfected before it is ever attempted in the field." techniques suffuse your body with a very low level of electromagnetic radiation. You produce the radiation as an interaction between the Force and your own mental influence over your central nervous system. The energies a student produces early in his study of the technique attract lightning much like a lightning rod. It is for this reason that this skill, like that of dismantling high explosives, is best perfected before it is ever attempted in the field."

"Other than scrambling brain scans and permitting a rather difficult-to-solve form of suicide by lightning, what do the other ha.s.sat-durr ha.s.sat-durr techniques do?" techniques do?"

"They can disable one's own prosthetics and electronic implants, can interfere with shock shackles, can cause one to be perceived by animal senses as something terrible or something inoffensive, and can allow one to act as a very effective range-boosting antenna for com-links. And there are other uses."

From a pocket in her robes, she drew out two objects. One looked like an ordinary sphere of durasteel-gray metal about four centimeters in diameter. The other was a flat plate of the same material; it had a rimmed depression that was clearly intended to accommodate the ball. An insulated cable was attached to the edge of the plate. About a meter long, it ended in an elastic strap with an electrical lead embedded in it.

She set the plate down in front of Luke, put the ball in the depression, and handed him the elastic band. "Please attach that to your hand, placing the lead in your palm."

Luke began to comply, then thought better of it and put the strap on his flesh hand instead of the prosthetic one.

"This device," Tila Mong said, "is a simple teaching tool. It is attuned to the precise intensities and frequencies of electromagnetic energy produced by someone correctly practicing the ayna-seff ayna-seff technique." technique."

"How, by the way, does ayna-seff ayna-seff translate?" translate?"

"Dead brain."

Luke grinned. "You Baran Do have very practical naming conventions."

"Our artistic senses lean toward the tactile and visual, not verbal. For us, learning Basic is always a ritual of discovery of colorful adjectives and breathtaking arrays of synonyms. Anyway, your first step is to learn to channel energies that will cause the ball to lift off the plate."

Luke looked at the ball. He allowed himself to sink into a meditative state. He resisted the urge to push at the ball with the Force; he could certainly lift it telekinetically, but that would not benefit his training. Instead, one by one, he cycled through all the Force techniques he had learned, not utilizing them but putting himself in the mental state required by each.

Half a minute later, as he prepared for a technique that caused holocams briefly to go to static, a method by which Jedi could bypa.s.s many security setups, the ball sprang up and began spinning, bobbing up and down between ten and twenty centimeters above the plate.

Tila Mong nodded. "Well, that's about eight weeks of apprentice training bypa.s.sed."

"But that's only the first stage. What are the others?"

"You learn to stop the ball from spinning. That means you have found the exact form of energy necessary for the dead brain technique. You learn to maintain the ball at an alt.i.tude of about one centimeter. That means you have found the correct amount of energy to exert, an amount that makes it hard for any but the most delicate and most correctly attuned devices to discover that there is any anomaly in your electromagnetic energy output. And you learn to sustain the output without tiring yourself-for days, weeks, or even longer."

"Is this how Jacen Solo learned the technique from Koro Ziil?"

Immediately, something shut down in Tila Mong's mind.

Luke wasn't sure whether someone who was not a Jedi Master would have noticed it. He wasn't even sure most Masters would have detected it. But something, the equivalent of a durasteel vault door, slid shut within Tila Mong's consciousness.

Her face and manner betrayed no sign of it. She just said, "Yes."

"How long did it take him?"

"As I recall, about three days."

Luke smiled. "It's very un-Jedi-like of me, but I want to break his record."

CALRISSIAN-NUNB MINES, KESSEL.

"WHERE'S U UNCLE H HAN?" CHANCE, SITTING BESIDE A ALLANA AT THE gleaming white cafeteria table, rhythmically kicked the underside of the tabletop. gleaming white cafeteria table, rhythmically kicked the underside of the tabletop.

"Not back yet." Allana paid him no attention. Her gaze was on Tendra and Lando, who sat alone at an adjacent table, whispering urgently to each other.

She glared at them. While Nanna prepared dinner in the adjoining, cavernously empty personnel kitchen, Nien Nunb waited in the communications room for a call from Han and Leia, and Chance was busy being a toddler. The Calrissians, it was clear, were discussing the Solos' fate but not doing anything about it.

Allana spoke in tones so low they couldn't hear her. "They're not dead, you know. I'd have felt it."

"Where's Aunt Leia?"

"Not back yet."

Chance's kicks grew more energetic. Allana felt like joining him in punishing the table. Finally, she raised her voice. "Why don't we go looking for them?"

Lando and Tendra looked her way. Lando flashed her a smile she knew was supposed to be rea.s.suring. She resented him for it.

"We're not sure that it would do any good at the moment, sweetie," he told her. "We're trying to figure out what to do next."

"We should just go down there and look. I'm really good at looking."

She saw Lando suppress a shudder. "Amelia, do you know what a transceiver is?"

She nodded. "It's like a comlink, except you talk into comlinks, and you don't talk into all transceivers."

"Right. Your mommy and daddy are carrying several transceivers, some of which they don't even know about. In their speeder, in their equipment."

"I know about tracking devices, too." She shot him a suspicious look. "You put tracking devices on them."

"Of course! Comm signals don't go very far in the mines. They don't go through stone. So I had special transceivers put in their gear that communicate with the seismic sensors we've got all over the tunnels. A while ago, after we stopped receiving signals and we had that groundshake, your aunt Tendra and I did go down to look."

"Why didn't you tell me? I would have gone with you."

"Yeah ... Anyway, there's a lot of fallen stone between us and Han and Leia right now. We have to dig through to them."

"And none of our miners are here right now," Tendra added. "Most of them are away on paid leave. We've sent out word asking for volunteers."

"Well, until they get here, we we can-" can-"

"We can stay here," Lando said, sounding stern for the first time in the conversation. He fixed her with a stare, and when she did not reply, he turned back to Tendra.

"I could find them," Allana whispered.

"What's that, Miss Amelia?" C-3PO, dithering beside R2-D2 on the other side of the table, leaned forward as if it would help his au-dioreceptors to pick up her words.

She gave the droid a resentful look. "Nothing."

R2-D2 tweetled, a lengthy statement for him. Allana glanced at C-3PO for a translation.

The protocol droid leaned toward her again. "He says he approves very highly of adventuresome young girls being adventuresome young girls. But not this time."

Allana sighed.

NINTH HALL OF JUSTICE, CORUSCANT.

She was the same Falleen judge who had handed down Luke Skywalker's sentence, and she was identically impa.s.sive now. "It is the determination of this court that Jedi Valin Horn is not competent to stand trial for his actions in the above-named suit."

At the back of the chamber, standing among the handful of Jedi who had been allowed into the packed courtroom, Jaina heaved a sigh of relief. This was good news. Valin would not be going to trial after all.

The judge's next words shattered her misapprehension. "This court has further determined that the defendant, because of the extraordinarily dangerous nature of his abilities and the overt criminality of his mental illness, is too dangerous to be confined in any conventional facility. For this reason, he will be detained through carbonite imprisonment until such time as-"

Her words might as well have been an unexpected reversal in a crucial bolo-ball game. Suddenly half the observers in the court were on their feet, the Jedi and friends of the Jedi among them shouting protests, the press standing tall or even getting up on benches the better to holorecord the proceedings. Nawara Ven, alone at the defendant's table, was roaring to make himself be heard above the crowd: "Your Honor, this is an outrageous violation of my client's rights, of the rights of all citizens-"