~18~
Chitchat
Han Solo was really very angry.
Angry that his brother- and sister-in-law and his children were lost somewhere in the recesses of wild space.
Angry that his wife alleged to having a vision that implied they were in some kind of considerable danger while simultaneously being lost somewhere in the recesses of wild space.
Angry at the Force itself for not endowing him with its virtues so that he might discover how much danger they were considerably in as they drifted, lost in the recesses of wild space.
Angry enough to need someone to blame.
He stalked down the corridors of the great temple, too quiet now without the explosions issuing forth from behind the closed doors of the laboratory, or the sound of the holoscreen blaring at all hours of the day in the common room, and his rage swelled to the point of necessary release. He strode out the back door of the common room, around the corner of the building, and towards the unused doorway across from the hangar bay where Jaina's hammock was hung.
As he expected, Kerryna Occot lay stretched out in it, swinging lazily back and forth with one of her long, tapered legs hanging over the side, a glass of water in her hand.
"Occot!" he roared as he jogged across the landing pad. "What in hell have you done to my wife and kids?"
Kerryna was so surprised, she dropped her cup. The sound of shattering glass and the hiss as the water evaporated on contact with the hot permacrete sent a stab of foreboding shooting through her.
"I don't know what you mean!" she protested, sitting up.
"You know damn well what I mean, you dark little bitch."
Kerryna shrank back in terror. She'd heard stories about Han Solo's famous temper, but she had thankfully never been its victim. Still, she was not about to quail in the face of the man's attack. This was a woman who'd dealt personally with an Emperor who was a thousand times more violent and abusive than Han Solo, on a good day.
"I might be more inclined to discuss this trifling matter with you if you would kindly use my honorific, that being The Bitch, and not just any mere secondary bitch. Also, may I remind you that I am no longer dark, but rather simply dark-haired, or has your rage rendered you incapable of distinguishing color?"
Han stopped ranting long enough to consider her words, which, after some thought, he decided only angered him more.
"I require a word, Kerryna," he rephrased, with mocking respect.
"That's better. Do you personally require a word, or can I direct any possibly helpful explanations to Leia, care of the common room couch?"
"Not that easy. You explain to me first," Han growled.
"Fair enough," Kerryna shrugged, but prayed that Han couldn't see her jugular throbbing with her heightened pulse. "Now, what is your problem?"
"A small matter of a disturbance in the Force, and a missing starship." Han was looking murderous. "Don't think I haven't seen you skulking around this past week, staying out of everybody's way."
"I do that anyway, not just under extenuating circumstances," Kerryna pointed out.
"Yes, well, case in point, it's been my experience that when people skulk, they're up to something. Besides, your track record is not exactly spotless."
"Point taken," Kerryna shrugged. "But I still think this matter would be better taken up between Leia and myself."
"Also fair," Han conceded. "Cut a deal, shall we?"
"Naturally," Kerryna said smoothly. "Will you agree to leave me alone for the rest of my life if I agree to be as helpful as possible on this matter of the missing ship that, may I remind you, is carrying my sister as well as your extended family, to whom I wish no harm?"
Han narrowed his eyes. "I normally like a shrewd businesswoman, but in this case, I think I'll beg to differ."
"Do we have a deal, Solo?" asked Kerryna, in a voice that was equally cold.
"Sure, but don't expect me to shake on it," he grumbled.
"Not at all. I wouldn't want to catch that charming affliction of yours."
"What's that?" Han asked suspiciously, as Kerryna hopped off the hammock and began sauntering in the direction of the common room door.
She brushed her straight, malt-colored locks over her shoulder, and turned to give him a sympathetic smile.
"Mistrust," she said lightly, and adjusted the lightsaber hanging at her waist before disappearing into the temple.
Leia was lying on her stomach on the common room couch, with a pillow hugged to her chest and her head resting on the upholstered arm. Worry had reduced her to inaction, while Jacen had spent the day slaving over the radar screens, trying desperately to make contact with the crew of the Jadesaber, without success. Their comlinks had been inactivated, and the ship appeared almost to have been cloaked, for Terapinn was well within the reach of the long-distance sound radars, and yet the vessel did not appear.
All afternoon, she'd been dictating worst-case scenarios to herself – they've run out of fuel and been left to drift on the outskirts of the galaxy for all eternity; they've been ravaged by bandits out there on the outer rim; they landed, only to have their intentions mistaken and be taken hostage for another ten years while their captors send word of their slow and tortuous deaths a hundred million miles from their homes – while replaying the scene in the jungle in the somehow unoccupied part of her brain reserved for diplomatic logic.
Thus far, she had managed to convince herself that, somewhere hidden among the memory of what she had witnessed in the woods, there was a clue, some indication that this unexpected shift in plans was actually in the natural order of things, that her brother and her children and her senator had meant to vanish completely without a word of warning, just a flash of suffering and then deep, impenetrable, suffocating silence.
