Chapter II - On A Mission
Anakin groaned and shook his head. "No, Luke. We've been over this before."
Luke sighed in exasperation. "It's necessary, Father. And I'm going to implement it whether you like it or not."
Anakin glared. "Honestly, where do you get your stubborn streak?"
They shared a chuckle.
The elder Skywalker's three-room apartment was fairly small but adequate for one man's needs. He spent most of his time at the garage, so there were few entertainment luxuries here apart from an Xbox and an inexpensive stereo system. The living room/dining room/kitchen was tastefully decorated, with the beautiful fantasy pictures he'd taken a fancy to dominating. At the table, Anakin, Luke and Opal sat together, Opal typing on her laptop, the two men arguing.
"I've gotten to the part where you and Padme reach Tatooine," Opal told him. "Where do you want me to go from here?"
Anakin hesitated. That part of his life was one he tried not to consider, and he did not relish discussing it with Opal, let alone putting it in a book. For that involved the death of his mother, and the first in a series of senseless slayings, and the beginnings of his fall to the dark side...
"Let me think on that for awhile."
Opal shrugged. "Take as long as you need. We're in no rush. Though the publisher did say he'd like the manuscript within two years."
He motioned politely for her to pause her train of thought, then turned back to Luke. "I do not require a bodyguard, Luke. I am not a feeble old man who requires 24-hour supervision. I am a Jedi. I can take care of myself."
"Yes, you are a Jedi. But even Jedi are not invincible. You know that. And there's the possibility the dark side is behind this..."
"The Sith Order is extinct. There's no way..."
"We don't know that for sure. It's a big galaxy. And there are other Force-using factions out there besides Jedi and Sith. Who's to say one of those factions isn't out to destroy the New Jedi Order?"
Anakin snorted. "I've never heard of other Force-using factions."
"For starters," Opal volunteered, "there's the Nightsisters and Singing Mountain Clan of Dathomir, the Prophets of the Dark Side, the Sons of the Sith here on Earth, various self- proclaimed wizards and magicians..."
"Mrs. Patten," Anakin interrupted. "You'd best head home. We'll work on the manuscript a little more tomorrow."
She nodded in farewell, disconnected her laptop, packed it up, and left.
Luke watched her go. "She's a nice woman. Interested in her?"
Anakin wondered what Luke was getting at. "She's a fine writer. Too shy to submit her work anywhere, unfortunately, which is why I hired her as a ghostwriter. Getting this book published may give her the courage she needs to submit her own writing."
Luke gave him an expectant look. "Anything else?"
Was Luke hinting at what he thought he was hinting at? "Luke, she's a friend. Nothing more. I'm not interested in a romantic relationship. No woman could replace your mother. And besides," and he cast an expectant eye on Luke, "she's much closer to your age."
Luke rolled his bright blue eyes. "Please, no more matchmaking. You set me up with Darcy, and it was a nightmare. She wouldn't stop talking throughout the entire date. I'm surprised she didn't lose her voice."
"Sorry to hear that, but I thought you might appreciate a woman in your life. After all, I killed Mara Jade and therefore your future bride. The possibilities for your destined soulmate are endless."
"Can we change the subject?" asked Luke testily.
The eternal hiss-whoosh of Anakin's respirator nearly drowned out his chuckle. Ever since Cody had revealed that Mara Jade and Luke were to wed in the comic books, Anakin could never resist poking fun at his son. Privately, though, he thought that his idealistic, adventurous, loyal son would be horribly paired with the vicious, back- stabbing, emotionless Emperor's Hand. But then, he'd never really gotten to know Mara, so she could have had another side to her personality -- and he'd never know now, now that he'd run her over with Amethyst's car a year ago.
"Look, I know you want your privacy, Father, but the guards will stay out of sight, I promise. You won't even know they're there."
"It'll be stealth troopers, then," Anakin noted with a healthy dose of distaste. The mere mention of those soldiers rankled him. Stealth troopers were a strain of clone developed shortly after the Purges, their DNA liberally seasoned with Jedi genetic material to heighten their senses and grant them a measure of invisibility in the Force. Controversial in any era, their production hadn't pleased him even as a Sith, and he didn't want any contact with them now.
"I'm sorry, but it's the only way. We're both in great danger, and on Earth you're sadly underprotected. These troopers are the best protection for you."
