Heir to the Empire

C H A P T E R 19

He awoke slowly, in stages, aware of nothing but the twin facts that, one, he was lying flat on his back and, two, he felt terrible.

Slowly, gradually, the haze began to coalesce into more localized sensations. The air around him was warm but damp, a light and shifting breeze carrying several unfamiliar odors along with it. The surface beneath him had the soft/firm feel of a bed; the general sense of his skin and mouth implied he’d been asleep for probably several days.

It took another minute for the implications of that to percolate through the mental fog filling his brain. More than an hour or two was well beyond the safe capabilities of any stun weapon he’d ever heard of. Clearly, after being shot, he’d been drugged.

Inwardly, he smiled. Karrde was probably expecting him to be incapacitated for a while longer; and Karrde was in for a surprise. Forcing his mind into focus, he ran through the Jedi technique for detoxifying poisons and then waited for the haze to clear.

It took him some time to realize that nothing was, in fact, happening.

Somewhere in there he fell asleep again; and when he next awoke, his mind had cleared completely. Blinking against the sunlight streaming across his face, he opened his eyes and lifted his head.

He was lying on a bed, still in his flight suit, in a small but comfortably furnished room. Directly across from him was an open window, the source of the aroma-laden breezes he’d already noted. Through the window, too, he could see the edge of a forest fifty meters or so away, above which a yellowish-orange sun hovered—rising or setting, he didn’t know which. The furnishings of the room itself didn’t look much like those of a prison cell—

“Finally awake, are you?” a woman’s voice said from the side.

Startled, Luke twisted his head toward the voice. His first, instantaneous thought was that he had somehow missed sensing whoever was over there; his second, following on the heels of the first, was that that was clearly ridiculous and that the voice must be coming instead from an intercom or comlink.

He finished his turn, to discover that the first thought had indeed been correct.

She was sitting in a high-backed chair, her arms draped loosely over the arms in a posture that seemed strangely familiar: a slender woman about Luke’s own age, with brilliant red-gold hair and equally brilliant green eyes. Her legs were casually crossed; a compact but wicked-looking blaster lay on her lap.

A genuine, living human being … and yet, impossibly, he couldn’t sense her.

The confusion must have shown in his face. “That’s right,” she said, favoring him with a smile. Not a friendly or even a polite smile, but one that seemed to be made up of equal parts bitterness and malicious amusement. “Welcome back to the world of mere mortals.” —and with a surge of adrenaline, Luke realized that the strange mental veiling wasn’t limited to just her. He couldn’t sense anything. Not people, not droids, not even the forest beyond his window.

It was like suddenly going blind.

“Don’t like it, do you?” the woman mocked. “It’s not easy to suddenly lose everything that once made you special, is it?”

Slowly, carefully, Luke eased his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, giving his body plenty of time to get used to moving again. The woman watched him, her right hand dropping to her lap to rest on top of the blaster. “If the purpose of all this activity is to impress me with your remarkable powers of recuperation,” she offered, “you don’t need to bother.”

“Nothing so devious,” Luke advised, breathing hard and trying not to wheeze. “The purpose of all this activity is to get me back on my feet.” He looked her hard in the eye, wondering if she would flinch away from his gaze. She didn’t even twitch. “Don’t tell me; let me guess. You’re Mara Jade.”

“That doesn’t impress me, either,” she said coldly. “Karrde already told me he’d mentioned my name to you.”

Luke nodded. “He also told me that you were the one who found my X-wing. Thank you.”

Her eyes flashed. “Save your gratitude,” she bit out. “As far as I’m concerned, the only question left is whether we turn you over to the Imperials or kill you ourselves.”

Abruptly she stood up, the blaster ready in her hand. “On your feet. Karrde wants to see you.”

Carefully, Luke stood up, and as he did so, he noticed for the first time that Mara had attached his lightsaber to her own belt. Was she, then, a Jedi herself? Powerful enough, perhaps, to smother Luke’s abilities? “I can’t say that either of those options sounds appealing,” he commented.

