The gentle and consistent hum of the hyperdrive, accompanied by the soft clicking of various systems and their corresponding lights that blinked mutedly on the control panel, were Han Solo's only companions. Chewie was sleeping, as was Jaina, while Jacen meditated in the hold and Anakin practiced with the lightsaber remote. They were all quiet and introspective, readying themselves in their own way for whatever it was they would find. Han had never been the introspective type.
In his smuggling days, introspection was a dangerous thing, in that it gave him too much time to ponder who he was. Despite his upbringing and apparent lack of conscience, Han had a sense of right and wrong. He knew he was selfish and self-serving, and on the most shallow of levels it hadn't bothered him. But if he had too much time with nothing to do but think about it, well...it wasn't always easy.
So the silence was unnerving, and it didn't help matters that his mind always insisted on returning to the subject of a certain Alderaanian Princess. What had happened? Was she wounded somewhere, the life bleeding from her? Was she a captive, being tortured for information? Was she being held for ransom?
There were too many possibilities, and he feared that there weren't any answers. Luke and Mara thought she was long gone, and he could tell Jaina did too. Anakin was characteristically optimistic, while Jacen was his usual unreadable self. So where did that leave Han? He tried to think positive, of course, but realistically he knew that whatever had destroyed Bespin had meant business. If Leia was alive, they must have her. And since there had been no trace of anyone by the time emergency help had arrived, the end result seemed pretty clear to Han.
So. He wouldn't find his princess at Bespin, but maybe he would find a clue to where she was. What if he didn't, though? What then? He supposed he would just have to tear apart the entire galaxy until he found her. There was no life, no purpose without Leia. In their youth, they had found comfort in each other as well as excitement in baiting the other into rousing arguments. During the first years of their marriage they had struggled with their place in each other's professional lives, while trying to raise three children who refused to stay out of the sights of every kidnapper in the galaxy. But now they had settled into a comfortable existence with each other, knowing every in and out of their quirks and personalities, while still maintaining a romantic and affectionate outlook. It was time to settle back and let the galaxy take care of itself, while they took care of each other. He wouldn't let someone take her from him, not now, not ever.
The warning light for the reentry back to sublight speeds began blinking rapidly. He had about thirty seconds before they reached Bespin. Han sat up a little straighter, stretched his shoulder muscles, put on his sabaac face and hit the comm. “Chewie, quit laying around and get up here. We're here.”
An acknowledging growl answered him, and a few bare seconds later his hulking form was taking a seat beside him. “Kids, strap in back there,” he said into the comm again, receiving a chorus of acknowledgments.
As the timer hit zero he slowly pulled back the lever, the starlines fading into stars. Clouds surrounded them immediately, leaving him virtually blind, flying by instruments. A few kilometers away he saw the Jade Sabre had also made a safe exit and was making for a merging path with the Millennium Falcon. “Chewie, ask Mara if she's picking anything up,” he instructed, hands flying from habit across the control board. The Wookiee copilot did so, barking and snarling into the communication outlet.
“Nothing yet,” Mara answered. “Actually...shouldn't Cloud City be around here somewhere?”
Han felt his throat tighten. “Luke, do you remember the visibility being this low last time?”
“No,” the Jedi Master answered after a brief pause. “I don't.”
The former smuggler's heart quickened. “Could this be...smoke?”
There was only silence.
And then without warning the clouds parted, revealing the smoking remains of Cloud City. It was no longer an amber colored spire in the heavens, but a blackened hulk missing close to half its mass, smouldering still. The destroyed remains of private yachts and shuttles lay scattered like asteroids through the area.
It was a graveyard.
* * *
“There's nothing here to investigate,” Mara said, stroking her chin. “I have a bad feeling about this one, Farmboy.”
Luke nodded, giving her shoulders a light squeeze. He stood behind her pilot's chair, watching the remains of a once prosperous and populated city. It wasn't right, that so many lives had been taken like that unnecessarily. But he didn't think that was the cause of the sick feeling in his stomach. “Do you sense it?”
She nodded slowly, resting her hand atop his own. “I do, I'm just not what sure it is. A lingering presence?”
“More than one,” he concluded. Blue eyes fluttered shut as he swept his consciousness over the area. There was residual pain, fear, despair...but that was normal for this type of massacre. What he felt was...what was it? A Force-user, certainly. More than one? More than fifty? Thousands?
Mara, who might as well be an extension of his own mind rather than a separate entity, asked, “Thousands? Skywalker, doesn't that seem a bit extreme?”
