Chapter 3: The Corellia Run, Part I
Dinner was better than his usual cardboard ration.
"This is really quite good."
"Thank Tenel Ka," said Jaina, her mouth half full. "She's the cook. Actually does it the old fashioned way. We have a modified heating-unit hooked up in the galley and she actually heats things over it."
'Jaq' looked at Tenel Ka with a new sense of respect. He hardly approved of smugglers, but anyone with such a rare skill – who's usefulness was becoming readily apparent – was to be admired.
"My complements, Ms. Djo."
"Tenel Ka is sufficient."
"Just don't drop the 'Ka,'" said Jaina, grinning. "That really pisses her off."
Tenel Ka grunted, causing Jaina to give a short burst of laughter.
'Jaq' just continued eating.
"So, I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me more about our reward now that we're underway?"
"Not unless you've taken the exceedingly foolish measure of eliminating the option of changing course Captain Draygo."
"Nope. Not that stupid."
"I expected as much. I do apologize, but I have no intention of giving away information that could reveal more about my mission than you need to know."
Tenel Ka spoke up. "And how much, Jaq Antillies, do we need to know?"
"Nothing more than you do already."
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"Getting into Corellia is tricky, but it can be done. Our plan is based partially on the undoubtedly exaggerated stories of people who've done it. Part of it is based on reliable intel we've bought off of the Karrde group's agents via a secure hyperspace link. Thoroughly encoded. Karrde's the best, and his group is trustworthy. No one else, let alone the Corellians, is going to know we have this info. Part of the plan is our own deductions. Part is our instincts."
Jaina stood at the front of the cockpit, a holographic display of the Corellian system floating in the air beside her. Tenel Ka sat beside her, entering some last minute changes to their course
"The instincts part – are you sure that's wise?"
"No. But it usually is. And besides, you've already committed yourself to this. We could turn you in to the Corellian authorities for pretty darn big reward, that's a lot more sure than what you're promising us."
"Point taken."
"Now here's the plan." She hit a button on the consol beside her and a line appeared, linking Corellia to parts unknown. "This," she said "is our course form Abregado-rea to Corellia. Now, our first jump out of Abregado-rea took us coreward a few parsecs, to throw off any potential pursuit, and incase anyone backtraces our route. This trajectory also gets us into the system at such an angle as to put us as close to Corellia as possible when the gravity-well pulls us out of hyperspace. And we are going to let the gravity-well pull us out. Doing that too often is no good for the hyperspace engine, but we barely ever do that, so we should be fine."
She hit another button and the display zoomed in on Corellia. The line showed a complicated descent pattern.
"We'll be entering the atmosphere here, " she continued, pointing at the point at which the line entered the holographic haze surrounding the image of the planet. "Our proposed course avoids as many of the known surveillance and orbital defense satellites as possible, but there's no way we can avoid them all. Besides, they may have changed the positioning since our data was gathered."
Jaq spoke up. "These orbital defenses – can your ship handle them?"
"As long as we don't stick around too long, yes. The Kestrel is more than capable of taking a few hits."
Jaq nodded in satisfaction.
"Once we enter the atmosphere, things get interesting. We put the engines into cool-down mode and glide under the cloud cover."
"Are you sure we don't just fall?"
"Funny Antillies, very funny. Here's how it is: not many people study aeronautics these days but I have. Back when I was swoop racing on Nar Shaada I studied anything I could get my hands on that would let my improve my speed, and so few people bother with aeronautics these days that the texts – really dense stuff, I don't recommend it for casual reading – are usually free. And my first partner and I practically built the Kestrel from the ground up."
"I apologize Captain Draygo."
"Apology accepted. Anyway, what we do is glide to here, " she said, pointing to a mountainous spot on the same continent as Coronet, "and use the repulsors to land. Then we cover the ship in camo netting and we hike to the nearest town – about twenty miles – and get a maglev ride to wherever we're going."
"Coronet. We're going to Coronet. Captain Draygo, while I am more than capable of handling a twenty mile hike in the mountains, I can't vouch for the people we're here to collect."
