Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy II: Dark Apprentice

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “A very primitive world, Admiral. No detectible industry. A few nomadic settlements …” He paused. “Wait. At the terminator I detect a cluster of people.”

  Daala studied the swirling olive, blue, and brown face of the planet, observing the edge of daylight creeping across the surface.

  “I’ve found what appear to be the ruins of a larger base that seems mostly abandoned now. The inhabited area is not very well developed—mostly small prefabricated dwellings.” The lieutenant scratched his short brown hair and bent closer to his glowing screen.

  “I see excavations where new superstructures are being set up,” he said, looking up at Daala. “This configuration is consistent with a large transmitting dish. Perhaps even a shield generator.”

  Daala’s brow furrowed as she pondered how her former mentor Grand Moff Tarkin would have handled this situation.

  Commander Kratas seemed to sense her hesitation and offered, “It doesn’t appear that they could muster much resistance,” he said.

  Daala pursed her lips. “Even if they did resist, we would still defeat them. That’s not the point.” She ran a slender finger along her chin, then brushed her coppery hair back behind her shoulders. “To start with, we will target the abandoned base from orbit and level it with our turbolasers. It will be a spectacular display.”

  Daala’s Star Destroyers controlled enough power to turn entire planets to slag, but she didn’t want to do that here. “Dantooine is too remote for an effective demonstration,” she said, “but we can make use of it nonetheless. Commander Kratas, I want you to lead a strike force. Take two AT-ATs from the Gorgon and a pair from each of the other two ships. Six Armored Transports should be enough.”

  “Me, Admiral? But surely General Odosk or one of the other Imperial Army commanders—”

  “Do you have a problem with my orders, Commander?”

  “No, Admiral. Not at all.”

  “I want you to show your versatility. Didn’t they put you through those exercises on Carida?”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Kratas said, “I simply thought it would be more efficient just to blast them from orbit.”

  Daala fixed him with her emerald stare. “Consider it an exercise, Commander. We’ve been cooped up guarding Maw Installation for too long, and we won’t have another opportunity to catch the New Republic so unprepared.”

  Now that he was a hopeful colonist, Warton got up in time to watch Dantooine’s peaceful pastel sunrise. He stretched and stepped outside his prefab self-erecting home unit, enjoying every moment of dawn. He felt safe and at peace for the first time in his life.

  His bones ached, but it was a pleasant soreness from gratifying work. He would never recover completely from his hard life on the tortured world of Eol Sha, but just spending a day without earthquakes or lava flows or scalding geysers made his life happy.

  The other colony units, made of brightly colored polymers set with transparisteel windows, looked across the whispering savannas of Dantooine. All the people rescued from Eol Sha agreed that this place seemed like paradise with tall, waving lavender grasses and broad-boled, jagged-branched blba trees.

  The southeastern horizon grew bright where Dantooine’s amber sun would rise. Overhead in the purplish skies he saw three brilliant stars moving against the other points of light.

  A cluster of six meteors streaked through the sky toward the horizon, their bright trails like slashes of claws. Then the supersonic screeching noise of their descent shattered the early-morning stillness. He saw the meteors impact; the savanna glowed with spreading flames not far from the colony.

  Other colonists from Eol Sha scrambled out of their huts, roused by the noise from the sky. Not far to the east, the empty ruins of the old Rebel base rose like adobe bulwarks out of the grasses. A small team of New Republic construction engineers bustled about their encampment.

  “What is it?” his wife Glena said as she stepped out of the dwelling to stand beside Warton. He shook his head, unable to answer.

  Then deadly lightning began to rain down from above.

  The singing of mace flies fell into silence. Blinding bolts of green laser fire shot down, striking the abandoned base and ripping up huge clouds of fragmented buildings and shards of synthetic rock.

  Turbolaser beams from orbit flashed again, cutting across their earlier path. In seconds they had obliterated the entire abandoned base, leaving only a smoldering rubble-strewn scar.

  The colonists ran out of their dwellings. Some screamed; others just stared in stupefied terror. Luke Skywalker had promised he would find a place of safety for the people of Eol Sha—but it seemed the Jedi had been mistaken.

