Vision of the future

'Please do not insult me,' Sakhisakh said darkly. 'Barkhimkh and I will of course accompany you. Even to death, if that is what awaits us.'

'Thank you,' Leia said. 'Thank you, too, Ghent, for bringing this to me. You did the right thing, flagrant illegalities and all. Trustant A'kla, I thank you too for your assistance here.'

'Wait a minute,' Ghent said, his eyes looking confused again. 'You're going out there? Alone?'

'Not alone,' Sakhisakh growled. 'We will be with her.'

'Yeah, sure,' Ghent said, looking back and forth between Leia and Elegos. 'I meant... Elegos?

Can't you—you know?'

'Travel alongside her?' the Caamasi said. 'Certainly, I would be more than willing to do so. Though I have no official standing with the New Republic, my people have some small skills at negotiation.' He regarded Ghent thoughtfully. 'But as I have already explained, I have the prior obligation of returning you to Coruscant.'

'Unless you're willing to take a shuttle over to Pakrik Major and find a liner to take you back,' Leia suggested.

'But I didn't mean for you to—' Ghent's face twisted into something almost painful-looking. 'I mean, I only brought you the message because—'

He sighed, a great exhaling of air that seemed to shrink him down like a collapsing balloon.

'Okay,' he said in resignation. 'Yeah, okay. Sure, I'll go with you, too. Why not?' Leia blinked. It was not the decision she'd been expecting from him. 'I appreciate the offer, Ghent,' she said. 'But it's really not necessary.'

'No, no—don't try to talk me out of it,' Ghent said. 'I got you into this—might as well stick through to the end. Everybody says I need to get out more, anyway.' Leia glanced at Elegos, caught the other's microscopic nod. Apparently, three days alone in a two-man ship with a Caamasi had done Ghent a world of good.

Or else the young slicer was finally beginning to grow up.

'All right,' she said. 'Thank you. Thank you all.' She glanced around the room. 'We'll have to take the Falcon, I'm afraid—this ship is too small for all of us. It's about a twenty-minute landspeeder ride away.'

'Then let us go,' Elegos said, gently prodding. 'There is little time to spare.' Five minutes later they were racing across the Pakrik Minor landscape, the whistling of the wind the only sound as the five occupants sat wrapped in the silence of their own thoughts. What the others were thinking during that trip Leia never learned. But for herself, a new and disturbing thought had suddenly occurred to her. A Jedi, she knew, could often see or sense into the future and, as she herself had often done, could similarly gain a sense of the Tightness of the path being taken or the Jedi's own position along that path. She was seeing that rightness for herself now. But could any Jedi, she wondered, see ahead to his or her own death? Or would the path leading to that moment always remain in darkness? Feeling right and proper, perhaps, all the way up to the point of passage?

She didn't know. Perhaps this would be the path where she would find out.

CHAPTER

13

From the far aft cabin, the warbling of the Wild Karrde's bridge battle alert was a quiet, almost subtle thing. But Shada had been trained to notice subtle things, and she was awake and out of bed before the distant trilling had finished its down scale and shut off. Throwing on her robe, stuffing her blaster into a side pocket, she headed for the bridge.

The corridors were deserted. Shada picked up her pace, ears cocked for the noise of battle or the straining engines that would indicate escape or evasion. But the ship was eerily quiet, with the steady drone of the drive and her own softly slapping footsteps the only sounds she could hear. Ahead, the bridge door slid open at her approach; slipping her hand into her robe pocket and getting a grip on her blaster, she charged through the doorway.

And skidded to a slightly confused halt. The bridge crew were seated in their normal positions, some of them looking questioningly back at her abrupt entrance. Ahead, out the viewport, the mottled sky of hyperspace was rolling past.

'Hello, Shada,' Karrde said, looking up from the engineering monitor where he and Pormfil had apparently been consulting on something. 'I thought you were still sleeping. What brings you here at this hour?'

'Your battle alert—what did you think?' Shada countered, looking around again. 'What's going on, a drill?'

'Not quite,' Karrde said, stepping over to her. 'My apologies; I didn't think you'd be able to hear the alert where you were.'