The Bacta War (59 page)

And yet …

He looked at Han. Han was looking back at him, the troubled expression still on his face. Perhaps wondering if Luke would do exactly that.

No. As Han had asked, he would let it go. For now. “All right,” he said. “What’s the new strategy?”

“Chewie and me’ll handle the talks,” Han said, turning to face the Wookiee. Even with his expression hidden, there was no mistaking the flicker of quiet relief in his emotional state. “If you don’t mind waiting until we’re finished, maybe you can help us figure out how to settle the deal.”

“Sure.” Luke looked in the direction the Diamala had gone. “He said I could be your adviser. So I guess I’ll advise.”

He looked back to find Han studying his face. “You don’t like this, do you?” the older man said.

Luke shrugged. “Well, it’s not exactly the high point of my day,” he conceded. “It’s always a little embarrassing to offer to help someone and get turned down. But I suppose a little embarrassment never hurt anyone.”

“Yeah,” Han said. “Sometimes it even helps.”

It was, Luke thought, a rather odd thing to say. But before he could ask about it, Han had stepped to Chewbacca’s side and taken the datapad the Diamal had given him. “You figured out where we’re supposed to go?” he asked.

The Wookiee rumbled an affirmative, pointing a shaggy finger at the datapad display. “Yeah, okay,” Han said, handing the datapad back. “Lead the way.” He threw Luke a lopsided grin. “There’s nothing like a Wookiee to get people to move out of the way.”

“You realize there’s one other possibility,” Luke said quietly as they set off across the docking bay. “They may be trying to split us up for some kind of attack.”

Han shook his head. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“I’d still like to keep an eye on your meetings,” Luke persisted. “I should be able to follow your presence from wherever they put us. That way, I can get there right away if you need me.”

“Just my presence, though, right?”

Luke frowned at him. “Of course. I wouldn’t try to read your mind without permission. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Han said. “Sure.”

As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary for Luke to use the Force in order to keep track of the proceedings. Their Iphigini hosts had somehow learned about the restrictions the Diamala had put on his attendance, and by the time Han and Chewbacca began the negotiations they had a monitor line set up between Luke’s suite and the conference room, allowing him to directly watch the meeting.

It took him two hours to realize that the talks were getting nowhere. It was another hour before Han came to the same conclusion. Or at least was willing to admit it out loud.

“They’re crazy,” Han growled, tossing a handful of datacards onto a low center table as he and Chewbacca joined Luke in the suite. “The whole bunch of them. Completely crazy.”

“I wouldn’t say crazy,” Luke told him. “Stiff-faced stubborn, maybe, but not crazy.”

“Thanks,” Han growled. “That’s real helpful.”

Chewbacca rumbled a warning. “I am
not
losing my temper,” Han informed him stiffly. “I am under perfect control.”

Luke looked at his friend, carefully hiding a smile. It was like the old Han again, the brashly confident smuggler he and Obi-Wan had first met back in the Mos Eisley cantina. Charging cheerfully into unknown situations, and more often than not finding himself up to his neck in trouble. It was nice to know that even as a respectable family man and responsible official of the New Republic, Han hadn’t lost all of the recklessness that had once driven his friends almost as crazy as it had the Imperials. Up to his neck in trouble was where Han functioned best. Perhaps, through sheer habit, it was where he was most comfortable.

“All right,” Han said, dropping into a chair across the table from Luke. “Let’s think this through. There’s got to be a way out.”

“How about trying a third-party approach?” Luke suggested. “Maybe the New Republic could run security for Diamalan freighters when they’re in Ishori systems.”

Chewbacca rumbled the obvious problem. “Yes, I know we don’t have a lot of ships to spare,” Luke said. “But the High Council ought to be able to scrounge up something.”

“Not enough to do any good,” Han said, shaking his head. “The Diamala do an awful lot of shipping, and I don’t think you realize how thin our hardware is spread out there.”

“It would still be cheaper in the long run than whatever it would cost to pull the Diamala and Ishori apart if they start shooting at each other again,” Luke argued.

“Probably,” Han conceded, toying with one of the datacards. “Problem is, I don’t think the Diamala would accept the offer even if we had the ships to spare. I don’t think they’re ready to trust anyone else with their security.”

“Not even the New Republic?” Luke asked.