  As the ruins of the base continued to crackle and steam, and fires spread across the dry savannas, Warton heard a pulsating, low-pitched sound: the humming of massive engines, the clanking of metal, thunderous footfalls.

  He squinted into the brightening morning, still dazzled from the green laser bolts, until he could discern the monstrous silhouettes of gigantic walking machines. Four-legged and camellike, the Imperial walkers—All Terrain Armored Transports—strode from their smoldering landing sites and marched in hulking formation across the savanna.

  The cockpit “heads” of the attacking AT-ATs bent lower to aim banks of laser cannons. Precision bolts of green and red fire shot down. The ancient swollen blba trees erupted into flames that spread out in concentric circles across the dry grasses. Greasy smoke curled up, carrying the stench of burning wet vegetation and roasted small animals.

  Warton shouted, “Run everyone! Get away from the dwellings. They will target them first.”

  The refugees from Eol Sha waded across the tall grasses as Imperial walkers plodded forward. The AT-ATs covered more distance with each step than a human could run in half a minute. The walkers took aim at the fleeing colonists, striking each individual with enough firepower to destroy a small fighter ship.

  Glena yanked her hand away from Warton and shouted at him, “Wait!” She turned around to run back toward their small dwelling.

  “No!” he yelled, unable to imagine anything that would cause her to turn and run into the attack.

  Before she could say another word, a blinding lance of turbolaser fire exploded full in her chest, and Warton watched in utter horror as Glena vanished in a blazing, sizzling cloud of red steam.

  The six walkers continued to march ahead, firing at blba trees, at colony huts, and at anything that moved. The great machines spread out to encircle the entire settlement.

  Over at their encampment the New Republic engineers had managed to set up a single-ion cannon. Warton, still standing stricken and motionless, watched their tiny forms as they scrambled to rig the dish-shaped generator. He knew the people manning the ion cannon were simply construction engineers with no battle training.

  “Why?” Warton wanted to know. But so many questions filled his head that he could not be more specific than that: Why?

  The New Republic engineers powered up the ion cannon and focused a single blast toward the lower section of the closest Imperial walker. The bolt struck and fused the knee joint of the AT-ATs front foreleg, melting the servomotor mechanisms. The walker halted and tried to limp backward in a stiff-legged retreat.

  The other five AT-ATs swiveled their heads in unison, targeting the single ion cannon with a river of laser blasts in a great gout of green fire—obliterating communications gear and ion cannon in a single splash of light.

  The walkers advanced again, firing indiscriminately. The prefabricated colony huts exploded one by one. Hungry flames raged through the dry grasses on the savanna.

  Warton’s people screamed as they ran, and stumbled, and died. The roar of destruction rang in his ears, and still he could not move. He stood with his hands at his sides. His entire body trembled.

  Even the blasted world of Eol Sha had never been as hellish as Dantooine.

  Commander Kratas sat in the AT-ATs unfamiliar cockpit, directing the movement of his six great machines.
They fired at anyone who tried to escape, igniting islands of grass and flushing out burning colonists who had attempted to hide there. Kratas intended to leave them no place to hide.

  He verified that every one of the huts had been blown to pieces, and all moving colonists had been cut down as they fled. The Rebel engineers and their ion cannon had been taken out with a single strike, and the minor damage inflicted on one walker could be repaired easily in the workshops back on the Gorgon.

  “I wish he’d move,” the gunner said.

  Kratas looked down to see a single man standing among the wreckage, motionless and staring.

  “It’s not much of a challenge to hit a stationary target,” the gunner said, lifting the visor of his black helmet. “If he’d run, I could get better practice.”

  Kratas surveyed the devastation and the black smoke curling up from a thousand different fires. Their job here was done. “Take him out anyway,” Kratas said. “We don’t have time to play games.”

  The gunner squeezed his firing buttons, and the lone surviving man vanished in a flare of green fire.

