by Sean Stewart
There was a great crash, the whole concourse rippled, and he lunged high,
driving Ventress before him to where poor Maks Leem, that good, kind, dying
partner, stood bleeding her life away at the edge of a pit cut into the floor.
She was soft and she was going to die for it, because at the end of the day it
was the killers who were hardest.
Ventress was smiling. Her mouth moved. He couldn't hear her, of course, but
he could follow the motion of her lips. Good, she was saying. That's it,
seventeen.
Ventress whirled, almost casually, and cut a smoking line across Master
Leem's belly. The Gran sank to her knees. She didn't even look at the wound. She
was staring at Jai, and her three eyes were sad, sad. Her lips said, Don't, Jai.
Another grinding crash: he couldn't hear it, but he felt it through the soles
of his feet. Then there was a hurricane in the concourse, a mighty wind as all
the air started to suck down through the hole in the floor. The space station
hull has been breached, Jai thought.
Smoke curled up from Master Leem's belly. Still she stared at him. Don't,
Jai.
Everything silent. Everything still.
Opening from the heart of stillness, a truth blossomed in Jai's chest: he was
going to die.
He was going to die here. Now.
There would be no miraculous rescue. There would be no marvelous escape. They
were both going to die, Ventress was going to kill them, and the question on
Maks Leem's face was, Would he die as a Jedi, or would he spend the last seconds
of his life giving in at last, forever, to the dark side?
Because that's where he was, right now. At the edges of this still place in
his heart Jai could feel all his hatred. And despair, yes, that, too. The
criminal waste of it, the horrible perversion that Ventress was going to win: it
was all there, every reason he would ever need to admit the dark side was
strongest. To give in.
There was the tiniest hesitation in his stroke. Maks Leem's body was being
sucked into the hole cut into the floor. She couldn't look at Jai anymore, she
was pouring the last of her strength into using the Force to seal the gap, to
keep the station's air from running out. "I won't," Jai said. He couldn't hear
himself. "I won't," he cried, and somehow he knew that Maks Leem, deaf and
dying, heard him and was content.
Nobody would ever know how close Jai had come to giving in to the dark side.
Nobody but Maks would ever know he had resisted at the end. In a few minutes
they would both be dead, and to the universe, his choice would make no
difference at all.
To Jai Maruk, it meant everything.
For the next thirty seconds he fought more beautifully than he had in his
life, and when Asajj finally cut him down, he was smiling.
Whie had such phenomenal balance that he had managed to keep from falling
even though he was racing down the stairs when the first blast of wind sucking
into the hole in the concourse floor had hit. Scout was not so lucky. The gust
knocked her down and dragged her tumbling down the stairs. She had to shake off
a hard smack to the head before she could struggle to her feet. By that time,
Master Leem seemed to be containing the breach, and Whie was far ahead, halfway
to Asajj Ventress.
Scout had just started to run when Ventress killed Jai. Master Maruk had
lifted his lightsaber to block a downward stroke from one of her blades; the
other passed cleanly through half his chest in a scything cut that dropped him
like a bundle of chopped burr millet.
The breath left Scout's body as if she'd been hit by a landspeeder. It didn't
even occur to her to worry about herself. Jai Maruk was suddenly dead. Her
Master, whom she was sworn to honor and defend. An hour before, she had been
complaining about him, but when the true test came she had proved everything he
ever said about her unreadiness was right. She had fallen on the stairs, she had
dropped her lightsaber, she had wasted time because she let the stupid droid
catch her by the throat: one ridiculous screw-up after another, and each of them
eating away the precious seconds that turned out to be all the time her Master
ever had.
And now he was dying or dead already.
Whie faltered and stopped. "Stars," he whispered as Scout ran up. His face
was deathly pale, and he was staring at Asajj Ventress. "This isn't right. It's
not supposed to be here."
Another grinding crash came from down below. The wind no longer whistled
through the hole in the floor.
The rigid concentration left Master Leem's body. She slumped by the hole, her
breathing fast and shallow.
Ventress turned from Maruk's body and walked over to where Maks Leem lay.
"That was noble, but someone appears to have patched the hull breach." She drove
her lightsaber through Master Leem's chest. "Eighteen," she added.
With a yell of rage Whie lunged toward her, lightsaber blazing. Ventress
stepped back. "Don't," she said calmly.
He attacked, blindingly fast. She was faster. He lunged: she stepped aside,
turned his blade, reached out with the Force, and flung him into a ticket
counter hard enough to drive the air from his lungs so all he could do was hang
there, gulping, with his diaphragm in spasms. "I don't particularly want to kill
you," she said, "but I will if you insist."
Air came back into Whie's chest with a whoop. "Not here, you won't," he
gasped. "Not today. Are you Jedi?" Deliberately, Ventress spat. "No."
"You carry a lightsaber."
"My first Master was a Jedi. The Order abandoned him to torment and death.
