figures scattered about it. He ducked back, then looked out
again.
No one is moving. Aside from the spiders and whatever
they snack on, there's nothing living in here.
He sliced the web-wall in half with his left hand, then
stepped into the long, rectangular room. Dust billowed up
around his feet and coated his soles. Slender, dust-laden web-
strands hung down from the ceiling like vines in a forest.
Some of them attached themselves to the figures in the room,
as if etheric umbilical cords maintaining the figures in their
twilight existence.
Corran had no idea where he was, but the taint of evil in
the room threatened to overwhelm him. That surprised him
because he saw no active threat and didn't feel directly men-
aced. The sensation reminded him of his days back in Cor-
Sec, when he entered the scene of a particularly violent
massacre of spice runners who had angered Durga the Hutt.
It was all destruction, but not wanton--it was completely
calculated and deliberate.
The figures he saw were all statues and mannequins. As
he approached the first one, a little light flashed on in the
space before it and resolved into a hologram of the head and
shoulders of a man. A voice from the base of the statue said,
"Avan Post, Jedi Master from Chandrila, served with distinc-
tion in the Clone Wars."
Corran looked up at the head of the white marble statue
to see if it matched the hologram, but the face on the statue
had been destroyed. The stone had melted back to the level
of the ears and streamed down over the figure's torso. Noth-
ing else about the statue's shape enabled Corran to figure out
if it was Post or not. Then again, why would the bologram of
Post be connected to this statue if it isn't him?
Corran frowned. And why remove his face?
Corran moved deeper into the room. The muted illumi-
nation came from glowtiles set near floor level and enabled
Corran to pick out two darkened doorways set into one of
the longer walls, but he didn't feel compelled to head out and
explore the area beyond them. He couldn't explain it, but he
had a hunch there was something important in the room,
something he had to find. While intellectually he knew run-
ning far and fast was the best thing for him, his father had
always encouraged him to follow his hunches. Doing that
has kept me alive. No reason to change now, especially now.
As he moved through the chamber it became obvious
that the statues and display cases were all exhibits in some
sort of museum. A Jedi museum. Everything pertained in one
way or another to Jedi Knights and Masters, with the vast
majority of them having served in the Clone Wars. Just over
forty years ago, all of these people were alive.
Without fail, whether the representation was a static ho-
logram with little mementos, or a life-size statue, or a man-
nequin dressed as the person it represented, the Jedi's image
had been ruined. Some statues lay in pieces on the ground.
Some of the mannequins had limbs missing or holes pounded
through the torsos. All of them had been defaced--most lit-
erally, though some had only had their eyes carved out. He
could not discern a pattern to the damage--beyond the fact
that all the faces were maimed in one way or another--but
Corran knew there was one, keyed to the mind of the person
who had done it.
Discarding his prison tunic, Corran pulled some clothes
from one of the broken dummies and got into them. The
rough-spun brown trousers and pale pull-over tunic itched
against his bare flesh and threatened to drive him crazy.
From what I remember of Jedi stories, a Jedi would have
chosen such clothes just to force himself to learn to ignore
the physical sensations distracting him--his clothes become
an exercise in concentration. He couldn't remember where
he'd heard that--it had to have been from his grandfather or
father, because the Jedi were extinct by the time Corran had
learned they had existed, and people who wanted to avoid
Imperial scrutiny didn't display much interest in the Jedi
Knights of old.
Corran's hand went to his throat to touch the medallion
he'd worn since he'd inherited it from his father--a medal-
lion he'd left with Whistler for safekeeping before his mission
to Coruscant. Mirax Terrik had identified it as Jedi Credit, a
medallion issued in limited numbers to mark a Corellian
Jedi's elevation from Knight to Master. I guess carrying it
around was my father's way of covertly defying the Empire.
Corran pulled on a Jedi's brown cloak and fastened it at
his throat. He swirled it around himself, sending lint-nerfs
scurrying across the floor and leaping from the top of a dis-
play case. A glint of gold in that case caught Corran's eye. He
stepped closer and swept dust from the glass with his hands.
His mouth went dry. That medallion, it's just like the
one I wore, save for the way the eyes have been gouged out
of it. Who is that? Irritated that the holographic legend
didn't play, Corran jiggled the case. A hologram began to
glow , creating an image of a slender man hovering above the
glass, about twenty centimeters high. A voice, starting low
and slow, then speeding up into a soprano, accompanied the
display. "Nejaa Halcyon, a Jedi Master from CoreIlia, died
in the Clone Wars."
