[Legacy Of The Force] - 04(25)

“Yes-oof-bumpy.” Wedge scrambled farther to his right, ending up in the gap between two traffic lanes moving in opposite directions.

“The awful orange speeder is your new ride. I’ll retrieve the one I dropped off.”

“Understood. Love you.”

“Love you.”

The orange speeder did a complete barrel roll as it roared over two lanes of traffic, then dropped precipitously into the gap where Wedge stood. He forced himself not to flinch as it came to a stop, its bow only a meter from him.

The pilot was a woman in her early twenties. Her eyes were hidden behind dark goggles, and her hair was a riot of colors, every lock seemingly a different hue. She pointed a gloved finger at him as if aiming a blaster pistol. “Hi, Dad!”

Wedge scrambled across the speeder’s bow and over its windscreen, dropping into the front passenger’s seat. “Myri! I thought you were supposed to stay at home, keep it secure.”

“Plans change. Are you mad? Spelled, ungrateful?”

“No. Let’s go.”

“Just a second, we’re waiting for…”

The speeder rocked and sank almost to ground level from the impact of something landing in the backseat. Wedge spun, saw a flash of awful green jumpsuit and red beard, and kept himself from swinging his pistol fully into line.

Then he caught sight of the eyes behind that preposterous red beard. “Corran!”

Corellia’s resident Jedi Master grinned at him.

Myri hit the thrusters, and Wedge was shoved by acceleration into his seat back, toward Corran. He continued, “So Iella’s message got to Mirax.”

Corran nodded. “And my wife got the message to me, and I got to your quarters in time for Myri to get me here. Everybody got something. Hey, girl, keep it down to fifty meters or lower.”

Myri waved at him, cheerfully ignoring his advice as she climbed to near rooftop level, but then her ballistic course reached its apex and she began a stomach-twisting dive toward a traffic lane a few blocks away.

“Sorry it was such a mess,” Wedge said. “I really thought the disguise and side-door gambit would throw off pursuit.”

“It did,” Myri said. “Mom says the main hit teams were assembled front and back. We missed about three-quarters of the assassins this way.”

“Oh. Good. Please tell me that all that stuff will wash out of your hair.”

“It will. But the tattoos are permanent.”

“Tattoos?”

Myri laughed at him.

CORUSCANT

JEDI TEMPLE VEHICLE HANGAR

It wasn’t a large number of starfighters, less than a full squadron’s worth-nine X-wings, one E-wing-but they were all beautifully maintained, and jag Fel felt an unexpected pang as he looked at them. It seemed so long ago that flying craft like these had been his whole life.

He missed that. He missed belonging to a band of comrades, divided by individual needs and peculiarities and prejudices but united in their goals and their support for one another.

He let none of what he was feeling reach his face.

“The Jedi order would like to fund and support your mission,” Luke Skywalker was saying.

That snapped jag’s attention back to the present. “To find and destroy Alema Rar,” he said.

“To find and neutralize Alema Rar,” Luke corrected. “Yes, obviously, it might entail killing her. But should an opportunity arise to capture her, transport her back here …”

“So that she might be convinced to see the error of her ways?” Jag let just a hint of mockery enter his voice.

“No. So that she might find her own path to redemption.”

Jag considered. Dealing with the Jedi would always be like this, he decided. The military made plans based on objectives-such as Find and eliminate an enemy force. The Jedi didn’t so much make plans as choose directions - such as Make things better. Back in the days of the Yuuzhan Vong war, the two different approaches had been a bit closer to each other; in these less defined times, the basic incompatibilities were more obvious.

So he would have to adjust his thinking a bit if he was to work with the Jedi. But he was a bit unsettled to realize that he wasn’t sure the Jedi approach was the wrong one. Even with Alema Rar … Once he, jag, had known a Jedi girl who had stepped off the right path, gone the wrong way for a while. She had found her own way back soon enough. But what if she hadn’t? If she had continued, might she not be a bit like Alema Rar, and would jag be just as sanguine about hunting her down and killing her?

“I accept,” he said.

“Good. I’m actually heading up a similar unit, pursuing leads involving the Sith lady Lumiya. She may be dead now-or maybe not-but what’s clear is that she was in alliance with Alema as of a few days ago, when they ambushed me and Mara. Now that it’s clear that Lumiya was, or is, employing agents, and who some of them are, we stand an improved chance of finding her trail.”