Star Wars - I, Jedi

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "Could have been stolen from him and used by someone else."

  "Your caution is good, Cilghal, but Kyp's being here isn't that hard a conclusion to draw." Kam walked over to the edge of the pyramid, looked down at the landing pad, then grunted. "Think Kyp is still hiding on this rock?"

  Streen shook his head. "I can't hear Kyp."

  "I'd like to hope that means he's dead, but I don't believe it." I glanced at Kam. "You're wondering how he got off this rock if he left the fighter behind."

  "Yes, and the only other ride in the system, unless we missed his coming with allies in the middle of the night, is the Sun Crusher." His hands contracted into fists. "Kyp knew how to make it work."

  Tionne shivered. "Could he have been powerful enough to recall it from the heart of the gas giant?"

  Streen crouched down and plucked from the Temple's roof a small stone that scintillated brilliantly in the dawning sun. "Corusca gem. The only place in the universe they are formed is in Yavin's heart. It could have been lodged in the hatch as-sembly and fallen off when Kyp entered the Sun Crusher." I groaned. "Not the news I wanted to hear."

  Cilghal raised a hand. "Corusca gems can be found here on Yavin, and we have no way of knowing how long that piece of one has been here. More importantly, we have no way of know-ing if the Sun Crusher is still in the gas giant or not. Again, you're reaching conclusions on the most circumstantial of evi-dence."

  "I can see why you were a diplomat, Ambassador." I sighed heavily. "Okay, look, we have to take this in steps. First thing, we get Master Skywalker down and out of the elements."

  Tionne smiled. "We should place him in the Grand Audience Chamber."

  I winced. "Won't that be like having him lie in state? He isn't dead."

  Her smile contracted. "I was just thinking that he liked the chamber and the acoustics are good for singing and it was the site of a great victory celebration."

  Karo came around behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. "Good thinking, Tionne. There's room enough there that we can all gather around and listen to you singing. We want him to feel he's still part of our community." Kam looked past her at me and raised an evebrow.

  "Right, exactly. You're thinking a lot more quickly today than I am, Tionne." I glanced at the Mort Calamari. "Ambassa-dor, you've got a talent for healing. Will you monitor Master Skywalker and let us know what we need to help him? Our medical supplies are limited here.... "

  "I can see to his initial care, yes. We should certainly get a full medical team out here as fast as possible, however." Cilghal slowly blinked her eyes. "We must also notify the New Republic and Councilor Organa Solo that something has happened to hcr brother."

  Brakiss added, "And let them know Kyp Durron has the Sun Crusher. With his hatred for remnants of the Empire, there is no telling what he will do with a weapon of that power."

  I cut off Cilghal's protest of Brakiss' remarks. "At the very least we need to get a survey team out here that can check to see if the Sun Crusher is still in the gas giant or not."

  Kirana Ti crouched and mopped sweat from Luke's brow with the hem of her Jedi robe. "We should also make certain Master Skywalker is never alone. He should always have an honor guard with him."

  Dorsk 81 looked at her with horror on his face. "You think Mastcr Skywalker is still in jeopardy?"

  I cleared my throat. "We can't discount that possibility. Kyp may have wanted him dead and held back at the last moment, for reasons we can't begin to plot. He might return to finish the job." Or the dark man might try. "Having someone with Master Skywalker also makes sense on the medical front, in case there is a change."

  The Mon Calamari nodded. "We should get him inside now.

  He is stable enough to move, I believe."

  "Good. I'll get on the HoloNet and speak to Coruscant to

  start notification going. Ambassador, I'd like you to later speak

  with Councilor Organa Solo. You can answer her questions

  about her brother better than I can, and news of what has

  happened here should come from someone who knows her, not

  o " a stran..er.

  Brakiss peered imperiously at me. "What about the rest of us?"

  "I don't know. Do what you're able to do. Help Cilghal.

  Make food. Meditate."

  The slender man frowned. "Meditate? Hardly helpful in this situation, wouldn't you say?"