"You aren't much safer when you're gallivanting around on Republic missions without so much as a Rogue pilot to escort your ship."
"Don't worry, this trip is different. I'm taking all my teenage and adult students with me. They'll need the practice for their solo missions someday."
Anakin gave a snort of laughter. "What, all six of you?"
Luke smiled despite himself. Five adult Padawans and sixteen Jedi children were a pitiful-seeming start to the New Jedi Order, but still a start. And if each of those twenty- one students took on two or more students upon attaining Knighthood, and each of those took on more still, the Order could grow swiftly.
"What sort of mission requires the services of six Jedi?" inquired Anakin.
"Pirates have laid siege to major settlements on Tatooine, including Mos Eisley, Mos Espa, and Bestine," Luke explained. "Moisture farms and fringe settlements have been robbed and their residents beaten or even killed. The Jawa caravans have been attacked several times, and even the Hutts are being harassed.
"We're to halt further attacks, contact the pirate leader, and find out what their intentions are. Then we're to either reach a compromise with them, if they're willing to negotiate, or drive them away. Mon Mothma estimates that the mission will take about two weeks."
Anakin listened gravely. "I have a bad feeling about this. There's more to it than simply disgruntled pirates out for a fight."
"What I don't understand is why Tatooine," Luke said, puzzled. "It's just a ball of dust and sand. If there's a bright center to the universe, that's the planet it's farthest from."
"Funny, that's what Jason says about Earth," Anakin replied. "Except he uses plenty of profanity when he says it. But seriously, the entire galaxy asked 'why Naboo' when Darth Sidious and the Trade Federation invaded your mother's homeworld. And we both know what came of that. I don't know if the Tatooine crisis is something of that magnitude, but all the same, I advise you to use caution."
"I wish you could come," Luke said wistfully. "You'd be a great boon to the mission, having lived on Tatooine before."
Anakin closed his eyes, remembering his childhood days on Tatooine. Podracing, the thrill of his life, and his mother, kind, gentle, yet firm when it came to discipline and instruction. The Jedi, Qui-gon, who had introduced him to his gift in the Force. Padme, an oasis of beauty in Tatooine's rough-hewn dryness. But there had also been Watto, greedy and irritable, prone to rage-filled bouts of screaming and abuse, as well as the brutal Sebulba, a bully both on and off the race course. And of course, there was the incident ten years later...
"Even if I weren't in exile, I don't think I could bring myself to go," he said quietly. "There are... memories associated with Tatooine that I don't care to revisit."
"Like the Tusken incident?" As soon as the words passed Luke's lips Anakin caught the self-condemning thought /Damn! I shouldn't have said that!/
"Yes," Anakin replied. "Like the Tusken incident." The rage, the darkness, the agony he had tasted during that massacre... yet also that power, savage and addictive as any drug. That brief foray into the dark side had been only the beginning of nearly a quarter century of senseless, agonizing evil wrought at the hands if him and his master.
"Of all the things I've done," he said softly, "that sickens me the most. Partly because it profanes the memory of my mother, but mostly because it was my first step down the twisted road of the dark side."
Luke smiled and gently patted Anakin's arm. "I don't know much about the Sandpeople, but I think they would forgive you if they could."
Anakin grasped his son's hand. "What I always loved about your mother was her unfailing optimism. You're like her in that respect."
Luke stood. "Well, I'd better be going. Our shuttle leaves in an hour. Your guards will meet us at the landing site."
"What of your child Padawans? Where will they be staying?"
"I wanted to ask if you would continue their training. I don't want to interrupt their lessons for two weeks."
"I can do that. But where will they live? Certainly not here in my apartment."
"That's another reason I'm here."
"No way!" shrieked Jason. "I can handle having a bounty hunter in the house for a month and a half, but not sixteen Force-strong brats!"
"Come on!" urged Patrick. "It's not like we'll be wrangling the little monkeys by ourselves. Emily and Steve offered to take their paid vacation days early to help us, and the rest of the Elite will help out where they can. Besides, it's for Luke."
"Luke shmuke zuke," grunted Jason, hauling himself out of the engine of a Toyota Camry that was in its death throes. "What's that got to do with it?"
"He's the boss' son, for one thing," Patrick pointed out as he finished reattaching a loose hose in a Volkswagon Jetta. "And if he weren't in the middle of giving this guy a price quote on his POS car, he'd probably have a few words with you about now."
