Fate of the Jedi: Backlash (22 page)

“Don’t forget to say ‘over,’ miss.”

“Please, over? Hello? Please call. He’s going to be coming for us soon.”

There was no answer.

Ben was wrapped up in his cloak again, but this time it was for warmth rather than disguise.

All his life, he’d heard his father make amused but highly critical remarks about meetings. How they wasted time, how they usually constituted a forum for people to air complaints but not resolve things.

And this meeting was an example of exactly that. Clan leaders of both the Raining Leaves and Broken Columns, and the offworld “counselors,” sat around a campfire built beside the lake and talked. One Raining Leaves woman, gray-haired and lean to a point just short of emaciation, had the floor—meaning that she held the gnarled, skull-topped staff indicating that she was the only person other than clan chiefs allowed to talk at the moment. “Clearly,
Shattered Chains
is no different from
Broken Columns
. It speaks only to the men’s tribe and ignores the Raining Leaves. It is a ridiculous suggestion.”

Several of those gathered, especially the men, raised their voices in
protest, but Kaminne and Tasander waved them to silence, pointing at the speaker’s staff. Those who had objected raised hands, reaching toward the woman, and she reluctantly yielded the staff to a black-bearded Broken Columns man.

He stood. “No name can please everybody. We have to decide and enforce our decision. We can’t worry whether every member of both clans is satisfied. I say—
Rusted Fetters.”

Another raising of unhappy voices, another raising of hands.

Ben sighed. He wished Tribeless Sha were here. Of all the people at this conclave, she probably had the most perspective on clan customs and was not influenced by loyalty to either clan. But he had not seen her in several hours.

The question of what name to give the united clan seemed like one of secondary importance, but Ben had learned since joining the camp-fire council that the union simply could not take place until it was resolved. And the way the two sides argued partisan perspectives, while pretending they were trying to help everybody, was a crime.

He stared into the fire, built higher than Carrack was tall, and frowned. Perhaps it
was
a crime, and perhaps it should be solved like a crime.

Motive, means, opportunity. Those were the staples of determining who had committed a crime. Once you knew who had a reason to commit it and what that reason was, who had the resources necessary to commit it, and who had the opportunity to commit it, the answer was close at hand.

With this crime, that of supporting one tribe’s naming agenda over the other’s, means and opportunity were not in question. But motivation—what reason did the two clans have to support names that referred only to themselves, that elevated them over the other? Ben suspected that it was nothing more than a lack of imagination on their parts—that, and a lack of understanding of what their clan names represented.

He thought about it while more futile discussion raged. Then, in a lull while members of both clans glared among themselves, he raised his hand.

Olianne, who had just been speaking, looked annoyed but handed him the speaker’s staff.

He rose. Several people looked confused that he would be talking. His father merely looked amused.

“Can I take it that the name
Raining Leaves
sort of speaks to your place in the world—you live in the forests, under open skies, you want to make reference to nature?” Ben looked from Raining Leaves member to member as he spoke.

Firen Nuln nodded, though she looked a little uncertain. “The name is ancient, so we do not know what the members of the clan council were thinking when it was chosen. But, yes, that’s the belief.”

Ben turned to Tasander. “And
Broken Columns
. I kind of get the sense that the name is saying,
We break with the traditions of the past that made us slaves.”

Tasander nodded. “That’s exactly right. Columns representing society as it was before. A failed way of living.”

“Then I have a suggestion.” Ben drew a breath as he composed his thoughts. “‘I am as ancient as time and yet constantly newborn. Nothing lives without me, and without me there is no hope. Yesterday’s children smiled at me, and tomorrow’s children will as well.’” He stopped and glanced around, silently inviting the gathered clan members to solve his riddle.

They were silent for a moment, then Kaminne looked startled. “The sun.”

Ben nodded. “Right. Older than nature itself on Dathomir. But new each day. So it sort of combines the symbolism of your two names.”

There were murmurs, mostly approving, from the gathering. Firen, a thoughtful look on her face, raised her hand. Ben passed her the staff and sat down again.

