Star Wars - Thrawn Trilogy - Dark Force Rising 02 (27 page)

The story came out in a rush from both men at once, a loud and confusing babble of charges and countercharges about some kind of business deal gone sour. C'baoth listened silently, apparently having no trouble following the windstorm of fact and assumption and accusation. Luke waited beside him, wondering how he was ever going to untangle the whole thing. As near as he could understand it, both men seemed to have equally valid arguments.

Finally, the men ran out of words. "Very well," C'baoth said. "The judgment of C'baoth is that Svan will pay to Tarm the full wages agreed upon." He nodded at each man in turn. "The judgment will be carried out immediately."

Luke looked at C'baoth in surprise. "That's all?" he asked.

C'baoth turned a steely gaze on him. "You have something to say?"

Luke glanced back at the two villagers, acutely aware that arguing the ruling in front of them might undermine whatever authority C'baoth had built up here. "I just thought that more of a compromise might be in order."

"There is no compromise to be made," C'baoth said firmly. "Svan is at fault, and he will pay."

"Yes, but-"

Luke caught the flicker of sense a half second before Svan dived for the slugthrower. With a single smooth motion he had his lightsaber free of his belt and ignited. But C'baoth was faster. Even as Luke's green-white blade snapped into existence, C'baoth raised his hand; and from his fingertips flashed a sizzling volley of all-too-well-remembered blue lightning bolts.

Svan took the blast full in the head and chest, snapping over backwards with a scream of agony. He slammed into the ground, screaming again as C'baoth sent a second blast at him. The slugthrower flew from his hand, its metal surrounded for an instant by a blue-white coronal discharge.

C'baoth lowered his hand, and for a long moment the only sound in the room was a soft whimpering from the man on the floor. Luke stared at him in horror, the smell of ozone wrenching at his stomach. "C'baoth-!"

"You will address me as Master," the other cut him off quietly.

Luke took a deep breath, forcing calm into his mind and voice. Closing down his lightsaber, he returned it to his belt and went over to kneel beside the groaning man. He was obviously still hurting, but aside from some angry red burns on his chest and arms, he didn't seem to be seriously hurt. Laying his hand gently on the worst of the burns, Luke reached out with the Force, doing what he could to alleviate the other's pain.

"Jedi Skywalker," C'baoth said from behind him. "He is not permanently damaged. Come away.

Luke didn't move. "He's in pain."

"That is as it should be," C'baoth said. "He required a lesson, and pain is the one teacher no one will ignore. Now come away."

For a moment Luke considered disobeying. Svan's face and sense were in agony:

"Or would you have preferred that Tarm lie dead now?" C'baoth added.

Luke looked at the slugthrower lying on the floor, then at Tarm standing stiffly with wide eyes and face the color of dirty snow. "There were other ways to stop him," Luke said, getting to his feet.

"But none that he will remember longer." C'baoth locked eyes with Luke. "Remember that, Jedi Skywalker; remember it well. For if you allow your justice to be forgotten, you will be forced to repeat the same lessons again and again."

He held Luke's gaze a pair of heartbeats longer before turning back to the door. "We're finished here. Come."

The stars were blazing overhead as Luke eased open the low gate of the High Castle and stepped out of the courtyard. Artoo had clearly noticed his approach; as he closed the gate behind him the droid turned on the X-wing's landing lights, illuminating his path. "Hi, Artoo," Luke said, walking to the short ladder and wearily pulling himself up into the cockpit. "I just came out to see how you and the ship were doing."

Artoo beeped his assurance that everything was fine. "Good," Luke said, flicking on the scopes and keying for a status check anyway. "Any luck with the sensor scan I asked for?"

The reply this time was less optimistic. "That bad, huh?" Luke nodded heavily as the translation of Artoo's answer scrolled across the X-wing's computer scope. "Well, that's what happens when you get up into mountains."

Artoo grunted, a distinctly unenthusiastic sound, then warbled a question. "I don't know," Luke told him. "A few more days at least. Maybe longer, if he needs me to stay." He sighed. "I don't know, Artoo. I mean, it's just never what I expect. I went to Dagobah expecting to find a great warrior, and I found Master Yoda. I came here expecting to find someone like Master Yoda:and instead I got Master C'baoth."