"Can't Luke find another babysitter?"
"He asked the Elite..."
"And why's he scootin' off on this secret mission anyway when he's got an assassin on his tail?"
"The assassin's part of the reason why he's leaving, remember? If he's no longer on Earth, maybe the guy will be thrown off his trail."
Jason flung his grease-stained work gloves on the table. "Pat, remember last year before Stellar-Con? When things were quiet and simple and peaceful and geek Zen? Why couldn't it have stayed that way? I mean, it used to be that the biggest thing that would happen here was that some idiot tourist would get chased down the highway by a bear or accidentally walk in on a Sons of the Sith meeting. Now a month don't go by without something in this town getting blown up or blaster-burned or have a landspeeder run through it! First Imps nuked the convention center, then Anakin's car got bombed by Rebel yahoos, yesterday was the boat-blasting..."
"Quit whining," grumped Patrick. "Change isn't bad. I think the planet's improved since we came in contact with the galaxy at large."
"I'll grant you that, but I wish things wouldn't have gotten so complicated. And I'm NOT playing host to Jedi younglings." He bent over the Camry's engine again.
"That's a shame," Patrick sighed. "I guess we don't get the $100-a-day payment the Republic's offering."
"$100 a day?!" Jason's head jerked up and thunked against the hood. "Yow! Why didn't you mention that earlier?"
"You didn't ask."
"Are they serious? $100 a day for Jedi daycare?"
"$100," Patrick said slowly. "Per Padawan. Per day. For fourteen days. Plus expenses."
Jason's mouth opened and shut like the jaws of a landlocked fish. "That... that... that's over twenty-two thousand bucks! Are they desperate or what?"
"They were expecting several families to step forward and agree to each take in one or two," Patrick explained. "But we were the only volunteers, so we got the whole caboodle."
"Don't tell me we're already bound and committed for this."
"Yup. Before Luke leaves in... fifteen minutes he's going to drop the kids off here, then we'll walk them back to our place. Then Anakin's going to give them a Jedi lesson and we'll put them to bed. Then the fun begins tomorrow morning."
"You're too damn efficient, bro."
As it turned out, the entire Elite accompanied Luke to the meadow that served as a mini spaceport for Star City. His entire Jedi Order -- all twenty-one of them -- gathered around him, the children to say goodbye, the adults to protect their master (though if someone had asked them, they probably would have told them it was simply to keep the kids from crawling all over him).
Two of the adult Padawans were human. Chyna Skleric was a former gunrunner from Nar Shadda, with pale skin, jet-black hair, and silver-blue eyes. She had been captured by the Empire days before the Republic's instatement, and Luke had discovered her on the prison world of Kessel. Grateful to Luke for rescuing her, she had quite willingly joined the Jedi Order.
Gabriel DeBour was from Earth and was a former member of the Paris France Outpost of the Fighting 501st fan club. Being a Stargeek, he was already quite familiar with the Jedi Order and was progressing quite rapidly in his training. Being a handsome young man with dark hair and eyes, his one flaw was that he tended to attract women wherever he went, a practice he didn't encourage but didn't exactly discourage either.
Korbanna (also known as Korie), a silver-furred teenage Wookie whose only garment was a leather-and-durasteel shoulder holster from which a blaster and her lightsaber hung, towered over the rest of the trainees. Once an Imperial slave, it had been her telepathic skills that had attracted Luke to her. She spoke no Basic and so wore a translation device on her shoulder, but she preferred to speak telepathically to the other Jedi.
Quite in contrast with Korie's tall, shimmering form, Hekku was a Geonosian -- short, gnarled, and crook-legged with locust-like wings and a long sour-looking face that was puckered as if he'd been sucking on a bar of cleaning compound. But he was fond of the Wookie, and the two were practically inseparable. Hekku had grown up in a Corusant circus until a routine tissue-sample analysis had revealed his midi-chlorian count was exceptionally high. He'd been quite willing to quit the circus and joint the Order.
The last adult trainee was also the newest -- Xna, the son of Republic Fleet second-in- command Dzi and of the serpentine Ramothian species. Luke had known since before the Battle of Endor that Xna was ideal Jedi material, but his father had been reluctant to permit Luke to train him. The old Jedi Order had almost entirely separated Padawans from their families, and Dzi had been afraid to sever contact with his only child. But Luke's Order was less strict and encouraged contact with families, and after being assured that he was in no danger of losing his son, Dzi had allowed Xna to join.
