Barbara Hambly - Star Wars: Children of the Jedi

The Gamorrean hurled a table at him, which Luke bisected, then struck at him with an ax at the same moment a ricocheting blaster bolt caught Luke glancingly on the shoulder. Either the blaster was turned fairly low or its power cell was nearly exhausted, but the jolt of it knocked him, gasping and confused, to the floor. He rolled, his vision blurring, blacking. Cut at the Gamorrean, whod been joined by a friend, also wielding an axdouble vision? Luke wondered cloudily, but he took off one assailants arm and tried to get to his feet and out the door. He couldnthis head was swimming too badly for him to figure out whyand he could only slash upward at his remaining assailant, cleaving in half the table that slammed down on him before it could crush his bones.

The cold sick weakness of shock and the sensation of something being wrong with the gravity

Then the Klaggs were gone, leaving a shambles of blood and broken furniture. Luke stayed conscious just long enough to switch off his lightsaber.

PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published May 1995
Bantam paperback edition/July 1996

CHILDREN OF THE JEDI
A Bantam Spectra Book

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed s are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Copyright 1995 by Lucasfilm Ltd.

, TM, and 1995 by Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. Used under authorization. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-5214.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79633-2

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words Bantam Books and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, New York 10019.

v3.1

For
Anne

Chapter 1

Poisoned rain speared from an acid sky. The hunter scuttled, stumbled a dozen yards before throwing himself under shelter again. A building, he thoughthopedthough for a seconds blinding terror the curved shape lifted, writhing, into a toothed maw of terror from which darkness flowed out like the vomited stench of rotting bones. Serpentstentaclestwisting arms reached down for him with what he would have sworn were tiny cobalt-blue hands but the burning rain was searing holes in his flesh, so he closed his eyes and flung himself among them. Then for a clear moment his mind registered that they were blue-flowered vines.

Though the stink of his own flesh charring still choked his nostrils and the fire scorched his hands, when he looked down at them his hands were whole, untouched. Realities shuffled in his mind like cards in a deck. Should those hands be stripped away to bone? Or should they sport a half dozen rings of andurite stone and a thin scrim of engine grease around the nails?

In what reality were those fingers limber, and where did he get the notion a moment later that they were twisted like blighted roots and adorned with hooked nails like a rancors claws?

He didnt know. The sane times were fewer and fewer; it was hard to remember from one to the next.

Prey. Quarry. There was someone he had to find.

He had been a hunter all those years in shrieking darkness. He had killed, torn, eaten of bleeding flesh. Now he had to find He had to find

Why did he think the one he sought would be in this this place that kept changing from toothed screaming rock mouths to graceful walls, curving buildings, vine-curtained towersand then falling back again to nightmares, as all things always fell back?

He fumbled in the pocket of his coverall and found the dirty sheet of yellow-green flimsiplast on which someonehimself?had written:

HAN SOLO
ITHOR
THE TIME OF MEETING

Have you seen it before?

Leaning one shoulder on the curved oval of the window, Han Solo shook his head. I went to one of the Meetings out in deepspace, halfway from the Pits of Plooma to the Galactic Rim, he said. All I cared about was sneaking in under the Ithorians detection screens, handing off about a hundred kilos of rock ivory to Grambo the Worrt and getting out of there before the Imperials caught up with me, and it was still the most I dunno. He made a small gesture, slightly embarrassed, as if shed caught him out in a sentimental deed of kindness. Impressive isnt the right word.

No. Leia Organa Solo rose from the comm terminal to join her husband, the white silk of her tabard billowing in her wake in a single flawless line. Impressive to the smuggler hed been in those days, navigationally if nothing else: Shed seen the Ithorian star herds gather, the city-huge ships maneuvering among one anothers deflector fields with the living ease of a school of shining fish. Linking without any more hesitation than the fingers of the right hand have about linking with the fingers of the left.

But this today was more than that.

Watching the Meeting here, above the green jungles of Ithor itself, the only word that came to her mind was Force-full: alive with, drenched in, moving to the breath of the Force.

And beautiful beyond words.

The high, thick masses of raincloud were breaking. Slanting torrents of light played on the jungle canopy only meters below the lowest-riding cities, sparkled on the stone and plaster and marble, the dozen shades of yellows and pinks and ochers of the buildings, the flashing, angled reflections of the antigrav generators and the tasseled gardens of blueleaf, tremmin, fiddleheaded bull-ferns. Bridges stretched from city to city, dozens of linked antigrav platforms on which thin streams of Ithorians could be seen moving, flowerlike in their brilliant robes. Banners of crimson and lapis fluttered like sails, and every carved balcony, every mast and stairway and stabilizer, even the wicker harvest baskets dangling like roots beneath the vast aerial islands were thick with Ithorians.

You? Han asked.

Leia looked up quickly at the man by her side. Here above the endless jungles of Bafforr trees the warm air was fresh, sweet with breezes and wondrous with the scents of greenness and flowers. Ithorian residences were open, like the airy skeletons of coral; she and Han stood surrounded by flowers and light.

When I was littlefive, maybe six years oldFather came to the Time of Meeting here to represent the Imperial Senate, she said. He thought it was something I should see.

She was silent a moment, remembering that puppyfat child with pearls twined in her thick braids; remembering the smiling man whom shed never ceased to think of as her father. Kindly, when it sometimes didnt pay to be kind; wise in the days when even the greatest wisdom didnt suffice. Bail Organa, the last Prince of the House of Alderaan.

Han put his arm around her shoulders. And here you are.

She smiled wryly, touched the pearls braided in her long chestnut hair. Here I am.

Behind her the comm terminal whistled, signaling the receipt of the daily reports from Coruscant. Leia glanced at the water clock with its bobbing amazement of glass spheres and trickling fountains, and figured shed have time to at least see what was happening in the New Republics capital. Even when embarked on a diplomatic tour that was three-quarters vacation, as Chief of State she could never quite release her finger from the Republics pulse. From bitter experience she had learned that small anomalies could be the forerunners of disaster.