[Legacy Of The Force] - 04(92)

Jacen considered that, looking at her, for a long moment. Then he simply said, “Thank you,” and left.

Still smiling, Lavint stretched out on the bed. Now she had to figure out just what she’d accomplished. If Alema were here, then that last bit of negotiation was going to get the Solos killed, and Lavint freed-unless Alema decided to kill her, too, which Lavint fully expected the crazy Twi’lek to do. But if Alema hadn’t heard this conversation, those negotiations would probably get Alema killed, which was the outcome Lavint preferred.

“Hey, crazy girl,” she said, “are you here?”

There was no answer. Lavint relaxed.

Her eyes closed, and within two minutes she was snoring.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


ZIOST


Every morning Ben awoke with the memory of the voices iii his ears. Some part of his mind tried to listen to them, to puzzle out what they were saying. The rest of him worked in order to avoid comprehending. He knew, deep down, that it lie listened long enough to understand, he’d want to do what they told him, and that what they told him would be very, very wrong.

So sleep was not restful for Ben, even on the nights when his fire burned through all the darkness hours and Kiara huddled against him, sad but trusting.

During those nights, he often awoke to a sense of worry or a beep from Shaker to see eyes gleaming from the other witle of the fire. Nocturnal predators, Jacen would have called them, and Ben could feel them in the Force. They were big, powerful presences there, suffused with energy … and wrongness. He could feel that they were as twisted as the blighted trees of this place.

So far they hadn’t attacked, but Ben made sure that Kiara was never more than a step or two from him except when either of them needed to perform some private business in the trees. Then he made sure Shaker stayed near the girl. The droid’s presence seemed not to violate her sense of privacy.

There was another presence, too. The day after Ben found Kiara, at about noon, they had stopped for a quick meal of canned rations. Ben sat, consuming some grease-packed meat product, and eating quickly so that he wouldn’t taste the stuff. Wary of the wild beasts he still had not seen, he had his physical and Force-awareness stretched to their limits, and abruptly he was certain that someone was looking at him.

He stood, looking around, and grabbed his lightsaber, but nothing approached. And after a few moments the sensation faded.

The next day, again at planetary noon, it happened once more, this time as they reached the remains of what must have once been a road. Now trees protruded through it, but there were long stretches where it remained flat and level, and Shaker could make much better time. The astromech had just assumed its tripodal wheeled configuration for greater speed when Ben felt the eyes upon him again. Once more, after less than a minute, the sensation faded.

The next day at noon, he was waiting for the sensation, and it did not fail him. In the few seconds he had, he sought the viewer through the Force.

And he was successful. Whoever was staring at him was doing so from straight up. Ben peered up through the canopy of leafless branches. But there was nothing for him to see, just the sun gleaming dimly through a layer of clouds. He said, “Shaker, passive sensors only, look straight up.”

The astromech chirped an affirmative.

Again the sensation faded. Ben pulled out his datapad. “Did you see anything?”

I DETECT A FAINT ION TRAIL.

“The ion trail-the kind that a TIE fighter would leave?”

CORRECT.

So the person who had blown up both the YT 2400 and the Y-wing was shadowing them. But why-and, just as importantly, how?

Ben spent part of the afternoon disassembling and checking every piece of equipment he had taken from Faskus’s camp, especially the electronics. He found no mystery transmitters in or on them.

There was Faskus’s datapad, of course, and it, like Ben’s, was a short-range transmitter. To determine whether it was transmitting to their shadow, Ben would have to catch it in the act-its programming could cause it to transmit a single recognition pulse at great intervals, and Ben would have to have Shaker listen on all comm frequencies all the tune to detect it.

But instead he could simply remove the battery from the 6vice, restoring it on those occasions he needed to consult its files. That he did. Then, no more informed than before, he led the way onward, through the snow and the twisted trees.

STAR SYSTEM MZX32905, NEAR BIMMIEL

The hologram of the scrawny, bronze-hued Bothan flickered and jittered. Lumiya pretended not to notice. She’d chosen Dyur and crew in part because their ship had a holocomm, but it clearly wasn’t a very good one. “Right on time,” she said, forcing a note of commendation into her voice. “What do you have to report?”