"Be careful, dude," Cody told Luke, slapping his shoulder.
"I will," he promised.
"Too bad Leia can't be here to see you off," Amethyst said.
"Ah, she should enjoy her honeymoon with Han," Luke replied.
Anakin pried a Twi'leck child's arms off from around his shin, then approached Luke. "Are you certain this is the proper choice, Luke?"
"Yes, Father. I trust you with these Padawans' welfare and their training in my absence. The others will help you. I'm sure you'll do a good job."
"We all will help," promised Gregory. "The entire Elite's willing to chip in."
"Hey, speak for yourself," grumped Zack.
"Watch it, bud," Gregory shot back. "I'm paying you twenty bucks a day to help out here."
"Good luck," Anakin wished his son, embracing him.
"You too. You'll need it."
He chuckled. "They're children. How difficult can they be to manage?"
Luke smiled. "You've never spent much time around large groups of children. I think you're in for a surprise. See you in two weeks."
The Jedi boarded the passenger liner. Luke was about to take a seat next to a half-asleep businessman and two missionaries when he saw Liz waving furiously for him to join her.
"Liz? Fett?" He moved to sit beside them. "What are you doing here?"
"Going to Corusant to pick up our baby, of course," Liz replied. "This ship's got a layover there."
Luke snapped his fingers. "That's right! Too bad I can't go with you. I'll be sure to come back and see the little one once we're done."
"You're dealing with pirates," Fett noted cynically. "The child will be in the throes of puberty by the time you come back."
"Will not!" Liz snapped.
"I don't anticipate too much trouble with this mission," Luke replied. "The reports from Tatooine show these pirates to be cowards. They run at the first sign of resistance. The negotiations will be short."
"Famous last words," Gabriel muttered.
"Are you implying the mission will be a failure?" asked Luke.
"Au contrair, Master!" Gabriel protested. "I am simply worried. I feel something... not right. Elusive. As if all is not what it seems."
Luke nodded. "I'm glad to see you're keeping your senses open, Gabriel. Thank you for the warning. We'll proceed cautiously."
Anakin groaned and shook his head. "No, Luke. We've been over this before."
Luke sighed in exasperation. "It's necessary, Father. And I'm going to implement it whether you like it or not."
Anakin glared. "Honestly, where do you get your stubborn streak?"
They shared a chuckle.
The elder Skywalker's three-room apartment was fairly small but adequate for one man's needs. He spent most of his time at the garage, so there were few entertainment luxuries here apart from an Xbox and an inexpensive stereo system. The living room/dining room/kitchen was tastefully decorated, with the beautiful fantasy pictures he'd taken a fancy to dominating. At the table, Anakin, Luke and Opal sat together, Opal typing on her laptop, the two men arguing.
"I've gotten to the part where you and Padme reach Tatooine," Opal told him. "Where do you want me to go from here?"
Anakin hesitated. That part of his life was one he tried not to consider, and he did not relish discussing it with Opal, let alone putting it in a book. For that involved the death of his mother, and the first in a series of senseless slayings, and the beginnings of his fall to the dark side...
"Let me think on that for awhile."
Opal shrugged. "Take as long as you need. We're in no rush. Though the publisher did say he'd like the manuscript within two years."
He motioned politely for her to pause her train of thought, then turned back to Luke. "I do not require a bodyguard, Luke. I am not a feeble old man who requires 24-hour supervision. I am a Jedi. I can take care of myself."
"Yes, you are a Jedi. But even Jedi are not invincible. You know that. And there's the possibility the dark side is behind this..."
"The Sith Order is extinct. There's no way..."
"We don't know that for sure. It's a big galaxy. And there are other Force-using factions out there besides Jedi and Sith. Who's to say one of those factions isn't out to destroy the New Jedi Order?"
Anakin snorted. "I've never heard of other Force-using factions."
"For starters," Opal volunteered, "there's the Nightsisters and Singing Mountain Clan of Dathomir, the Prophets of the Dark Side, the Sons of the Sith here on Earth, various self- proclaimed wizards and magicians..."
"Mrs. Patten," Anakin interrupted. "You'd best head home. We'll work on the manuscript a little more tomorrow."
She nodded in farewell, disconnected her laptop, packed it up, and left.
