Dark Force Rising

by Timothy Zahn

  Or she could admit defeat, fire up the main drive and pull for space, and go after Karrde alone.

  Gritting her teeth, she studied the contour scan. The rock storm had stopped after the fourth hit—the Jedi Master, no doubt, waiting to see if she’d crash without further encouragement on his part. With a little luck, maybe she could convince him that she was done for without actually wrecking the ship in the process. If she could just find the proper formation in that cliff face …

  There it was, perhaps a third of the way down: a roughly hemispherical concavity where erosion had eaten away a layer of softer rock from the harder material surrounding it. The ledge that had been left beneath the indentation was relatively flat, and the whole thing was large enough to hold the Skipray comfortably.

  Now all she had to do was get the ship there. Mentally crossing her fingers, she flipped the ship nose up and eased in the main sublight drive.

  The glare of the drive trail lit up the near side of the rim mountains, throwing them into a dancing mosaic of light and shadow. The Skipray jerked up and forward, stabilized a little as Mara brought the nose a bit farther back off vertical. It threatened to overbalance, eased back as she tapped the control surfaces, twitched almost too far in the other direction, then steadied. Balancing on the drive like this was an inherently unstable operation, and Mara could feel the sweat breaking out on her forehead as she fought to keep the suddenly unwieldy craft under control. If C’baoth suspected what she was trying, it wouldn’t take much effort on his part to finish her off.

  Setting her teeth together, splitting her attention between the approach scope, the airspeed indicator, and the throttle, she brought the ship in.

  She nearly didn’t make it. The Skipray was still ten meters short of the ledge when its drive trail hit the cliff face below it with enough heat to ignite the rock, and an instant later the ship was sheathed in brilliantly colored fire. Mara held her course, trying to ignore the warbling of the hull warning sirens as she strained to see through the flames between her and her target. There was no time to waste with second thoughts—if she hesitated even a few seconds, the drive could easily burn away too much of the ledge for her to safely put down. Five meters away now, and the temperature inside the cabin was beginning to rise. Then three, then one—

  There was a horrible screech of metal on rock as the Skipray’s ventral fin scraped against the edge of the ledge. Mara cut the drive and braced herself, and with a stomach-churning drop, the ship dropped a meter to land tail-first on the ledge. For a second it almost seemed it would remain balanced there. Then, with ponderous grace, it toppled slowly forward and slammed down hard onto its landing skids.

  Wiping the sweat out of her eyes, Mara keyed for a status readout. The airstilting maneuver had been taught to her as an absolute last-ditch alternative to crashing. Now, she knew why.

  But she’d been lucky. The landing skids and ventral fin were a mess, but the engines, hyperdrive, life-support, and hull integrity were still all right. Shutting the systems back to standby, she hoisted the ysalamir frame up onto her shoulders and headed aft.

  The main portside hatchway was unusable, opening as it did out over empty space. There was, however, a secondary hatch set behind the dorsal laser cannon turret. Getting up the access ladder and through it with the ysalamir on her back was something of a trick, but after a couple of false starts she made it. The metal of the upper hull was uncomfortably hot to her touch as she climbed out onto it, but the cold winds coming off the lake below were a welcome relief after the superheated air inside. She propped the hatchway open to help cool the ship and looked upward.

  And to her chagrin discovered that she’d miscalculated. Instead of being ten to fifteen meters beneath the top of the crater, as she’d estimated, she was in fact nearly fifty meters down. The vast scale of the crater, combined with the mad rush of the landing itself, had skewed her perception.

  “Nothing like a little exercise after a long trip,” she muttered to herself, pulling the glow rod from her beltpack and playing it across her line of ascent. The climb wasn’t going to be fun, especially with the top-heavy weight of the ysalamir frame, but it looked possible. Attaching the glow rod to the shoulder of her jumpsuit, she picked out her first set of handholds and started up.

  She’d made maybe two meters when, without warning, the rock in front of her suddenly blazed with light.

