Star Wars - Children of the Jedi (by Barbara Hambly)

CHILDREN OF THE JEDI

by

Barbara Hambly

Lucasfilm Ltd.

The chronicle of the dazzling universe of George Lucas's blockbuster Star Wars films continues in this

latest in a series of novels that began with Timothy Zahn's celebrated New York Times bestselling trilogy.

Now the bestselling space adventure of all time soars to new heights as the Republic faces its greatest

challenge yet.

Princess Leia, Han Solo, and Chewbacca set out on a mission vital to the survival of the

fragileNewRepublic . They are searching for the long-lost children of the Jedi, a quest that takes them to

the once vibrant stronghold of Belsavis--a nearly forgotten frozen world. Leia has heard tales of a Jedi

exodus from the dark crypts below the planet's surface. She has also heard that since the time of the

exodus no one entering the crypts has returned alive.

Halfway across the galaxy, Luke Skywalker has undertaken an equally dangerous expedition that, if it

fails, could have fatal consequences for Leia, Han, and Chewbacca.

Haunted by ominous dreams and guided by a force he cannot identify Luke journeys to a remote

asteroid field over the planet Pzob. There he discovers the automated Dreadnaught Eye of

Palpatine--from the days of all-out war.

Camouflaged deep within a nebulous gas cloud and dormant for thirty years, Eye of Palpatine is

governed by a supersophisticated artificial intelligence system known as the Will. Taken aboard the

Dreadnaught, Luke is counseled by the spirit of Callista, a Jedi Knight who gave her life to stop the ship

once before. Now Luke must learn from her how to destroy it once and for all. The Will has awakened.

The Eye of Palpatine is on the move. Its mission: the total annihilation of Belsavis.

The mystery of the crypts, the invincible power of the Will, the lost Jedi, and the burgeoning passion

between Luke and Callista come together in the stunning climax of Children of the Jedi--the latest chapter

in the magnificent Star Wars saga.

Barbara Hambly's novels range from high fantasies to historical mysteries to vampire tales, most

recently including Stranger at the Wedding and The Bride of the Rat-God. She holds both a master's

degree in medieval history and a black belt in Shotokan karate. A multiple Nebula Award nominee, she

is president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She lives inLos Angeles .

Chapter 1

Poisoned rain speared from an acid sky. The hunter scuttled, stumbled a dozen yards before throwing

himself under shelter again. A building, he thought--hoped--though for a second's blinding terror the

curved shape lifted, writhing, into a toothed maw of terror from which darkness flowed out like the

vomited stench of rotting bones. Serpents--tentacles--twisting arms reached down for him with what he

would have sworn were tiny cobalt-blue hands... but the burning rain was searing holes in his flesh, so he

closed his eyes and flung himself among them. Then for a clear moment his mind registered that they were

blue-flowered vines.

Though the stink of his own flesh charring still choked his nostrils and the fire scorched his hands, when

he looked down at them his hands were whole, untouched. Realities shuffled in his mind like cards in a

deck. Should those hands be stripped away to bone? Or should they sport a half dozen rings of andurite

stone and a thin scrim of engine grease around the nails?

In what reality were those fingers limber, and where did he get the notion a moment later that they were

twisted like blighted roots and adorned with hooked nails like a rancor's claws?

He didn't know. The sane times were fewer and fewer; it was hard to remember from one to the next.

Prey. Quarry. There was someone he had to find.

He had been a hunter all those years in shrieking darkness. He had killed, torn, eaten of bleeding flesh.

Now he had to find... He had to find...

Why did he think the one he sought would be in this... this place that kept changing from toothed

screaming rock mouths to graceful walls, curving buildings, vine-curtained towers--and then falling back

again to nightmares, as all things always fell back?

He fumbled in the pocket of his coverall and found the dirty sheet of yellow-green flimsiplast on which

someone--himself?--had written:

HAN SOLO ITHOR THE TIME OF MEETING

"Have you seen it before?"

