The tractor beams sputtered into nothingness, and a sense of relief permeated the Force as Tahiri and Alema and Zekk finally regained control of their craft. A Chiss fighter appeared in front of Jaina, coming at her head-on and pouring angry streams of blaster bolts more or less in her direction. Jaina returned fire automatically, and she did not notice how her hand was shaking until after the clawcraft exploded.
Jaina reached out for Lowbacca and felt him drifting away, frightened and awed and lonely.
We’ll find you! she promised. But he would have to stay open to the meld, he would have to help them find him.
She’ll be doing well, Lowbacca thought, just to save herself.
FOURTEEN
After a week of travel and three off-course jumps, the dark-banded surface of Qoribu’s night side was finally swelling in the Shadow’s forward viewport, biting an ever-larger crescent from the blue-green sun behind it. The planet was girded by a spectacular ring system, and the dusky shadows of its penumbra were brightened by a litter of twinkling moons, but Luke’s gaze kept drifting to the velvet void beyond, to a few bright stars where the Chiss frontier hung stretched like the web of some dark, deadly spider better left undisturbed.
The Chiss prided themselves on never being the aggressor people. By their own law, they never attacked first. Their military doctrine took the edict even farther, decreeing that an enemy must attack them within Ascendancy space before they responded. So Luke did not understand how the Chiss had ended up in a border conflict when both sides acknowledged that the Colony was still over a light-year from the border.
Perhaps doctrine had changed. After all, the war with the Yuuzhan Vong had changed almost everything else. And Luke knew from his last journey into the Unknown Regions that there were things happening out here that the Galactic Alliance still did not understand. The number of Chiss ruling houses been reduced from nine to four for some unknown reason, and the Empire of the Hand had mysteriously vanished. So it certainly seemed possible the Chiss had changed their doctrine.
Still, Luke doubted that the Chiss would abandon their most basic tenet-the prohibition against attacking first. The law had stood for a thousand years, and Thrawn-the Chiss Grand Admiral who had nearly defeated the New Republic single-handedly-had been exiled from the Ascendancy for violating it.
To Luke, there was only one logical conclusion. The Colony had brought this conflict on itself-or Raynar had.
Just the thought of what Raynar had become filled Luke with guilt and sorrow. The Myrkr mission had cost his nephew Anakin and six other young Jedi their lives, and Raynar had suffered horribly, alone and with no reasonable hope of rescue. Could he be blamed for becoming the entity that he was now?
“It was war,” Mara said softly from the pilot’s seat. She glanced up at the activation reticle in the canopy, then looked at Luke in the section that mirrored over. “You’re not responsible for what happened. Billions of good people were lost.”
“I know that,” Luke said. The blue star was completely hidden behind Qoribu’s dark side now, and the yellow ring system looked as though it encircled a ghost planet. “But Raynar isn’t lost. I may be able to bring Raynar back.”
“You dream big, Skywalker,” Mara said, shaking her head. “But it’s not going to happen this time. For better or worse, Raynar is entwined with the Colony. I doubt that they can be separated.”
“You’re probably right,” Luke said. “But something here feels wrong.”
“Define wrong,” Mara ordered. “Something to do with Raynar?”
“Maybe. It frightens me when Jedi become emperors.”
“The galaxy had a bad experience with that,” Mara admitted. “But Raynar is hardly another Palpatine. He seems very concerned about his, uh, people.”
“For now,” Luke said. “But how long before power becomes the end instead of the means?”
“So it’s your job to set it right?” Mara asked. “We have enough to worry about in the Galactic Alliance.”
“The galaxy is larger than the Galactic Alliance.”
“And the Jedi can’t be responsible for all of it,” Mara retorted.
There was a long silence while they continued the discussion on a deeper, more intimate level, wrapping themselves around the other’s viewpoint, trying to understand completely, but also searching for a way to consolidate what seemed to be opposing opinions. Such moments were one of the secret buttresses of their marriage. They understood how they fit together, how each had strengths and insights that complemented the weaknesses and blind spots of the other, and they had learned early in their relationship-during a desperate, three-day hike fleeing Imperials in a vornskyr-filled forest-that their future always looked brighter when they relied on each other.