  Karo shook his head vehemently. "We need to avoid panic and keep our wits about us. We should practice what we have learned so far, strengthening ourselves. If Kyp returns, if an-other problem arises, we need to be able to deal with it." His head came up. "I'11 expect everyone who isn't assigned other duties to meet for exercises as usual."

  "It's a plan." I gave Karo a nod. "And a good one. Everyone clear? Good. Go to it."

  I descended to the comnmnications center and powered up the system. Luke's R2 unit stood faithfully by to help me, but his anxiety kept him bouncing from tread to tread. His whistles took on a pinched tone, reminding me of Whistler when he really wanted to have his gears lubed.

  "Go, Artoo, having you near him will make Master Skywalker feel a lot better, I'm certain. And you can monitor lifesigns better than any of the rest of us." I smiled as the droid raced from the comm center. I wasn't certain I wanted him around while I worked anyway.

  I tried first to reach Wedge, but could only leave a message in his personal holocache. Next I tried Tycho and managed to get him at Squadron Headquarters.

  He gave me a big smile. "Didn't expect to be hearing from you for a while. How is the training going?"

  I shook my head and his smile atrophied. "We just took a big hit. Luke Skywalker is down." "Down?"

  "Hurt, but we don't know how badly. We can only guess what happened and it's not good. Luke's stable right now, and we hope he'll recover, but we're going to need a full medical team out here as fast as possible."

  Tycho glanced out of the holograph's frame, then nodded. `Tve got a shuttle fueling and prefiighting right now. I'll alert a reed team and fly it out myself."

  "Good. I also have a list of other things I want you to bring."

  "Whatever you need."

  "Could be tough to get." I paused for a moment. "I need enough nergon 14 charges to level something like the Great Temple here."

  Tycho sat back and blinked away some surprise. "Are things that drastic'?"

  "Could be. I hope what I think might be happening isn't actually going on here, but if it is, I might need to take down a temple to act as a circuit breaker." I lowered my voice. "I need the crates mislabeled, too. I don't know that I can trust every-OllC here.... "

  "So you can't really trust anyone but yourself."

  "That's pretty much it."

  l~cho looked at me, then slowly nodded. "I trust you know what you're doing."

  "I think so." I ran my hands back through my hair. "Last thing, I need you to put me through to General Cracken. It is vital I speak to him."

  "Okay, I'll do that now." Tycho gave me a quick grin. "See you in the better part of thirty hours." "Thanks, Colonel."

  The Rogue Squadron crest hung in air above the corem unit's holoprojection pad. It brought an unconscious smile to my face. I remembered when Gavin Darklighter had designed it, sur-rounding the Rebel crest with twelve X-wings streaking out-ward. For almost five years that insignia had helped define who I was. Now it helped remind me of where I came from, and another proud tradition that I was weaving into my new life.

  Cracken's face replaced it. "Colonel Celchu suggested you had something urgent for me."

  I nodded. "You remember that Sun Crusher you thought you'd taken care of by dumping it in Yavin gas giant'?" "I don't like the sound of that question, Captain."

  "Then you're really going to hate the reason I'm asking it." I set nw face into an impassive mask. "Some time past midnight local time, person or persons unknown arrived on Yavin 4. They confronted Master Skywalker, defeated him, and de-parted again. They
left behind a Z-95 Headhunter with the controls destroyed. Kyp Durron, one of the few, if only, people xxho knows how to pilot that Sun Crusher. was last seen in pt~ssession of the Headhunter in question. I don't have tissue samples and fingerprints to prove he was in it when it arrived here yet, but, trust me, he was." I felt a little twinge of guilt at xiolating Cilghal's caution, but softsoaping facts wasn't going to help New Republic Intelligence deal with the situation.

  Cracken's face sagged and his mouth slowly opened. "You have no idea where he went, who he was with?"

  "None you'd believe." I let a grim note play through my voice. "Given things Kyp said before he left earlier, his ire seems directed at the Empire. If I had to guess, I'd say he'd be hunting whoever the latest self-styled warlord is, or maybe go-ing after the remnants of Thrawn's fleet. When he finds a tar-get, you'll know."