Han shook his head, his eyes darting surreptitiously to Luke’s face for a moment, then just as quickly shifting away. “No.”

Luke frowned. In that moment he’d caught another flicker of the same troubled mood he’d felt back by the
Falcon
. “I see.”

“Yeah,” Han said, all brisk business again. “Anybody got any other ideas?”

Luke glanced at Chewbacca, searching for a diplomatic way to say this. But there really wasn’t one. “You know, Han, it’s not too late to bring Leia in on this. We could call Wayland and ask the Noghri to bring her here.”

“No,” Han said firmly.

Chewbacca growled agreement with Luke. “I said no,” Han repeated, glaring at the Wookiee. “We can handle this ourselves.”

There was a trill from the console built into the table. Luke looked at Han, but he was still engaged in a glaring contest with Chewbacca. Reaching out with the Force, he keyed the switch. “Skywalker,” he said.

On the hologram pad in the middle of the table the quarter-sized image of a young Iphigini appeared, his braided lip-beard not quite covering up the throat insignia of the Iphigin Spaceport Directorate. “I apologize for disturbing your deliberations, Jedi Skywalker,” he said, his voice far more melodious than the craggy face and physique would have suggested. “But we’ve received notification from New Republic Commerce that a Sarkan freighter is on its way here under a Customs Red alert.”

Luke looked at Han.
Customs Red:
a warning that there was illegal and highly dangerous cargo aboard. “Did Commerce identify the captain and crew?”

“No,” the Iphigini said. “A follow-up transmission was promised, but it has not yet arrived. The suspect freighter is already approaching Iphigin, and we have dispatched the bulk of our inner-system customs frigates and patrol craft to intercept. It was thought that as New Republic representatives, you and Captain Solo might wish to observe the procedure.”

There was a sudden change in Han’s emotions. Luke looked over, to see his friend gazing thoughtfully off into space. “We appreciate the invitation,” he said, looking back at the hologram. “At the moment, though—”

“Where’s this Sarkan coming in from?” Han interrupted.

“Sector Three-Besh.” The Iphigini’s image was replaced by a schematic of Iphigin and the space around it. A red dot blinked a few degrees off a line connecting Iphigin to its sun; nearly twenty blinking green dots were converging on it from the planet and nearby space. “As you can see, we have attempted to send a force adequate to overcome any resistance.”

“Yeah,” Han said slowly. “And you’re sure it’s a Sarkan?”

“Its transponder ID has been checked,” the Iphigini told him. “The ship itself is a Corellian Action-Keynne XII, rarely seen in this part of the Core except under Sarkan authority.”

Luke whistled soundlessly. He’d been given a tour of an Action-Keynne XII once, and had come away thoroughly impressed by both the touches of inner luxury and the multiple tiers of outer weaponry. Designed to transport the most valuable of cargoes, it very nearly qualified as a capital warship.

Which was probably why the Iphiginis were sending so many ships to intercept it. If its captain decided not to cooperate, the Iphiginis were in for a fight.

“Sounds like a Sarkan, all right,” Han agreed, his voice a little bit too casual. “You go ahead and do your intercept. Maybe we’ll come up later and have a look.”

“Thank you, Captain Solo,” the Iphigini said. “I will alert the officials that you will be joining them. Farewell.”

The hologram vanished. “Don’t count on it,” Han muttered, gathering up the datacards from where he’d tossed them on the table and thumbing rapidly through them. “Chewie, get over to that console—see if you can pull up a full listing of the traffic pattern out there.”

“What’s going on?” Luke asked, frowning at Han and trying to read his mood. Suddenly all the earlier frustration was gone, leaving a sort of sly excitement in its place. “You know who the smuggler is?”

“He’s not a smuggler,” Han said. He found the card he was looking for and slid it into his datapad. “You got it, Chewie? Great. Punch it into the hologram pod over here.”

Chewbacca growled acknowledgment, and a more complete Iphigin schematic appeared over the table. Han peered at it, then looked down at the datapad in his hand. “Great. Okay, come here and give me a hand with this.”

“What is it?” Luke asked.

“This is the ground station list and the orbit data for their Golan I Defense Platform,” Han told him, waving the datapad as Chewbacca lumbered to his side again. “Let’s see …”

For a minute the two huddled close together, peering alternately at the hologram and Han’s datapad and conversing in low tones. Luke studied the schematic, watching the color-coded freighters and other ships moving in and out and wondering what this was all about.

