Allies Read online

  Ben poured them each a glass of blue milk—his dad hated the stuff, but Ben found he kind of liked it—and shrugged. He slid the glass over to Vestara, and as she grasped it, their fingers brushed.

  “Well,” he said, “he kind of is. I mean, he’s got a personality.” He grinned suddenly. “He definitely has a personality. And he’s been with the family a long time.”

  “How long?” Vestara took a sip of the milk and peered at Ben, apparently highly interested.

  I bet you are, Ben thought. You’re just waiting for me to get too chatty and let something slip.

  “Very long,” he said. It was time to turn the tables. He forked up a chunk of vegetable. “You said you liked hunting. What sort of animals did you hunt?” And are you hunting me, stalking me, waiting patiently?

  It was the briefest of pauses, as Vestara chewed and swallowed, but pause she did. She patted her lips delicately with a napkin and graced him with another one of her radiant smiles. But somehow to Ben, this one seemed just a little forced.

  “Dead, once we were done with them.”

  She was closed down, guarded. Just like he was. Ben had to make an effort not to sigh.

  They finished their meal in an uncomfortable silence.

  OFFICES OF THE IMPERIAL HEAD OF STATE GALACTIC EMPIRE EMBASSY COMPLEX, CORUSCANT

  THE HOUR WASN’T ALL THAT LATE, NOT AS JAGGED FEL WAS STARTING to reckon hours, but it was late enough that his brain was tired and having difficulty focusing. He rubbed his eyes, strained from staring at datapads all day, and put the one he was reading atop a pile. On a whim, he assembled them all into a little tower. There were quite a lot of them.

  He turned his expensive—and incredibly comfortable, which was more a necessity than a luxury, considering how much time he spent in it—nerfhide chair toward the vidscreen and touched a button.

  A too-familiar face filled the screen: the visage of a man with tawny, perfectly coiffed hair, a stylish suit, and a faux-sincere expression. The so-called journalist, Javis Tyrr. Behind him, framed artistically off center in the cam, was Raynar Thul, looking as if he were listening to something no one else could hear.

  Thul had been a Jedi who had gone missing years earlier. He had reappeared, alarmingly and unexpectedly, as UnuThul—a Joiner who was leading the Killik expansion into the Chiss territories. He was mad, and disfigured, and had been under the care of the Jedi healer Cilghal for a long time. His burn scars had healed but still left the face framed by the cam looking stiff and artificial. Free now to come and go as he pleased, Thul had not yet chosen to leave the Jedi Temple.

  “I’m sitting here, on the steps of the Jedi Temple, speaking with Raynar Thul, who—”

  Jag glowered and changed the channel.

  “—former Jedi Tahiri Veila,” a human woman with long black hair swept up into a bun was saying. “The charges are—”

  Jag’s glower deepened. He wanted to hear about Tahiri’s situation even less than he wanted to stare at Javis Tyrr’s smirk. He changed the channel again.

  Another reporter’s face filled the screen. By human standards, Javis Tyrr’s perfect features were more appealing than the one Jag regarded now, but Fel would take the homely, oversized face of Perre Needmo and his levelheaded reporting over Tyrr’s pretty looks and sensationalism any day. Needmo was a Chevin, and his face was long and solemn with a wrinkled, expressive snout. He had the calm mien of an elder statesperson, and evoked trust and confidence. His show, too, tended to include positive things as well as negative, so one didn’t feel the need to take a sanisteam right after watching. It made a nice change from Javis Tyrr Presents.

  “—from reporter Madhi Vaandt,” Needmo was saying, and the scene cut to a young female Devaronian standing in what looked to be the heart of the Coruscant Underlevel. Not for the first time, Jag was struck by how extremely different the genders were in Devaronians. The females didn’t even look like they belonged to the same species, and their behavior and natures couldn’t be more different from the males. That they needed one another to continue the species had always seemed to Jag like some great cosmic joke.

  Whereas the males had bare, reddish skin, two prominent horns of which they were extremely proud, and sharp incisors, the females were covered in short soft white, brown, or reddish fur except for their hands, feet, and faces, which were pale pink, and had merely darker pigmented ovals where horns would be on their male counterparts.

