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The pain in her head was what finally forced Rowan back into consciousness. It was more than just a headache or a bruise; it felt as if something had actually stabbed itself into her brain. She clamped her mouth shut to fight a heaving stomach and made herself open her eyes.
Somehow, she was not surprised to find herself in a detention cell.
Alai Luwellaen leaned against the opposite wall, watching her with a strange mixture of anger and what could almost be called sympathy. She stood next to the door, her arms crossed and one leg propped up on the wall. "About time."
Rowan made herself stand up, running through the old conditioning exercises that she had learned as a Royal Guard to keep herself upright. "How long?" she croaked.
"Eight chronos." The Emperor's current favorite smiled faintly as she glanced around the cell. "Sorry about the arrangements, but Lord Rage felt it was best under the circumstances."
A cold pit opened up in Rowan's stomach. "What circumstances?"
"Withholding information, consorting with men whose loyalty to the Empire has been questioned more than once, using the Holonet for non-essential communication, being found in a building with quite a lot of questionable information..." Alai trailed off with a shrug. "You have to admit that it doesn't look good, Admiral."
"I'm loyal to the New Order," Rowan bit out. She was terrified to be sure, but she was also a Corellian, born and bred to keep fighting until the very end. She had helped devise the famed victory of Sluis Van and she had held her own against a Noghri in unarmed combat. And most importantly, she had recovered the traitor Mon Mothma and personally overseen her execution. "I'm not a Rebel," she spat even as the ground swayed under her.
"I know." Alai's voice was not kindly, but it was not as harsh as Rowan might have expected. "I am a Force-user, Admiral Antilles. You are loyal to the Empire, if the not the Emperor." Her faint smile faded. "More the pity now, when the distinction between the two no longer matters."
"What will happen to me?" Rowan caught herself on the wall. Her head throbbed with every heartbeat. "Don't lie and tell me I'll live."
"I wouldn't lie. You've been loyal in your way and you deserve that much." Alai met her gaze levelly. "You will be denied medical treatment until we reach Imperial Center. You will be given a trial and found guilty of sedition and treason against His Majesty the Emperor, at which point you will be stripped of your rank and executed publicly by a firing squad."
Rowan heard herself laugh harshly. Or perhaps it was a sob. "That's that, then, isn't it?"
"Yes. I'm afraid so." Alai lowered her eyes for a moment. "For what it's worth, Admiral, I'm sorry." She turned to leave.
"Did you find the message?" Rowan asked, not really sure what possessed her. Maybe clinging to her last orders would keep her sane.
Alai shook her head, her face hardening into a stone masks. "We found some things. But no, Admiral, no message." That said, she left the detention cell. The door slid shut behind her.
Rowan felt her knees hit the hard floor. The pain in her head made her stomach heave, while the ache in her heart brought tears to her eyes. She covered her face with her hands, proud to the last. The surveillence officers would not have the pleasure of seeing her weep.
***
"Told you."
Jessa could feel Ben's glare on the back of her head. The boy probably would not know a sabaac face if it fell on him and he was about as quick on his feet as the average Imp troop transport, but he had a stare that would have done interrogators proud. It was a real pity those eyes - which resembled nothing so much as green lasers - had been wasted on him.
Even in the early hours of the morning, the twin suns blazed down. Ben seemed oblivious to the light and the heat, but Jessa had made use of her tinted goggles and her scarf to keep her brains from frying. After standing guard all night, prodding Ben awake, trekking along the edge of the Junjun Wastes or whatever they were called, and finding her bike missing, she felt she was handling all of this with superhuman patience.
Which meant she felt no qualms whatsoever about pointing to the beat-up landspeeder. "I said it was worthless and I meant it. Let's get to your uncle's garage, huh?"
"Just what I need," Ben muttered. He heaved the squat little rustbucket of a droid into the landspeeder. "Hop in."
Jessa hesitated. "You do know how to pilot that thing, right?"
He smiled faintly. "Do Jawas smell?"
She had to chuckle at that.
Ben took them across featureless dunes and rugged, worn rocks - and Jessa decided that there was one other thing about him that was worth respecting: the boy could certainly knew how to steer.
"You ever considered being a fighter pilot?" she called after a while.He glanced at her. "Me? No way. Only thing I'm going to fly is a skyhopper."