It's not a club I'm eager to join."
Whie laughed. It wasn't a good sound. He's hysterical, Scout thought. Seeing
Master Leem die has completely unhinged him. "Usually you don't have to join the
Jedi Order. Heck, I didn't. Usually they just . . . sign you up."
Ventress examined him, and then glanced, warily, at Fidelis, who came to
stand at his master's shoulder. "The Force is strong in you," she remarked.
"So they tell me. I have a peculiar talent," the boy said. "I dream the
future. Last night, for instance, I dreamed my own death. And this wasn't it."
Scout stared, wide-eyed. No wonder Whie had seemed so strange this morning.
"Actually—and I think you'll find this amusing," Whie said, still on the ragged
edge of hysteria, "I learned that I will die under a Jedi's hand. So I'm afraid
you're out of luck," he said. "Doesn't mean I can't kill you," he added.
"Do you want to?"
"You killed the person I loved best in the world," Whie said. "You stabbed
her in the chest while she was helpless. I'd say my reasons are pretty good."
"I would agree." Ventress studied her fingernails. "But you're not really
displaying the real Jedi sense of unattachment, are you?" Still watching
him—and, rather more carefully, Fidelis—she began to pace as she talked,
punctuating her words with the click-clack of her boot heels on the floor. "I
mean, a real Jedi wouldn't attack, would he? A real Jedi would survey the
tactical situation: respect his responsibility to the girl: respect his need to
preserve hi
mself as a valuable and expensive asset of the Republic. A real Jedi
would try to find Master Yoda. A real Jedi would be a coward," she said. Nothing
mocking in her voice now. Just thoughtful. Boots clicking, a steady tick like a
pendulum, cutting time into seconds. "A real Jedi would leave their bodies lying
here." She looked up at him curiously. "Do you want to be a real Jedi?"
He stared at her with hate.
"I don't think you do," Ventress said. Click, clack. "You are still young.
You are not fully indoctrinated. And I think that deep down in your heart, you
know the Jedi way is a lie. Do you want not to care that I killed your Master?
Do you want to be the person who wouldn't care?"
Click, clack. Click, clack. Black boots. Slow strides. Voice calm. Strangely
gentle. Strangely touched, as if seeing herself in Whie's pale fury. In Scout's
horrified eyes.
"Let me tell you about the dark side," Ventress said quietly. "Typical Jedi
propaganda to name it so. Let me give it another name," she said. Click, clack.
"Let's call it the truth."
She paused to study Master Leem's body with something like sadness. "The
truth is, you do care that this one is dead. You should. The truth is, you would
be less than alive if you didn't. The truth is, the principles that seem right
to an eight-hundred-odd-year-old hypocrite who may live forever make no sense
for the rest of us who live and suffer and die in this world. Our time here is
so short: so precious: so sweet. To turn your back on it, to crawl into your
monastery and teach yourself not to feel. "What a waste," Ventress said. Her
voice shook. "What a . . . blasphemy.
"If the universe loves the 'good' as the Jedi would have you believe—if the
morality of the weak indeed governs the dance of the stars, if life is fair—why
then am I alive, while your Master lies dead?" For a moment it looked as if she
would touch Maks Leem's body with her foot. If she had, Whie would have killed
her where she stood, or died trying.
Instead she paced on, always walking, that mesmerizing click, clack echoing
through the empty concourse. "The truth is, there is no good, and no evil,
either," she said with a wan smile. "There is only life . . . or not.
"The powerful always trick the simple with the promise of power. That's the
easiest way to bring someone to see the dark side. 'Give in to your anger!' It's
a simple trick, and an effective one, because it works. When people stop denying
what they have always known in their hearts is true, they come to some degree
into their own power. But that is not the end of the journey," Ventress said.
"It is the beginning. That despair, that furious instant when your eyes open and
see the world for what it really is . . . a necessary first step, that's all."
She looked from Whie to Scout and back again. "Behold: I give you the gift of
life. Hate me, if you like. By all means hate this," she said, glancing at the
bodies of the two Jedi. "You should. I give you the gift of my own heartbreak.
If you learn from it, if you can face the emptiness of the universe, then you
have some chance of growing up." She shrugged. "If, like scared children, you
can't let go of old Yoda's hand, and you crawl back for his bedtime stories and
his soothing lies, so be it. If having had a chance to see the truth, you
willfully choose to live the Jedi lie, then I will know what to do when next we
meet, and I'll do it with far less remorse than these executions."
A comlink beeped on her wrist. Asajj raised it to her mouth. "Yes? . . .
Where are you? . . . You let yourself . . . you're tumbling in space? . . . No,
I'm not going to stop to collect you," she said, rolling her eyes at the
Padawans. She listened for another moment, and then snapped the comlink off and
sighed. "Yoda has destroyed my ship and thrown my droids out the air lock.
Several Phindian military cruisers are heading this way. Given the odds"—her
eyes flicked curiously to Fidelis again—"I had best be stealing another ship
before Master Yoda gets back."