Leaning one shoulder on the curved oval of the window, Han Solo shook his head. "I went to one of

the Meetings out in deepspace, halfway from the Pits of Plooma to the Galactic Rim," he said. "All I

cared about was sneaking in under the Ithorians' detection screens, handing off about a hundred kilos of

rock ivory to Grambo the Worrt and getting out of there before the Imperials caught up with me, and it

was still the most... I dunno." He made a small gesture, slightly embarrassed, as if she'd caught him out in

a sentimental deed of kindness. ”"Impressive" isn't the right word."

No. Leia Organa Solo rose from the comm terminal to join her husband, the white silk of her tabard

billowing in her wake in a single flawless line. "Impressive" to the smuggler he'd been in those days,

navigationally if nothing else: She'd seen the Ithorian star herds gather, the city-huge ships maneuvering

among one another's deflector fields with the living ease of a school of shining fish. Linking without any

more hesitation than the fingers of the right hand have about linking with the fingers of the left.

But this today was more than that.

Watching the Meeting here, above the green jungles of Ithor itself, the only word that came to her mind

was "Force-full": alive with, drenched in, moving to the breath of the Force.

And beautiful beyond words.

The high, thick masses of raincloud were breaking. Slanting torrents of light played on the jungle

canopy only meters below the lowest-riding cities, sparkled on the stone and plaster and marble, the

dozen shades of yellows and pinks and ochers of the buildings, the flashing, angled reflections of the

antigrav generators and the tasseled gardens of blueleaf, tremmin, fiddleheaded bull-ferns. Bridges

stretched from city to city, dozens of linked antigrav platforms on which thin streams of Ithorians could be

seen moving, flowerlike in their brilliant robes. Banners of crimson and lapis fluttered like sails, and every

carved balcony, every mast and stairway and stabilizer, even the wicker harvest baskets dangling like

roots beneath the vast aerial islands were thick with Ithorians.

"You?" Han asked.

Leia looked up quickly at the man by her side. Here above the endless jungles of Bafforr trees the

warm air was fresh, sweet with breezes and wondrous with the scents of greenness and flowers. Ithorian

residences were open, like the airy skeletons of coral; she and Han stood surrounded by flowers and

light.

"When I was little--five, maybe six years old--Father came to the Time of Meeting here to represent

the Imperial Senate," she said. ”He thought it was something I should see."

She was silent a moment, remembering that puppyfat child with pearls twined in her thick braids;

remembering the smiling man whom she'd never ceased to think of as her father. Kindly, when it

sometimes didn't pay to be kind; wise in the days when even the greatest wisdom didn't suffice. Bail

Organa, the last Prince of the House of Alderaan.

Han put his arm around her shoulders. "And here you are."

She smiled wryly, touched the pearls braided in her long chestnut hair. "Here I am."

Behind her the comm terminal whistled, signaling the receipt of the daily reports from Coruscant. Leia

glanced at the water clock with its bobbing amazement of glass spheres and trickling fountains, and

figured she'd have time to at least see what was happening in theNewRepublic 's capital. Even when

embarked on a diplomatic tour that was three-quarters vacation, as Chief of State she could never quite

release her finger from the Republic's pulse. From bitter experience she had learned that small anomalies

could be the forerunners of disaster.

Or, she thought--scrolling through the capsule summaries of reports, items of interest, minor

events--they could be small anomalies.

"So how'd the Dreadnaughts do in last night's game?" Han went to the wardrobe to don his jacket of

sober dark-green wool. It fit close, its crimson-and-white piping emphasizing the width of his shoulders,

the slight ranginess of his body, suggesting power and sleekness without being military. From the corner

of her eye Leia saw him pose a little in front of the mirror, and carefully tucked away her smile.

"You think Intelligence is going to put the smashball scores ahead of interplanetary crises and the latest

movements of the Imperial warlords?" She was already flipping through to the end, where Intelligence

usually put them.

