"R2," the President said without turning around. "Is this true?" R2 wobbled on his wheels. He tried to come toward her, but his circuits groaned. He beeped softly.
"You had best answer her and worry about your health later," the protocol droid said.
R2 beeped, then chirruped, then rocked on his wheels as if he was emphasizing his point.
"R2 confirms the young man"s tale," the protocol droid said. "He is worried that these new computers are part of a plot to destroy the best pilots in the fleet. He suggests that we see who ordered the recommissioning-"
"I did," the general said.
"Oh, dear," the protocol droid murmured.
Oh dear was right. The President"s face flushed as she turned toward the general. "You what, Wedge?" The general shrugged. "Well, it wasn"t just me," he said. "The chiefs of staff met. We"d had some problems with the X-wings. Mechanical troubles, mostly because they"re not aging well.
Since the market for electronic component parts has gone down, we thought we could rebuild some X-wings, and then buy the others that we needed."
"I wasn"t informed of this," the President said.
"Leia," the general said. "We issued a memo. It wasn"t really a policy change."
"Perhaps not," she said, "but it must have been expensive. The New Republic isn"t rich."
"That"s what I"ve been trying to tell you," the general said. "The costs on this project were unusually low. That"s why I promoted it in the first place. I thought it would benefit us. It certainly took the X- wing pilots out of danger from the mechanical failures we"ve been seeing lately." The President"s lips thinned, and her eyes narrowed. She clearly wasn"t going to argue with him in front of the guards. She turned to Cole.
"Do you believe this detonator is in all X-wings?" He swallowed. She was magnificent, her style so different from her brother"s. She was hard-edged where he made his demands with a deceptive softness. There was nothing soft in the President"s manner. Cole would never have argued with her as he had argued with her brother.
"The detonator is in the new computers, ma"am. That"s the one item we"ve replaced in every X-wing we touched."
"If you"ve touched those computers all day long, why haven"t you discovered this before now?"
"Because," Cole said, "I"ve never had occasion to take apart a computer before now."
"Wedge," the President said, "I need you to be honest with me. Whose idea was it to replace the computers?"
"Mine," he said.
"Wedge." Her voice had a warning tone in it. "We don"t have time for games. I need to know."
"Leia." He put his hand on her arm. "It was my idea. I"m the one who discovered the problems with the old X-wings. I"m the one who thought of the reconditioning. I"m even the one who talked to the military-issues buyer. It was me, Leia."
"I won"t believe you ordered sabotage," she said.
"I didn"t." His words hung in the air. The guards looked away. Only the protocol droid watched them, his golden eyes taking in everything.
Cole bit his lower lip. He had to speak up. "I beg your pardon, ma"am,"
he said, "but the general could have made the order without knowing of the sabotage."
"I know," she said. "The computers arrive a.s.sembled."
"Yes, ma"am," Cole said, "and in such a way that you"d have to be looking for it in order to find it. I wouldn"t have found it if Luke Skywalker hadn"t objected to the computer change specifically. And even then, I didn"t find it. R2 did."
"Mistress Leia," the protocol droid said, "the Kloperians have a policy against astromech droids in the maintenance bay." R2 whistled.
The President closed her eyes for a moment, then she asked, "How long have we been doing this?"
"Quite a while," the general said. "I could look it up." She shook her head. "Luke"s X-wing was brought in this time. He"s been to Coruscant enough that we can a.s.sume the change was made since his last meeting.
Still, that"s a long time. Mr. Fardreamer, how many X-wings do you think have the new computer system?"
"Most of them, ma"am," he said. "I was surprised to see one as old as the Jedi Master"s without an overhaul."
"Most of them." She whispered the sentence. Her hands were clasped together so tightly that the knuckles showed white. "And what about the new X-wings? How many are in use?"
"All but a handful, Leia," the general said.
"I wantfthem all checked. All of them. I also want the rebuilt X-wings checked."
"You don"t think that every X-wing has a bomb inside," the general said.
"That"s precisely what I do think," the President said. "And I want them removed."
"That could ground our X-wing fleet for a while."
"Better grounded than destroyed," the President said. "Can you do this, Mr. Fardreamer?"
"Yes, ma"am." Cole stood. "But I think we might have a bigger problem here." Her face became perfectly still, her eyes huge, as she waited for him to elaborate.
"Not all the X-wings are here with the fleet. A number of them are out."
She swallowed. "Do you think these need a remote detonator?" He understood where she was going. If a remote detonator was needed, then the X-wings away from Coruscant were probably safe.
"No, ma"am. This detonator is designed to go off when a certain combination of commands is made."
"Do you know what that combination is?" Cole shook his head.
"Then every X-wing pilot"s in danger," the President said.
"I"ll issue an order grounding them immediately," the general said.
"Be sure to send one to Jedi Master Skywalker," Cole said.
"Luke?" This time, the panic in the President"s voice was evident.
"Yes, ma"am. The X-wing he took is an exact replica of the prototype here, right down to the computer."
"Oh, Luke," she said. Then she looked up at the general. "I don"t even know where he is." The general put his arm around her. "We"ll find him,"
he said. "We have no other choice."
Almania loomed in his viewscreen, a large white-and-blue planet surrounded by clouds. Its three moons were smaller than Almania, and colored differently. Two had a lot of green mixed with the blue.
Luke"s charts told him that all three moons supported life, and had long-established cultures. Pydyr was the most famous, both for its exclusiveness and for its wealth. He had never heard of the other two, or of Almania, for that matter, until Brakiss had told him about it.