But she couldn't distinguish the real from the imagined, the solid from the shadows that had darted wildly through the trees around her, ignorant of her lying there in the mud. That is, until her clue walked jauntily through the common room door, dressed characteristically in black, whistling a maddeningly happy, oblivious tune.
"Talk time," sang Kerryna Occot, redeemed Sith Lord, former Grand Admiral of the Imperial echelons, and Emperor Palpatine's favorite yet least famous former adolescent mercenary and plaything. "What's happened to the prodigal ones this time, hmm?"
"I'm inclined to admire your coolness in the face of adversity, Kerryna," Leia sighed patiently, not budging from her subdued repose on the couch as the forty-two year old Kerryna dragged over a folding chair and straddled it backwards, still humming.
"But?" Kerryna prompted, arching one immaculate eyebrow.
"But I hardly think it's prudent in this situation," said Leia stiffly. "Particularly not when your sister's gone missing."
"No kidding!"
Kerryna, remarkably, didn't seem to be remotely affected by this news.
"You aren't doing much to discourage my suspicions at the moment, Kerryna," Leia warned, deciding that Kerryna might be easier to deal with if she were sitting up and facing her straight on.
"I know, your husband's just informed me that I'm to be terminated at sundown if I don't directly confess that this is all my fault."
Sitting up, it was then that Leia noticed Han lurking outside the common room door, his hair shining in the sunlight, a cigarra pinched between his index and middle fingers.
"Han!" she barked. He stuck his head around the doorframe, looking righteous.
"Your highness-ness?"
"Get lost. We're having a girly chat."
"You'll be okay?"
"Don't worry," Kerryna bellowed over her shoulder, "I won't eat her."
"That's the least of my concerns!" Han growled, but obeyed his wife and closed the door.
"Now," Leia said, becoming business-like.
"Yes," seconded Kerryna. "As I was saying, I was just outside enjoying my last hours on death row, when your charming husband charmingly accused me of having something to do with this latest charming Solo-Skywalker family tragedy."
"You mentioned a direct confession."
"I didn't confess anything," Kerryna stated flatly. "Although if you'd explain to me precisely what's happened to cause you to lie so listlessly about the academy, I might be of some service."
Leia supposed that Kerryna at least deserved an explanation, since more often than not she was the one singled out as the likely cause of whatever recent strife had befallen the resident families of the Academy.
So, with her heart beating in her throat, Leia recounted to Kerryna the story of her walk in the woods, and the voices, and the fleeing shadows, and the solitary solid figure darting through the trees in the opposite direction, and the way time had seemed to pass as though it wasn't passing at all but rather bounding ahead or biting off pieces of itself and leaving raw, uncomfortable blanks. She told how the Jadesaber had vanished from the radar screens not long after.
Through it all, she failed to see the way Kerryna was becoming noticeably more agitated, her hands twisting in her lap, her teeth gnawing furiously at her lower lip. Perhaps she refused to see, so lost was she in the strange and disturbing retelling of her ordeal, but again and again, her necessary clue darted past her, the only real among the unreal, a force of opposition in its very essence.
So it was that when Leia again saw that lone figure hurrying frantically past, pushing its way through the shadows as though they were clouds of insects, she began to recognize the malt-colored hair flashing in the sunshine, the gleam of the metal tube hanging at the person's waist, the long, black-clad legs and feminine torso, the face hidden behind a cowl … all the things she had ignored when she had been lost in the moment in the forest.
All the things now sitting, draped against the back of a chair, right in front of her.
Her heart turned to ice as she dared to glance up at Kerryna, who was sitting very still indeed, looking at her feet, which were bare. Red polish on pale toes stood out against the gray of the floor, and Leia swallowed hard. She didn't even have to ask. Kerryna's submissive posture said it all.
"The figure in the woods – that was you?"
"Congratulations," Kerryna said sweetly, brushing her hair back over her shoulder.
"Then you saw the vision, too?" Leia asked, naivety taking over for just a second as she wondered if perhaps Kerryna might actually be an ally to her, as bewildered by the occurrences of the past thirty-six hours as she was herself.
But Kerryna didn't answer right away, as she was too preoccupied drawing courage for what she knew she had to do, if not sooner then perhaps later, and Leia's momentary confidence in the woman evaporated the instant Kerryna opened her mouth to say, "I have something I should probably tell you."
Leia eyed her disbelievingly. The retired villain, responsible once again for mayhem? It was too simple. There had to have been accomplices, there had to have been a motive – and she had thought Kerryna incapable of harboring malicious intent towards anyone, her lingering guilt dictated it that way.
But no, Kerryna was sitting here like a child awaiting punishment with hands outstretched, anticipating the cane, confessing everything with the expression on her face.
"How," Leia demanded in a low voice, leaning forward. "How is it even possible that you, after all these years, could still have the potential to wreak havoc?"
Kerryna flinched, for no apparent reason other than the words that sprang to her lips, ones she knew she'd have to say eventually, but was holding back because they would finish her for sure in the eyes of the woman she'd tried for half a decade to redeem herself to.
