Fate of the Jedi: Backlash (3 page)

He came free of the speeder bike as it rotated beneath him from the giant creature’s blow. He was still headed for the tree trunk. He gave himself an adrenaline-boosted shove in the Force and drifted another couple of meters to the left, allowing him to flash past the trunk instead of into it; he could feel its bark rip at the right shoulder of his tunic. A centimeter closer, and the contact would have given him a serious friction burn.

He rolled into a ball and let senses other than sight guide him. A Force shove to the right kept him from smacking into a much thinner tree, one barely sturdy enough to break his spine and any bones that hit it. He needed no Force effort to shoot between the forks of a third tree. Contact with a veil of vines slowed him; they tore beneath the impact of his body but dropped his rate of speed painlessly. He went crashing into a mass of tendrils ending in big-petaled yellow flowers, some of which reflexively snapped at him as he plowed through them.

Then he was bouncing across the ground, a dense layer of decaying leaves and other materials he really didn’t want to speculate about.

Finally, he rolled to a halt. He stretched out, momentarily stunned but unbroken, and stared up through the trees. He could see a single shaft of sunlight penetrating the forest canopy, but not far behind him it illuminated a swirl of pollen from the stand of yellow flowers he’d just crashed through. In the distance, he could hear the roar of Ben’s
speeder bike, hear its engine whine as the boy put it in a hard maneuver, trying to get back to Luke.

Closer, there were footsteps. Heavy, ponderous footsteps.

A moment later, the owner of that huge arm loomed over Luke. It was a rancor, standing upright but bent forward.

The rancors of this world had evolved to be smarter than those elsewhere. This one had clearly been trained as a guard and taught to tolerate protective gear. It wore a helmet, a rust-streaked cup of metal large enough to serve as a backwoods bathtub, with leather straps meeting under its chin. Strapped to its left forearm was a thick, round durasteel shield that looked ridiculously tiny compared with the creature’s enormous proportions but was probably thick enough to stop one or two salvos from a military laser battery.

The creature stared down at Luke. Its mouth opened, and it offered a challenging growl.

Luke glared at it. “Do you really want to take me on right now? I don’t recommend it.”

It reached for him.

The rancor’s extraordinary musculature gave it speed not usually found in creatures so large. Luke kicked downward, propelling himself into a backward somersault, and rose to his feet as the rancor’s fingers plowed into the soft, mossy ground where he had just been lying. He put an edge of anger and fearsomeness into both his voice and the Force. “It’s time for you to leave before you get hurt. Badly hurt.”

But the rancor merely bellowed at him again, apparently unfazed by the Jedi mental touch. It did not bother trying to grab Luke a second time; with its other arm, it swung its ponderous shield down at him, the object’s circumference making it a huge weapon, difficult to avoid.

Difficult for an ordinary man to avoid. Luke leapt over it as it swung at him. He landed directly in front of the rancor.

He could feel the giant beast’s resistance to his Force nudge, and that resistance was not natural. Something nearby was feeding the rancor thoughts and motivation, also through the Force. And that individual
would be the more dangerous of the two, but Luke could scarcely turn his back on the rancor to go looking for the Force-user.

In the distance, he heard Ben’s speeder bike end its tight turn and settle into something closer to straight-line flight as it hurtled back toward Luke’s position. Through the Force, Luke sent a feeling of caution, warning Ben to be mindful of other possible hazards. At the same time, he unclipped and ignited his lightsaber, then lunged at the rancor’s extended shield hand, still sweeping away from him.

His energy blade caught the rancor’s wrist and cut a bloody trench from that point deep into the forearm, severing the shield’s laces, leather or sinew cables as thick as those used on ancient seafaring ships. Lightsaber attacks normally cauterized the flesh they contacted, but the rancor’s limb was too thick, the wound too deep for that. Dark rancor blood gouted up, and the shield dropped away from the arm.

The rancor howled and straightened. It glanced at the injury—Luke knew it not to be a life-threatening cut by rancor standards, for all that his strike would have severed a tauntaun leg or wampa arm—and glowered at Luke. Then it took a step back, looked left and right, and saw what it wanted, a fallen tree trunk some eight meters long. It sidestepped to the trunk and, using both hands, unimpaired by Luke’s attack, lifted it by one end, clearly intending to use it as a club.

