Allies Page 8

  “Can it be artificially replicated?” Vestara again.

  “No,” the grocer replied. “And we have refused to let it be analyzed. Any scientific analysis would require more than could be obtained with a soil sample, as wintrium is such a complex element. And the only way to get that would be to violate the Fountain.”

  Fountain. Ben knew a cue when one was presented to him. He stepped in quickly. “When my father requested permission to dock, he was told a little bit about the Fountain. It’s called the Fountain of the Hutt Ancients, right?”

  Kelkad had been turned away from his father, placing the priced and bagged items on the table. Both Ben and Vestara saw him wince at the word “Hutt.”

  “Yes. All are free to behold it. You can even walk right up to it. We would not dream of attempting to come between the Fountain and those who approach to respectfully admire it.”

  “There are rules, I understand,” Vestara said. “Visitors to the Fountain are forbidden to approach with anything technological on them. Or to ride on ships or any motorized vehicles.”

  “You are quite correct,” and the grocer smiled at them. Still turned away from his father, Kelkad continued to quietly fume. Ben frowned a little. Why was the youth so upset?

  “The Fountain is not like any other fountain. You see, it does not spout water. It spouted wintrium—so long ago that its origins are lost to time. It is because of that sacred timelessness that we do not approach with anything technological.”

  “And wintrium is unique to your world,” Vestara continued. “And there is no other place on Klatooine where one could get such a pure sample other than at the Fountain.”

  “And no one would violate the Fountain, so no one else gets to grow pak’pahs.”

  “Why would no one violate the Fountain?”

  Vestara’s blunt question clearly offended the elder Klatooinian. “Because not only is it wrong, and most of our visitors are enlightened enough to know that,” he said, rather pointedly, “but because it would violate the Treaty of Vontor.”

  “What’s that?”

  The grocer drew breath to speak, but his son interrupted him. “Over twenty-five thousand years ago, Barada M’Beg, the Klatooinian for whom most males on my world are named, including my father, signed a treaty with the Hutts. In return for the Hutt’s promise to protect the Fountain, Barada M’Beg promised the Hutts the servitude of my people forever.”

  Kelkad’s voice was polite and cool, almost disinterested. But Barada shot him a worried look and glanced around. The market was crowded and noisy and nobody seemed to be paying any attention to the conversation.

  “That is correct,” Barada said. “And the Hutts have always kept their bargain. No one has violated the Fountain in all that time. Is there anything you two would care to purchase?”

  His point was clear. “Uh,” Ben said. “Yeah. You liked the pak’pah, right Vestara?”

  Vestara caught on at once, as he knew she would. “Yes. We’ll take—oh, about a dozen.”

  “Sure,” said Kelkad. “Let me help you select the best ones.”

  There was nothing further for Barada to do other than walk away, casting a worried glance at his son and a not-very-friendly one at Vestara and Ben. The three bent their heads together, selecting out the most succulent pak’pah fruit while softly continuing their conversation.

  Vestara cut right to the point with lightsaber keenness. “You don’t approve of the treaty, do you, Kelkad?” Her whisper was soft and husky.

  “No,” Kelkad said. “And there are many who think like me scattered throughout the galaxy. Some have escaped their bonds of servitude and live free, on free worlds.”

  “What’s meant by ‘servitude’ anyway?” Ben queried. “Is that polite code for ‘slavery’?”

  “It can be,” said Kelkad. “It can be whatever the Hutts want it to mean.”

  Ben frowned a little, confused. “It’s got to be dangerous to voice dissent here. So how come you’re talking so freely to us?”

  “Because I heard that you’re Jedi.”

  Vestara continued to look sincere and earnest. Ben supposed that it didn’t matter if she heard Kelkad’s impassioned opinion. Vestara didn’t work for the Hutts, and he couldn’t imagine the Sith Tribe caring one way or another about a species on a remote world and its twenty-five-thousand-year bond of “servitude.”

  “Well, some of us are Jedi,” Ben said. “I’m a Jedi Knight.”

