One of the trainees, Tionne, sat in the corner preparing to play a stringed musical instrument: two hollow resonating boxes separated by a shaft strung with tonal cords.
“This is the ballad of Nomi Sunrider,” she said, “one of the historical Jedi Knights.” She smiled. Long silvery hair streamed past her shoulders, hanging down to her chest and splitting like a white-capped river down her back. Her eyes were small and close set, glinting with a mother-of-pearl sheen. Her nose was small, her jaw squarish. Luke thought she looked more exotic than beautiful.
Tionne had a great passion for the old Jedi legends and ballads and histories. Even before Luke found her, she had dedicated her life to resurrecting the old stories, digging them out of the archives and popularizing them. Luke had tested Tionne’s Jedi talent, and while her potential was perhaps less than the other students’, she made up for it with absolute devotion and enthusiasm.
The others found chairs, benches, or just a smooth spot on the floor to hear Tionne sing. She laid the instrument in her lap, and as the trainees listened, she plucked the strings with both hands, setting up an echoing music that fed and subtracted from her lyrics as she sang.
Luke closed his eyes and heard her tale about young Nomi Sunrider, who, after her husband’s murder, attended the Jedi training that had been meant for him. Nomi had become a pivotal character in the devastating Sith War that pitted Jedi against Jedi in the ancient days of the Old Republic.
Luke smiled as he heard the music, the resonating notes. Tionne’s soft and watery voice as she sang with passion. From the far side of the room, Luke heard a restless stirring and turned to see Kyp Durron, his face stormy with a scowl. The young man sighed, scowled again, and finally stood up, interrupting Tionne’s song.
“I wish you wouldn’t perpetuate that ridiculous story,” Kyp said. “Nomi Sunrider was a victim. She fought in the Sith Wars without ever understanding what the battles were about. She listened blindly to her Jedi Masters, who were afraid because Exar Kun had discovered a way for the Jedi to increase their power.”
Tionne set her musical instrument on the flagstones and gripped her knees through the fabric of her robe. Her face looked stricken, her small eyes glinting with confusion. “What are you talking about?” Her voice was thick with discouragement. “I’ve spent weeks reconstructing that legend. Everyone here knew what I was doing. If you had other information, Kyp, why didn’t you share it with me?”
“Where did you learn all this history, Kyp?” Luke said, standing up. He put his hands on his hips, trying to stare Kyp down. The young man had become more and more volatile as he acquired Jedi knowledge. Calm, you must be calm, Yoda had said, but Luke didn’t know how to make Kyp calm.
Kyp flashed his glance across the trainees, who looked at him in astonishment. “If the Sith War had turned out differently,” he said, “perhaps the Jedi Knights would have learned how to defend themselves when Darth Vader came hunting, and they wouldn’t all have been slaughtered. The Jedi would never have fallen, and we wouldn’t be here, taught by someone who doesn’t know any more than we do.”
Luke remained adamant. “Kyp, tell me where you learned all this.”
Kyp pushed his lips together and narrowed his eyes. He drew several deep breaths, and Luke could sense the turmoil inside him, as if his mind were working rapidly to come up with an answer. “I can use the Holocron too,” he said. “As Master Skywalker keeps telling us, we are all obligated to learn everything we can.”
Luke didn’t quite believe the young man’s words, but before he could ask another question, Artoo trundled in, warbling and chittering in alarm. Luke deciphered some of the electronic language. “No idea who it is?” he said.
Artoo whistled a descending hooting negative.
“We have a visitor,” Luke announced. “A ship is landing on the grid right now. Shall we go out to greet the pilot?” He turned to place a firm hand on Kyp’s shoulder, but the young man shrugged away. “We’ll discuss this later, Kyp.”
Relieved to have a distraction that would shatter the tension, Luke led the way. The other Jedi students followed him down the stone steps and through the hangar bay to the cleared landing grid.
A small personal fighter—a Z-95 Headhunter, a sleek metallic cruiser often used by smugglers—circled and eased down into the clearing. The other students stood at the edge of the grid, but Luke came forward.