“Can't you feel it?” he asked.
Her own senses extended, searching the Force for answers they probably wouldn't get. Finally she said, “There's a residue here like I've never felt before. Like when the Jedi have one of those big huge congregations, only, well, bigger. I can't imagine so many Force-users in one place.”
“Let's ask the twins and Anakin what they sense,” Luke suggested. “Hey, Han?”
“What is it, kid?” Han asked, his voice dry and deep.
“Put one of the kids on,” he told him.
“Just a second.”
Luke and Mara waited impatiently, Mara drumming her fingers nervously on the armrest of her chair. “What is it, Uncle Luke?” Anakin's voice returned after a time.
“Have any of you felt something...strange? A lingering Force presence, or more than one?” Luke asked, leaning over Mara's shoulder to speak into the comm.
A few seconds later he said, “I definitely feel something. Jacen does too. Neither of us are sure what, though. Hang on, Jaina's saying something.” There was a pause. “She says it's like what she felt when around the Shadow Academy, only not as sinister, or something. Yeah, Jacen's agreeing.”
Luke nodded. “Very astute observations, all of you. That's kind of what Mara and I were thinking. Whoever these people were, a great number or even all of them are Force-users.”
“They can't be Sith,” Mara mused aloud. “There's always two. No more. No less.”
“Other dark siders, then?” Anakin suggested. “Although they don't feel dark to me. Just untrained, or something.”
“They're definitely not of the light side,” Luke told him. “But I don't think they're Sith. I just have a hard time believing someone could gather up this many Force-sensitives into one army, or whatever they are.”
Suddenly Han's voice broke through the conversation. “I'll tell you right now, I don't care who the hell they are. They have Leia, and I'll be damned if they keep her!”
Despite the seriousness of the situation and the concern he felt for his sister, Luke had a hard time keeping a smirk from his face. Such a comment was so characteristically Han. “I agree. But a group of Force-sensitives this size couldn't be too hard to track, Han, with enough meditation.”
“Then get to meditatin'!”
“It's a little more complicated than that,” Mara said calmly. “With a force this size, we're going to need backup. More than usual, because this is going to be like fighting an army of Jedi.”
“What if we can negotiate?” Luke suggested.
Mara gestured to the carnage around them. “Does this look like they want to negotiate?”
“I guess not,” he conceded. “So we need backup. Think we can wrangle Fey'lya into it?”
There was a derisive snort from the other end. “Good luck with that,” Han scoffed. “He wouldn't help us if only for spite, even if he is frying his own hide. Because, sooner or later, they're going to make a big push into his comfort zone. And then things aren't going to be too pretty.”
“So where do we turn?” Luke asked. “How do we go about getting Leia back?”
“Luke,” Mara began, sounding a little distracted, “do you remember back during the Thrawn Crisis when we saved Kardde from the Chimaera?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think a stunt like that would work again?”
“Against a group of Force-users? I doubt it.”
“But,” Mara began, “they'll be able to sense our own sensitivity. They'll take us to their leader, we break loose, fight our way to Leia, get her, and get out. Cut and dry.”
“Unless they don't have Mom stashed in the same place their leader is,” Jaina added over the comm. Mara winced, conceding the point. “But,” she continued, “we could expand on that principle. Mom wasn't expecting to be captured, so she wasn't prepared. We are. One of us could get ourselves captured, smuggle a lightsaber in some how, break free, get Mom, and make a run for it.”
“Or more than one of us,” Anakin added.
“You know, that might actually work, with the right preparations,” Han said.
“It's still risky,” Luke countered. “It doesn't eliminate the fact that sooner or later, we're going to need backup. Someone needs to take what we know back to Coruscant and tell Borsk and his cabinet. Convince them, somehow.”
“And what if they don't listen?” Mara asked, her voice a whisper.
Luke rubbed his chin, running out of ideas and options. There was something tickling the back of his mind, something Mara had said... “Wait,” he snapped, a cold sense of calm settling over him. Mara would most likely disagree, but it was a feeling, a hunch from the Force. This was the right course of action. “Han, do you remember when Mara disappeared a few years ago and I had to go save her, back right before we got married?”
“Yeah, so?” he asked.
Mara threw him a wary look. “I hope you're not thinking what I think you're thinking.”
He grinned roguishly, but spoke to Han. “We found a group of people. They're excellent pilots, trained by Thrawn—”
“Whoa now,” Han interjected. “Thrawn?”
