The smile left the death"s head. "I am the person to do so, President. I have done so on my homeworld. I can do it anywhere else."
"I"ve never heard of you," Leia said. "How do I know you"re capable of such wisdom?"
"No one had heard of young Luke Skywalker before he rescued you from the Death Star. Or of the brash Han Solo before he joined Skywalker and Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi. There were even planets that had not heard of you before the Rebellion, President. Sometimes reputations develop late."
"What will you do if I refuse to turn the New Republic over to you?" The smile returned. "I will kill your brother. And your husband. And your children." Leia put her hands behind her back. She used a Jedi calming method so that her emotions remained in check. She would feel terror and anger later. Now she had to be a leader. The best leader the New Republic had ever known. And sometimes being a leader meant knowing when to ask the right question. "What if I still refused?" The death"s head tilted, and part of its forehead disappeared out of the holo frame. She had surprised this Kueller. "You would refuse?"
"I haven"t made any decisions yet," she said, keeping her voice calm. "I simply want to know my options."
"Then I will destroy your subjects, President."
"Why would you want to do that?" Leia asked. "Even if you succeeded, you"d have no one left to rule."
"There are always more worlds. With the wealth I would have from the New Republic, I can find those worlds."
"You can"t kill everyone in the Republic," Wedge said. "The Emperor tried to intimidate everyone into his power, and it took years." The death"s head"s smile grew. "I can kill all of them at once."
"That"s hundreds of worlds," Admiral Ackbar said. "You can"t kill that many beings at the same time."
"Ah, but I can." The death"s head turned and looked at something in its view, but its head suddenly faced Admiral Ackbar. The mouth gave an order in a language Leia was unfamiliar with.
She looked to Wedge in confusion. He shrugged, and as he did so, a wave of terror hit her. It was mixed with cold and voices screaming. She felt a betrayal and shock so deep that it devastated her. Not again, she thought. The weight of it made her stagger. Stop! she thought, or maybe she screamed. She didn"t know. The cold grew deeper.
And then the voices were silent.
She was sitting on the floor, tears she hadn"t known she had shed on her cheeks. The others in the room were staring at her in astonishment. Wedge helped her up. "What happened?" The face had a triumphant look. The blackness behind the eyes seemed deeper. It felt more powerful than before.
Force-sensitive. Kueller could use the Force.
And he used it for the dark side.
As that realization filled her, the death mask smiled. "I am stronger than you will ever be, President. I am more powerful than you can dream."
"What did you do to her?" Wedge shouted.
"I"m all right." Leia worked to keep her voice calm. She let go of his arm.
"I did nothing to President Organa Solo. I merely gave you a demonstration of my powers. Overpopulation is such a problem, don"t you think? I just rid the galaxy of at least a million lives. More room for the rest of us."
"A million lives?" Ackbar murmured.
"That is my second demonstration. You remember that feeling from the first time, don"t you, President?"
"How can you?" Leia asked. "Those were people. Living, breathing people."
"Well, actually, most of them didn"t breathe," Kueller said, "at least not in the way you do. But they no longer have to worry about breathing, through lungs or gills or airholes. See how good I am for the galaxy?"
"No," Leia said.
"I will not argue methods with you, President. You have heard my demands.
Either you acquiesce, or in three days" time, I will kill your brother."
"You can"t kill Luke Skywalker," Wedge said.
"Why not? Because he is a Jedi Master? Or because he is your friend?"
Wedge didn"t answer.
The death mask turned its empty eyes to Leia. "You have three days, President. I give you time because I respect you." The head nodded.
"Until then, President." And the image was gone.
Leia let herself sink to the floor. A million lives. A million more lives as a demonstration to her.
Like Grand Moff Tarkin"s demonstration of the Death Star.
Tarkin had taken her father. Kueller threatened her new family.
She wouldn"t let him win. Han and Luke and her children would come home to her. And the New Republic would remain hers. She just didn"t know how yet.
TWENTY-NINE.
Luke had just finished a small meal from the canned rations still in the house. He was resting, regaining his strength as best he could. The feeling of being watched was gone, for the moment, but he knew it would return.
And it had something to do with Almania.
After he let the food settle, he would question the house"s computer again. He was hoping it knew of a bacta tank or the Pydyrian equivalent.
Anything to help him heal faster. He had to do more than Jedi practices.
He knew that he would need all of his strength.
Once he found the bacta tank, he would start a search for a new ship. He wasn"t sure if he would proceed to Almania, or if he would go back to Yavin 4 until he healed. He didn"t know how much time he had; he wasn"t even certain what he was searching for, and that made him uneasy.
This whole thing made him uneasy.
Luke?
Leia, reaching toward him from a long distance away, her mind filled with concern.
Leia?
