Star Wars - I, Jedi Part 16

"Can't understand why. Should I have had my sting operations catered or something, I shook my head. "They traded in rare commodities and I traded them the rarest of all for their wares: time."

"Yeah, on Kessel. Time goes a long way there."

"And I didn't even charge extra for it." I straightened up and offered her my hand. "I'm sorry to see you go. I thought between us we could really kick some life into this place and help Luke move the students on to the next level of development. I hesitate to say it, but it's been fun working with you."

Mara gave me one of her carefully h.o.a.rded smiles. "For something that started off with our arguing and my s.h.i.+p getting stolen, the experience hasn't been as bad as I would have thought. Thanks for your help. If there is anything I can do for you . . ."

"Actually there is." I gave her a weak smile. "With your contacts in the smuggling community, maybe you will hear some-thing about Mirax. I'd appreciate hearing anything. I'd owe you."

"How about a swap?" She hitched for a second, then glanced down at the floor. "Watch out for Luke for me, will you?"

"Sure, gladly." I frowned. "Anything specific? I know he won't like your leaving .... "

"That, certainly." Her voice shrank a bit. "His involvement with the dark side. I know it functions as a spur to drive him on to teach his students, but I don't think he knows how much he was hurt by it. The experience had to be unbelievably traumatic and he's still healing. I don't fear a relapse, but maybe, I don't know."

"He might try to do too much, too fast?"

"That would be like him."

I nodded and wanted to kick myself for not having seen it sooner. For Luke, for anyone, the journey to the dark side and back would have been like being shot multiple times at point-blank range. Bacta therapy might heal the physical wounds, but the memories and nightmares resulting would take time to work out. While the Jedi calming techniques might get rid of the resulting anxiety, they just treated the symptoms without curing the underlying problems. Only time could heal them; time and the love and support of friends.

"I'11 watch him for you. Take care of yourself, okay?"

"Will do."

"And if any of your smuggler pals manage to have some spare food-good food they need to offload somewhere, you know where we could use it."

Mara shouldered her satchel and slipped past me. "You've got it, CorSec.

See you a couple pa.r.s.ecs down the line."

After Luke saw her off, he took us listlessly through the morning's exercises. He clearly was trying to do his best with us, but his heart wasn't in it. I recognized in him the same sort of behavior Iella had reported in me after my father's death. He was thinking too hard about what had happened and allowing himself to dwell in the past while the rest of the universe was sliding on into the future.

In my case, Iella and Gil Bastra had taken me to one of the seediest cantinas on Treasure s.h.i.+p Row. The place called the Fel Swoop was packed with a rough crowd of swoop-riders and speeder bike jockeys. After a lot of Corellian whiskey, they got me singing a little song about the lack of brains and intestinal fort.i.tude of speeder bike enthusiasts. My singing voice, even at the best of times, would cause a riot in a receptive audience, and the resulting brawl kind of tore the place apart. Fact was, though, that the aches and pains and scars that resulted brought me back into the real world and anch.o.r.ed me there.

Unfortunately for me, we didn't have any cantina to hit, nor did we have any whiskey to drink. I felt a little physical activity would still be good for Luke and help ground him again, so I challenged him to a duel.

Kam explained that there were things I needed to learn from a living foe and that he, Kam, did not have the control necessary to spar with me. It would be up to Luke to make sure I didn't hit him and he didn't hit me, causing him to concentrate.

I lit my lightsaber, letting its snap-hiss fill the hangar. "Fair question to ask, if I'm leaving or not. You've got ample reason to ask it. No, I'm not going anywhere unless, of course, this fight goes badly for one or the other of us."

Luke's green blade sprang to life. "Let me see what you have learned."

I closed with him and arced a cut in toward his left shoulder. He came up and blocked it high left, picking it up in the outer ring of defense. I came down and around in a sweeping blow at his left leg, but he brought his lightsaber down and batted mine aside easily. The spark of light exploding from the contact of the two blades washed shadows across Luke's disinterested expression.

About what I expected. s.h.i.+fting my lightsaber to my right hand. I closed quickly and snapped the blade down in an over-hand cut. I picked up my speed on the cut, forcing Luke to block me in the middle ring. Continuing my forward movement, I pushed in with my right hand, then slid the lightsaber's hilt down. I hammered his breastbone with the lightsaber's hilt, then hooked my right leg behind Luke's right leg and dumped him to the ground.

