~12~

The Seven and the Hundreds


Tara awoke suddenly what felt like hours later, her head nestled in the crook of her arm, her legs curled up against the wall of the hallway connecting the cockpit of the *Jadesaber* to the crew cabin. She was bathed in a square of faded blue light that danced on the cylindrical ceiling above her, and a sense of urgency pervaded the dreamy haze that clouded her thoughts. She sat up, promptly whacking her head on the doorframe. There was another body beside her.

"Luke!" she hissed. "Master Skywalker!"

Her teacher's limp form was hanging half-in, half-out of the corridor, his feet dangling from the doorstep, his face pressed into the floor of the cockpit, near the base of a chair in which Jaina sat, ashen-faced and uncertain.

Anakin was standing beside her, his hand on her shaking shoulders, while Dave attended to Lilandra, who was wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her sweatshirt and trying to push him away. Mara was nowhere to be seen, probably in the washroom ridding her burning stomach of the last traces of her illicit overindulgence.

Anakin turned and saw that Tara was awake, and picked his way gingerly over Luke's lifeless form to where she sat, feeling dazed. Though she was clearly alive, clearly breathing, Anakin still felt the need to pass his fingers over her forearms, her neck, feeling for a pulse, and Tara was filled with a strange kind of relief. Satisfied, he ended his search by pressing his lips against hers. She didn't kiss him back. He sat back on his haunches, and offered her a hesitant sort of grin before clearing his throat.

"Skewed logic, but otherwise unharmed," he pronounced quietly, and got to his feet. "Master Skywalker?"

Luke responded with a groan. "Someone take down the license number of that landspeeder …"

Anakin's eyebrows shot up in amusement. "Reversion to use of corny outdated humor. A sure sign of impeccable mental health. Congratulations, Uncle Luke. You'll live."

"Anyone care to explain to me what just happened?" Luke asked waspishly, pushing himself onto his knees in the corridor and stretching.

"Jedi," Jaina said through tight lips. "That's Terapinn's big, almighty secret. It's a penal colony for Jedi."

Silence descended upon the group once more, as Luke regarded Jaina's pained expression, the tears rolling down Lilandra's flushed cheeks, his eyes falling at last on Tara's sudden grimace.

"When you've all composed yourselves," he commanded wearily, "land this ship."


The minutes passed in silence as Lilandra, having pulled herself quickly together, piloted the ship towards the peaceful gray-blue sphere hanging in the viewport. Mara had emerged from the washroom, looking green, and the group was now clustered around the chairs in the cockpit, watching the planet's terrain morph as they drew nearer.

They could see now that Terapinn was a mountainous world. Peaks dusted with glistening caps of snow rose through great canyons of voluminous white clouds. The feeble light from its distant sun shone weakly upon its northern hemisphere, where Lilandra was now steering the ship.

"Get down beneath those clouds," Luke ordered, pointing to a particularly large bank of vapor. "We'll scout around there for a place to land."

Obeying, Lilandra angled the *Jadesaber*'s nose sharply downward, and plowed through the bank, skidding the ship over massive updrafts. Ice and water pelted the viewscreen, and for a few moments, there was only whiteness, and then the ship broke through, circling a mountain peak and diving down its starkly shadowed windward face.

Lower down, pale gray composite volcanoes rose through the mist hugging the purplish earth, their dormant craters dotting the landscape for miles in either direction.

"Barren," Luke murmured. "Head east, towards those mountains."

The mountains in question were twin peaks, lower than the jagged ones they had come in around, but still shrouded in thick layers of cloud. Lilandra banked around the larger of the two peaks, and began flying the ship on a straightaway, through the steep valley formed between the mountain brothers. Through breaks in the cloud layer, there were flashes of lush, dark green, miles and miles below.

"This is it!" Luke said. "A river valley – draining from those mountains. Follow downstream, and keep your eyes peeled, everyone."

