A Shadow at Dusk

Chapter 3

A planet in the Ten Tempest System

Talon Karrde moaned, a harsh sound filled with pain that seemed to reverberate around the small room.

Luke Skywalker's eyes fluttered open and he struggled to sit up. Glancing over to the other cot in the tiny one-room cabin, Luke saw Karrde thrashing on his bed, his groans becoming louder and more prolonged.

Luke swung his feet to the floor. The healing trance he had been in had not been long enough, but he was feeling a little better. He stood, stopping for a moment to get his balance, and walked somewhat unsteadily across the tiny dirt floor. He knelt beside Karrde's cot and laid his hand on the man's shoulder.

"Talon, relax buddy, try to relax. You're going to have to concentrate and help me."

Karrde coughed repeatedly, deep racking coughs that seem to literally rip at his lungs. A line of spittle, specked with blood, dribbled down his chin into his short, trim beard. Luke took a damp cloth from a bowl next to the cot and wiped Karrde's face.

"Talon, can you hear me? Come on, talk to me," Luke said softly, feeling the man's forehead. The smuggler's chief was burning up with fever again, and obviously not coherent.

Luke positioned his fingers on Karrde's temples and concentrated, sending the man soothing, comforting feelings. After a moment, Karrde seemed to relax, the muscles in his tense body loosening. He lay much calmer.

Luke increased his concentration, seeking out the cause of the latest spike of fever in Karrde's limp body. It didn't take him long to trace down the few scattered spores and dissolve them quickly.

Karrde's tall slender body had an almost instantaneous reaction to the absence of the spores as he began to drop into a cleansing sleep. He did mumbled one word that Luke didn't catch.

Luke leaned closer. "What? What did you say, Talon?"

The man mumbled the word again, although he obviously had no idea what he was saying. Then he dropped into a deep, healing slumber.

Luke sat up again and let out a long sigh. I know what you mean, old buddy, I know exactly what you mean, he thought, his mind turning to Mara. He knew she must be worried sick by now. It had been over two weeks since he had talked to her, and they had never gone that long without some communication between them.

He glanced down at Talon. He's having the same concerns, Luke thought, even if they were buried farther in his subconscious. But they were obviously leaking to the surface. What Talon had mumbled had been a name. Shada, he had said.

Just her name, but Luke understood. Talon was apparently as anxious for his friend, Shada D'ukal, as Luke was for Mara.

A sound at the small opening of the hut caught Luke's attention and he looked up.

A boy drew aside the leather flap that covered the opening and came into the room. He was about fifteen, tall and thin for his age. His face was pinched and told of a worn weariness.

"Master Skywalker?" the boy asked politely.

"I'm here," Luke answered, standing up. He was steadier on his feet than before, but knew he needed more rest.

"It's time, sir," the boy said in his rough Basic.

"I'll be right there, Vashi," Luke told him. It had taken him a few days after their arrival to get used to the sound of the language, but now he was having no trouble understanding it. It was his own language after all, just an ancient form of it.

The boy nodded and then left out the door again. Luke glanced down at Talon, then bent to pull the thick blanket up higher onto the older man's chest. He had to keep an eye on Talon Karrde. Mara would never forgive him if he let something happen. And he had a feeling Shada D'ukal wouldn't either.

A soft, mournful beeping caught his attention, and he walked to the corner of the little room and laid his hand onto the dome of the little droid. "I know, Artoo. I want to get out of here, too." He squatted beside the droid. "Have you found any more data?"

An affirmative sounding beep lifted Luke's spirits and he watched the data being processed on Artoo's tiny screen. Then he sighed. "You're sure, Artoo? There's no mistake?"

Artoo gave the little mournful whistle again, and Luke stood. He didn't think it was possible to be any more depressed, but he was. Artoo had spent days analyzing and cross-referencing the information they had collected about the strange malady affecting the people of this small planet, but had come up with absolutely nothing that could help them. As far as Artoo was concerned, it was a totally new and obscure disease.

The only thing that seemed to hold the infestation at bay was Luke's own Jedi powers. He was able to search out the disease in a person's body and dissipate it. If the person was lucky and Luke managed to dispel all the disease spores, then the person had a very real chance of surviving. And at least one good thing seemed to have evolved from Luke's arrival. If the person survived the spores, there didn't seem to be a chance of re-infection. The person apparently became immune to the virulent spores causing the disease after that.

Those few that did recover could help take care of those that were ill.

But there were just so many, so many who were ill. When Luke entered the huge, circular communal hut, he let his barriers drop and briefly swayed under the onslaught of pain and agony that assailed him. Rows of cots lined the walls of the room while in the center, children worked at wooden tables covered with bowls of water, coarse towels and blankets. The children moved among the cots, pressing damp towels against the fevered brows of the people in the cots. Most of those people Luke would have characterized as young. Many were in their late teens; a few were slightly older, but there weren't any people who could be classified as matured adults.

