Force Heretic_ Refugee Part 16

"But all that equipment," she said. A loss like that for a small group such as Freedom had to hurt. "All that data!"

"Data and equipment are replaceable; lives are not." An open shaft pa.s.sed by overhead, briefly affording them some light. It reflected off Salkeli's multifaceted eyes. "Okay, we're there," he said. "Swim for the edge. "

"You actually know where we are?" She was genuinely surprised.

"A Rodian always has an escape plan," he said, kicking vigorously for the edge of the tunnel. "I thought everyone knew that."

"But it was my idea to jump!" The Rodian snorted, a nasal bleat that sounded unusually loud in the tunnel. "I had already thought of it; I just wanted to check out your mettle." He reached the wall and found purchase on its slimy surface. Jaina wasn't far behind. Her fingers dug into the gaps between bricks where ancient mortar had eroded away. "Up there," Salkeli said. "See?" Jaina looked up and to her right, and saw an open access cover. Descending from it was a rusting metal ladder. She followed Salkeli's lead and began to edge her way toward it. The current was stronger here than it had been before, and she had to fight not to be swept away. From farther down the tunnel she could hear a faint rumbling sound, like that of a distant roaring. She guessed that either the tunnel continued to narrow the farther it went, or it ended in an underground waterfall of some kind. Either way, she didn't particularly want to find out.

"I'll help you up," Salkeli said, coming up beside her when she reached the base of the ladder.

"That's all right." She nudged him upward with the Force and enjoyed the look of surprise on his greert face. "I have something I have to do first." He ascended the ladder while she reached into her pocket and removed the bug, releasing it into the current. She was happy to let the security guards search through the drainage system to find it. Then she lifted herself out of the water, pulling herself up and out into the relatively fresh air.

The sun was rising over the horizon when she scrambled through the access hatch. Looking around, she could tell they had come out in a completely different section of the city than they'd just been in. The streets were wider, the buildings lower and better maintained. It looked more like a warehousing suburb than the abandoned business complex they'd left behind.

"We made it," she said, laughing in relief.

"You ditched the bug?" Jaina nodded, already thinking about what to do next.

"I think you've helped Freedom enough for one day," Salkeli said.

"Would you like a lift back into town?"

"As long as it doesn't involve swimming again." He grinned, motioning for her to accompany him to the nearest building-a low, long container hold. There was a metal roller door securing the premises.

Salkeli tapped a code into the lock and it obligingly slid up, revealing a dusty but serviceable two-seater speeder.

"You're not going to tell me that's yours, are you?" she said.

The Rodian's multifaceted eyes twinkled. "Would you believe me if I did?"

"Well, you know what they say," Jaina said lightly. "A Rodian always has an escape plan." He smiled at this, gesturing with his long, green fingers for her to climb aboard while he moved around the back to adjust the airfoil. In the second it took for him to do this, her senses told her that something had gone terribly awry-something she hadn't antic.i.p.ated. But it was too late. She was climbing into the speeder when a searing pain caught her in the back.

She turned as she fell, catching a fleeting glimpse of Salkeli as he lowered his blaster.

"Always," she heard him say as darkness claimed her.

She ran as fast as she could along the mostly empty corridors, not knowing where she was or where she was going. For all she knew-or cared-she might have been running in circles. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that she keep running in the hope that it might distract her from the pain in her mind.

Try as she might, though, she couldn't outrun the memories. Her life seemed to be made up of one long tragedy, from her parents' deaths on Tatooine to her latest breakdown on Bakura. And, of course, Anakin...

Remember-together, you are stronger than the sum of your parts.

Master Ikrit's last words to her, communicated via the Force, had helped her accept her feelings for Anakin. But it wasn't about strength; it was about being together. She loved Anakin, and always had. As a child, she had loved him as a friend; then, as they grew older, she had been learning to love him as a woman. But now, because of the Yuuzhan Vong, because of the voxyn and Myrkr, that love would never be realized.

Her body shook with sobs as she doubled up, clutching her stomach.

Anakin's absence was like a yawning gulf in her life, a hole that nothing could fill. The future they should have had together would never happen, and nothing could ever take its place. Not even becoming a full Jedi Knight was any comfort. The Force without him in it was an empty thing.

It's not supposed to be like this! she wanted to shout at the universe. Change it back! Make it right. Make it better. Make the pain go away!