Sticking close to the eastern peak, the *Jadesaber* cruised ever lower, its underbelly skimming the lower clouds until it vanished into their midst to emerge beneath their shelter and hover above the distinctly more welcoming sight of Luke's river valley.

A long, shallow canyon had been gouged into the bedrock by the wide ribbon of water snaking its way between two heavily treed escarpments. Two flat, grassy plains stretched away towards the mountain peaks that evidently supplied the river with runoff from their patchy white peaks.

"The floodplains, due east, Lil. Check it out."

Lilandra eased the ship down, and they entered the mountain's shadow. Luke had been correct – below them, on the floodplain amidst squares of long grass bent flat from wind, was what looked like brown earth. It had been divided into the telltale, mismatched squares that denoted farmlands.

"Come on, Ilkhaine. Set her down in one of these, and we'll have ourselves a little expedition, shall we?"

Luke sounded hopeful.

"They don't look like they've had it so bad, do they?" Tara commented as they flew past a few squares that had already burst into bright green foliage. "They've got a food source, at least."

"Damn those resourceful Jedi. I'm beginning to wonder if we're actually doing them a favor by coming here," Anakin replied. Jaina put her hands over her mouth.

Lilandra set the *Jadesaber* down in a dry field at the edge of the floodplain at Luke's instructions.

"We don't want to startle them," he said.

"Are you kidding?" Anakin pointed out. "They're Jedi – they probably already know we're here."

Jaina let out a small squeal from behind her cupped palms, and Dave patted her shoulder reassuringly.

They landed with a small, barely perceptible bump, and then proceeded to sit in silence for moment, thinking most likely identical thoughts.

"We've come this far," Dave suggested, voicing what nobody else wanted to. "We might as well go and have a look around. Maybe these people will have us for tea for our efforts."

Anakin snorted laughter, which seemed to settle it. Lilandra extended the ramp from the base of the ship, and the crew of seven descended onto the springy, dusty soil of the world of Terapinn.

Lilandra jogged to the border of the field some ten feet away and back again, enjoying the way the soil seemed to repel the impact of her boots, pushing her feet up again and guiding her steps. The air here was thin, cool and crisp. It felt good, sliding down her throat. Pure, clean oxygen began to circulate through her blood, giving her the rush of the atmosphere of an ancient world untainted by life.

Thin fingers of mist reached across the floodplain on which they stood, disappearing over a small rise into the river valley below. Shaded hillocks greeted them at the base of the huge mountain that loomed miles above them, its peak hidden by dark-bottomed clouds, and the lip of the valley seemed to curl around behind them, making Lilandra feel as though she was standing on an island of earth, surrounded by unscripted, uncharted wilderness on either side. Excitement coursed through her; this was, all things considered, the perfect place to drop a planetful of unruly Jedi.

Tara had begun idly strolling a path, completely unaware of the notion that she was standing on a path, so lost in the mystical air of the planet was she. She hugged her arms around herself and tilted her head back so that the tips of her blonde curls brushed her shoulders. She stuck out her tongue, as if hoping to catch a drop of pure spring water upon it, should the heavily laden clouds above decide to unload their burden upon the ground below.

"Chee," Anakin breathed, emerging last from the ship, arm in arm with his sister. "Nice place, this."

"Fine appraisal," Dave replied sarcastically. "Probably the same thing Palpatine thought when he went scouting for real estate. What's that the agents always say? 'Location, location, location …'"

"It's a real fixer-upper, but it's got potential," Jaina mused, squinting her eyes into the watery light illuminating their surroundings. "There's a quaint aura about the place."

"Oh, yeah … lots of happy memories, I'll bet," Ani laughed.

"Come on, shut up, you three. Honestly." Luke rolled his eyes. "Joking at this point feels like a sacrilege."

Anakin crossed himself, and fell to his knees in the dirt. "May the Maker strike me dead, for I have committed the sin of illuminating the utter irony of this situation."

"What, that we're practically in dead space and yet standing on someone's field?" Jaina asked coquettishly.

