by James Luceno
“Jen had the strength—I guess you could call it strength—to forget about you after he handed you over to the Jedi. No, that’s too harsh. He had confidence enough in his decision to believe that he had made the right choice, and that you were doing well.” Jula shook her head. “I could never get there. I missed you. It broke my heart to see you leave, and know that I might never see you again. That’s what eventually ruined us.”
Shryne mulled it over. “Jen sounds like he was Jedi without the title.”
“How so?”
“Because he understood that you have to accept what destiny sets in front of you. That you have to pick and choose your battles.”
Her gray eyes searched his face. “What does that make me, Roan?”
“A victim of attachment.”
She smiled weakly. “You know what? I can live with that.”
Shryne glanced away, catching Starstone’s look before she quickly turned back to the communications console. She was eavesdropping on their conversation, worrying that the efforts she had made to keep Shryne on the proper path were suddenly being undermined. Shryne could feel her wanting to tear herself away from the communications suite before it was too late, and Shryne was lost to the cause.
He looked at Jula once more. “I’ll provide a confession in exchange for yours: I refused an assignment in the Temple’s Acquisition Division. I’m still not sure why, except that I’d persuaded myself on some level that I didn’t like the idea of kids being separated from their families.” He paused briefly. “But that was a long time ago.”
She took his meaning. “Long ago in years, maybe. But I’m guessing you still feel like you missed out.”
“On what?”
“Life, Roan. Desire, romance, love, laughter, fun—all the things you’ve been denied. And children. How about that? A Force-sensitive child you could nurture and learn from.”
He made his eyes dull. “I’m not sure how Force-sensitive a child of mine would be.”
“Why is that?”
He gave his head a sharp shake. “Nothing.”
Jula was willing to let the point drop, but she had more to say.
“Roan, just hear me out. From everything I’ve heard, the Jedi order has been vanquished. Probably ninety-nine percent of the Jedi are dead. So it’s not like you have a choice. Like it or not, you’re in the real world. Which means you could get to meet and know your father, your uncles and aunts. All of them still talk about you. Having a Jedi in the family is a pretty big deal in some places. Or at least it was.” She fell briefly silent. “When I heard what happened, I thought for a moment …” She laughed to push some memory aside. “I don’t want to get into all that. Someday you can tell me the truth about what happened on Coruscant, and why Palpatine betrayed you.”
Shryne narrowed his eyes. “If we ever learn the truth.”
From the comm suite came a cheer of excitement, and a moment later Starstone was hurrying across the cabin toward them.
“Roan, we got a hit! From a group of Jedi on the run.” She turned to Jula. “Captain, with your permission we’d like to arrange a rendezvous with their ship.”
Filli appeared at Starstone’s side to elaborate. “We’d have to divert from our course to Mossak. But the rendezvous wouldn’t take us too far out of the way.”
Shryne felt Jula’s eyes on him. “I won’t try to convince you,” he said. “It’s your ship, and I’m sure you have important business elsewhere.”
Jula took a long moment to respond. “I’ll tell you why I’m going to do it: just to have more time with you. With luck, enough time to persuade you to get to know us, and ultimately to stay with us.” She cut her eyes to Starstone. “There’s room for you, too, Olee.”
Starstone blinked in indignation. “Room for me? I’m not about to abandon my Jedi oath to go gallivanting around the galaxy with a band of smugglers. Especially now that I know that other Jedi survived.” She looked hard at Shryne. “We have contact, Roan. You can’t be taking her offer seriously?”
Shryne laughed out loud. “Normally Padawans don’t talk like this to Masters,” he said to Jula. “You can see how fast things have changed.”
Starstone folded her arms across her chest. “You said I shouldn’t call you ‘Master.’ ”
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t respect your elders.”
“I do respect you,” she said. “It’s your decisions I don’t respect.”
“Many Jedi have left the Temple to lead regular lives,” Jula thought to point out. “Some have gotten married and had children.”