"… You've never met these people before, have you?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Tenel Ka, you may have to carry some old people. You up to it?"
"I am strong Captain, but this is a rather unreasonable request."
"That was a joke Tenel Ka, even if it wasn't a very good one."
"Ah. Aha."
Jaina looked back to Jaq, who was giving them an odd look.
"It's called 'banter,' Mr. Antillies. It's a skill I'm trying to teach my first mate. Would you like lessons as well?"
Jaq appeared to think for a moment.
"No thank you, Captain. I believe you have enough on your plate teaching Ms. Djo."
Jaina's face split in a radiant grin. "Someone's a fast learner."
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An hour before they were due to be pulled out of hyperspace by Corellia's gravity well, Jaq joined Jaina in cockpit. Tenel Ka was meditating in the cargo bay.
"I just wanted to thank you," said Jaq, "for taking this job."
Jaina grunted. "Thank Tenel Ka. She's the one who agreed to it."
"You're the captain you could have vetoed her."
"I'm the captain of a two person crew, Mr. Antillies. I can't exactly alienate the other member of that crew."
"She's from a primitive planet and she's had no access to information about the galaxy at large for most of her life. She had no idea how dangerous making the Corellia Run is. You could have refused without tearing your crew apart."
"Could I have? Tenel Ka gets pretty weird sometimes, when she thinks she's having magical instincts."
"Magical?"
"She says she's a witch. It's a Dathomiri thing."
"I …see."
"Yeah. It's pretty weird. Hardly the weirdest thing you'll hear, or the oddest person you'll meet, if you live on the fringe long enough. Which you haven't."
"It's that obvious?"
"Yep. You're way too polished, and in the wrong way. You're a military man, aren't you?"
"I'm not going to answer that."
"I thought as much."
"So who and what on the fringe is stranger than a woman who claims to have magical powers?"
"The rumors, for one. There are people who say Luke Skywalker is still alive. Some even claim to have seen him in a few of the seedier ports."
Jaq chuckled.
"Then there are the Darth Vader sightings. And the people who claim he was Anakin Skywalker – some war hero from the Clone Wars. Folks talk about Corellia being a giant space ship. And of course there's always the usual talk about Zonama Sekot and Lusankya."
"Those last two you here everywhere."
"Yeah, but do you hear the stories about the Emperor's Hand defecting."
"No. That's a good one though."
"Do you think she was real or just another urban legend?"
"The Emperor's Hand? She either didn't exist or the stories about her became greatly exaggerated in the course of the telling. Changing appearance? Using telekinesis? Even carrying a lightsaber? Sounds to me like those stories grew out of the stories about the Jedi, from people wanting to believe they still existed in some form."
An alarm went off on the console beside Jaina. She turned to her companion.
"Do me a favor, Jaq? Go Tenel Ka meditation time is over."
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They came out of hyperspace just inside Corellia's defensive perimeter, and the firing began immediately. A transmission came in simultaneously: "You have entered the space of the Corellian system without transmitting proper authorization. You will power down your engines immediately or your ship will be destroyed."
Jaina sat in the pilot's seat, Tenel Ka beside her in the co-pilot's, and Jaq strapped in behind them in one of the two passenger seats they barely ever used. Jaina grinned maniacally.
"Like hell." And then she began to fly.
Jaq knew pilots. He'd seen more pilots fly than he could count, had even been one. He knew pilots, and he knew Captain Jaina Draygo was something else. She dodged, she span, she pulled turns that taxed the inertial compensators beyond their limits. But what was remarkable about the way Jaina Draygo flew was that she seemed to get into the rhythm of it, in a way that few pilots Jaq knew could, and those few were veterans who'd been flying and fighting much longer than the young captain. She seemed to instinctively know the defense platform's firing patterns. She dodged as though she knew where the next shot would come from. She danced.
And then they were into the atmosphere and under the clouds and Jaina was talking, more calm than any pilot had the right to be immediately out of battle, without the break that landing provided to let the adrenaline subside:
"Cut the engines and begin cool-down sequence."
