"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.
Jinzler took a deep breath. "Mara?" he called.
Three seconds later Mara appeared at the recovery room doorway, Captain Talshib right behind her. "What is it?" she demanded, glancing around for trouble.
"Rosemari says there's a Delta-Twelve tucked away over in D-Three," he told her. "You ever hear of that particular model?"
"Sounds vaguely familiar," Mara said, frowning in concentration. "Remind me."
"It was from Kuat Systems," he told her. "They manufactured the entire Delta line, including the Delta-Seven Aethersprite the Jedi used as starfighters during the early days of the Clone Wars. None of the Deltas had an internal hyperdrive, but TransGalMeg Industries made a hyperdrive ring for it to dock into. The Twelve was basically a larger, two-person version of the Seven that had its weapons stripped off for the civilian market."
"I'll take your word for it," Mara said. "So what's the question?"
"The question is whether you or Luke could fly it," Jinzler said.
"But the hyperdrive doesn't work," Pressor reminded him.
"I'll fix the hyperdrive," Jinzler said tartly. "Can you fly it?"
"Don't worry," she assured him grimly. "If you can fix it, we can fly it."
"You can fix it?" Evlyn asked, her voice sounding awed.
Jinzler looked at her. She was gazing up at him, her eyes as awed as her voice. A girl who had the power of the Jedi... and yet she was awed and impressed that he could fix a hyperdrive.
Suddenly he was staring at his sister again, all those years ago.
"Pretty exotic training for an ambassador," Pressor murmured.
Jinzler turned to face him; and as he did so, he felt himself drawing up to his full height. "I'm not an ambassador, Guardian," he said, his voice ringing clearly down the corridor with a pride and self-respect he'd never, ever felt before. "I'm an electronics technician."
He looked down at Evlyn and smiled. "Like my father before me."
As if from deep inside a well, a familiar voice called their standard code phrase. "I love you."
Luke blinked his eyes open, fighting the equally standard surge of disorientation. It was dark in the operating room, with only a dim permlight glowing off to one side, but he had no trouble recognizing the face leaning over him. "Hi, Mara," he said, working moisture into his mouth. "How's it going?"
"Better than I would have thought when you went under," she told him. "First things first. How do you feel?"
Experimentally, Luke took a deep breath. "Mostly healed, I think," he told her. "Muscles and skin seem fine." He wiggled his shoulders. "Except for my left shoulder blade."
"You took a big piece of shrapnel there," Mara said, rolling him half up onto his right side and probing the half-healed injury with her fingertips. "That one'll take a little more work."