  For the first time, Kelkad gave him a genuine smile. “Jedi despise slavery.”

  “We do, but the treaty’s kind of … legal, isn’t it? I mean, you weren’t snatched up and carted away someplace against your will.”

  Ben did not look at Vestara as he said these words, but he felt her shiver in the Force, ever so slightly. She had done exactly that to the Nightsisters. He was starting to grow highly attuned to her nuances in the Force, as well as learning how to read her usually impassive face and body language.

  “No, but I did not sign the treaty,” Kelkad continued bitterly. More loudly he said, “This one looks good,” and made a show of dropping another fruit into Vestara’s bag. “And I do not get to decide my own fate. That is wrong. Jedi know that it’s wrong, don’t they?”

  He looked Ben full in the face, his large dark eyes pleading. Ben felt a stab of guilt. Not for the first time, Ben found himself confronted with what was right versus what was legal. It was an issue that seemed to be cropping up an awful lot these days. He wanted to say something calming and wise like his father so often did when confronted with things like this, but found no words would come.

  Fortunately, Kelkad did not appear to want to wait for Ben’s comment, and he had no such problem speaking. He continued, the words tumbling out of him.

  “I am almost of the age where they will come for me. They might let me stay here and continue to help my father. Or they might drag me away to some dangerous world and I will be told to fight and kill enemies of the Hutts. And the same will be true of every youth my age on this world. All because Barada M’Beg got the Hutts to agree to protect the Fountain of the Ancients. I refuse to sully it with the word ‘Hutt.’ They are not our ancients. A few guards with blasters, and their commitment is met. But our commitment—”

  He broke off. Ben glanced over at Barada, who was starting to again take note of the conversation.

  “Your dad’s watching,” he said quietly. “I think he’s worried for you.”

  “Of course he is,” hissed Kelkad, his jowls shaking with barely suppressed outrage. “He knows he could lose me forever if the Hutts get wind that I am saying this. But I cannot keep it inside me any longer!” His fists clenched, and the pak’pah he held in one of them split under the pressure, juice dripping freely to the hard-packed dirt floor.

  Impulsively, Ben said, “I wish I could help. But we’re just a couple of Jedi. I’m sorry.”

  “I know. But … when you go home … you will return to the Temple? You will speak with the Masters there? We hear of them.”

  Vestara was watching them both closely. Ben only nodded.

  “Tell them that we are a patient people. But we are also a people with a deep regard for time. For what it does, how it shapes everything. Everyone knows that in the face of time, all things fade away.” He smiled, drawing his jowls back from sharp teeth. “Even treaties.”

  Ben nodded slowly, then handed over some credcoins. Vestara took the bag, smiling. Without a word exchanged between them, they turned back to the street, out from under the canopied market stalls.

  Where they could talk freely.

  Ben selected a pak’pah, fiddling with it absently. He wasn’t really hungry but he had to do something with his hands.

  “So the Jedi help slaves?”

  “Well, of course we do, where we can,” Ben said. For no real reason he could fathom immediately, he was annoyed with Vestara. “To take a being and force it to do something against its will when it’s completely innocent of any wrongdoing—” He sighe
d, peeling the fruit.

  “Servants and slaves are useful things,” Vestara said quietly, simply stating what was, for her, a fact. “Your father was not quite right, I believe. From everything I have heard, even from Kelkad, the Hutts place the Klatooinian youths where they are best suited.” She took another bite of the pak’pah, wiping the juice from her chin.

  “Where the Hutts think they are best suited, not their own people,” Ben said. “That’s a huge distinction.”

  “We place the—” Vestara suddenly fell silent, one hand creeping up to her throat. The half-eaten pak’pah fruit tumbled from her other hand as she clutched Ben’s arm. She appeared unable to breathe.