  The shock of it sent her sliding back down the cliff face to a bumpy landing atop the Skipray; but she landed in a crouch with her blaster ready in her hand. Squinting against the twin lights glaring down on her, she snapped off a quick shot that took out the leftmost of them. The other promptly shut off; and then, even as she tried to blink away the purple blobs obscuring her vision, she heard a faint but unmistakable sound.

  The warbling of an R2 droid.

  “Hey!” she called softly. “You—droid. Are you Skywalker’s astromech unit? If you are, you know who I am. We met on Myrkr—remember?”

  The droid remembered, all right. But from the indignant tone of the reply, it wasn’t a memory the R2 was especially fond of. “Yes, well, skip all that,” she told it tartly. “Your master’s in trouble. I came to warn him.”

  Another electronic warble, this one fairly dripping with sarcasm. “It’s true,” Mara insisted. Her dazzled vision was starting to recover now, and she could make out the dark shape of the X-wing hovering on its repulsorlifts about five meters away, its two starboard laser cannons pointed directly at her face. “I need to talk to him right away,” Mara went on. “Before that Jedi Master up there figures out I’m still alive and tries to rectify the situation.”

  She’d expected more sarcasm, or even out-and-out approval for such a goal. But the droid didn’t say anything. Perhaps it had witnessed the brief battle between the Skipray and C’baoth’s flying boulders. “Yes, that was him trying to kill me,” she confirmed. “Nice and quiet, so that your master wouldn’t notice anything and ask awkward questions.”

  The droid beeped what sounded like a question of its own. “I came here because I need Skywalker’s help,” Mara said, taking a guess as to the content. “Karrde’s been captured by the Imperials, and I can’t get him out by myself. Karrde, in case you’ve forgotten, was the one who helped your friends set up an ambush against those stormtroopers that got both of you off Myrkr. You owe him.”

  The droid snorted. “All right, then,” Mara snapped. “Don’t do it for Karrde, and don’t do it for me. Take me up there because otherwise your precious master won’t know until it’s too late that his new teacher, C’baoth, is working for the Empire.”

  The droid thought it over. Then, slowly, the X-wing rotated to point its lasers away from her and sidled over to the damaged Skipray. Mara holstered her blaster and got ready, wondering how she was going to squeeze into the cockpit with the ysalamir framework strapped to her shoulders.

  She needn’t have worried. Instead of maneuvering to give her access to the cockpit, the droid instead presented her with one of the landing skids.

  “You must be joking,” Mara protested, eyeing the skid hovering at waist height in front of her and thinking about the long drop to the lake below. But it was clear that the droid was serious; and after a moment, she reluctantly climbed aboard. “Okay,” she said when she was as secure as she could arrange. “Let’s go. And watch out for flying rocks.”

  The X-wing eased away and began moving upward. Mara braced herself, waiting for C’baoth to pick up the attack where he’d left off. But they reached the top without incident; and as the droid settled the X-wing safely to the ground, Mara saw the shadowy figure of a cloaked man standing silently beside the fence surrounding the house.

  “You must be C’baoth,” Mara said to him as she slid off the landing skid and got a grip on her blaster. “You always greet your visitors this way?”

  For a moment the figure didn’t speak. Mara took a step toward him, feeling an eerie sense of déjà vu as she tried to peer into the hood at the fac
e not quite visible there. The Emperor had looked much the same way that night when he’d first chosen her from her home … “I have no visitors except lackeys from Grand Admiral Thrawn,” the figure said at last. “All others are, by definition, intruders.”

  “What makes you think I’m not with the Empire?” Mara countered. “In case it escaped your notice, I was following the Imperial beacon on that island down there when you knocked me out of the sky.”

  In the dim starlight she had the impression that C’baoth was smiling inside the hood. “And what precisely does that prove?” he asked. “Merely that others can play with the Grand Admiral’s little toys.”

