Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy II: Dark Apprentice

by Kevin J. Anderson

  A pastel glow crept into the sky at the horizon as the rapid rotation of the jungle moon brought planetrise closer. Kyp continued to climb the long series of steps, staring toward the apex of the Great Temple.

  Kyp had already struck his first blow by erasing dangerous knowledge from the Imperial scientist, Qwi Xux. Only Qwi had known how to build another Sun Crusher—but Kyp, using his bare hands and his newfound power, had torn that knowledge from her brain and scattered it into nothingness. No one could ever find it again.

  Next, he would apply a poetic justice that delighted his sensibility, that made him thrill with revenge for all that the Empire had done against him and his family and his colony world. Kyp would resurrect the Sun Crusher itself and use it to obliterate the remains of the Empire. He would be accountable to no one but himself. He trusted no one else to make the hard decisions.

  Kyp reached the summit of the Great Temple just as the huge orange ball of Yavin heaved itself over the horizon. Misty and pale, the gas giant swirled with tremendous storm systems large enough to swallow smaller worlds.

  The temple’s diamond-shaped flagstones covered the small observation platform above the grand audience chamber. Vines and stunted Massassi trees poked up from the corners of the old stones.

  Kyp looked skyward. The small plants and animals filling the jungles of Yavin 4 were insignificant to him. They mattered nothing in the grand scheme of what he was about to undertake. The importance of his vision far exceeded the petty needs of any single planet.

  As the sphere of Yavin rose into the sky, Kyp lifted his arms, and the slick black fabric of his cape fell behind him. His hands were slender and small, the hands of a young man. But inside, power sizzled through his bones.

  “Exar Kun, help me,” Kyp said, closing his eyes.

  He reached out with his mind, following the paths of the Force that led to every object in the universe, drawing power from the cosmic focal point of the Massassi temple. He searched, sending his thoughts like a probe deep into the storm systems of the gas giant.

  Behind him Kyp felt the black-ice power of Exar Kun arise, tapping into him and reinforcing his abilities. His own feeble exploratory touch suddenly plunged forward like a blaster bolt. Kyp felt larger, a part of the jungle moon, then a part of the entire planetary system, until he burrowed into the heart of the gas giant itself.

  Pale orange clouds whipped past him. He sensed pressure increasing as he plummeted down, down to the incredibly dense layers near the core. He sought the tiny speck of machinery, a small, indestructible ship that had been cast away.

  When he reached the bottommost levels of the atmosphere, Kyp finally found the Sun Crusher. It stood out like a beacon, a bull’s-eye in the funneling field lines of the Force.

  Size matters not, Master Skywalker had repeated. Kyp engulfed the Sun Crusher with his mind, surrounding it, touching it with his limitless, invisible hands. He thought about heaving it back up, dragging the Sun Crusher out of the depths of Yavin. But he discarded that thought.

  Instead, with the assistance of Exar Kun, he used his innate skill to power up the controls again, to move control levers, push buttons to alter the course stored in the Sun Crusher’s memory, bringing it out of its entombment.

  Kyp continued to watch the weapon’s progress, focusing on the sphere of the enormous planet as it crested the misty treetops. The Sun Crusher appeared as a silvery dot, seeming no larger than an atom as it emerged from the highest cloud layers and streaked across space toward the emerald-green moon where Kyp waited.

  He stared upward and waited, opening his arms to receive the indestructible weapon.

  The Sun Crusher approached like a long, sharp thorn of crystalline alloy, cruising upright on its long axis. The toroidal resonance-torpedo launcher hung at the bottom of the long hook. It looked beautiful.

  The Sun Crusher descended through the jungle moon’s atmosphere, straight down—like a spike to impale the Great Temple. Kyp controlled it, slowed its descent, until the superweapon hovered to a stop, suspended in front of him.

  As the sky brightened with planetrise, the alloy hull of the Sun Crusher seemed as pristine as a firefacet gem, scoured of all oxidation and debris by the intense temperatures and pressures at the core of Yavin. The Sun Crusher looked clean, and deadly, and ready for him.

  “Thank you, Exar Kun,” Kyp whispered.

  Luke Skywalker awoke from another series of nightmares. He sat bolt upright on his pallet, instantly aware. He had felt a great disturbance in the Force. Something was not right.

  He got up, moving cautiously as he sent out his thoughts to check on his students: Kirana Ti, Dorsk 81, the new Calamarian arrival Cilghal, Streen, Tionne, Kam Solusar, and all the others. Nothing seemed amiss. They slept soundly—almost too soundly, as if a net of sleep had been cast over them.

  When he reached out farther, he was stunned to feel a cold, black whirlpool of twisted Force around the peak of the temple. It stunned him.

