Part IV

Kyp Durron poured through the archives for hours, but he had known from the beginning that finding any reference to 'Red Hand' or 'Red Fist' was unlikely, save, perhaps, in the context of the assassination of the Moff Pletrsky had told him about.

The primary problem, Kyp figured, was that at the time during which the rumors were seemingly active, the Empire was undergoing its greatest turmoil. In the years following the emperor's death, the splitting of Imperial warlords, the New Republic's capture of Coruscant… records had been lost and destroyed, governments had moved, and purposeful sabotage of intelligence, such as under Grand Admiral Thrawn, had simply left a large portion of years incomplete in the palace archives.

His next stop was the Jedi library, but that seemed even more unlikely to yield anything worthwhile; most of those records were simply copied from the government's and added to what little had been salvaged of the old Jedi archives; but even those just stopped decades earlier, a sudden cessation of history that sent an eerie, reminding chill down Kyp's back about the Jedi Purge undertaken by Palpatine at the onset of his Galactic Empire. Only since the end of the Yuuzhan Vong war had the Jedi taken up a presence on Coruscant once more in an attempt to centralize their members and message.

Try as he might, he couldn't get the thought out of his head that, if anyone could tell him something useful, it was someone right under his very nose. Approaching her to ask would entirely undermine everything he had told Jag Fel about keeping his movements quiet, but it was undeniable that there was one person who knew more about the last years of the Empire than anyone else living.

Kyp needed to talk to Mara Jade Skywalker.

Her intimate knowledge of the emperor and the inner-workings of the system were unrivaled, and if anyone would have had information about a secretive underground organization, it would have been the 'Emperor's Hand.' Later in life, she had connections to the seemingly omniscient Talon Karrde, who reveled in the acquisition and selling of information, and later her role in the Smuggler's Alliance would have kept her well informed of goings-on around the galaxy.

Sighing, Kyp glanced around, using the Force to distract an archive librarian looking his way. He quickly and efficiently deleted all traces of his searches before standing and striding from the console, leaving it as infuriatingly bright and welcoming as when he sat down some four hours prior.

Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene.

It seemed to Leyla that this Xela woman was not particularly smart.

Three days after she had woken, Xela was still acting as though everything was okay, that she was protecting Leyla at her parents' wishes and that she would be allowed to contact them when it was safe to do so again.

Clearly, she knew that the young girl was Force-sensitive, but apparently she did not consider that the Force would tell Leyla that everything Xela said was a lie. If her mommy had sent her away, then she would not feel the constant, nagging worry from her and the rest of mommy's family. When she was alone, Leyla allowed herself to try to focus in on her mother's presence in her mind, but it wasn't something they had ever practiced over any sort of distance. Nevertheless, she tried to exude the idea that she was alright- for the moment.

Despite her gnawing fear, Leyla did her best to remain calm for the frightening woman who came into her room a few times every day to 'see how she was doing.' She might only be seven, but her parents taught her early that it was best to keep a cool head. Her mother even taught her how to use the Force to calm herself a little, and she found herself drawing on that as much as she dared.

The other thing she'd learned early in life was from Grandpa Han- emotions give your opponent a weapon against you. Granted, her grandpa was talking about sabaac, some game that Leyla didn't really understand, but she was pretty sure he had meant it to apply to real life as well. Trusting that assumption, Leyla remained quiet as much as possible when Xela came to see her, and tried to downplay her awareness in the Force, lest Xela think she could use it against her.

Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene.

Jaina tried her best not to hover as Zakarisz Ghent started on his third hour of work attacking the situation with the stolen authorization codes and falsified emergency beacons. An astounding amount of equipment was arrayed around him as he worked furiously as the console in the embassy that had been remotely activated to send Jag the emergency transponder five days prior.

In his mid-forties now, Ghent still looked like a naïve, nerdy teenager who spent too much of his time in front of a computer terminal and other pieces of technology he could in some way decode, encrypt, hack, slice, or put back together.

In fact, that's generally what Ghent still did with most of his time. After having spent more than a decade as the New Republic Crypt Chief, he'd retired to go back to what he liked best- tinkering with his various toys and tools on his own time, working on the projects he wanted. Periodically, he still took tough jobs within the GA, and this particular job was at least proving a challenge.

Despite the knowledge that there was nothing she could do to speed up the process in any way, Jaina was horribly impatient for results. If Ghent could find the ultimate source of the phony beacons, then it might provide a clearer lead for her parents as they tried to pinpoint a conspirator among the thousands of employees for Coruscant space defense and traffic control who had manually bypassed the usual security protocols for the two shuttles that had participated in the attack.