“Yes. His own personal little group of trainees. Now, the ones we met were small in number, but they're a part of this bigger race called the Chiss—”
“Now hang on just a minute. You want us to get help from people loyal to Thrawn?” Han questioned, incredulous. “What makes you think they'd help us?”
Luke tossed his wife a glance, then said, “Because they asked Mara to join them.”
There was silence. Luke continued. “We also have a map of the Unknown Regions that we kind of stole from their files. We could threaten to release it on the HoloNet, tell them that if this group of people isn't repulsed we'll give it to New Republic citizens and they'll have a flood of people running to find shelter in their borders. That's only if they flatly refuse. They may actually be willing.”
“It sounds a little far-fetched to me,” Han drawled. “Especially when there are so few of us to spread around.”
“Then only one of us goes,” Mara suggested. “We could take Jaina's X-wing.”
“Now wait,” Jaina interrupted. “No one's taking my X-wing anywhere but me.”
Mara scowled at the sound of her apprentice's voice. “Jaina, the Chiss won't hurt me, I know that. This is too dangerous for you.”
Luke coughed pointedly. “What is it, Skywalker?” she snapped.
“I actually think it would be better for someone other than you to go,” he said with a wince.
Her brow furrowed in anger. “Oh yeah? And why is that?”
“Well, considering the mess you made of their base and hangar bay...”
She paled at his words, and he could see the surrender in her eyes. “Maybe you're right.”
“Then it's settled. I'll go to...where is it I'm going?” Jaina asked.
“Nirauan,” Mara said stiffly. “And no one agreed it would be you.”
“It has to be,” she argued. “Uncle Luke and Dad are going after Mom, there's no point in arguing there. You're going to want to go too, but someone has to go back to Coruscant and talk to the Senate.”
There was a Wookiee growl of displeasure.
“I don't think this is the best mission for you to tag along on, Chewie,” Han said reluctantly. “Besides, we'll need you here on the Falcon to pick us up on our escape.”
“But that doesn't mean it has to be you that goes to Nirauan,” Anakin argued, obviously talking to his sister. “Jacen or I could do just as good a job.”
“One, you're still a kid,” Jaina snapped. Luke smirked despite himself. Mara was definitely having an affect on her apprentice. “Two, yeah, Jacen could do it, but he hasn't expressed a wish to. And three, it's my ship. Mine. Therefore, I'm going to Nirauan.”
Luke sensed his wife draw on the Force for direction, and when she was finished he knew she had her answer. “I think Jaina should go.”
“I don't know,” Han expressed his doubt. “I don't like the idea of sending you to some strange, alien, Imperial planet all by your lonesome.”
“I'll be fine,” Jaina concluded confidently. “Besides, it's the only way.”
Luke rubbed his brow, thinking. “So here's what we've got: Jaina's going to Nirauan to try to bribe the Chiss into helping us. Han and I are going to find and infiltrate these Force-users. Chewie's staying on alert in the Falcon. And Mara's taking Jacen and Anakin in the Sabre back to Coruscant and wherever else she needs to go to rally support.”
“You know, I'm not the most diplomatic of people,” Mara added with a smirk.
“But you are good at intimidating people into what you want,” Luke smiled.
She smiled reluctantly in return. “True. But I'd rather be going with you.”
“This is the right path,” he promised solemnly. “I can feel it.”
“Then it's a done deal,” Han finished. “Let's extended the docking arm and get the kinks out of this thing, so we can get the show on the road.”
* * *
'The Restricter' turned out to be a forcefield box whose power terminal was on some other end of the ship, so Leia had no chance of disabling it. It was no doubt designed to keep a Jedi—or Baci wizard, as they called themselves—safely locked away until their fate was decided.
Not that, with her skills, Leia could have broken out of a regular cell anyway. With her lightsaber, certainly, but that had been confiscated at her capture. As it was, she didn't have many options.
She was still reeling from the brutal mind probe she had been subjected to a few hours or days before. It had been equal to a mental rape, but whoever that man was didn't know her fortitude when it came to torture. Darth Vader himself had tried to extract information from her on more than one occasion, and whoever this guy was, he paled in comparison.
Her family had to know she was missing by now. And, knowing Han, he was already on his way after her, guns blazing. Luke and the kids were probably there, too. But how they were ever going to get her out, she had no idea. With the precautions they had taken and the almost invulnerable quality they possessed by being Force-sensitive, it seemed hopeless.
