Star Wars - I Jedi (Michael Sta

Star Wars: I, Jedi

One

None of us liked waiting in ambush, primarily because we couldn’t be

wholly certain we weren’t the ones being set up for a hot-vape. The

Invids-the pirate crews working with the ex-Imperial Star Destroyer

Invid-ious-had so far eluded the best efforts of the New Republic to

engage them. They seemed to know where we would be, when we would get

there, and in what force, then planned their raids appropriately. As

a result we spent a lot of time doing battle-damage assessments on

their efforts, and they really pushed to give us plenty of BDA work.

Rogue Squadron had gone to ground to wait on several of the larger

asteroids in the K’vath system. This location put us in close

proximity to K’vath 5’s primary moon, Alakatha. We pow-ered down our

engines and had our sensors in passive mode only to avoid detection

by the folks we wanted to trap. Accord-ing to our mission briefing,

New Republic Intelligence had got-ten a tip they considered reliable

that at least part of Leonia Tavira’s pirate fleet would be hitting a

luxury liner coming out of the resort coast on Alakatha’s northern

continent. Mirax and I had actually honeymooned there three years

ago, before Thrawn turned the New Republic inside-out, so I had fond

memories of the place and could well remember the wealth dripping in

jewels and precious metals from the throats and hands of the New

RepubliCs elite.

2

I glanced at my X-wing’s chronometer. “The Glitterstar is still on

schedule?”

Whistler, nestled behind my cockpit, hooted with just a hint of

derision in his voice.

“Yes, I know I told you to let me know if there was a change and, no,

I didn’t think it had slipped your circuits.” I forced my gloved

hands open, then rotated my wrists to get rid of some of the tension.

“I’m just anxious.”

He blatted a quick comment at me.

“Hey, just because patience is a virtue, that doesn’t make impatience

a vice.” I sighed and turned the latter half of it into a piece of a

Jedi breathing exercise Luke Skywalker had urged upon me when trying

to recruit me as a Jedi. Breathing in through my nose to a count of

four, I held the breath for a seven count, then exhaled in eight

beats. With each breath I let more tension flow out of me. I sought

the clarity of mind I’d need for the coming battle-if the Invids

materialized-but it eluded me with the ease the Invids had shown in

escaping the New Republic.

Things kept seeming to happen fast. Mirax and I married fast, and

while I did not at all regret having done so, events conspired to

make our married life extremely difficult. Grand Admiral Thrawn and

his antics ruined our first anniversary, and rescuing Jan Dodonna and

the others who had once been im-prisoned with me on the Lusankya had

called me away during the second. And then the reborn Emperor’s

assault on Corus-cant dropped a Star Destroyer on what had been our

home. Neither of us were there at the time, which was standard oper-

ating procedure far too often.

In fact, the only benefit of being assigned to go after the Invids

was that their leader, ex-Moff Leonia Tarira, seemed to have a taste

for a life of leisure. When her Invidious vanished between raids, we

usually had a week of down time before having to worry about another

attack. Mirax and I put this free time to good use, rebuilding our

home and our relationship, but with that came some consequences that

I saw as incredibly disruptive-on the scale of Thrawn disruptive.

Mirax decided she wanted children.

I have nothing against kids-as long as they go home with

their parents at the end of the day. Expressing this opinion in those

terms to Mirax was not the smartest thing I had ever done and, in

fact, proved to be one of the more painful ones. The hurt and pain

in her eyes haunted me for a long time. Deep down, I knew there

would be no dissuading her, and I wasn’t even sure, in the end, I

wanted to.

I did try, however, and employed most of the standard argu-ments to

do so. The “this is an unsettled time in the galaxy” ploy lost out to

the fact that our parents had faced a similar choice and we’d turned

out pretty well. The “uncertainty of my job” argument wilted beneath

the logic of my life insurance and then withered away when Mirax gave

me a glimpse at the ac-counts files-the real ones-for her

import/export business. She pointed out that she could easily support

the three or four of us and I’d not have to work a single second,

outside of caring for the children. And, she noted, that carrying a

child for nine full months meant she would already have 3.11 years of

forty-hour weeks of child-care logged and that I would owe her.

Over and above all that, she said I’d make a great father. She noted

that my father had done a great job with me. Having learned from him

the skills of being a father, she just knew I’d be wonderful with

kids. In using that argument, she turned the love and respect I had

for my father around on me. She made it seem as if I was dishonoring

his memory by not bringing chil-dren into the world. It was a most

persuasive argument, as she knew it would be, and hammered me pretty

hard.

