“The drive exhaust?” Han managed to make his confusion sound like alarm. “Well, stop her! If she cuts one of those-“
“Han!”
“Yeah?”
“Enough!” Leia said. Han certainly knew his own ship well enough to realize that the aft escape pod discharged a couple of meters forward of the drive exhaust, and she would just have to trust him to figure out the significance of that. “She has a headset, too. Remember?”
“All right… just stop her!”
Leia raised her lightsaber and charged. Alema looked first puzzled, then worried; then finally she pivoted away and blocked as Leia swung at her head.
Leia kicked wildly at the Twi’lek’s leading foot, forcing her to step back, then swung again at the head. Alema blocked and stepped into the attack, trying to work her way past Leia to strike at the drive exhaust.
Leia attacked hard, smashing her knee into Alema’s ribs, forcing herself not look toward the escape pod hatch, to not even think about it…
Alema surprised Leia with a spinning hook kick that caught her across the shins and sent her sprawling onto her face just centimeters from a pool of spilled coolant.
Han’s panicked voice came over the headset. “Leia! Stop her!”
Leia looked up to find Alema racing past, only three steps shy of the pod hatch but a full meter off to one side. She locked her blade into the activated position, then rose to her knees and threw her lightsaber at the Twi’lek’s shoulder.
Whether Alema sensed or heard the blade coming did not matter. She dodged away-and that was when the escape pod’s outer hatch blew, catching the Twi’lek along her whole left side, buckling her knees and leaving her lying motionless in the grass.
By the time Leia scrambled to her feet and raced over to make sure Alema would not be getting up again, C-3PO was already riding the rear cargo elevator down with a hypo full of tranquilizer in his hand.
“Well done, Mistress Leia!” C-3PO said. “Captain Solo said all along that experience-“
“Give me that!” Leia snatched the hypo from the droid’s hands and knelt down to inject the Twi’lek… then nearly fainted as a terrible pain shot up her leg. “Blast! If I’m going to make a habit of this, I really have to practice more.”
TWENTY-SIX
At the near end of the academy training grounds, the youngest students were practicing Force leaps, stepping to the mark with knitted brows, then launching themselves one after the other over a three-meter cross ray. Most cleared the red beam with a simple arcing dive, then dropped into the landing area headfirst, relying on the safety repulsors to break their falls. But a few - especially from the more agile species-executed graceful somersaults and came down on their own feet. Some of the children in line noticed Luke and Mara emerging from the access tunnel and began to point and whisper, so Luke made a show of nodding approval as the next few jumpers cleared the beam.
“These are the Woodoos,” Luke explained to their guest, Aristocra Chaf’orm’bintrani of the Chiss Ascendancy. “They’re our youngest students.”
“Your youngest?” A few centimeters shorter than Luke, the Aristocra was relatively small for a Chiss, with a blue angular face just beginning to sag with age. “How young are they?”
“The Woodoos are generally between five and seven years old, Formbi,” Mara said, calling the Aristocra by his core name. “Though that varies by species-some mature at markedly different rates.”
“Yes-well, we wouldn’t have that problem in the Ascendancy.” Formbi folded his hands behind his back and peered across the running track at the children. “Which one is your son?”
Luke felt the pang in his wife’s chest as clearly as the one in his own, but when Mara answered, her voice betrayed no hint of her emotions. “Our son doesn’t attend the Jedi academy.”
“How strange.” Formbi continued to watch the Woodoos. “My file lists his age as seven.”
‘Ben is withdrawing from the Force right now.” As much as it pained him, Luke had no intention of hiding the fact. That would have implied he was ashamed, and he was not. “We don’t know why.”
Formbi turned. “I didn’t know children could do that.”
“Most can’t,” Mara said. “Ben demonstrated exceptional power from birth. This only confirms how gifted he is.”
“I see,” Formbi said. “I’m sorry, then, that he is choosing not to develop his potential.”
“We’re not,” Luke said. He felt Mara’s ire rising, but the smile on her face remained polite. Winning Formbi’s cooperation was going to be difficult enough without allowing Chiss manners to become an issue. “Children must want to be at the academy to succeed. We don’t force anyone to attend, and we do everything we can to encourage them to enjoy their time here.”