Part XVII
"Mistress Leia! Master Luke!" Threepio summoned them to the console where he and Artoo were hooked up, sifting through seemingly endless data of flight logs and transmission signals compiled from the captured ships. "There seems be a consistency in a particular communication between these ships and the governor's palace on Generis."
"Generis," Luke murmured, frowning. "That's the capital of the Atrivis Sector."
Leia scanned the signals and the list of captured ships and their fleets of origination. "We didn't capture any of theirs," she speculated in mild disappointment. "I suppose it could be something, but likely as not it was just a mustering point for them."
The GA Intelligence agent overseeing the process frowned and stepped over to them. "You said Generis?"
"Oh, yes sir," Threepio said excitedly. "It seems that all of these ships have had communications with the governor's residence on…" he stopped when Luke held up his hand, shaking his head.
The agent shook his head. "The Atrivis Sector belongs to Moff Qadrik Croyel; he wasn't represented in this skirmish."
"You're sure?" Leia asked, pondering the implications of that. "What do we know about this Croyel man?"
Artoo was already pulling up the relevant information. Threepio's optical sensors flickered as he perused the file himself. "Moff Croyel has been Moff of the Atrivis Sector for just over fifteen standard years, following the… oh my- the suspicious death of his predecessor and mentor, who was assassinated in his sleep."
"Hardly unusual among this crowd," the agent huffed.
"He seems to be among the more mild-mannered Moffs," Threepio continued, "not among the usual chaos-mongering sorts… keeps to his own governate's business without frequently concerning himself in the galaxy at large. Though his capital was largely destroyed by the Yuuzhan Vong, so much of his time has been expended in the past five years simply rebuilding."
Luke grimaced. "Uh huh," he muttered. "In other words, an ideal Moff. A little too ideal, hm?"
"Oh, I don't know about that, Master Luke, my programming does not recognize such a concept as 'too good'…"
"Shut up, Threepio," Jaina and Mara approached, noticing the commotion. "Did we find something?"
Luke glanced at Leia. "Maybe," he responded tentatively. "A link to a Moff who was not actually involved in the rebellion against Bastion. It might not mean anything though, he could have been a funding source, or a sympathizer…"
"Or the mastermind of this whole thing," Jaina put in coolly. "Who is it?"
"Qadrik Croyel of the Atrivis Sector," Threepio put in helpfully.
Luke considered something. "And who was his predecessor?"
"Yarden Morgny."
"Mara," Luke looked at his wife sidelong, "what do you know about him?"
She frowned. "About who?"
"Morgny."
Her frown deepened. "Nothing."
"Ah," Luke looked mildly surprised and turned back to Threepio. "How long was Morgny a Moff?"
"Oh, ah… thirty-five standard years."
"That's impossible," Mara cut in, "if he'd been a Moff…" she trailed away and met Luke's eyes. An unspoken communication passed between them.
Luke straightened. "I think Croyel's our man."
"Wait- what?" the agent who had been assisting them was blindsided. "How do you get there?"
Leia and Jaina also looked confused. "Jedi intuition," was his vague, mumbled reply. "We should talk to Admiral Pellaeon," he glanced around at his assembled family. "I think this might call for some Jedi investigation. Threepio, send everything you can find on Croyel and Morgny to my datapad, please."
He turned to leave the room. Leia and Jaina followed. "Wait, Uncle Luke," Jaina exclaimed, "what's going on?"
"I can't say- yet," he smiled apologetically. "But doesn't it seem strange to you that Mara doesn't remember anything about Morgny?"
"Well yes, but…" her eyes brightened and she understood. "Right."
Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene.
"It would seem," Wrynn's voice was low and dangerous, "that we have been played. And we fell for it every step along the way with an inexcusable gullibility."
"But my lord," Croyel frowned, "Durron could never have gotten this far unless he had truly been recruited! He knew the identification phrases, he was at the set place at the right time… perhaps he simply had a change of heart when he realized we had the girl? You yourself expressed a concern that his past friendship with Han Solo could make him… uneasy about it."
Wrynn smiled cruelly. "Wrong, my dear Moff. Here," he waved a hand and a datapad flew to him. "We, of course, had limited surveillance in the girl's room, in the event of any… incidents." He played the recording from the moment Leyla began stirring and called the lights on. They watched her get up swiftly and pack a set of clothes that had been set aside into a small bag, and then she sat and waited patiently for several minutes.
When the door opened and the tall figure stepped through, the girl ran into his arms. There was no audio, but they didn't need it to ascertain the mood of the conversation. He picked up her and hugged her briefly before talking swiftly and seriously to her, then leading her out of the room. Wrynn turned off the recording.
"Clearly," he hissed, "she was waiting for him. Clearly, she knows Durron very well, enough that she would have no reservations about following him in an instant. What I want to know is- how did we not know this?"
"My lord," Tahlia was hesitant and frightened, "he may have just omitted the fact when he was passing along information out of the temple…"
"You fool!" Wrynn snapped, sending her flying backwards in an outraged burst. "Have you not listened to anything I've said? Durron was not our source! The Jedi woman he attacked before fleeing was, he took and erased her memories!"
A horrible silence descended upon the room. "Moff Croyel," Wrynn finally controlled his fury, "find out for me what Durron's relationship is with the girl, I don't care how you do it. I want to know where he was the day we took her, whether he has ever visited the Fels' apartment on Coruscant… I want to know where the man was the day the girl was born, the day Solo and Fel got married…"
He trailed away, thoughtful, peering down once to glance at the tiny holo image.
"My lord, they married on the living planet of Zonama Sekot; nearly every Jedi is the galaxy was present for Skywalker's conclave, Durron among them."
"Indeed," Wrynn murmured. "Then the girl was already, what? Nearly two years old?"