In his peripheral vision, Luke saw movement, the bob-and-weave of Ben’s speeder bike.

At almost the same moment Luke felt a pulse in the Force from the opposite direction. He spun around, dropping into a ready crouch.

Ten meters away, standing in front of a thornbush, stood a human woman. Luke saw a mane of black hair, strands of white animal teeth hanging from it to frame her face, and abbreviated garments and accoutrements fashioned from ruddy tanned hide.

Then it was as though Luke, the rancor, everything within sight was enveloped in a ball of lightning. Arcs of electricity a few centimeters thick and several meters long snapped and crackled between ground and sky, incinerating vines, igniting leaves, causing the rancor to howl as though it were witnessing the end of the galaxy. As the barrage began, Luke let the Force flow through him, let it direct his instincts, and leaped where it guided him, bounding forward–left–right in a seemingly random pattern that kept all but a few errant lightning
strikes from hitting him. The woman vanished from his sight and other perceptions as he moved.

The lightning strikes that hit Luke did not seem too dangerous, though he felt the hair all over his body stand on end. Suddenly his lightsaber switched off.

The engine howl of Ben’s speeder bike turned into a series of coughs, then cut out entirely.

And then the lightning storm was over. Luke saw the oncoming speeder bike dip, nose-down, toward a rock outcropping. Ben leapt free, clearing the jagged black stones by less than a meter, and somersaulted toward a trio of tree trunks.

Luke raised a hand, extending control through the Force, and directed his ballistic son to one side of the trees, slowing Ben’s velocity as he did so. By the time Ben came to ground, he was hurtling at a pace his gymnastic skills could handle. The boy shoulder-rolled through a shallow patch of algae and came to his feet, slick green slime adhering to his back and right arm, poised and ready to fight.

But their visible opponent was no longer interested. The rancor looked around, an almost human expression of fear on its face, then glanced again at its forearm injury. It turned away from the two Jedi and plunged into the forest, heading directly away from them.

Ben frowned and prepared to give chase, but Luke gestured for him to stand down. “That’s not our real enemy. Look for a Force-user.”

“That woman? Who was she?”

Luke shrugged. “A Dathomiri Witch, I expect.”

They cast about in the Force, but the woman was not to be found. They could feel teeming rain-forest life in the Force, could detect the lumbering rancor moving away from them at high speed, and Luke could still feel, distantly, his own blood the Sith girl was carrying, but there was no pulse to suggest that anyone was using the Force.

Ben sighed. “What was that all about?”

“Somebody did not want us to proceed.” Luke reignited his lightsaber. It came on, but its
snap-hiss
of ignition was more faltering, more unsteady than usual, and the weapon remained lit only a few seconds. Its energy blade retracted from view. “Try yours.”

Ben did so. The blade did not ignite. “Stang.” He scowled, then checked his comlink and datapad in turn. “Fried, Dad.”

“Mine, too.”

“How is it that your hand’s still working?”

Luke looked at his right hand—the prosthetic one. He had lost the original when he was only a few years older than Ben. “The artificial skin offers a fair amount of insulation.” He balled his hand into a fist, felt no indication that it was damaged. “Come on, let’s get out of the immediate vicinity—in case our enemies return—and then see if we can get any of these electronics working again. A Jedi without a lightsaber—”

“Is a lot less dashing to the girls.”

“Not what I was going to say, but probably true.”

Master Cilghal—who, like all the Mon Calamari, possessed a stocky, powerful body and bulbous head, with protruding eyes that routinely moved independently in their sockets—left Master Hamner’s quarters at a fast walk, this unaccustomed speed causing her Jedi robes to swirl around her.

Jaina Solo, Jedi Knight and daughter of Han and Leia, dressed in ordinary robes like a scaled-down version of Cilghal’s, saw her emerge. Jaina hurried to catch up and walked beside the Master Jedi. A tiny woman and a delicate beauty, had Jaina not been famous because of her parents and her own exploits, she might have been mistaken for the sort of athlete who won fame for some sports victory, then spent the rest of her professional career fulfilling lucrative product endorsement contracts. In truth, she cared little about her looks or money; her continued service to the Jedi was proof enough of the latter. She waved to catch Cilghal’s attention. “I take it that something’s up.”

