“During the war, I know.” Ben stretched his arms toward Nanna. “I wanna go back to bed.”
Luke didn’t lift him toward the droid. “You’re sure? We’re coming up on Qoribu now.”
Ben’s face lit briefly in delight when he glanced forward, but he quickly turned back to Nanna. “I’m still tired.”
“Really?” Luke frowned inside, but passed Ben to the droid. “We’ll wake you when we see Jacen and Jaina.”
“Okay.” Ben buried his cheek on Nanna’s synthflesh shoulder and looked away.
After the droid had taken him off the flight deck, Luke said, “He’s afraid of it.”
“Clearly.” Mara’s voice was sharp, but Luke sensed it was only because she was worried about Ben. “Maybe he thinks the Force is why his cousin and so many other Jedi died?”
“Maybe,” Luke said. “It would be nice to have a reason we understood.”
“But you don’t think that’s it.”
“I guess not,” Luke said. “When it comes to anything else, he’s just too adventurous and confident, sometimes even reckless.”
Noting that the Falcon was already drifting into a standard defensive formation while Juun’s XR808g continued to speed ahead, Luke opened a tight-beam channel to both vessels.
“Not so fast, Exxer” he said. “Until we know what that battle was about-“
“There was a battle?” Juun gasped.
“Check your readouts,” Han commed from the Falcon. When he received only dead silence in response, he added, “You do have the standard reconnaissance suite?”
“We have two pairz of electrobinocularz,” Saba informed them, acting as the XR808g’s copilot. “And only one of us is small enough to use them.”
As Han chided the Sullustan for this lack, Mara said to Luke, “Heads up. What’s that?”
Luke checked his tactical display and found a torrent of Killik dartships streaming out of Qoribu’s shadow. Frowning because he had not sensed any nests in that area, he turned to ask R2-D2 to double-check the readings-and found the little droid leaning against his interface arm, slowly twisting the information buffer back and forth in the socket. Alarmed at how the droid seemed to be deteriorating, Luke promised himself that he would schedule some maintenance time and looked out the forward viewport instead.
It took only a moment to see the sensors were not mistaken. An elongated oval of tiny white flecks was pouring into the gray shadows of the planet’s penumbra, moving to position itself in front of the six moons where Luke had sensed Killiks.
“This isn’t standard procedure,” Juun said. The XR808g continued toward the Killik moons. “They must be nervous because of the battle.”
“Then what are you doing?” Han asked. “Shouldn’t we slow down?”
“The sooner they see us, the better,” Juun said. “Once they realize we’re only flying transports, they’ll return to their usual routine. Insects are very advanced. They always follow standard procedure.”
Luke wasn’t so sure. He reached out to the dartships and sensed… nothing definite, only the same vague uneasiness that he had felt before the tower collapsed on Yoggoy. He knew that Mara felt it, too.
“Captain Juun, I think you should come back,” Luke commed. “We can’t feel those pilots in the Force.”
“You place too much faith in your ancient sorcery, Master Skywalker,” Juun said. “In Running the Blockade: Escape from Yavin, Captain Solo clearly illustrated the value of a confident approach.”
“What’d I tell you about those history vids?” Han warned. “The Force isn’t just some hokey religion. This stuff works.”
“So does procedure, Captain Solo,” Juun said. “That’s why you’re paying me the big credits. Let me do my job.”
The dartships continued to stream out of the umbra, gathering in a wall of swirling, flickering orange between them and the Killik moons. The XR808g accelerated.
“Captain Juun, I think you should reconsider.” Though Luke spoke more forcefully, he resisted the temptation to tell Saba to take control of the XR808g. The Jedi may have developed a ruthless streak during the war, but they still stopped short of fomenting mutiny. “After the attack on Yoggoy-“
“What attack?” Juun asked.
“The building collapse,” Saba rasped.
“But that was determined to be an accident.”
“Not by us, it wasn’t,” Han answered.
The XR808g’s running lights began to flash in ancient blink code. Luke looked to his display, but instead of the translation he had expected, he found only the blip-storm of approaching dartships.