Luke watched her go. "She's a nice woman. Interested in her?"
Anakin wondered what Luke was getting at. "She's a fine writer. Too shy to submit her work anywhere, unfortunately, which is why I hired her as a ghostwriter. Getting this book published may give her the courage she needs to submit her own writing."
Luke gave him an expectant look. "Anything else?"
Was Luke hinting at what he thought he was hinting at? "Luke, she's a friend. Nothing more. I'm not interested in a romantic relationship. No woman could replace your mother. And besides," and he cast an expectant eye on Luke, "she's much closer to your age."
Luke rolled his bright blue eyes. "Please, no more matchmaking. You set me up with Darcy, and it was a nightmare. She wouldn't stop talking throughout the entire date. I'm surprised she didn't lose her voice."
"Sorry to hear that, but I thought you might appreciate a woman in your life. After all, I killed Mara Jade and therefore your future bride. The possibilities for your destined soulmate are endless."
"Can we change the subject?" asked Luke testily.
The eternal hiss-whoosh of Anakin's respirator nearly drowned out his chuckle. Ever since Cody had revealed that Mara Jade and Luke were to wed in the comic books, Anakin could never resist poking fun at his son. Privately, though, he thought that his idealistic, adventurous, loyal son would be horribly paired with the vicious, back- stabbing, emotionless Emperor's Hand. But then, he'd never really gotten to know Mara, so she could have had another side to her personality -- and he'd never know now, now that he'd run her over with Amethyst's car a year ago.
"Look, I know you want your privacy, Father, but the guards will stay out of sight, I promise. You won't even know they're there."
"It'll be stealth troopers, then," Anakin noted with a healthy dose of distaste. The mere mention of those soldiers rankled him. Stealth troopers were a strain of clone developed shortly after the Purges, their DNA liberally seasoned with Jedi genetic material to heighten their senses and grant them a measure of invisibility in the Force. Controversial in any era, their production hadn't pleased him even as a Sith, and he didn't want any contact with them now.
"I'm sorry, but it's the only way. We're both in great danger, and on Earth you're sadly underprotected. These troopers are the best protection for you."
"You aren't much safer when you're gallivanting around on Republic missions without so much as a Rogue pilot to escort your ship."
"Don't worry, this trip is different. I'm taking all my teenage and adult students with me. They'll need the practice for their solo missions someday."
Anakin gave a snort of laughter. "What, all six of you?"
Luke smiled despite himself. Five adult Padawans and sixteen Jedi children were a pitiful-seeming start to the New Jedi Order, but still a start. And if each of those twenty- one students took on two or more students upon attaining Knighthood, and each of those took on more still, the Order could grow swiftly.
"What sort of mission requires the services of six Jedi?" inquired Anakin.
"Pirates have laid siege to major settlements on Tatooine, including Mos Eisley, Mos Espa, and Bestine," Luke explained. "Moisture farms and fringe settlements have been robbed and their residents beaten or even killed. The Jawa caravans have been attacked several times, and even the Hutts are being harassed.
"We're to halt further attacks, contact the pirate leader, and find out what their intentions are. Then we're to either reach a compromise with them, if they're willing to negotiate, or drive them away. Mon Mothma estimates that the mission will take about two weeks."
Anakin listened gravely. "I have a bad feeling about this. There's more to it than simply disgruntled pirates out for a fight."
"What I don't understand is why Tatooine," Luke said, puzzled. "It's just a ball of dust and sand. If there's a bright center to the universe, that's the planet it's farthest from."
"Funny, that's what Jason says about Earth," Anakin replied. "Except he uses plenty of profanity when he says it. But seriously, the entire galaxy asked 'why Naboo' when Darth Sidious and the Trade Federation invaded your mother's homeworld. And we both know what came of that. I don't know if the Tatooine crisis is something of that magnitude, but all the same, I advise you to use caution."
"I wish you could come," Luke said wistfully. "You'd be a great boon to the mission, having lived on Tatooine before."
Anakin closed his eyes, remembering his childhood days on Tatooine. Podracing, the thrill of his life, and his mother, kind, gentle, yet firm when it came to discipline and instruction. The Jedi, Qui-gon, who had introduced him to his gift in the Force. Padme, an oasis of beauty in Tatooine's rough-hewn dryness. But there had also been Watto, greedy and irritable, prone to rage-filled bouts of screaming and abuse, as well as the brutal Sebulba, a bully both on and off the race course. And of course, there was the incident ten years later...