  Commander Kratas signaled the flagship, and he nodded to Daala’s tiny shimmering form on the transmitter platform. “The mission is a complete success, Admiral. No casualties on our part, very minor damage to one AT-AT.”

  “You’re sure nothing is left alive down there?” Daala said.

  “Nothing, Admiral. No structure is left standing. The place is a wasteland.”

  “Good,” Daala said with a slight nod. “You may return to the ships. I believe we’ve made our point. We’ve had our practice.”

  She continued with a smile, “Next time we’ll choose a more important world to strike.”

  10

  The sleep of a Jedi was rarely troubled by dreams. Pure rest brought about through concentration and meditation techniques left little room for disturbing thoughts or shadow plays. But this time nightmares did break through to Luke Skywalker.

  A voice called him across a misty blank dreamscape. “Luke, Luke my son. You must hear me!”

  A shadowy form rose out of the mists even as the surroundings began to sharpen. Luke saw himself in his pale-gray flightsuit, stained with sweat, grime, and pain—as he had looked when he took his father’s body from the second Death Star.

  The features on the spectral silhouette shimmered with a pale aura. Luke saw the firm face of Anakin Skywalker, restored from the ravages Darth Vader’s evil had worked on his body.

  “Father!” Luke called. His own voice had an odd, echoing quality, as if it bounced off the mists.

  “Luke,” the image of Anakin said.

  Luke felt tingling amazement surge through him. It was another sending, just like his last contact from Obi-Wan Kenobi. But Obi-Wan had bid him farewell, claiming that he could never contact Luke again. “Father, why are you here?”

  Anakin stood taller. His robes rippled in a rising wind that drove back the mists. Suddenly the world surrounding them was no longer featureless. Luke recognized that he and the image of his father stood atop the Great Temple on Yavin 4. The orange gas giant hung overhead, and the timeless jungles below looked unchanged. But the stones of the temple were white and new with bright scars from fresh quarrying. A sketchy framework of scaffolding laced one wall of the ziggurat. Far below, Luke heard mumbling and chanting, incantations from suffering slaves.

  He saw people of the vanished Massassi race laboring together, straining to haul enormous stone blocks along roads they had chopped through the jungle. The grayish-green Massassi were humanoid, smooth-skinned, with large lanternlike eyes. Anakin Skywalker stood on the highest point of the temple, as if directing the work gangs below.

  “Do not be deceived, Luke. Do not trust everything you think to be the truth.” Anakin’s words carried an odd, distant lilt, like the faint accent of an ancient race. “Obi-Wan lied to you, more than once.”

  Luke felt uneasiness well up within him. No matter how much he loved Obi-Wan Kenobi, he knew the old man had not always been completely forthcoming with him. “Yes, I know he hid the truth from me. He told me Darth Vader had killed you, when you had really become Vader.”

  Anakin turned from the illusory Massassi laborers below. He met Luke’s gaze with eyes as bottomless as the universe itself. “Was that the only lie Obi-Wan told you?”

  “No. He hid other things from me.” Luke looked off into the jungled distance, toward the moon’s foreshortened horizon to see another clearing, another tall temple being erected.

  “And Obi-Wan rationalized it as being for your own protection. Did you ask for such protection, Luke?”

  “No.” Luke tried to fight back his uneasiness.

  “Obi-Wan wanted you to be his student, but he wouldn’t allow you the freedom to make your own decisions. Did he trust you so little? Did you always agree with his ‘certain point of view’?”

  “No,” Luke said, feeling the words swallowed up in doubt.

  Anakin’s voice became tinged with anger. “Obi-Wan fought against the complex Sith teachings I had uncovered. He did not understand them himself, but he forbade me to study them—though he always insisted that I must learn for myself and choose my own path. I rebelled against him for his narrow-mindedness, and I insisted on unlocking secrets for which I was not ready. In the end it consumed me—I fell to the dark side, and I became the Dark Lord of the Sith.”

  Anakin looked at Luke with an anguished, apologetic expression. “But if Obi-Wan had let me learn the teachings at my own pace, I would have grown stronger. I would have remained uncorrupted. He never understood that.”

