The Unseen Queen by Troy Denning Read Free Book Online

you.”
    Though Luke had noticed no other suspicious Force ripples, he pivoted in both directions, scanning the shadows beneath nearby ships, the churning Killik swarms, the hexagonal storage cells along the walls, and anywhere else an attacker might be lurking. He found nothing and turned back to Alema.
    “I don’t suppose you’re here to ask the Jedi to take you back?”
    “What an interesting idea.” The smile Alema flashed would have been coy once, but now seemed merely hard and base. “But no.”
    Fairly confident now that Alema was not going to attack—at least physically—Luke moved his hand away from his lightsaber and advanced to within a few steps of the Twi’lek.
    “Well, what are you doing here?” Knowing it would upset her and throw her off balance, Luke purposely allowed his gaze to linger on Alema’s disfigured shoulder. “Just stopping by to let us know you and Lomi Plo are still alive?”
    Alema gave a low throat-click, then said, “Lomi Plo died in the Crash.”
    “With Welk, I suppose.”
    “Exactly,” Alema said.
    Luke sighed in frustration. “So we’re back to that, are we?” He had slain Welk during the fight at Qoribu, only a few minutes after he had cut Alema’s shoulder half off, and he had good reason to believe that the apparition that had nearly killed
him
—and Mara—was what remained of Lomi Plo. “Alema, you were at Kr. You saw Welk before I killed him, and it had to be Lomi Plo who pulled you out of the nest at the end.”
    “You killed BedaGorog,” Alema said. “She was the Night Herald before us.”
    “The person I killed was male.” Luke suspected he was arguing a lost cause. The Dark Nest remained determined to hide the survival of Lomi Plo behind a veil of lies and false memories, and—as a sort of collective Unconscious for the entire Colony—it was adept at manipulating the beliefs of Joiners and Killiks alike. “He had a lightsaber, and he knew how to use it.”
    “BedaGorog was Force-sensitive.” A lewd smile came to Alema’s lips. “And as we recall, you did not take the time to check inside her pants before you killed her.”
    Luke let his chin drop. “Alema, you disappoint me.”
    “The feeling is mutual, Master Skywalker,” Alema said. “We have not forgotten the slaughter at Kr.”
    “There wouldn’t have been a slaughter if you had done your duty as a Jedi.” Luke sensed a familiar presence creeping toward him, skulking its way under the stern of the old Star Barge, and realized that Han had returned to the hangar without C-3PO. “But you let your anger make you weak, and the Dark Nest took advantage.”
    Alema’s unblinking eyes turned the color of chlorine. “Don’t blame us for what—”
    “I’ll lay the blame where it belongs. As a Master of the Jedi council, that is
my
duty—and my privilege!” Hoping to keep Alema’s attention too riveted on him to notice Han sneaking up behind her, Luke moved to within lightsaber range of the Twi’lek. “Now I ask you one last time to return to Ossus. I know it will be hard to face those you betrayed, but—”
    “We are not interested in ‘redemption’ … or anything else you have to offer, Master Skywalker. We are here with—”
    Alema stopped in midsentence and cocked her head, then reached for her lightsaber.
    Luke had already extended his arm and was summoning the weapon to himself, literally ripping Alema’s belt off her waist and leaving the Twi’lek with an empty hand as Han hit her in the flank with a stun bolt.
    Alema dropped to her knees, but did not fall, so Han fired again. This time, the Twi’lek collapsed onto her face and lay on the hangar floor twitching and drooling. Han leveled the weapon to fire again.
    “That’s enough,” Luke said. “Are you trying to kill her?”
    “As a matter of fact, yeah.” Han scowled at the setting switch on the barrel of his blaster, then thumbed it to the opposite position. “I could have sworn I had it set on full