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

by Walter Jon Williams

  He looked at her in surprise. "Attack you how?"

  "Mentally." Her whiskers rippled. "If it helps, you may use a component of that anger you first brought to this room. I'll trust that you're a gentleman and won't make it lethal."

  Give in to your anger. The Emperor's seductive voice echoed in his mind. Was Vergere trying to provoke him to anger, bring him to the dark side?

  If so, that attempt was doomed. He had withstood Vader and Palpatine when he was barely more than a boy; now that he was a Jedi Master in the prime of life he would hardly fall victim to such a trick.

  Luke turned his chair to face her and crossed his legs. The Force welled into his mind like water rising in an artesian spring. Force awareness expanded in all directions: he was aware of Ayddar Nylykerka outside the room, the two techs who monitored the equipment, a prisoner in another cell, others who worked in an office just above them. He could sense the glow of their lives in the Force, hear the throb of their hearts, and time their whispering breaths. He knew that one of the techs was concentrating on a technical problem, and that his friend was daydreaming of her fiance, who had four arms and bright blue fur and who sent her flowers and reams of bad poetry . . .

  But what Luke could not detect was Vergere. She seemed to have vanished completely from his Force-awareness, even though he could plainly see her sitting on her stool across from him.

  He refined his awareness and finally detected her, a kind of fitful uncertain presence, her life force a faint cool phosphorescence compared to the bright candle flames of the others.

  Luke tried to refine his sense of Vergere to a greater degree, but she was remarkably evasive: she kept sliding away from his perceptions, like a slippery melon seed squeezed between the fingers. The difficulty of keeping Vergere in focus produced in Luke a sense of frustration, which he used deliberately to fuel an attack at the elusive target, a fast snakelike strike configured as a command simply to remain still. The mental bolt fired but failed to find its target.

  He built a strike more deliberately, drawing more of the Force to power the attack, not a jab this time but a battering ram. reveal yourself, he commanded, and launched the strike. Again Vergere eluded him.

  His frustration rose, and he used it to power another fast strike, like a reflex backhand blow. Nothing.

  Luke began to vary his attacks between massive, deliberate cannonades and swift, intuitive reflex strikes, hoping that one or the other would catch Vergere by surprise. Nothing worked.

  Vergere continued to sit on her stool, her re verse-articulated knees poking up above her head like knobby horns, her eyes gazing mildly into Luke's. / can see where she is, Luke realized. He didn't have to search for her in the Force.

  So he built a Force wall around her, an iron box to keep her mind from slipping away, and he made up the walls of the box with the command reveal yourself. After this he shrank the box, forced it smaller around Vergere's small body, molding it until it fit her form exactly, a prison to contain her spirit. And then he called more of the Force to him, building a vast mental cannonball that would obliterate anything in its path, again with the command reveal yourself, and he aimed the cannonball at the tiny figure that he'd trapped inside the iron box.

  "Reveal yourself, " he commanded again, and he launched the cannonball.

  He knew it entered the box. He knew Vergere's spirit was trapped there, boxed in, unable to move. But somehow the tiny target eluded him and the cannonball slid away on a curving trajectory, through the wall, into the next cell, and Luke was suddenly and startlingly aware of the prisoner there, who jumped from his cot and screamed, "Yes! I confess! I stole the captain's shoes while he was drunk!"

  Revealing himself.

  Luke laughed and let the Force-awareness ebb to its normal level. "I'm going to get tired if I keep this up," he said.

  "That last one almost worked," Vergere said from around a piece of candy.

  "I hope you can teach this technique," Luke said.

  "There is more than one technique involved. I managed to evade that last strike with a kind of mental parry, as in fencing. You know how a thrust can be parried not by opposing it, but by redirecting it slightly so that it misses its goal?"

  "Of course,"

  "I did something similar. I added just enough mental energy to your strike to cause it to divert. The timing was very difficult to judge, and there was no small measure of luck involved in my success."

  "And your other techniques?"

  "Do you know the definition of a master of defense?"

  "Tell me."

