Star Wars_ The New Rebellion Part 9

Some did. They returned for more training. Others disappeared. Luke hoped that they too would return someday.

But none of them had left in the same spectacular manner as Brakiss.

Brakiss was one of the handful of Imperials who had tried to infiltrate the Jedi Academy. Unlike the others, Brakiss had a true talent for the Force. Luke decided to see if he could keep Brakiss away from the dark side.

The training went well. Brakiss softened, and Luke thought it time to give him the equivalent of the dark cave on Dagobah. Luke sent Brakiss on a journey in which Brakiss had to face himself. Brakiss emerged, terrified and angry. He left Yavin 4 and went back to the Empire.

Luke knew that one day he would see Brakiss again.

He had feared it would be like this.

"Master Luke! Master Luke! Oh, thank heavens we found you!" 3PO's voice cut through Luke's reverie. Luke glanced over his shoulder. 3PO stood in the door with R2 at his side. They started to come in.

"No!" Luke said. "It's too unstable in here. Meet me outside."

"But Master Luke-"

"I'll be right there, 3PO."

"I hope so," 3PO said. He walked away from the door. R2 bleeped at Luke and then followed 3PO. It had to be something serious, then. R2 sounded distressed.

Luke stood. He got no more of Brakiss than that initial sensory impression. And it bothered him. He wasn't used to such superficial feelings. But all he had felt around this blast had been strange.

He climbed out. One of the workers in the outer corridor looked at him.

"Those your droids, Master Skywalker?" Luke nodded.

"They seemed agitated." Luke smiled. "3PO always seems agitated. I'm sure it's nothing." He continued outside. 3PO and R2 stood on the dirt-covered lawn. They were facing the door. 3PO turned and said something to R2 when Luke appeared.

"What's so important?" Luke asked.

"Master Luke, R2 and I had a dreadful experience in the maintenance bays.

R2 insisted that we go down there and we were taken prisoner by this horrible Kloperian who seemed to have no idea who we were. I wouldn't have brought this to you, sir, but R2 insisted. He said you needed to know-"

"What were you doing in the maintenance bays? Those are off-limits to all but specialized droids."

"R2 insisted," 3PO said. "He's been behaving quite badly. In fact, the language he used in front of the Kloperian-well, it made my gears freeze if you get my meaning, sir. And-"

"R2?" Luke asked.

R2 bleebled, then a compartment opened near his base and a small tube arm emerged. Luke held out his hand, and R2 dropped several tiny chips into it.

He crouched and examined them. "These are the X-wing's memory chips." R2 moaned, a mournful sound.

"The X-wing is in pieces, sir. If I had known that R2 was going to steal parts-"

"In pieces?" Luke said. He closed his fist around the chips. The X- wing and R2 had been flying together so long that their memories were linked.

They had their own special language. The X-wing was as much of a person as a ship could be. "Who authorized this?"

"Why, I thought you did."

"I authorized routine maintenance." Luke stood. "This would have to happen the moment I need the X-wing. How bad is the damage?" 3PO said, "There is no actual damage." R2 beeped and squawked.

"Aside from the pieces," 3PO said.

Luke's grasp on the chips was tight. "It sounds more like they're rebuilding the X-wing. Why else remove the memory chips?" R2 whistled an affirmative.

"I know nothing about technical matters, sir," 3PO said. "It just seems to me that routine maintenance is routine maintenance, at least on Coruscant."

"Which is why they imprisoned you?" Luke shook his head. "I don't like the sound of any of this."

"We didn't exactly appreciate it either, Master Luke. Why, if I hadn't told them that we belonged to you and Mistress Leia, we would still be in that closet. Or"-and 3PO's golden body shook in an imitation shudder- "we'd have had our memories wiped and our bodies sold for sc.r.a.p." R2 moaned.

"Good thinking on your part, 3PO, and yours too, R2." Luke gave the memory chips back to R2. "Keep these safe. I'll see about the condition of the X-wing. We'll get it back together in no time." But he wasn't as sure as he sounded. Routine maintenance did not require the disa.s.sembly of the X-wing. He should have been more cautious in his instructions when he arrived. But he hadn't thought there would be a threat to him, his droid, or his X-wing on Coruscant. Even with the bombing and the strange feelings he had had.