But the connection broke; shattered as it never had before. He couldn"t feel her. He reached with his mind, feeling for her familiar sense, and she wasn"t there. It was as if someone had built a wall around his mind.
Leia?
She couldn"t be dead, could she? Her thought for him had been filled with concern, but he thought the concern was for him, not because she was in trouble.
Leia?
He sought out the children, and could feel them, squabbling happily on Anoth. He even got a sense of his students back on Yavin 4, but not of Leia.
Or of anyone close to her. Something was blocking him. Something purposeful.
He sighed. Something more to seek out. Something else to sap his strength. He rubbed his eyes, taking a deep breath before trying again.
He leaned forward in the chair made for a form smaller than his when the blast hit him. It knocked him backward, and he yelped with pain as the floor hit his injured skin. But that pain was nothing compared with the ice-cold pain that overwhelmed him. Pain, terror, the shock of betrayal, all at once, expressed in thousands of mental voices that were suddenly, irrevocably silenced.
The chill filled him. Then he remembered Anakin: We made the room hot.
Hot.
He sent heat into the cold, beating it back, cringing from the pain, his arms around his head to protect himself from the pink goo, from the stinging, from the cold, awful pain of death.
Death.
Death.
The chill disappeared, leaving a sour residue in his mouth. He raised his head, uncertain how long he had been on the floor.
It had happened again. Another planet destroyed.
He sent for Leia again, but didn"t feel her. That block: hard, firm, powerful.
He stood, shaking. He had to find a computer connected to the nets or something that would give him information. Even though he knew, deep down, that nothing had happened to Coruscant.
That blast had been deeper, colder, more powerful than the first one. It had been closer.
Much closer.
And he even knew the source of the destruction.
Almania, and the presence that was waiting for him there.
"Who was that?" Admiral Ackbar asked.
"I don"t know," Leia said. She brushed off her combat fatigues, and pushed back a strand of hair. She was sitting once more at her computer station, sending messages to Han, who didn"t respond, and to the children, who did. Winter said they too had felt the blast, and this time she had known how to help them. She also said that Luke had helped them on his trip to Coruscant and, while they were shaken, they weren"t as terrified as they had been the first time.
Leia spoke to them, rea.s.suring them that she was fine, and then signed off.
"That death mask looked familiar," Wedge said.
"We used to have a collection of them in the National Museum on Alderaan, " Leia said. "It comes from one of the farthest reaches of the galaxy."
"How do we know it"s a mask?" the lieutenant asked. "It moved like a mouth."
"We don"t," Leia said. "Do you know of any peoples who look like that? Or use masks like that to cover their faces?"
"Not off the top of my head," Admiral Ackbar said, "but we should check for it."
"We need to check for many things," Leia said. "We also need to find out where that transmission originated from." Her hair had slipped again. She pushed it back. Her hands were still shaking. "We also need to find out who died."
"I felt nothing, Leia," Wedge said.
"I know, Wedge. This Kueller, whoever he is, has some Force capability.
He knew that I would feel those deaths. That was his demonstration."
"How do we know he didn"t do some sort of sending, something that would have made you feel as though people died?" Admiral Ackbar said.
"We don"t," Leia said. "But I can"t imagine anyone having that kind of talent." She shuddered, the chill still numbing her heart.
"There are no reports of exploded planets," the lieutenant said, "either now or just before the bombing of the Senate Hall."
"Kueller said he used an elegant weapon," Wedge said. He slipped back into his chair. "We"re looking for something too big. We need to know what planets haven"t been heard from lately or what unusual events have transpired in nearby s.p.a.ce."
"Lots of reports of mids.p.a.ce collisions in the landing area around Auyemesh," Ackbar said.
"And no response from their s.p.a.ce-traffic-control unit," said Wedge, his voice rising with excitement.
"All attempts to contact others on the planet failing," the lieutenant said.
"Where"s Auyemesh?" Leia asked.
"It"s a tiny planet in a far system," Ackbar said. "It"s on the Coruscant side of the Almanian system."
"The Almanian system?" Leia hated it when she was ignorant of the galaxy.
She thought she knew every place. Was this the Almania Lando mentioned?
"I haven"t heard of it either," Wedge said, "and I thought I"d been everywhere."
"It"s beyond the Rim Worlds in distance," Ackbar said. "The Old Republic was going to make Almania a member, but several senators fought it, saying the distance to the system was too great."
"Great distance," Leia whispered. "Admiral, you said that transmission came from a great distance." Ackbar nodded. "The Almanian system is far enough away to have that sort of effect. In fact, holo-coding would be the preferred method of communication from that distance because it covers the other obvious tells of a long-distance communication."
"Because holo-coding is often slower than regular messaging," Wedge said.
"Precisely. It takes an expert to recognize the differences between coding problems and distance problems."
"All right," Leia said. "That gives us some kind of lead."