“No,” Starstone said, shaking her head back and forth. “Maybe apprentices, but not Jedi Knights.”
“That can’t be true,” Jula said.
“It is true,” Starstone said firmly, before Shryne could say a word. “Only twenty Jedi have ever left the order.”
“Don’t try to argue with her,” Shryne advised Jula. “She spent half her life in the Temple library polishing the busts of those Lost Twenty.”
Starstone shot him a gimlet look. “Don’t even think about being number twenty-one.”
Shryne let his sudden seriousness show. “Despite your claims for me, I’m not a Master, and there is no order. How many times are you going to have to hear it before you accept the truth?”
She compressed her lips. “That has no bearing on being a Jedi. And you can’t be a Jedi and serve the Force if your attention is divided or if you’re emotionally involved with others. Love leads to attachment; attachment to greed.”
So much for Olee and Filli Bitters, Shryne thought.
At the same time, Jula was regarding Starstone as if the young Jedi had lost her mind. “They certainly did a bang-up job on you, didn’t they.” She held Starstone’s gaze. “Olee, love is about all we have left.”
Instead of reacting to the remark, Starstone said: “Are you going to help us or not?”
“I already said I would.” Standing up, Jula gave Shryne a look. “But just so we understand each other, Roan? You and I both know that you don’t have access to any ‘secret funds.’ You make one more attempt at using Force persuasion on any members of my crew, and I may forget that I’m your mother.”
Darth Sidious had had most of his beloved Sith statues and ancient bas-reliefs removed from his ruined chambers in the Senate Office Building, where four Jedi had lost their lives and one had been converted to the dark side. Relocated to the throne room, the statues had been placed on the dais, the scuptures mounted on the long walls.
Swiveling his throne, Sidious gazed at them now.
As some Jedi had feared from the start, Anakin had been ripe for conversion when Qui-Gon Jinn had first brought him to the Temple, and for well over a decade all of Sidious’s plans for the boy had unfolded without incident. But even Sidious hadn’t foreseen Anakin’s defeat by Obi-Wan Kenobi on Mustafar. Anakin had still been between worlds then, and vulnerable. The failure to defeat his former Master had worked to prolong that vulnerability.
Sidious recalled the desperate return trip to Coruscant; recalled using all his powers, and all the potions and devices contained in his medkit, to minister to Anakin’s hopelessly blistered body and truncated limbs.
He recalled thinking: What if Anakin should die?
How many years would he have had to search for an apprentice even half as powerful in the Force, let alone one created by the Force itself to restore balance, by allowing the dark side to percolate fully to the surface after a millennium of being stifled?
None would be found.
Sidious would have had to discover a way to compel midichlorians to do his bidding, and bring into being one as powerful as Anakin. As it was, Sidious and a host of medical droids had merely restored Anakin to life, which—while no small feat—was a far cry from returning someone from death. For thousands of years, the ability to survive death had been pursued by Sith and Jedi alike, and no one had been successful at discovering the secret. Beings had been saved from dying, but no one
had cheated death. The most powerful of the ancient Sith Lords had known the secret, but it had been lost or, rather, misplaced. Now that the galaxy was his to rule, there was nothing to prevent Sidious, too, from unlocking that mystery.
Then he and his crippled apprentice might hold sway over the galaxy for ten thousand years, and live eternally.
If they didn’t kill each other first.
In large part because Padmé Amidala had died.
Sidious had deliberately brought her and Anakin together three years earlier, both to rid the Senate of her vote against the Military Creation Act and to put temptation in Anakin’s path. Following the murder of Anakin’s mother, Anakin had secretly married Padmé. When he had learned of the marriage, Sidious knew for certain that Anakin’s pathological attachment to her would eventually supply the means for completing his conversion to the dark side.
