Kun raised his opaque arms in a sudden brisk gesture. With a flicker of wind the twelve candles around Master Skywalker's body snuffed out, plunging the room into deep shadow.
"We're not afraid of the darkness," Tionne said in a firm voice. "We can make our own light."
As his eyes adjusted, Streen saw that all twelve of the Jedi candidates were limned with the faintest sheen of an iridescent blue glow that grew brighter as the new Jedi converged around Exar Kun.
"Even joined together, you are too weak to fight me!" the shadowy man said.
Streen felt his throat constrict, his windpipe close. He choked, unable to breathe. The black silhouette turned, staring at those who resisted him. The Jedi trainees grasped their throats, straining to breathe, their faces darkening with the effort.
Kun's shadow expanded, growing darker and more powerful. He towered over Streen. "Streen, take your lightsaber and finish these weaklings. Then I will allow you to live."
Streen heard the blood sing in his ears as his body strained for oxygen. The rushing sound reminded him of blowing wind, gale — force storms. Wind. Air. He grasped the wind with his Jedi powers, moving the air itself and making it flow into his lungs, past Kun's invisible stranglehold.
Cool, sweet oxygen filled him, and Streen exhaled and inhaled again. Reaching out with his power, he did the same for all the other Jedi students, nudging air into theirthe lungs — helping them breathe, helping them grow stronger.
"We are more powerful than you," Dorsk 81 said, gasping, in a tone that mixed challenge with amazement.
"How you must hate me," Exar Kun said. Desperation tinged the edges of his voice. "I can feel your anger."
Cilghal used the silken ambassadorial voice she had worked so hard to develop. "There is no anger," she said. "We don't hate you, Exar Kun. You are an object lesson for us. You have taught us much about what it is to be a true Jedi. By observing you we see that the dark side has little strength of its own. You have no power that we do not have. You merely used our own weaknesses against us."
"We have seen enough of you," Kam Solusar said grimly from the edge of the circle, "and it's time for you to be vanquished."
The Jedi trainees stepped closer together, cinching the circle around the trapped shadowy form. Streen held his lightsaber high, while across the circle Kirana Ti raised hers to a striking position. The nebulous glow around the new Jedi Knights grew brighter, a luminous fog that joined them in an unbroken ring, a solid band of light
forged by the power of the Force within them.
"I know your flaws," Kun said stridently. "You all have weaknesses. You — The was shadow lunged toward the streamlined form of Dorsk 81. The cloned Jedi candidate flinched, but the other trainees gave him strength.
"You: Dorsk 81, a failure!" He sneered. "Eighty generations of your genetic structure were perfect, identical — but you were an anomaly. You were an outcast. A flaw."
But the olive — skinned alien would not back down. "Our differences make us strong," he said. "I've learned that."
"And you" — Exar Kun whirled to Tionne — "you have no Jedi powers. You are laughable. You can only sing songs about great deeds, while others go out and actually do them."
Tionne smiled at him. Her mother — of — pearl eyes glittered in the dim light. "Someday the songs will tell of our great victory over Exar Kun — and I will sing them."
The glow continued to brighten as the synergy between the trainees grew more powerful, weaving threads to reinforce their weak spots, to emphasize their strengths.
Streen wasn't sure exactly when another image joined the Jedi candidates. He saw a new form without a physical body — short and hunched, with withered hands held in front of it. A misshapen funnel face, whiskered with tentacles, stared with small eyes hooded by a shelf of brow. Streen recognized the ancient Jedi Master Vodo — Siosk Baas, who had spoken to them from the Holocron.
Kun's image also saw the ancient Jedi Master, and his expression froze in a sculpted grimace of astonishment.
"Together Jedi can overcome their weaknesses," Master Vodo said in a bubbly, congested voice. "Exar Kun, my student — you are defeated at last."
"No!" the shadow screamed in a night — rending voice as the silhouette fought to discover a part of the circle he could breach.
"Yes," came another voice, a strong voice. Opposite Master Vodo glimmered the faint, washed — out form of a young man in Jedi robes. Master Skywalker.