She fell to the floor, rolling tightly into a fetal position, desperately wanting to push back the pain. Anakin had sacrificed himself for the greater good, and the thought of that only enhanced the love she felt for him. She wanted to go back and kiss him that last time, instead of holding off as she'd done. She wanted to go back and fight at his side, to help him overcome the Yuuzhan Vong warriors who had ultimately brought him down. She wanted to die with him, because life without him was so incomprehensible.

Memories...

"You aren't immortal," Corran Horn had told them on an asteroid near Yag'Dhul, "and you aren't invincible."

"Everybody gets a nasty surprise someday," Anakin had replied. "I'd rather get it standing up than lying down." Memories...

"I've thought about the dark side for most of my life. My mother named me after the man who became Darth Vader. The Emperor touched me through her womb. Every night I had nightmares that ended with me in my grandfather's armor. With all due respect, I think I've probably thought a lot more about the dark side than anyone I know..." Memories...

"You wre scarred up and tattooed like Tsavong Lah," Anakin said.

"You were Jedi, but dark. I could feel the darkness radiating from you."

"You don't still think that could happen to me?" she responded, horrified by the vision. "How could I? You saved me from them, stopped me before they finished." His doubt, his fear that she might join the other side and destroy the Jedi, had cut her more deeply than any physical wound she had ever sustained. "Anakin, I'll never join the Yuuzhan Vong Memories...

"Might be simpler if we don't make it." After their first kiss, when there was no going back to the way they'd been before. "Yeah. Are you sorry? "

"No. No, not even a little bit."

"So let's survive so we get a chance to figure this out, okay?"

Sobs tore through her like knives. She was so lonely; she was so alone.

Anakin's family could have been hers, but now instead they were frightened of her. They were suspicious of her and tried to push her away. Everyone was pus.h.i.+ng her away. Everyone except - "Tahiri?" The voice came from outside her head, beyond her memories. The use of her name was so unexpected that she was on her feet in an instant, her lightsaber crackling, rising defensively before she'd even seen who had said it. Then, when she did look, she couldn't see him properly because of the film of tears over her eyes.

"No, wait!" Whoever it was, he backed nervously away, arms outstretched in a desperate request for her to lower her weapon.

"You come anywhere near me," she hissed, "and so help me I'll-"

"I won't, I promise." She didn't recognize the voice. "I just heard that you were lost. That's all. I came to help you."

"Help me?" she repeated suspiciously, the lightsaber unsteady in her hands. "Why should you help me? You don't even know me!"

"Sure I do," he said. "You're the Jedi-who-was-shaped. You're-" She felt the blood drain from her face. "Don't ever call me that!" He backed away another step as the tip of her lightsaber stabbed toward him. "I'm sorry!" he said. "I didn't realize you found it offensive."

"Well, I do," she said, pouring all of her anger into the words.

"It reminds me of things I'd sooner forget."

"I can understand that. You are like us in many respects." Anger flared again. He was trying to manipulate her. "Who are you?"

"I'm a friend. We met back at the s.p.a.ceport, remember?"

"The Ryn?" She blinked back the moisture covering her eyes and looked more closely at the being before her. He was gray-skinned and had a beak for a nose. A prehensile tail lashed the air behind him. There was a smell about him, too: a smell that was inherent to his species.

"It is you," she said with some surprise, sensing his familiarity even though she'd never seen his face before.

He nodded. "The name is Goure," he said, trying to force a smile but clearly finding it difficult with her lightsaber still raised toward him. " Look, could we put that away for now? I think we might attract unwanted attention." With some embarra.s.sment, Tahiri realized that they were standing in a public access way. At the other end of the corridor, people were starting to gather, staring curiously at the Jedi and the Ryn. She quickly deactivated her lightsaber and reattached it to her belt.

"I'm sorry," she said, appalled by her foolishness. "I'm not thinking straight at the moment." Goure shrugged good-naturedly. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," he said sotto voce. "Come, follow me and I'll take us to a place where we won't have an audience. But try not to make it seem as though you are following me, okay? I'm a servant; you must order me to lead." She nodded slowly. "I was lost, and you are taking me home."

"Exactly." He rearranged his body under the simple gray robes he wore so he was hunched forward, as though with age. "This way." She followed him with head held high and her expression devoid of any of the emotions she'd felt just moments earlier. She pushed through the crowd at the end of the corridor, her cold stare daring anyone to obstruct her. It took all her control of the Force to placate the more curious, and the irony wasn't lost on her that she couldn't apply the same trick to herself. Behind the facade, her mind was still very much in turmoil.

