Fate of the Jedi: Backlash by Aaron Allston Read Free Book Online

your secret backup bodyguard corps. But tonight I was nowhere around. You took out six armored veterans trying to kill you. That’s very, well, Imperial.”
    Jag snorted. “My deputy minister of trade, perishable goods, was in the suite above mine. I shot her in the foot while she was entertaining a guest. Not so very Imperial.”
    “Well, that’s not what everyone is talking about.”
    “Good.” Finally somewhat calmed, Jag moved across to sit beside her. “I just don’t know if I can pull this off, though. Hold things together long enough for the Empire and Alliance to reunite, and beyond. Effect any sort of change.”
    Jaina shrugged. “Think about what you
have
accomplished. You’ve saved lives. You’ve maintained the honor of the Fel family name and brought it into a new generation. And you’ve shot a deputy minister in the foot.”
    Despite himself, he grinned. “Couldn’t let that one go, could you?”
    “You could start a whole new Imperial custom. ‘Dance, fool, dance!’
Zap, zap, zap!
‘Ow, my toe!’”
    “Just keep quiet, will you?”
DATHOMIR SPACEPORT
    The two-vehicle caravan got under way as soon as Han and Leia finished changing into camouflage.
    Han took the pilot’s seat in the faster, nimbler ruin of a sports-speeder. Leia and Dyon joined him. The others, Yliri piloting, took thecargo speeder. Leia directed them northward, following her vague sense in the Force of where Luke must be.
    Luke’s presence was steady and distant, and Leia had no sense that he was in immediate danger. But this feeling was not as accurate or specific as a homing beacon, and Leia could follow it in only a meandering, imprecise fashion, now correcting more to the northwest, now to the northeast.
    The two vehicles moved through the Dathomiri rain forest at what, to Leia, seemed a maddeningly slow rate. They flew at an average of three or four meters above the forest floor, the sports vehicle in front, both pilots being very careful not to scrape against tree branches and conceivably knock passengers free. The cargo speeder sometimes had to stop, backtrack, and circle to find passages when Han’s speeder could easily navigate shorter routes, but Yliri did seem to be a more-than-competent pilot.
    Occasionally Leia would get flashes of other presences in the Force: Dathomiri forest predators lying in wait as the two speeders passed. No attacks came, and she assumed that most wildlife on this planet would steer clear of tangling with humans and other humanoids, so many of which here carried deadly weapons and made use of Force powers. None of these brief Force flashes was familiar to her; none carried the unmistakable stamp of Luke or Ben.
    A couple of hours in, Leia’s sense of direction failed her. She could still feel her brother in the Force, but her perception of him was divided; he was distant, but his emotions were near, lingering in this area, probably because of some encounter. “I’ve lost him,” she told Han.
    He thumbed the dilapidated speeder’s comm board. “Mark this spot for a possible muster point, then commence spiral search. Report anything out of the ordinary.”
    Yliri acknowledged and her speeder banked away to starboard, beginning its spiral pattern. Han banked to port. Their two spiral searches would overlap to a considerable degree, offering double coverage to the area Leia most wanted to search.
    A short while later, when the two speeders had come within view of each other for the third time, Leia saw the cargo speeder halt. Therewas discussion among the four people aboard, then Tribeless Sha dropped over the side, landing nimbly on the forest floor four meters down. She looked right and left, then set off at a trot to the right, a course that would carry her past the red speeder’s current path. When she’d moved forty paces, the cargo speeder followed at a slow pace.
    Leia activated her speeder’s comm. “What’s happening? Over.”
    Yliri’s voice came back, “Sha spotted