Anakin’s fears for her, in actuality and in visions—and especially after Padmé had become pregnant—had been heightened by keeping him far from her. Then it simply had been a matter of unmasking the Jedi for the hypocrites that they were, sacrificing Dooku to Anakin’s rage, and promising Anakin that Padmé could be saved from death …
The latter, an exaggeration necessary for Anakin’s turn from what the Jedi called right thinking; for opening his eyes to his true calling. But such was the way of the Force. It provided opportunities, and one needed only to be ready to seize them.
Not for the first time Sidious wondered what might have happened had Anakin not killed Padmé on Mustafar. For all she loved him, she never would have understood or forgiven Anakin’s action at the Jedi Temple. In fact, that was one of the reasons Sidious had sent him there. Clone troopers could have dealt with the instructors and younglings, but Anakin’s presence was essential in order to cement his allegiance to the Sith, and, more important, to seal Padmé’s fate. Even if she had survived Mustafar, their love would have died—Padmé might even have lost the will to live—and their child would have become Sidious’s and Vader’s to raise.
Might that child have been the first member of a new Sith order of thousands or millions? Hardly. The idea of a Sith order was a corruption of the intent of the ancient Dark Lords. Fortunately, Darth Bane had understood that, and had insisted that only in rare instances should there exist more than two lords, Master and apprentice, at any given time.
But two were necessary for the perpetuation of the Sith order.
And so it fell to Sidious to complete Vader’s convalescence.
As Emperor Palpatine, he had no need to reveal his Sith training and mastery to anyone, and for the moment Vader was his crimson blade. Let the galaxy think what it would of Vader: fallen Jedi, surfaced Sith, political enforcer … It scarcely mattered, since fear would ultimately bring and keep everyone in line.
Yes, Vader was not precisely what he had bargained for. Vader’s legs and arms were artificial, and he would never be able to summon lightning or leap about like the Jedi had been fond of doing. His dark side training was just beginning. But Sith power resided not in the flesh but in the will. Self-restraint was praised by the Jedi only because they didn’t know the power of the dark side. Vader’s real weaknesses were psychological rather than physical, and for Vader to overcome them he would need to be driven deeper into himself, to confront all his choices and his disappointments.
Powered by treachery, the Sith Master–apprentice relationship was always a dangerous game. Trust was encouraged even while being sabotaged; loyalty was demanded even while betrayal was prized; suspicion was nourished even while honesty was praised.
In some sense, it was survival of the fittest.
Fundamental to Vader’s growth was the desire to overthrow his Master.
Had Vader killed Obi-Wan on Mustafar, he might have attempted to kill Sidious, as well. In fact, Sidious would have been surprised if Anakin hadn’t made an attempt. Now, however, incapable of so much as breathing on his own, Vader could not rise to the challenge, and Sidious understood that he would need to do everything in his power to shake Vader out of his despair, and reawaken the incredible power within him.
Even at Sidious’s own peril …
Alert to a mild disturbance in the Force, he swung toward the throne room holoprojector a moment before a half-life-size image of Mas Amedda resolved from thin air.
“My lord, I apologize for intruding on your meditation,” the Chagrian said, “but an encrypted Jedi code transmission has been picked up and is being monitored in the Tion Cluster.”
“More survivors of Order Sixty-Six,” Sidious said.
“Apparently so, my Lord. Shall I summon Lord Vader?”
Sidious considered it. Would additional Jedi deaths be enough to heal Vader’s wounds? Perhaps, perhaps not.
But not yet, in any case.
“No,” he said finally. “I have need of Lord Vader on Coruscant.”
Right … now,” Shryne overheard Filli tell Starstone.
The communications suite chimed and Filli, Starstone, and Eyl Dix leaned in to study a display screen. “The Jedi ship has reverted to realspace,” Dix said, almost in awe, antennae twitching.
Filli stood to his full height, stretching his arms over his head in theatrical nonchalance and beaming. “I love it when I’m right.”
Starstone glanced up at him. “I can tell that about you.”
His frowned dramatically. “No put-downs in the main cabin.”