  "An eighteen-year-old kid who grew up in a prison mine in control of a weapon that can destroy star systems." Cracken scratched at a spot on his forehead. "At least when we were dealing with Imperials we had a chance of predicting their be-havior, but a kid who's angry with the galaxy?"

  "Not one of the better days for the New Republic, I agree."

  "You said Luke Skywalker was defeated. What's his status?"

  "He's hurt and in a coma. No telling when or if he will come out of it."

  Cracken nodded wearily. "So we're on our own for this one." "Right. Ambassador Cilghal will be communicating with Councilor Organa Solo when we have more information on Master Skywalker's status. Colonel Celchu is going to run a medical team and some supplies out here inside a day from now." I shrugged. `Tll keep you informed as I am able." "Thank you."

  I hesitated for a second, then looked at him. "Might seem kind of trivial given what I've just told you,tbut any word about Mirax?"

  "Not trivial at all, Captain. I admire your restraint in asking." The general gave me an open stare. "No word, no leads that are panning out. No ransom demands. We're still looking and have hope."

  "I'm sure you are, and I share your hope. Thank you, sir." I tossed him a quick salute. "Yavin 4 out."

  Fustration largely characterized the week between Master Skywalker's fall and the arrival of his sister and her family. When Ambassador Cilghal had told her what had happened, Leia Organa Solo had wanted to travel to ?avin 4 immediately, but the demands of her office were not such that they could be so easily dismissed. Ambassador Cilghal suggested she could wait until the medical team had arrived and made its evaluation, and promised to keep her informed of any changes.

  This direct link with Luke's sister made Ambassador Cilghal, our newest student, the de facto leader of the academy, at least from the New Republic's point of view. Kam Solusar still over-s~lw our instruction, but he didn't push to expand what we knew, just perfect it. I understood his reluctance to teach us more in Luke's absence, but this meant Kam was inclined to be conservative in what he allowed to go on at the academy. He kept us all close to the Great Temple and even asked me to curtail my runs. I flat refused to do that, but found myself a circuit that always kept me relatively close to home.

  Frustration set in, because with Cilghal and Kam in charge I rcaliv had no standing where I wantcd it. When the survey tcanl came to see if the Sun Crusher was still in the heart of Yavin, they roundly ignored me. Some shave-tailed lieutenant told me that all information was on a need-to-know basis, ~md he'd decide when or if I needed to know. Had he any idea who I really was, he'd have been answering "Yes, sir," and "No, sir" and not daring to breathe unless I gave him leave to do so, but as a Jedi wannabe, I was just seen as "part of the problem."

  Of course, it would have been child's-play to meddle with his mind and make him think I was not present in the comm center when he filed his report with General Cracken, but I was fairly certain such a capricious use of my abilities would have left me dabbling in the dark side. While I did want to know what he had to report, I didn't want to put myself in harm's way learn-ing it. Still, I did consider myself as having a need to know, so I convinced Luke's R2 unit to pull the report from the comm center computer.

  I could have saved myself and Artoo the trouble if I remem-bered the first lesson about junior officers: if they know some-thing neat, they can't wait to share it. If they know nothing, they use ranks and regs to cover their ignorance. This Lieutenant Morrs was about as ignorant as a Hutt is ugly. Because of storms raging in the gas giant's heart, he couldn't be certain if the Sun Crusher was there, had been destroyed or had been taken away. His survey results were labeled inconclusive and seemed to have put the New Republic somewhat at ease con-cerning the Sun Crusher.

  While I would have liked to have taken heart in the idea that the Sun Crusher might not have gone anywhere, another devel-opment, or lack of one actually, had me worried. Since Luke's defeat, there had been no sign of the dark man. This scared me a great deal because his lack of activity was somewhat un-characteristic and made me think we were just on the cusp of the disaster Master Skywalker had foreseen.