In retrospect, I should have given up at the start and saved the two

of us a great deal of grief. She makes her living-a vely good living,

it turns out-convincing all sorts of folks that junk no one else

wants is absolutely vital to them. While she en-gaged me in logical

discussions-focusing my defenses on that avenue of attack-she slipped

past my guard on a purely emo-tional level. Little comments about

what kind of child our ge-netic lottery would produce got me

investing brainsweat in solving that puzzle. That went straight to

the detective training in me-the training that wouldn’t let me drop a

case until I had an answer.

Which, in this case, meant a child.

She also managed to flick on the HoloNet monitors when some event

featuring news about Leia Organa Solo’s three-year-old twins was

being shown. The children were frighten-ingly cute and their very

existence had been blamed for a baby-binge in the New Republic. I

knew Mirax was not so shal-low as to be wanting a child out of envy

or to be trendy, but she did note that she was Leia’s age, and that

it was a good time to have a child or two.

And that cuteness factor really can get under your skin. The New

Republic media avoided showing the twins drooling and dripping the

way children do, and they really maximized the appealing things about

the toddlers. It got so that when I did remember dreams, they were of

me cradling a sleeping child in my arms. Oddly enough, I stopped

thinking of those dreams as nightmares pretty quickly and did my best

to preserve them in my mind.

Realizing I was lost, I began to bargain for time. Mirax flat refused

to accept fixed time dates, mainly because I was think-ing in years,

so I made things conditional. I told her once the Invids were taken

care of, we’d make a final decision. She ac-cepted my decision a bit

better than I expected, which started preying on me, and making me

feel guilty. I would have thought that was a tactic she’d decided to

use, but she thought guilt was a hammer and she’s definitely a

vibroblade fan.

I exhaled slowly again. “Whistler, remind me when we get home, Mirax

and I need to make a decision on this baby thing, now, not later.

Tavira’s not going to dictate my life.”

Whistler’s happy high staccato sailed down into a low warn-ing tone.

I glanced at my primary monitor. The Glitterstar had lifted from

Alakatha and another ship had appeared in-system. Whis-tler

identified it as a modified bulk cruiser known as the BooU Full.

Unlike the liner’s sleek design, the cruiser was studded with warty

protrusions that quickly detached themselves and began to run in on

the liner.

I keyed my comm. “Rogue Lead, three flight has contact.

One cruiser and eighteen uglies heading in on the Glitterstar.”

Tycho’s voice came back cool and calm. “I copy, Nine. En-gage the

fighters with two flight. One has the cruiser.”

I flicked over to three flight’s tactical channel. “Light them up,

Rogues, we have the fighters.”

I started the engines, then shunted power to the repulsorlift coils.

The X-wing rose like a ghost from a grave and came about to point its

nose toward the liner. As Ooryl’s X-wing pulled up on my left and my

other two pilots, Vurrulf and Ghufran, arrived on the right, I

punched the throttle full for-ward and launched myself into the

fight.

A smile blossomed on my face. Any sapient creature making a claim to

sanity would find hurtling along in a fragile craft of metal and

ferro-ceramics to be stupid or suicidal. Pushing that same craft into

battle merely compounded the situation, and I knew it. By the same

token, very few experiences in life can compare to flying in combat-

or engaging any enemy in a fight-because doing that is the one point

where civilization demands us to harness our animal nature and employ

it against a most dangerous prey. Without being physically and

mentally and even mechanically at my best, I would die and my friends

might even die with me.

But I had no intention of letting that happen.

With a flick of my thumb I switched from lasers over to pro-ton

torpedoes and allowed for single fire. I selected an initial target

and eased the crosshairs on my heads-up display onto its outline.

Whistler beeped steadily as he worked for a target lock, then the box

surrounding the fighter went red and his tone became a constant.

I hit the trigger and launched my first proton torpedo. It streaked

away hot and pinkish-white, trailed by others lancing out from my

flight. While employing proton torpedoes against fighters is seen as

overkill by some pilots, within Rogue Squad-ron using such a tactic

was always seen as an expedient way of lowering the odds against us-

odds that were usually longer than a Hutt and decidedly more ugly.

The Invids used a form of custom-designed fighter called a Tri-

fighter. It started with the ball cockpit and ion engine as-sembly of

Seinar Svstem’s basic TIE fighter-a commodity which, after hydrogen

and stupidity, was the most plentiful in the galaxy-and married it to

a trio of angular blades set 120 degrees apart. The bottom two served

as landing gear, while the third came up over the top of the cockpit.

