The Emperor's Plague

5

The sharp scent of ozone and metal drifted up from the escape pod, along with a crackle of static electricity from the recently disengaged tractor beam. Raynar could hear the chugging of the pod’s life-support systems mixed with the whine of the Lightning Rod’s sublight engines as Zekk maneuvered to dock with the Rock Dragon. He had never heard or smelled anything so wonderful. The harsh glare of the cargo hold’s glowpanels was cheering, welcoming. Everything seemed brighter, sweeter, fresher to him than it had for nearly a year. The galaxy would soon be set to rights. His father had returned. With shaking fingers Raynar pressed the hatch release, and the heavy top panel popped open with a whoosh of depressurization. Giving a joyful cry of welcome, Raynar leaned into the pod—only to find a blaster aimed straight at his heart.

Jaina was the first to stumble through the airlock from the Rock Dragon. Setting his external sensors to full alert to keep an eye out for unwanted visitors, Zekk threw aside his crash webbing and bounded out of the Lightning Rod’s cockpit and into the crew cabin. He twirled Jaina in a happy hug while they both laughed with relief, but then he growled,

“I thought I told you you couldn’t come with me!”

Jaina knew he was trying hard to sound stern, but she could hear the pleasure in his voice. She pulled back and favored him with a Solo grin. “Since when have you ever done anything I wanted you to do?” She gave an unladylike snort. “I’m just as worried about your safety as you are about mine, you know.”

“All right,” Zekk admitted, “I’m glad you came. But I still don’t know how you found us.”

Jaina shrugged and grinned again. “Trade secret.”

“Hah!” Jacen said, appearing in the airlock with Tenel Ka behind him. “Some trade secret. More like a sneaky droid, if you ask me.”

Lowie also emerged from the airlock in a flurry of ginger fur and full-throated Wookiee bellows.

“Why, if you’re referring to me, Master Jacen, I’ll take that as a compliment,” Em Teedee said, zipping past him into the crew cabin on his microrepulsor jets.

“This is a fact,” Tenel Ka said. “You are an excellent ‘sneaky’ droid.”

Zekk looked accusingly at Jaina. “What did Em Teedee do?”

“When we were helping you with your preflights,” she stammered, “I kind of, um, had Em Teedee download the frequency and encoding for the tracer you used on Bornan Thul’s ship.”

“Hey, it was a good thing, too,” Jacen picked up where his sister left off. “After we saw the delegation off to Ryloth, we all had this feeling that something was about to go wrong.”

Lowie woofed and brushed at the back of his neck to indicate the tingle of danger they had sensed.

“Mom must have felt it too,” Jaina said, “because when I told her you were going to need our help, she didn’t even try to argue. She was glad she had some Jedi she could send on such an important mission—even if two of them were her own kids.”

Tenel Ka nodded.

“Her one stipulation was that we send her a message if we required reinforcements.” She raised an eyebrow and looked around at her friends. “Do we require reinforcements?”

“Not if Bornan Thul made it out intact with his navicomputer.”

“Or managed to destroy it,” Zekk added. “We’d better go down to the hold and find out.”

“Don’t shoot, Dad—it’s me!” Raynar said. His father, looking haggard and wary, glanced around but did not lower his blaster. “Are you a hostage? Have you been coerced into helping a bounty hunter or the Diversity Alliance?”

“No, Dad. Zekk may have worked as a bounty hunter, but he’s a … a friend.” Raynar was surprised to note as he said it that this was true. Zekk was a friend, and the dark-haired young man had risked his life more than once for each of them. “He believes what you told him about all humans being in danger. He wanted to help you, so he came to get me—he figured you wouldn’t trust him alone.”

Bornan Thul’s haunted eyes closed for a moment, and he nodded.

“Your … friend was right. I wouldn’t have trusted him.” Raynar’s father lowered the blaster and extended a hand for his son to help him out of the escape pod. Raynar had thought about this too long to be embarrassed anymore, although his family had rarely engaged in physical contact when he was growing up. Even before his father’s feet were firmly on the deckplates, Raynar threw his arms around Bornan in a fierce hug. And his father, perhaps because he was unsteady, or perhaps because he’d also had months to reflect, did not hesitate in returning the embrace. Only the sound of his friends’ footsteps descending into the cargo hold brought Raynar bask to reality. His father flinched and reached for his blaster, instantly suspicious again.

“These are my friends, too,” Raynar said, and introduced them one by one. “They’re all Jedi trainees, except of course for Em Teedee, who is the best miniaturized translating droid ever to be retrofitted on Mechis III—and a pretty good navigator to boot.”

“Speaking of navigators,” Zekk said, “what about the module Nolaa Tarkona wanted so badly? Was it onboard your ship when it blew up?”

Bornan Thul pointed into the emergency pod. “No, I brought it along. It’s here with me.”

Raynar felt giddy with relief. “Then you don’t have to run anymore,” he said. “All we have to do is destroy the information.”

His father’s mouth formed a grim line. All the blood seemed to drain from his once-round cheeks. He shook his head.

“It’s not that simple. Before I got into the escape pod I noticed that the computers on my ship were all being accessed at once. I don’t know how, but someone was slicing into them remotely.”

“Ah. That would probably be Boba Fett,” Zekk said.

“He did that to the Rock Dragon when we were in the rubble field of Alderaan,” Jaina explained, then looked questioningly at Bornan Thul. “But you have the navicomputer with you. Boba Fett couldn’t have sliced into it.”

“You don’t understand.” Bornan’s voice rasped as if it were painful for him to speak. “I knew that even if I destroyed this navicomputer Nolaa Tarkona would never stop looking for the weapons depot. That’s why I went there myself, hoping to destroy it. I couldn’t find a way, though, so I left again, planning to buy supplies and weapons so that I could return to blow up the storehouse.” Raynar blanched. “But that means that the location of the plague storehouse—”

“—was in your ship’s own automatic navigation log before it blew up,” Jaina finished for him.

“In that case,” Zekk concluded, “Boba Fett has the information. And he won’t hesitate to give it to Nolaa Tarkona.”