They glided for a while, marvelously serene, Jaq just staring, for once, at the sky in front of him as Jaina kept them under cloud cover using the maneuvering repulsors.
A crackling, then speech from the com: "This is Corellian Defense Force. Surrender control of your ship to us or prepare to be destroyed."
"Shut off the com, Tenel Ka."
Tenel Ka, who had been working on the cool-down sequence, didn't even look away from her consol as she reached over and flipped the com switch. And then they were off again, dodging, this time with Tenel Ka returning fire via a holographic display linked one of the turrets while still performing the cool-down routine, all with only maneuvering repulsors. Eventually the headhunters and TIEs broke off the pursuit.
"They are planning to catch us once we land," said Tenel Ka. Jaina nodded, and continued their nearly unpowered descent.
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They had landed, Tenel Ka reported, only about ten kilometers from where they had planned to. Jaina seemed please with this. Apparently it was well within her preferred margin of error, one that 'Jaq' felt was perfectly reasonable. She stood up and gestured in the direction of the cargo bay.
"Jaq, if you'd be so kind as to help me get the camo netting while Tenel Ka changes into something less reptilian?" she said with a nod to Tenel Ka, who was in the process of leaving the cockpit.
"Of course."
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Tenel Ka emerged from the ship when he and Jaina were half way through putting the netting up. She was dressed in black denim pants and a tight white shirt, and was hefting a knapsack that, 'Jaq' assumed her bowcaster. The woman didn't seem the sort to leave her weapon behind. Jaina, he noted, had stashed a tube the size of her blastsword just inside the hatch along with the two knapsacks containing their supplies. She grabbed it and the knapsacks just before they secured the netting over the hatch. She tossed one to him. It was surprisingly heavy.
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It was, Tenel Ka felt, an easy hike. She knew that Jaina, and most likely the man who claimed to be called Jaq Antillies, would find the pace she set vigorous, but for her it was a matter of course. The Kestrel had an ovoid corridor running around the galley and common room, and Tenel Ka ran laps every day. Many laps. She was not, she regretted, in the exemplary shape she had been in on Dathomir, but she was far more fit than most human members of the galactic community. Mind you, Jaina was fairly impressive for a member of her culture, and apparently the same could be said of Antillies.
They had set out at perhaps 0800, local time, and the set up a small camp when the sun set. Jaina slept in her tent, lending her own to Antillies. They cooked some old Imperial rations in a portable heating unit and ate them in silence, before going to sleep. Tenel Ka dreamed of her great-grandmother who had died in the battle against the Nightsisters a year ago.
"My child," Augwynne Djo said, "a great change is coming to the stars. You will be there. You will see it. You will be a seed of it. You will bring the Jai to us, my daughter's daughter's daughter."
When she awoke at dawn the dream was crystal clear in her memory. She meditated on it for nearly an hour, but she could not fathom how it would come to pass, though she did not doubt that it would. She went to wake the others.
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When the small town of Corwin's Rest came into view over the last of the foothills they'd been hiking through Jaina called a halt and passed out the fake papers she'd bought for them back on Abregado-rea.
"These reportedly made by the best, but I don't know how up to date they are. There's no way to know. Tenel Ka, you're Jolyn Thrax. I'm Haria Jaim. Jaq is still Jaq, since he's already provided himself with a fake name. Last part sounds Corellian too." She turned to Jaq.
"You're going to need to take that visor off. It might not be a problem in the town – people might just think you've got some weird sunglasses – but espionage devices won't be allowed on the maglev anymore than blastswords or bow casters."
"I assume you've got something to fool the weapons scanners?"
"Of course. Just toss it in Tenel Ka's pack."
Tenel Ka proffered the relevant pack and Jag walked up to her, took off and folded up his visor, and placed it in the bag. Then he added his pistol, holdout blaster and vibroknife. Jaina gave him an appreciative look. Jaq and Tenel Ka looked at each other for a moment and then he turned back to Jaina and met her eyes.