Artoo gave a slightly disparaging gurgle, and Luke had to smile at the translation. "Yes, well, don't forget that Master Yoda gave you a hard time that first evening, too," he reminded the droid, wincing a little himself at the memory. Yoda had also given Luke a hard time at that encounter. It had been a test of Luke's patience and of his treatment of strangers.

And Luke had flunked it. Rather miserably.

Artoo warbled a point of distinction. "No, you're right," Luke had to concede. "Even while he was still testing us Yoda never had the kind of hard edge that C'baoth does."

He leaned back against his headrest, staring past the open canopy at the mountaintops and the distant stars beyond them. He was weary-wearier than he'd been, probably, since the height of that last climactic battle against the Emperor. It had been all he could do to come out here to check on Artoo. "I don't know, Artoo. He hurt someone today. Hurt him a lot. And he pushed his way into an argument without being invited, and then forced an arbitrary judgment on the people involved, and-" He waved a hand helplessly. "I just can't see Ben or Master Yoda acting that way. But he's a Jedi, just like they were. So which example am I supposed to follow?"

The droid seemed to digest that. Then, almost reluctantly, he trilled again. "That's the obvious question," Luke agreed. "But why would a Dark Jedi of C'baoth's power bother playing games like this? Why not just kill me and be done with it?"

Artoo gave an electronic grunt, a list of possible reasons scrolling across the screen. A rather lengthy list-clearly, the droid had put a lot of time and thought into the question. "I appreciate your concern, Artoo," Luke soothed him. "But I really don't think he's a Dark Jedi. He's erratic and moody, but he doesn't have the same sort of evil aura about him that I could sense in Vader and the Emperor." He hesitated. This wasn't going to be easy to say. "I think it's more likely that Master C'baoth is insane."

It was possibly the first time Luke had ever seen Artoo actually startled speechless. For a minute the only sound was the whispering of the mountain winds playing through the spindly trees surrounding the High Castle. Luke stared at the stars and waited for Artoo to find his voice.

Eventually, the droid did. "No, I don't know for sure how something like that could happen," Luke admitted as the question appeared on his screen. "But I've got an idea."

He reached up to lace his fingers behind his neck, the movement easing the pressure in his chest. The dull fatigue in his mind seemed to be matched by an equally dull ache in his muscles, the kind he sometimes got if he went through an overly strenuous workout. Dimly, he wondered if there was something in the air that the X-wing's biosensors hadn't picked up on. "You never knew, but right after Ben was cut down-back on the first Death Star-I found out that I could sometimes hear his voice in the back of my mind. By the time the Alliance was driven off Hath, I could see him, too."

Artoo twittered. "Yes, that's who I sometimes talked to on Dagobah," Luke confirmed. "And then right after the Battle of Endor, I was able to see not only Ben but Yoda and my father, too. Though the other two never spoke, and I never saw them again. My guess is that there's some way for a dying Jedi to-oh, I don't know; to somehow anchor himself to another Jedi who's close by."

Artoo seemed to consider that, pointed out a possible flaw in the reasoning. "I didn't say it was the tightest theory in the galaxy," Luke growled at him, a glimmer of annoyance peeking through his fatigue. "Maybe I'm way off the mark. But if I'm not, it's possible that the five other Jedi Masters from the Outbound Flight project wound up anchored to Master C'baoth."

Artoo whistled thoughtfully. "Right," Luke agreed ruefully. "It didn't bother me any to have Ben around-in fact, I wish he had talked to me more often. But Master C'baoth was a lot more powerful than I was. Maybe it was different with him."

Artoo made a little moan, and another, rather worried suggestion appeared on the screen. "I can't just leave him, Artoo," Luke shook his head tiredly. "Not with him like this. Not when there's a chance I can help him."

He grimaced, hearing in the words a painful echo of the past. Darth Vader, too, had needed help, and Luke had similarly taken on the job of saving him from the dark side. And had nearly gotten himself killed in the process. What am I doing? he wondered silently. I'm not a healer. Why do I keep trying to be one?

Luke?

With an effort, Luke dragged his thoughts back to the present. "I've got to go," he said, levering himself out of the cockpit seat. "Master C'baoth's calling me.

