“Wait,” someone called from inside the carved-out area. “There’s a problem.”
Kanan sighed as Yelkin hustled back inside. Kanan was about to start off-loading the crates himself when he glanced back into the recess. Beside Yelkin, he saw another technician sticking a long prod into a hole drilled for explosives. Or trying to. “Something’s already in there!”
Kanan’s eyes widened—and for the first time, he looked down at the ground outside the short tunnel. There was something he’d seen before: small and brown, discarded nearby.
Skelly’s toolbox.
Kanan yelled into the opening. “Get out! Get out!”
He didn’t have to yell a third time. The techs were moving.
“Someone’s wired something already,” Yelkin said in a panic. “There’s a timer! Thirty seconds—”
No disarming that! “Forget it!” Kanan yelled. “Go!”
Moonglow’s demolition techs kept a portable siren in the blast area; it was right in Kanan’s path. He activated it. All across Zone Forty-Two, workers charged for the exit tunnels to the west.
Ahead of him, Yelkin stumbled across the craggy surface and fell. Kanan, on a headlong run, slowed as he approached the miner—the only other soul left in the enormous crystal atrium. But Yelkin wasn’t asking for help. He was pointing, instead, to something Kanan had forgotten about.
“Kanan! Your cart!”
Kanan looked back at the hovercart with its full load of baradium bisulfate—a hundred times more material than Skelly would have been carrying in his kit—and remembered the demolition guys’ adage: It’s the secondary that does the damage. His cart could bring down half the cave network.
Kanan bounded back toward the opening—and its ticking bomb inside—and seized the hovercart. Turning with it, he ran, pushing it as fast as he could across the long clearing.
Yelkin wasn’t moving, he saw—he’d twisted his ankle. Kanan pointed the cart toward him as his boots pounded the surface. His voice echoed across the chamber: “Yelkin! Grab for it!”
It wasn’t easy to see or hear much after that.
Light from the blast came first. Emanating into the work area from the blasting tunnel, it reflected dazzlingly off the crystal structures above and to either side of Kanan. The sound came next, a muted boom. Kanan had just reached Yelkin with the crate-topped hovercart when the shock wave hit him in mid-stride. The cart’s repulsors were still working; its front bumper caught Yelkin in the gut—and now both they and the hovercart were carried forward, Kanan’s hands locked onto the handle for dear life.
Searing cracks resounded across the atrium. Kanan, now a passenger hanging on like Yelkin, knew what was next. Like icicles on a summer day, meter-wide stalactites across the chamber began falling across the ground they’d already covered. First the crystal knives—and then the rock and stone suspended above them, all plummeting into the open space.
Seeing the first shard strike nearby, Kanan hit the ground with his heels for the first time in seconds. Without thinking, he leapt.
Leapt, as he hadn’t in nearly a decade, farther than any mortal normally could. Leapt, atop the crates filled with deadly explosives on the careening cart. Leapt, to where he could reach out and grab the shoulder of the unaware Devaronian, clinging for dear life.
The western opening through which the other miners had evacuated was just ahead. Pulling the hapless Yelkin fully onto the hovercart in one motion, Kanan hit the ground off the left side with his next. Guiding the airborne vehicle like a wader moving a raft, he slung the cart toward the exit tunnel. He stumbled, a step shy of safety, as he tried to follow. Twisting faceup as he dropped, Kanan hit the ground. He looked up into the onrushing mass—
—and stopped it, with his mind.
It was an odd feeling, like putting on an old article of clothing. It was like the leap, something he had sworn never to do. Not in front of anyone, to be sure.
But now he had done it. All light was gone, but he could sense the black mass of debris quivering a meter from his head, even as he heard apocalyptic clamor all around. Instinctively, Kanan dug his heels into the tunnel floor and forced himself backward, the tail of his shirt grinding against the surface until he was fully inside the reinforced western tunnel.
And then he let go. Let go with his mind, and listened as a mountain, denied, found the space where he had landed.
—
Vidian was in an upper chamber addressing the droidmaster and his three terrified aides when the floor fell in.