“It’s not a criticism,” Starstone was quick to explain. “What I mean is that I was the same way at the Jedi Temple library. Someone would come in looking for data, and I would almost always be able to direct them right to the files they needed. I just had a sense for it.” Her voice broke momentarily; then she continued in a confident tone. “I think you should be proud of doing what you do best, instead of hiding behind false humility, or”—she gave Shryne a furtive glance—“letting disillusion convince you that you need a new life.”
Shryne got out of his seat. “I’ll take that as my cue to leave.”
A droid directed him to the corridor that led to the Drunk Dancer’s ample cockpit, where Jula and Brudi Gayn sat in adjacent chairs behind a shimmering sweep of instrument console. A crescent of red planet hung in the forward viewport, and local space was strewn with battle debris.
Shryne rapped his knuckles against the cockpit’s retracted hatch. “Permission to enter, Captain?”
Jula glanced at him over her shoulder. “Only if you promise not to tell me how to pilot.”
“I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
She patted the cushion of the acceleration chair behind hers. “Then take a load off.”
Brudi gestured to a point of reflected light far to port. “That’s them. On schedule.”
Shryne studied the console’s friend-or-foe display screen, in which a schematic of a sharp-nosed, broad-winged ship was rotating. “Republic SX troop transport,” he said. “Wonder how they got ahold of that.”
“I’m sure there’s a story,” Brudi said.
Shryne lifted his eyes to the viewports, and to the wreckage beyond. “What happened here?”
“Seps used this system as a staging area for reinforcing Felucia,” Jula said. “Republic caught them napping and dusted them.” She gestured to what Shryne had initially taken for marker buoys. “Mines. Command-detonated, but still a potential hazard. Better warn the transport to steer clear of them, Brudi.”
He swiveled his chair to the comm unit. “I’m on it.”
Shryne continued to gaze at the debris. “That’s a docking arm of a TradeFed Lucrehulk. What’s left of it, anyway.”
When Jula finally spoke, she said: “Something’s not right.”
Brudi turned slightly in her direction. “Transport’s registering the signature they transmitted before rendezvous.”
She shook her head in uncertainty. “I know, but …”
“There are Jedi aboard the transport,” Shryne said.
She glanced at him out of the corner of her
eye. “Even I know that much. No, it’s something else—”
A tone from the threat board cut her off, and Brudi swiveled again.
“Count six, make that eight bandits emerging from hyperspace,” he said tersely. “Dead on the transport’s vector.”
Shryne watched the IFF transponder. “ARC-one-seventies.”
“Affirmative,” Brudi said. “Aggressive ReConnaissance starfighters.”
Visual scanners caught the craft as their transverse wings were unfolding, splaying for battle and increased thermal stability. Jula’s left hand made adjustments to the instruments while her right held tight to the yoke.
“Is the transport aware of them?”
“I’d say so,” Shryne said. “It’s going evasive.”
Brudi pressed his headset tighter to his ear. “The transport’s warning us away.”
“Makes me like them already,” Jula said. “Scramble our signature before the ARCs can get a lock on us.”
“You may not be able to jam them,” Shryne said. “They’re not like V-wings. And they punch harder, too.”
“Try anyway, Brudi,” Jula said. “Last thing I want is the Empire chasing us all over the galaxy. And I am not about to get a new ship.” She flipped an intercom switch. “Skeck, Archyr, are you there?”
Skeck’s voice issued through the cockpit speaker. “Weapons are powering up, Captain. Just say when.”
Jula looked at Shryne. “Any ideas, Jedi?”
Shryne swept his eyes over the display screens. “The ARCs are maintaining a wedge formation. They’ll wait until they’re within firing range of the transport, then they’ll break formation and attempt to outflank it.”
“Skeck,” Jula said toward the audio pickup, “do you copy?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Are the ARCs within range of your turbolasers?” Shryne asked.
“Almost,” Skeck said.