  The males had a reputation for irresponsibility and wanderlust, and tended to roam the galaxy. They were not the finest representatives of their species, so most of the denizens of various worlds did not have the highest opinion of Devaronians. The females, however, were precisely the opposite. They were the ones who ran the businesses and the government, with level heads, calmness, and insight.

  The female before him seemed a fine representative of her gender. And an appealing one, too. Javis Tyrr would have killed for the charm and sincerity she radiated. Whereas Tyrr’s hair stylist and makeup artist probably got paid overtime, Madhi Vaandt’s hair was cut short and was rather wild, as if all she had done was run her fingers through it. She wore makeup to offset the brightness of the harsh cam lighting, but even through that he could see the dark ovals on her forehead peeping through wispy locks of white hair and smaller dots on her forehead that were freckles. Her clothing, too, was unremarkable and practical—tan-colored pants, a linen blouse with the sleeves rolled up under a vest with lots of pockets. She looked right into the cam, slanted green eyes intense and captivating, long pink ears swept back.

  “Thank you, Perre,” Vaandt said. Her voice was captivating, musical and lilting with her native accent. “I’m coming to you live from one of the dark, dirty secrets of Coruscant—a place known variously as Lower Coruscant, the Coruscant Underworld, Undercity, or the Coruscant Underlevel. Oh, its origins are no secret.”

  Vaandt began walking as she spoke. Behind her, Jag could see yorik coral covering railings and stairwells, and slashvines and other plant life growing wherever it had a chance to set hungry roots. Now and then, a figure darted past; it was almost impossible to tell what species it was. It didn’t matter. Jag knew that, in this place, all suffered. He found himself wincing in sympathy.

  “This is an ancient place, filled with ruins and stories. And recently, it was given a new name—Yuuzhan’tar. While the rest of Coruscant has been reclaimed since the end of the war, this part of the planet never fully recovered.”

  She paused, tilted her pink face upward. “Above me are towering buildings. Civilization. Order. Order the Galactic Alliance has established over the years. But in the midst of all the rebuilding, all the recovery, all the positive steps the GA has taken …”

  She turned and gestured with a slender, white-furred, graceful arm. The cam panned over to a cluster of young human males dressed in pieces of plastoid armor and wearing white tabards. When the cam’s light hit them, they scattered like creatures one finds when a rock is overturned.

  “… this place has been forgotten. There’s no order, no civilization here. There’s no health care for beings trying to eke out an existence. There’s no stopping the sale of illegal drugs, or halting illicit activities, or investigations of murders here. No interference with zap gangs, or protection from Cthons. Violent deaths are an everyday occurrence, and the bodies are looted before they become food for Ferals. This is a dark place, a frightening place, and it’s just easier to forget about it since we are not forced to see it every day.”

  She raised disturbing points. Why, indeed, hadn’t more been done about this place? Jag found himself wondering.

  Madhi Vaandt beckoned off cam, her pink, freckled face soft, a gentle smile on her lips, and a young human male came into view. He was thin, with the pinched face of the malnourished, dirty, and looked as skittish as a young animal. Madhi slipped an arm around him.

  “We’ll be following young Tarynd here for the next few weeks. We’ll see what he has to endure on a daily basis, simply to surviv
e, in the heart of this planet, the very seat of the Galactic Alliance. We’ll discover—”

  “I’ve got a favor to ask,” Jaina Solo stated.

  Jag hadn’t heard her come in, so focused had he been on Madhi Vaandt’s reporting, but he didn’t miss a beat.

  “So do I,” he replied, gazing up at his fiancée as she stood in front of his desk, hands on her hips. “Announce yourself first when you come into my office.”

  She pushed the stack of datapads to the side and perched on his desk. “Imperial Head of State Jagged Fel, Sword of the Jedi Jaina Solo wants to see you. Proprieties observed. Now can I ask my favor?”

  “I could have been right in the middle of delicate negotiations or working on something highly classified, you know.”