The cockpit doors swung up like the wings of a great insect and the pilot emerged. Luke saw a sleek silvery suit clinging to the curves of a young woman’s body. She stepped down, pulled off an opaque helmet and shook her dark reddish-brown hair. Her angular face had once been pinched with determination, but now seemed softened, her eyes wider, her full lips not entirely unaccustomed to a smile.
“Mara Jade,” Luke said.
She tucked the helmet under her left arm, squeezing it against her rib cage. “Hello, Luke.” She looked at him with just the hint of a friendly expression, then raised her eyebrows. “Or do I have to call you ‘Master Skywalker’ now?”
Luke shrugged, holding out his arms to welcome her. “That depends on why you’re here.”
She left the Headhunter open behind her as she strode across the clearing to take his hand in greeting. Then she swiveled in a military-style maneuver to survey the dozen students that had come to Luke’s training center.
“You told me I had the ability to use the Force,” she said. “I came here to learn more about it. Jedi powers could help me run the smugglers’ guild.”
She unzipped a flexible pouch at her side and tugged out a packet of microcompacted folds of cloth, more than Luke could believe would fit inside a tiny package. She shook the brownish folds, unwrapping her garment.
She looked at the identical garments on all of Luke’s trainees and then back at him. “See,” she said. “I even brought a Jedi robe.”
Over a generous meal of spiced runyip stew and bowls of chopped edible greens, Luke watched Mara Jade feed herself as if she were famished. Luke savored every bite, sensing the nutrients and energies as they slowly permeated his body.
“The New Republic is counting on your Jedi Knights, Luke, and things are getting much worse out there,” she said.
Luke leaned forward, lacing his fingers together and trying to pick up echoes of her emotions. “What’s happening?” he said. “We’re starved for news.”
“Well,” Mara Jade said, still chewing a mouthful of greens. She swallowed and took a drink of cold spring water, frowning at it as if she had expected something else.
“Admiral Daala has continued her depredations. She doesn’t seem to be allied with any of the Imperial warlords. From what we can tell, she’s just trying to cause a lot of damage to anyone who opposed the Empire—and she is causing plenty of damage. You know that she has been hitting supply ships, blowing them out of space? She leveled the new colony on Dantooine.”
“Dantooine!” Luke said.
Mara looked at him. “Yes, isn’t one of your students from that group of people?”
Luke sat rigid. Some of the trainees gasped in shock. His mind whirled, thinking of all the refugees he had helped relocate to a supposedly safe place from the treacherous world of Eol Sha. But now they had been wiped out.
“Not anymore,” he said. “Gantoris died. He was … unprepared for the powers he tried to use.”
Mara Jade raised her thin eyebrows, waited for him to explain further. When Luke said nothing else, she continued. “The worst part was when Daala struck the planet Calamari. Seems she meant to take out the orbiting shipyards, but Admiral Ackbar recognized her tactics. He blew up one of her three Star Destroyers—but Daala still managed to sink two Calamarian floating cities. Countless thousands died.”
Kyp Durron stood up at the far end of the long table. “Daala lost another one of her Star Destroyers?”
Mara Jade looked at him as if noticing the young dark-haired man for the first time. “She still has two Star Destroyers, and no inhibitions. Admiral D
aala can still cause incredible destruction, and she has a weapon no one else seems to have: she knows she’s got nothing to lose.”
“I should have sacrificed myself,” Kyp said. “I could have killed her with my bare hands when I was on the Gorgon.”
He lowered his voice, relating the story Luke already knew. “We stole the Sun Crusher out from under her nose, and we wasted our opportunity. We had a weapon that could have struck a decisive blow against the worlds still loyal to the Empire—but what did we do with it? We threw the Sun Crusher into a gas planet where it won’t help us at all.”
“Calm,” Luke said. He gestured for Kyp to sit back down, but Kyp placed his hands flat on the veined stone table, leaning over to glare at Luke.
“The Imperial threat is not going to go away!” he said. “If we pool our Jedi powers, we can resurrect the Sun Crusher, tear it out from the core of Yavin. We can take it and go hunt the Imperials. What could be a clearer mission for us? Why are we just hiding here on this backwater moon?”