  “And can others get hold of the Grand Admiral’s ysalamiri, too?” she demanded, gesturing toward the frame on her back. “Enough of this. The Grand Admiral—”

  “The Grand Admiral is your enemy,” C’baoth snapped suddenly. “Don’t insult me with childish denials, Mara Jade. I saw it all in your mind as you approached. Did you really believe you could take my Jedi away from me?”

  Mara swallowed, shivering from the cold night wind and the colder feeling within her. Thrawn had said that C’baoth was insane, and she could indeed hear the unstable edge of madness in his voice. But there was far more to the man than just that. There was a hard steel behind the voice, ruthless and calculating, with a sense of both supreme power and supreme confidence underlying it all.

  It was like hearing the Emperor speak again.

  “I need Skywalker’s help,” she said, forcing her own voice to remain calm. “All I need to do is borrow him for a little while.”

  “And then you’ll return him?” C’baoth said sardonically.

  Mara clenched her teeth. “I’ll have his help, C’baoth. Whether you like it or not.”

  There was no doubt this time that the Jedi Master had smiled. A thin, ghostly smile. “Oh, no, Mara Jade,” he murmured. “You are mistaken. Do you truly believe that simply because you stand in the middle of an empty space in the Force that I am powerless against you?”

  “There’s also this,” Mara said, pulling her blaster from its holster and aiming it at his chest.

  C’baoth didn’t move; but suddenly Mara could feel a surge of tension in the air around her. “No one points a weapon at me with impunity,” the Jedi Master said with quiet menace. “You will pay dearly for this one day.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Mara said, retreating a step to put her back against the X-wing’s starboard S-foils. Above and to her left she could hear the R2 droid chirping thoughtfully to itself. “You want to stand aside and let me pass? Or do we do this the hard way?”

  C’baoth seemed to study her. “I could destroy you, you know,” he said. The menace had vanished from his voice now, leaving something almost conversational in its place. “Right there where you stand, before you even knew the attack was coming. But I won’t. Not now. I’ve felt your presence over the years, Mara Jade; the rising and falling of your power after the Emperor’s death took most of your strength away. And now I’ve seen you in my meditations. Someday you will come to me, of your own free will.”

  “I’ll take my chances on that one, too,” Mara said.

  “You don’t believe me,” C’baoth said with another of his ghostly smiles. “But you shall. The future is fixed, my young would-be Jedi, as is your destiny. Someday you will kneel before me. I have foreseen it.”

  “I wouldn’t trust Jedi foreseeing all that much if I were you,” Mara retorted, risking a glance past him at the darkened building and wondering what C’baoth would do if she tried shouting Skywalker’s name. “The Emperor did a lot of that, too. It didn’t help him much in the end.”

  “Perhaps I am wiser than the Emperor was,” C’baoth said. His head turned slightly. “I told you to go to your chambers,” he said in a louder voice.

  “Yes, you did,” a familiar voice acknowledged; and from the shadows at the front of the house a new figure moved across the courtyard.

  Skywalker.

  “Then why are you here?” C’baoth asked.

  “I felt a disturbance in the Force,” the younger man said as he passed through the gate and came more fully into the dim starlight. Above his black tunic his face was expressionless, his eyes fixed on Mara. “As if a battle were taking place nearby. Hello, Mara.”

  “Skywalker,” she managed between dry lips. With all that had happened to her since her arrival in the Jomark system, it was only now just dawning on her the enormity of the task she’d set for herself. She, who’d openly told Skywalker that she would someday kill him, was now going to have to convince him that she was more trustworthy than a Jedi Master. “Look—Skywalker—”

  “Aren’t you aiming that at the wrong person?” he asked mildly. “I thought I was the one you were gunning for.”

  Mara had almost forgotten the blaster she had pointed at C’baoth. “I didn’t come here to kill you,” she said. Even to her own ears the words sounded thin and deceitful. “Karrde’s in trouble with the Empire. I need your help to get him out.”

  “I see.” Skywalker looked at C’baoth. “What happened here, Master C’baoth?”

  “What does it matter?” the other countered. “Despite her words just now, she did indeed come here to destroy you. Would you rather I had not stopped her?”