“Okay,” Han said at last. “That’s where they’ll come in. So all we need to do is sit somewhere in the middle of that cone and wait. Great. Get down to the
Falcon
and get ’er ready. I’ll be right there.”

Chewbacca rumbled an acknowledgment and headed out the door at a fast Wookiee trot. “Do I get to know what’s going on?” Luke asked.

“Sure,” Han said, gathering up the datacards and packing them away again. “We’ve got pirates on the way.”

“Pirates?” Luke blinked. “Here?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I didn’t think pirate gangs operated this far into the Core, that’s all,” Luke said. “So the Sarkan is just a feint?”

“Yeah,” Han said, getting to his feet. “Only he doesn’t know it. It’s an old trick: you call an alert on some ship coming in sunside, then hit a nightside target while Customs is busy half a planet away. The only tricky part is making sure the ground and orbit defenses can’t get to you. Plus figuring out how to fake the alert in the first place. Come on, let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we alert the Iphigini first?” Luke asked, reaching for the comm.

“What for?” Han said. “You and Chewie and me ought to be able to handle it.”

“What, a whole pirate gang?”

“Sure, why not? The only gangs working this sector are small ones—two or three ships, tops.” Han’s lip twitched. “Actually, you probably won’t even need us.”

“I appreciate your confidence,” Luke said icily. “But I’d just as soon not take them all on myself, thank you.”

Han held up his hands. “Hey. No offense.”

“None taken.” Luke gestured to the hologram and the patrol ships weaving their net around the incoming Sarkan freighter. “And I still think we ought to call in the Iphigini.”

“We can’t,” Han said. “The pirates probably have a spotter already here. Any sign of an alert, and they’ll just call off the raid. We’d end up looking stupid, and Diamalan opinion of the New Republic would sink a little deeper. The High Council will have my hide if that happens.”

Luke sighed. “Things were a lot easier when Alliance military activity wasn’t always getting tangled up in politics.”

“Tell me about it,” Han growled. “Look, we’ve got to get going. You in or out?”

Luke shrugged. “I’m in,” he said, pulling out his comlink. “Artoo?”

* * *

THE NEW JEDI ORDER
(25–40 YEARS AFTER
STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE
)

A quarter century after
A New Hope
and the destruction of the Death Star, the galaxy is free of wide-scale conflicts—but the New Republic must contend with many regional brushfires. And Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Order faces its own growing pains: Some New Republic officials want to rein in the Jedi, leading Luke to wonder if the Jedi Council should be restored.

On the planet Rhommamool, Leia Organa Solo, Mara Jade Skywalker, and Jaina Solo meet with a mysterious rabble-rouser named Nom Anor. Anor rejects Leia’s diplomatic entreaties, but she’s more disturbed by what she finds when she reaches out to him in the Force: nothing. It’s as if he isn’t there.

Anor is a secret agent of the Yuuzhan Vong, powerful warriors from another galaxy who regard technology as blasphemous, relying on biological constructs to serve as their starships, weapons, and communicators. Long ago, a devastating war destroyed much of the Yuuzhan Vong’s galaxy and cut them off from the Force, sending their clans across the intergalactic void in search of a new home. Now they are at the edge of the
Star Wars
galaxy, ready to invade.

As head of the New Jedi Order, Luke is central to the galaxy’s defense; Leia’s skills as a former Chief of State and respected political adviser are also called on. The five-year war shakes the galaxy to its foundations. Technologically advanced worlds within the Yuuzhan Vong invasion corridor are subjected to the newcomers’ biotechnology and altered into strange hybrids combining what they had been with the new Yuuzhan Vong ecosystem. Entire species are enslaved—or eradicated. The New Republic is ill prepared to meet the extragalactic threat, with regional rivalries, political dissension, and concern over the Imperial Remnant limiting the effectiveness of its military response. Wrangling in the Senate snarls the war plans, as do disagreements between planetary fleets and armies, while assassination and war thin the ranks of the New Republic’s leaders. Officers and pilots who battled for so long against the Empire, such as Admiral Ackbar and Wedge Antilles, work feverishly to figure out how to outmaneuver their new enemies.