"That's right. I forgot. You don't want excitement." She leaned forward to prod at the controls. "No offense, space waste, but the way this thing is held together, you're likely to crash any day - "
"What's that?"
Jessa looked up and felt something icy settle into her gut.
Black smoke billowed in the distance, thick and dark and oily against the cloudless blue sky. The heat sensor in the cockpit began to flash; now that she knew to look, she could see that there was something hot and smouldering up ahead. "Was this your Sand People?" she asked quietly, although she already knew the answer.
Ben just shook his head. She did not need to lie to him. Instead of speaking, he just hit the accelerator. The dunes blurred under the little vehicle as it raced across the desert.
All too soon, the source of the smoke came into view.
Ragged men, women, and children huddled outside the smoking ruins of a settlement. A few of the younger men and women held cobbled-together rifles and makeshift clubs. The icy pit in Jessa's stomach opened up to swallow her heart. She had not been in the Rebellion very long, but she knew the looks on those faces all too well.
But Ben did not.
Before she could stop him, he had hit the brakes and leapt from the landspeeder, racing over to a woman with streaks of soot on her face. She shook her head and pointed to a particular pile of rubble.
Jessa did not have to be near Ben to see the blood drain from his face. Oh, no. Please, Maker. Please. She jumped out of the landspeeder and ran toward him, trying unreasonably to shield him from what she knew had to be there. Stars and moons, what did we do?
Like a man possessed, Ben dug frantically through the smoking ruins. "Uncle Gavin?! Aunt Olivea?! Sasha!" He pulled bloody hands back from the rough permacrete and turned to look at another wrecked house, completely indistinguishable from the first. "Shay! Shay, answer me!"
No one said anything. Jessa thought maybe they would let him stand there until the suns drained the life from him. But that was not what should be done. Reacting more out of instinct than anything else, she grabbed Ben by the shoulders and forced him around until those uncomprehending eyes met her own.
"Listen to me!" she snapped, surprised to hear her own voice shaking. "There was nothing you could have done - nothing! They came after your droid. If you hadn't left last night, you'd be under that rubble now." She looked back at the little droid sitting forlornly in the landspeeder. "And he'd be in the Imps' hands. We'd have lost everything."
"I..." Ben collapsed against her, silent sobs shaking him. "Why would the Imps do this?" he whispered.
"I don't know." Again her gaze turned to the little droid. She did not have the heart to tell him that in all likelihood the signal had been tracked to his home - or that maybe the receiver he had attached to Blue had been programmed to intercept that particular frequency. He did not need to feel that guilt.
Especially when I'm responsible, she thought grimly. I'm the one who told Thanas about using Tatooine as a rendezvous point. The pain of that was worse than what she saw in Ben's eyes.
"Hey," she said softly, at a loss for words for the first time in her life. "Do you have other family somewhere? I can take you to Anchorhead. You can get a transport to Noonridge or wherever you want to go."
"No." He shook his head. "I don't have anyone else. Everyone was here." He looked back at the rubble. If Jessa had not thought it impossible, she would have said that he was drawing strength from it. "Uncle Gavin was a Rebel, wasn't he? And Shay?"
Jessa nodded, unable to think of anything to say. "Probably," she finally managed. "Even the Imps wouldn't do this just for the fun of it."
"Sasha wanted to go to the Academy. That was her dream." He seemed to shake himself out of whatever reverie he was in. "I want to come with you to Bakura."
"Fraggit." Jessa sighed. "Look, the Imps don't want you. You'll be safe here."
"There's nothing for me here now." He looked at her - and behind the pleading in his eyes Jessa saw something else. Despair. Desperation.
Blinding, terrifying rage.
And somehow, in a way she did not understand, he was fighting past those feelings. He meant what he said. "Uncle Gavin and Aunt Olivea would have helped you. Shay would have died rather then..." He scrubbed at his eyes with his hand. "I want to help, Jessa. Let me do what they would have wanted me to."
"All right." It was against her better judgment, but she did not see another course of action. "All right, Ben. If that's what you want." She rested her hand on his shoulder. "Do you want to see about a burial, or..." Fraggit. She had never been good with words. Everyone was watching them. She wanted to shoot her blaster in the air and tell them all to go away. But she could not. They had lost family and friends, too.