"Yes; apparently Solo and Fel hid her quite effectively for the first several months. At the time, Solo was highly sought by the invaders, who believed her to be a goddess of sorts."
Wrynn stared at him stonily, remembering an unexpected, recent revelation from one of their sources… that Durron and Jaina Solo had once, briefly, been more than Master and apprentice... "When the child was born, was she named Solo or Solo-Fel?"
"I… I'm not sure…"
"Find out," he hissed. "And then… Tahlia," he addressed the woman he had just thrown across the room, "see if you can find a useable DNA sample from Durron's room; Xela, the same for the girl's."
Tahlia and Xela quickly obeyed; Croyel looked more confused than ever. "My lord?"
Wrynn ignored him. "Alert all of our people to be on watch for Durron; surely he wouldn't risk Coruscant… Bastion perhaps? Or maybe he'll just try to disappear, the Galactic Alliance wants him for treason… I don't care. Find him."
Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene. Scene.
She slept heavily for a long time, and Kyp wondered if it wasn't the first time she'd gone to sleep feeling safe and secure in the past two months. From periodic, quick glances into her emotions, he knew that, physically she had been unharmed, but she had been a whirlwind of loneliness, fear, and anger, and he worried that the experience would have a lasting effect on her. Probably not, he decided; she had inherited her mother's bravery and Jag had imparted on her his own cool-headedness. Clearly, she had used both traits in the extreme while she watched and waited.
He took some time to toy around in the ship's logs while he waited for Leyla to wake up. Two hours later, satisfied, he was pulling a datacard from the computer just as she inquisitively stuck her head into the cockpit. "Kyp?" she called softly.
"Right here," he stood. "Come on- let's go get some breakfast. Are you hungry?" She nodded gravely. "Alright, let's see what we can find, hm?"
There was a food synthesizer in the galley, he knew from his long voyage with Tahlia to rendez-vous with the armada and the shorter trip from the retreat point back to Gree Baaker. It wasn't the most extravagant of units, but he found a simple sweet pastry that he expected a seven-year-old would like just fine. He programmed the unit and, while he waited, dug around in the storage shelves for some juice packs.
They didn't speak much while she ate her pastry and Kyp chewed slowly on a ration bar, but he could sense that she felt better as she got her blood sugar back up after the exciting events of the night and her long sleep. When she was done eating, she smiled shyly and thanked him.
"Feel better?" he asked kindly.
She nodded. "Are we going to see my parents?"
"Very soon," he promised. "They're not at home though, they're out looking for you just like I was."
"I know," she whispered. "I could feel how worried mommy was."
"Exactly. And it wouldn't be very safe to take you to where they are now, but that's okay, because I'm going to take you to your daddy's Uncle Wedge instead, and he is going to let your parents know that you're safe and that they can come and get you. Okay?"
She looked mildly confused. "Can't you just tell them?"
He sighed. "I wish I could. The thing is, sweetie… the bad people will be out looking for us, and they have a lot of people working for them. I'm worried that if I try to send them a message, one of the bad people will hear it and come after us. Does that make sense?"
"I guess," she sat back heavily. "But can't the bad people hear Uncle Wedge's message too?"
Kyp grinned. "Maybe- but he has a whole big Star Destroyer to protect you with; I just have this tiny little shuttle." She smiled half-heartedly and Kyp winced internally, not relishing making her understand the next part. "Leyla, I have to explain something to you. In order to find you, I had to make everyone think that I was a bad guy just like them."
Her soft brown eyes, so much like Jaina's, widened. "Like Vulcor thought?"
"Exactly. So when we get to your great-uncle Wedge, they'll probably want to take me away and find out why I did the things I did while trying to find you. You understand?" she nodded. "If that happens, I don't want you to worry, okay? You just go with Wedge and- most importantly, Leyla- you stay near him or one of the Jedi you know until your parents arrive, they'll keep you safe."
"Okay," she said quietly.
"Good," he smiled. "Now there's one more little thing. I'm going to give you this datacard before we land," he pulled it from his pocket. "It has some important information on it but, if there are any bad people on the ship, I don't want them to know about it. So what I want you to do is to wait until you're alone with your great-uncle, or you're sure that anyone else near you is someone you can trust, and then I want you to give him this. Think you can do that?"
"Yes."
They sat quietly for a couple of minutes while Leyla sucked absently on the straw of her hydration pack. Once it was empty, he cleaned up the small table and sat back down opposite the small, hunched girl. "Leyla," she looked up at him, "is there anything you'd like to talk about?" She shrugged. "Do you want to tell me about anything that happened while you were stuck there?"
"I… why did they take me away from mommy and daddy?" she asked quietly.
His heart nearly broke at the youthful innocence of her confused pain. He came around the table and sat beside her. "What did they tell you?" In truth, he hadn't received a satisfactory answer to that question himself.
She hesitated, leaning against him for comfort. "Well, Xela told me that mommy sent me with her to protect me, but I could tell that wasn't true. And then… Wrynn told me that he was going to become an emperor, and that scared me, and then I was really scared when he said he wanted me to be an emper-ess one day with him." Kyp's eyes narrowed, remembering Wrynn's comment about Leyla's 'destiny.' "I told him I didn't want to be," she continued in a near-whisper, "because the last emperor was a bad man."
"That was… very brave of you, sweetheart," Kyp sighed. "But don't you worry- he'll never be another emperor."
"Is Great-Uncle Luke going to kill him?" her eyes widened again.
He chuckled. "Well, I don't know about that. But someone will have to stop him and the others."
"I hope they don't hurt Vulcor," Leyla murmured softly. "He was nice, he's not like Xela."
Kyp wondered if Vulcor was already dead.
End Part XVII