Fate of the Jedi: Backlash Read Free

planetfall.”
    “Ah.”
    “Dilapidated, you say? A yacht?”
    “That’s right.”
    Vames keyed in some more information. “Last night, shortly after dusk, local time, a vehicle with the operational characteristics of a SoroSuub yacht made a sudden descent from orbit, overflew the spaceport here, and headed north. There was some comm chatter from the pilot about engines on runaway, that she couldn’t cut them or bring her repulsors online for landing.”
    Ben frowned at that. “Last night? And you didn’t send out a rescue party?”
    “Of course we did. As per regulations. Couldn’t find the crash site. No further communication from the vehicle. We still have searchers up there. But no luck.”
    “Actually, that
is
helpful.” Luke turned to his son. “Ben, no enclosed vehicles.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Get us a couple of speeder bikes, would you? Beg, borrow …” Luke glanced at the spaceport official and decided that the man wouldn’t grasp that
steal
would have been a joke. “Or rent them.”
    Ben grinned. “Yes, sir.”
    Fifteen minutes later they were on their way, equipped with two rented speeder bikes and one piece of useful information that they hadnot possessed before, courtesy of questions asked and credcoins dropped by Luke.
    The model of SoroSuub yacht the Sith girl had taken from Sinkhole Station was not one that normally came equipped with a hypercomm system. From the time it had left the Maw Cluster to its arrival on Dathomir, it had not lingered at any star system long enough for its pilot to make any substantial contact with locals. And in the time since its arrival on Dathomir, the planet’s sole hypercomm system, based out of this spaceport, had not been utilized to send any message packet large enough to include the complex navigational data required to instruct someone how to enter the Maw and find Sinkhole Station.
    What that meant, ultimately, was that the Sith girl had likely not been able to communicate instructions to her Sith masters on how to reach the station or the powerful dark-side Force mystery it held. Luke probably did not have to fear that the Sith would find that power—until and unless they retrieved the Sith girl.
    For once, if only temporarily, time was on Luke’s side.

DATHOMIR RAIN FOREST
    T HE RAIN FOREST AIR WAS SO DENSE, SO MOIST, THAT EVEN ROARING through it at speeder bike velocity didn’t bring Luke Skywalker any physical relief. His speed just caused the air to move across him faster, like a greasy scrub-rag wielded by an overzealous nanny droid, drenching all the exposed surfaces of his body.
    Not that he cared. He couldn’t see her, but he could sense his quarry, not far ahead: the individual he’d crossed so many light-years to find.
    He could sense much more than that. The forest teemed with life, life that poured its energy into the Force, too much to catalog as he roared past. He could feel ancient trees and new vines, creeping predators and alert prey. He could feel his son, Ben, as the teenager drew up abreast of him on his own speeder bike, eyes shadowed under his helmet but a competitive grin on his lips, and then Ben was a few meters ahead of him, dodging leftward to avoid hitting a split-forked tree, therecklessness of youth giving him a momentary speed advantage over Luke’s superior piloting ability.
    Then there was more life,
big
life, close ahead, with malicious intent—
    From a thick nest of magenta-flowered underbrush twice the height of a human male, just to the right of Luke’s path ahead, emerged an arm, striking with great speed and accuracy. It was human-like, gnarly, gigantic, long enough to reach from the flowers to swat the forward tip of Luke’s speeder bike as he passed.
    Disaster takes only a fraction of a second to bring about. One instant Luke was racing along, intent on his distant prey and enjoying moments of competition; the next, he was headed straight for a tree whose trunk, four meters across, would bring a sudden stop