The fighter still had the TIE’s twin lasers mounted beneath the

cockpit, while the third tine sprouted an ion cannon. The ships also

had some basic shields, which explained why they were more successful

than your basic eyeball, and side viewports cut into the hull gave

the pilot more visibility. Because the trio of tines looked as if

they were grasping at the cockpit, we’d nicknamed the design

“clutch.”

The shields and extra visibility didn’t help the clutch I’d targeted.

The proton torpedo jammed itself right up the left engine’s exhaust

port and actually punched out through the cockpit before detonating.

The fighter flew into the roiling, golden ball of fire and just

vanished. Three more clutches ex-ploded nearby, then another three

exploded off to starboard, where two flight was coming in.

“Pick targets carefully, three flight. Ooryl, we’re on the pair to

port.”

“Ten copies, Nine.”

I kicked my X-wing up on the port stabilizer foils and hauled back on

the stick. Chopping power to the engine, I tightened the circle, then

rolled out to the right as the pirates started a long serpentine

turn. I switched over from missiles to dual la-sers and immediately

got a yellow box around the lead fighter. I goosed the throttle back

to full to close range and keyed my comm. “I’m on the leader.”

Oorvl gave me a double-click on his comm to let me know he’d gotten

the message. Nudging the stick just a bit right, the targeting box

went green and I hit the firing button. Two red bolts hit the target.

The first fried the shields. The clutch trailed sparks from the

shield generator like a comet trailing ice. The second bolt pierced

the cockpit and though it hit kind of high, it hit hard, too. Sparks

shot from the hole and the clutch began a slow spiral down toward

Alakatha.

Ooryl rolled to port as the other clutch broke. I brought my X-wing

around in behind him as he lined his shot up. Tile Gand’s first two

shots blasted past the shields and burned fur-rows in the ship’s

hull. The next two drilled the engines, jetting the disintegrating

ship forward on a golden gout of flame. The flame abruptly died,

leaving the Tri-fighter to tumble through space out toward the

asteroid belt.

Up through the cockpit canopy I could see the green and white streaky

ball of Alakatha and the Glitterstar rising up from it. Off to

starboard the Boot), Full seemed to crouch in the void like a

malignant insect. The turbolasers along its spine and in a bellv

turret fired out, trying to track one fiight’s X-wings, but the shots

were no real danger to the fighters. Colonel Celchu, Hobbie, Janson

and Gavin Darklighter were old hands at pull-ing the teeth of raiders

like these. As long as we kept the clutches busy, the Booty Full had

no chance.

The X-wing’s first slashing attack came from Tycho and Hob-hie. They

rolled through and each drove a proton torpedo into the aft shields.

Coming from the other direction, Gavin and Wes Janson strafed the

ship with laser fire. Gavin’s second burst melted the belly turret

clean away while Janson’s shots nibbled away at the ship’s aft vector

jets. The Booty Full was done, though I had no doubts it would take a

couple more passes before the crew realized that and surrendered.

I followed Ooryl up and around the back toward the fight. It had

fairly well degenerated into a chase-and-kill run. The loss of seven

ships before they even saw their enemies had clearly shocked the

pirates and, more importantly, brought their num-bers down close to

ours. While clutches were more agile than X-wings-not by much, but by

enough to make fighting them difficult-they couldn’t outrun us or

outgun us. Lacking the discipline of a trained military unit like

Rogue Squadron, when panic set in, they fell apart and made our job

that much easier.

Ooryl settled in on one and hit it with a full quad burst from his

lasers. The clutch exploded, but boiling in through the ex-plosion

came another clutch making a head-to-head pass at Ooryl. The clutch

got off a shot with the ion cannon that sent a lightning storm

skittering over Ooryl’s shields, but they died before the ion blast

did. The motivator blew on his R5 unit and Whistler reported his

engines were out.

“Ooryl, go for a restart.” I didn’t know if he still had comm or not,

but I offered that bit of advice and fired a dual burst at the

clutch. Hastily aimed, the shot missed low, but did cause the clutch

to veer off. Rolling out to the right, I headed in after him. “This

is Nine on one. Someone watch my back.”