“There’s one other one.” She took half a step forward, moving close enough that he could have reached out and touched her. Lifting the blaster, she pointed it directly at his face. “You try to escape … and I kill you right here and now.”

For a long moment they stood there, frozen. The bitter hatred was blazing again in those eyes … but even as Luke gazed back at her, he saw something else along with the anger. Something that looked like a deep and lingering pain.

He stood quietly, not moving; and almost reluctantly, she lowered the weapon. “Move. Karrde’s waiting.”

Luke’s room was at the end of a long hallway with identical doors spaced at regular intervals along its length. A barracks of sorts, he decided, as they left it and started across a grassy clearing toward a large, high-roofed building. Several other structures clustered around the latter, including another barracks building, a handful that looked like storehouses, and one that was clearly a servicing hangar. Grouped around the hangar on both sides were over a dozen starships, including at least two bulk cruisers like the Wild Karrde and several smaller craft, some of them hidden a ways back into the forest that pressed closely in on the compound from all sides. Tucked away behind one of the bulk cruisers, he could just see the nose of his X-wing. For a moment he considered asking Mara what had happened to Artoo, decided he’d do better to save the question for Karrde.

They reached the large central building and Mara reached past Luke to slap the sensor plate beside the door. “He’s in the greatroom,” Mara said as the panel slid open in response. “Straight ahead.”

They walked down a long hallway, passing a pair of what seemed to be medium-sized dining and recreation rooms. Ahead, a large door at the end of the hallway slid open at their approach. Mara ushered him inside—

And into a scene straight out of ancient legend.

For a moment Luke just stood in the doorway, staring. The room was large and spacious, its high ceiling translucent and crisscrossed by a webwork of carved rafters. The walls were composed of a dark brown wood, much of it elaborately open-mesh carved, with a deep blue light glowing through the interstices.¹ Other luxuries were scattered sparingly about: a small sculpture here, an unrecognizable alien artifact there. Chairs, couches, and large cushions were arranged in well-separated conversation circles, giving a distinctly relaxed, almost informal air to the place.

But all that was secondary, taken in peripherally or at a later time entirely. For that first astonishing moment Luke’s full attention was fixed solidly on the tree growing through the center of the room.

Not a small tree, either, like the delicate saplings that lined one of the hallways in the Imperial Palace. This one was huge, a meter in diameter at the base, extending from a section of plain dirt floor through the translucent ceiling and far beyond. Thick limbs starting perhaps two meters from the ground stretched their way across the room, some of them nearly touching the walls, almost like arms reaching out to encompass everything in sight.²

“Ah; Skywalker,” a voice called from in front of him. With an effort, Luke shifted his gaze downward, to find Karrde sitting comfortably in a chair at the base of the tree. On either side two long-legged quadrupeds crouched, their vaguely doglike muzzles pointing stiffly in Luke’s direction. “Come and join me.”

Swallowing, Luke started toward him. There were stories he remembered from his childhood about fortresses with trees growing up through them. Frightening stories, some of them, full of danger and helplessness and fear.

And in every one of those stories, such fortresses were the home of evil.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Karrde said as Luke approached. He picked up a silvery pitcher from the low table at his side, poured a reddish liquid into a pair of cups. “I must apologize for having kept you asleep all this time. But I’m sure you appreciate the special problems involved in making sure a Jedi stays where you’ve put him.”

“Of course,” Luke said, his attention on the two animals beside Karrde’s chair. They were still staring at him with an uncomfortable intensity. “Though if you’d just asked nicely,” he added, “you might have found me quite willing to cooperate.”

A flicker of a smile touched Karrde’s lips. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He gestured to the chair across from him. “Please sit down.”

Luke started forward; but as he did so, one of the animals rose up slightly on his haunches, making a strange sort of choked purr. “Easy, Sturm,” Karrde admonished, looking down at the animal. “This man is our guest.”

The creature ignored him, its full attention clearly on Luke. “I don’t think it believes you,” Luke suggested carefully. Even as he spoke, the second animal made the same sort of sound as the first had.

“Perhaps not.” Karrde had a light grip on each of the animals’ collars now and was glancing around the room. “Chin!” he called toward the three men lounging in one of the conversation circles. “Come and take them out, will you?”