He paused, fuming. When the other students looked at him, Kyp glared back at them. “Are you all stupid?” he shouted. “We don’t have the luxury to fine-tune our levitating abilities, or balance rocks, or sense rodents out in the jungle. What good does that do? If we aren’t going to use our powers to help the New Republic, then why bother?”
Luke looked at Mara Jade, who seemed greatly interested in this discussion. He refocused his attention on Kyp. The young man’s meal was practically untouched.
“Because that isn’t the Jedi way,” Luke said. “You’ve studied the Code. You know how we must approach a difficult situation. The Jedi do not set out to destroy recklessly.”
Kyp turned his back on Luke and stormed toward the door of the dining chamber. At the arched stone entrance to the room, Kyp whirled and said, “If we don’t use our power, then we may as well not have it. We’re betraying the Force with our cowardice.”
He gritted his teeth, and his words came out much more quietly. “I’m not certain what else I can learn here, Master Skywalker.” With that, he vanished into the corridor.
Kyp felt his skin tingling with barely contained power, as if his blood had begun to fizz inside of him. He moved down the temple corridors like a projectile, and when he reached the heavy door to his quarters, he used the Force to fling it open and slam it against the far wall with enough strength to flake a long splinter of stone from the blocks.
How could he ever have admired Master Skywalker? What did Han Solo see in him as a friend? The Jedi teacher was blind to reality, ignoring problems, covering his eyes with his Jedi cloak, and refusing to use his own powers for the good of the New Republic! The Empire remained a threat, as Daala’s attacks on Calamari and Dantooine demonstrated—if Skywalker refused to use his powers to wipe out the enemy, then perhaps his convictions were not strong enough.
But Kyp’s were.
He could stay at the Jedi academy no longer. He yanked at the collar of his robe to tear it off. From his stash of personal belongings Kyp pulled out a satchel that contained the flowing black cape that Han had given him as a good-bye gift. During his training at the praxeum, he had been content to wear the rough old robe Master Skywalker provided. But now he wanted nothing more to do with it.
Exar Kun had shown him how to unleash great powers. Kyp did not trust the Sith Lord, but he could not deny the truth of what the shadow man taught. Kyp could see the power actually working.
For now he had to get away to ponder and sort through the conflicting thoughts in his mind.
He opened up the satchel to look at the black cape. A pair of small, lightning-fast rodents dashed out from their nest in his garment and vanished like hot liquid through a chink in the stone wall.
Alarmed, Kyp lost control of his anger for an instant and let fly a searing blast of power that followed the two rodents down their narrow tunnels and incinerated them as they ran. Blackened bones tumbled forward with the momentum, then slumped to dust in the stone tunnel.
Paying no more heed to the distraction, Kyp pulled out the flowing cape, holding it in front of him. Its embedded reflective threads sparkled as if with hidden power. Kyp wrapped it around himself and gathered a few of his other possessions.
He had to go far away. He had to think. He had to be strong.
Later that evening, when Artoo sounded all the alarms, Luke awoke instantly. He sprinted down the corridors to the outside landing area. Mara Jade ran beside him, already alert, as if she had a good idea of what might be happening.
Luke’s eyes adjusted rapidly to the star-strewn sky, which was fuzzy and pale in the south with skyshine from the gas giant Yavin. Mara and Luke stood outside the half-open hangar doors as they watched her Z-95 Headhunter rise from the landing grid with all its running lights darkened.
“He’s stealing my ship!” Mara Jade shouted. The Headhunter’s sublight engines kicked in, burning white-hot behind the craft as it shot into the sky.
Luke shook his head in disbelief and realized that he had unconsciously extended one hand, beckoning for Kyp Durron to return.
The small ship became a white streak of light that grew smaller and smaller as it reached orbit, then set out among the stars.
Luke felt a devastating emptiness, knowing that he had lost another of his Jedi students forever.
24
Every flagstone gleamed. Every Imperial column had been scrubbed white. Every colorful banner representing the Empire’s most loyal worlds hung absolutely straight, displayed without a wrinkle. Everything was in order at the main citadel of the Imperial Military Academy on Carida.