  The argument utterly fled from Ben’s mind, replaced by quick, cold, slithering fear as Vestara choked. Almost immediately he reached out, both physically to slip an arm around her, and in the Force, and focused his attention on the object lodging in her throat. He needn’t have worried, of course. Vestara, even while choking, was levelheaded and a powerful Force user. She had already thought of the same thing he had, and the small piece of fruit moved from blocking her airway to her mouth, where she spat it out.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded. For a second there he wondered if she had been faking it, but he had sensed the blockage was serious. She gave him a grin.

  “Well, that was attractive,” she said, her cheeks coloring a little. “Sorry about that.”

  “Hey, it’s fine,” Ben said. His arm was still around her. He found he didn’t want to remove it. Nor did he want to revisit the conversation they’d been having. It was an argument, a clash, and he was growing increasingly weary of struggling against her. For the time being, they were all supposed to be working together. She was beautiful and smart, and they were simply walking through an outdoor market. Did they have to be fighting while doing so? Couldn’t it all be—he didn’t know—set aside for an hour?

  Vestara was still embarrassed, and the thought pleased him a little. She cared about how he thought of her. He squeezed her shoulder reassuringly, and she didn’t protest. She even leaned into him a little, smiling at him. The scar, that tiny little scar that she disliked so much, stretched with the gesture and made her smile even wider.

  He wanted to tell her, I don’t want to fight with you. There’s enough strife and anger and bad feelings running around as it is. I know there are things we can’t agree on, and things that make my gut hurt to think that you really believe. I know that I want to show you my world, my thoughts, what I believe is right. And I think that maybe you might listen, one day. But for now, I just want to walk around with you and just … be us. Can’t we just be us?

  Instead he said, keeping his voice light, “So, how’d you get that scar?”

  Her smile widened, became mischievous. His heart did something strange in his chest. “Oh, that was when I was beginning my apprenticeship training,” she said, her voice deadly serious but her eyes bright. “In order to prove that I was worthy to be trained, I had to fight four rukaros, all fed enough to keep them strong and deadly, but kept so that they were not at the height of their aggression. I had a sporting chance.”

  They had started walking now, ambling, heading no place in particular. She continued melodramatically.

  “They all came at me at once, four sets of claws as long as my hand, a mouthful of teeth, tails that were barbed with poison. I killed all but one before they could get me, but before that one died, right as my lightsaber sliced him neatly into six pieces, he struck out with a claw and tore my mouth. And that’s what caused the scar.”

  Ben grinned at her. The argument they had had earlier was forgotten, gone like a cloud blown away by a cleansing wind. “Well, I have to say, I’m not impressed. I—”

  A sudden scream sounded from inside the market, followed by a loud crash. For half a heartbeat Ben and Vestara stared at each other. Then Ben grasped his lightsaber and raced back toward the marketplace as fast as he could go. Vestara was right beside him.

  MOS EISLEY, TATOOINE

  SHE WAS ELEVEN, DIRTY, TOO SKINNY, AND TOO CLEVER FOR HER OWN good. Or so her master told her. Her name was Kitaya Shuul, and she was a slave.

  Inserted just below her shoulder blade was a subcutaneous chip that transmitted a signal. Her master, Truugo the Hutt, could tell where she was at any time of the day or the night. And she knew she was monitored nearly constantly. If Truugo didn’t like where she was, he would order that the chip be detonated. And Kitaya would no longer be dirty, too skinny, and too clever for her own good; she would be a messy, gooey collection of small pieces of flesh and bone.

  That didn’t stop her.

  Fortunately, one of the duties Truugo liked to utilize her for was the occasional—more than occasional—round of espionage. He had done his best to teach her several languages, making his other slaves teach her everything they knew. Kit could speak four different languages and comprehend eight more; her human ear could understand certain languages when spoken, but her human tongue could not replicate them.

  It was ironic, that while conducting her service to her master, she was also plotting his downfall.

  Slavery was an institution as old as there were sentient beings. In the days of the Republic, Tatooine was too far afield to warrant the enforcement of the antislavery laws. And now, in the era of the Galactic Alliance, because it had not joined said Alliance, there were no antislavery laws to enforce at all. Tatooine, as it had for most of its history, was left to take care of itself.