The light from the holographic projection bled below
into a static hologram. It showed Halcyon standing with a
boy. The Basic legend running down the edge of the image
read, "Nejaa Halcyon and an apprentice." The projection
snapped off and the hologram went dark, but it took Corran
several seconds to become cognizant of that fact.
That boy. That was my father .... He'd seen ho-
lograms of his father as a child, and the boy in the image
looked very much like Hal Horn had at that age. He even
looked a bit like me. But that can't he, can it?
Corran frowned mightily. Mirax had told him that the
commemorative medallions were given to family, friends,
students, and Masters by the Knight who appeared on them.
If my father had been his apprentice, that would explain how
he got the coin, but he never said anything about knowing a
Jedi or training with him. My grandfather did, but he never
mentioned this Halcyon. That hologram has to be wrong, !
have to have seen it wrong.
He jiggled the case again, but the projection did not
return. He stepped back and up to it again without results.
He jogged and then shook the case, but that only moved the
medallion around and tipped over the hologram. I need light
to see who's really in that hologram.
Swaddling his left fist in his Lusankya tunic, Corran
hammered it against the display case. The glass shattered
into hundreds of sparkling shards. Looking around ner-
vously, waiting for some alarm system to start blaring, Cor-
ran shook the canvas wrap off his hand and cast it aside. He
carefully plucked out the medallion and put it in his pocket.
To it he added the hologram and would have walked over to
one of the footlights to examine it, but the third memento of
Nejaa Halcyon attracted his attention.
Shifting his blaster to his left hand, Corran reached into
the case and pulled out a thirty-centimeter-long silvery cylin-
der. A concave dish capped it, a thickened knob served as the
pommel, and a black button rode in a recessed niche pre-
cisely where his right thumb naturally rested. Pointing the
cup away from himself, Corran hit the button.
A silvery-white shaft of light just over a meter in length
hissed to life. It hummed low and mournfully as its cold
illumination turned all the Jedi images into ghosts. Corran
twisted his wrist around, bringing the energy blade through a
set of interlocked loops. The sound quickened slightly as the
blade transformed a strand of webbing into a drifting tendril
of smoke.
Corran turned, thinking to sweep the lightsaber blade
through one of the mannequins, but stopped before he
struck. These images have endured enough abuse. I won't
add to it. He knew he was correct not to contribute to the
further despoiling of the monuments. Moreover, there had
seemed to be a subtle pressure, a hidden malevolence in the
room, that encouraged and condoned the destruction.
Corran felt good defying it.
He hit the button under his thumb once to shut the blade
off. It remained lit. Corran frowned for a moment, then hit
the button twice in quick succession, and the blade vanished.
The double hit to turn it off guarantees it won't go down in
combat if the button is hit accidentally.
As shadows reconquered the room, Corran shivered.
Trying to integrate this storehouse of Jedi memorabilia with
Lusankya was enough to make his brain hurt. I'd probably
have a better chance of figuring out what all of this stuff is
doing here if I had a clue as to where I was. It's good to have
clothes and equipment, but somehow I doubt disguising my-
self as a Jedi Knight is a way to become less conspicuous in
making my escape. And that's still my first priority--getting
out of here.
Corran smiled and let the lightsaber roll back and forth
across the palm of his hand. "I bet you'll make a wonderful
door opener."
Suddenly a short, sharp pop echoed through the com-
plex of rooms. A shockwave started dust swirling through
the room, centered on a doorway back along the wall to the
right. Sounds like someone else is finding novel ways to open
doors. This room is too open, nowhere to bide.
Three figures dressed in black moved into and through
the doorway. They paused there and swept the room with
the harsh white beams of the glowrods fixed to the barrels of
their blaster carbines.
Having no other option, Corran froze in place. The
lights flashed over him, lingering only as long as they had on
the other unmoving figures in the room.
"Nothing here."
The tallest of them nodded. "Then we wait." His voice
trailed off for a second. "Hey, there was something funny
about one of the dummies over here."
He played his light over Corran again and his friends
likewise brought their lights to bear on him. "This one's got
a face."
"Yeah, I have a face and I'd like to keep it." Corran
thumbed the lightsaber to life. "l hope that's not going to be
a problem for anyone."