"The way to extinguish a shadow," Cilghal said in her calm and confident voice, "is to increase the light."
Kirana Ti stepped forward with the lightsaber that had been built by Gantoris. Streen met her with Luke Skywalker's lightsaber. The two stared into each other's eyes, nodded, and then struck with the brilliant luminous blades.
Their beams crossed in the middle of Exar Kun's shadowy body — pure light intersecting pure light with an explosion of lightning. The flash of dazzling white seemed as bright as an exploding sun.
Darkness flooded out of the shade of Exar Kun. The blackness shattered, and fragments flew around the circle, seeking a weak heart in which to hide.
Streen and Kirana Ti kept their lightsabers crossed, the energy sizzling and searing.
With the Force, Streen touched the winds again. The air inside the grand audience chamber swirled with increasing coriolis force to form a whirlwind. The cyclone grew tighter in an invisible knot around the shredded shadow, trapping it and carrying it up toward the rooftop and out, flinging it into the vast emptiness.
Exar Kun vanished with only a brief, curtailed scream.
The Jedi Knights stood joined together for a final moment, relishing the shared Force. Then, in exhaustion and relief and triumph, they separated from each other. The unearthly glow dissipated around them.
The image of the alien Master Vodo — Siosk Baas stared toward the ceiling, as if to catch a last glimpse of his conquered student, and then he too disappeared.
With a wheezing cough as he expelled long — trapped air from his lungs and drew in a fresh breath, Master Skywalker groaned and sat up on the stone platform.
"You've — done it!" Luke said, gaining strength with each lungful of cool, clean air. The new Jedi Knights surged toward him. "You have broken the bonds."
With squeals of delight Jacen and Jaina ran to their Uncle Luke. He pulled them into his arms. They giggled and hugged him back.
Luke Skywalker smiled out at his students, his face glowing with pride for the group of Jedi Knights he had trained.
"Together," he said, "you make a formidable team indeed! Perhaps we need no longer fear the darkness."
In the Sun Crusher's pilot seat Kyp Durron crouched over the controls. He stared at the Millennium Falcon as if it were a demon ready to spring at him. His fingernails scratched down the metallic surface of the navigation panels like claws trying to dig into flesh.
His mind had been swimming with the bittersweet memories of happy times with Han, how the two of them had careened over the ice fields in a frantic turbo — ski run, how they had made friends in the blackness of the spice mines, how Han had pretended not to be all choked up when Kyp left for the Jedi academy. Part of him was appalled at the idea of threatening Han Solo's life, that he would want to destroy the Millennium Falcon.
It had seemed an easy threat, the obvious thing to do. But it came from a dark shadow in the back of his mind. The whispering voice chewed at his thoughts, haunted him constantly. It was the voice he had heard during his training on Yavin 4 in the deepest night and in the echoing obsidian pyramid far out in the jungles, and on top of the great ziggurat from which Kyp had summoned the Sun Crusher out of the core of Yavin.
Troubled by that voice, Kyp had stolen a ship and fled to the forest moon of Endor to meditate beside the ashes of Darth Vader's funeral pyre. He had thought to go far enough away to escape Kun's influence, but he no longer thought that was possible.
Kyp had traveled to the Core Systems, but still he felt the chains bi
nding him to the Dark Lord, the malevolent obligations required by the Sith teachings. If he tried to resist and think for himself, the angry tauntings returned with full force, the snapped words, the coercions, the veiled threats.
But Han Solo's words tugged at him too — weapons of a different sort that made his heart grow warm, melting the ice of anger. Right now Exar Kun's voice seemed distracted and distant, as if preoccupied with another challenge.
As Kyp listened to Han's words, he realized that his friend, knowing little about Jedi teachings, had put his finger on the truth. He .was following the dark side. Kyp's weak justifications crumbled around him in a storm of excuses built on a fragile foundation of revenge.