  "A master of defense is one who is never in the place that is attacked. One can move the attack, as I just did with my parry, but one can also simply not be there!"

  "Not so simply," Luke murmured.

  "I call it making myself small. I narrow my focus bit by bit until it becomes, well, microscopic. Tiny. My mind and Force-awareness I shrank to an infinitesimal size. An enemy has the same chance of finding me as his chance of finding one molecule amid billions of others."

  "Your tears," Luke said. "That's how you make your tears."

  "Very good, young Master," Vergere said. "Yes. In that state I can rearrange molecules, take them apart, and build new ones bit by bit. I use my tears because they are convenient, but I can accomplish the same thing with other material."

  "I know a Jedi healer, Cilghal, who would delight in this technique."

  "I'll try to teach her, if you and she are willing. If I'm ever permitted to leave this place."

  "You can teach without leaving this room," Luke reminded her.

  A sly smile drifted across Vergere's face. "I can—but will I?"

  Vergere gave one of her wheezing laughs, and popped a candy into her wide mouth.

  "If the military releases you from here," Luke said, "will you aid us in the fight against the Yuuzhan Vong?"

  Vergere rolled the sticky candy into her cheek as she spoke. "Insofar as it coincides with my goals, I will. Though I am much more a teacher than a warrior, and I believe my greatest objective is to help Jacen to his destiny." Her eyes narrowed. "I understand that he is your apprentice, not mine, and that you may have other intentions for him."

  "I'm glad that you appreciate that." Luke had no clear idea whether he wanted to let Vergere near Jacen ever again.

  "I think I have much to teach him."

  "I don't want him to become dependent on you," Luke hedged.

  "Nor do I."

  There was a moment of silence. Then Vergere said, "Correct me if I'm wrong in my understanding. But Jacen gives me to understand that you've put restrictions on the Jedi during the course of this war, forbidding aggressive actions,"

  "I've tried to do so," Luke said, and then laughed. "My success has been modest."

  "But my understanding is that you, yourself, undertook offensive warfare against the forces of the late Emperor. For instance, you were part of a party that attacked the first Death Star. You led the destruction of the criminal organization of the Hutt called Jabba. You accepted military rank and participated in numerous offensive actions against the forces of the Empire and other enemies. You didn't confine yourself to spying missions and aiding refugees."

  "All true."

  "So my question is, what has changed?"

  Luke paused and considered how best to marshal his arguments. "The Yuuzhan Vong are a different enemy, for one thing," he began. "Our special talents are ineffective against them. And—as I expressed yesterday—I didn't know what we owed a species so far outside life as we knew it."

  Vergere nodded her understanding. "You have heard my opinion that the Yuuzhan Vong are not outside the Force. I wonder if this has changed anything."

  Luke hesitated. "I don't think so. The Jedi Code is clear in its statements against aggression. I know much more about the dark side than I did when I was twenty. I know how easily the dark can enter, how the dark can infiltrate the heart even when it's most certain of its own actions, and I know that many of my st
udents aren't ready to face it."

  "You cut off your father's hand."

  "Yes."

  "You want to prevent your students from making the same mistakes that you have made."

  "Of course."

  A disdainful look crossed Vergere's face. "That is egotism speaking."

  Resentment prickled along Luke's nerves. "You don't know my students. You don't know how impulsive and reckless they are. Don't judge them all by Jacen." He hesitated. "Kyp Durron killed millions"

  "And this was your responsibility."

  Again Luke hesitated. "The situation was complex. I was paralyzed, and Kyp was under the control of—"

  "You mean to say that it was not your responsibility," Vergere interrupted, her tone harsh.

  "I could have been more aware of the situation," Luke insisted. "There's so much I could have done—"

  "So it is your responsibility." Interrupting again.

  "The next time it will be!" Luke insisted. "The next time one of my students is swept away on a dark whirlwind and catastrophe results, it will be my fault!"

  Vergere's feathery crest rose. She smoothed it with her fingers. "Of course it would not be your fault," she said. "You are a Jedi Master, not a nursemaid!"

