Chapter 16

Chapter 16

BAIL ORGANA felt like he was being buried in bureaucracy. His office in the royal palace on Alderaan was roomy, and he’d never felt overwhelmed in it before. There was more than enough space for chairs, a desk, and the aquarium full of brightly colored sea creatures he’d had installed to keep his daughter from getting under his feet, but he felt like all the room in the galaxy wouldn’t accommodate the double weight of responsibility he now carried. He did what he could to represent the people of the Alderaan sector in the Imperial Senate, and he did what he could to help the people of the galaxy when he was sure no one was watching.

He was almost positive no one was watching him now.

He risked a glance sideways to be sure his daughter was distracted by the fish and then opened the latest of his secret files. It was encrypted, of course, but he had it decoded soon enough. He looked sideways again. The trouble with adopting the child of two prodigies was that there was a decent chance she would turn out to be unusually intelligent, as well. He was reasonably certain that Leia hadn’t learned to read while he was on Coruscant for the last senatorial session, but with her, he could never be sure. He wouldn’t be able to keep her out of the mess forever, but he and Breha had agreed they should keep her clear of it at least until she could reliably speak in coherent sentences.

He started reading and almost forgot that Leia was in the room at all.

The moon was called Raada, a small satellite of an uninhabitable planet that he had to look up on a star chart. He had no idea why the Empire had gone there, but they had, and the local population—mostly farmers, according to the report—had not reacted well to occupation. During their resistance, several of them had died or been captured. All this information pulled at Bail’s heartstrings, but it was the note at the end that made his heart nearly stop: Jedi activity confirmed.

He still dreamed of that last night, when the Temple had burned. Sometimes he was able to get the Padawan into his speeder in time. Sometimes the clones shot him, too, when they shot the boy. Every once in a while, he failed to rescue Yoda and woke in a cold sweat, with the sound of blasters and lightsabers echoing in his ears and visions of a tiny, broken green body haunting him. When he had the dream on Coruscant, there was nothing he could do about it but accept his defeat and yet another night of lost sleep. When he had the dream on Alderaan, he would get Leia out of her bed, hold her close to his chest, and hope against hope that she exhibited only her mother’s gifts, not her father’s. He would stand there, cradling her, until Breha found them and guided them both back to bed.

The idea that there was a survivor out there filled his chest with equal parts anticipation and dread. Dread because the Empire would never stop hunting the Jedi and anticipation because a Jedi was a natural ally to his cause. There was no description of the Jedi in question, so he didn’t know who he was looking for. He knew it couldn’t be Obi-Wan, at least. There had been thousands of Jedi before the purge. It was likely that this one would be a stranger to him and would have no reason to trust him if he made an overture of friendship. That said, it would have to be someone relatively powerful to have survived for so long, making it worth the effort to find them.

He debated sending a message to Obi-Wan but almost immediately dismissed the idea. They had agreed to no contact, except in the direst of emergencies, and as much as a Jedi survivor might make his old friend feel better, Bail knew it wasn’t worth the risk. Someday, if he had a reason to reach out, he would. But the toddler in his office was all the reason he needed to keep silent, and there was another child, one he’d met only for a few moments, who needed his discretion just as badly.

Bail deleted the report and scrubbed the drive clean. At some point, it would be useful to have a way to store these files, but right now he simply had no way of securing them once they were decrypted. He currently relied on verbal transmission and living memory, which was inconvenient but generally safer for everyone involved. He looked out the window, the green-and-blue mountains of his home world a comfort to him, as they always were.

He would get the R2 unit back from Captain Antilles. The droid was trustworthy and capable of defending himself. Bail would just have to make sure not to leave the droid alone with his daughter, in case either of them got any ideas.

Thinking about her made Bail look at the aquarium again. Leia had pulled herself up, her hands and her nose pressed against the glass, as she watched an orange-and-purple tentacled creature move through the water like a dancer. She laughed every time it changed direction, which it did by emitting a stream of bubbles. He couldn’t imagine his life without his daughter. He couldn’t imagine not working for a better galaxy for her to grow up in. He still wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to do all that and manage to keep her safe.