  And Kit wanted to be among those who would “take care” of the institution of slavery.

  It had begun with books, smuggled to her on chips or encoded among repair manuals on datapads. Poetry, history, fiction, or truth, Kit drank it all in as thirstily as she drank water on this arid world. Stories of revolutions and of peaceful negotiations, accounts of brutalities and unspeakable kindnesses, tales of the individual and tales of a society. All inspired her.

  Then, she began keeping in contact with certain individuals who had “business” here. And they often conducted their “business” in locales where Truugo sent Kit to spy. For a while, Kit had held her breath, certain that at some point she would be discovered. Would find out when it was too late that the being she was sent to eavesdrop on was one of her contacts.

  They called themselves the Freedom Flight. Their burning passion was to eliminate slavery throughout the galaxy, not just on those worlds whose leaders had enough integrity to do so themselves. Sometimes they were able to help fund planetary representatives who would work to bring about change. Other times, the organization, if such a term could be applied to something so mysterious and elusive, functioned on more of a personal level, helping individuals to escape and finding them new lives and identities elsewhere. Those involved in such activities were called “pilots,” and the routes they took were called “flight paths.” The “flight paths” had several stops, and most pilots knew only their small portion of the route to freedom for the slaves they transported. It was safer that way if anyone was ever caught.

  Kit couldn’t escape. Technology, it would seem, kept up with the slave trade, and every time it looked like someone had figured out how to deactivate the transmitter, a new, improved one would be invented. She’d resigned herself to that. Besides, her life was not as bad as that of others she had heard tell of. She at least was beaten only if she disappointed her master, and she had enough food most of the time. Kit knew she could help best if she stayed here, on Tatooine, owned by a giant slug.

  Kit swept up a lock of dirty, unkempt black hair behind her ear, and hurried on bare, callused feet to the appointment site.

  She had no fear of being recognized. She was not a well-known slave, as she had few interactions with the public. The most basic of disguises—hair coloring or a wig, cleaned up or scruffy, posture, simple prosthetics—made her look different each time. She moved swiftly, not quite running so as not to attract attention, through the streets of the spaceport. There were people out even at
this hour, for Mos Eisley knew no curfew. Curfews were bad for business—of all kinds.

  Kit slowed as she approached the cantina. Formally known as Chalmun’s Cantina, although nobody bothered to call it that anymore, it had a decades-old reputation for being a place where shady goings-on took place. It also, according to Truugo, served the best Sarlacc Kicker in town. As usual, business was brisk, and she had to dodge quickly as a stumbling Gamorrean lurched out of the doorway. It glared at her with its tiny, piggy eyes, and grunted. She knew the language, but had been called more insulting things in her day, so she simply stepped out of the way and let him trundle drunkenly off into the night.

  She waited for a pause in the flow of customers, then settled herself down near the entrance. Not so close that she would be inadvertently stepped on, but close enough so that she could see those who entered and left, and could hear very well thanks to the auditory enhancer.

  She sat on an old blanket and put out a ceramic bowl, letting her body droop in mock weariness and pain. Her left arm was bent so that her hand rested on her shoulder and tightly bound, the sleeve flopping free. In the dim light, even if a being looked closely, she would seem like a poor amputee begging for food or credits from the kinder-hearted. The auditory enhancer in her ear screened out extraneous noises, and she had learned from an early age how to focus on one voice above all others.

  Feet, hooves, talons, and wheels all moved swiftly past her, stirring up the dust from the street as they went. Kit stretched out her good hand imploringly, her pinched face with its too-large blue eyes peering up at the passersby.

  “A few credits? A bite to eat? Please, whatever you can spare—”

  Kit did not expect to be noticed, for few people here had time for the destitute and unfortunate, and for the most part she was ignored. Now and then, though, a bite of food or a credit or two would fall into the little bowl she had set before her. Her eyes darted about, seemingly on the lookout for a kind face, but in actuality searching for one being in particular.