His eyes were a beautiful shade of green.
Jaina nodded mutely and started walking again.
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"Your papers, please?"
'Jaq' handed his papers to the bored station security officer and passed his bag through the weapons scanner.
"What the hell kind of name is Jaq?" said the officer, handing back his papers.
"You'd have to ask my parents."
He walked through the personal scanner and sat down on a stood waiting for Jaina and Djo to go through the same process, which they did without any problems. The three of them headed for the third of the four platforms, Jaina noisily relating a rather absurd dream to her emotionally detached partner, and him chuckling occasionally when it seemed appropriate.
Their train arrived shortly after they got to the platform and they boarded, presumably passing through the weapons sensors embedded in the doorways without incident.
The ride to Coronet was about three hours long. Jaina purchased (they still used Imperial credits presumably because the currency was so stable) on a magazine from the attendant droid – a swoop racing zine featuring profiles of such past greats as Dengar Jag bought a newspaper.
"CorSec Investigates New Lead in the Bombing of Bela Vistal Military Installation"
"Diktat Sal-Solo to Visit the Saccorian Territories"
"Coronet Comets Coach Mal Reno Reveals the Story Behind the Team's Controversial Roster Changes"
The two of them read for the rest of the trip as Tenel Ka stared out the window.
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Coronet had suffered since the holo's in Jaina's foster parents' album, but it was still an impressive sight. It had nothing on some of the places Jaina had been in terms of either size or aesthetic appeal.
"So," she said, turning to Jag, who was looking out from the large window in the stations entrance hall to the cityscape before them, "where now?"
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The airtaxi dropped them off in a lower class neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, ostensibly to visit a cousin of Jaina's and drop off the painting she was carrying in her tube. She'd come up with that story on the fly when their cab driver turned out to be the talkative type.
From where they were dropped off they followed the map Jaq had bought at the maglev station a few blocks to a worse neighbor hood, put their weapons, save for Jaina's blastsword, on openly, and perhaps a kilometer further until they reached an area where the damage from Sal-Solo's uprising was still visible. There they entered a seedy looking bar bearing the dubious name of Wander Inn and took seats at the bar.
Jaq waited for the bartender to come over and then gave him the code phrase: "A glass of Namana liquor, please."
"They're at the corner table," said the bartender, a grey-furred Selonian, pointing towards a shadowy table with the privacy shield up.
Jaq turned toward Jaina and Tenel Ka, said, "You two wait here," and headed over to the table.
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Jaq entered the privacy shield and sat down in the table's single unoccupied seat, across from a cloaked figure whose face was shrouded in shadows. He held out his hand to the man.
"Jaq Antillies." The man didn't shake.
"If this is going to work, boy, we're going to have to trust each other. Your name, your real name, please."
'Jaq' took a deep breath. This was risky, but he had to chance it.
"Jagged. Jagged Fel."
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"Whyrens's Reserve, please." The bartender slid a bottle of the whiskey to her and turned back to polishing glasses. It was around 1400 and the bar was nearly empty. "What do you think he's up to?" she asked Tenel Ka.
"Perhaps he is being paid to smuggle these individuals out of the system."
"But why would he need to come here? And why wouldn't they hire someone with their own ship? The fewer people involved in that kind of operation the better."
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The cloaked man nodded, and then lowered his hood. The shadows seemed to linger around his face for a split second longer than they should have. He had graying brown hair and sharp eyes. He finally reached out to shake Jag's hand.
"Hal Horn."
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"Rebels," Jaina blurted out, barely remembering to keep her voice down. "This could have something to do with the Corellian rebels."
"What makes you say this?"
"Hunch, I guess."
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"This is Lando Calrissian," said Horn, indicating a dark skinned man to his left, "– his wife Tendra Risant Calrissian, – " a woman with blondish-brown hair, "and this miscreant –" a gray haired and bearded man, " – Is Booster Terrik."
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"Jaq is a rebel. I'm sure of it."