I backed off as his blade's green light illuminated the surprise on his face. I let an edge drift into my voice. "If you aren't going to respect me, at least respect what Kam has taught me."

Luke slowly climbed back to his feet, but did so with his lightsaber always remaining between the two of us. I kept my blade angled across my body, with my hands held near my right hip and the blade's tip hovering near my left shoulder. I stamp-feinted with my right foot, as if I were beginning a charge, and Luke withdrew a half-step.

He's got to focus. I waited for him to set himself, then I came in on a circular approach that worked me toward his left. I slashed twice, crosswise, forehand and back, to keep him away from me, then drove straight toward him. I lunged with the blade. Luke's green lightsaber came around in a circular parry that carried my blade wide to my right.

His triumphant laugh died abruptly as my right foot kicked him in the gut. While he'd parried, I'd recovered from my lunge and kicked out straight into his midsection. He doubled over and fell back a couple of steps, his left hand rubbing his belly, but I gave him no chance to recover. I came on hard and fast, whipping my silver blade through an infinity loop, las.h.i.+ng out high and low.

Luke looked up at me and his eyes hardened.

Which is when I ran into a Force wall that bounced me back a couple of feet and set me on my heels. I tasted blood on my lips, but knew it was really coming from my nose, which hurt. I didn't think it was broken, but b.u.mping it up against anything solid is seldom a pleasant experience.

I wiped it off on the sleeve of my green tunic, but in the half-light both it and the blood looked black. "Nice trick."

A feral grin twisted Luke's mouth. He came forward, wordlessly, moving with a fluidity I'd not seen in him before. He aimed a slash at me that would have bisected me from right shoulder to left hip. I caught a momentary flash of surprise from him because he'd expected me to block it high right, but I let it come through the outer and middle rings of defense. With a quick parry, I slid it wide of my right shoulder, then I stepped forward and slammed my right shoulder into Luke's chin. That stood him up, clicking his teeth sharply together. I drove a weak jab with my left hand into his ribs, then ducked a slash that should have trimmed my hair at roughly the level of my earlobes. Dropping into a crouch, I whipped my left leg out and scythed it through his legs, bas.h.i.+ng his ankles together and again dropping him onto his back.

I whirled away and stood, looking down at him. "I would have thought you'd be better than this."

Luke slowly got up and wiped a trickle of blood from his split lip away with his left hand. "Never had much rough and tumble growing up. My friends and I were more involved in racing than fighting.

"Then maybe you should be a Jedi Racer, not a Knight."

"You don't understand." Luke spat out some b.l.o.o.d.y saliva.

"There are things in play here, forces s.h.i.+fting."

"Maybe I could understand, if you'd talk about it." I lowered my blade.

"You're the Jedi Master but that doesn't mean you should shoulder all the responsibility. You know that already: you've been letting Tionne learn and share history. Kam's been handling some of the instruction and you've had me working on the dark man problem-and I think I have Exar Kun's temple pegged from Dorsk 81's survey logs, by the way. Figured I'd check it later this afternoon."

"No." Luke shook his head adamantly. "You're not to go there alone. I don't want any of the students going there." So you go and I'll back you up."

He hesitated, then shook his head. "Can't, not now."

"Why not'?"

Luke closed his eyes and sighed. "Do you recall how I told you of knowing my friends were in trouble on Bespin?"

"Yes. You said that was a vision of the future." I narrowed my eyes. "You said Darth Vader allowed you to sense it to lure you into a trap."

"I have had other visions, other feelings." Pain tightened Luke's expression. "There is disaster in the offing. It remained a bit more distant when Mara was here, but now I feel it is much closer."

"Do something about it."

"What?" Luke's question came almost as a plea. "I have this oppressive sense of doom approaching. It touches on everyone and everything. All the things I think about doing don't seem to make it go away."

I swiped at more blood from my nose with my left hand. "Slow down for a moment. Do you know if this doom, this future, is locked in holo, or is it morphable?"

"The future is always morphable, but nothing I think to do will change it."

"Two things you're overlooking here, Master Skywalker. First, thinking is closer to trying than doing, if you catch my drift. Changing the future has got to require action, not just planning for action. While a Jedi acts in defense and not out of aggression, that doesn't mean aggressively putting a defense into place is bad."

Luke nodded slowly. "And the second thing?"