Everything went dark as Vidian, his audience members, and all their furnishings tumbled downward. The fall was brief, with the remnants of what had been the floor beneath their feet smashing to pieces on the tougher surface below. An immense jolt rocked Vidian.
Up to his hips in stone, he took a moment to regain his bearings. His eyes switched to night-vision mode, and he realized that a sinkhole had opened beneath the droidmaster’s office: The walls of the room, as well as the hallway leading from it, were intact, several meters above.
Disregarding the pained cries of the others struggling in the rubble, Vidian used his cybernetic arms to dig himself out. Then he began climbing for the aperture above.
“We’re trapped down here,” a voice called behind him. “Help us!”
“Someone will arrive before you starve,” Vidian said, reaching for the bottom of the doorway.
“But there may be aftershocks—”
“Aftershocks? Impossible. This moon’s crystal columns are supposed to prevent tremors,” Vidian said. The event couldn’t have been natural. Pulling himself up and into the intact hallway, he began to suspect what had happened.
His anger returned anew.
—
In the darkness, Hera felt the world rumbling around her. She’d seen Vidian fall through the floor and disappear; she’d lingered for a few moments, hoping he was gone for good.
No luck, she thought, hearing his voice from the recess up ahead. The moon had tasted him and spat him out.
She heard voices in the hallways around her, and spied portable lights flashing this way and that. There was too much activity now—someone had kicked the insect nest. She needed to use the darkness while she could.
Recon’s over, the Twi’lek thought. She turned from Vidian’s chamber and ran back up the hall.
—
Kanan continued to force himself backward as debris struck the ground behind him. Finally, after what seemed like an eon, stillness came.
And then the work lights.
Okadiah arrived at his side and knelt. “Lad? You all right?”
Kanan coughed up dust and nodded. Blinking particles from his eyes, he vaguely saw his hovercart, its securely fastened crates of explosives still there. Yelkin lay facedown atop it, wheezing.
“What happened?” Okadiah asked.
“I didn’t see,” Yelkin said. He looked back at the rubble-blocked passage. “I guess we caromed into the tunnel! I thought we were goners, for sure!”
“A million-to-one shot,” Okadiah said, scratching his chin. He looked at Kanan. “My boy, you are the lucky one.”
Kanan knew he was anything but lucky. For Kanan Jarrus was Caleb Dume, the Jedi who never was.
And now, he knew, it was time to go.
THE FORCE WAS A MYSTERIOUS energy field that sprang from life itself; that much, every Jedi student knew. The Force could be used for many purposes: protection, persuasion, wisdom—even the manipulation of matter and the performance of great physical feats. Jedi taught younglings all of those things.
But they never taught how to make the Force go away when it wasn’t wanted. That was all Caleb—all Kanan had wanted from the Force for years. And the blasted thing had just shown up again on Cynda. It had saved his carcass, true—but if anyone had seen, Kanan’s life wouldn’t be worth a Confederacy credit.
He had left a moon in chaos. Zone Forty-Two’s ceiling had caved in, producing tremors that caused dangerous seams to open in some flo
ors higher up. Thankfully, no chambers had vented to space: They were too far beneath Cynda’s surface. It was a miracle no one had been killed.
Kanan didn’t know if Count Vidian was still there or not, or if the Empire suspected Skelly of planting the charges that caused the collapse. It was a safe bet they did. It was mining in Zone Forty-Two that Skelly had warned about; perhaps he’d decided to bring the roof down before anybody else did. Cynda was laced with tunnels, but the Imperials had numbers. They’d find Skelly eventually, and he’d get what was coming to him.
Kanan had used one of those back tunnels to slip away, leaving Okadiah and his crew behind. Taking little-used elevators back to Expedient, he’d raised ship before security knew any better. He could hear over the transceiver that departures had been grounded. He doubted it would be a problem. The Moonglow techs below would vouch for his having warned them; no one would suspect Kanan of having planted the bomb, at least. He was just returning his ship safely to home base, on Gorse, like he was scheduled to do.