Someone was watching them. He glanced over his shoulder. They were alone on the street.

But someone was watching him. He had had that feeling since Yavin 4.

Someone was watching, planning, and outguessing him.

It was time to regain control.

"Come on, R2," Luke said. "Let's get our X-wing."

"With all due respect, sir," 3PO said, "I would prefer not to return to that den of iniquity. I think it better if I return to my duties." Luke nodded. "3PO, tell Leia about your adventure, and tell her about the X-wing. Tell her that-" Then he stopped. Better to tell her in person. In person he could communicate the depth of his unease. "Tell her that I will speak to her before I leave."

"Very good, Master Luke," 3PO said, and toddled off toward the Imperial Palace.

Luke disagreed. It wasn't very good. But it was the best he could do.

For now.

ELEVEN.

The Inner Council met in the Amba.s.sadorial Dining Area. It was another large, gold-leafed room, filled with decorations that dated from the Emperor's reign. Leia couldn't wait for the investigations to end so that she could rebuild the Senate Hall. The temporary offices only reminded her how much she missed it.

The room had an antiseptic smell, probably from a recent cleaning. She had decided on this room as a meeting place at the last moment, and planned to continue random room choices until the murderers were caught and the Senate could return to normal business. She didn't want anyone to have days to plan another attack.

Leia sat at the head of the table, and the other members of the Inner Council surrounded her. Three of her most valued friends had died in the attack. One had died in the medical center. She missed them. Han had been right about the gaps in her life. She had sent the children and Winter off that morning to Anoth. Han was gone, and she knew it would only be a matter of time before Luke left too. She could work well on her own, but with her family spreading to all corners of the galaxy, and with so many friends injured or dead, she felt as she had in those first few days after the destruction of Alderaan. All alone with only herself to rely on.

"The news has reached the Outer Rim," Borsk Fey'lya said. His melodious voice contained his concern. The fur near his face was shorter than usual, where the medical personnel had cut off the singed areas. "The Rim Worlds are agitating for revenge."

"Vengeance isn't the issue," Leia said. "Stopping another attack is. I hope you've all let your people know that the investigations are underway."

"They don't care about the investigations," C- Gosf said. She was pet.i.te, even for a Gosfambling. They were delicate furred creatures, intelligent and soft-spoken. Her whiskers curled around her face as she talked. Leia had to lean forward to hear her. "It is the loss of representation. With so many serious injuries, and so much loss of life, the Senate is unable to vote on any but simple-majority declarations. We barely have a quorum." Leia leaned back. She had been fearing this.

"The term is just beginning," said Gno. "If it were near the end, Leia, I would suggest closing the session with the representatives we have. But we are looking at three years and more in which certain planets will be underrepresented."

"Exodeen lost its senior senator and its secondary senator, " said ChoFi.

"Now it is only represented by R'yet Coome. That's not good for any of us."

"Don't let your political biases interfere, ChoFi," said Garm Bel Iblis.

His craggy face had a look of exhaustion. "We have to get used to the former Imperials."

"I worry that we'll invite even more of them by having emergency elections," Leia said.

"Or we give the ones already in the Senate more power," Fey'lya said.

"Leia, the Senate is based on the will of the voting republics. They have chosen former Imperials as their representatives. We cannot argue with that." Leia smiled sadly. "I suppose we can't."

"And we have to trust them to make the right choices in the future,"

Fey'lya said.

The Bothan trusted no one. Even Leia knew that. "And what does your elaborate information say will happen if we hold elections now?"

Fey'lya's fur rippled, the only sign he showed of distress. "Nothing would happen to the Bothans. We were surprisingly lucky in this."

"If we hold the election quickly," ChoFi said, "no one new would have time to mount a campaign. The losers of the last election would probably take office."