Vurrulf, the Klatooinan in three flight, barked a harsh, “I copy, on

it,” so I felt a bit safer in pursuing the clutch. One of the worst

things a pilot can do is to get so locked in on a target that he

misses what else is happening. When situational aware-ness focuses

down on one target, the hunter becomes hunted and never knows what

hits him. It’s a rookie mistake and while I’m no rookie, I’m not

immune to it.

The clutch’s pilot was good and clearly had no desire to die, but

Whistler wasn’t reporting that he’d powered down his weapons, so he

was just as clearly willing to fight. I tried to settle in on him,

but he modulated his throttle and used his ship’s agility to keep

breaking before I could get a lock. I snapped a couple of shots off

at him, but they missed wide or high. Try as I might, I was having

trouble keeping up with his shifts and cuts.

I pulled back on the throttle and let him gain some distance. His

juking antics continued, but with range the movements that had ripped

him out of my sights in close barely broke the edges of my targeting

box. I hit the firing button and sent two paired bursts at him. One

pair lanced through the aft shield and man-gled one of the landing

tines. The other two energy darts clipped the thrust vector vents on

the port side, limiting his maneuverability.

Whistler displayed a comm frequency being used by the clutch and I

punched it up on my comm unit. “This is Captain Corran Horn of the

New Republic Armed Forces. I will accept your surrender.”

A woman answered me. “Don’t you know, Invids never sur-render?”

“Not true of the BooO’ Ftdl.”

“Riizolo is a fool, but he doesn’t have a capital warrant out on his

head. I do.” She laughed. “I have nothing to live for, except my

honor. One pass, Horn, you and me.”

“You’ll die.” A single pass would negate the clutch’s agility

advantage. She had to know that.

“But perhaps not alone.” Her ship stopped jinking and headed out on a

long loop. “Allow me this honor.” The clutch turned and began its run

at me.

I wanted to do as she asked, and would have, except for one thing:

the Invids had proved over and over again that they had no honor.

I switched to proton torpedoes, got a quick tone-lock from Whistler

and pulled the trigger. The missile shot from my X-wing and sprinted

straight for her ship. As good as she was, the clutch pilot knew

there was no dodging it. She fired with both lasers, but they missed.

Then, at the last moment, she shot an ion blast that hit the missile.

Blue lightning played over it, burning out every circuit that allowed

the torpedo to track and close on her ship.

I’m fairly certain, just for a second, she thought she had won. The

problem with a projectile is that even if its sophisticated circuitry

fails, it still has a lot of kinetic energy built up. Even if it

never senses the proximity of its target and detonates, that much

mass moving that fast treats a clutch cockpit much the way a needle

treats a bubble. The torpedo drove the ion en-gines out the back of

the clutch, where they exploded. The fighter’s hollow remains slowly

spun off through space and would eventually burn through the

atmosphere and give resort guests a thrill.

Whistler made my threat screen all green indicating no more active

hostiles in the area. Three flight reported in and Ooryl was back up

and running. His forward shield had collapsed and refused to come

back up, but otherwise he was fine. Vurrulf and Ghufran reported no

trouble with their X-wings. As it turned out only Reme Pollar in two

flight had been hit hard enough to be forced extra-vehicular, but she

reported she would be fine until the Skipray blast boat from the

Glitterstar picked her up.

I switched the comm over to the command channel. “All green here,

Rogue Leader.”

“I copy, Nine. Looks like this wasn’t the trap we feared it would

be.”

“No, sir, it doesn’t.”

“Have your people prepare to rejoin the fleet.”

“As ordered, Colonel.”

I relayed the order to my people, but before we could reach my

designated rendezvous point, the fleet made a microjump in from the

edge of the system. A Mon Calamari Cruiser and two Victoo,-class Star

Destroyers formed a triangle in the space above Alakatha. We’d come

to the system aboard Horne One and used microjumps to get in as close

as we did. Because the information about the Booty Full had been

unusual, we ex-pected it might be an ambush, so the fleet had waited

to see if the Invids would pounce on the Rogues.

If they had, we would have gotten a chance to finish them once and

for all.

I keyed my comm. “Colonel, if we were expecting the pirates to jump

us, and they did not, was this mission a success?”

“Good question, Nine. This is one of these missions where only

Intelligence will be able to tell us how we did.” Tycho hesitated for

a moment. “Then again, we lost only machines, not people. It’s a

victory anytime that happens.”