And that would be it. He’d never set foot on the moon again. And tomorrow, he’d find a way off Gorse. It was time to move on.
He’d been in motion since that dark day, years earlier. The darkest of days. The day when life as he knew it had fallen apart, had been blasted apart, by something he hadn’t then understood. He still didn’t understand much of it. There he’d been, fourteen years old, having relied for his entire life on the Jedi Order for everything: food, shelter, education, and security. Maybe not love, but at least stability, calm, sense.
And then, all at once, the Republic and its clone soldiers had turned against the Jedi. Depa Billaba fought to protect him—and he fought to protect her. She died. He fled. She died so he could flee, but to what end? What did she hope for him?
The young Caleb hadn’t known. He’d known only that, in the end, the Force hadn’t helped her. Or any of the other Jedi he’d heard about.
It’s not your friend, he’d told himself. It was one reason he refused to use it, even to make his life a little easier. He’d also refused to take up his lightsaber. He still had it: Besides the finicky Force, it was his last tie to the past. But what good were lightsabers? What good was the Force, if it allowed its most devoted followers to be cut down by rank betrayal?
“A Jedi uses the Force for guidance,” his first teacher had said. Yeah, guidance right into a freaking wall!
The problem was that the Force couldn’t be turned off like a switch. Many of the benefits it conveyed were subtle. They enhanced traits without his conscious effort. No act of will could make it stop; no lapse of belief could make it fully vanish. Kanan would always be better at some things. And that had been the problem of his life. He was still driven to take jobs that interested him, and to excel at them. That was just his way.
But excelling by too much, or for too long, risked notice. And that was something he had been told to avoid.
Obi-Wan had used the beacon to warn Jedi to avoid detection. It hadn’t taken long for Kanan to understand why. For days and weeks after the Jedi generals had been cut down by their own clone troopers, the new Empire continued to hunt and kill Jedi. It wasn’t just about hiding physically from the Empire. Avoid detection meant hiding from everyone the fact that he had a connection to the Force.
The Force was a death mark.
The early months had been a blur of terror for young Caleb. He’d lived constantly with nightmares of what could happen. The Empire had control of the Jedi headquarters. That surely included the database with whatever information the Jedi had on file for Caleb Dume. They would have learned his name, for sure, and likely had images of him taken by the training center’s security cams. What else did they have? He’d racked his brain many times trying to remember what, if any, biometric information the Jedi had taken from him over the years. Did they have a soundprint of his voice? A genetic sample? It bewildered Kanan now to think that the Empire might know more about his family history than he did.
Whatever had happened to the other Jedi Knights and their Padawans, he had to assume the Emperor would have been thorough about it. They’d have found a list, or constructed one. They’d have marked off everyone who fell. And they would’ve known Caleb Dume did not fall when Depa Billaba did.
So in the beginning, Caleb did everything right. When he took jobs to feed himself, he made sure not to excel too far beyond the expected norm. Personally distributing his own payloads on Cynda was a holdover from that; it kept his number of flights per day to a number that was merely exceptional, and not suspicious. He’d resisted friendships and long-term romantic connections, and he’d mostly restrained his chivalrous impulses. The teenager had done all those things, for fear of a middle-of-the-night visit by stormtroopers.
But weeks turned to months, and months to years, and no one came to his home—or cot, or tent, or patch of spacecraft floor—to wake him and drag him away. And the young man now known as Kanan Jarrus discovered that carousing eliminated those worries entirely.
So he’d done more of the same. He’d drunk to forget. He’d brawled to let off steam. He’d taken the dangerous jobs to fund his lifestyle—and then began it all again. He wasn’t some chivalrous nomad, skulking from planet to planet doing good deeds and leaving when things got too hot. No, he left when things got dull. When the drinking money ran out, or when the bar-owner’s daughter suddenly wanted to marry him. Kanan didn’t leave because the Empire moved in: He’d stared down Imperials like Vidian before and lived. They knew he was something to ignore. No, he left because where the Empire went, fun usually died.
