Abyss (8 page)

Yaqeel punched him in the shoulder, hard. “And you didn’t tell me?”

Bazel hadn’t realized he needed to; wasn’t her nose as large as his?

Yaqeel’s ears shot forward. “Gee,
thanks
.”

She picked up her pace. Bazel hastened after her, his heavy strides sounding like drumbeats as his big heels pounded the paving slabs. Beings ten meters ahead began to glance over their shoulders and look for convenient places in which to disappear.

Bazel paid them no attention. It wasn’t like Yaqeel to be touchy, so he was afraid he had really hurt her feelings. As he lumbered after her, he kept up a steady refrain of grunts and groans, trying to explain that her nose was really as big as his only
in proportion
to the size of her face. But Yaqeel wasn’t in any mood for explanations. She continued to move ever faster, until she was almost running.

They reached the end of the pedway, emerging from the Walking Garden into the open vastness of the Temple Court. Yaqeel continued to move at a brisk pace, angling for the south side of the huge pyramid, where there was a subsurface speeder gate that many Jedi employed as an entrance because of its inaccessibility to Javis Tyrr and his fellow holoslugs.

Finally, Bazel caught up to Yaqeel and spun around to block her way. Her eyes were wide and bulging, almost bloodshot, and the tips of her fangs were showing beneath her curled lips. Growing alarmed, he clamped a huge hand on her shoulder and demanded to know why she was suddenly so frightened of him.

Yaqeel’s ears flattened to the sides. “It’s not you, Bazel.”

Yaqeel
never
called him by his proper name; clearly, something was terribly wrong. He snorted a question, demanding to know what it was.

Yaqeel glanced over her shoulder, back toward the Walking Garden. “
Them
, of course,” she said. “Can’t you sense the change?”

Now Yaqeel was really starting to frighten Bazel. When he asked
her what change she meant, his voice broke into a shrill squeal that made passing beings circle around them even more widely.

“Oh, Barv, you’re just so … 
trusting
.” Yaqeel took Bazel by the wrist and started toward the speeder entrance again, this time at a more normal pace. “Don’t let them know we’re on to them. That’s the mistake the others made.”

Bazel began to have a sinking feeling. He inquired what others she was talking about.

Yaqeel stared up out of one narrowed eye. “The others like
us
, of course.”

Bazel asked if she meant the rest of the Unit, Jysella and Valin.

Yaqeel nodded, adding, “And Seff and Natua, too.”

They were just angling past the main entrance, where a full Galactic Alliance Security assault team—complete with armored hovercars—had been stationed as an assertion of Daala’s authority. To either side of them sat a pair of newsvans, resting on their parking struts until the next opportunity came to embarrass the Jedi Order. Javis Tyrr was nowhere in sight at the moment, but Bazel recognized Tyrr’s distinctive, half-winking “gotcha eye” logo on one of the vans, and he knew the bottom-feeding reporter would be somewhere close. He pulled Yaqeel to his other side, where she would be shielded from roving cams by his jade bulk.

His worst fears were confirmed when Yaqeel failed to notice what he was doing. “We’ll free Seff and Natua first,” she said. “Then maybe we can recover Jysella and Valin, find a safe place to thaw them out, and figure out what the kriff is going on.”

It would certainly be good to figure things out, Bazel agreed. What he didn’t say was that Yaqeel was breaking his heart. He hadn’t grown as close to Seff and Natua at Shelter as he had to Yaqeel and the Horn siblings, but the quarters had been so tight that he had become friends with most of the other students, and he desperately wanted to see them leave the Asylum Block—
when they were ready
. Now Bazel’s best friend was starting to act like she was on her way to joining them, which was certainly a better alternative to being frozen in carbonite like Valin and Jysella.
That
, Bazel would never allow.

As they approached the corner of the Temple, Bazel took one last
look back toward the cam vans and found a single lens turned their way—no doubt capturing some stock footage of him so they would have something ready when they aired a report about the Jedi menace. He raised a hand as though to wave, at the same time shooting a Force flash toward the van that would wipe his image—and most of the day’s other footage—from the cam’s digital memory.

They rounded the corner and came to a hedge of tall rutolu bushes, the purple leaves as long and slender as daggers. A freshly worn path led through the hedge to a chest-high safety wall that protected the sunken entrance to the speeder gate, and it was here that Yaqeel reached for her lightsaber. Bazel was desperate to keep her from causing trouble outside the Temple, where she might injure a passerby and would certainly draw the attention of the GAS assault team. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her away.