“Sure.” A middle-aged man with a Froffli-style haircut³ got up and trotted over. “Come on, fellows,” he grunted, taking over Karrde’s grip on the collars and leading the animals away. “What hai we go for a walk, hee?”

“My apologies, Skywalker,” Karrde said, frowning slightly as he watched the others go. “They’re usually better behaved than that with guests. Now; please sit down.”

Luke did so, accepting the cup Karrde offered him. Mara stepped past him and took up position next to her chief. Her blaster, Luke noted, was now in a wrist holster on her left forearm, nearly as accessible as it would have been in her hand.

“It’s just a mild stimulant,” Karrde said, nodding to the cup in Luke’s hand. “Something to help you wake up.” He took a drink from his own cup and set it back down on the low table.

Luke took a sip. It tasted all right; and anyway, if Karrde had wanted to drug him, there was hardly any need to stoop to such a childish subterfuge. “Would you mind telling me where my droid is?”

“Oh, he’s perfectly all right,” Karrde assured him. “I have him in one of my equipment sheds for safekeeping.”

“I’d like to see him, if I may.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged. But later.” Karrde leaned back in his seat, his forehead furrowing slightly. “Perhaps after we’ve figured out just exactly what we’re going to do with you.”

Luke glanced up at Mara. “Your associate mentioned the possibilities. I’d hoped I could add another to the list.”

“That we send you back home?” Karrde suggested.

“With due compensation, of course,” Luke assured him. “Say, double whatever the Empire would offer?”

“You’re very generous with other people’s money,” Karrde said dryly. “The problem, unfortunately, doesn’t arise from money, but from politics. Our operations, you see, extend rather deeply into both Imperial and Republic space. If the Empire discovered we’d released you back to the Republic, they would be highly displeased with us.”

“And vice versa if you turned me over to the Empire,” Luke pointed out.

“True,” Karrde said. “Except that given the damage to your X-wing’s subspace radio, the Republic presumably has no idea what happened to you. The Empire, unfortunately, does.”

“And it’s not what they would offer,” Mara put in. “It’s what they have offered. Thirty thousand.”⁴

Luke pursed his lips. “I had no idea I was so valuable,” he said.

“You could be the difference between solvency and failure for any number of marginal operators,” Karrde said bluntly. “There are probably dozens of ships out there right now, ignoring schedules and prior commitments to hunt for you.” He smiled tightly. “Operators who haven’t given even a moment of consideration to how they would hold on to a Jedi even if they caught one.”

“Your method seems to work pretty well,” Luke told him. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me how you’ve managed it.”

Karrde smiled again. “Secrets of that magnitude are worth a great deal of money. Have you any secrets of equal value to trade?”

“Probably not,” Luke said evenly. “But, again, I’m sure the New Republic would be willing to pay market value.”

Karrde sipped from his drink, eyeing Luke thoughtfully over the rim of the cup. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said, putting the cup back on the table beside him. “You tell me why the Empire is suddenly so interested in you, and I’ll tell you why your Jedi powers aren’t working.”

“Why don’t you ask the Imperials directly?”

Karrde smiled. “Thank you, but no. I’d just as soon not have them start wondering at my sudden interest. Particularly after we pleaded prior commitments when the request came in for us to help hunt you down.”

Luke frowned at him. “You weren’t hunting for me?”

“No, we weren’t.” Karrde’s lip twisted. “One of those little ironies that make life so interesting. We were simply returning from a cargo pickup when Mara dropped us out of hyperspace on the spur of the moment to do a nav reading.”

Luke studied Mara’s stony expression. “How fortunate for you,” he said.

“Perhaps,” Karrde said. “The net result, though, was to put us in the middle of the exact situation that I’d hoped to avoid.”

Luke held his hands out, palms upward. “Then let me go and pretend none of this happened. I give you my word I’ll keep your part in it quiet.”

“The Empire would find out anyway.” Karrde shook his head. “Their new commander is extremely good at piecing bits of information together. No, I think your best hope right now is for us to find a compromise. Some way we can let you go while still giving the Imperials what they want.” He cocked his head slightly. “Which leads us back to my original question.”

