[Last Of The Jedi] - 05(24)

They entered silently. They were in a short hallway. A door to a fresher was off to their right.

Ferus waited, listening, searching for evidence of the Living Force.

“No one is here,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“I know.” He walked inside the apartment. It was sparsely furnished. He carefully looked around, then crossed to the small kitchen and opened cabinets.

“Hungry?”

“No one is living here. But someone is trying to make it look that way.”

“So it’s a dead end.”

Ferus crossed back to the living area. He looked out the window to the skeletal unfinished tower next door. “I know where to look,” he said.

The turbolift shafts had not been completed. There was only an exterior lift for the workers to access the roof. Ferus and Clive took the stairs. The workforce was on the roof today. They could hear the noise of turbohamrners dimly echoing through the building.

Ferus followed the trail as though he was tracking someone through the woods. He saw the imprint of work boots in the dust from the construction, but he was looking for something unique — the footprints of a child.

He found them on a landing on the twenty-second floor. He lost them on the thirtieth and found them again on the thirty-sixth. At last he stopped on the sixty-second floor.

There were only four apartments per floor. One had no door and was still being worked on. They were now on the highest partially completed floor. Ferus listened at the door of the remaining three apartments. “This one,” he said. “Open it.”

Again Clive worked his magic and the door slid open silently. They took a few cautious steps into the empty hall.

They heard something, a murmur of a female voice.

They moved closer.

“. . And that doesn’t mean you don’t keep up with your lessons.”

A boy’s voice. “But I don’t have any teachers.”

“I’m your teacher now. Do it or you’ll turn into a horned hairy urchin toad.”

The boy giggled.

Ferus and Clive exchanged a look. It sounded like a typical exchange between a mother and a child. Could this be the home of the daring saboteur? Ferus risked a quick look around the corner.

The room was bright with light and furnished with only a table and bright cushions on the floor. On the floor sat a young boy of about eight years, with dark hair. He was bent over a datapad. Cross-legged next to him was a woman with close-cropped dark hair. She was dressed in a flight suit.

She looked up, and there was no fear in her gaze when she saw Ferus. Her hand drifted to her side.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said softly.

Her hand stopped. He saw the glint of a blaster, concealed in the pocket of her flight suit.

Something about her face was familiar. What was it? He knew her. He had a sudden memory of a woman with tumbling dark curls.

“You’re Astri Divinian,” he said. “Bog’s wife.”

She rose smoothly. “I’m Astri Oddo. Bog is no longer my husband. This is my son, Lime. Who are you — and how did you get in?”

“We met once, years ago. Very briefly. At the Galactic Games on Euceron. I was with the Jedi team that supervised the games. Ferus Olin.”

He saw her response in her quickened breathing. “.A Jedi? That’s impossible. They were all… wiped out.”

“I left the Jedi Order years ago.”

He watched as she moved to block Lune. She did it casually, as though she were edging closer to study him. Astri had been a great friend of the Jedi. Why would she consider him a threat? He felt something… .

Something … He reached out with the Force, searching …

“Have you come to arrest me?” she asked. Behind her back, she put a hand on Lune’s shoulder.

“I don’t work for the Samarian government, or for the Empire,” Ferus said. “But I was asked to find you.”

“By whom?”

“That’s not important.” Ferus crouched down in front of Lune. He held out his hand. The laser lasso was in his palm. “Did you lose this?”

“You found it!” The boy took it from him. “I didn’t know where it was.” He unfurled it, and it snaked around the room, fast and agile. He lassoed a small cushion and sent it flying, somersaulting through the air. He laughed.

“Lune! Don’t do that.” Astri’s voice was tight.

Ferus turned to her. “Is there somewhere we can talk’?”

“The kitchen.” Astri turned to Lune, and in a soft but firm voice said, “Stay here and finish your lesson.”

The three adults moved into the tiny kitchen. Ferus could feel Astri’s fear. He just wasn’t sure what, exactly, she was afraid of.