Yaqeel spun on him with fire in her eyes, then sent a jolt of Force energy into his arm so powerful that Bazel squealed in surprise. He had never seen her do such a thing before; in fact, he had never seen
any
Jedi use the Force that way.

“
You
, Barv?” Yaqeel’s hand dropped to her lightsaber. “They got you—”

Bazel gave a disgusted snort, pointing out they weren’t going to free anyone from the Asylum Block by trying to fight their way
into
the Temple. The plan was to
fool
the Jedi, remember?

Yaqeel’s hand remained on her lightsaber hilt, her long brow-fur rising at the ends as she studied Bazel. Finally, she said, “Barv, we
are
the Jedi.”

Silently cursing the dim wits of his species and the sharp wits of the Bothans, Bazel took a deep breath and tried to accept that he would soon be in a huge amount of pain. Even under the best circumstances, Bazel wasn’t a very good liar, and now Yaqeel would be using the Force to determine whether he was being truthful. That left him with only one option: to grab her and try to drag her inside the Temple before the GAS assault team arrived and the two Jedi got themselves killed.

And that was when Bazel realized he
could
lie to her. The key to defeating the Jedi truth-sense lay in believing the lie one told, and Bazel
knew how to do that. He didn’t know
how
he knew, or where he had learned it. But all he had to do was soak his words in a little Force energy, and then he himself would believe what he said. And everyone else would, too.

So Bazel simply shrugged and pulled his hand away from Yaqeel’s lightsaber. He suggested that maybe rescuing Seff and Natua wasn’t such a good idea, after all. The … the
fakes
were bound to be watching them, and the instant he and Yaqeel started down toward the Asylum Block, they’d probably get jumped and end up in a cell themselves.

Yaqeel considered his words for a moment, then took her hand away from her lightsaber. “You’re probably right, Barv. But we’ve got to
try
.”

Bazel sighed in relief, using his newfound Force skill to make it seem like resignation. Then he asked Yaqeel if she was ready.

Yaqeel nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” She grabbed the safety wall and pulled herself up, crouching on its mist-slickened top to glance back down at Bazel. “Remember to act normal, Barv. You can’t let them shiver you out too much.”

He assured her that he wouldn’t give them away to
anyone
inside the Temple. It was another lie, of course, but he did not feel guilty about it. Once he had Yaqeel safe somewhere deep inside the Temple, he could try to reason with her, make her see that nothing sinister had happened to their fellow Jedi. And if he failed, at least there would be plenty of help to make certain she didn’t fall into GAS’s custody and end up like Valin and Jysella.

Bazel laid an elbow on top of the wall and swung a massive leg up so he was sitting astride it. He found himself looking down into a white duracrete trough, about five meters deep and just wide enough for two speeders to pass in opposite directions. At one end, the trough vanished into the tunnel that led down to the south-side speeder hangars. The durasteel gate to this entrance was wide open while a small, dome-shaped Lovolol cleaning droid polished the threshold.

Standing just outside that gate, next to an armored luxury speeder bearing the crest of the Imperial Remnant, were Jaina Solo and Jagged Fel. Head of State Fel wore a formal dress uniform with the tunic collar
still fastened. Jaina was in a purple day dress styled just enough like a Jedi robe to make the lightsaber hanging from its belt look appropriate. They were wrapped in each other’s arms, kissing and paying no attention to anyone else.

The fur on Yaqeel’s neck stood on end, and her hand drifted toward her lightsaber again. Bazel knew his plan to get her safely inside the Temple had just run into a serious problem.

He leaned close to Yaqeel’s ear and rumbled that Jaina and her friend were only interested in each other. Bazel and Yaqeel should just hop down, excuse themselves, and continue into the Temple.

Yaqeel shook her head. “What’s that cleaning droid doing there?” she whispered. “Something’s not right.”

Bazel cursed under his breath, then explained that Jaina had probably been out with Head of State Fel having a late lunch—or early dinner—somewhere.

“Bazel, they’re not
people,
” Yaqeel hissed. “You
have
to remember that.”

Bazel nodded and assured her that he would try.

