Heir to the Jedi (14 page)

When we got to the window I saw two Kupohans working inside, one taking orders and one in a tiny kitchen area, filling greased flimsicard take-out boxes with noodles, meat, and vegetables. I wasn’t sure if I was speaking to Sakhet or not, but I repeated Nakari’s order and then ordered the Corellian buckwheat with rancor sauce. The Kupohan gave no outward sign that my order was unusual beyond a small twitch of the primary and basal ears, scribbling on an old-fashioned paper ticket instead of the more common datapad and growling something at the cook, lips curled over her large flat teeth. She took my credits and I began to fear that I would, in fact, be given something with rancor sauce on it. She produced a receipt from her register and she scrawled on it.

“Order number eighty-nine,” the Kupohan growled at me, then sniffed wetly through her three nostrils, which did little to stimulate my appetite. “Don’t forget your receipt, friend.” She shoved it at me and twitched her head to my right. “Pick up your food at the window around the corner.”

“Thanks,” I replied, taking it from her. Nakari and I shuffled out of the way and I looked down at the receipt. The number 89 was large and circled at the top and then, at the bottom in tiny script, it said,
Return at 0900 tomorrow
.

I showed it to Nakari. “I doubt they’ll be selling noodles that early,” she said.

“I agree. Should give us plenty of time to talk.”

“So what do we do now? I’ve done some shady things for my dad before, but never something quite like this.”

“We follow through and get our noodles. We’re just two hungry humans out for a bite.”

“Excellent. I’m going to take a holo when you try the rancor sauce.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.” My stomach turned slightly. “I’m not that hungry, actually.”

She smiled. “We can get you something else.”

“That might be better,” I admitted.

“Order eighty-nine!” a voice called from the pickup window. I flashed my receipt and the Kupohan working there—a third one I hadn’t seen before, wearing a red bandanna that draped protectively over the frequency filter organs between the primary and basal ears—took a look at it and thanked me, pushing forward two hot cartons and disposable eating sticks.

“Don’t worry,” she said in a low voice, her four dark eyes glinting with amusement, “we just gave you two orders of the nerf nuggets.”

“Thanks,” I said, truly grateful. “See you around.”

Tray in hand, I looked back at the plaza area and saw that there was nowhere to sit. Nakari spied a small pavilion farther along the path that had six picnic tables. Most of them were occupied, but one of them had room for two more.

We carried our steaming cartons over to the table in question and asked the nice Gran couple there if they minded sharing some space. Six eyes on stalks swiveled to regard us, and the two Gran grunted agreeably.

“You can have it,” one of them said. “We were just finishing.” They scooped up their remainders and wished us a good evening. We discovered that the wooden table was well stocked with salt and pepper for our noodles, and the benches offered a wide range of splinters for our backsides.

“So how much do you know already about the—” Nakari paused, looked around, and lowered her voice. “That special group your father was in?” Using the word
Jedi
out loud probably would not be wise here. It was doubtful that anyone would be interested in our dinner conversation and unlikely that our voices could be picked out in the noise of the plaza, but there
was no need to be careless, either. Nakari shook some pepper over her nerf nuggets. “Or should I ask what it is you still need to learn?”

“Practically everything. Right now I can kind of feel the, uh …” I waited for Nakari’s eyes to look up and then I mouthed the word “Force.” When she nodded her understanding, I resumed. “It gives me heightened reflexes in battles, and maybe a tiny bit of predictive ability—like I’m really good at guessing how the other guy is going to move next. But I’m sure that’s just the first step into a larger world. There’s that suggestive power we discussed earlier, for example, and I don’t know how I’ll ever make my own … weapon.”

She squinted an eye at me. “Is that something you absolutely have to do?”

“I suppose not. I already have one. But the ability to make one would mean I have excellent control over the … powers.”

“How so?”

“You can’t construct one without moving the focusing crystals with your mind.”

“You mean telekinesis?”

“Yep. I can’t seem to get the hang of that, but I should be able to. If this power flows through and around everything, then manipulating it and using it to push and pull physical objects has to be part of the deal. For example, when I’m in a fight, it guides my actions—or at least influences my brain to guide my actions. Still, that’s a concrete manifestation of its power, not me simply saying that I believe it’s there. If it can physically affect me, then it should be able to physically affect other things, as well. And I should be able to make that happen.”

“Have you tried?”

“Yeah. I tried to move something small. I went after a little greasy vegetable on Rodia.”

“Did you succeed?”

“Failed. Though in my own defense, I was interrupted.”

Nakari pulled out a noodle from her bowl and plopped it on the table between us. It lay there like an anemic grassworm. “Fine. Move the noodle.”

“What, here?”

“Yes, here. Look at it, Luke. It is utterly lacking in strength, for it has been boiled into complete submission. It’s not going to put up a fight. So move it.”

“Aw, you’re making fun.”

“No, you can do it. Force that noodle to scoot over here. I won’t interrupt. I’ll just make yummy noises and enjoy my dinner.” So saying, she shoved an enormous portion into her mouth and moaned. “Oh yeah,” she said around the food, a few noodles still dangling past her lips, twitching like tentacles crying for help. “Mmm. Best nerf nuggets ever. I have no idea what you’re doing over there because I’m just eating over here. Being kinda gross about it, too.”

I cracked a smile, which was probably her intention. There was no pressure, just friendly encouragement. I did feel encouraged, unlike on Rodia, where I had felt almost overwhelmed at the enormity of all I didn’t know. But I did know what everyone knows about noodles: They are not very good in contests of wills. Perhaps this single wet noodle was the perfect object on which to begin. And if nothing happened, no big deal, it was just dinner with a new friend.

