[Legacy Of The Force] - 03(53)

Jaina was so astonished that she stopped walking and simply stood there staring at Zekk’s broad back. She had broken off their romance when they were teenagers, and she had been trying to get him to stop pursuing her ever since. So why did it suddenly feel like she had lost something?

Now that she understood what had happened, Jaina realized she could still feel Zekk’s presence in the back of her mind. He was strong and certain and independent… and so over her. He had finally granted her wish.

And that was a good thing-it really was.

Jaina hurried to catch up, then fell in at Zekk’s side. “It’s about time,” she grumbled. “Now maybe I can stop waiting until you’re asleep to take my sanisteams.”

Zekk laughed. “It didn’t work anyway,” he said. “I kept having these dreams …”

“You did?” Jaina glanced over to find a mischievous glint in Zekk’s eye, but now that she had located their connection again, she knew he was telling the truth. “And you didn’t say anything?”

Zekk shrugged and flashed an embarrassed grin. “I thought they were just… well, dreams,”

Jaina started to accept his explanation, then had the sudden realization that he was mocking her.

“Liar!” She punched him in the shoulder. “Let’s just deliver Tenel Ka’s message.”

“Sure,” Zekk chuckled. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

Jaina strode ahead, taking the lead as they crossed the last few meters to the gate. Villa Solis was a cluster of squat round buildings, constructed of white gratenite and located in the heart of the planet’s remote moorlands. It was surrounded by two hundred kilometers of bog country, and the only practical way to reach it was by air. All in all, it was one of the most isolated and inaccessible retreats Jaina had ever visited-but she supposed that was the point. Lady Galney had warned them that the only thing her sister the Ducha enjoyed more than privacy was hunting, and there would certainly be plenty of both available at Villa Solis.

As they drew nearer, Jaina kept expecting a panel to slide open in the tarnished crodium gate so a sentry-or at least a security droid-could issue a challenge. But the villa remained eerily silent, with nothing stirring but the dank bog breeze.

“Too quiet,” Zekk said. “They must know we’re here.”

“Yeah,” Jaina said. As elusive as StealthXs were, even they created a sonic boom when they sliced down through an atmosphere at many times the local speed of sound. “Maybe we scared ‘em.”

Once they had stopped in front of the gates, a brass-sheathed tentacle shot up to each side of them. Jaina and Zekk both snapped the lightsabers off their belts and pivoted so they were standing back-to-back, and Jaina found herself looking into the bobbing, dark blue lens of a Serv-O-Droid gatekeeper’s eye pod.

“You have one minute to leave the essstate.” The gatekeeper’s voice-emitted by a small vocabulator hidden behind its eye pod-had been customized to sound sibilant and menacing. “Failure to obey will be dealt with harshly.”

“We’re here with a message for the Ducha,” Jaina replied.

“You’re not on the schedule.” It was the gatekeeper on Zekk’s side that spoke this time, in a voice that was sugary and feminine. “You should have requested an appointment.”

“How?” Zekk asked. “The HoloNet doesn’t reach Terephon.”

“Our message is from Queen Mother Tenel Ka,” Jaina added. “It’s important.”

“Then you’ll have to make an appointment and return when you’re on the sssschedule,” the first gatekeeper said. “The Ducha is not in residence at thissss time.”

Jaina frowned. “The Royal Intelligence Service says she is,” she retorted. “And they haven’t been wrong about the whereabouts of any of the other nobles we’ve visited.”

The two gatekeepers reared back on their motility tentacles. “You have thirty secondsss to depart,” the first said. In a sweet voice, the second added, “Termination procedures are already under prepar…”

Jaina activated her lightsaber in the same instant Zekk’s blade snapped to life. They lashed out together, not so much slicing through the eye pods as incinerating them, then reversed their strokes in perfect unison, cut the motility tentacles off at the ground, and pivoted to face the gate.

“Better mission partners than we would be lovers, too,” Jaina observed.

“No surprise,” Zekk grunted. “We’ve actually been on missions together.”

When the attack the gatekeepers had threatened did not materialize, Jaina asked, “Why would the Ducha be so reluctant to hear a message from Tenet Ka?”