"Sure," said Solo cheerfully. "They don't have any money riding on interplanetary crises."

"The Infuriated Savages beat them nine to two."

"The Infuriated...! The Infuriated Savages are a bunch of pantywaists!"

"Had a bet with Lando on the Dreadnaughts?" She grinned across at him, then frowned, seeing the

small item directly above the scores. "Stinna Draesinge Sha was assassinated."

"Who?"

"She used to teach at the Magrody Institute-she was one of Nasdra Magrody's pupils. She was Cray

Mingla's teacher."

"Luke's student Cray?" Han came over to her side. "The blonde with the legs?"

Leia elbowed him hard in the ribs. ""The blonde with the legs" happens to be the most brilliant

innovator in artificial intelligence to come along in the past decade."

He reached down past her shoulder to key for secondary information. "Well, Cray's still a blonde and

she's still got legs.... That's weird."

"That anybody would assassinate a retired theoretician in droid programming?"

"That anybody would hire Phlygas Grynne to assassinate a retired theoretician." He'd flipped the

highlight bar down to Suspected Perpetrator. "Phlygas Grynne's one of the top assassins in the Core

Worlds. He gets a hundred thousand credits a hit. Who'd hate a programmer that much?"

Leia pushed her chair away and rose, the chance words catching her like an accidental blow. "Depends

on what she programmed."

Han straightened up, but said nothing, seeing the change in her eyes.

"Her name wasn't on any of the lists," he said as Leia walked, with the careful appearance of

casualness, to the wardrobe mirror to put on her earrings.

"She was one of Magrody's pupils."

"So were about a hundred and fifty other people,” Han pointed out gently. He could feel the tension

radiating from her like gamma rays from a black hole. "Nasdra Magrody happened to be teaching at a

time when the Emperor was building the Death Star. He and his pupils were the best around. Who else

was Palpatine gonna hire?"

"They're still saying I was behind Magrody's disappearance, you know." Leia turned to face him, her

mouth flexed in a line of bitter irony. "Not to my face, of course," she added, seeingWho says? spring to

her husband's lips and hot anger to his eyes. "Don't you think I have to make it my business to know

what people whisper? Since that was back before I held any power in theAlliance they say I got my

"smuggler friends" to kill him and his family and hide the bodies so they were never found."

"People always say that about rulers." Han's voice was rough with anger, seeing the pain behind the

armor of her calm. "It was true about Palpatine."

Leia said nothing--her eyes returned for a moment to the mirror, to readjust the hang of her tabard, the

braided loops of her hair. As she moved toward the doorway Han caught her arms, turning her to face

him, small and slender and beautiful and not quite thirty: the Rebel Princess who'd turned into the leader

of theNewRepublic .

He didn't know what he wanted to say to her, or could say to her to ease the weight of what he saw

behind her eyes. So he only brought her to him and kissed her, much more gently than he had first meant

to do.

"The awful thing is," said Leia softly, "that a day doesn't go by that I don't think about doing it."

She half turned in his grip, her lips set in that cold expression that he knew hid pain she could not show

even to him. The years of enforced self-reliance, of not giving way in front of anyone, had left their mark

on her.

"I have the lists. I know who worked on the Death Star, who Palpatine hired in his think tanks, who

taught at the Omwat orbital training center--and I know they're out of the Republic's jurisdiction. But I

also know how easy it would be for me to juggle credits and Treasury funds and hire people like Phlygas

Grynne or Dannik Jericho or any of those "smuggler friends" they talk about to find these people and

just... make them disappear. Without a trial. No questions asked. No possibility of release on a

technicality. Just because I know they're guilty. Because I want it so."

She sighed, and some of the pain eased from her face as she met his eyes again. "Luke talks about the

power that lies in the dark side. The Force isn't the only thing that has a dark side, Han. And the tricky

thing about the dark side is that it's so easy to use--and it gets you what you think you want."