"Maybe you're not the one who has to act. Maybe it's me or Kam or all of us together." I sighed. "You're teaching us how to use the Force, you're opening us up to new powers, and you've established that we are heirs to a Jedi tradition full of responsibility. Fact is, though, that you've not given us any responsibility. Defeating this disaster you feel coming, getting rid of Exar Kun or whoever the dark man is might just require all of us finally accepting our responsibilities as Jedi.

"Right now you're accepting every sc.r.a.p of responsibility here. You're getting buried under the weight of what you see as a string of failures.

Mara Jade didn't leave here because you failed her, she left because you succeeded. She learned what she needed to learn-which might not have been what you thought she needed to learn. She left because she didn't want to fail others to whom she felt responsible."

He opened his eyes. "You think I've been treating all of you like children."

"Closer to the mark than you want to know."

"I haven't meant to, but you are children within the Force."

"That's fine, Master Skywalker, and true; but we're also a disparate group of adults. Kyp was what, our youngest, and he was the age you were when you started your training? He was the age I was when I went into the CorSec Academy. We're pretty well formed at that point, personality-wise.

Those who have come here to learn from you have already made a decision to explore a new life. You need to let us do that. You need to challenge us, and challenges aren't just the size of rocks or the range of a vision one can project. Those challenges test our skills. not our characters, and the failures here have been fail-ures of character."

"But you are not ready for such challenges."

"Not if you're going to make them marrow-blasting challenges, no." I pointed at his right hand. "Did you learn a lot from your failure at Bespin'?"

Luke's fingers flexed. "Yes."

"Then let us fail a bit and learn how to deal with it. As we used to say in CorSec, there are two types of speeder bike riders: those who have fallen off, and those who are going to fall off. Jedi will fail, and if they don't learn how to deal with failure, if they don't have the spine to recover from it, you'll lose them."

Luke's lightsaber died. "I have to think about what you've said."

"Don't just think, Master. act." I thumbed my blade off as well, letting darkness swallow us. "If you don't act, the disaster you feel could be on a scale from which none of us can possibly recover."

I awoke slowly, feeling as if I'd done my best to drain every drop of liquor from a cantina where the drinks weren't watered, the mugs weren't cleaned, the bottles weren't labeled and the first-aid kit consisted of a blaster with which you could put yourself out of your misery. Actually, I didn't even feel that good. I was pretty sure I'd not been on such a bender because I didn't find any tattoos or scars on me, and the bruises were ones I recognized from my training. The fact that the nearest cantina was a good five pa.r.s.ecs away, as the Falcon flies, coupled with the fact that I didn't have a s.h.i.+p, likewise contraindicated a hangover.

But, then again, I did kinda feel as if I'd walked that far. Despite my better judgment-which was urging me just to lie down and die-I oozed out of bed and pulled on my running clothes. That helped wake me up, largely because they were still damp, cold and clammy from the short run I'd taken the night before to burn off some of my frustration with Master Skywalker. Nothing like the feel of wet fabric against the flesh in the morning to remind you that you're alive. Doesn't do much for the quality of life issues some folks find important, but I'd reached that point where I decided being alive was better than the nearest alternative.

I even managed a smile. "And if I die, I don't want to spend the rest of eternity locked in the rocks on this place. Might be good enough for Exar Kun, but not me."

My muscles felt as if they were encased in carbonite, but 1 managed to get them going and actually had worked up to a brisk stumble when I emerged from the Great Temple. There I movcd into a real stumble, landing on my hands and knees, because a Z-95 Headhunter rested on the landing pad outside. I panicked for a second, thinking I might, in fact, have stolen it from near the cantina where I did all the drinking, but I calmed myself quickly. Didn't even have to use a Jedi technique to do it, either.

I knew, had I flown in the condition I was in, the only landing I could have managed was a crash. And Mara Jade wouldn't like that happening to her Headhunter.

The realization that I was looking at her fighter washed the last of the muzziness from my brain. Kyp had stolen that s.h.i.+p and if it was back, that meant he was, too. I got up and ran over to the craft, stretching out my feelings to see if I could detect his presence. I caught some faint traces of him, but they emanated mostly from the controls, which looked as if he'd reached a hand into them and just squeezed. Mara Jade isn 't going to like that one bit.

I turned around, following a wisp of Kyp's essence to the base of the Great Temple. A path had been cleared through the rusty vines overgrowing much of the temple. The vines nearest the uncovered stairway looked pale and stunted. They had re-coiled from the steps like snakes preparing to strike, and had withered considerably in the process.