Two

Te K’vath system was far enough from Coruscant to be trendy and

desirable for seclu-sion-though the price of a mug of lum there would

have been enough to discourage most folks from enjoying their

holiday. Mirax and I never would have gone there three years ago,

but Wedge Antilles had recommended it, and someone in manage-ment had

been convinced that our participation in the libera-tion of Coruscant

made Mirax and me just the sort of glare couple to attract the notice

of the New Republic’s fashionable elite. As a result we didn’t pay

for anything while we were there, and stopping the Boot), Full over

A]akatha helped me feel a bit better about having enjoyed the world’s

hospitality.

The Glimmerstar requested an escort all the way to Corus-cant, which

Home One agreed to supply. This meant our return trip would be at the

leisurely pace dictated by the liner instead of the faster speed of

which the Mon Calamari Cruiser was capable. The Rogues could have

taken our X-wings home, but the trip would have locked us in the

cockpit for a full twenty-four hours, which I looked forward to with

the same enthusi-asm I had for discussing old times with Mirax’s

father. It would have been nice if the Glimmerstar had allowed us to

spend the extra day of travel time on the liner, but their gratitude

ex-tended only as far as letting us study the ship’s beautiful lines

from afar.

We had duties enough to keep us busy anyway, and despite the

oppressive humidity, the Mon Cal Cruiser’s accommoda-tions were not

that bad. After landing my X-wing and getting Whistler set up for

recharging, I caught a quick meal in the galley, then joined the rest

of the squadron in a briefing room for our debriefing. We all rode

Reme for going EV, but we were glad to have her back and enjoyed her

descriptions of the Glimmerstar’s blast boat. After that I grabbed

some rack time, slept for eight hours, worked out a bit and headed

for the galley for some breakfast.

Ooryl raised a three-fingered hand and waved me over to the table he

occupied all by himself. I smiled and nodded to him, then grabbed

some breakfast cakes and an artificial nerfmilk protein beverage. I

almost balked at it, because consuming any-thing that doesn’t sit

well on the stomach can be a mistake when eating with a Gand, but I

was very thirsty.

I dropped into the chair opposite Ooryl and did my best not to glance

down into the bowl from which he was feeding. “Any-thing interesting

happen while I’ve been down?”

Ooryl’s mouth parts moved apart in his approximation of a smile and

his compound eyes glittered brightly. His grey-green flesh was of a

hue slightly darker than the sauce on the tenta-cles he was fishing

out of the bowl, and contrasted sharply with the bright orange of his

flight suit. Knobby bits of his exoskele-ton poked at odd angles from

within the fabric, as if his flesh were having an allergic reaction

to the color.

“Nothing Ooryl considers out of the ordinary.”

I frowned. The Gands had a tradition of speaking of them-selves in

the third person and not using the pronoun “I” be-cause they thought

it was the height of arrogance to do so. Only those Gands who had

committed acts so great that all Gands would know of them were

allowed to speak of themselves as “I.” The whole of Rogue Squadron

had even gone to Gand and been part of Ooryl’sjanwuine-jika, the

ceremony that conferred that right upon him. For him to have reverted

to third person meant something was bothering him.

“What is the matter?” I narrowed my green eyes and stared into his

black faceted orbs. “You can’t be embarrassed about getting shot by

that Invid.”

Ooryl slowly and deliberately shook his head. “Ooryl is ashamed that

he has not been able to help you with your prob-lem.”

“My’ problem?”

“You have been distracted, Corran.” Ooryl perched his hands on the

tabletop like two armored spiders. “You and Mirax desire offspring.

If Ooryl was on Gand, Ooryl could help solve this problem.”

I stuffed a crumb from one of the cakes into my mouth, chewed quickly

and swallowed. “Back up here. How do you know about the child thing?”

The Gand remained rock-still for a moment, then lowered his head.

“Qrygg was told by Mirax that you and she would have children,

therefore Qrygg had to do Qrygg’s best to make certain you were not

killed in combat.”

I gave him a hard stare. “Mirax talked to you about our discussion on

children?”

“Mirax wished to know if you had spoken with Qrygg about the

discussion. When Qrygg said you had not, she asked Qrygg to encourage

the discussion if you did.” Ooryl’s head came back up. “You should

not have been ashamed to speak to Ooryl of it. Ooryl would have been

worthy of your trust.”