Luke leaned over to whisper in his ear. “Not bad.”

“Gave ’em something to think about, anyway.”

“And you invoked one of their own customs to do it. Politically savvy of you.” Luke leaned back.

Ben smiled, cheered by the praise, then returned his attention to the assembly.

Within a quarter of an hour, Tasander and Kaminne, after huddling together, proposed
Bright Sun Clan
as a name for the united group.
There were objections, but fewer than for the other names—and none suggesting that
Bright Sun
favored one clan over the other.

Halliava pointed skyward as that discussion continued. “That’s a good sign.”

Ben and the others looked up. There, flitting around in broad circles, was a glowing object, a tiny one; it gave off a little yellow light that intensified and faded at irregular intervals like a malfunctioning glow rod.

“Sparkfly.” That was Drola of the Broken Columns. “You don’t usually see them when it’s this cool out.”

“Look, another.” Kaminne pointed to a different quarter of the sky, where a second sparkfly flew its erratic course.

The gathered Dathomiri seemed cheered by the symbolism of the pretty insects, and within a minute many more sparkflies had joined in the aerial display. Then the sky seemed alive with them, sparkflies by the hundreds, and Ben could see men and women of both clans all over the campsite craning their necks to stare up at the glowing patterns the insects made.

A sparkfly descended to alight on a man of the Broken Columns not five meters from Ben. The man froze, nervous, as the long-winged, translucent insect walked from his elbow to his wrist, the luminous glow produced within its body ebbing and rising in the same rhythm as those of the sparkflies overhead.

Then the insect’s tail end dipped and brushed against the man’s wrist. A large spark erupted from the tail and a patch of his skin, a centimeter in diameter, blackened. Smoke rose from it and the man yelled, swatting the insect away.

That seemed to be a signal for the other insects. Streams of light poured down from the sky, the sparkflies remaining in coherent patterns until they reached an altitude of one or two meters from the ground. Then they spread out randomly, seeking the Dathomiri, stinging with their high-temperature sparks.

Shouts and screams erupted from all over the encampment. Ben saw two sparkflies buzzing in toward him. He flicked a finger at each, thumping the insects away. They circled and went off in search of easier prey.

Suddenly his father was by Ben’s side. “Nightsisters again. Can you feel it?” He swatted a small cloud of sparkflies away from his face. The insects hurtled into the ground. Some immediately flopped over back onto their feet and took to the air again.

Ben put his hand on the hilt of his lightsaber but restrained himself. Swinging a live lightsaber around in this environment, with pained and panicky Dathomiri now beginning to run in all directions, veering randomly in their efforts to elude the stinging insects, could prove fatal. “I can’t.”

“Focus, son. Or keep them off me while I focus.”

Ben opted for the latter. Luke closed his eyes and relaxed into a meditative posture—a choice that looked strange, surrounded as he was by the chaos of flying, stinging insects and fleeing, shouting tribe-members. Ben kept near him, circling his father, swatting sparkflies away from Luke and from himself.

A gout of flame rose from someone nearby, spreading out into the sky, and waved about, incinerating an entire cloud of the sparkflies. Smoke rising from the flames spread through the air, and Ben saw sparkflies enter the smoke cloud and immediately grow disoriented.

He glanced at the source of the flames. It was Carrack, struggling into his armor while being beset by at least a score of sparkflies. In one hand he held the nozzle of a flamethrower, which, despite his state of distraction, the big man directed toward the thickest clouds of sparkflies in his vicinity.

Luke’s eyes snapped open. He turned toward the trees surrounding the encampment—toward the very stand of trees where they’d had their meeting with Olianne and Vestara the other night. “They’re out there, scattered, several of them. But I can feel a couple of them very clearly.”

“Let’s go.”

Together the two Jedi set out at a dead run, zigzagging to avoid fleeing clan members and pursuing sparkflies.

