Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne Read Free Book Online Page A

Plutonia—but only after scanning the ship for tracers and spyware. Without immediate pressure and with the luxury of time, Artoo minimized the inherent risk of traveling along unknown hyperspace lanes in conjunction with the nav computer of the
Desert Jewel
.
    Admiral Ackbar and Princess Leia surprised me by taking a shuttle over from the command ship
Redemption
to the
Promise
where the
Desert Jewel
was being kept. They wanted to see me right away, and they arrived in the captain’s quarters with C-3PO whirring behind them. The protocol droid looked like he had recently enjoyed an oil bath and a shine, and he was almost jubilant to see R2-D2.
    “It was a somewhat successful trip,” I said. “Artoo has the full catalog of Rodian weapons—”
    “Excellent,” Ackbar wheezed, waving that away as unimportant. I noticed the Mon Calamari often cut off or disregarded any talk that didn’t immediately advance his current goal. “But we’re more interested in what happened to you in the Llanic system.”
    How had they heard about that? “I never could make that stop on Llanic,” I said. “There was this ship in trouble and I couldn’t stand to see it destroyed by TIE fighters, so I helped it escape. I know it was stupid and compromised the mission and maybe the safety of the fleet, and I apologize for that.”
    “We’ll send someone else to Llanic, Luke,” Leia said. Her long dark hair was braided in a queue that fell down her back, and she wore a practical, casual outfit of pants, tunic, and boots. “And don’t worry—helping that ship the way you did was vital. It carried information that could change things for us.”
    “It did?”
    “There was a Kupohan spy on that ship who delivered some vital intelligence. Apparently, there’s a Givin woman newly arrived on Denon who can, if reports are accurate, slice almost anything. She’s a cryptographic genius who makes intuitive leaps that droids can’t and customizes her own hardware. The Empire is keeping her in a sort of luxurious imprisonment there, trying to convince her to apply her skills to slice through our codes and those of other groups they’re monitoring. She’s been given freedom to move on the planet, but she’s guarded around the clock. Through a Kupohan contact on Denon she smuggled out a message entirely in mathematics that took Threepio most of a day to figure out. She says she’ll work for us against the Empire if we can get her family to Omereth and then take her there to join them.”
    “Where’s Omereth?”
    “Out past Hutt Space,” Ackbar answered. “It’s a water-based planet with a few archipelagos. I’ve seen holos. Looks delightful,but it has little to offer most species in the galaxy besides fish, so it’s practically uninhabited.”
    “No sentient water species there?”
    “Only those daredevils that like to visit from other planets, I’m told. The problem is that many of the native fish are quite large and hungry. Makes for dangerous swimming. Not the kind of ocean I’d like to swim in.”
    “Luke, we can have Major Derlin and his crew take care of relocating the family,” Leia said, “but we’d like you to snatch the cryptologist from Denon and fly her to Omereth.”
    “Why me?”
    “You’re one of the best pilots we have, and it’s going to take some skillful flying to get her out of there. Once the Empire realizes she’s been taken, they’ll be anxious to reacquire her. We know this because the pursuit of the Kupohans was relentless. If not for your interference, they wouldn’t have made it.”
    “Are you sure about that? There were only two TIEs on its tail and I took them out easily. I mean, one of them swung around to attack and then deliberately broke off and gave me a free shot. What if this is a setup?”
    “I don’t think it is,” Ackbar said. “The Kupohan ship’s shields were almost exhausted and the TIEs would have destroyed it in the next couple of minutes. They couldn’t have known