[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(139)
BATTLE CARRIER DODONNA, ABOVE TRALUS
The starfighter control chamber was an exercise in controlled chaos-a sight familiar to Leia, who’d helped coordinate many starfighter skirmishes, starting with the Battle of Yavin.
Aboard Dodonna, they had bells and whistles she’d never enjoyed in the control room at Yavin. The entire battle was being reproduced via holograms over their heads, the skirmishes not exactly to scale but with each individual starfighter or vessel shown in a wire-frame form color-coded to whichever side the fighting vehicle represented. The GA forces were blue; Corellian forces, red; unknowns-including several vehicles, probably civilian, above Rellidir and heading away from that endangered city-in yellow. As they moved around, firing, sustaining damage, disappearing, the disconcerting combination of colorful icons and event noises made the whole display seem like an oversized console game experiencing delirium tremens.
Equipped with a specialized datapad handed to her by the chamber’s coordinator, a black-furred Bothan colonel by the name of Moyan, Leia could gather all sorts of data about the various forces. By pointing the datapad at any vessel or vehicle and tagging it with a beam of light from the device, she could display information about the target on the datapad screen.
For example, the fighter that had just winked out in the fight above Rellidir was designated Nebula Eleven, its pilot Gorvan Peel.
The Corellian vessels were equipped with ejectors, and a moment after the fighter vanished, Leia’s screen was updated: EJECT SUCCESS, LIFE SIGNS OPTIMAL, QUEUE RESCUE #37.
As several of the coordinators in the chamber were doing, she pointed at one of the “mystery bombers” descending on Rellidir and sampled its information:
F/F: ENEMY
CLASS: CEC YT-VARIANT (UNKNOWN), EST. BOMBER
PILOT: UNKNOWN
Information on the other Shriek was identical.
Leia spoke quietly into her datapad, allowing its speech-to-text translator to add a notation to the data on the bomber: “Believed damaged, as it is turning away from GA targets. Recommend concentration on fighter escort.” She tapped the screen to send that datum to Dodonna’s database.
A flash of guilt washed across her. She was pretending to be helping the GA forces, and instead she was protecting her husband as he bombed them. She shook her head, trying to force the emotion away from her. No matter what she did during this fight, she’d be coping with guilt, and not keeping an eye on Han’s back would be worst of all … especially if he was hurt.
She turned her attention to the Alephs skirmishing with Han’s fighter escort.
CORUSCANT
His head filled with a baffling mix of emotions and images, Luke sat up in bed. He spared Mara a glance, saw that she was still asleep, and rose.
So pounded was he by sensations reaching him through the Force that it was actually difficult to think. Cautious, he opened himself to them, trying to sort them out.
betraying trust, to act is to betray, not to act is to betray
A mynock, its eyes glittering with unusual intelligence, stared at him from the distance of centuries.
the Sith are not what you think
Leia, her features smoothed by grief so great it could not be expressed, fell forward, folding over as she did.
dark dark I will not be afraid of the dark
Han, regret on his face, a vibroblade in his hand, lunged forward and slammed the blade between the ribs of a pretty young woman with dark hair.
I loved you in my own way, I would have repaired the harm I did you
Instinctively, Luke reached out through the Force to offer support and strength to Leia. The others he wasn’t sure about, whether they were really the individuals the visions represented, but he could feel the true Leia within the vision of her. He just wasn’t sure whether he was extending his gesture to the Leia of here and now, the Leia of some future time, or the Leia of a future that would actually never occur.
His attention was drawn back to Mara. Now her eyes were open, staring sightlessly upward, her body cut and butchered, the edges still black and steaming, by a lightsaber blade.
Luke shook his head and exerted himself through the Force, willing the visions, the voices away. They faded, leaving him in the dark with his wife asleep and unharmed.
He took his lightsaber from the nightstand and moved out into the hallway. He didn’t want his perturbation to awaken Mara.
Something was happening; events at distant points of the galaxy and even of time were focusing toward him and those he loved. The confusion, the turbulence of those thoughts and emotions pressed down on him, soured his stomach.
On the cold stone floor outside his chambers, he sat cross-legged and tried to sink into a meditative state-a state to give him real knowledge, a state to grant him peace.
STAR SYSTEM MZX32905, NEAR BIMMIEL