37
Wedge walked over to the circular holopad sitting atop a
pedestal in the center of the briefing room. "We've only got
time to go through this once, so listen up." He hit a series of
keys on the holopad, causing a holographic map of the Pal-
ace district and environs to spring to life. The whole scene
rotated up 90 degrees to give the pilots a chance to look
down through the network of towers, tunnels, and cause-
ways which clogged that section of the city. Deep in the
lower reaches of the display a red square pulsed with life.
"We have a report that the Palpatine Counter-
insurgency Front is staging from this location for a strike on
a bacta storage facility in Invisec. We're flying cover for a
commando force that is going to go in. The fact is that these
PCF folks are very dedicated to their jobs and are likely to
scatter when our forces hit. We expect speeder bikes,
swoops, and speeders to be heading out of there. Since they
used an airspeeder bomb to hit an earlier site, we have to
assume that any and all such vehicles are moving bombs.
We're going to take them down."
Wedge pointed to the empty seat beside Pash Cracken.
"Nawara isn't here because our strike is going to hit the PCF
about the same time Nawara normally runs the gantlet of
holojournalists. If he's not there on the day ]cho's defense
is supposed to open, they might think something is going
down and move too soon. Ooryl, you'll fly on Pash's wing.
Normal assignments for everyone else."
Pash glanced up at Wedge. "If we're going to be hawk-
ing targets through the city, isn't there a good chance we'll
lose some of them? There are places an X-wing might not fit,
but a speeder bike will."
rity office onboard the Emperor's skyhook, but there is a
chance some might get away."
Erisi's hand went up. "There will be a lot of civilian
traffic up. How badly are these guys wanted? How much
collateral damage do we risk?"
Wedge winced. "If any of them get through to their tar-
get, a lot of people will die. Thousands, perhaps even hun-
dreds of thousands. When we go in the municipal authorities
will issue a sector-wide emergency grounding call. Anyone
who ignores that call, especially after we start lighting the
area up, is making a very big mistake. We don't want to
shoot civilians, but if you have a positive ID on a target, take
it. Shooting in the city isn't going to be real pretty, but letting
a PCF terrorist get through is going to be worse."
Erisi nodded. "What if the PCF people go to ground
with the civilians?"
"Then they won't be blowing up a bacta storage facil-
ity." Wedge grinned grimly. "We'll spot them and call in
someone who can help neutralize them."
"Ooryl believes this is a must-win, no-win scenario."
You have that right. We're busting open a rat's nest and
hoping to kill all of them before they call do damage when
they escape. The chances of collateral damage are high, and
while a Corellian usually doesn't have any use for odds, in
this case 1 wish they were much lower against us. "There is
no denying that the probable outcome of our exercise is the
loss of some innocent folks on the ground or in a building.
We have to be careful but thorough. I can't tell you t
o shoot
with children on a causeway backstopping your shots. I'm
just going to trust that you'll be smart enough to avoid find-
ing yourself in that situation."
He sighed. "Your astrogation droids have the map of the
Palace sector and Invisec. The bacta facility is protected and
you'll get a warning tone if you enter the exclusion zone
around it. If you find yourself there, get out. They'll take
your target. Anything else?"
He looked around the room, but no one had any com-
ments or questions. "Great. Hit the hangar and mount up.
Fly your best out there. We might not be up against a Death
Star, but this mission is still vital. And may the Force be with
you. Dismissed."
The pilots started to file out. Wedge noticed Asyr give
Gavin a quick kiss, then stroke his cheek with her left hand.
She said something to Gavin that Wedge couldn't hear, then
she turned toward him and held a hand up. "Commander, if
you have a moment."
"Just a moment, Asyr."
Asyr nodded to Gavin and he departed. She approached
Wedge and the fur on the back of her neck rippled up and
down. "Do you recall a conversation we had six weeks ago?
About my having to make a decision?"
Wedge nodded. "I told you there would come a point
where you had to choose between the squadron and your
allegiance to the Bothan Martial In telligence."
"You said at the time that you trusted me, and wanted
to continue to trust me."
"Right. And I told you that if you chose to leave the
squadron, I'd respect your decision." Wedge shook his head.
"Of course, if you're doing that right now, I might not re-
spect your choice of timing."
Her violet eyes flashed coldly for a second as she looked
up at him. "I want you to continue to respect my decisions
and my timing. And I want you to continue to trust me." She
dug into the pocket of her flightsuit and pulled out a data-
card. "I was ordered to prepare a report about the bacta
massacre at Alderaan. It was felt a document that suggested
our delay in getting there might, in some way, have been
deliberate and the result of human action. That datacard has
the only copy of said report. If anything happens to me,