Only not like this. Not all at once.
At least she had chosen to sever all ties to her heritage and blood. Ben had had that decision made for him.
He just squinted up at the sky. Jessa could almost imagine that he was looking past the suns, out to the farthest stars.
***
The hangar was better than the one on Ord Mandell – not that that was saying much. Hal had seen cleaner garbage disposals. Idly brushing the top of his blaster with one hand, he walked down the ramp and surveyed the litter-strewn floor and filthy walls without bothering to conceal his disgust.
"Solo?" he called as he stepped over something decayed. "Want to let me in on the secret now?"
"There's no secret." A muscle jumped in Solo's cheek as he looked around the hangar. "Same one," he muttered almost to himself. "I'll be Kesseled."
Hal did not bother to ask. All he knew about Solo was what Solo had chosen to reveal – in other words, next to nothing. The man was a smuggler and carried a chip on his shoulder the size of a small planet, but that was about it. Hal had not been able to find anything about the man. Maybe he would be able to get Melody's slicer friends to work on it. They liked challenges.
"I need a drink," he said, making his way around what he sincerely hoped was not a decayed creature.
"You do that," Solo said absently. He was staring off into space, hardly listening to Hal at all.
Yep. Crazier than a Dug in a desert. Leaving Solo to his own devices, Hal made his way into the blisteringly hot streets of Mos Eisley and followed the wave of lowlifes heading for a small, out-of-the-way cantina. Most of the people around him had the hardened look of smugglers or the bloodshot eyes of spice junkies. He could ignore them.
Then he saw the kids in the shock collars.
Slavers. Hal hated slavers the way most Corellians hated CorSec. It was just the principle of the thing. He unhooked his blaster's safety and made his way through the small throng of greasy majordomos to the skinny man holding the collars' remote.
Maybe other men would have handled things more diplomatically. But Hal had learned a few things from Solo and from Melody. He balled his hand into a fist and slugged the man across the jaw.
"Hey!" One of the men in the crowd started forward, his hand already on what looked suspiciously like a disrupter. Fraggit. Hal drew his blaster and readied it, trying to watch all parts of the crowd at once. "Leave the merchandise alone!" the man snapped. "Bid on it fair and square!"
"Seal your word port." Hal grabbed the skinny slaver by the collar. "Where'd you get these kids?"
"Bought them where I always do." The slaver squinted at him. "Who the frag are you?"
"Someone who wants that remote." Hal dropped the man and scooped up the remote. He could hardly let the kids go here – not when they would just be scooped up by the majordomo's guards. And he was not about to complain to the local Imp garrison. Fragging wonderful.
He pointed his remote at the most well-dressed majordomo. "Brain-dead. Tell these goons to get out of the way. These kids aren't for sale."
One of the smaller girls squealed suddenly. "Behind you, mister!"
Hal whirled just in time to see a Gamorrean the size of a freighter lumbering toward him.
Sithspawn! He could hardly fire, not unless he wanted Imps crawling all over the place. Maybe he could slip into the crowd, but that would leave the kids back where they had started. Sometimes he wished he had Melody's take on life. She would have just blown the Gamorrean's brains out.
"Garrison security! Move it or lose it!"
Double frag. Hal scanned the crowd until he saw a young woman flashing a holobadge and sporting a sonic pistol. The majordomos disbursed slowly, but they began to slip away into the streets. The Gamorrean grunted and backed away. But that was not what made Hal's mouth drop open.
Xinia?!
It was indeed Xinia Terrik, waving that falsified holobadge for all it was worth. When she reached the slaver, she gave him a good kick and tucked her sonic pistol back in its holster. The majordomos had cleared out, no doubt thinking the Imps were not far behind. Even on Mos Eisley, no one wanted to attract the attention of a full garrison.
"What are you doing here?" she asked with a wide grin as she took the remote from his unresisting fingers. A quick push of a button sprang the shock collars open. The kids scattered, presumably running back to wherever they had come from. "I thought you were running spice in Hutt space."
"I was. My captain dragged me here." He frowned at the badge. "What about you?"
