STAR WARS - THE NEW JEDI ORDER - Destiny's Way

by Walter Jon Williams

  "Senator Sneakaway," Luke said, with a significant look at Mara. "Senator Scramblefree."

  Cal frowned at the datapad. "I count at least a dozen Senators who either ran away from Coruscant during the fighting or found reason to flee before the fighting started. And some of them are influential."

  "Rodan told me that he didn't trust the Yuuzhan Vong to keep a truce," Luke said.

  "He repeated it publicly, this afternoon," Mara said.

  "But can he hold out against his own supporters?" Cal said. "When the people he depends on for his position tell him they want peace with the Yuuzhan Vong, how can he resist?"

  "I don't understand," Mara said. "Rodan was brave during the fight, maybe even heroic. How can he associate with these people?"

  "Some people don't question the folks who give them what they want," Cal said, and then his long face creased in a sly smile. "I haven't exactly made my own supporters fill out a questionnaire, either."

  Luke finished his stew. "We need a government soon," he said. "And one the military can respect. Because the military won't hold still for a surrender or a truce. And then we'll have a military government that won't hold any legitimacy other than what they acquire at blasterpoint."

  Cal looked serious. "Mara told me what you saw this afternoon. I agree we need a government soon. A parliamentary system like ours is inefficient in certain ways, but it's what we're stuck with."

  "The question is," Mara said, "does the military understand that?"

  It was a question to which none of them had the answer.

  Luke and Mara found Jacen in the suite when they returned. Jacen sat on the floor in a meditation pose, and Luke could feel the Force surrounding him, swirling in great eddies through the boy's body, cleansing, healing, strengthening, and restoring. Jacen's eyes opened as soon as Luke and Mara stepped into the apartment, and he smiled.

  "The Intelligence people are done with me, for the present," Jacen said. "I think they'll be a while with Vergere, though."

  "I spoke with her myself," Luke said.

  Jacen's smile broadened. "What did you think?"

  "I think she's not simple."

  Mara had scowled at Jacen's pleased reaction to the mention of Vergere, but she put the frown away and sat next to Jacen. "I have to wonder about her loyalties," she said.

  "They're not simple, either," Jacen said. "She's very harsh sometimes."

  Mara's mouth twisted, and Luke knew why, because his own insides were queasing at the thought of torture. He swallowed back a bitter surge of stomach acid and dropped cross-legged to the floor in front of Jacen.

  Jacen looked at him. "I'm still your apprentice, Master Sky-walker," he said. "Do you have any assignments for me?"

  Harsh, Luke thought. Whatever he was going to be, he wasn't going to be Vergere. He smiled. "A very difficult assignment, Jacen," he said. "You're to take a vacation."

  Jacen was surprised. "What kind of vacation?" he asked.

  Luke almost laughed. "Whatever kind you like," he said. "You've been through a lot, and I want you to take the time to think about it. Many of your friends are here—I want you to reconnect with them. Meditate, as you were doing. Try to discern what it is that the Force wants for you, if anything, and whether it's what you want for yourself."

  Jacen tilted his head in curiosity. "You'd give me that option?"

  "You of all people," Luke said, "should know that you've always had that option." He looked into Jacen's solemn eyes. "I want you to get beyond what I want for you, beyond what Vergere wants, beyond any of us. I want you alone with Force. A dialogue, with just the two of you, alone."

  "Harsh," Mara said. Luke could feel her muscles tense. "Days and days of torture. Harsh"

  They were alone in bed, lying nested like spoons, Mara in the curve of Luke's body. Jacen was presumably asleep in the next room, and they conversed in low tones so as not to be overheard.

  "She claims she had good reasons for what she did," Luke said. "And they sounded plausible, if—well—harsh"

  Mara looked thoughtful. "She helped heal me with her tears."

  "Perhaps a gesture of compassion, perhaps a coldhearted calculation to pave her way to a defection—or should I say a re-re-defection, to our side."

  "She tortured Jacen, but she brought him back."