"Just know this," she said instead. "Your brother and your family and my sister are in no danger. They will be kept safe …"
She halted, looking meaningfully at Leia. "They will be kept safe in the hands of the Jedi."
"By the Force," Leia hissed, and followed that up with an uncharacteristic outpouring of profanity. "They were Jedi, those people in the woods."
"Yes." Kerryna's voice had become very small now.
"And how do you know this, dare I ask?" Leia asked, knowing the answer before Kerryna even had time to phrase it.
"Twenty years ago, I was still allied with the Emperor. And I helped him imprison the people who today inhabit the penal colony of Terapinn."
It was a smooth delivery; Leia had to hand it to her. There was none of the usual blubbering apologies or blatant, panicked denials she had become familiar with while overseeing the trials of the war criminals who had not had time to either go into hiding or to commit suicide before meeting with a fate worse than death at the unforgiving hands of Gilad Pellaeon and Leia Organa-Solo. Nor did Kerryna even attempt to mask the truth somehow, or paint it a brighter color than it actually was. She had just confessed, and that surprised Leia more than even the most contrived of confessionals would have.
It was such a surprise that she almost forgot to be angry, until several minutes had ticked by and she had begun to think of other things. That Kerryna had been responsible for the imprisonment of Jedi was not such a shock. Worse crimes had been committed at the hands of the former fiend of the Republic, the darling of the Empire.
That she had alluded to these people being alive, after twenty years – that was a shock. And that was what made Leia angry.
"These Jedi live, then?" she asked, just to be sure.
"I'm sure of it," Kerryna said. "I've been to the Galaxy Lake to check on them every day since my sister departed. To make sure they would not be committed to a world uninhabited and desolate, and waste their time on the mistakes of the past."
"So you have known for twenty years that these people live, and for the past five you have had the power to do something about it, and yet you leave them there, imprisoned?"
Now Leia's anger was feeling justified. Incredulity was threatening to unleash her fury upon the woman.
"What was I supposed to do?" Kerryna asked helplessly, spreading her hands.
"Bring them home!" Leia shouted. "The minute you knew you could, the moment you realized that what you did was wrong! Or does that moment have yet to come?"
"No!" Kerryna cried, rising from her chair. "I have lived with my mistakes every day for the past five long years, Leia. But if they had been my doing, and my doing alone, I could do my best to reverse them. These are not only my mistakes, though. I only helped carry them out. The man who conceived them has been dead these twenty years, and the rules of redemption leave me powerless to undo a crime I did not commit.
"Surely you know, Leia," she continued, "that you can only be completely forgiven for that which you alone caused. And what I caused was the flight of the people who sought shelter on this world over twenty years ago, at the height of the rebellion. My duty was to chase them out, deliver them into the hands of the Emperor. I did not physically imprison them. I did not kill their children or their husbands and wives and brothers.
"I bid them leave," she said with a cynical sneer, gesturing to the door, " to put it nicely. And I cannot chase them back."
"So you leave the task to your redeemers," Leia said bitterly.
"So I do," Kerryna said soberly. "They are much more capable than I."
"They aren't too scared to stand up to a dead oppressor, you mean," Leia spat.
"Then you think I'm a coward?" Kerryna asked, so innocently it almost made Leia want to eat her words.
A 'coward' was the last word she would've used to describe Kerryna Occot. But that was what she had implied, though in truth she didn't know what to think. Someone had to take responsibility for the actions of Emperor Palpatine, and on the whole, she would rather not have had it be her brother and family.
But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that even Kerryna was powerless. Her whole life, this woman had been answering to an Emperor, a tyrant. He had given her instructions, and she had obeyed without consideration or care.
Now, she had no one to answer to but herself, and though many of her mistakes remained uncovered, there was truth in her words. There was no way to unbind her actions from the actions of the Emperor's. They had existed as an entity, and as much as she might be able to undo the crimes she alone was responsible for, there could be no redemption or retribution for the man to whom she'd been bound for so long.
"None of the mission crew know about this?"
"No," said Kerryna. "Not even Lilandra, though I wish I'd told her. Even the imprisoned Jedi … of all of them, only two know who I am."
"Who?" Leia asked, as though it were important.
"Their leader, and one man, an Augur who was working for the Emperor. His was a hard decision – he foresaw the exile of his people, and had to choose whether he would flee, or join his people as a good patriot would. He will remember me best."
"But they are safe?"
"They are safe," Kerryna assured her.
But as she left Leia's presence with that last, she couldn't help but wonder what seeds the Emperor might have sown in her absence, what treachery he might have devised to ensure that this people he so hated would never arise to have him thrown down, and guilt weighed heavily on her shoulders.
By nightfall, in the midst of a roaring Yavin thunderstorm, worry had sapped her of any other feeling, just as it had done Leia, and the two women were strangely united against something unknown, yet somehow meant to be feared at the same time, while a million miles away, on a world absent from the cares of the galaxy, the mission crew danced beneath the stars.