  "I trained them," Luke said. "If their training fails—"

  "When you cut off your father's hand, was it the fault of your teachers?" Vergere demanded. "Did Yoda fail to instruct you what dark passion could do?"

  "No, I—" Frustration throbbed in Luke's heart. "That's different. I—"

  "I," Vergere mocked. "I, I, I. Upon you lies the spiritual health of yourself and all those whom you taught. Is that not ego speaking?"

  Luke looked at her as realization struck. "You're trying to make me angry," he said.

  "Yes," she said simply. "Did I succeed?"

  "You did." Luke found his anger easing as he realized that Vergere had been manipulating him—though it didn't fade entirely, it still hummed, subdued, in his nerves.

  "I preyed upon your weakness," Vergere said. "I preyed upon your lack of self-knowledge, your uncertainty about where your responsibility lies for the behavior of those who have been your students." Her piebald feathers rippled. "Was your anger dark?"

  "It was getting there," Luke said.

  "So where was the darkness? In me, in you, or in the Force?"

  "I think you've been asking too many questions."

  Vergere sat back on her haunches. "I wondered when you were going to notice. If you have a question, ask it."

  "You've been saying that dark passions are caused by lack of self-knowledge. But Emperor Palpatine was dark, and I can hardly imagine that he lacked self-knowledge. He seemed perfectly comfortable within his evil. How do you reconcile this with your theory?"

  Vergere paused, assembling her argument. "Darkness enters through the dark passions," she said finally. "But sometimes it remains through invitation. Palpatine, knowing himself thoroughly, may simply have decided to become dark, or to let the dark part of his own nature dominate."

  "You're saying he may have chosen evil. Coldly, not out of a hot passion."

  "Sometimes people make such choices." Vergere's tone was amused. "Usually these people are trivial or silly. Swearing a midnight oath, solemnly intoning, I choose evil!'—what a ridiculous picture! But sometimes there may be a genius who chooses to free the dark side within him. Perhaps Palpatine was one such—I cannot say, I knew him only distantly, as a politician. But I can say this—the dark may enter through meditation as well as through anger."

  Luke considered this. Certainly Palpatine and Vader's methods hadn't been to urge him to evil through meditation, but then—if he had joined them as their disciple—perhaps that would have come.

  "Have I answered completely?" Vergere said. Luke nodded. "If so," Vergere went on, "I would ask another question. Do you think the Force cares what shade your thoughts may be?"

  "The Force is all life. It embraces all options. But I care."

  Vergere nodded. "A good answer, young Master. Because the shades, the dark and the light and all the colors of the rainbow—" She leaned forward and tapped Luke on the breast with one hand. "—they are here. Light and dark are not some great abstracts in the sky, but a part of you, and the Force reflects what it finds in you."

  Later, when Luke spoke with Ayddar Nylykerka, he said, "You might as well let Vergere go. You're not going to get anything out of her that she doesn't want to give you."

  Nylykerka was surprised. "You're no longer worried she might be a danger?"

  "It still concerns me," Luke said, "but if Vergere is an enemy, we won't find out by keeping her here. We'll find out by watching what she does once she's been released."

  The Tammarian looked thoughtful. "I'll give your recommendations serious thought, Master Skywalker."

  "If you decide to release her," Luke said, "I'd be obliged if you'd let me know first. And you could let her know my address and comm code, in case she wants to speak with me."

  "I'll do that."

  Luke bowed. "Thank you, Commander Nylykerka."

  "At your service, sir."

  Luke made his way to the planet's surface, Vergere's words spinning through his mind.

  What has changed?

  Perhaps everything.

  "We know that there must be many refugees from Vortex on Mon Calamari," Lando Calrissian said. "And we're sure that they're in touch with your office."

  "A great many of them, yes," said Fyg Boras, the Senator from Vortex. He and Lando were seated comfortably, with drinks, in the hotel suite Lando had rented.

  "We sympathize," Lando said. "And as you know, we've brought sixteen ships' worth of relief supplies to Mon Calamari to help settle the refugees here."