“And from there back to my original answer,” Luke said. “I really don’t know what the Empire wants with me.” He hesitated, but Leia should be well beyond Imperial reach by now. “I can tell you, though, that it’s not just me. There have been two attempts on my sister Leia, too.”

“Killing attempts?”

Luke thought about it. “I don’t think so. The one I was present for felt more like a kidnapping.”

“Interesting,” Karrde murmured, his eyes defocusing slightly. “Leia Organa Solo. Who is in training to be a Jedi like her brother. That could explain … certain recent Imperial actions.”

Luke waited, but after a moment it became clear that Karrde wasn’t going to elaborate. “You spoke of a compromise,” he reminded the other.

Karrde seemed to pull his thoughts back to the room. “Yes, I did,” he said. “It’s occurred to me that your privileged position in the New Republic might be what the Empire was interested in—that they wanted information on the inner workings of the Provisional Council. In such a case, we might have been able to work out a deal whereby you went free while your Artoo droid went to the Imperials for debriefing.”

Luke felt his stomach tighten. “It wouldn’t do them any good,” he said as casually as he could manage. The thought of Artoo being sold into Imperial slavery … “Artoo has never been to any of the Council meetings.”

“But he does have a great deal of knowledge of you personally,” Karrde pointed out. “As well as of your sister, her husband, and various other highly placed members of the New Republic.” He shrugged. “It’s a moot question now, of course. The fact that the focus is exclusively on the New Republic’s Jedi and potential Jedi means they’re not simply after information. Where did these two attacks take place?”

“The first was on Bimmisaari, the second on Bpfassh.”

Karrde nodded. “We’ve got a contact on Bpfassh; perhaps we can get him to do some backtracking on the Imperials. Until then, I’m afraid you’ll have to remain here as our guest.”

It sounded like a dismissal. “Let me just point out one other thing before I go,” Luke said. “No matter what happens to me—or what happens to Leia, for that matter—the Empire is still doomed. There are more planets in the New Republic now than there are under Imperial rule, and that number increases daily. We’ll win eventually, if only by sheer weight of numbers.”

“I understand that was the Emperor’s own argument when discussing your Rebellion,” Karrde countered dryly. “Still, that is the crux of the dilemma, isn’t it? While the Empire will wreak swift retribution on me if I don’t give you over to them, the New Republic looks more likely to win out in the long run.”

“Only if he and his sister are there to hold Mon Mothma’s hand,” Mara put in contemptuously. “If they aren’t—”

“If they aren’t, the final time frame is somewhat less clear,” Karrde agreed. “At any rate, I thank you for your time, Skywalker. I hope we can come to a decision without too much of a delay.”

“Don’t hurry on my account,” Luke told him. “This seems a pleasant enough world to spend a few days on.”

“Don’t believe it for a moment,” Karrde warned. “My two pet vornskrs have a large number of relatives out in the forest. Relatives who haven’t had the benefits of modern domestication.”

“I understand,” Luke said. On the other hand, if he could get out of Karrde’s encampment and clear of whatever this strange interference was they were using on him …

“And don’t count on your Jedi skills to protect you, either,” Karrde added, almost lazily. “You’ll be just as helpless in the forest. Probably more so.” He looked up at the tree towering above him. “There are, after all, considerably more ysalamiri out there than there are here.”

“Ysalamiri?” Luke followed his gesture … and for the first time noticed the slender, gray-brown creature hanging on to the tree limb directly over Karrde’s head. “What is it?”

“The reason you’re staying where we put you,” Karrde said. “They seem to have the unusual ability to push back the Force—to create bubbles, so to speak, where the Force simply doesn’t exist.”

“I’ve never heard of them,” Luke said, wondering if there was any truth at all to the story. Certainly neither Yoda nor Ben had ever mentioned the possibility of such a thing.