"Ten thousand credits to the lady in the ugly orange flightsuit," Anakin bellowed.

Jaina bowed deeply. "They like me! They really like me!"

"So what happens now, Uncle Luke?" Anakin asked impatiently. "Shall we get our hoes?"

Jaina was overcome with a strong fit of giggles as Anakin slipped an arm roguishly around Tara's shoulders, winking first with his right eye, then with his left. She gasped, slapping him hard upside the head.

"That's not what I meant!" he laughed.

"I know what you meant!" Tara yelled back, but laughed also.

"Peace, children," Luke interjected calmly, if a tad cynically. "We must wait for a course of further action to present itself."

They didn't have to wait long, for their jovial exchange was abruptly interrupted by the quiet arrival of one of the presences that had contributed its thoughts to the jumble that had overcome them up in space.

"I am wondering," a gravelly sort of voice said from behind them, "why you are here."

The group turned as one to observe the newcomer, and was only mildly surprised by what they found.

A creature, with a short, stocky torso and the broad ears and horned feet of one very famous Jedi was squatting in the dirt, a human-sized rake in its hand.

Luke squinted at it, disbelieving. The thing was almost identical to Yoda, his onetime teacher, save for its large, shiny red lips and long, dark lashes framing a pair of curious violet eyes. Luke might've taken it for granted that the thing was female, but one could never really be sure with unidentified species. They could always be illiquid.

"Neat!" Tara knelt down in the dirt and extended a hand to the creature. It blinked passively at her, offering her a vacant sort of smile. Tara knew better than to be taken in by its vapid nature. "Doctor Ton-Ara Jaksbin at your service."

"Teghan," the creature replied, its expression becoming more animated. It drew its long, stained burgundy robe tighter about itself, and shifted its rake to its other hand. "Why have you come?"

"Sort of unassuming, this one," Anakin commented quietly. "If seven large and possibly armed bipeds showed up in *my* field, I probably wouldn't question their reason for being there."

"Maybe it's not evident from that height," Dave shrugged, shifting the blaster holster slung around his hips.

"Don't," Lilandra said in a warning voice. "We didn't come here to freak them out."

"Great, you're telling me all the Jedi are this species? No wonder they weren't identified before now!" Mara put in.

"Would explain Yoda, wouldn't it?" Anakin asked, turning to Luke, who was still watching the creature – Teghan, he assumed – with great interest.

Tara had decided to answer Teghan's question, producing a copy of the galaxy map from the pocket of her flightsuit and unfolding it deliberately.

"We received a message from your world," she explained slowly. Teghan drew back from her outstretched hand as though it contained a detonator. Lilandra noticed the slick way in which Tara avoided telling the creature that they had naturally assumed the message was a cry for help. It was a typical politician's way of gaining information for one's own purposes. If the message had indeed been a cry for help, then surely Teghan would know, or at least recommend them to someone who would.

The creature looked as though she might be about to answer, when a sharp call shattered the pause from some distance away.

"Teghan! *Craemok!*"

" 'Crayon box?' " Anakin repeated fearfully. Luke nudged him in the ribs.

The voice was male, and sounded slightly threatening. Its exclamation seemed to startle the small Yoda look-alike. Her round head turned madly from side to side, looking for the unseen person through the thick mist. Her shoulders hunched, as if expecting some sort of reprimand.

"I meant them no harm," she croaked, pulling her dark red hood over her face. "Only curious."

From the folds of mist, a man appeared, at some distance still. When he saw the ship, and the seven weary travelers, he broke into a run.

Closer to, they were able to see that he was quite young, clothed in a ragged shirt of the same rich shade as Teghan's robe, and dusty, olive-gray pants. Imperial issue, by the look of them, and although they were torn at the knees and cuffs, the tiny embroidered symbol of a thrice-crossed hexagon was visible on the cargo pockets sewn upon the legs.