I gave Ooryl the biggest smile I could muster. I overexagger-ated it

because he wasn’t so good at reading subtlety. “Ooryl, if i was

talking to anybody about our wanting kids, it would have been you. I

trust you with my life every day and have never had any cause to

regret it.” I saw his mouth parts open, aping my smile and I realized

right then and there I’d been fairly stupid in keeping the whole

discussion to myself. “And I really should have spoken with you about

it. Your advice has always been welcomed and wise. I just didn’t

think, which is a bad habit I had hoped to abandon.”

“If Ooryl was truly wise, Ooryl would have advised you to abandon

it.”

“You have, in very many ways.” I sighed slowly. “And, as Mirax told

you, we have been talking about having kids. She went to you to learn

what I was thinking. I’m sure any help you offered her was

appreciated.”

“Ooryl would like to think so. You will recall that during Ooryl’s

janwuine-jika, Ooryl was also initiated into the ways of being a

Findsman. On Gand, the Findsman performs many use-ful tasks. He

locates lost slaves, reads the mists for omens and hunts criminals.

There is one more duty he performs for people like you and Mirax. He

can wander into the mists and find the child they desire. These

mistborn children are a gift and raised by the people as their own. I

would be honored to do this for you, my friend.”

I smiled. “Thanks, but I think I can handle the child produc-tion

part on my own.”

Ooryl’s mandibles sprang open. “Then you are capa-ble .... “

“Yes, very much so.” I raised my chin. “Voy much so. No problems

here.”

A membrane nictitated up over Ooryl’s eyes for a moment.

“Then why would you not have a child already?” “Huh?”

“This is the purpose of life, is it not? To create life is the

greatest act a living creature can commit.”

The solemnity and truth in his words hit me hard. “That’s true, but .

. .”

“Is this a time Ooryl should remind you that you are trying to

abandon being thoughtless?”

I snapped my jaw shut and narrowed my eyes. “If having kids is so

important, why don’t you have any?”

Ooryl shrugged. It wasn’t a motion natural to him and his exoskeleton

clicked in protest. “I am janwuine. It is not for me to choose a

wife, but for Gand to choose one for me. At that time I shall proudly

commit genetic fusion.”

“The idea loses something in translation there.” I drank a bit of the

milk and used another piece of cake to get rid of the thick chalky

taste. “The fact is I mean to settle this thing with Mirax once we

get back to Coruscant.”

“Good. With the stories you have told of your father, any child you

will have will be well cared for.”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “And how do you know I’ll agree to have

children?”

“I have spoken with Mirax. That is enough.”

I sat back and laughed lightly. “I never really had a chance, did I?”

“No, Corran, but that really means you will have every chance.” Ooryl

slurped in a tentacle, then wiped verdant gravy from his cheek. “We

have all helped create and strengthen the New Republic. Creating the

generation to which it will be passed is one more duty we owe

posterity.”

Ooryl’s words stuck with me through the rest of the trip and worked

on me like a virus. By the time I loaded myself into my X-wing and

began to descend to our hangar facility, I was look-ing forward to

heading home with Mirax and start working on a child then and there.

And while that sort of an enthusiastic greeting when either one of us

returned from journeys was not at all uncommon, this time it would be

more than a wordless way of saying “I missed you.”

It would mean parts of us would never be separated again. That

thought struck me as so right and good, even flying over the debris

fields littering Coruscant could only slightly tarnish my mood. Vast

swathes of destruction had been carved across the urban landscape.

Ships never meant for entry into atmo-sphere had crashed down,

glowing white from the heat, trailing thick clouds of black smoke, to

slam into the cityscape. They gouged great furrows through

neighborhoods and blasted huge craters out of the buildings. Hundreds

of millions, perhaps even billions of people had died in the

factional fighting that fol-lowed Thrawn’s assault on the New

Republic; and we were nowhere near recovered from it.

Looking at the shattered buildings and twisted wreckage, I found it

difficult to conjure up my memories of Coruscant from before, back

when it was still Imperial Center. I could remem-ber vast rivers of

light making the nightside glow with life, but here only dull grey

predominated. Bright lights had once given Coruscant an artificial

life and without them the urban planet seemed dead.

I knew it wasn’t really that bad. Despite the vast surface

destruction and tremendous loss of life, people did continue living.

The catastrophic damage did bring out the worst in some people, but

it brought out the best in even more. Mirax and I had planned to live

in her Pulsar Skate when our home had been destroyed by one of the

crashing ships, but friends wouldn’t let us. Iella Wessiri, my old

partner from the Corellian Security Force, managed to convince her

boss at New Republic Intelligence that we should be given the run of

a safehouse they maintained, so we ended up with a place even closer

to Rogue Squadron Headquarters than before.