Luke moved into the center of the room and caught the attention of the boy who had come to his small cabin. The boy nodded and walked over to Luke.

"The most urgent cases are over there, Master." The boy pointed to a section to the right of where they were standing. Several cots lined the area and as Luke walked among them, he could feel the desperate illness of the people on the small beds.

He knelt beside the first one and frowned heavily, looking up at the boy who had accompanied him. "I hope you haven't waited too long, Vashi," he said, more sharply than he intended.

The boy shifted from one leg to the other. "I have to let you rest, Master. If you fall so exhausted that you cannot help, then where would we be?"

Luke felt a brief spasm of guilt at speaking so harshly to the boy. Sithspit! He was only fifteen and he was taking care of a whole village of ill and dying people. Luke doubted that he could have done as much when he was the same age. "You did the right thing," Luke told him softly and then turned back to the cot.

A young girl, no more than nineteen or twenty, moaned almost inaudibly as she moved restlessly on the bed. Luke could tell she was very weak and without some help, probably would not last the rest of the morning.

He leaned toward her and placed his fingers on her temple. He reached out with the Force and began to search her internal organs. Suddenly, he jerked spasmodically and dropped his hands, tears coming involuntarily into his eyes. The spores were everywhere, hundreds, thousands of them. It would take him hours to remove them all, hours he didn't have to devote to one person.

He glanced up at the boy, only to see him shrug.

"They brought her in late last night. I think she may be from the village over the hill from this one." The boy looked out the door of the huge hut. "I don't think there are many left there now."

"You should have awakened me when they brought her in," Luke pointed out, the emotional pain he was feeling evident in his voice.

The boy shook his head, gently moving the feather from some colorful avian creature native to his world that was attached to his hair. His expression reflected a wisdom far older than his years. He put his hand on Luke's shoulder. "Master, you cannot save them all." He looked down at the girl on the bed. "I showed her to you because I thought we may learn something new about this disease. She is not of our village..." He stopped and sighed heavily.

For the first time, Luke realized that the boy was exhausted. The spasm of guilt hit him again. The kid had been working virtually non-stop since Luke and Karrde had landed on the planet. They had trekked several days before coming across the village and walking into a nightmare that Luke knew he would never forget. And then he and Karrde had both fallen ill with the mysterious affliction, but Luke had managed to clean himself of the spores almost immediately and hadn't had any recurrence. Talon hadn't been as lucky, and Luke had been working on him for several days, cleaning the spores from the man's body as soon as they showed activity.

Luke was sure that the spores could lay dormant in the body until ready to attack, and he was almost positive that the older a person was, the more spores seemed to invade the body. Talon Karrde was almost a decade older than Luke, and he had been struck much harder and more viciously. But Luke was keeping him alive and hoped that soon he would have Talon's lean body free of the spores.

A young girl, about fourteen years old, came up to Luke and the boy. She was breathing heavily as if she had been running. "Vashi! Vashi!"

"Hold, Enee!" The boy took the girl by her thin shoulder and held her still. "What is it?"

"The Batui! The Batui are coming!" The girl wrenched from Vashi's grip and ran to the big table in the center of the room. She took a bow and several arrows from a long wooden box and ran outside again.

The boy shot a glance at Luke. "We must hurry, Master." Then he, too, ran to the table, collected some weapons and raced out after the girl, calling, "Enee, wait!"

Luke sighed and looked down at the young woman on the cot. He knelt beside her again and put his hands on her temples. Closing his eyes and gathering the Force to him, he reached far down inside her and eased her agonizing pain. Soon, she was lying quietly, her breathing leveling off. "I'm so sorry," he whispered softly and he leaned toward her, planting a gentle kiss on her forehead. He knew she wouldn't be alive when they returned.

Then he stood, fingering his lightsaber with one hand and checking that his blaster was still in its holster. He walked purposely out of the hut's huge door and into a scene that he knew instinctively was a reenactment of his species' history.

*********************

Talon Karrde's eyes opened and he blinked rapidly, trying to clear them of a hazy blurriness. With a bit of a struggle, he sat up and swung his long, muscular legs off the bed. He sat there on the side of the cot for a time, letting his body adjust to the new position. The incredible, searing pain was gone, yet he was very conscious of the weakness still surrounding his body.

His head rolled back on his shoulders, his eyes closing again momentarily. He had a vague memory of Skywalker working on him earlier that morning and knew that he must be clean of the spores again. He hoped fervently that that had been the last of them, but nothing was a certainty. They had thought before that he was cleared of the spores only to have a dormant one flare to life. At least they had discovered that once infected a person couldn't be infected again. The body apparently built up an immunity that kept new spores from entering it.