I took the steps two at a time. 1 had no idea what I would find at the top or what I would do to confront Kyp if I found him there. I steeled myself for a confrontation, and worked to tap the Force to fort.i.ty myself for one. Even as I did that, however, I had the sinking feeling that no amount of preparation would be enough for dealing with what I would find.

As I mounted the final flight of steps, new sensations cascaded down from the top of the pyramid. I sensed the other students up there, and their emotions ran from shock and out-rage to sorrow and despair. I crested the edge of the Temple and saw the Mon Calamari, Cilghal, cradling Luke's head in her lap. Streen, his eyes wide with fear, stood over her. "Is he alive'? I can't hear him."

The Mon Cal concentrated on Luke, then shook her orange and algae-green head. She reported finding a heartbeat and I could see his chest moving with shallow respiration. "But I can't find him inside. When I touch him with the Force, all I find is a great empty spot .... "

I reached out with my senses and tried to find what she could not.

Pus.h.i.+ng hard, I wove some of the external Force with my internal energy and tried to see if I could find a spark of Master Skywalker in his body.

I recalled his noting that he had been taught we were luminous beings, not creatures of crude matter, but I found it hard to accept his having abandoned his body. Still, the evidence of that very thing was right there, since I could not feel him at all.

Kirana Ti pulled her robe tightly closed at her throat. "What can we do?"

Cilghal blinked her eyes. "We are all alone now."

The despair in her voice found an ally in the fear writhing into my belly. It had never seemed odd to me that Kyp had been able to slam me into a wall because he had always been more powerful than me. Even when I felt the other presence reinforcing him and got hammered by the combination of them, I never imagined that they could be more powerful than Luke Skywalker. I had even rationalized away the dark man's ability to avoid detection as his being talented in that area, just as I was talented in the area of image projection.

Had I even dreamed Luke was in danger I would have worked harder to convince him we had to act. The saliva in my mouth soured. When we start handing out citations for failure, let me get in the front of the line.

I'd told Luke we were dealing with a sociopathic murderer, but I'd not convinced him of the gravity of that situation. He seemed to be in a position to handle it and all he wanted from me was information that would have given him a direction.

And I let him do just that. I closed my eyes for a moment and wanted to smack my head with the heel of my hand. What had I been thinking? I was the one who had experience with such monsters, not Luke Skywalker. I surrendered responsibility for such things to him when he was no more able to deal with it than he felt we were ready to deal with the fate of the universe. My mistake was the reverse of his, yet mine compounded his.

The pure arrogance and stupidity of those ideas slammed hard into me.

Luke Skywalker had dealt with Darth Vader and the Emperor, even the Emperor Reborn. If they weren't monsters, monsters didn't exist. Master Skywalker was more than capable of dealing with them, which made his condition now that much more stunning and terrifying.

I looked down at his body as Cilghal straightened his limbs. I'd screwed up badly, and because of it he was lying there. If I'd done things differently, there was no guarantee he wouldn't have ended up in the same place, but things might have taken another turn, one for the better. I'd failed him, and I'd had the arrogance to suggest he was failing us.

Failure stops here and now. Muscles bunched at the corners of my jaw.

"We're not alone. We have each other. We may not be Jedi, but we're not helpless either."

The Dathomiri witch looked at me and restated her question.

"What can we do?"

"We can do the obvious, can't we?" I jerked a thumb back down toward the Headhunter. "Kyp was here and, if I had to guess, I'd say he was responsible for what happened to Master Skywalker. First thing we need to do is to let Coruscant know Luke has been hurt and that Kyp Durron was involved."

The Mon Calamari Amba.s.sador looked up. "Until you have solid evidence that Kyp was here, blaming him for this is wrong."

I frowned at her. "But the Headhunter . . ."

"Could have been stolen from him and used by someone else."

"Your caution is good, Cilghal, but Kyp's being here isn't that hard a conclusion to draw." Kam walked over to the edge of the pyramid, looked down at the landing pad, then grunted. "Think Kyp is still hiding on this rock?"

Streen shook his head. "I can't hear Kyp."

"I'd like to hope that means he's dead, but I don't believe it." I glanced at Kam. "You're wondering how he got off this rock if he left the fighter behind."

"Yes, and the only other ride in the system, unless we missed his coming with allies in the middle of the night, is the Sun Crusher." His hands contracted into fists. "Kyp knew how to make it work."

Tionne s.h.i.+vered. "Could he have been powerful enough to recall it from the heart of the gas giant?"