Ours was hardly the most remarkable of tales. Supplies that had been

hoarded for years during times of political instability suddenly

poured forth. People took refugees into their homes, which seems

hardly unexpected, but a lot of the hosts were old Imperial families

and the refugees were from the wlrious non-human species in the

galaxy. The battering Cornscant had taken at the hands of Imperial

warlords had broken down the last walls of resistance. Suffering

formed a common bond that began to erode xenophobia on both sides.

With the rest of the squadron I made my approach and landed in our

hangar bay. I turned the X-wing ,wcr to a tech, changed into civilian

clothes and caught a hoverbus south to the Manarai mountains. A

mother and child in a seat up the way from me caught my eye. I

watched the woman smile as the infant reached out unsteadily and

grasped at her nose. She tilted her face up slightly, kissing the

hand, then lowered her face until she was nose to nose with her baby.

She whispered something and rubbed her nose against the child’s, then

pulled back accompanied by the baby’s laughter.

The infant’s delighted laugh still echoed in my ears as the bus broke

from the darkened canyons and started flying across a ruined

landscape of duracrete chunks strewn like a dewback’s scales on a

stable floor. The burned-out hulks of airspeeders lay twisted and

half-melted all over the place. Scraps of cloth that had once clothed

victims flapped and fluttered from various points in the stone piles.

Bright bits of color that could have been anything from toys to the

shards of a holodisk player, littered the landscape.

Despite the utter destruction, the child’s laugh overwhelmed it all.

The laugh was innocent and light, it mocked the ruin surrounding us.

People could create and destroy, but, the laugh seemed to suggest,

anyone who thought destruction was more powerful than creation was a

fool. Within the first ten years of that child’s life, the scars from

the battling on Coruscant would be erased. And even if they were not,

that child could, in twenty or thirty years, be the person who saw to

their erasure. Life truly was the antidote to destruction.

I smiled. Mirax has been right all along, and 0o0’l, too. If we live

for the present and in the present, we short-change the future.

Living for the future is necessary if we are to have any sort of

jutttre at all. Yes, Mirax, we’ll have a child. Make that children.

We’ll make our contribution to the future.

I winked at the woman with the child as I got off at my stop. I

threaded my way through the buildings and over the catwalks that led

to my home. I almost stopped at a store to buy a decent wine to

celebrate the resolution of our problem, but decided instead to whisk

Mirax off somewhere for a quiet, romantic meal. I didn’t know where

we’d go exactly, but with the con-struction droids roaming over the

planet, I knew there were dozens of restaurants that had been created

in the week I’d been gone. Finding a place to eat wouldn’t be much of

a prob-lem.

I hit the door and punched the code into the lockplate. The door slid

open and a wave of warm air cascaded down over me. I stepped into

the apartment’s darkened interior, letting the door close behind me.

The warm air surrounded me like a thick blanket and for a moment I

almost gave in to panic because it seemed suffocating and dense.

My high spirits began to die down. The air had become warm because

Mirax had shut off the apartment’s environmental comfort unit. We

both did that when we were going to be gone for an extended period of

time. It was possible she was only going to be gone during the day,

but a quick glance at the food prep station told me that wasn’t the

case. All the dishes had been washed and put away; and the small

basket of fruit she kept around wasn’t in sight. That meant she’d

tossed it in the conservator so it wouldn’t spoil while she was gone.

I continued my way on into the apartment. I ducked my head into the

darkened bedroom on the left, but saw no signs of life there. The

dining area, which abutted the food prep station on the right was

likewise devoid of life. The main table had a couple days’ worth of

dust on it and the datacard that had been set near my place likely

held all the messages that had come in for me up to the time Mirax

left.

In the living room area off to the left I saw a light blinking on the

holotable. I smiled. Good girl, you didn’t leave without giving me a

message. I shucked my jacket and tossed it on a nerf-hide chair, then

crouched down and hit the button below the light.

Standing forty-five centimeters tall and as beautiful as ever, Mirax

smiled at me. Even in miniature, her black hair shined lustrously and

fire filled her brown eyes. She wore the black boots and dark blue

jumpsuit in which I’d first seen her, and had a blue neff-hide jacket

slung over her shoulder. A small canvas satchel rested at her feet.

