Star Wars - I, Jedi

  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 Victory,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 expected 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 seclusion-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 management had been convinced that our participation in the liberation 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 Coruscant, 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 enthusiasm 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 extended 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 accommodations 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 anything 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. "Anything 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 tentacles he was fishing out of the bowl, and contrasted sharply with the bright orange of his flight suit. Knobby bits of his exoskeleton 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 themselves in the third person and not using the pronoun "I" because 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 problem."

  "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 rockstill 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 overexaggerated 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 useful 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 production part on my own."

  Ooryl's mandibles sprang open. "Then you are capable.... "

  "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 looking 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 atmosphere 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 followed 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 remember 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 nonhuman 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 problem.

  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 fee
ling 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.