Cilghal nodded. “Something is very, very up. I just had a message from your cousin.” Cilghal’s voice was the sort of resonant, gravelly rumble common to the Mon Calamari. Hers was usually a trifle softer, as befit a healer, but now it was as hard as that of any member of her species.

“From Ben? Is Luke all right?”

“He is hurt and tired, but he will recover.”

“Well?” Not as diplomatically adept as her mother, Jaina did not bother keeping impatience out of her voice.

“Jedi Skywalker has informed us—and I point out that, because it comes from young Ben, it is no violation of the Grand Master’s terms of exile—”

“You’re splitting hairs.”

“I have no hairs to split. Young Ben informs us that the dark side of the Force is powerfully represented in the Maw cluster, and the Sith are at large again in the galaxy.”

“What?”

“Sith. Your uncle and cousin fought them. But these do not follow the Sith Rule of Two. They apparently follow a Sith rule of However Many They Need. The Grand Master is pursuing one to try to find her planet of origin.”

Jaina was silent until the two of them reached the end of the marbled corridor and the turbolift. It opened before them, and they stepped in. “What’s Master Hamner’s response? To assume that Ben is wrong and ignore the problem?”

“The Master is no fool. Medcenter, please.” The turbolift doors closed and the lift plummeted. Unmoved by the lift’s heart-stopping speed, Cilghal continued, “He knows no Jedi Knight would lie about such a thing—or even report it when not absolutely sure. Master Hamner will be calling for the Masters to convene and strategize.” The lift shuddered to a halt and its doors opened, allowing the two Jedi to exit on the level where most of the medical offices were located. “But we can be sure that whatever we decide, whatever we do, it will have to be without the knowledge or approval of the Galactic Alliance government.”

Jaina nodded. That was a given. The GA Chief of State, Natasi Daala, was no fan of the Jedi and would oppose any military action unilaterally initiated by the Jedi Order. But the Sith were a menace recognized chiefly by the Jedi; to the population at large, they were either fairy-tale monsters or just another philosophical Order, little different from the Jedi themselves. In fact, Jaina’s brother Jacen had, at different times, been both Jedi and Sith, and had blurred the distinction between them in the public eye.

“Make sure I get invited to the meeting,” Jaina said. “If the Sith are
under discussion, the Sword of the Jedi needs to be there.” She had a distaste for referring to the title that had been conveyed upon her during the Yuuzhan Vong War, but at times like this it needed to be invoked.

Cilghal nodded again. “The Sword of the Jedi needs to be lit and swinging at the enemy.”

Han looked down through his viewport at the unpromising spectacle of the grassy field and prefabricated domes that constituted Dathomir’s preeminent spaceport. He sighed and shook his head. He was going to need to call some backup, because if Luke and Ben were down there somewhere hunting Sith, the last thing he was going to do was let Leia go looking for them alone, and Dathomir was the last place you’d want to leave a little girl to her own devices—especially a Force-sensitive girl who just happened to be the Chume’da of the Hapan Consortium, the supposedly deceased daughter of Jacen Solo and former Jedi Knight, Queen Tenel Ka.

That last, of course, was a well-kept secret, necessary to protect young Allana’s life. To everyone but close family, the little girl now seated in Leia’s lap in the copilot’s seat to his right was “Amelia,” a child Han and Leia had adopted to help heal their grief over the loss of their two sons. Almost from toddlerhood, Allana had learned to cultivate the deception in public, even if she didn’t understand the reasons for it.

Now she squirmed around and looked at Han. “What’s wrong, Grandpa? Is it a bad place to land?”

“No, sweetie. I can land the
Falcon
during a groundquake and keep your cup of milk steady. It’s just a bad
place.”

Leia snickered. “Believe it or not, your grandpa used to
own
this planet. For a few weeks, and not entirely legally. He had some bad times here. With Witches, and monsters, and an Imperial admiral who just wouldn’t go away, and a rich, handsome prince who wanted to marry me.”

“You’re making all that up.”

Leia shook her head. “The prince was your other grandfather, Isolder.”