Oddly enough, he trusted Brakiss"s information. Brakiss still had a thread of goodness in him, a thread he fought, but one that existed. Luke was afraid, though, that one day Brakiss would overcome that goodness, and would use all of his considerable powers for evil. All Luke could do was help where he might, and let Brakiss know that Luke was there.
Letting his students go was the hardest part of teaching: allowing them to make their own mistakes, allowing them to be themselves, allowing them to choose their own paths. Brakiss had a great deal to fight from his past; Luke hoped that Brakiss would make the correct choice for the future.
But Brakiss had once again gone into Luke"s past, except for his words about Almania. You"re supposed to go to Almania. The answers you want are there. And then, later: Leave the fighting to those who are ruthless.
They"ll win anyway.
Whoever wanted Luke in Almania was ruthless, so ruthless that he terrified Brakiss. Not even Luke terrified Brakiss, not on that deep level. A part of Brakiss valued Luke, or he never would have given Luke that warning.
But Brakiss didn"t value the person who paid him to bring Luke to Almania. Brakiss feared that person.
That alone intrigued Luke. The warning intrigued him more.
He had spent the entire flight researching Almania. There wasn"t a lot to learn. Almania was on the far side of the galaxy. Neither the Empire nor the New Republic had paid it much attention. The Empire had once contacted Pydyr to help finance campaigns, but Pydyr had sent a carefully worded message about noninvolvement. Normally something like that would have set the Emperor off, but it didn"t. Even with all its wealth, Pydyr was too far away for the Empire to bother with.
While Pydyr saw itself as noninvolved, Almania considered itself loosely tied to the Rebellion, and later to the New Republic. The Je"har, who had led Almania during the fight against the Empire, had sent weapons and funds to several Rebel bases, including the one on Hoth. But the Je"har"s leadership changed shortly after the New Republic defeated Grand Admiral Thrawn, and the communications from Almania stopped. Some reports told of hideous brutality under Almania"s new regime. Others spoke of slaughter on a ma.s.s scale. But no one asked for help until later, and by that time, the New Republic was busy with the Yevetha threat. Almania, ignored in the best of times, was forgotten.
Something nagged Luke about the timing, though. Before he had built his retreat in the Manari Mountains, but after Callista, he had taught a wide range of promising students, including Brakiss. Brakiss had left during that time. Luke had thought that perhaps Brakiss was tied to Almania, but he could find nothing to link them. There was nothing in Brakiss"s mother"s stories to link them, either. And the Empire had not had a presence on Almania, so Brakiss could not have gone there during his Imperial service.
Or could he?
Brakiss was, after all, a spy.
Did Brakiss have something to do with the change in the Je"har? Brakiss had warned that Luke was walking into a trap, and Brakiss was part of that trap. But was the warning part of it? Luke had not felt that level of deception in Brakiss.
Only fear.
Leave the fighting to those who are ruthless.
They"ll win anyway.
They hadn"t in the past. In the past, Luke had been able to defeat them.
From Vader to Palpatine, from Thrawn to Daala, from Waru to Nil Spaar, Luke and his friends had dealt with the ruthless and defeated them. Yoda had taught him that there was great strength in the Force, strength that came from compa.s.sion, not from hatred. In that hatred alone, the ruthless weakened themselves.
"They won"t win," Luke whispered to Brakiss, wishing he had thought to say this in the droid factory. "I can guarantee it." Although Luke didn"t know quite yet what he was facing. He only had the remembered pain of the blast, the fear that had risen in Coruscant, and throughout the New Republic.
As he got closer to Almania, he felt a distinct chill. He checked the temperature in the X-wing. It was normal. The chill emanated from his stomach, and wound itself around his heart. It was nothing like the chill that had blasted him when all those people died.
And yet it was.
The chill settled into his back and shoulders. He was nearing Pydyr. He opened a channel, expecting to be challenged for being so close to such a private planet.
But his comm picked up nothing.
No scrambled signals.
No local broadcasts.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
And he should have gotten something.
He scanned the planet below. The buildings remained, and he got several life-form readings. But only about ten.
Ten on the entire moon.
When there should have been thousands.
Millions.
The chill gripped his heart. The cries had come from here. From Pydyr.
He would have to investigate. Almania could wait a day.
Then he felt the tendrils of a presence. It felt familiar, but too far away to be clear. And it felt almost as if it were being filtered through a dense atmosphere. He had felt it before.
On Telti.
Just before he saw Brakiss.
But this wasn"t Brakiss. That much he knew. This was someone else.
Someone equally familiar.
And more powerful. Much more powerful to be felt from so far away.
The feeling had a malevolence in it, though, that was unfamiliar. Except around Emperor Palpatine. Luke had felt it then.
But this wasn"t Palpatine. This was someone else. Someone Luke had known...
He punched the coordinates for Pydyr into the navicomputer, and the X-wing swung around, veering off its normal course and heading toward Pydyr. The answers would be there.
The feeling grew stronger, both familiar and unfamiliar. The dark side was strong near Almania. Almost as if the entire planet were awash in it.
Luke"s mouth was dry. Perhaps he should go back to Coruscant and get help. Leia, Han, anyone. Going into this alone would be very destructive and difficult.
But he could handle Pydyr. With only ten life-forms on the planet, he wasn"t about to run into all of them at once. He would see what happened on Pydyr, and make his decision from there.
The X-wing broke into the atmosphere. This side of Pydyr was awash in light. Buildings stood below him, with expansive avenues between them.
Avenues wide enough to land an X-wing in.