I relaxed, closed my eyes, stretched out with my mind, felt the Force around me, and found the noodle. I imagined it moving away from me and back to the base of Nakari’s carton, a detailed animation in my mind, for perhaps half a minute, and I envisioned the Force flowing in such a way as to make that happen. Nakari’s whoop broke my concentration.

“You did it!”

“I did?” I opened my eyes and saw a damp squiggly line where the noodle had originally been resting, while the noodle itself lay in a completely different sine wave a few centimeters away
from that position. It hadn’t traveled all the way back to her carton as I’d envisioned, but it had undeniably moved.

“Yes, indeed! Look at you, you little noodle scooter!”

“Wait, are you messing with me? Did you move it while my eyes were closed?”

Nakari’s brilliant smile disappeared and she reached out with her bandaged hand to cover mine. “No, of course not! I wouldn’t do that, Luke. I know this means a lot to you, and I swear you absolutely made that happen. It was a smooth undulation, like a snake taking a tour of the neighborhood.”

Despite my disbelief in my own success, I sensed that she was telling the truth—it was an absolute certainty in my mind, as if the Force had run a fact-check for me. I didn’t feel that way normally when speaking to people, but maybe my recent connection with the Force had something to do with it. It had everything to do with moving the noodle, the reality and significance of which were finally hitting me. “Incredible. I actually did it.”

Nakari’s smile returned, a bit smug, and she pointed at me with her eating sticks. “Knew you could.”

“Did not.”

“Your noodles are getting cold.”

“Guess you’re right about that.”

Despite the loss of a few degrees of heat, those were the best noodles I’ve ever had. To know that telekinesis was possible—not just for Jedi, but for me—gave me better hope for the future than I had enjoyed for a long time.

SAKHET PROVED TO BE
the Kupohan in the red bandanna. She was still wearing it when we returned to the noodle hut in the morning. I noticed some additional details that hadn’t been so clear in the low light of her stall before. She had six neck torcs circling her throat, indicating her sixth decade of life, and her basal ears practically drooped from the weight of her silver status earrings. The Kupohans wore jewelry with a purpose, never for decoration, and Sakhet’s earrings indicated she had earned far more prestige among her people than a food vendor normally would. She pointed to a delivery speeder parked nearby and said, “Get in.” It was emblazoned with the name
SAKHET’S NOODLES
and smelled like cooking oil. There were several bags inside full of cartons that obviously contained fresh food. There was no room there for Artoo and I was glad we had convinced him to stay behind once again. I had a feeling he’d be vital during
the extraction, but at the moment he would be an awkward addition to the party.

“What’s all this for?” I asked, sitting down next to the cartons.

“That’s our cover,” Sakhet replied. “We’re making a catering delivery. People eat at all hours of the day on Denon.” She drove us a short distance to an urban greenbelt that served as a recreational area for the district. We gathered a few bags each, and Sakhet led us to a high walkway that looked down on the park. Similar walkways opposite our position reflected the sun, and our aerial view of the park showed us paths winding through the trees and sculpted hedges, fields of open grass for all-purpose frolicking, and plenty of benches to lounge upon. A few people milled around, tossing balls or ropes for their pets to fetch.

Behaving as if this were a standard delivery and the scenery a bore, Sakhet said, “Every morning the target goes for a walk, and the destination rotates depending on the day of the week. Today she will be in the park below between ten and eleven hundred. Tomorrow she will be at a botanical garden, and the day after that, a café that features live music by some local unwashed aliens. And so on. I’ll give you the schedule and a set of maps when we get back in the speeder. Leave your bags here.” She set the noodles down on the doorstep of an anonymous address and we deposited ours next to hers. She buzzed the bell once and began walking back to the speeder, not waiting for an answer. I wondered if someone at that address had actually ordered noodles, or if Sakhet was surprising them.

“The upside is that the target has established a routine and makes herself vulnerable in public—on purpose, of course. She’s waiting for you to act. The downside is that her security team has also established a routine.”

“Who are they? Stormtroopers?”

“No. ISB agents. They know what they’re doing, too. They’ll have eyes on this walkway and the one across from us. They can
get stormtroopers here and air support, as well, with a simple comm call, and that’s the case at every location. You can’t afford any sort of extended engagement—if you’re not successful at the start, you should abort unless you have a death wish. I’d suggest you come back here later to see her because the security team will recognize me. You should not be spotted with me after this.”

“What about where she’s working? Can we get to her there?”

“Forget it. It’s an Imperial death trap even worse than trying to snatch her away from the agents. Don’t linger now, you’re supposed to be employees helping old Sakhet drop off noodles.”

We piled back into the delivery vehicle, and Sakhet steered us back to the noodle hut. On the way, she sent the sum of her scouting on Drusil Bephorin to Nakari’s datapad. Local maps and photos, noted security arrangements, placements of Imperial forces within easy reach of each location, and their estimated time of arrival after a request for aid.

“You’ll also find an encrypted file in there, which you can unlock with the code phrase
Rancor Sauce
, two words. Don’t unlock it unless you need it, and get rid of it once the mission’s complete.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a list of Kupohan contacts on various worlds should you find yourself on the run and in need of help.”

“I didn’t know the Kupohans had a network like that.”

“Officially we don’t. We’re not organized like the Bothan spynet. But that was you who shot down those TIE fighters in Llanic, am I right?”

“Yeah, that was me.”

“My son was on that ship. He was cooking your nerf nuggets last night and he wouldn’t be if you hadn’t decided to act. So I’m giving you a place to run if you need it. Contact anyone on that list and tell them you’re a friend of Sakhet’s on Denon, and that I make the best nerf nuggets you’ve ever had. They’ll give you what help they can.”