Goure led her through the corridors and malls of Salis D'aar, past floating statues and elegant fountains. Plant life encroached heavily on the city, thriving in the thick air and fertile soils. Tree trunks snaked through carefully arranged holes in the pavement and walls, their vine-covered coils diverting the eye from security checkpoints, public comm stations, and information outlets. In some places, Salis D'aar seemed so heavily overgrown that it looked like the jungle was taking over, but ferrocrete was strong and resisted the tide of root and tendril with stubborn defiance. The city would last awhile yet; it was civilization's strongest bastion in its battle against nature.

"Here," Goure said, waving her ahead into a narrow corridor between two ornamental statues. She did as he told her without hesitation or question; he projected no sense of threat or danger. After looking up and down the corridor behind them, he followed. When inside, he flicked a switch; a small holoprojector flickered to life, covering the entrance with the illusion of solid wall.

"It won't actually keep anyone out," Goure said, walking ahead of her along the corridor, "but it'll at least stop them from stumbling in on us."

"Is security looking for me?" she asked.

"Oh, no. This is nothing to do with you." His tail coiled and uncoiled restlessly. "We just prefer not to leave too many odd connections in our wake, that's all." The room at the end of the corridor was empty apart from two simple chairs and a low box. Bare stone walls and a single, naked light source leant it a forbidding air, but Tahiri didn't feel threatened by the Ryn at her back. He radiated nothing but surety and reliability.

"Take a seat." He fished around in the box and produced two scuffed metal cups and a bottle of water. Tahiri eased herself into the chair closest to the entrance, thankful to be resting her feet. She felt drained right to the very core of her being, as though she had been running for days.

He offered her a cup of the water, which she gratefully accepted.

It felt good and refres.h.i.+ng in her mouth, and she closed her eyes in appreciation as she sipped it.

"What happened to your arms?" Goure indicated the scars showing beneath her thin tunic.

"Nothing," she answered uneasily, folding her arms in a way that hid the self-inflicted wounds from back on Mon Cal. There was nothing she could do to hide the marks on her forehead. "What time is it?" she asked to change the subject.

"A couple of hours before dawn." That surprised her-although it did explain her exhaustion. She didn't want to ask the next question, but she had to in order to ease her mind. "What have I been doing?" Goure looked sympathetic. "You haven't hurt anyone, if that's what you're worried about."

"You said you'd heard that I was lost." A useful euphemism, she thought. "How? "

"I have many means of learning what's going on," he said. "I'm a Ryn. We're ignored at best. We work on the lowest rungs of society, doing the jobs no one else wants to do. That allows me to get into places and gives me access to information most people wouldn't even know existed. I listen to gossip, scan the security frequencies, go through the trash-"

She inadvertently pulled a face, which made him smile. "Yeah, I know.

It's not the most glamorous of jobs at times, but I get results. Anyway, your name came up in a security report. They were watching you carefully, unsure what you were up to. I thought it might be best to get to you before they decided to bring you in." He shrugged. "It wasn't difficult to work out where you were and where you might be headed. " She hated to think what she might have done had the security guards closed in on her at any point during her strange fugue state. The feelings of anger and hurt had been so overwhelming; she may well have used those guards as a means to vent her emotions.

Still, Goure had said that she hadn't hurt anyone. That was something to be grateful for, at least.

"What about Han and Leia?" she asked. "Do they know?"

"They have other things to worry about, I'm afraid." The Ryn's expression turned serious. "A warrant for Jaina's arrest was released shortly after midnight."

"What? Why?"

"Security droids caught images of her helping Malinza Thanas escape from where she was being held. She's been charged with aiding and abetting, along with sedition-or she will be, when they find her. She's listed as being armed and dangerous. Guards are to use force if necessary." The news shocked Tahiri out of concern for herself. Jaina on the run? Her first thought was to help. The tug of the family she'd nearly had was strong, but not as strong as the sudden sense of warning that rushed through her.

I called you Riina.

It came back to her in a rush: Leia's face in the gloom of the bedroom, the silver pendant - Jaina told me what Jag found.