"I was supposed to be picking up a datadot, but my contact didn't show." Her face was suddenly grim as she pointed skyward. "There's a Super Star Destroyer and an Interdictor up there, in case you've gone blind and deaf."
"I noticed." Hal was not sure where Solo had gotten old Imp access codes, but apparently the Imps' computers had decided the battered Falcon was a supply ship. He was going to have to weasel that little trick out of Solo sometime. "I haven't seen you on any wanted signs recently."
"That's just because you aren't in the Core." The smuggler and occasional Rebel tucked the holobadge back in her pocket. "I'm leaving in a chrono. Care to join me for a drink?"
"You read my mind." Hal took one last look around. The kids might as well have vanished into thin air. "My captain needs to have a few circuits checked."
"One of those, huh?" Xinia rolled her eyes. "Ugh. I know the feeling."
***
"I told you something was wrong!" Nees shrieked. "I told you!"
"Bite it!" Melody squeezed off a hail of blaster bolts, dropping one of the Weequays. Not that one made any difference right now. For the moment her little "crew" was marginally sheltered, but Maker only knew how long that was going to last.
Briz, kriffing slimeball that he was, stood in the middle of the Weequays, pointing to all the hideouts that he had helped pick out especially for this job. Hobb went down with a smoking hole in his chest. Fry in frag, Melody thought with an angry snarl. Wonder how much we were worth selling out. The analytical part of her considered briefly. This is Briz. A couple thousand, tops.
Ghent fired blindly into the Weequays and ducked back behind the crate. "I'm getting too old for this," he muttered.
"I've got something to live for, remember?" Melody snapped off another shot. "Any plans, oh brilliant leader?"
"I don't suppose rolling over and dying is an option."
"Not on your kriff-loving mother's life." Frag. There was no way she was going to be able to make this up to Hal. Knowing Durga, the slime would have his goons dump her just inside the door of her apartment so he and Solo could stumble on her corpse whenever they got back.
Another shot grazed two and took down a third. Nees screamed somewhere behind her.
Melody made her decision.
"How many left?" she asked Ghent.
"Counting me? Two."
"Frag." Melody slipped her spare blaster pack out of its pouch. "When I get to three, you run like a slag-blasted Mynock. Ready?"
He nodded.
"Three!" She threw the blaster pack for all it was worth and stood up in full view of the Weequays. The tiny pack fell into the crowd, all but lost save as a discoloration against the Weequays' light skin. She could hear Ghent already just before she got gunned down. "Moons-mad idiot! Not even a Sith could make that shot!"
She fired.
The pack exploded.
Crowing triumphantly even as she ran like hell, Melody dove behind the crates and followed Ghent toward the maintenance exit. She thought she could hear Briz shrieking behind her.
A cold smile crept onto her face. Whoever said revenge was a platter best served chilled had never had a chance to really frag some Imp-loving two-face over.
"Where to?" Ghent asked once they were running through the cool night air.
"Off this planet." Abandoning Hal made her heart hurt, but she knew that finding her dead would have about the same effect. And she could make it up to him later. She just had to think of how she was going to find him.
She looked at Ghent. "I need you to track a ship," she said as she jumped over a pile of trash. "Think you can do that?"
He flashed her a grin. "Sure I can. Which ship and who owns it?"
"The Millennium Falcon. Han Solo."
Ghent stopped dead. "You're moons-mad."
"How did I know you were going to say that?" Melody crossed her arms. "You'll break into a Hutt's private warehouse, but you won't track Drunk and Smelly?"
"You mean Wanted and Rebel?"
Melody's heart sank into her boots. "What?"
"You kids are all idiots, you know that?" Ghent patted her on the shoulder. "Han Solo was a general at Endor. I thought you would know."
"It never came up." Melody looked up at the polluted sky. Somewhere out there, Hal was following a man with enough credits on his head to feed a small army. "I have to find Hal. Which means I need to find Solo."
"Which means you need to find the Rebels." Ghent sighed. "Do you know how much you owe me, pipsquirt?"
She smiled. Back when she was a little brat stealing sunfruit from vendors, he had made sure she kept her head on her shoulders and her neck out of a slave collar. She did owe him. Big time.
Impulsively, she leaned over and hugged him. "Thanks."