  Ice tinkled in Boras's drink. The discreet scent of his minty cologne wafted through the air. "I'm grateful on my constituents' behalf."

  "We have a problem, though, and perhaps you can help."

  "How may I assist you?"

  "We have the supplies, but no way to distribute them. What we thought we'd do is present you with twenty-five metric tons of supplies. You can distribute them to your constituents as you think best."

  Boras's eyes grew wide. "That's certainly . . . very generous," he managed. "Twenty-five tons?" He was almost visibly calculating how much twenty-five tons of relief supplies was worth in the current market, with the planet's few surface areas swarming with refugees from dozens of worlds, all desperate for the most basic necessities. Boras no longer had a homeworld to return to, and without a homeworld to vote him in he was obviously never going to be returned to the Senate: he had to think about his future.

  "Twenty-five tons," Lando repeated. "Though there is a catch."

  Boras's wide eyes narrowed to slits. "And what might the catch be?"

  "We hope to be able to sell our YVH droids to the military," Lando said. "If you can use your best efforts to vote an amendment onto the upcoming military appropriations bill, you'll find us extremely appreciative."

  Boras sipped his drink carefully. "You'd best tell me about these droids."

  "I have a full array of literature," Lando said, "and of course a demonstration holo ..."

  After Boras left with an armful of datapads to distribute to his peers, Talon Karrde stepped from the next room. "It's all recorded," he said.

  "Boras's bribe weighs twenty-five tons." Lando smiled. "It's going to be hard for him to claim it doesn't exist."

  Unlike the distinguished Senator from Bilbringi, who, on being offered the relief supplies, simply demanded their equivalent in cash. That holo was particularly entertaining.

  "Who's our next guest?" Lando asked.

  Karrde glanced at his datapad. "Chau Feswin, from the Elrood sector."

  "The Elrood sector isn't threatened by the Yuuzhan Vong. Do you think he'd have any use for relief supplies?"

  "Make the offer," Karrde shrugged. "We can always turn it into cash later." He looked up. "We've also got some calls from o
ther Senators who must have heard about us from, ah, our other clients. They're very interested in the military acquiring our droids. Practically begging us to bribe them."

  Lando looked at him with a growing smile. "I think we should oblige."

  Karrde shrugged. "I can't think of any reason not to." He looked thoughtful. "But I wonder—if these people are on our payroll, who else's payroll are they on?"

  "That answer would be interesting, wouldn't it?" Lando said. "By the way, have you heard how Mara's doing?"

  "Not yet. But I hope to hear from her soon."

  Mara was in fact doing well. She had taken YVH-M-1 out for its maiden Yuuzhan Vong hunt, wandering government buildings and large public concourses. She lunched at a kiosk set up in a shopping concourse and then sat down to digest and to watch the passersby. She told the droid to search on its own.

  She was distracted by the sight of a pair of children, children Ben's age, taking their first hesitant steps in the open-air creche the concourse provided as a convenience to its customers. Sadness rose in Mara and took her by the throat. For a moment she missed Ben so much that it was almost a physical pain.

  And then the mouse droid signaled her portable comm. Mara looked up from the creche, startled. The mouse droid signaled again.

  The droid had located a Yuuzhan Vong infiltrator—or at least someone the mouse droid claimed was a Yuuzhan Vong. Mara asked the droid for a homing signal, and followed it until she saw the person in question: a tall, rather broad female human, inconspicuously dressed,, who wandered seemingly at random along the shopping galleries. Mara called the Force into her mind, letting the lives of all the thousands of living beings in the concourse flood into her awareness.

  All the beings save one. Her target was a cold void in the Force, an emptiness that Mara had learned to associate with the Yuuzhan Vong.

  "Good work, mousie," Mara said.

  Mara was plainly dressed, in worn robes such as a refugee might wear, with a hood that she could wear over her overly conspicuous red hair. She alternated the hood with a floppy-brimmed hat in order to change her silhouette, and she carried a datapad through which she could issue commands to the mouse droid, and also view what the droid was seeing.