  "And she collaborated in the deaths of hundreds of billions of citizens of the New Republic," Luke said. "The reasons she gives are, perhaps, adequate. Or perhaps she is simply a being with absolutely no conscience and an agenda of her own."

  Mara's eyes turned hard. "We've got to get Jacen out from under her influence."

  "That's why I told Jacen to take time off and to reconnect with his friends," Luke said. "I can't order him not to feel a connection to Vergere, but I can tell him to connect to all the parts of his life that aren't Vergere."

  Mara nodded. "Good idea."

  "Whatever may have happened to Jacen while he was gone, he's more mature than he was. More balanced. And more centered than ever in the force."

  Mara bit her lip. "I agree. Not everything that happened to him was negative."

  "After Jacen's gotten his bearings back, I'll send him on a mission. After he's had a chance to think and regain his balance, he'll need to reconnect with his job."

  "Yes." She hesitated. "That may be hard, but it's necessary." "I spoke this morning of Jacen's having a special destiny," Luke said. "Vergere thinks he has one as well."

  Mara looked at him over her shoulder. "Maybe you'd better tell me what she said."

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  Because he needed to know, he returned.

  He needed to know whether or not he was doomed, and along with him the revived Jedi Order he had created.

  Vergere peered up at Luke from her perch on the stool. "Come to ask more questions?" she inquired. "I should warn you I've already spent my day answering questions from Fleet Intelligence, and I'm tired of it."

  "I'll trade you," Luke said. "One of my questions for one of yours."

  Her whiskers rippled. "You didn't answer my last. If you can't detect the Yuuzhan Vong in the Force, is the fault with the Yuuzhan Vong or with your perceptions?"

  Luke settled onto the chair opposite Vergere. "You left out a third possibility. The fault may be in the Force."

  Vergere's feathery crest rose in surprise. "Is this your answer?"

  "No. I don't have an answer," Luke admitted. He looked at Vergere. "Do you?"

  Vergere smoothed her crest with one hand. "Is that your first question?"

  "It is."

  Vergere paused for a long moment, as if mentally rehearsing an answer. "Before I can answer, I need to know whether Jacen told you what happened to me on Zonama Sekot."

  "He did," Luke said.

  "So you know that I chose to accompany the Yuuzhan Vong in order to discover their true nature."

  "You spent fifty years with them. And so if anyone should have an answer to the question of whether the Yuuzhan Vong are outside the Force, it should be you."

  "Yes." There was a long pause while Luke waited for Vergere to continue. Then she said, "That was your answer."

  Luke smiled. "The answer to my first question is 'yes!'"

  "Correct."

  "And I'll have to ask another question if I want further information."

  "Also correct."

  "Isn't this a little bit childish?"

  Her feathers fluffed, then smoothed. "It's your game, not mine. And I believe it's my turn."

  He shrugged. "Go ahead."

  She fixed him with her tilted eyes. "If the Yuuzhan Vong arc completely outside the Force, what does that imply for the Jedi and our beliefs?"

  Luke hesitated. This wasn't just a question, this was the Question of Questions, the issue he had been wrestling since the invasion began. When he spoke, he spoke carefully.

  "It implies that our knowledge of the Force is in error, or incomplete. Or it implies that the Vong are ... an aberration. A prof
anation of the Force. A thing that should not be." He hesitated again, but the implacable logic of his train of thought forced him to continue. "To life we owe our compassion and our duty. But I must wonder what we owe to something completely outside our definition of life, to something that is a kind of living death. I must wonder if we owe them anything but a real death?"

  "You shrink from this thought." It was a statement, not a question.

  "Any being of conscience must," Luke said. He could feel tension in his clenched jaw muscles. "But still it is my duty to the Jedi not to fear where this leads." He centered himself, and tried to send the tension into the far distance. "My turn," he said.

  Vergere nodded. "Proceed."

  He took a breath, and forced himself to ask the question that he suspected would doom him. ""Are the Yuuzhan Vong outside the Force?"

  "I have only what amounts to an opinion."

  "But it's the opinion of a Jedi Knight, experienced in the Force, who has spent fifty years among the Yuuzhan Vong."