And he also left whenever he got too comfortable. That was when the Force, tired of being suppressed, would sneak back like an ignored pet. He didn’t want it complicating his world, making him feel like somebody’s prey again. And he didn’t like being reminded about what had happened in that other life.
Watching Ultimatum growing in his cockpit window as he headed for Gorse, Kanan thought for the umpteenth time about the text portion of the message from Obi-Wan. Republic forces have been turned against the Jedi. There was something in that wording: have been turned. It suggested that maybe the people themselves hadn’t turned against the Jedi, despite the Emperor’s claims to the contrary.
That might have mattered years earlier, Kanan thought, but it hardly did now.
He had always been aggravated by how little Obi-Wan had shared. It made sense that he’d been short of time. And perhaps he hadn’t known much, yet, when he sent the warning. But why hadn’t he sent another? If he didn’t have access to the beacon on Coruscant any longer, wouldn’t he have found another way to get a message out, later on?
Kanan knew the answer. Because there probably aren’t any Jedi left to contact. And because Kenobi’s probably dead himself.
At one time, those had been hard thoughts to have; now they only produced a tired yawn. He couldn’t see Obi-Wan willingly hunkering down on some remote world, waiting for things to blow over. He’d have had a mission, if he were alive—an important one. He’d want people to know about it. And all the missions Kanan could imagine would have put Obi-Wan into motion all around the galaxy. No, if Kenobi lived, Kanan would have heard something.
But Kanan knew he wouldn’t care even if the Jedi Master popped up in the seat right behind him. Caleb Dume hadn’t yet been a Jedi Knight, and Kanan Jarrus wasn’t one now. None of it affected him, need ever affect him. He’d been dealt his hand, and that was what he would play. Play, for as long he could keep from stupid stunts like the one he’d pulled on Cynda.
He just wouldn’t play here anymore.
He would return Expedient to Moonglow; it would be a dumb starship thief indeed that would want it. He’d collect his back pay, gather his few goods before Okadiah got home, and be on his way. The Star Destroyer was still out there, he saw, but it hadn’t yet barred commercial flights from Gorse. He would pick a direction and be on his—
Kanan took a second look at the Star Destroyer, now ahead and to
his right. From Ultimatum’s underside, two four-vehicle flights of TIE fighters emerged and headed in his direction.
Snapped alert, Kanan leaned forward and grabbed the steering yoke. Which way? They were headed right for Expedient. The ship had a little rock-shooter of a cannon, nothing more, and the vessel hadn’t been refueled since that morning, four lunar flights earlier. Kanan switched the comm system from channel to channel, listening for Captain Sloane’s voice. Someone, something to tell him whether he needed to fight or fly.
The voice he did hear came from the backseat—but it wasn’t Obi-Wan Kenobi, or even kindly old Okadiah. “They’re not after you,” it said. “They’re looking for me.”
Kanan looked back.
Skelly!
“YOU!” KANAN GRABBED at Skelly’s collar, yanking him violently forward and slamming him against the top of Expedient’s dashboard. Kanan’s first instinct was to deal with the stowaway—but the Imperials were still out there, still heading in his direction.
“Look!” Skelly said, gasping for breath, arms flailing.
Kanan followed the upside-down man’s gaze and saw, past the TIE squadrons, a Lambda-class shuttle departing Ultimatum. As its trapezoidal wings folded into flight position, another one followed. And then another—until five shuttles were heading in Kanan’s direction. Two TIEs from each group broke formation and moved to flank the shuttles as the others continued ahead, clearing the space lanes. Kanan watched, disbelieving, as the vessels passed over his head on the way to Cynda.
“I told you, they’re all looking for me,” Skelly said. “Not you.”
“Congratulations,” Kanan said drily. He didn’t let Skelly up. “There’s about to be a hundred more stormtroopers on Cynda, thanks to you. I’m tempted to send you back to them!”
Skelly wrested free—and Kanan gave him a hard smack. Blood spurted from Skelly’s nose. “You jerk! What did you do that for?”
“You blew up Zone Forty-Two. You tried to kill us!”
The Rise of the Empire Page 38