Jaina must have sensed them watching, because she suddenly opened her eyes and peered up at them over Head of State Fel’s shoulder. Instead of breaking off the kiss, she lifted a hand and fluttered her fingers at them. It was a casual wave, such as anyone might give in a similar position, but Bazel was beginning to see Yaqeel’s point. With Han and Leia behind them and Jaina blocking their access to the Temple, the Solos had them in a perfect trap. Could it really be just coincidence?

Jaina must have sensed his confusion, because she pulled away from her companion and motioned them down.

“Sorry,” she called. There was an uncharacteristic flush to her cheeks—subtle, but distinct enough for Bazel to notice. “You’re not interrupting anything, really.”

Now Head of State Fel turned as well, his cheeks showing the same uncharacteristic flush, and Bazel’s heart jumped into his throat. He couldn’t imagine what had ever made him doubt Yaqeel’s judgment; she was a Bothan, after all, and Bothans understood treachery a lot better than Ramoans.

“Please, don’t let us hold you up,” called the being who looked like Head of State Fel. “I was just leaving.”

Yaqeel seemed frozen in indecision, so Bazel forced a smile and replied that it was no problem, they were in no hurry. He put a little Force energy into the words, but apparently the ability to tell a good lie could not get them out of everything. The being who was impersonating Jaina frowned and started to step around the car toward them, and Not-Fel leaned into the open door to say something to his driver.

Bazel hazarded the opinion that they might have walked into an ambush.

“
Might
have?” Yaqeel snapped her lightsaber off her belt and turned back toward the rutolu hedge. “Let’s get out of …”

Yaqeel let the sentence trail off as a pair of beings who looked a lot like Han and Leia Solo came pushing through the hedge. They did not have the same flush Bazel had seen in the cheeks of Jaina and Head of State Fel, but he knew they couldn’t be the real Solos because Han didn’t have the ability to Force-jump, and that meant he could not enter the Temple by this entrance. Besides, Bazel’s danger sense was going wild, and both Solos were holding something behind their backs, and he knew the
real
Han and Leia would never harm him or Yaqeel.

Not-Leia’s eye went straight to the lightsaber in Yaqeel’s hand. “Yaqeel, what are you doing with your lightsaber out? Is there a problem?”

Not-Leia was still speaking when Yaqeel sprang, yelling, “
You
are—”

Not-Han’s hand was already coming around. Bazel glimpsed the silver form of some kind of hand weapon, then heard the
phoot-phoot
of flying darts.

Yaqeel gave a startled cry, her knees buckling as she landed in front of Not-Leia. She activated her lightsaber and flicked her wrist around in a clumsy attack, but Not-Leia had already stepped out of range. The blade sputtered dead as the hilt spun from Yaqeel’s twitching hand.

Bazel watched in horror as Yaqeel’s eyes rolled back in her head and drool began to slide down the long red tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. He bellowed her name and reached for his own
lightsaber—then noticed the tranquilizer pistol Not-Leia was holding on him.

“Bazel, it’s just a tranquilizer,” Not-Leia said. “Yaqeel’s going to be fine.”

“Yeah,” Not-Han agreed. “How about you?”

Bazel considered trying to use his mass to overpower them both and flee with Yaqeel. But he was still sitting astride the wall with his lightsaber hanging from his belt, and both Not-Solos were holding tranquilizer pistols in their hands. He simply wasn’t quick enough, so he moved his hand away from his lightsaber and nodded, using his new skill to put a little Force behind the gesture.

The faces of both Not-Solos relaxed instantly, and Not-Han whistled in relief. “Good. I thought for a minute we’d lost you both.”

Bazel shook his head to assure him they hadn’t. He eyed a landing spot close to Yaqeel, then began to gather his legs under him. If he was quick enough, he might be able to snatch Yaqeel up and be through the hedge before—

“Stay up there, Bazel,” Not-Leia ordered. “We’ll pass her up.”

“Yeah, we need to get out of here.” Not-Han kicked Yaqeel’s lightsaber aside, then holstered his tranquilizer pistol and stooped down to pick up her unconscious form. “That GAS team was already starting this way when we came through the hedge.”

Bazel settled back astride the wall, then stretched a hand down to take Yaqeel’s limp form. This lying skill was a handy thing, he reflected. If the impostors were just going to hand her up to him, maybe he could hang on to her until he saw an opportunity to—