Wielding a blanket dipped in lake water like a flexible club, Han stayed near Leia and tried to keep the sparkflies off her. He’d been fairly successful. She had a burn mark on one bicep, and he had one on his forehead. She walked through the camp as if unaware of the sparkflies near
her; her attention was on the larger clusters high in the sky. To Han, it seemed that the insects would make attack runs against targets on the ground, then rise into the air, regroup, and begin new runs. It was eerily similar to starfighter attack patterns. It didn’t remind him of insect behavior at all.

Where Leia watched, turning her attention from cluster to sparkfly cluster, the insects would waver and break formation. But she did not seem to be able to sustain this effort against them, and they would inevitably regroup.

She shook her head. “They’re under tight control. Very organized. I wish Valin Horn were here. He used to be very good at this sort of thing.”

“Keep them off me! I need help!” That was Carrack, still dividing his time between his armor and his flamethrower.

Han glanced at Leia, and she nodded. Together they trotted over to the big mercenary.

Carrack thrust his weapon, a long rod with a trigger at one end and a nozzle at the other, attached by tubing at the trigger end to a large metal bottle that was currently dragging on the ground, into Han’s hands. The big man had burn marks on both cheeks, but most of his armor was on. “I just need a few seconds.”

“You got ’em.” Han took the weapon. Not bothering to ask for advice or instructions—that would have been unlike him, after all—he aimed the nozzle up toward the nearest large cloud of insects and pressed the trigger.

A gratifyingly bright gout of flame erupted from the nozzle and shot into the cloud of sparkflies—into and through, jetting on for another fifty meters or more. It illuminated the camp from one end to the other.

Leia took Han’s blanket, rolled it into something like a lash, and cracked it like a whip, here swatting three sparkflies out of the sky, there one. “Maybe a little
less
, dear.”

“No, I like it this way.” Han let off the trigger, aimed, and fired again. Once more the camp was bathed in hues of red and orange as insects were vaporized out to a distance of fifty meters.

A broad grin spread across Han’s face. “Why haven’t I ever gotten one of these for myself?”

Leia shot him an incredulous look before returning her attention to keeping the insects off the three of them. “Because it would be like letting children play with thermal detonators.”

“I
like
it.” Han swung the nozzle around, causing the gout of flame to curve across the sky, sweeping insects away as it reached them. “I have a
flamethrower
.”

“Blast it, Carrack, see what you’ve done?”

Carrack jammed his helmet down. Han heard a sudden hum of machinery as the helmet locked into place and systems all over the armor booted into life.

Carrack picked up the oversized blaster that lay at his feet and began a slow turn, eyeing the distant fringes of the trees. “Infrared active. Han, don’t put the fire in front of me, you’ll blind me.”

Han, his grin unabated, swiveled so that his flame scoured the air mostly above and behind Carrack. “What have you got?”

“Stationary figures in the forest, deployed at positions thirty to forty meters apart. Women, all of them. I’ve got two males moving toward their line, but not straight toward any of the women. Oh, it’s the Skywalkers.”

Han saw more and more of the Dathomiri running into the lake, despite the chill of the water. They waded out until they could stand upright with only their heads protruding. The tactic did not seem to be working: sparkflies dived at them, settling on their scalps, stinging and burning them through their hair, and more were clustering out there by the hundreds with every passing minute.

He glanced at his wife. “You can use the Force like a big public address system, can’t you?”

“I can make myself heard, yes.”

“Tell the ones out in the lake to duck under the water at the count of ten. Then count down.”

“You in the water!” Leia didn’t seem to raise her voice above the Senatorial projection and volume she’d been able to employ since she was a teenager, but her voice somehow carried to all corners of the camp. “When I call ‘zero,’ go beneath the water! Ten … nine …”

Beside Han, Carrack raised his blaster rifle to his shoulder. He did not fire immediately, instead jacking a clip of what looked like small cylindrical grenades into the bottom. A rectangular optic screen
flipped up over the weapon’s usual sights, and Han could see images displayed on it, human-shaped silhouettes in a light green. Carrack was murmuring, barely audible through his helmet: “Target one, one five seven point three meters.” He swiveled just a bit, and a new silhouette appeared on the display. “Target two, one three four point two meters.”