Star Wars: Red Harvest by Joe Schreiber Read Free Book Online

B-7 until she’d reached the private incubation chamber in the far corner of the room. Deactivating the air lock, she stepped inside, resealing the door behind her.
    Finally
, the orchid burst out.
What took you so long?
    You’re not the only plant on this level
. She took her time checking the temperature and moisture readouts on the wall unit, making incremental adjustments to both, and then walked over to the only plant in the chamber, a small orchid with black petals and a thin green stalk, its fronds seeming almost to quiver with impatience. For a moment she stood sipping caf and looking at it.
    I was cold during the night. Exceedingly unpleasant
.
    Actually, I turned the temperature down in your incubation chamber
, she told it.
Almost a full two degrees, on purpose
.
    Why?
    I’ve been telling you for ages that you’re a lot heartier than you thought. Now you know it’s true. Fact is, you could probably survive a twenty-degree temperature drop, maybe more, and you would have been just fine
.
    That’s cruel to test without warning!
    If I’d told you
, Zo replied,
then you would have gotten yourself all worked up over nothing
.
    The orchid withdrew into sulky silence. As flora went, it was one of the most Force-sensitive species in the galaxy. The problem was that it knew it. Zo put up with it anyway, and most of the time she was happy to dedicate herself to studying its abilities and providing for its needs. Every so often, though, it needed to be reminded why it had endured for thousands of years: it was far more durable than it gave itself credit for.
    Zo?
the orchid said now.
    What is it?
    Something’s wrong
.
    What now?
    Outside … something’s happening
.
    Zo reopened the incubator’s hatchway and stepped back out. Standing motionless in front of the chamber, she realized several things simultaneously.
    First, that the initial sense of wrongness she’d been experiencing up until now had nothing to do with her work here on Marfa. Contrary to what she’d initially supposed, the feeling was emanating from an outside source, an interloper, something that clearly didn’t belong here. It hadn’t been a dream; it was an alarm.
    And second, despite the silence, she wasn’t alone.
    Zo?
the orchid’s voice asked.
What is it?
    Give me a second
. She listened to the entire greenhouse with her ears instead of her mind. She heard no audible voices, but that was to be expected. Her fellow Jedi often worked for hours among their individual species without speaking a word. Much of their daily routine was accomplished in absolute silence.
    Pausing halfway down a long aisle overgrown with leafy stalks, Zo looked up. Far overhead, she found what she was looking for, an 800-year-old panopticon willow, a perfect specimen of organic surveillance, draping its limbs in a dense canopy of emerald-dripping lace. Each bud was tipped with a tiny golden eye.
    Zo placed one palm flat against the shaggy trunk, allowing its root strength to pulse through her, aware at the same time that the tree was embracing her as an equal. She felt her ground-level perspective surging up through its branches, spreading out along colonies of sharply focused eyes. Her vision shifted, wobbled, and became clear again. She was now gazing down at herself and the entire floor from far above, from the willow’s point of view. The tree’s branches shifted and Zo felt a slight shimmer of cognitive dissonance as her perspective aligned itself and she saw the familiar robed figure of Wall Bennis leaning face-first against the sinuous, downy-tufted trunk of a Malpassian squid pine.
    But Bennis wasn’t leaning.
    He was slouched forward, motionless, his torso hanging at an unnatural angle, arms dangling at his sides, impaled by the spear that had been slammed through his back into the trunk of the tree. A long dagger-shaped bloodstain ran from between his shoulder blades down his back, soaking through his belt. The cup of caf he’d been holding lay on the