With a shaking hand, Scout flicked the power switch on her lightsaber.
"You're not going anywhere."
Ventress took what looked like a small dart gun from a holster at her side
and fired at the wall. Some kind of contact corrosive or incendiary must have
been packed into the tip, because where it hit the wall immediately buckled and
blew out. " Hull breach," Ventress said brightly as the air started to scream
out of the station again. "I'd fix that if I were you."
She turned her back on them and ran quickly back through the security
checkpoints, heading for the cruisers on the station's docking arm. With a last
look of fury, Whie turned his attention to the ruptured wall. Reaching into the
Force, he concentrated on holding the breach closed until Yoda arrived.
"Scout?" The word a whisper of agony.
Scout whirled. Jai Maruk, not quite dead, was trying to form her name. She
ran over and knelt beside him.
Asajj Ventress's killing blow had carved terribly into his chest. He was
gasping, short shallow panting breaths.
He smiled at the sight of her face. Squinted at the blood, the bruises on her
head and around her throat. His mouth worked. "Still . . . winning . . . the
hard way," he whispered. He looked down at his ravaged body. "Me . . . too."
He was smiling. She didn't think she'd ever seen him smile before. Tears
welled up inside Scout. "Don't try to talk. It will be all right, Master. Master
Yoda will be here soon to take care of you." Tears dropped from her eyes onto
his shattered chest. There was a long hitch in his breathing. His eyes closed.
"Master Maruk? Master Maruk! Don't go," Scout cried. "Don't leave me!"
His eyes opened, and he smiled again. "Never . . . ," he whispered. ". . . my
Padawan."
His eyes closed, and he was gone.
9
Count Dooku scooted his chair back from the dining room table at Chateau
Malreaux, dabbing at the spilled wine dripping from its edge. As if she had been
waiting for the spill to happen, half-mad Whirry lumbered into the dining room,
settling a foxtail stole around the ragged shoulders of her dirty pink ball
gown. "Which I can clean that up for Your Lordship, can't I, pets?"
Dooku sighed. In all reason—and he was a reasonable man—the spill was his own
fault. He had been distracted, turning over the progress of the war. Things were
going so well in the Outer Rim, the Republic press was urging action there,
"before the whole Rim is lost to the Confederacy for good." Really, sometimes it
seemed to Dooku that Darth Sidious's plots were needlessly complex. It was
beginning to look very much as if Dooku could simply win: march his battle
droids into Coruscant and claim the Republic outright.
Not that he would ever question the power of Darth Sidious. The dark secrets
at his command. But each man to his own devices: give a problem to a soldier,
and you will get a military solution; the same question will get you diplomacy
from a diplomat, and clothes from a tailor. Darth Sidious had the mind of a
schemer, and so he put his faith in schemes.
Dooku checked himself. The thought
was unfair. Say rather, Darth Sidious,
alone in all the galaxy, knew most intimately the dark springs that ran through
creatures' hearts. He was an expert in personal disintegration—in the ways one
came to betray oneself. It was no wonder, then, that even a clash of empires
revealed itself to the Sith as fundamentally a psychological battle, to be won
and lost at the level of each being's inner strength or weakness. Dooku
himself—though certainly psychologically acute, both naturally and through his
Jedi training, and more recently through the wisdom of the Sith—was also born to
wealth and power, and had for years now commanded very large groups of
followers, both in armies and corporations. It seemed to him that a being's
inner nature, whether noble or debased, looked much the same as he or she was
crushed under the tread of a tank. When one has sufficient force, there is no
need for schemes.
"Uh-oh," Whirry said. She had reached out to dab at the spilled wine with an
old rag—stars forbid she should risk a wine stain on the fancy Malreaux linen
napkins—but her hand had stopped in midair, hovering over the splotch of
burgundy on the table. "You're in trouble."
"Whirry," Dooku began severely, "I have told you before, I don't like—"
The comm console chimed. Glancing over, the Count saw who was calling and cut
his sentence off short. "I'll take this in my study," he said.
For a long time Darth Sidious did not speak to him. Instead, he simply piped
the breaking news story into Dooku's holoconsole. A smiling Palleus Chuff,
bruised but modestly triumphant. Long panning shots of the interior of the
Phindar Spaceport: reporters pointing excitedly at spent flechettes and plasma
scorch marks. Quickly patched holes in the floor and wall. Head shots of Master
Yoda—"another glowing chapter in his legendary career." Security footage of
Trade Federation assassin droids running amok; two Jedi Knights bravely battling
to save civilians before being cut down. Asajj Ventress, of course. A shot from
external space station cams: Last Call tumbling heavily through space,
accelerating, and then making a hyperdrive jump to certain doom. A
state-of-the-art ship built at Dooku's own expense—the third one she'd lost, if
one counted the craft Anakin and Kenobi had stolen from her.