"Han ... I — was "
But just as he had been about to speak warmly to Han, to open up and ask his friend to come talk with him — suddenly his controls went dead. An override signal from the Falcon's computer had shut down the Sun Crusher's weapons systems, its navigation controls, its life support.
The black net of anger fell over him, smothering his kind intentions. In outrage Kyp found the power to send a burst of controlling thought through the integrated circuits in the Sun Crusher's computer. He flushed the alien programming, wiping pathways clean and rebuilding them in an instant. He remapped the functions with a sudden
mental pinpoint that made the Sun Crusher whole again. The systems hummed as they returned to life, charging up.
Exar Kun had also been betrayed by his supposed partner, the warlord Ulic Qel — Droma. Now Han had betrayed Kyp. Master Skywalker had also betrayed him by failing to teach the appropriate lessons ... appropriate defenses against Exar Kun. In his head the voice of the Sith Lord shouted for him to kill Han Solo, to destroy the enemy. To let his anger flow through and be strong.
It overwhelmed Kyp. He squeezed his dark eyes shut, unable to watch as his hands gripped the control levers for launching the torpedo. He primed the system. The screens blinked with warning signals, which he disregarded. He needed to destroy something. He needed to kill those who had betrayed him. His fists gripped the firing handles. His thumbs rested on the launch buttons, squeezing, ready —
Squeezing —
And then the haunting voice of Exar Kun rose to a wail in his mind, an utterly forlorn scream as if he were being torn out of this universe and exiled to another place entirely, where he could torment Kyp Durron no more.
Kyp snapped backward in his control seat as if an invisible tow cable had been severed. His arms and head dangled like a puppet with suddenly snipped strings. The cool wind of freedom whistled through his mind and body. He blinked his eyes and shuddered with revulsion at what he had been about to do.
The Millennium Falcon still gripped the Sun Crusher in its tractor beam. As Kyp saw the battered old ship, Han Solo's prize possession, he felt a tidal wave of despair.
Kyp reached out to the energy torpedo controls and vehemently canceled the firing sequence. The plasma generator flickered and faded as the energy died away.
Without the presence of Exar Kun inside him, Kyp felt isolated, suddenly in free fall — comb independent.
He opened the communication channel but couldn't form words for a few moments. His throat was dry. It felt as if he hadn't had anything to eat or drink in four thousand years.
"Han," he croaked, and said louder, "Han, this is Kyp! I ..." He paused, not knowing what next to say — whichat else he could say.
He hung his head and finally finished, "I surrender."
The Twi'lek Tol Sivron still felt jangled from his horrendous passage through the Maw, escaping from the Rebel invasion force and riding the gravity between black holes.
His long head — tails tingled with a rush of impressions, delighted to see that the information he had long ago stolen from Daala's secret files — the list of tortuous safe routes through the black hole cluster — had been accurate. If the course map had been the least bit imprecise, he and his retreating crew would not be alive now.
The Death Star prototype lurched under full power as it emerged safely from the cluster, but just as it sped away from the sinuous, brilliant gases, the propulsion systems fizzled and went off — line.
Sparks showered from panels as the stormtrooper captain shut down the engine power and rerouted systems. Yemm attempted to use a manual fire — extinguishing apparatus to squelch flames licking out of a nearby console, but he succeeded only in short — circuiting the intercom systems.
Golanda and Doxin flipped furiously through repair manuals and design specifications.
"Director," the stormtrooper captain said, "we have successfully broken free from the Maw, though the strain has caused a good deal of damage."
Doxin looked up, scowling. "I remind you that this was a nonhardened prototype, never meant to be actually deployed."
"Yes, sir," the stormtrooper said in an inflectionless voice. "As I was about to say, I believe the damage can be repaired in only a few days. It is a simple matter of bypassing circuits and reinitializing computer systems. I believe after this shakedown the prototype will be in much better shape for combat."
Tol Sivron rubbed his hands together and smiled. "Good, good." He leaned back in the pilot's chair. "That will give us time to select a suitable target for our first attack."