  “Skywalker—” Mara began.

  He stopped her with an upraised hand, his eyes still on C’baoth. “Did she attack you?” he asked. “Or threaten you in any way?”

  Mara looked at C’baoth … and felt the breath freeze in her lungs. The earlier confidence had vanished from the Jedi Master’s face. In its place was something cold and deadly. Directed not at her, but at Skywalker.

  And suddenly Mara understood. Skywalker wouldn’t need convincing of C’baoth’s treachery after all. Somehow, he already knew.

  “What does it matter what her precise actions were?” C’baoth demanded, his voice colder even than his face. “What matters is that she is a living example of the danger I have been warning you of since your arrival. The danger all Jedi face from a galaxy that hates and fears us.”

  “No, Master C’baoth,” Skywalker said, his voice almost gentle. “Surely you must understand that the means are no less important than the ends. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.”

  C’baoth snorted. “A platitude for the simpleminded. Or for those with insufficient wisdom to make their own decisions. I am beyond such things, Jedi Skywalker. As you will be someday. If you choose to remain.”

  Skywalker shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t.” He turned away and walked toward Mara—

  “Then you turn your back on the galaxy,” C’baoth said, his voice now earnest and sincere. “Only with our guidance and strength can they ever hope to achieve real maturity. You know that as well as I do.”

  Skywalker stopped. “But you just said they hate us,” he pointed out. “How can we teach people who don’t want our guidance?”

  “We can heal the galaxy, Luke,” C’baoth said quietly. “Together, you and I can do it. Without us, there is no hope. None at all.”

  “Maybe he can do it without you,” Mara put in loudly, trying to break up the verbal spell C’baoth was weaving. She’d seen the same sort of thing work for the Emperor, and Skywalker’s eyelids were heavy enough as it was.

  Too heavy, in fact. Like hers had been on the approach to Jomark …

  Stepping away from the X-wing, she walked over to Skywalker. C’baoth made a small movement, as if he were going to stop her; she hefted her blaster, and he seemed to abandon the idea.

  Even without looking at him, she could tell when the Force-empty zone around her ysalamir touched Skywalker. He inhaled sharply, shoulders straightening from a slump he probably hadn’t even noticed they had, and nodded as if he finally understood a hitherto unexplained piece of a puzzle. “Is this how you would heal the galaxy, Master C’baoth?” he asked. “By coercion and deceit?”

  Abruptly, C’ba
oth threw back his head and laughed. It was about the last reaction Mara would have expected from him, and the sheer surprise of it momentarily froze her muscles.

  And in that split second, the Jedi Master struck.

  It was only a small rock, as rocks went, but it came in out of nowhere to strike her gun hand with paralyzing force. The blaster went spinning off into the darkness as her hand flared with pain and then went numb. “Watch out!” she snapped to Skywalker, dropping down into a crouch and scrabbling around for her weapon as a second stone whistled past her ear.

  There was a snap-hiss from beside her, and suddenly the terrain was bathed in the green-white glow of Skywalker’s lightsaber. “Get behind the ship,” he ordered her. “I’ll hold him off.”

  The memory of Myrkr flashed through Mara’s mind; but even as she opened her mouth to remind him of how useless he was without the Force, he took a long step forward to put himself outside the ysalamir’s influence. The lightsaber flashed sideways, and she heard the double crunch as its brilliant blade intercepted two more incoming rocks.

  Still laughing, C’baoth raised his hand and sent a flash of blue lightning toward them.

  Skywalker caught the bolt on his lightsaber, and for an instant the green of the blade was surrounded by a blue-white coronal discharge. A second bolt shot past him to vanish at the edge of the empty zone around Mara; a third again wrapped itself around the lightsaber blade.

  Mara’s fumbling hand brushed something metallic: her blaster. Scooping it up, she swung it toward C’baoth—

  And with a brilliant flash of laser fire, the whole scene seemed to blow up in front of her.

  She had forgotten about the droid sitting up there in the X-wing. Apparently, C’baoth had forgotten about it, too.