  "Yes. And my opinion is this: by definition the Force is all life, and all life is the Force. So therefore the Yuuzhan Vong, who are living beings, are within the Force, even though we can't see them there."

  Luke felt months-long tension draining from his limbs, and a heavy stone fly weightless from his heart.

  "Thank you," he murmured.

  She looked at him and spoke with quiet intensity. "You owe to the Yuuzhan Vong the same measure of compassion you owe to all life. No war of extermination is justified. You will not have to eradicate this profanation from the heart of existence."

  Luke bowed his head. "Thank you," he repeated.

  "Why were you afraid of my answer?"

  "Because if the enemy were not life, if they did not deserve compassion, then leading a war against them would have furnished a means of letting the dark side enter not only myself, but all the Jedi I have trained as well."

  "My understanding of your position, then, is that such traitsas anger and aggression are to be avoided, because they may lead to domination of the mind and spirit by the dark side of the Force."

  Luke looked at her. "Was that your second question?" "Young Master," Vergere said, "it was phrased very carefully so as not to be a question. I was merely attempting a clarification of your position."

  Luke smiled. "Yes, your understanding is correct."

  "Then my next question is this: do you believe that nature would have given us traits such as anger and aggression if they were not useful?"

  "Useful for what?" Luke countered. "They are useful to the dark side. What use does a Jedi have for anger and aggression? The Jedi Code is specific: we act not from passion, but from serenity."

  Vergere settled onto her stool. "I understand now," she said. "Our difference concerns where this serenity originates. You believe serenity is an absence of passion, but I believe it is a consequence of knowledge, and self-knowledge most of all."

  "If passion is not opposed to serenity," Luke said, "why are they paired in the Jedi Code?"

  "Because the consequences of these two states of mind are opposed to one another. An unchecked passion produces actions that are hasty, ill considered, and often destructive. Serenity, on the other hand, may well result in no action at all—and when it does, serenity produces actions that proceed from knowledge and deliberation, if not from wisdom." Her wide mouth suggested a smile. "My turn."

  "I haven't asked my question yet."

  "I beg your pardon, but you asked a question about the Jedi Code. I answered."

  Luke sighed. "Very well. Though it seems to me that I'm conceding a great deal."

  "On the contrary. You are acting from serene self-knowledge."

  Luke laughed. "If you insist."

  "I do." Vergere stroked her delicate whiskers and considered her next question. "It was my observation that on your last visit, you were angry with me. You believed that I had deliberately harmed your apprentice—which was accurate—though your anger was moderated somewhat when I explained my motivations."

  "That's true," Luke admitted.

  "Now my question is, was that anger dark? Was it an evil passion that possessed you, such that the dark side might have taken you as a consequence?"

  Luke chose his thoughts carefully. "It could have been. If I had used that anger to strike out at you, or harm you, particularly through the Force, then it would have been a dark passion."

  "Young Master, it is my contention that the anger you experienced was natural and useful. I caused deliberate harm—pain and anguish and suffering, over a period of weeks—to a young man for whom you had accepted responsibility and for whom you felt a measure of love. Naturally you felt anger. Naturally you wanted to break my thin little neck. It is absolutely natural, when you discover that a person has inflicted deliberate pain on a helpless victim, to feel angry with that person. It is equally as natural an emotion as to feel compassion for the victim."

  Vergere fell silent, and Luke let the silence build.

  After a moment, Vergere bobbed her head. "Very well, young Master. You are correct when you said that if you had entered my cell and struck out at me with the Force, that such an action would have been dark. But you didn't. Instead your anger prompted you to speak to me and find out the reasons for my actions. To that extent, your anger was not only natural but useful. It led to understanding on both our parts."

  She paused. "I'm about to ask a rhetorical question. You need not answer."

  "Thank you for the warning."

  "My rhetorical question is: why wasn't your anger dark? And my answer is: because you understood it. You understood the cause of the emotion, and therefore it did not seize power over you."