Golanda called up a navigational chart, displayed across the viewscreen. "Director, the Kessel system is very close, as you know. Perhaps we should — "
"Let's get the propulsion units up and running again before we plan too far ahead," Doxin interrupted. "Our ultimate strategy may depend on our capabilities."
Yemm tore the cover off the communications panel and squinted down into the morass of blackened wires, sniffing the burned insulation.
Golanda kept studying her station, calling up readings from the prototype's exterior sensors. "Director, I've found something puzzling. Looking at the gas turbulence that surrounds the black hole cluster, it appears that another very large ship has recently entered the Maw, only moments ago. It seems to have followed one of the other paths Admiral Daala designated as a safe route through to the Installation." She looked at him, and Tol Sivron flinched away from her unpleasant face. "We just missed them."
Sivron didn't know what she was talking about, nor why it should concern him. All of these frantic problems were like stinging insects buzzing around his head, and he swatted at them.
"We can't do anything about that now," he said. "It's probably another Rebel ship coming to mop up the invasion of our facility." He sighed. "We'll get back at them, as soon as we get the Death Star up and running again."
He leaned back in his pilot's chair and closed his beady eyes, longing for just a moment's peace. He wished he had never left his home planet of Ryloth, where the Twi'lek people lived deep within mountain catacombs in the habitable band of twilight that separated the baking heat of day from the frigid cold of endless night.
Tol Sivron thought of more peaceful days, breathing the stale air through gaps in his pointed teeth. The heat storms on Ryloth brought sufficient warmth into the twilight zone to make the planet habitable, though desolate.
The Twi'leks built their society around the governorship of a five — member "head — clan" who led the community in all matters until such time as one of them died. At this point the Twi'leks cast out the remaining members of the head — clan to the blasted wasteland — and presumably to their deaths — while they selected a fresh group of rulers.
Tol Sivron had been a member of the head — clan, pampered and spoiled by the benefits of power. The entire clan was young and vigorous, and Sivron had expected to reap the benefits of his position for many years — spacious quarters, Twi'lek dancing women renowned throughout the galaxy, delicacies of raw meat that he could tear with his pointed teeth and savor the spicy liquid flavors...
But the good life had lasted barely a standard year. One of his idiot companions had lost his balance on a scaffolding while inspecting a deep — grotto construction project and had fallen to impale
himself upon a ten — thousand — year — old stalagmite.
According to their custom, the Twi'lek people had exiled Tol Sivron and the other three members of the head — clan into the blasted deserts of the dayside to face the heat storms and the scouring wind.
They had resigned themselves to death, but Tol Sivron had convinced the other three that if they worked together, they could survive, perhaps eke out an existence in an uninhabited cave farther down the spine of mountains.
The others had agreed, clinging to any hope; and then, as they slept that night, Tol Sivron had killed them all, taking their meager possessions to increase his own chances of survival. Covering himself with thick layers of garments stripped from the dead bodies of his companions, he had trudged across the fiery landscape, not knowing what he was searching for...
Tol Sivron had thought the glittering ships were mere mirages until he stumbled into the encampment. It was a rugged training base and refueling station for the Imperial navy, frequented by smugglers but supported by the Empire.
Tol Sivron had met a man named Tarkin there, an ambitious young commander who already had several ships and who intended to make the small outpost on Ryloth a strategically important refueling station in the Outer Rim.
Over the years, Tol Sivron had worked for Tarkin, proving himself to be an unparalleled manager, a skillful arranger of the complex business that Tarkin — then Moff Tarkin, then Grand Moff Tarkin — had under way.
Sivron's career had culminated in his directorship of Maw Installation — which he had now fled in the face of a Rebel invasion. If Tarkin was still alive, the embarrassing retreat would no doubt figure negatively in Tol Sivron's next performance appraisal.
He had to do something to make up for it, posthaste.
"Director," Yemm said, interrupting his thoughts. "I think the comm system is functioning again. It will be ready to use as soon as I log the modifications into xs maintenance record."
Sivron sat up. "At least something works around here."
Champions of the Force Page 12