"Yeah, yeah." She knew he was smiling. "Don't make me regret it."
***
Denilee had been wearing ornate robes and dresses since she was an infant - it was part of the responsibility that came with being the daughter of Darth Rage. She was used to standing still for hours while her maids fussed over every detail of her hair and every drape of her veils.
But that did not mean she had to like it.
"You're scowling," Nanny said softly. Not reproachfully - there was never any reproach in Nanny. She was about eighty and in most ways she was more Denilee's mother than Roganda Ismaren, the woman who had given birth to her. She also had no name that Denilee was aware of. She was just Nanny, ever-present, infinitely patient, and brave enough to try to mother Denilee's father when she took it into her head.
Denilee smiled and tried not to shift. Her maids were not really like older sisters, but sometimes she imagined them to be. So she did not want to mess up their hard work by twitching. "I'm sorry. I'm just hot."
"I'm not surprised." Nanny looked at her for a moment. "Although red is your color, child."
Denilee did not have to look down at the ornate dress and overrobe. She had already seen it when it had been personally designed for her. The entire ensemble was crimson, but the septsilk dress had been spectra-dyed so that by the time the high neckline reached her enormous gold collar, it was the color of a sunset. The heavy overrobe was brocaded and had been embroided with stylized golden versions of the Imperial symbol. Her hair was piled up on top of her head in carefully arranged curls and draped with tiny red mothfabric veils to accent the Tumerian pressure rubies hanging from her ears. The crowning glory was the enormous gem set just above her forehead. It was called the Jewel of Zenda and had been given to her by the Emperor as a first birthday present.
It all weighed a ton. Especially the Jewel.
"There goes the scowl again." Nanny touched her cheek with one soft hand. "Do you want to tell me what's really bothering you."
She could never hide anything from Nanny. She had tried. "I don't want Mikel to be betrothed," she said softly. She knew she was not supposed to say anything like that, even to family, but she knew that her rooms had no listening devices and that her maids were loyal to her above even the Emperor. Nanny had seen to that. "If he gets betrothed, then he'll get married someday and I'll..." She blinked quickly so she would not cry. Princesses did not cry, especially when they were the daughters of Sith.
"You'll miss him." Nanny shooed the maids away with a wave of her hand. Denilee sometimes had the sneaking suspicion that most of the Imperial Palace's servants would stand on their heads if Nanny told them to. "Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to or be with people we don't love. It's part of the way life is."
Denilee leaned on her, careful not to crush her curls. She wanted to be home in her father's palace, not here. Not in apartments so close to the Emperor's court, however luxurious they happened to be. The old man made her feel like someone had dropped her in slime, and whenever he spoke it was like there was another voice scraping at the back of her mind. A silent scream, perhaps, or a plea for help cut off forever.
"I hate Emperor Palpatine," she muttered.
Nanny gave her another of those long looks. "Why? He's the reason you have all these things."
"I don't care. He's mean and Daddy's scared of him and he's going to make Mikel get betrothed." She scrubbed at her eyes. She could not look like she had been crying. "Why does Daddy listen to him?" she whispered.
"Because he is the Emperor." There was a tightness around Nanny's eyes, come and gone in a moment.
"Well, he's a bad one. Someone should take Mommy's vases and drop them on his head!"
Nanny chuckled. "That would be something to see, wouldn't it?" She patted Denilee on the shoulder. "Come along. Your mother always gets fussy if you run late."
Denilee took Nanny's hand and followed her out into the main rooms.
***
"Welcome to Chalmun's" Xinia said as she pushed past a Twi'lek and made her way to the nearest bar stool. A few of the local coins appeared from somewhere on her person and were dropped in front of the bartender. "Two Corellian brandies. Good ones."
When the bartender had scooped up the coins and gone to get the drinks, she leaned on her elbows and gave Hal a long look. Suddenly he remembered exactly what he had seen in her as a boy on Corellia. Alluring and beautiful, exotic without being really foreign, Xinia could easily be a model for one of the better designers. Except that life would never fit her. She would not be tied to the soil - not for anyone or any amount of money.
But for all her beauty and all of her personality, she was not Melody. Both were unique and both could probably outshoot him in a firefight, but while Xinia was all alluring mystery and inviting smiles, Melody was...