  Anakin’s image shook his head. “If you are going to teach other Jedi, Luke, you must understand the consequences of what they may learn. You, too, must study the ancient heritage of the Sith. It is a part of your Jedi training.”

  Luke swallowed. “I’m afraid to believe you, Father. I have already felt the power of the dark side.”

  Below, Massassi labor crews hummed and sang in stuporous unison, far beyond exhaustion, as they hauled an enormous block up a mud-covered ramp made of stripped logs.

  Atop the dream temple, the wavering image of Anakin Skywalker spoke more forcefully. “Yes, but the ways of the Sith can lead you to a stronger grasp of your own power. You can wipe out the last vestiges of the pitiful Empire that continues to harass your New Republic. You can become more than a mere servant to a frail and corrupt government. You can administer the galaxy yourself as a benevolent ruler.

  “You deserve it more than any other person, Luke. You can control everything, if you use the Force as your tool, instead of allowing yourself to become its servant.”

  Luke stiffened, unable to believe what his father was saying. Then he noticed that with the rising passion in his voice, the image of Anakin Skywalker became less distinct, wavering, until it transformed into only a black outline, an engulfing hooded form that sucked energy from the air.

  Slowly, Luke realized the truth. “You are not my father!” he shouted as the illusion began to crumble. “My father was a good man in the end, healed by the light side.”

  Streaks of brilliant light flashed across the dreamscape sky of ancient Yavin 4. Below, Massassi slaves fled into the jungles in terror as the monumental temples crumbled under a barrage of laser blasts from orbit. Old Republic battleships had arrived, immolating the moon’s surface.

  “Who are you?” Luke shouted at the figure through the roar of sudden blazing devastation around him. “Who?”

  Instead, the hollow shadow laughed and laughed, ignoring the destruction that erupted from the construction sites—or amused by it. The Massassi temples exploded. The thick rain forests burst into flame.

  The dark man’s silhouette grew larger and larger, swallowing up the sky. Luke backed away from it, but his dream feet reached the edge of the imposing temple, and he stumbled backward, falling away, falling.…

  Surrounded by the thick stone walls of his quarters, Gantoris did not even attempt to sleep. He sat on his bu
nk dreading the arrival of the dark man from his nightmares.

  He fingered the lightsaber he had constructed, feeling its smooth cylinder, the rough spots where he had welded the pieces together, the buttons that would activate the energy blade. He wondered how he could use it against the ancient spectre who had taught him things that terrified him, things that Master Skywalker would never show his Jedi trainees.

  “Do you mean to strike me down with that weapon?” the hollow voice said.

  Gantoris whirled to see the oily, infinitely black silhouette ooze out of the massive stones in the wall. His impulse was to ignite the lightsaber and slash the violet-white blade across the dark form. But he restrained himself, knowing it would do no good.

  The shadow man laughed, then spoke with his antiquated accent. “Good! I am glad to see you have learned to respect me. Four thousand years ago the entire military fleet of the Old Republic and the combined forces of hundreds of Jedi Masters could not destroy me. You would certainly be unable to do so alone.”

  The dark man had shown him how to borrow energy from other living things, to shore up his own reserves. His mind was alert, but his nerves were frayed and his body exhausted. “What do you want with me?” Gantoris said. “You don’t just want to teach me.”

  The shadow man agreed. “I want your anger, Gantoris. I want you to open the doorways of power. I am barred from the physical plane—but with enough other Sith followers, I could be at peace. I could even live again.”

  “I won’t let you have my anger.” Gantoris swallowed, searching for a core of strength within himself. “A Jedi does not give in to anger. There is no passion; there is serenity.”

  “Don’t quote platitudes to me!” the dark man said in a cold, vibrating voice.

  “There is no ignorance; there is knowledge,” Gantoris continued, repeating the Jedi Code. “There is no passion; there is serenity.”

  The dark man laughed again. “Serenity? Let me show you what is happening at this moment. Do you recall the people you saved from Eol Sha? How happy you were to learn they had been taken to a place of safety, a paradise world? Observe.”