“Corran, I’d hoped to be here when you got back, but I’ve got a run I

can’t turn down. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. You

should only be lonely for about a day. If my plans change, I’ll let

you know.” She bent to pick up her satchel, then smiled at me again

as she straightened up. “I love you. Don’t forget it and don’t doubt

it. Ever. I’ll be back soon, love.”

Her image dissolved into static, then the holopad shut itself off. I

reached out to run the message again, but hesitated. I’d come home to

dozens of such messages during our time to-gether, as had she, and

never before had I wanted to play one again. Why do I want to now?

It struck me that I might be feeling a bit cheated and a bit

vulnerable. I’d spent the better part of my time away from her

thinking about children and had finally come around to her point of

view, and she was gone! I’d made one of the most important and

momentous decisions of my life and she was just off flitting about

the galaxy as if my decision was no big thing. To have it treated so

casually stung a bit and I wanted to hear her say again that she

loved me.

As much as I knew my analysis of my emotions was true, I also knew my

emotions were not at the core of my problem. I hit the button and

listened to her message again, then nodded. She said I’d be lonely

for only a day or so, and that if she had a change of plans, she

would let me know. The fact was, however, that I had been a full day

late because of our escorting the Glitterstar here to Coruscant, so

she should have been here. I’d had no message from her about a delay

here or at Squadron HQ, and that surprised me.

Others might have taken the phrase “about a day” and have seen it as

a fairly loose measure of time, but to Mirax it was painfully exact.

She made her living delivering items of value to various clients, on

time and intact. If she had meant twelve standard hours, she’d have

said so. If she’d meant twenty-five hours, she’d not have rounded

them down to a day, she would have given me her best estimate, to the

hour or minute.

As damning and worrisome as that might seem, I knew better than to

panic. Any message could have been delayed or mis-routed. She could

have even stopped off to see her father on the Enfant Venture and his

communication system could be down again.

A shiver ran down my spine, but I shrugged it off. “Your good news

will just have to wait, I guess.” Still feeling a little achy and

tired from the run home, I stripped my clothes off, hit the refresher

station, cleaned myself up, then dropped into bed. I left the

bedroom door open in the hopes that I’d awaken when Mirax returned.

Scant chance of that. I dropped into a deep sleep, dark and black,

like the deepest shadows on Coruscant. I realized I was drifting off

and tried to seek out the dream about the child, hoping my decision

would paint more details onto him, but it eluded me. Consciousness

evaporated in a pool of nothingness and I fell into a dreamless

sleep.

ColTan.

I stirred at the sound of my name but couldn’t recognize the voice.

CORRAN!

Mirax’s shriek ripped me to wakefulness. I sat bolt upright in bed

and reached out for her. The image of her face faded from before my

eyes as my hands encountered only cold sheets where she should have

been. I felt about for her, seeking the warmth that her body should

have deposited there, but I found none of it. For all of a heartbeat

my brain chastened me with a flash of Mirax’s message, then something

more horrible slammed into me. Bile surged up into my throat, choking

me. In one blindingly terrible moment, I knew Mirax was gone I

stumbled out of bed on the far side and barked my shin on a low table

set there. I kicked out angrily at it. Who would have put that there?

I knew I wouldn’t have put it there because even a gentle bump would

have toppled it and scattered the datacards stacked there as easily

as my kick had.

I looked around the room and in the half-light I saw all manner of

things that were wrong about the place. The holo-graphs on the walls

were pleasant enough, and were even of scenes from CoreIlia, but were

of locations I’d not known on my homeworld. Who bttilt this parody of

my home?

My feet caught in the sheets I’d tossed off and I crashed to my hands

and knees. The pain in my shin found an ally in my knees and hands,

and just for a moment shocked me into a clarity of mind. The

holographs and the table and the data-cards, all these little pieces

of the apartment that were not mine, they were things Mirax had

placed here. Mirax, my wife.

I looked up at everything she’d brought in to make our apart-ment

feel like a home. Somehow she had found replacements for many of the

things we had lost when our previous home had been destroyed.

Intellectually, as I looked around the room, I could catalog her

contributions to the decor, and could even remember the when and

where of her finding the items. I looked at the closet and could see

her clothes hanging there. I found it easy to recall when she had

purchased this gown, or where she had gotten that jacket.

But I could not recall anything about her connections to those items.

In looking at the clothes I couldn’t remember which gown was her

favorite. I couldn’t remember which jacket she considered slimming,

or which blouse and slacks she con-sidered appropriate for business,

and which outfit she wore when we were out to have fun.

Star Wars - I Jedi (Michael Sta

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