She reached into the pocket of her robe and felt the pendant, its b.u.mps and edges worn by Yuuzhan Vong claws. The Peace Brigade had left it on Galantos, probably by accident. It had fallen under a bed in the diplomatic wing, where the Brigaders had been staying. Something about the pendant had called to her, triggering her instincts They told her that something was up; there was more to Galantos than met the eye.

Searching, she'd been drawn to the pendant's dusty hiding place and - She's hiding something-from herself as well as everyone else...

Then she had blacked out. When she had woken, the pendant had gone.

Jag must have found it and pa.s.sed it on to Jaina, who had aired her suspicions to her mother. All the while, the pendant had nagged at Tahiri like an unscratchable itch, preoccupying her mind, calling out to her...

No. Not her. It was calling out to Riina of Domain Kwaad-the monster the Yuuzhan Vong had tried to turn her into!

Somehow, the Riina personality is still inside you.

A deep darkness rose up in her mind, threatening to consume her-just as it had so many times before. She fought it now as she had then, fighting down the persona that kept trying to take her over.

I am not Riina! I am Tahiri Veila! Despite her determination, her mental voice sounded feeble. I am a Jedi!

The darkness receded and she sagged back into the chair with a sob.

What was she going to do? If the slightest hint of Yuuzhan Vong was going to destabilize her so deeply, how could she possibly hope to be of use in the war against the enemy? And what if Riina took over completely? What then would become of her and the people around her?

"Tahiri?" Despite the softness of the voice, it cut sharply into her thoughts, startling her. So relieved was she to hear her own name that she suddenly burst into tears.

"Hey, I'm sorry, Tahiri. Are you okay?" Lost in her thoughts, she had forgotten all about Goure, the Ryn. He was crouched down before her now, his powerful scent filling her nostrils, thrusting deep into the old places of her mind, forcing itself into the s.p.a.ces buried beneath her thoughts. It seemed to sweep out the cobwebs as it went, working its way through the tangled corridors of her mind like a powerful cleansing wind.

Jaina couldn't be blamed for the position Tahiri was in. Nor could Jag, or Anakin's parents. There was only one person responsible, and that was herself. She had to be the one to prove to everyone that she could be trusted, that she was the one in control and not Riina.

"Don't be sorry," she said to the anxious Ryn. She wiped the tears from her face and quashed down the darkness still threatening to rise to the surface. The pendant was in her hand, and she pushed it back into the inner pocket of her robes where she didn't have to look at it. "Just help me rescue my friend."

"That I will," the Ryn said, his tail snapping like a whip. "The first thing we have to do, though, is find out if they've caught her. The warrant only mentioned Jaina, so Han and Leia might be in the clear for now. But I can't be certain. We'll need to be closer to things in order to keep an eye on them."

"I'll do whatever it takes," she said determinedly. "I just want to put things right."

"And the best way to do that is with my help, if you're willing to stick with me awhile longer." She met his gaze with all the strength she could muster. Part of her wanted to go straight back to Han and Leia, to try to repair the damage, but another part of her was nervous of doing that just yet. Not until she was certain of where she stood. And besides, she told herself, if she could find more about what the Ryn were up to, that would stand her in good stead when she did go back. It was important who was helping them, and why.

Goure nodded as though in approval.

"Very well, Tahiri Veila." He rose to his feet. "The first thing 1 need you to do is to wait here. You can't go wandering around looking like that." She looked down at her robe and frowned. "Like what?"

"Like you. Even if they weren't already watching you, they certainly wouldn't let you walk freely into where we need to go. The trick to being like us, you see, is to make sure you're not noticed."

"I need a disguise, right?" He nodded, smiling. "I won't be long, I promise."

"How long?" she asked quickly, standing. The emptiness of the room was already crowding in around her. There would be nothing to do while he was gone, no distractions from her thoughts. The idea of being on her own in an unfamiliar city put her even more on edge. What if the security guards came for her? What if Goure didn't come back?

"Try not to be scared, Tahiri. You'll be all right." She could tell from the hesitant movements of his hands that he would like to reach out and rea.s.sure her physically, but was reluctant to do so. Probably, she figured, because he was worried she might have another panic episode and threaten him with her lightsaber again.

"I-I'm just worried about being alone, that's all." She looked down, embarra.s.sed by the admission. It was a weakness, and did not become the Jedi Knight she was supposed to be. "I feel very lost right now."

"We have a saying," Goure said. " 'In the darkest hole you can always find some light. You just have to open your eyes to see it.' "