Outbound Flight

Neither of the doors into 124 was marked with any special notice of its new classroom status. Steeling himself, trying not to think about all the legends about Jedi power, he walked up to the smaller door and touched the control.

Nothing happened. He tried again; still nothing. He moved to the larger cargo door, only to find that it, too, was sealed. Stepping back to the smaller door, he curled his right hand into a fist and pounded gently on the metal.

There was no answer. He knocked again, gradually increasing the volume level. Were theyall out making nuisances of themselves?

"What do you want?"

He jumped, turning to a comm display that had been set up to his left just inside the cargo netting. C'baoth's face was framed there, glowering at him. "I need to talk to you about your students and their teachers," Uliar said, feeling his resolve starting to erode beneath that intimidating gaze. "They're in a reactor control and monitor room where they have no business-"

"Thank you for your interest," C'baoth interrupted. "But there's no need for concern."

"Excuse me, Master C'baoth, but there's every need for concern," Uliar insisted. "Some of those systems are very delicate. It took me fouryears to learn how to handle them properly."

"Your ways are not the Jedi ways," C'baoth pointed out.

"That's a nice slogan," Uliar growled. His anger, which had faded somewhat during the trip down here, was starting to bubble again. "But devotion to platitudes is no substitute for tech school."

C'baoth's dark look went a little darker. "Your lack of faith is both thoughtless and insulting," he said. "You will go now, and you will not return."

"Not until those children are out of my reactor room," Uliar said doggedly.

"I saidgo," C'baoth repeated.

And suddenly an invisible hand was pressing against Uliar's chest, pushing him inexorably away from the locked door and back toward the other end of the section. "Wait!" Uliar protested, batting uselessly at the pressure against his chest. He'd never realized Jedi could do this through a comm display, without actually being there in person. "What about the children?"

C'baoth didn't answer, his image following Uliar with his eves until he was nearly to the far door. Then, simultaneously, the display image and the pressure on Uliar's chest vanished.

For a long minute Uliar stood where he was, his heart pounding with tension and dissipating adrenaline, trying to decide whether he should go back across the room and try again. But there was obviously no point in doing so. Taking a deep breath, he turned and made his way back up to Dreadnaught-4 and the reactor room.

Ma'Ning and the children were gone when he arrived, and Sivv and Algra

"He told me to go away and mind my own business," Uliar told him.

"Thisis our business."

"Don't tellme," Uliar said tartly. "Go tellhim."

"Maybe we should talk to Pakmillu," Algra

"What for?" Uliar growled. "Looks to me like the Jedi are the ones ru

Algra

"It's not a tyra

"No," Algra

Chapter 18

Outbound Flight," Qe

"Me, neither," Maris seconded. "And you say this Kav and Stratis want todestroy it?"

"Kav and whoever," Car'das said. "Thrawn thinksStratis is an alias."

"Fine; Kav and Master No One," Qe

Car'das shrugged. "Stratis spun a big loop pastry about how dangerous the Jedi are and how they want to take over and make everyone to do things their way. But that has to be a lie."

"Not necessarily," Qe

"They're certainly helping to prop up the Coruscant bureaucracy," Maris pointed out. "Anyone who wants genuine government reform will have to persuade the Jedi to change sides."

"Or else kill them," Qe

Maris shivered. "I can't believe it would ever come to that."

"Well, Stratis sure wasn't talking about persuasion," Car'das said. "What about these Dreadnaughts? You ever hear of them?"

"Yeah, they're Rendili StarDrive's latest gift to the militarily obsessed," Qe

"Has Coruscant been doing any of the buying?" Maris asked.

Qe

"So with six Dreadnaughts, we're talking up to a hundred thousand people aboard Outbound Flight?" Car'das asked.

"Probably no more than half that," Qe

"That's still a lot of people to kill if all they want is to get at a few Jedi," Maris pointed out.

"Don't worry, I'm sure your noble-minded Commander Thrawn won't fall for it," Qe

"But even if Thrawn doesn't cooperate, Stratis still has an intact Trade Federation battleship on hand," Car'das reminded them. "That's a lot of firepower, and they might have more of them on the way."

"So what do we do?" Maris asked.

"Wedo nothing," Qe

"But we can't just sit here and do nothing," Maris protested. "No, we can run like scalded hawk-bats," Qe

"And I'm thinking this would be a real good time to do just that." "But-"