She leaned close and kissed him again, thanking him. Outside the movement of wind filled the sky with

light and the sound of chimes.

Leia smiled. "We're on."

The herds ingathered. Cities themselves, they linked and joined to form one great shining city of bright

stone, dark wood, flashing glass, exuberant with greenery. Segmented bridges stretched like welcoming

hands to join clan platform to clan platform, house float to house float. Balloons, gliders, kites skated the

air between the platforms; arborals, tree skimmers, the gaudy fauna of the jungle's top canopy clambered

insouciantly up the harvest baskets from the trees below, chattering and whistling on trees and balconies

while the Ithorians made their way to the Cloud-Mother's central square.

The Cloud-Mother--the herd best known for its hospitals and glass manufacturing--had been voted the

site of the reception of the Republic's representatives, mostly because it had the best guest facilities and

the largest shuttleport, though it was also true that it was one of the most beautiful of the herds. Leia had

the impression, as she stepped out into the clear, burning sunlight of the top platform of the Meeting Hall's

steps, that the huge square before her was a garden, packed with brilliant silks, wreaths of flowers, from

which emerged a forest of wide, leathery necks and gentle eyes.

An ululation of applause and welcome rippled from the crowd, like the song of a million birds at

morning. Ithorians waved scarves and flowers, not rapidly but in long, swooping curves. To human eyes

they appeared ungainly, sometimes frightening, but here in their home they had a weird, graceful beauty.

Leia lifted her hands in greeting, and beside her she saw Han raise his arm to wave. Behind them,

solemnly, the three-year-old twins, Jacen and Jaina, released their nurse Winter's hands to do the same;

the toddler, Anakin, only stood, holding Jaina's hand and gazing about him with round eyes. The leaders

of the herds stepped from the crowd, over a dozen of them, ranging in height anywhere from two to three

meters and in color from darkest jungle green to the bright yellows of a pellata bird. Atop the broad

necks, the T-shaped heads with their wide-separated eyes had an air of gentle wisdom.

"Your Excellency." Umwaw Moolis, Ithorian liaison to the Senate, dipped her neck and spread her

long arms in a graceful gesture of submission and respect. "In the name of the herds of Ithor, welcome to

the Time of Meeting. General Solo--Master Skywalker..."

Leia had almost forgotten that Luke would be present, too; he must have come out onto the platform

behind her. But there he was, inclining his head in response to the greeting. Her brother seemed to wear

an inner silence like a cloak these days, a haunted stillness, the burden of being a Jedi and the roads that

it had caused him to travel. Only when he smiled did she see again the flustered, sandy-haired farmboy

who'd blasted his way into the detention cell on the Death Star in his borrowed shining white armor and

saidOh... er... I'm Luke Skywalker....

In the shadows of the Meeting Hall's columned porch, Leia could just glimpse the others who'd come

with them to the diplomatic reception: Chewbacca the Wookiee, Han's copilot, mechanic, and closest

friend from his smuggling days, two meters plus of reddish fur well brushed for the occasion; the golden

gleam of the protocol droid C-3PO; and the smaller, chunkier shape of his astromech counterpart,

R2-D2.

All those battles, thought Leia, turning back to the Ithorian delegation. All those stars and planets,

whose names, sometimes, she could scarcely recall, though in nightmares she felt again the ice and heat

and terror.... And yet, after all the danger and fear, the Republic was alive. Growing in spite of the

warlords of the fragmented Empire, the satraps of the old regime, the planets that tasted liberty and

wanted total independence from all federation. Here in the clear glory of the sunlight, the utter peace of

this alien world, it was impossible to feel that they would not succeed.

She saw Luke move, swing around as if at some sound, scanning the two-level arcades that flanked the

Meeting Hall, and she felt at the same moment the terrible sense of danger...

"Solo!"

The voice was a raw scream.

"Solo!"