"You can't predict like that," C-Gosf said. "My people would not elect someone who lost. Such a person can never run again, nor can that person ever hold a position of power. Once a loser on Gosfambling, always a loser." Leia glanced at C-Gosf. She hadn't realized what her colleague had risked in running for the Senate.

"So what would happen on Gosfambling?" Leia asked.

"Someone who is already in power would be promoted," she said.

"It's a problem we've grappled with all along," Gno said. "Imposing an electoral system on different cultures."

"We have rules," Fey'lya said.

"Yes," ChoFi said, "and you should know perhaps better than the rest of us how cultures manipulate those rules."

"The Bothans haven't done anything untoward."

"You mean illegal," ChoFi said.

"It does no good to fight among ourselves," Leia said. She sighed. "Gno is right. As much as I don't want to, we have to hold emergency elections in those places where the representative was killed or is too injured to carry out official duties. And we have to do it soon, otherwise any legislation we enact will have the onus of being decided by a diminished council. We have enough troubles uniting the various members of the Republic. We don't need additional problems."

"You realize," Bel Iblis said, "that we could create problems by having this rapid election."

"You mean gain more former Imperials than we want?" Gno said. "We have to take the risk. Leia is right. The Senate is diminished already by the attack. To operate underrepresented would be a clear signal to those planets whose representation was lost that they are unimportant."

"We can't be afraid of our colleagues forever," C-Gosf said. "We voted to allow former Imperials into the Senate. We have to accept them now." Leia nodded. She agreed, even though she didn't want to. "Let's set up the elections for one week from today," she said, "and bring the new officials in as soon after that as they can come. No later than one month from now. Agreed? " The members agreed. Leia called an official vote, and then moved to other business. But as she did, she couldn't stop a chill from running up her spine.

Perhaps this was what her unseen enemy wanted. A rapid change in the Senate. Disorientation, destruction, and a sudden increase in new faces would cause fragmentation.

Fragmentation existed as Senator Palpatine took over the Old Republic Senate.

It would be up to Leia to prevent such a takeover from happening again.

Femon sat in her office on Almania. Death masks from a dozen different cultures covered her walls. Red, gold, blue, some with mouths open in agony and others looking serene, they all shared an eerieness that she had once found comforting.

She did no longer.

She had almost wiped the makeup from her face upon her return from Pydyr, but that would have been a clear sign that she no longer believed in Kueller. His hesitation in continuing the fight would be their downfall.

He had said he wanted to replace the New Republic with a government of his own. She had believed him from the moment she met him.

The New Republic was weak, he said. They allowed too many threats to their own people. They spent too much time legislating things that could not be legislated and too little time effecting change.

Femon's family had died six years ago, when the Eye of Palpatine swept over their planet. The Imperial starship operated on an old computer program whose mission had been established by the Emperor himself.

Femon's family had been killed in the crossfire as they tried to save others being lured onto the ship. Sure, the New Republic eventually stopped the Eye of Palpatine, but too late to save Femon's loved ones.

The New Republic allowed too much Imperial equipment to remain on conquered planets. Several times, the Republic had allowed former Imperials, trying to reestablish their government, to threaten peaceful worlds. Too many times. The New Republic had never gone for the kill, had never executed those directly involved, had never done all that needed to be done to establish their own government firmly.

Kueller had said that the New Republic's inability to destroy its enemies was the sign of a fatal weakness. He said it didn't matter who ruled the galaxy as long as that rule was accomplished with an iron fist.

Now he was exhibiting the same weakness he had once attributed to the New Republic.

Femon could no longer support him.

She had pushed, on Pydyr and before, for him to strike swiftly and decisively. He had the power to do so. But he wanted to toy with Sky walker and Organa Solo.

He acted like a man who wanted revenge, but for something she didn't completely understand.

It didn't matter anymore. He was going to spend two more days on Pydyr, cataloging his wealth and meeting with his spies. Two days was more than enough time for her to take the decisive action he had failed to make.

She had the knowledge, the equipment, and the codes. She even had the ability to get rid of Kueller.

He had left himself wide-open on Pydyr.

By tomorrow, Kueller's death mask would be real.