He had longish, shaggy black hair, and tanned skin that seemed tinged with a faintest hint of … silver. Only Lilandra thought to notice that his eyes were pale hazel, or that his cheeks were flushed from exertion. She paid close attention to his next words, which were spoken in the same foreign language as his call, and with a great deal of irritation as he addressed the creature.

"Qata ta tanha? Tetya si no ranani dei disos rasunas?"

He punctuated this with an indignant sigh. Teghan looked away.

Lilandra glanced sidelong at Luke, whose expression reflected perfectly her own amazement.

The young man turned to the group, with the look of one preoccupied as he shuffled his feet in the dirt. His next words sounded apologetic, and were spoken in carefully measured basic that carried the faint hint of a lilting accent.

"She always forgets the rules, eh? She's impossible … some … times …"

He trailed off as he dared to glance up, and realized that he didn't recognize the people he was addressing. His eyes widened, and he shot a glance at Teghan.

"Backpack, now," he commanded, and Lilandra watched, fascinated, as Teghan handed him the rake, shimmied up his left leg, and fastened herself quite willingly into a roughly-hewn cloth harness that was strapped to the young man's broad shoulders.

"Now," he breathed, appearing a tad fearful. "Who are you, exactly?"

There was a huskiness in his voice that hadn't been there before. His eyes flicked instantly to the senator, and Lilandra felt her stomach flip over backwards.

She cast a wide-eyed glance behind her at Luke, who nodded encouragingly. He had apparently spoken directly to her, and so she answered.

"I'm …"

She stopped, her mouth moving but no sound emerging, much to her horror.

"Senator Lilandra Ilkhaine of the Allied Republic," Jaina cut in, her own voice full of a mirth that Lilandra didn't much appreciate. "You'll have to excuse her, she's single – "

"Singular in this galaxy," Lilandra growled, pushing Jaina aside with a hostile glare. "Thank you for that accurate appraisal, my friend."

She smiled charmingly at the young man, who stared back, apparently caught somewhere between turning around and walking away or jumping her bones right then and there. He settled on an uncertain grin.

"I'm glad to see you speak our language," Lilandra said, her composure regained for the time being.

"Your language?" the young man replied, with an air of ironic wisdom that seemed to belie his apparent youth. "I was under the impression that it was ours, but I guess that's the dangerous thing about generalizations."

Lilandra and Jaina exchanged an amazed look.

"You're absolutely right," Lilandra replied, feigning superiority that she sincerely hoped he understood to be a joke, "but I suppose in this case, such a generalization is just a fortunate coincidence."

The young man smiled knowingly through closed lips, and tilted his head to the side in unspoken agreement. Lilandra dared to continue on behalf of the group, which was unnervingly silent, watching this exchange with gleeful amusement.

"What I was trying to say before I … got something stuck in my throat – " her shoulders tensed as she heard Jaina and Tara snickering behind her, " – is that we are representatives of the outside government known as the Allied Republic, and have come to your world in aid of a message we received last week from your world."

She snatched the map from Tara's hand, baring her teeth at the giggling blonde.

"*You tell him, sweetheart,*" Anakin mouthed beside her.

Lilandra handed the map to the man, praying with all her might that Anakin had not seen his fingers brush lightly against her own as he took it, nor the involuntary shiver that had succeeded his touch.

He gazed at the map for a moment, his expression wavering between hesitance and recognition for a moment. Pressing his lips together, he glanced up at Lilandra again, a secretive sort of glance that turned her knees to ice water and filled her with the flutter of anxiety she always felt when she knew someone was reading her mind. Whatever he happened to observe in her head, though, he had the tact to keep it quiet.

"My name is Cace Lendene," he said instead, pressing his palm warmly to Lilandra's outstretched one before moving onto the others. The universal gesture of shaking hands appeared to be beyond him.

Cayce Lend-een. That was how he said his name, with an unusual but endearing pride evident in his tone.

His eyes fell on Luke, who stepped forward.