He closed all the files on his desk once the message to Captain Antilles was sent. He’d get a reply soon, and until then he would need to think about the next step and discuss the options with his wife. Bail crossed the room quietly, counting on the tentacles to keep his daughter from seeing his reflection in the glass, and then swung her up into his arms. Her surprised giggles echoed through the office, the perfect counterpoint to his deeper laugh.

“Outside,” she said, not willing to relinquish his attention, even if they left the aquarium behind.

“Outside,” he agreed, and carried her onto the balcony, where he’d first introduced her to her mother and the planet she would grow up calling home.

* * *

The main problem was that after a certain point, despite his training as an Inquisitor and skills of observation, all children looked the same to the Sixth Brother. That point came fairly early in his inquisition this time, because of the sheer number of children this family seemed to have produced. He was able to rule out the older ones; who would have come to the attention of the Jedi Temple before it fell, but there were at least a dozen younger ones, and they seemed to travel everywhere in a pack.

The report hadn’t been entirely reliable to start with, either. Static-laden surveillance holos of a shipyard weren’t all that useful, and he hadn’t even seen the replay himself before some inept underling managed to ruin it. All he had were the statements of four stormtroopers and a lieutenant who had seen the recording before it was destroyed, and none of them had been able to say for sure if it had been a child in the recording. No one else had actually seen a child do anything, or at least he hadn’t found such a person to question yet. The family didn’t seem to be aware that they might be concealing a traitor in their midst.

So he was reduced to this: sitting on a backwater planet, watching an unruly mob of children until one of them exhibited Force sensitivity that she may or may not actually possess. More than once, he wished he could just arrange an accident for all of them and solve the problem that way. The Fardi family was important on Thabeska but virtually unknown everywhere else in the galaxy. There would be no complaints if an entire generation of them met with an untimely end. Sadly, that was against his current directive. He didn’t kill children. He only acquired them for his masters.

The console he was seated at signaled an incoming message. It was a holorecording from a moon even more backward than the planet he was already on, so he very nearly ignored it altogether. Then he noticed the message’s code. It was a new one, created especially for him and his brothers and sisters. It might be another wild mynock chase, but it might also be something he very much wanted to see.

“Attention, Imperials,” the recording began. It was a low-level district commander, though his rank was unusually high to be stationed on a moon that far out. There must be something on the moon that the Emperor really wanted. “We have detected the presence of a Force-sensitive being. Identity cannot be determined, but ability to use the Force has been confirmed by several parties. Age indicates a certain level of Jedi training. Suspected Padawan, no higher. Report made according to standard procedure while we await further instructions. Please advise.”

This was much better than looking for a child. A child was to be captured and taken for experimentation and corruption. A Jedi, even a lowly Padawan, he could kill. Moreover, he was granted unlimited Imperial backing when it came to tracking down a Jedi, and he’d been meaning to brush up on his interrogation tactics. Now all he had to do was make sure he got there first.

He recorded a quick reply, using the same code, so the district commander would not find his arrival unexpected. From what hadn’t been said in the message, he guessed that the Jedi had already managed to escape and the commander needed all the help he could get before the full measure of his incompetence was brought to light. The Inquisitor sent a longer, though still quite terse, message to his own headquarters, detailing where he was headed and why. None of the others had replied yet, which meant his claim was solid. He was not above poaching, though, so he couldn’t really expect the others to be. He had to get to the useless little moon as soon as he could.

With no hesitation, he closed the file he’d been monitoring and marked it as noncritical. If one of the children had any power, it wasn’t enough for him to find or track and was therefore nothing to be concerned about. The Empire could always send another Inquisitor if it was deemed necessary in the future, but he was done with this dusty world. And an adult was better prey. He stood up, pulled his helmet down over the gray skin of his face, and strode across the shipyard to where his sleek vicious little ship was docked. He had no belongings, save the weapon he carried on his back, and he was in orbit and calculating the jump to hyperspace before much time had passed.

In the dust on the planet’s surface, Hedala Fardi played with her cousins in the empty yard where her family’s ships docked. The ugly feeling that had been bothering her for the past few days, like a toothache or a dark spot in the corner of her eye that she could never quite bring into focus, suddenly lifted, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. She took her turn at the toss-and-catch game and was perfect as usual, making her shot with no real effort. Her older sibling and cousins didn’t question her skill at the game. It had long since ceased to be a wonder to them.

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