“Not very many have,” Karrde agreed. “And in the past, most of those who did had a vested interest in keeping it that way. The Jedi of the Old Republic avoided the planet, for obvious reasons, which was why a fair number of smuggling groups back then had their bases here. After the Emperor destroyed the Jedi, most of the groups pulled up roots and left, preferring to be closer to their potential markets. Now that the Jedi are rising again”—he nodded gravely to Luke—“perhaps some of them will return. Though I daresay the general populace would probably not appreciate that.”

Luke glanced around the tree. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see several other ysalamiri wrapped around and across various of the limbs and branches. “What makes you think it’s the ysalamiri and not something else that’s responsible for this bubbling in the Force?”

“Partly local legend,” Karrde said. “Mainly, the fact that you’re standing here talking with me. How else could a man with a stun weapon and an extremely nervous mind have walked right up behind a Jedi without being noticed?”

Luke looked at him sharply, the last piece falling into place. “You had ysalamiri aboard the Wild Karrde.”

“Correct,” Karrde said. “Purely by chance, actually. Well—” He looked up at Mara. “Perhaps not entirely by chance.”

Luke glanced again at the ysalamiri above Karrde’s head. “How far does this bubbling extend?”

“Actually, I’m not sure anyone knows,” Karrde conceded. “Legend says that individual ysalamiri have bubbles from one to ten meters in radius, but that groups of them together have considerably larger ones. Some sort of reinforcement, I gather. Perhaps you’ll do us the courtesy of participating in a few experiments regarding them before you leave.”⁵

“Perhaps,” Luke said. “Though that probably depends on which direction I’m headed at the time.”

“It probably will,” Karrde agreed. “Well. I imagine you’d like to get cleaned up—you’ve been living in that flight suit for several days now. Did you bring any changes of clothing with you?”

“There’s a small case in the cargo compartment of my X-wing,” Luke told him. “Thank you for bringing it along, incidentally.”

“I try never to waste anything that may someday prove useful,” Karrde said. “I’ll have your things sent over as soon as my associates have determined that there are no hidden weapons or other equipment among them.” He smiled slightly. “I doubt that a Jedi would bother with such things, but I believe in being thorough. Good evening, Skywalker.”

Mara had her tiny blaster in hand again. “Let’s go,” she said, gesturing with the weapon.

Luke stood up. “Let me offer you one other option,” he said to Karrde. “If you decide you’d rather pretend none of this ever happened, you could just return Artoo and me to where you found us. I’d be willing to take my chances with the other searchers.”

“Including the Imperials?” Karrde asked.

“Including the Imperials.” Luke nodded.

A small smile touched Karrde’s lips. “You might be surprised. But I’ll keep the option in mind.”

The sun had disappeared behind the trees and the sky was noticeably darker as Mara escorted him back across the compound. “Did I miss dinner?” he asked as they walked down the corridor toward his room.

“Something can be brought to you,” Mara said, her voice little more than a thinly veiled snarl.

“Thank you.” Luke took a careful breath. “I don’t know why you dislike me so much—”

“Shut up,” she cut him off. “Just shut up.”

Grimacing, Luke did so. They reached his room and she nudged him inside. “We don’t have any lock for the window,” she said, “but there’s an alarm on it. You try going out, and it’ll be a toss-up as to whether the vornskrs get to you before I do.” She smiled, mock-sweetly. “But don’t take my word for it. Try it and find out.”

Luke looked at the window, then back at Mara. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

Without another word she left the room, closing the door behind her. There was the click of an electronic lock being engaged, and then silence.

He went to the window, peered out. There were lights showing in some of the other barracks windows, though he hadn’t noticed any other lights in his own building. Which made sense, he supposed. Whether Karrde decided to turn him over to the Empire or release him back to the New Republic, there was no point in more of his associates knowing about it than absolutely necessary.

All the more so if Karrde decided to take Mara’s advice and just kill him.

He turned away from the window and went back to his bed, fighting back the fear trying to rise inside him. Never since facing the Emperor had he felt so helpless.

Or, for that matter, actually been so helpless.

He took a deep breath. For the Jedi, there is no emotion; there is peace. Somehow, he knew, there had to be a way out of this prison.

All he had to do was to stay alive long enough to find it.