"Even if I weren't in exile, I don't think I could bring myself to go," he said quietly. "There are... memories associated with Tatooine that I don't care to revisit."
"Like the Tusken incident?" As soon as the words passed Luke's lips Anakin caught the self-condemning thought /Damn! I shouldn't have said that!/
"Yes," Anakin replied. "Like the Tusken incident." The rage, the darkness, the agony he had tasted during that massacre... yet also that power, savage and addictive as any drug. That brief foray into the dark side had been only the beginning of nearly a quarter century of senseless, agonizing evil wrought at the hands if him and his master.
"Of all the things I've done," he said softly, "that sickens me the most. Partly because it profanes the memory of my mother, but mostly because it was my first step down the twisted road of the dark side."
Luke smiled and gently patted Anakin's arm. "I don't know much about the Sandpeople, but I think they would forgive you if they could."
Anakin grasped his son's hand. "What I always loved about your mother was her unfailing optimism. You're like her in that respect."
Luke stood. "Well, I'd better be going. Our shuttle leaves in an hour. Your guards will meet us at the landing site."
"What of your child Padawans? Where will they be staying?"
"I wanted to ask if you would continue their training. I don't want to interrupt their lessons for two weeks."
"I can do that. But where will they live? Certainly not here in my apartment."
"That's another reason I'm here."
"No way!" shrieked Jason. "I can handle having a bounty hunter in the house for a month and a half, but not sixteen Force-strong brats!"
"Come on!" urged Patrick. "It's not like we'll be wrangling the little monkeys by ourselves. Emily and Steve offered to take their paid vacation days early to help us, and the rest of the Elite will help out where they can. Besides, it's for Luke."
"Luke shmuke zuke," grunted Jason, hauling himself out of the engine of a Toyota Camry that was in its death throes. "What's that got to do with it?"
"He's the boss' son, for one thing," Patrick pointed out as he finished reattaching a loose hose in a Volkswagon Jetta. "And if he weren't in the middle of giving this guy a price quote on his POS car, he'd probably have a few words with you about now."
"Can't Luke find another babysitter?"
"He asked the Elite..."
"And why's he scootin' off on this secret mission anyway when he's got an assassin on his tail?"
"The assassin's part of the reason why he's leaving, remember? If he's no longer on Earth, maybe the guy will be thrown off his trail."
Jason flung his grease-stained work gloves on the table. "Pat, remember last year before Stellar-Con? When things were quiet and simple and peaceful and geek Zen? Why couldn't it have stayed that way? I mean, it used to be that the biggest thing that would happen here was that some idiot tourist would get chased down the highway by a bear or accidentally walk in on a Sons of the Sith meeting. Now a month don't go by without something in this town getting blown up or blaster-burned or have a landspeeder run through it! First Imps nuked the convention center, then Anakin's car got bombed by Rebel yahoos, yesterday was the boat-blasting..."
"Quit whining," grumped Patrick. "Change isn't bad. I think the planet's improved since we came in contact with the galaxy at large."
"I'll grant you that, but I wish things wouldn't have gotten so complicated. And I'm NOT playing host to Jedi younglings." He bent over the Camry's engine again.
"That's a shame," Patrick sighed. "I guess we don't get the $100-a-day payment the Republic's offering."
"$100 a day?!" Jason's head jerked up and thunked against the hood. "Yow! Why didn't you mention that earlier?"
"You didn't ask."
"Are they serious? $100 a day for Jedi daycare?"
"$100," Patrick said slowly. "Per Padawan. Per day. For fourteen days. Plus expenses."
Jason's mouth opened and shut like the jaws of a landlocked fish. "That... that... that's over twenty-two thousand bucks! Are they desperate or what?"
"They were expecting several families to step forward and agree to each take in one or two," Patrick explained. "But we were the only volunteers, so we got the whole caboodle."
"Don't tell me we're already bound and committed for this."
"Yup. Before Luke leaves in... fifteen minutes he's going to drop the kids off here, then we'll walk them back to our place. Then Anakin's going to give them a Jedi lesson and we'll put them to bed. Then the fun begins tomorrow morning."
"You're too damn efficient, bro."