"Luke Skywalker, pleased to meet you," he said. Lilandra couldn't help but notice how sick he was looking. There were unflattering circles under his eyes, and his hair was in disarray. He was plainly nervous. "I'm the leader of this group."

"Power trip!" Anakin blared, and Tara and Jaina dissolved into giggles again. Mara silenced them with an icy glare.

Cace actually smiled, an infectious, toothy grin quite different from the reverent smirk he had earlier bestowed upon Lilandra, and one that changed the entire look of his face, making him seem much younger than he'd first appeared – boyishly adorable – and Lilandra had to shut her eyes. She put a hand to her mouth and grinned hard behind it, clenching her teeth together.

She could not tear her eyes from Cace. He seemed to almost glow with that odd silver tint on his skin, and even though he addressed Luke, his gaze flicked back to meet hers every so often. She tried to construct some semblance of an expression that was both indifferent and yet engaged, habitually pressing her hair flat with one hand to determine its state.

" … Assumed the message might be some sort of call for help," Luke was saying. "Of course, we're only assuming that you're one of …"

Luke didn't seem sure of how to proceed. "Assuming that this world is Terapinn, the last unregistered penal colony to be established by the late Emperor Palpatine."

Cace looked … well, his expression was hard to describe. It was partially hesitant, partially relieved. Lilandra supposed she'd look rather the same if, after some indeterminate amount of time, seven aliens had turned up in her field, offering to help an extinct cause. She could already tell that he was a man plagued by the intrigue of indecision: a deep thinker. Infuriating yet adorable. Her smile got fifty feet wider.

"Perhaps I should take you up to our settlement," Cace said quietly, almost to himself, after a moment's consideration. "If that's alright, of course?"

Lilandra whirled around and gave Luke a disgustingly beseeching look before straightening up and brushing her hair back behind her shoulders self-importantly. A claw had suddenly materialized in the pit of her stomach and was apparently attempting to tunnel its frantic way out. Her stomach growled with hunger, and she crossed her arms over her abdomen, fruitlessly trying to muffle the sound. Dave stared at her with marked amazement.

"Of course. We've come all this way," Luke replied slyly, sneaking a glance at Lilandra, who beamed. "It would be a shame not to at least explore."

Cace looked cheerful. "Well, then, follow me," he said brightly, and set off along the path, Teghan's domed head bobbing over the top of the harness on his back, the expression on her protracted face nothing less than tense.

The path, comprised of packed gray stones, wound across the patchwork of fields towards the hillocks looming in the distance. As they began a climb up the side of one of them, trees suddenly seemed to spring up out of nowhere, shielding them from view – and blocking them from a quick return to the *Jadesaber*, Lilandra noticed.

The trees began to thin out again, however, as they entered the shadow of the mountain towering on their right, giving way to purplish rock outcroppings and cracked stone plateaus. At the peak of the hill, the entire river basin stretched away below them, the water sparkling in the muted light between gaps in the rich foliage enfolding the flat plain beneath.

"Sure is beautiful here, eh?" Jaina said, breathing hard as she jogged to catch up to Lilandra, who gave her a vacant stare. Jaina saw Cace striding along purposefully, some twenty feet ahead, and poked her friend. "Why don't you just go up and talk to him?" she asked teasingly.

"That would imply something," Lilandra answered evasively. She risked a glance behind her, where Tara and Anakin were dancing around Luke and Mara, bantering loudly with them. Lilandra caught the word 'dipsomaniac', hollered gleefully by Anakin, who clearly thought he was being smart until his uncle swatted him upside the head, drawing a snort of laughter from Tara.

Lilandra's eyes wandered to the back of Cace's head again, and Jaina snickered.

"Someone's got a crush on our tour guide," she sang knowingly, and Lilandra stiffened.

"Nix on the accusations, Jainy," she warned in a low voice, but was seized with a brief, yet tantalizing vision of herself and Cace tangled up in a passionate embrace on one of the *Jadesaber*'s couches.