The man sprang from the arcade's upper balcony with the unthinking speed of an animal, landed

halfway up the steps, and raced toward them, arms outstretched. Ithorians staggered, taken by surprise,

as he shoved his way between them; then they fell back from him in shock and fear. Leia had an

impression of eyes rolling in madness, flecks of spittle flying from his dirty beard, even as she thought, He

isn't armed, and realized in the next second that this was one to whom that fact meant nothing.

The Ithorian herd leaders closed on the man, but their reflexes were the reflexes of a thousand

generations of herbivores. The attacker was within a foot of Han as Luke stepped forward, with no

appearance of haste or effort, and caught the claw-fingered hand, flipping the man in a neat circle and

laying him without violence on the pavement. Han, who'd stepped back a pace to give Luke room to

throw, now moved back in, helping to pin the attacker to the ground.

It was like trying to hold down a frenzied rancor. There was something hideously animal in the way the

man bucked and heaved, throwing the combined strength of Han and Luke nearly off him, screaming like

a mad thing as Chewbacca and the Ithorians closed in.

"Kill you! Kill you!" The man's broken, filthy hands flailed, grabbing at Han as the Wookiee and

Ithorians dragged him from the ground. "Going to kill you all! Solo! Solo!"

His voice scaled up into a hideous scream as one of the herd's physicians, loping from the Meeting Hall

in a billow of purple robes, slapped the man on the side of the neck with an infuser. The man gasped,

mouth gaping, sucking air, eyes staring in lunatic pain. Then he sagged back unconscious into a dozen

restraining arms.

Leia's first reaction was to reach Han-the intervening two meters of platform were suddenly a virtual

stockade of towering, gesticulating Ithorians, chattering like some impossibly beautiful orchestra whose

players have all suddenly been dosed with brain-jagger or yarrock. Umwaw Moolis was in her way.

"Your Excellency, never in the history of this herd, of this world, have we been subjected to such an

attack..."

It was all she could do not to push her aside.

Luke, she was interested to note, had gone straight for the arcade from which the man had come,

springing from platform to balcony and scanning the colonnade and the square beyond.

The children!

Leia forced her way through the crowd to the doorway.

Winter was gone. See-Threepio toddled forth from the shadows with his slightly awkward mechanical

walk and caught her arm.

"Winter has taken Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin back to their nursery, Your Excellency," he reported. "She

stayed only long enough to point out to them that General Solo was completely unhurt. Perhaps it would

be advisable for you and General Solo to go there and reassure them at the first convenient opportunity."

"Are they guarded?" Han could look after himself... for one awful moment the hairy, convulsed face of

the madman returned to her, reaching for the children...

"Chewbacca has gone with them."

"Thank you, Threepio."

"Can't see any further danger." Luke appeared at her side in a swirl of black cloak, light-brown hair

ruffled where he'd pushed back the hood, his face--scarred from a long-ago encounter with an ice

creature on Hoth-unreadable as usual, but his blue eyes seeming to see everything. "Kids all right?"

"They're in the nursery. Chewbacca's with them." She looked around. Han was still standing where he

had been, in the midst of a hooting, waving crowd of Ithorians, staring at the shadowed door through

which the attacker had been taken. He was nodding and even making some kind of reply to the herd

leaders, who were assuring him that such things never happened, but Leia could tell he wasn't really

hearing them.

She and Luke edged their way to him.

"You all right?"

Han nodded, but gave them only a glance. Leia had seen him less upset by full-scale artillery ambushes

with Imperial starfighter support.

"That can't have been anything like a planned attempt." Luke followed his gaze to the door. ”When he

starts to come out of the tranquilizer I'll see if I can go into his mind a little, pick up who he is--“

"I know who he is," said Han.

Brother and sister regarded him in surprise.

"If that wasn't a ghost," said Han, "and it might have been... I'd say it was about fifty percent of my old

buddy Drub McKumb."

