Timothy Zahn - Survivor's Quest

"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 announce it from the command deck, either." Jinzler turned. Pressor and Rosemari were coming down the corridor toward them, Pressor with a pile of sacks across one forearm. "I brought you a new collection bag," he said, peeling one off the stack and handing it to Evlyn. "These are plasticized, so they won't get as soggy."

"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 planning to destroy that on their way out. If they succeed, it might be months before anyone comes back out this way."

"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.

"Of course it's important," Rosemari said. Her voice seemed sad, almost resigned, yet at the same time had a sense of peace to it. "Ambassador... there may be another hypercapable transport available. We have a Delta-Twelve Skysprite sitting in one of the docking bays over on Three."

Pressor turned to his sister, his jaw dropping in astonishment. "We've got a what?"

"A Delta-Twelve Skysprite," she repeated. "It's a two-passenger sublight transport with a connecting hyperdrive ring. Dad showed it to me once when we were working over there together."

"I didn't know there was anything like that aboard Outbound Flight," Pressor said.

"Not many people do," Rosemari said. "And I don't think anyone knows why it was even aboard. Dad certainly didn't."

She looked at Jinzler. "The problem is that the Managing Council made Dad disassemble the hyperdrive. They knew they'd never be able to find a way out of the cluster, and they didn't want one of their exiled Jedi to figure it out and get away."

Jinzler took a careful breath. A hypercapable ship... "You say the ring was disassembled, not destroyed? Are all the parts still there?"

"I'm sure Dad didn't break anything," Rosemari said. "He was being very careful. And when he was done, he put everything into a storage locker. If you could get it to work, someone might at least be able to go for help."

"So you'd just let us go?" Jinzler asked, eyeing her closely. "Even though keeping us here might help your daughter?"

"Against your will?" Rosemari asked quietly. "And at the cost of all those Chiss lives?" She shook her head. "Not for me. Not even for my daughter. Jedi serve others rather than ruling over them, for the good of the galaxy."

She looked down at her daughter, a bittersweet smile on her lips. "You see?" she said. "I even know the Code."

Evlyn wrapped her arms around her mother. "I knew you'd do the right thing," she murmured.