The door to the room she was trapped in opened, and the leader she had met before stepped in. Her lightsaber hilt hung at his hip. “Hello, Leia. How are you this morning?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Better before you came in. You really should do something about that smell.”
A thin smile crossed his lips. One hand fondled the lightsaber, pulling it from his belt and igniting it. “I was given this very interesting weapon this morning, and told that it had been found on your person. Would you like to explain it to me?”
She laid back on her elbows, crossing her ankles. They had changed her from her formal dress into a standard prisoner jumpsuit, making her movement a little easier. “Not really. I'm sure you have an idea, anyway.”
He swung it in a crossing motion experimentally. “What I don't understand is why anyone would want to use such a primitive weapon.”
Leia shrugged. “Then why the curiosity?”
He looked at her purposefully. “Because your Jedi do. And if they do, there is some reason. Explain it to me.”
“I'm not a Jedi,” she explained roughly.
“But you know them. Your whole family is composed of them.”
She remained silent, contemplating the different ways she could possibly kill him if he lowered the energy shield. Suddenly he crouched before her, his expression much less intimidating. “Listen, I'm not a bad guy,” he confided. “I don't want to hurt you. I just want to preserve my people. And these Jedi are a threat to that cause. Tell me what I need to know and I'll let you be.”
Leia sat up angrily. “Don't you already have enough of what you need?”
“The memories?” he scoffed, waving a hand in dismissal. “I just got an overview. Enough to give me an idea. I need detail. You can give me that.”
Tentatively Leia touched the Force, not enough to alert him but enough to gain some guidance. She could feel his mood, hopeful and hungry. But that she could see in his eyes, eyes that were a little too dark and far apart to be all human. Hungry for power? For knowledge? Or something else all together?
Leia didn't answer him. It was a good tactic, one she had learned from experience. They couldn't glean anything from silence. At the same time she built wall after wall of defense around her mind, protecting it. He wouldn't catch her off guard again.
He stood, expression resolved. “Fine. I'll be back later. And while I'm gone, you can think about how long you're willing to wait me out. Each day your usefulness grows a little smaller. Take advantage of my offer before it runs out altogether.”
A sudden thought struck Leia, and as he turned to leave she said, “I'll trade.”
He looked over at her, interested. “What, my dear, do you want to trade?”
“Questions,” she said, sitting up fully and crossing her legs beneath her. “I'll answer one of yours, you answer one of mine.”
He stood perfectly still for a long moment, then nodded in assent. “Who leads these Jedi?”
“Me first,” Leia demanded. When Han did come for her, she would have enough knowledge of these people to give the New Republic a head start. And maybe it would keep him satisfied long enough to let her live until Han came.
“Go ahead,” he told her, dropping to an identical position across from her.
“What's your name?”
“Cale Wilos, Premier of the Baci Nation. Who is the head of your Jedi Order?”
“It is a democratic body. No one commands,” Leia answered.
“I don't believe you. No organization can flourish without a command structure. I have answered you, you answer me,” Cale demanded.
Leia sighed. Was she putting Luke in danger by admitting this? Probably not. He was a big boy, and he could most likely squash this Wilos guy like a bug. “Unofficially, it's my brother, Luke Skywalker. Where do the Baci come from?”
“Everywhere. How are your skills with the Channel passed on?”
“Now wait,” Leia stopped him. “'Everywhere' isn't an answer.”
“We have evolved in the untamed reaches of space for millennia. We travel in our fleet, find a habitable planet, stay as long as it is useful, and move on to another,” he said, gesturing broadly with his left hand, as if to indicate the very air they breathed.
“You're wanderers,” Leia concluded aloud.
He nodded at her assessment. “How are your skills with the Channel passed on?”
Leia frowned. “You mean the Force?”
“I suppose, if that is your term for it.”
“We train at an Academy,” she said, still a little confused. How did these people use the Force and still know nothing about it?
“No, no, no,” Cale said, shaking his head. “Is it hereditary?”
“Of course. Although Jedi have been known to spring up in Force-blind families,” Leia told him matter-of-factly.
An expression of bafflement remained fixed to his face. He didn't express it in words, but Leia could tell it was there. He stood suddenly, looking distressed. “I must leave.” He did just that, leaving her once again to her solitude. Leia didn't mind. It would give her a chance to meditate, maybe even let Luke or her children know she was okay.
They would come for her soon. She had to hold on to that, or there was no foreseeable hope in her future.