She blushed furiously, forcing the vision from her head, but not before she was suddenly assaulted by an icy cold that raced down her spine. She gave a piercing shriek, and whirled to face Dave, who was grinning sheepishly as he poured the water from his canteen down the back of her jersey.

"Too preoccupied to notice an attacker," he clucked in mock admonition. "What's happened to your constant vigilance, Senator? Too busy memorizing Lendene's behind?"

"Who shot who in the what now?" Anakin gasped, appearing suddenly at Lilandra's side. "I heard something about a behind, and simply couldn't resist!"

He squealed girlishly, putting on a fake strut. "Do I look fat in this?" he asked Dave, pulling discerningly at the waistband of his flightsuit.

"Hardly, darling, but the color is *all wrong*!" Dave simpered. "With that skin tone, I think you need to go for more of a pastel detailing – perhaps something in mauve …"

"Enough!" Lilandra snapped, but Anakin's melodramatic posing had attracted Luke and Mara to the scene.

"What did I miss?" Mara asked eagerly, slinging one arm over Luke's shoulders and the other around Lilandra's.

"Only Lilandra's quiet affirmation of affection for *Cace Lendene*," Anakin crooned.

"Oh, *Cace*!" Dave screamed ardently, beating his fists against his chest and flinging his head back in a wild gesture of submission. Lilandra ducked behind Luke, cringing as Cace stopped, and turned.

"Someone call?" he asked good-naturedly. Lilandra let out a dry sob, halfway between laughter and tears.

Dave and Anakin stopped pretending to preen themselves, and put on a face of wide-eyed innocence instead.

"Nope, nope, we're all good back here," Anakin called as Lilandra bent over and turned her laughter into an aggressive coughing fit, hiding her smile in the crook of her elbow.

"Your senatorial friend alright?" Cace pointed to Lilandra, who turned her back to him.

"Consumption," Dave explained sympathetically, and Lilandra emitted a particularly violent cough.

"Oh," said Cace, confused until he caught Lilandra's eye. Peering at him from behind her elbow, her eyes held a sly, mischievous look that included him at once in their private joke. He felt a kind of warmth spread through his shoulders and into his palms, which tingled as he held her gaze there. He smiled, knowing that Senator Lilandra Ilkhaine had accepted him already. The smile was to let her know that he appreciated it. Lilandra straightened, her cheeks still flaming crimson, and glared at her friends.

"I thought you only went for older men, Lil," Mara hissed deviously into her ear.

"How do you know he's not older?" Lilandra hissed back, frowning.

"Oh, come on! You'd be robbing the cradle with this one, dear," Mara laughed.

"Sure, ruin all my fun," Lilandra pouted.

"Don't worry, Lil," Tara said quietly. "Your secret's safe with us."

Lilandra scowled at the path, watching her feet. "I have a hard time believing that one …" she muttered, and promptly walked into something tall, cold, and discouragingly solid.

She stumbled backwards, clutching her forehead and whimpering, and dared to peek at what she'd collided with. One column of a crumbling stone arch stood facing her like a glaring sentinel, and even given her edgy mood, she didn't fail to notice that it was inscribed with writing identical to the writing on the walls in the Temple of the Galaxy. She motioned Luke over.

"Look," she whispered. "Look familiar?"

Luke nodded, his eyes widening, and they ran to catch up with the others.

Cace was now leading them down a steep embankment, towards what appeared to be another planet altogether: green, cultivated, and *very* heavily populated.

Tens of hundreds of sturdy wooden dwellings, the smallest no bigger than a guard hut and the largest easily a hundred feet long and open-fronted, had been erected in a circle on the lip of another outcropping that fell away at least a hundred feet to the river below, and among them were people, flitting about like silver ghosts before Lilandra's disbelieving eyes.