Another half hour passed before Jag returned from his office where he had been discussing a temporary replacement for his position with the representatives from the Chiss Ascendancy. His work had been neglected at best in the past five days, and he had waited with barely contained frustration while the aristocra of the ruling families had deliberated on who to send in his stead.

"Come on, sweetheart," he took Jaina's hand and pulled her away from the terminal where Ghent was doing work that even she did not understand. "You've been sitting here for hours. Ghent will call us if he turns up anything, right?"

The older man nodded distractedly back towards Jag, barely having registered his arrival, and continued his work.

Jaina allowed herself to be led away without comment. Silently, the dejected couple descended several levels on the turbolift to a lower level where the joint Chiss-Imperial Embassy shared a cafeteria with a wide range of foods featured from dozens of Imperial and Chiss worlds. He led her to a private room, meant for meeting dignitaries and other state officials, and he studied the food synthesizer distastefully.

"You have to eat something," he reluctantly prodded her. She was quiet. "You barely sleep, and I've not seen you eat more than a handful of nutri-pills a day…"

"Just pick something," she snapped, and then looked apologetic as he programmed two more-or-less random selections from the 'human' list, though his face betrayed no anger or annoyance towards her. "Sorry," she muttered. "I just feel so… helpless."

He sighed. "Me too. Probably even more than you. At least you can sense her and feel that she's alright…" he paused. "She is still… right?"

Jaina was quiet for a moment as she attuned her senses, reaching for that special bond she shared with their seven-year-old daughter. "She's still alright physically… but she's afraid and… nervous, I think. Like she's anticipating a change soon maybe…"

"Perhaps they're nearing a final destination," Jag said quietly, and Jaina bit her lip, looking down. Both knew that their best chance of locating her would be to discover anything before they hid her away on some far, unknown planet. "Is there any chance that we'll narrow down where she is based on the time of the journey…?"

"Not really," she said emotionlessly. "In five days, they could be anywhere, they could have stopped somewhere, delayed and backtracked just to prevent anyone from pinpointing a more accurate range…"

They settled back into an uneasy silence. Jag wanted to ask her if she could sense anything about Kyp's movements, but if they were being spied on in any way… he had always made it a practice to scan public places like this for listening and recording devices, but after everything that had happened, he wasn't sure how far he trusted any of that anymore. For now, all he could do was follow the Jedi Master's orders precisely and hope that his silence was indicative of progress.

Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene.

It was as usual a morning as ever for Ferrin Belotab, the chief of staff to the GA chief-of-state Cal Omas. Sitting attentively, he listened and made notes during an infrastructure planning meeting regarding the as-yet-untamed underworld of Coruscant that still teemed with Yuuzhan Vong wildlife. In five years, construction and repair crews had done an extraordinary job combing the upper levels of the city, gradually opening new districts as they were deemed functional again, but the lower hundred fifty levels or so had been neglected even before the invasion; now, they were simply feral.

"Have you tried asking Jacen Solo to talk to the World Brain any further… oh, but of course," Omas rubbed at his temples in wearied exhaustion. He turned to look at Ferrin. "Has there been any sort of progress on the Fel girl?"

"No, sir," Ferrin said. "They brought in Zakarisz Ghent to see if he couldn't uncover anything that the Jedi couldn't. He's been working on it since last night, but the last update I had suggested that he hadn't made much substantial progress."

One of the engineers spoke up hesitantly. "We didn't want to bother Solo while the whole family is still trying to track down his sister's daughter…"

"No," Omas nodded, "you're right. We can get by without him after all this time, I daresay," a ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Now, as to your proposal for scheduled demolition-"

He was interrupted by a loud tap at the door, and then his wide-eyed twi'lek chief secretary opened it. "Chief Omas?" she said shakily. "There's a GA Security team out here demanding access to this room…"

Everyone at the table looked around in bemused consternation. "Well, send them in, Ra'ani," he waved at her to open the doors, and then sat up straighter in surprise when six heavily armed men pushed past the nervous twi'lek and took up positions in the doorway. "What can we do for you?"

Their commander spoke clearly in a no-nonsense tone. "We are here to take one Ferrin Belotab into Galactic Alliance custody."

Ferrin's face drained of any color it might have had. "Why?"

"Yes," Omas sounded appalled, "what are the charges?"

"Conspiracy and accessory to the abduction of a GA citizen and daughter of diplomatic personnel."

"What?" Ferrin said aghast at the same moment that Omas exclaimed, "Ferrin!" Further entreaties were stopped short as a new figure stepped through the doorway, a short, brown-haired young woman in a grey jumpsuit, lightsaber deactivated but in hand.

As Ferrin Belotab looked into the fierce and piercing eyes of Jaina Solo-Fel, his stomach dropped, and he wondered why he'd bothered to get out of bed that morning.

End Part IV