Chapter 2

"Children." The man lashed to the diagnostic bed mumbled the word as if lips, tongue, and palate were

swollen and numb. Blue eyes stared blankly up from an eroded moonscape of wrinkled flesh. Above the

padded table, small monitor screens traced jewel-bright patterns of color. The central one, Leia could

see, indicated that the smuggler was in no physical pain--with that much gylocal in him he couldn't

possibly be--but the right-hand monitor showed a jangled horror of reds and yellows, as if all the

nightmares in the galaxy held shrieking revel in his frontal lobe.

"Children," he muttered again. "They hid the children in the well."

Leia glanced across at her husband. In his hazel eyes she saw the reflection, not of the emaciated

creature who lay before them in the ripped green plastene coverall of a long-distance cargo hauler, but

the fat, blustering planet-hopper captain he'd known years ago.

The Healing House of the Cloud-Mother was a dim place, rank with plants like all the herd and bathed

in soft blue-green light. Tomla El, chief healer of the herd, was small for an Ithorian and like the lights of

the place also a soft blue-green, so that in his purple robe he seemed only a shadow and a voice as he

considered the monitors and spoke to Luke at his side.

"I am unsure that going into his mind would profit you, Master Skywalker." He blinked his round

golden eyes at the frenzied right-hand screen. "He's under as much gylocal and hypnocane as we dare

administer. The brain has been severely damaged, and his whole system is full of repeated massive doses

of yarrock."

"Yarrock?" said Luke, startled.

"Sure explains him being off his rocker," commented Han. "I haven't seen Drub in seven or eight years,

but back when I knew him he wouldn't even sniff dontworry, much less go in for that caliber of

hallucinogen."

"Oddly enough," said the Healer, "I don't think his condition is attributable to the drug. Judging by his

autonomic responses, I believe the yarrock acted as a depressant to the mental activity, permitting brief

periods of lucidity. These were found in his pockets."

He produced a half dozen scraps of flimsiplast, stained and filthy and creased. Han and Leia stepped

close to look over Luke's shoulders as he unfolded them.

HAN SOLO ITHOR THE TIME OF MEETING BELIA'S BOSOM -- SULLUST -- BAY

58 SMELLY SAINT -- YETOOM NA UUN -- BAY 12

FARGEDNIM P'TAAN

"P'taan's a medium-big drug dealer on Yetoom." Solo rubbed unconsciously at the scar on his chin, as

if contact with it reminded him of his own rough-and-tumble contraband days. "If Drub was on yarrock

he could have got it from him, provided he'd found some way to make himself a millionaire in the past

seven years. And you'd have to be a millionaire to take enough of that stuff to give yourself that kind of

damage."

He shook his head, and looked again at the starved body on the table, the filthy, claw-like nails.

"I take it the Smelly Saint and Belia's Bosom are ships?" Leia's eyes were still on the nightmare

readouts above the bed.

"The Saint runs rip-off copy agri-droids out of the Kimm systems, sometimes slaves from the Senex

Sector. Makes sense. Yetoom's on the edge of the Senex."

He shook his head again, staring down at what was left of the man he had known. "He used to be

bigger than the three of us put together; I kidded him about being Jabba the Hutt's younger, cuter

brother."

"Children," whispered McKumb again, and tears leaked from his staring eyes. "They hid the children

down the well. Plett's Well." His head jerked, spastic, face contorting with pain. "Han... Kill you. Kill you

all. Got to tell Han. They're there..."

"Got to tell Han," repeated Luke softly. "That doesn't sound like a threat."

"Plett's Well...." Leia wondered why the name tugged on her mind, what it reminded her of... What

voice had said it, and who had hushed the speaker at the sound of those words?

"He's definitely suffering from severe and prolonged malnutrition," said Tomla El, surveying the line of

numbers on the bottommost readout screen. "How long since you saw him last, General Solo?"

"Eight years, nine years," said Han. "Before the fighting on Hoth. I ran across him on Ord Mantell--he

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