  “You weren’t. Ashik would have told me.” Ashik was the “core name” of Kthira’shi’ktarloo, the Chiss male who was Jag’s assistant, attendant, and head of his personal security. Jag trusted the Chiss completely, and it had surprised no one when a member of that species had been appointed to such a position. Ashik—tall, soft-spoken, with a sharp nose, full lips, and piercing eyes—was genial enough, and certainly understood the relationship Jaina and Jag had, but he had no compunctions about denying her, or anyone, entrance if he did not feel it appropriate. Jaina had bridled initially, but it was clear she also respected Ashik’s determination.

  Jag sighed. He had a feeling he knew what the favor was about to be, and he didn’t want to get involved. It seemed that more and more, events—and people, even people they loved—were conspiring to drive them apart. Even though he had vowed to her that nothing as petty as politics would come between them, a vow he fully intended to keep, he had to admit that it was certainly causing things to become frayed around the edges.

  “I suppose he would have, yes,” he said. “So what’s the favor?”

  Jaina smiled, slipped her legs neatly over the edge of the desk, and slid off it to sit in his lap. Despite his worry about the nature of the favor, Jag found himself smiling as he pulled her into his arms. They kissed, passionately but sweetly, and he felt the tension inside him ease. He loved Jaina Solo, was looking forward to marrying her, and nothing in the galaxy was going to change that.

  She sat back and grinned at him. “Okay,” Jag said, “That’s a favor I can get behind.”

  She punched his shoulder in mock annoyance. “That’s not the favor, that’s the bribe. I figure if I’m going to become a politician’s wife, I have to start thinking of things like that.”

  “So you should,” he agreed in his most serious voice, nodding and settling her into his lap. “And I approve of the nature of the bribe. So, Jedi Solo. You have my full attention. Ask your favor.”

  The playful smile faded from her lovely face, and her eyes turned serious. “It’s about Tahiri Veila.”

  Jag felt his own good humor bleed out. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Jag, she’s already lost two advocates. She’s going to get someone the court appoints, and the court has it in for her,” Jaina said.

  “I know that both you and I have had our issues with the Chief of State, but I really don’t think she’d go so far as to pack the jury or deliberately appoint someone to lose Tahiri’s case for her.”

  “I do,” Jaina said.

  He eyed her. “Really?”

  “Of course! Daala’s smarting from Niathal’s suicide. Tahiri Veila is a perfect target for her frustration. You think she’s going to let that go? She’d be like Anji with her stuffed eopie.”

  It was an apt analogy. Jag and Jaina had been over to dinner at the Solos’ residence before Han, Leia, and Allana had been forced to find new quarters. Jag had met the latest member of the family, Anji, a young nexu cub. Leia had been forced to kill its mother when the Jedi Knight Natua Wan had snapped and let loose the dangerous animals at the Coruscant Livestock Show and Exhibition. Allana, according to Jaina, had argued that they therefore had a responsibility to care for the orphaned animals—one of them, at least. And that fortunate cub had been Anji.

  Anji had dulled quills, clipped claws, and a restraint that prevented her from biting hard enough to draw blood. She adored Allana and seemed gentle enough, for what she was, but kept attacking a stuffed eopie. She would let no one come near it, growling and gnawing upon it despite the bite restraint until Jag was certain that bits of the eopie’s fabric innards would be strewn over the carpeting and furniture. It was testimony to how well made the toy was that that didn’t happen. Jag thought perhaps he should invest in the toy company; their products seemed to hold together better than some armor he had worn.

  “You do have a point,” he allowed, shifting her slight weight on his lap. “I’m sorry that Judge Lorteli wouldn’t permit Nawara Ven to represent her, and that Mardek Mool didn’t work out, but what do you expect me to do about the situation?”

  “You know people. You have a lot of connections. You could find someone.”

  He blinked at her. “Jaina, I can’t use my connections to influence the outcome of a trial.”

  “I’m not asking that. I’m just asking that you see if you know anyone who’d be willing to tackle the job. You know she’s not going to get a fair trial otherwise.”

  Jag sighed and leaned his head back against the soft leather of the chair for a moment. Jaina knew better than to press her attack, and just nestled against him quietly. Probably because she knew, like he knew, that he usually did his best to do the right thing within the constraints of his duty. And the right thing in this situation was to get someone who was accused of murder a lawyer who actually cared about representing her fairly and was capable of standing up to what was sure to be an ugly trial.