He shut down the displays, but not before the translation of Artoo's worried jabbering scrolled across the computer display. "Relax, Artoo," Luke told him, leaning back over the open cockpit canopy to pat the droid reassuringly. "I'll be all right. I'm a Jedi, remember? You just keep a good eye on things out here. Okay?"

The droid trilled mournfully as Luke dropped down the ladder and onto the ground. He paused there, looking at the dark mansion, lit only by the backwash of the X-wing's landing lights. Wondering if maybe Artoo was right about them getting out of here.

Because the droid had a good point. Luke's talents didn't lean toward the healing aspects of the force-that much he was pretty sure of. Helping C'baoth was going to be a long, time consuming process, with no guarantee of success at the end of the road. With a Grand Admiral in command of the Empire, political infighting in the New Republic, and the whole galaxy hanging in the balance, was this really the most efficient use of his time?

He raised his eyes from the mansion to the dark shadows of the rim mountains surrounding the lake below. Snowcapped in places, barely visible in the faint light of Jomark's three tiny moons, they were reminiscent somehow of the Manarai Mountains south of the Imperial City on Coruscant. And with that memory came another one: Luke, standing on the Imperial Palace rooftop gazing at those other mountains, sagely explaining to Threepio that a Jedi couldn't get so caught up in galactic matters that he was no longer concerned about individual people.

The speech had sounded high and noble when he'd given it. This was his chance to prove that it hadn't been just words.

Taking a deep breath, he headed back toward the gate.

"Tangrene was our real crowning achievement," Senator Bel Iblis said, draining the last of his glass and raising it high above his head. Across the expansive but largely empty headquarters lounge the bartender nodded in silent acknowledgment and busied himself with his drinks dispenser. "We'd been sniping at the Imperials for probably three years at that point," Bel Iblis continued. "Hitting small bases and military supply shipments and generally making as much trouble for them as we could. But up till Tangrene they weren't paying much attention to us."

"What happened at Tangrene?" Han asked.

"We blasted a major Ubiqtorate center into fine powder," Bel Iblis told him with obvious satisfaction. "And then waltzed out right under the collective nose of the three Star Destroyers that were supposed to be guarding the place. I think that was when they finally woke up to the fact that we were more than just a minor irritant. That we were a group to be taken seriously."

"I'll bet they did," Han agreed, shaking his head in admiration. Even getting within sight of one of Imperial Intelligence's Ubiqtorate bases was a tricky job, let alone blasting it and getting out again. "What did it cost you?"

"Amazingly enough, we got all five warships out," Bel Iblis said. "There was a fair amount of damage all around, of course, and one of them was completely out of commission for nearly seven months. But it was worth it."

"I thought you said you had six Dreadnaughts," Lando spoke up.

"We have six now," Bel Iblis nodded. "At the time we only had five."

"Ah," Lando said, and lapsed back into silence.

"So after that was when you started moving your base around?" Han asked.

Bel Iblis eyed Lando a moment longer before turning back to Han. "That was when mobility became a top priority, yes," he corrected. "Though we hadn't exactly been sitting still before that. This place is, what, our thirteenth location in seven years, Sena?"

"Fourteenth," Sena said. "That's if you count Womrik and the Mattri asteroid bases."

"Fourteen, then," Bel Iblis nodded. "You probably noticed that every building here is built of hi-state memory plastic. Makes it relatively simple to fold everything up and toss it aboard the transports." He chuckled. "Though that's ben known to backfire on us. Once on Lelmra we got hit by a violent thunderstorm, and the lightning strikes were hitting so close to us that the edge currents triggered the flip-flop on a couple of barracks buildings and a targeting center. Folded them up neat as a set of birthday presents, with nearly fifty people still inside."

"That was terrific fun," Sena put in dryly. "No one was killed, fortunately, but it took us the better part of the night to cut them all free. With the storm still blazing on around us."

"Things finally quieted down just before daylight," Bel Iblis said. "We were out of there by the next evening. Ah."

The bartender had arrived with the next round of drinks. Twistlers, Bel Iblis had called them: a blend of Corellian brandy with some unidentified but very tart fruit extract. Not the sort of drink Han would have expected to find in a military camp, but not bad either. The Senator took two of the drinks off the tray and handed them across to Han and Sena; took the other two off-