Karrde opened his eyes and shook his head. He had never felt so bad in his life than when the spores had first attacked him. He had been positive he was going to die, and in his few lucid moments, had spent some time going over the pages of his life.

Although he had accomplished many things and considered his life to be successful for the most part, there was one deep and abiding regret that now seemed to eat at his core. He had never had a family, never had children who would carry on his name, never found a woman whom he could love completely and consider his own. Even Mara, with all her cynicism and aloofness, had found someone to love. Someone, who in return, loved her.

Talon leaned forward and ran a hand through his longish black hair. No, he thought. There was no use in lying to himself any longer, at least not now. He had found a woman, one that he would give almost anything to be able to claim as his own. But as with so many other things in his life, luck had not been with him. It had been his lot to fall in love with a woman who could never return his affection, a woman so caught up in the bitterness and betrayals of her own life that she could not see past them to a future. At any rate, a future with him.

Shada, he thought, his eyes betraying his own bleakness. How he wanted her, and yet they had remained friends, good friends who trusted and believed in one another completely, confided in and counted on each other to the exclusion of all others. But never once, in the nearly two years that they had been close had their relationship ever crossed over to something beside a deep and abiding friendship.

Talon looked down at the dirt floor under his feet. A memory as sharp as if it had happened the day before flooded into his mind. Han Solo, his arm about the shoulders of his beautiful and petite wife, teasing Talon about his relationship with Shada D'ukal.

"Yeah, I did," Han said, giving Karrde a highly speculative look. "You know, I asked you once what it would take to get you to join the New Republic. Remember? You asked what it had taken to get me to join up - "

"Yes, I remember," Karrde cut him off, an uncharacteristic note of embarrassment coloring his voice. "Kindly bear in mind that I have not joined the New Republic. And my relationship with Shada is nothing like that."

"Neither was mine," Han said smugly. "That's okay. Give it time."

"It's not going to happen," Karrde insisted.

"Yeah," Han said. "I know."*

And Talon Karrde now understood how Han Solo, ex-smuggler, had managed to hold his own among Jedi relatives and hordes of politicians for so many years. The man was far too perceptive for his own good.

The sounds of shouts and running feet brought Karrde's attention back to the present and he pulled himself to his feet. Shaking his head one more time to clear it, he walked on wobbly legs to the door of the cabin. Pulling aside the covering, he stepped out into the brilliant sunlight.

**************

As Luke Skywalker walked out of the huge circular hut, a group advanced on the outskirts of the village where crude defensive armaments had been placed. The group wasn't large, no more than twenty, but its members were heavily armed with the weapons typical of the planet. Bows, arrows, and blades of all kinds and lengths. The group was both genders, advancing at a quick rate on foot. Yet, they were all young, at least what Luke characterized as young. Mostly teenagers, a few even younger than that. Their faces were painted with some sort of intricate design. Probably their tribal markings, Luke thought, walking steadily toward the defensive battlements. Even in this village he had seen its members paint their faces for various occasions, though most of those had been in mourning in the time that Luke had been there.

As he passed the small cabin that he shared with Talon Karrde, the man appeared in the doorway, leaning heavily on the frame.

"Talon!" Luke exclaimed, moving quickly over to him. "What are you doing? Get back in bed. You can't help out here."

Talon straightened up, his tall, lean body standing almost a head taller than Luke. "I'm alright, Skywalker. A little shaky, maybe, but I feel much better, and I need to move around to get my strength back."

"Yeah, well, you may be right there, but moving around in a battle is not the place." Luke took Talon's arm, intent on moving him back inside.

"Battle? What battle?" Talon asked, resisting.

A solid thunk sounded near Talon's head and both men looked in astonishment at the heavy, quivering arrow embedded in the wooden wall.

"What in all the Sith hells was that?" Talon gasped.

Luke glanced down at the blaster that had suddenly appeared in Talon's right hand. Any man capable of drawing that fast was ready to fight if necessary. "Come on," Luke told him. "We have company."

The two men did a crouching run towards several wooden carts and wagons that had been turned over onto their sides and piled together in the center of the main dirt thoroughfare that ran through the village. Behind the barriers were several youngsters, standing at periodic times and loosing a volley of arrows into the distance.

The area was filled with shouts and yells from the children behind the barricade and from the ones walking now at a steady pace down the center of the thoroughfare, firing a host of arrows as they came.

Luke and Talon arrived at the pile of carts and wagons and crouched down behind it with the children of the village. Luke scooted over next to Vashi just as the young man stood and fired his long bow. A harsh yell of pain erupted from one of the advancing group, and Luke knew the boy had hit his target.

"Why are they doing this?" Luke peered up at Vashi as the boy notched another arrow into his bow.