She was Melody, completely open and honest and as ready to draw a blaster in the middle of a hostile crowd if it meant defending her interests. She meant more to him than any cause could have - and if something happened to her, he was not sure if he could live with himself for not telling her that. He would probably drink himself into oblivion.
Or, he realized with a sudden start, turn out like Solo.
Oh, frag. I'm blind.
Xinia smiled. "Thinking deep thoughts?"
"Thinking about my captain." He really needed that brandy right about now. Solo might be drunk, smelly, and everything else that generally applied to a lowlife, but Hal had always known that there was something else to him. It was the same way that he could sometimes tell whether or not someone meant trouble without even saying a word to them. It probably came from watching his back so much.
"Is he that annoying?" Xinia asked with a chuckle.
"Maybe not." He forced thoughts of Solo out of his mind. "When are you leaving?"
"In a few minutes. The suns will give the Imps a blind spot then." She handed Hal his brandy and gulped hers. "I'm going back to the base," she said suddenly. "We need good pilots and you're one of the best."
Hal grinned. "I thought you weren't getting involved with the Rebellion."
That alluring smile flashed across her face. "And miss my chance to give Palpatine a splitting headache?" She stood up and patted him on the shoulder. "You know better than that. See you around, Horn."
"You, too." Hal watched her vanish into the crowd before turning his stare on his brandy. Just when you thought you knew someone, she turned out to be a bonafide Rebel.
Or something more than a smelly drunk.
He gulped the brandy and ordered another. Maybe if he got drunk enough, he could pass out and stop thinking for awhile.
***
The hiss of the cell door opening was all the warning Malinza had. As she sat up and pulled her hood down to hide the fear she knew was on her face, a blank-faced guard marched into her cell. A step behind him was the Sith Darth Rage. Hidden beneath her robe's voluminous sleeves, Malinza's hands curled into fists. She knew a torture session when she saw one.
"Now, Governor," Rage said softly. His rasping hiss of a voice filled the tiny cell. "We will discuss your involvement with the Rebel Alliance."
A whine grated on Malinza's ears. Already knowing what she would see, yet unable to tear her eyes from the sight, she stared in utter horror at the small black droid that slowly entered the cell.
Perhaps she was mistaken, but for a moment she was sure that some modicum of sympathy flickered across the guard's face before he left the cell, leaving her completely alone with the Sith and the torture droid.
***
The swamp world of Dagobah had served as a refuge for many Force-users throughout its long life. Now it provided a momentary haven for the last Jedi master, safely sheltering him from the Empire, if not from his own memories.
"I won't do it," he said to empty air. "Hal's all I have left."
Trained Anakin you did. Now the same you must do for your son.
"Hal's not strong in the Force," Corran snapped. "And he's too old."
You were older when I trained you. The second voice was not gravelly and wise, as the first one was. It belonged to a tired young woman. Please, Corran. Whether you like it or not, you're the last Jedi. Anakin is still an apprentice. We both know he isn't really ready.
Corran could imagine the young woman's face when she said that. "Look, Leia," he said finally. "I'll do what I can." He hid his face in his hand. "The last thing I told Iella was that I wouldn't let anything happen to Hal. Tell me I can keep that promise."
I could. But I won't lie to you. Leia Organa Solo hesitated for a moment. This isn't just my family's fight anymore. There's too much at stake.
"I know." He pulled his green robes around him as if shielding himself from a sudden chill. "Anakin's waiting for me on Naboo."
Returning to the beginning he is. Knows it he does not, but returning he is.
Whatever that meant. Corran made himself stand up and start for the Headhunter he had landed on the only bit of dry land for miles around. If his ethics had not gotten the better of him and Iella, they would never have helped the most wanted woman in the galaxy escape from a Sith during the Corellian Revolt. And he would not be here now, a widower estranged from his only child and hunted because he was, for all intents and purposes, the last of his kind.
"Come on, Whistler." He tapped his ancient R5 unit. "Let's get going."
***
Leia Organa Solo watched the lights of the Headhunter disappear into the gloom. I should have told him everything.
If knew he did, spare his son he would.
Stars help me, I know. She looked up at the sky from her robe's hood. It's starting again, she added softly. I can feel it. And I don't know how to stop it.
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