  I still thought of the dark man as a sociopath, and nothing I'd learned about Exar Kun suggested he didn't fit that mold per-fectly. Sociopathic murderers tend to cycle-they commit their crimes on a schedule that makes sense for them. As their crimes become more and more horrific, the cycle tends to speed up until whatever little control they had over themselves erodes and they get sloppy enough to get captured. The havoc they wreak in that time is nothing short of devastating and brutally cruel.

  Gantoris was on Yavin just over two weeks before his death, which could be seen as a cap to one cycle. Kyp arrived a week or so later and was here just over a week before he stole the Headhunter. Inside a week he came back and dropped Luke like a hot rock. By rights the dark man should have been back preying on us within days after Luke's defeat, but he wasn't, ired this frightened me.

  There were ample explanations for why he wasn't causing us trouble. The first is that he wanted to give us time to despair over Luke's condition. That would leave us more vulnerable to him. The second reason, and one that chilled me to the mar-row. was that he was devoting his energies to controlling Kyp Durron and the Sun Crusher. If it was Exar Kun who had influ-enced Kyp, I didn't know what target he'd pick for the Sun Crusher, but I'd hate to be on a world he decided to pay back after four thousand years.

  The only vaguely positive explanation for Exar Kun's dor-mancy that I could come up with was that his effort to draw the Sun Crusher from Yavin and to down Luke had tired him out. I had no way to determine how powerful Exar Kun could be, but it struck me as possible that he'd expended a lot of energy to defeat a Jedi Master. There was no telling how long it would take for him to recover, but with each passing day the appren-tices grew in strength as well.

  In blackest night, any light is welcome.

  Tvcho brought the medical team and my special supplies as quickly as possible. He told me the shuttle he had brought had a fully operational proton torpedo launching system and of-Fered to take me on a strafing run of any Temple I wanted to destroy, but I held back. Proton torpedoes probably would have been the most effective way to deal with Exar Kun's stronghold, but I still recalled how adamant Luke had been that neither I nor anv of the other students travel there. If we weren't strong enough to deal with the problem, I didn't want to put Tycho in jeopardy.

  "I'11 leave you the coordinates, Colonel." I tossed him a sa-lute as he boarded the shuttle to leave. "If things go very badly, talk Admiral Ackbar into a planetary bombardment that will raze it."

  "I copy." He returned my salute. "May the Force be with you."

  The medical team he'd brought went over Luke from top to bottom, inside and out. His systems seemed to be functioning just fine, but there was no one in residence inside him. The doctors and med-techs and droids all listened to us try to ex-plain that fact to them, but they were creatures of science. While they could watch us do simple things with the Force, they sought physical and scientific explanations for what were spiri-tual phenomena. Trying to explain the
Force to them was like trying to explain altruism to a rancor.

  Their departure left us with nothing to do but wait for Leia Organa Solo's arrival. It could have come at any time, so we spent the better part of a week waiting. I've probably spent longer weeks on boring stake-outs, but nanoseconds seemed to pass in hours-and long hours at that. And, despite Kam's best efforts to keep us focused, our spirits began to ebb.

  Princess Leia's arrival worked wonders for us. She looked tired and a bit haggard, but still every bit the exciting and heroic icon she had been during the Rebellion. Her twins, dark-haired and bright eyed, looked around at Yavin 4 with a mix-ture of wonder and trepidation. Last down the egress ramp from the Millennium Falcon came Han Solo. He looked to me as if he'd lost a bit of weight during his recent adventure on Kessel, but still cut a dashing and vital figure.

  Ambassador Cilghal led the Solos to the Grand Audience Chamber. Sunlight filled the room with a golden glow and warmth that belied the cold and stark reality of Luke lying on a bier as if dead. The sight seemed to stagger his sister for a moment. I hung back enough that I could not hear the family's whispered remarks, but Jaina squirmed down out of her fa-ther's arms and gave her uncle a kiss. All of us hoped that gesture might work where our powers and medical science had failed, and my heart ached when the disappointed child turned away, defeated.