  “It will have to be completely unofficial,” he said at last. “It won’t be through the offices of the Empire.”

  “Of course not.”

  He opened his eyes and looked down at her and his breath caught for a moment. She was smiling gently at him, her face soft, her eyes warm. It wasn’t an expression most of the world ever saw. She reserved it for family, and for him, and it was as rare and as lovely as a Krayt dragon pearl. At this moment, she wasn’t the “Sword of the Jedi,” or the daughter of a perhaps-too-famous couple, or the woman who at the cost of ripping up her own heart had slain a Sith Lord who also happened to be her twin. She was just Jaina now, open and vulnerable. He felt his own heart soften to look at her, and lifted a hand to tenderly brush away a stray lock of dark hair from her forehead.

  “All right. I promise you that I will find her the best, most decent, most honest, hardest working lawyer I can,” he promised her.

  “Oh,” Jaina said. “I was trying to get her someone who’d win.”

  Cell 2357

  Galactic Justice Center

  Coruscant

  Tahiri Veila, seated in her very clean and very bright GA cell deep in the bowels of the Galactic Justice Center, her head in her hands, found that she was surprised at what she missed.

  She’d expected to miss her freedom, of course. The ability to putter as she wished in her own small, private space. The choice of whether to stay home or go out, perhaps even to visit the Temple. The comfortable, familiar weight of her lightsaber at her hip.

  And she did miss those things, but above all else was an odd pang at something else she probably ought to have anticipated—how terribly much she missed the feel of soft grass beneath her bare feet. She had carpeted her apartment with grass, and now, deprived of it, it was the thing she missed most.

  She could take her shoes off here, of course. After all, this was a Galactic Alliance prison cell, not a primitive cage. But there was only the cool tile of the too-antiseptic, too-well-lit cell to walk on. And the tile was cold, and hard, and unpleasant, and made her miss everything else just a little bit more.

  So Tahiri kept her shoes on, stared at the incredibly white-and-black décor, and thought about how things sometimes just weren’t white-and-black. She sighed and rubbed her face for a while, ran her hands thr
ough her blond hair, then rose and paced the cold tile floor. Like a caged animal, she thought. Which, just maybe, I am. With the additional irony of knowing that the Jedi Temple was close at hand. The Justice Center was just across Fellowship Plaza from it.

  She could have escaped all of this. All she’d have had to do was do what she had done once before—turn her back on people who cared about her and do something reprehensible. Then, it had been to fall under the sway of Jacen Solo, of her own achingly lonely yearning for a boy long dead, of her own wants. She’d killed a decent old man. Not in combat. Not in self-defense, or defending innocents. She’d killed him in cold blood, deliberately. Broken into a room by using the Force to overcome the lock, ordering him to control the Moffs and to violate a surrender. To attack civilians. And when he’d done the right thing, which was to say no, she’d fired at him point-blank.

  That had been the deal that Mardek Mool had proposed. He hadn’t said in so many words that it had been Daala’s idea, but he hadn’t had to. It was ironic that Chief of State Natasi Daala, who had been so incensed at that type of action when ordered by Jacen Solo, had been so comfortable with asking Tahiri to betray those who trusted her a second time. It seemed that Daala thought that two wrongs made a right. Because Tahiri had killed Gilad Pellaeon, and lied and deceived in order to do so, it was somehow “right” for her to lie and deceive again. The only difference was, this time it was Daala’s enemies, not her friends, that Tahiri was supposed to betray.

  But it wasn’t right. Tahiri was not about to walk the same misguided path again. She realized that her chances of being found not guilty were, to put it mildly, poor. Make that slim to none. Not even Han Solo would gamble on it.

  She didn’t believe the courts were completely corrupted. Just mostly.

  The Jedi had tried to get Nawara Ven to represent her—something she hadn’t expected, something that moved her. She wasn’t surprised that Judge Lorteli had forbidden Ven to do so. Mool, the next advocate, had been sincere in wanting to help, but hadn’t been up to the task.