Ambassador Furgan nodded. Just the way he liked it.
Three hundred crack stormtroopers stood at attention in the echoing hall, motionless in perfect ranks. Their white armor glistened like polished bone. They were identical, intensively trained, precise military machines. These stormtroopers were the best of the best in the academy. Only the top Imperial recruits even began stormtrooper training, and these three hundred had excelled in every way.
Ambassador Furgan moved toward the podium to address them. The smell of oils and waxes on the synthetic wood seemed potent in the otherwise sterilized air. Furgan drew himself up, trying to look larger than his stocky stature allowed. The white helmets turned in unison to track him with their black goggles.
“Imperial troops,” he said, “you have been chosen to lead the most important mission since the fall of our beloved Emperor. You have endured hardship and passed many tests during your training. I have chosen you as the elite, the best trainees remaining on Carida.”
They did not stir, did not congratulate each other. They remained like ranks of statues—which itself attested to the thoroughness of their training.
Since receiving the long-awaited coordinates of the secret planet Anoth, Furgan had plotted this operation with extreme caution. He had studied the personnel data of thousands of his best troops. He had analyzed the records of their training exercises: mock combat in the harsh ice caps of Carida; prolonged sieges out in the baked and waterless deserts; jungle survival tours through dense and uncharted rain forests filled with primitive predators, carnivorous plants, and poisonous insects.
Furgan had culled the names of those stormtroopers who had shown the most stamina, the most initiative, the greatest success, coupled with the strongest willingness to follow every order.
He was proud of his assault force.
“We have obtained secret information regarding the location of a certain baby. A child with enormous potential for using the Force.” He paused, expecting to hear them groan, but the stormtroopers made no sound.
“This child is the son of Leia Organa Solo, the New Republic’s Minister of State. If we were to apprehend this child, it would deal an enormous psychological blow to the Rebellion—but beyond that, this boy is the grandson of Darth Vader.”
There, finally, he thought he heard a rustle of superstitious fear or awe.
“This child could be ex
tremely valuable to the rebirth of the Empire. A child such as this, raised properly and trained properly, could become a worthy successor to the Emperor Palpatine.”
Furgan kept talking, faster now as he felt the excitement within him. He was more than just an ambassador; he planned to go along on this assault himself. He would not expose himself to any part of the attack, of course, but he would be there to snatch the young child named Anakin.
“Your unit leaders will provide you with specific assignments. This expedition is currently being provisioned. We have secured transports to take you to the secret location of this world.”
Furgan allowed himself a broad grin with his thick purplish lips. “It is also my pleasure to announce that this assault will mark the first combat use of our new Mountain Terrain Armored Transports on which you have been training these past months. That is all. Hail to the Emperor!”
The thunderous response of filtered stormtrooper voices came back at him, rocking the hall. “Hail to the Emperor!”
Furgan slipped behind the hanging purple curtains into a walkway that led down empty glow-lit corridors toward his secure office. Inside his chambers he closed the blast-proof door and sealed it with a cipher lock. He brushed aside models and plans of the deadly new MT-AT attack vehicles. He felt immensely pleased with himself and eager for the assault to start.
Sitting on Carida during the years of turmoil, Furgan had been upset with all the squabbling Imperial commanders since the Emperor’s death. Many of the warlords in the Core Systems were extremely powerful, yet they spent their time wrestling for dominance among the remnants of the Imperial fleet rather than fighting against their real enemy, the Rebellion.
Grand Admiral Thrawn had seemed their greatest hope, but he had been defeated; and a year later even the resurrected Emperor had been defeated. The power vacuum of leadership left the Imperial forces with no leadership, no goal, battling only for their own advancement.
Even this surprise new threat by renegade Admiral Daala disturbed Furgan. At least Daala was putting her Star Destroyers to an appropriate use, attacking Rebel worlds and creating as much havoc as possible. But Daala had no overriding plan, no strategy that would bring her ultimate success. She was simply a juggernaut, striking target after target for the satisfaction of causing pain.
Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy II: Dark Apprentice Page 21
