Survivor's Quest

"Here comes another one," Evlyn stage-whispered from a few paces down the corridor. "No; two of them. No; it's a whole crowd."

Jinzler moved away from the wall and the discussion and crossed to her side. In the much brighter light blazing away from a rack above the portable generator, he could see a group of perhaps twenty line creepers wriggling their way across the deck toward the enticing aroma of electric current.

"Careful," he warned as Evlyn started toward them. "If you get too close your own bioelectrical energy might distract them."

"Okay," she said, backing up again. Together they watched as the fragile-looking creatures climbed briskly up over the lip of the wide, flat basin the generator's stubby legs were resting in. One by one, they dropped into the salt water, twitched a few times, and went still. "That's really cool," she commented.

"Effective, too," Jinzler agreed absently, most of his attention still back on the snatches of conversation he was able to hear of Formbi's war council. Drask and Talshib were discussing their options now, with Mara, Formbi, and Fel occasionally putting in a comment or suggestion. Luke, still in his Jedi trance, was across the corridor in the operating room where they'd finished patching him up.

Unfortunately, none of the options being batted around sounded particularly hopeful, at least not from where he was standing. Borrowing extra generators from Outbound Flight might speed up the decontamination process aboard the Chaf Envoy, but even so the best possible projected completion point was at least three days away. Unless the Vagaari had mechanical trouble along the way, the stolen Dreadnaught would have far too much of a head start for the Chaf Envoy to catch up with it before it reached the Brask Oto Command Station and escaped from the cluster.

"You'll be leaving soon, won't you?"

Jinzler shifted his full attention back to Evlyn. "We all will," he told her. "You, your mother—all of us."

"I mean as soon as the Blue—I mean the Chiss ship is fixed, you and Mara and Luke will be leaving."

"But we'll be back," Jinzler promised. "Or at least, some Chiss transports will be. They'll take you anywhere you want to go."

She shook her head. "It won't make any difference," she said quietly. "No matter where we go, Uliar will find some kind of Three to put me in."

"They're not going to do that," Jinzler insisted. "Surely they learned a lesson from this whole thing. If it wasn't for you, a good many more people might have died."

"That won't make any difference," she said again. "Not to them." She sighed. "I wish you'd never come here. If you hadn't..." She trailed off.

"If we hadn't, what?" Jinzler prompted. "You would have gone on living a lie?"

"I could have pretended," she said. "Lots of people pretend." She looked squarely up into his eyes. "Even you do."

An edge of guilt dug up under Jinzler's rib cage. "That's different," he said. "If I hadn't told them I was an ambassador, the Chiss might not have let me come along."

"But you're here now," she reminded him. "You could have stopped pretending a long time ago."

"Yes, well, we're not talking about me, young lady," he reminded her firmly. "We're talking about you. And the point is, you shouldn't be ashamed of what you can do."

"Maybe not." Pressor's voice came from behind them. "But that doesn't mean she should a

"Thanks," she said, taking it and handing him her partially full one in return.

"I really think you ought to go join the rest of the people down on Six, Evlyn," Rosemari said, eyeing her daughter's bandages. "Don't you think you'd be more comfortable there?"

"Would you be?" Evlyn said pointedly.

The corners of Rosemari's mouth tightened. "I suppose not," she conceded. "Director Uliar's probably been talking to people already."

"I'm sure he has," Pressor said. "But I've been thinking, and there may still be a way to backtrack on this."

"What do you mean?" Rosemari asked.

"Well, think about it," Pressor said. "Besides the stuff in the turbolift, which no one else saw, the only thing Evlyn did was pull that comlink across the meeting room deck. We could easily churn the water by saying it was actually Ambassador Jinzler who did that."

"Except that I'm not a Jedi," Jinzler pointed out.

"Maybe you lied about that," Pressor countered. "Or maybe you didn't even know yourself that you had the power."

"And you are the brother of a known Jedi," Rosemari added thoughtfully. "That has to count for something. Maybe your pep talk in the meeting room actually stimulated your powers, not Evlyn's."

"Are you suggesting I lie for your daughter?" Jinzler asked.

Rosemari held his gaze without flinching. "Why not?" she said. "It was you and your people who got her into this mess."

"It's not a mess," Jinzler insisted. "It's an opportunity."

Beside him, Evlyn stirred. "Ambassador Jinzler says I shouldn't be ashamed of who I am."

"Ambassador Jinzler doesn't have to live among these people," Pressor retorted, glaring at Jinzler.

"I do for the moment," Jinzler pointed out ruefully. "A moment that could stretch out considerably, I might add. We won't know until the line creepers have all been cleaned out whether or not they caused any permanent damage. We could conceivably find out that the Chaf Envoy will never fly again."

"That could be a problem, all right," Pressor grunted. "I don't suppose it occurred to you to bring a spare hypercapable vehicle with you?"

"We brought three, actually," Jinzler said with a grimace. "The commander's glider, the transport the Imperials came in, and Luke and Mara's ship. The Vagaari hit all three on their way out. Talshib says they even took the time to sabotage their own shuttle, and it wasn't even hypercapable."

Pressor shook his head. "They're thorough, you have to give them that. So how long until the rest of the Chiss come hunting for you?"

"That's just it," Jinzler said. "Formbi was playing this so close to the table that I'm not sure the rest of the Chiss even know we're out here. There are some aboard the command station we passed on our way into the cluster, of course, but the Vagaari might well be pla

"That would solve the problem, wouldn't it?" Evlyn murmured.

They all looked at her. "What?" Pressor asked.

"That would solve the problem," Evlyn repeated. "Because if you stay, they'd have to put Luke and Mara in Three if they put me there. And they couldn't do that, could they?"

"I doubt it seriously," Jinzler agreed hesitantly. That hadn't even occurred to him.

"And then they could teach me how to be a real Jedi," Evlyn continued, looking up at her mother. "Then we wouldn't have to be afraid anymore about what they might do to me, because they couldn't."

Rosemari reached up to stroke her daughter's hair, an oddly pinched expression on her face. "Evlyn..."

"That's what you want, isn't it?" Evlyn pressed. She turned back to Jinzler. "It's what you want, too, isn't it?"

"Certainly, I want you to develop your gift," Jinzler agreed. "But we're the only ones who know about the Vagaari and what they've found out about the Redoubt. If we get stuck here, it may mean the deaths of many more Chiss."

"Is that important?" Evlyn said, a strange edge of challenge in her voice.