As it turned out, the entire Elite accompanied Luke to the meadow that served as a mini spaceport for Star City. His entire Jedi Order -- all twenty-one of them -- gathered around him, the children to say goodbye, the adults to protect their master (though if someone had asked them, they probably would have told them it was simply to keep the kids from crawling all over him).
Two of the adult Padawans were human. Chyna Skleric was a former gunrunner from Nar Shadda, with pale skin, jet-black hair, and silver-blue eyes. She had been captured by the Empire days before the Republic's instatement, and Luke had discovered her on the prison world of Kessel. Grateful to Luke for rescuing her, she had quite willingly joined the Jedi Order.
Gabriel DeBour was from Earth and was a former member of the Paris France Outpost of the Fighting 501st fan club. Being a Stargeek, he was already quite familiar with the Jedi Order and was progressing quite rapidly in his training. Being a handsome young man with dark hair and eyes, his one flaw was that he tended to attract women wherever he went, a practice he didn't encourage but didn't exactly discourage either.
Korbanna (also known as Korie), a silver-furred teenage Wookie whose only garment was a leather-and-durasteel shoulder holster from which a blaster and her lightsaber hung, towered over the rest of the trainees. Once an Imperial slave, it had been her telepathic skills that had attracted Luke to her. She spoke no Basic and so wore a translation device on her shoulder, but she preferred to speak telepathically to the other Jedi.
Quite in contrast with Korie's tall, shimmering form, Hekku was a Geonosian -- short, gnarled, and crook-legged with locust-like wings and a long sour-looking face that was puckered as if he'd been sucking on a bar of cleaning compound. But he was fond of the Wookie, and the two were practically inseparable. Hekku had grown up in a Corusant circus until a routine tissue-sample analysis had revealed his midi-chlorian count was exceptionally high. He'd been quite willing to quit the circus and joint the Order.
The last adult trainee was also the newest -- Xna, the son of Republic Fleet second-in- command Dzi and of the serpentine Ramothian species. Luke had known since before the Battle of Endor that Xna was ideal Jedi material, but his father had been reluctant to permit Luke to train him. The old Jedi Order had almost entirely separated Padawans from their families, and Dzi had been afraid to sever contact with his only child. But Luke's Order was less strict and encouraged contact with families, and after being assured that he was in no danger of losing his son, Dzi had allowed Xna to join.
"Be careful, dude," Cody told Luke, slapping his shoulder.
"I will," he promised.
"Too bad Leia can't be here to see you off," Amethyst said.
"Ah, she should enjoy her honeymoon with Han," Luke replied.
Anakin pried a Twi'leck child's arms off from around his shin, then approached Luke. "Are you certain this is the proper choice, Luke?"
"Yes, Father. I trust you with these Padawans' welfare and their training in my absence. The others will help you. I'm sure you'll do a good job."
"We all will help," promised Gregory. "The entire Elite's willing to chip in."
"Hey, speak for yourself," grumped Zack.
"Watch it, bud," Gregory shot back. "I'm paying you twenty bucks a day to help out here."
"Good luck," Anakin wished his son, embracing him.
"You too. You'll need it."
He chuckled. "They're children. How difficult can they be to manage?"
Luke smiled. "You've never spent much time around large groups of children. I think you're in for a surprise. See you in two weeks."
The Jedi boarded the passenger liner. Luke was about to take a seat next to a half-asleep businessman and two missionaries when he saw Liz waving furiously for him to join her.
"Liz? Fett?" He moved to sit beside them. "What are you doing here?"
"Going to Corusant to pick up our baby, of course," Liz replied. "This ship's got a layover there."
Luke snapped his fingers. "That's right! Too bad I can't go with you. I'll be sure to come back and see the little one once we're done."
"You're dealing with pirates," Fett noted cynically. "The child will be in the throes of puberty by the time you come back."
"Will not!" Liz snapped.
"I don't anticipate too much trouble with this mission," Luke replied. "The reports from Tatooine show these pirates to be cowards. They run at the first sign of resistance. The negotiations will be short."
"Famous last words," Gabriel muttered.
"Are you implying the mission will be a failure?" asked Luke.
"Au contrair, Master!" Gabriel protested. "I am simply worried. I feel something... not right. Elusive. As if all is not what it seems."
Luke nodded. "I'm glad to see you're keeping your senses open, Gabriel. Thank you for the warning. We'll proceed cautiously."