In the center of the circle of dwellings was a massive courtyard, its most striking attribute a huge bonfire surrounded by smooth, polished logs upon which more people sat, yards of white fabric at their feet. Some ten feet away, at the entrance to the long communal building, four men were working at a wooden table that was at least twenty feet in length and solid as rock, carving an enormous wolf-like creature that lay bleeding before them.

There were people entering and exiting the dwellings, people traveling the same path upon which the Yavin crew stood, in the opposite direction, towards where it dived off down the escarpment towards the river.

Below a steep fall of trees and banked by the verdant foothills of the easternmost mountain, the water glittered gray and gold in the waning light. Thin skiffs glided effortlessly on the current in silhouette, guided by long, gently curved poles, while cloud shadows flickered across the flat, blank faces of the hills.

Back on the plateau, a man and a woman appeared at the top of the steep, treed escarpment, dragging a net full of large, struggling fish, their multitude of fins flashing silver in the sunshine.

Dripping garments hung on twisted ropes between mid-sized dwellings, ragged hems flapping in the crisp breeze, while women in white robes and leather aprons labored, red-faced, over steaming vats positioned by the fire, churning the darkened water with whittled branches.

Small children chased each other through the soft, yellowed grass between dwellings, and along the narrow, pressed stone paths that weaved between the rows. Boys trailed after the men striding down the fishermen's path to the river, where the back of another low wooden dwelling could be seen, though its purpose was hidden behind its smooth walls.

Voices drifted up the hill to the missionaries – the sharp reprimands of mothers, the laughter and chattering of laboring girls, the shouts and giggles of the children, the strident barks of the men – a bewildering mixture of basic and a fluid, expressive dialect, all syllables of consonant followed by vowel, with nothing at all to suggest that it had its roots in another language. It seemed entirely made-up … a secret code, almost, that only the large handful of beings below them could speak and understand, but it was beautiful and stirring to listen to, the way it seemed to roll off the tongue of each individual who spoke it without any hesitation.

Above the din and the bustle, the smell of fire drifted up to the missionaries, sharp and tangy, warming them to their toes, and they tasted copper on their tongues. The whole of the place below them had an atmosphere of mystery, an ancientness that belied the mere twenty years it had allegedly been in existence.

It was here that Cace stopped them, and gestured to the bustling village below.

"Welcome to Whilldri," he said softly, and his eyes met Lilandra's with the precision of a tractor beam. She was immediately pulled in by the thinly veiled curiosity that flashed in them.

The others watched them with adolescent anticipation, until Luke broke the awkward silence.

"Whilldri?" he asked.

"Does the name surprise you?" Cace asked cryptically, smiling an equally secretive smile. Luke seemed to understand, though, and this was even more puzzling.

"Well … yes – I can't help but think of the Wills …" he trailed off suddenly, his face lighting up. "The Wills?"

Cace nodded, and grinned in a way that was so spontaneous that Lilandra was reminded something of her herself.

"Who-ills," he corrected them, over-enunciating the whisper of the double consonant so that they might understand. "As in the same Wills who wrote the Journal upon which the faith of the modern Jedi is based. Direct descendants, actually, but, well, you know, with an 'h'. Same principle. Whilldri – that's just a throwback to our old tendency to name everything we encounter."

Luke looked as though he'd just found a solid gold bar. He turned to his companions to explain hastily.

"The Wills were a race of Jedi … the first, actually … they were friends with the Masassi."

He looked at Lilandra. "Why didn't we think to check the Journal? It's the most obvious connection!"

Lilandra understood what he was saying – this was a little darker, a little more complicated than anything she had envisioned they'd find on this trip, but after all the surprises they'd encountered today, from the ephemeral flicker in the Force aboard the ship, to the realization that Terapinn harbored vanished Jedi in the midst of all its clouds and mist, the pieces did seem to fall into place, including the reason for the Wills' imprisonment.

"Seems to make Palpatine's motive fairly clear," she pointed out, and sighed resignedly. "I guess even the ancients weren't exempt from his Great Jedi Genocide, historically important or not. He just … didn't want anyone to know."