Vashi glanced over the top of the cart he was hiding behind. "They are probably hungry."

Luke twisted his face wryly. "Then why not just ask for food? Wouldn't you give them some?"

Vashi looked down at him. "Why ask for some when you can take it all?"

Luke nodded at the boy's logic and sighed. Vashi squatted down beside him. "Their leader is a boy I've known many years. He is aggressive and arrogant. He thinks all should follow his lead."

Talon moved over closer to them. "Can you talk to him?"

Vashi shook his head, his colorful feather bouncing on his shoulder. "I've tried. He will not listen. He said...he said there could not be two leaders." Vashi looked down, his body tense.

Talon eased up and took a look over the cart at the leader across the way. He was shorter but more physically powerful than the slender Vashi, his muscled legs and arms evident even in the distance. "He wants to fight you, doesn't he?"

Vashi looked quickly at the older man and then nodded miserably. "His name is Ackkuu. He is from a village near the hills." The boy waved in the direction of the distant mountain range. "I cannot fight him. I am not a warrior like him. He will kill me easily."

Talon nodded. "Then we'll just have to outsmart him, won't we?" He looked at Luke and motioned with his head for the younger man to follow him. The two men moved back from the barricade and talked quietly.

After a moment, Luke called to the slender girl beside Vashi. "Enee?"

Her head jerked with surprise, but she whispered, "Yes, Master?" "Can you find some food for me and put it in something I can carry easily?"

The girl thought for a moment and then nodded. "Yes, Master." Then she hurried away, heading back in the direction of the circular hut that dominated the center of the village.

Vashi's intelligent, brown eyes gazed patiently at the men. He didn't know what had brought the two men down from the sky two weeks before, but he had been astonished at their knowledge, especially at the younger one, the one the other man had said was a Jedi Master. Vashi wasn't sure exactly what a Jedi Master was, but he had seen the man do incredible healing, apparently with his will and his mind. He truly was a gift from the gods.

Talon smiled at the boy. "We have a plan that we think will work, but you need to keep them busy until we have everything we need."

The boy nodded and notched another arrow into his bow. He peered over the top of the cart. There had been a lull in the fighting and now the group across the way had moved just out of arrow range. They seemed to be talking over their options as well.

Suddenly, Enee ran up to them and she handed Luke a large sack made of a coarse, straw-like material. It was bulging with packs of food.

Luke laid his hand on the girl's shoulder. "Thanks, Enee, good job."

She nodded, pleased that she had been successful, and then took her place beside Vashi again.

Luke turned to Talon. "Ready?"

Talon nodded and eased along the carts to the edge of the barricade. He checked his blaster and then peered cautiously around the edge.

Luke placed the sack over his shoulder and grasped his lightsaber in his other hand. Taking one step back, he then Force-leaped over the barricade, igniting his lightsaber as he came down.

He was vaguely aware of the gasps of surprise from Vashi and his followers but he was more concerned with the reaction of the group farther down the dirt street. He wasn't disappointed. Many in the group cried out in surprise and fear as Luke seemed to virtually fly through the air, and the leader sharply barked an order Luke didn't understand.

Arrows began to rain in his direction, but he easily blocked them with his lightsaber, walking steadily toward the group the whole time.

The group, seeing his advance, began to move away. Luke could vaguely hear murmurs of "A god, he's a god!" But the arrows continued to rain down at him, even though the group now seemed in a steady retreat.

Suddenly, his danger sense flared and he looked quickly toward his right. Before he could move his lightsaber in that direction, an arrow suddenly darted out of the darkness behind a small cabin and struck Luke in the thigh. A blaster barked from behind him, sending a flash of red behind the cabin. Through the searing pain from his leg, Luke saw a boy, about seventeen or eighteen stagger out and collapse.

A sudden stillness came over the little street, and Luke turned to the group he had been facing before, steadying himself as best he could on his injured leg.

The group was staring open-mouthed at their fallen comrade. Then the leader mumbled, "Another god, they have another god," and pointed a shaking finger at where the blaster shot had come. The group suddenly diversed, cries of terror accompanying their panicked flight from the village.

Luke stumbled a few steps after them. "Wait!" he called, but they didn't heed his cry and continued to run.

Talon Karrde appeared at his side, along with Vashi. Karrde took the sack of food from Luke. "Here, Vashi, take the food to the end of the street and leave it. They will come back for it after they think it over."

He slipped an arm around Luke's waist and helped him turn around. Together, they walked back up the street toward the barricade. "Sorry, Skywalker, this wasn't part of the plan."

Luke grimaced. "It's all right, Karrde. If you hadn't shot him, I might not be here to talk about it. Once we get this arrow out, I'll spend a few hours in a healing trance. I should be fine after that."

Talon nodded solemnly, knowing it could have been far worse.

On to Chapter 4