  Luke thought for a moment. "It is your contention, then," he said, "that to understand an emotion is to prevent its being dark."

  "Unreasoning passion is the province of darkness," Vergere said. "But an understood emotion is not unreasoning. That is why the route to mastery is through self-knowledge." Her tilted eyes widened. "It's not possible to suppress all emotion, nor is it desirable. An emotionless person is no more than a machine. But to understand the origin and nature of one's feelings, that is possible."

  "When Darth Vader and the Emperor held me prisoner," Luke said, "they kept urging me to surrender to my anger."

  "Your anger was a natural response to your captivity, and they wished to make use of it. They wished to fan your anger into a burning rage that would allow the darkness to enter. But any unreasoning passion would do. When anger becomes rage, fear becomes terror, love becomes obsession, self-esteem becomes vainglory, then a natural and useful emotion becomes an unreasoning compulsion and the darkness is."

  "I let the dark side take me," Luke said. "I cut off my father's hand."

  "Ahhh." Vergere nodded. "Now I understand much." "When my rage took control, I felt invincible. I felt complete. I felt free."

  Vergere nodded again. "When you are in the grip of an irresistible compulsion, it is then that you feel most like yourself. But in reality it was you who were passive then. You let the feeling control you."

  "My turn for a question," Luke said, and at that point a comm unit chimed.

  "Master Skywalker." Nylykerka's voice. "A fleet has just arrived out of hyperspace, and they wish to contact you."

  Vergere blinked at him. "Next time," she said.

  Luke rose. "Next time," he said.

  Outside, Nylykerka met him with a bow. "Sixteen ships just arrived, mostly freighters or modified freighters, but including a Star Destroyer, Errant Venture. There are messages to you from Captain Karrde, and also from Lando Calrissian, who commands one of the ships."

  "Thank you."

  Nylykerka walked with him to the nearest comm unit. "I'm running out of questions to ask her," the Tammarian said. "And I'm running out of reasons to hold her."

  "Keep her until I can talk to her one more time," Luke said. "I'm still not convinced that she's benign."

  The Tammarian's air sa
c pulsed meditatively. "Then why would she rescue Jacen?"

  "To gain access to the Jedi, perhaps so she can destroy us."

  Air whistled from Nylykerka's sac. "No wonder you want her held."

  The problem, Luke thought, was that if Vergere was as powerful as he thought, she wouldn't be in Nylykerka's cell any longer than she wanted to be there.

  Luke stepped aboard Wild Karrde to a salute from a double row of skull-headed, glowing-eyed droids with massive physiques and sloping foreheads. The ship smelled of machine oil. Luke returned the salute and marched down the line to be embraced by Lando Calrissian and to have his hand pumped by Talon Karrde.

  "I see your droid factory is thriving," Luke told Lando.

  "Everything you see," Lando said with a grin, "is for sale to the government for a very reasonable price."

  Luke frowned at his friend's flippant remark. "That strongly depends on whether we get a government," he said.

  Karrde looked serious and tugged his small goatee. "You'd better tell us about that," he said.

  Karrde took Luke to his cabin, and Luke told Lando and Karrde of the latest developments in the Senate. "There have always been rumors about Fyor Rodan," he said finally. "Rumors that he's connected with smuggling operations on the Rim. If either of you know any of the details, perhaps you can help us . . ."

  "Discredit Rodan by associating him with us" Karrde said, and laughed.

  "No offense," Luke said.

  "None taken," Karrde said. "But I'm afraid I can't help you. It's not Fyor Rodan who's the smuggler, it's his older brother Tormak."

  "Tormak Rodan used to fly out of Nar Shaddaa for Jabba the Hutt," Lando said. "After Jabba had his, ah, accident, Tormak went independent and set up on the Rim."

  "He and his brother hate each other," Karrde added. "Tormak was into anything shady, and little brother Fyor grew up as strait-laced as they come, probably in reaction to how big brother Tormak behaved. If Fyor's sensitive on the subject of smuggling, I guess that's why. Still," he added, stroking his goatee. "I think Lando and I can help your candidate along."