  Luke sprinted to the door of his chambers, hesitated, then stepped back to retrieve his lightsaber. He marched down the corridors, smoothing his fear as he rode the turbolift to the upper levels of the ancient pyramid.

  Calm, Yoda had said, you must remain calm.

  But the sight that greeted him under the dawn sky nearly overwhelmed Luke.

  The Sun Crusher hung suspended over the temple, still steaming in the morning air, resurrected from its tomb at the core of the gas giant. Kyp Durron spun around to stare at Luke, his black cape swirling with the rapid motion.

  Stunned, Luke reeled backward. “How dare you bring that weapon back!” he said. “It goes against all the Jedi knowledge I have taught you.”

  Kyp laughed at him. “You haven’t taught me very much, Master Skywalker. I’ve learned a great deal beyond your feeble teachings. You pretend to be a great instructor, but you’re afraid to learn for yourself.”

  He looked back at the Sun Crusher. “I will do what must be done to eradicate the Empire. While I make the galaxy safe for everyone, you can stay here and practice your simple Jedi tricks. But they are no more than children’s games.”

  “Kyp,” Luke said, keeping his voice even and taking a step toward him, “you’ve been lured by the dark side, but you must return. You were deceived and misled. Come back before its grip becomes too strong.” He swallowed. “I went over to the dark side once, and I came back. It can be done if you’re strong enough and brave enough. Are you?”

  Kyp laughed in disbelief. “Skywalker, it’s embarrassing for me to listen to you talk. You are afraid to risk anything yourself, yet you want to call yourself a Jedi Master. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve stunted the training of your other Jedi candidates because of your own narrow-mindedness. Perhaps I should just defeat you here and now, and then I can take over their training.”

  With trembling hands and a deep-seated dread in his heart, Luke reached to his side and wrapped his hand around the slick handle of his lightsaber. He pulled it free, igniting it with the familiar snap-hiss. The brilliant green blade extended, humming and ready for battle.

  A Jedi could not attack an unarmed opponent, could not resort to violence before all other avenues had been exhausted—but Luke knew the deadly potential of his most talented student. If Kyp had fallen to the dark side, he could become another Darth Vader. Perhaps even worse.…

  “Don’t make me do this,” Luke said, raising his lightsaber, but unsure what to do. He couldn’t just cut down his student, who stood unarmed at the top of the temple. But if he didn’t …

  “We have to send the Sun Crusher back,” Luke said. “At one time you yourself insisted that it should never be used.”

  “I spoke out of ignorance,” Kyp said, “just as you do.”

  “Don’t make me fight you,” Luke said in a low voice.

  Kyp made a dismissive gesture with one hand, and a sudden wave of dark ripples splashed across the air like the shock front from a concussion grenade.

  Luke stumbled ba
ckward. The lightsaber turned cold in his hand. Frost crystals grew in feathery patterns around the handle. At the core of the brilliant green blade a shadow appeared, a black disease rotting away the purity of the beam. The humming blade sputtered, sounding like a sickly cough. The black taint rapidly grew stronger, swallowing up the green beam.

  With a fizzle of sparks Luke’s lightsaber died.

  Trying to control his growing fear, Luke felt a sudden brush of cold behind him. He turned to see a black, hooded silhouette—the image that had impersonated Anakin Skywalker in Luke’s nightmare … the dark man who had lured Gantoris into a devastating loss of control.

  Kyp’s voice came as if from a great distance. “At last, Master Skywalker, you can meet my mentor—Exar Kun.”

  Luke dropped his useless lightsaber and crouched. His every muscle suddenly coiled and tensed. He rallied all the powers of the Force around him, seeking any defensive tactic.

  With the Sun Crusher looming behind him, Kyp stretched out both hands and blasted Luke with lightning bolts like black cracks in the Force. Dark tendrils rose up from gaps in the temple flagstones, fanged, illusory vipers that struck at him from all sides.

  Luke cried out and tried to strike back, but the shadow of Exar Kun joined the attack, adding more deadly force. The ancient Dark Lord of the Sith lashed out with waves of blackness, driving long icicles of frozen poison into Luke’s body.

  He thrashed, but felt helpless. To lose control to anger and desperation would be as great a failure as if he did nothing at all. Luke called upon the powers that Yoda and Obi-Wan had taught him—but everything he did, every skillful technique, failed utterly.

  Against the full might of Kyp Durron and the forbidden weapons of the long-dead spirit of Exar Kun, even a Jedi Master such as Luke Skywalker could not prevail.

  The black serpentlike tentacles of evil force struck at him again and again, filling his body with a pain like lava coursing through his veins. As he screamed, his voice was swallowed by a hurricane from the dark side.

  Luke cried out one last time and crumpled backward to the blessedly cool flagstones of the Great Massassi Temple, as everything turned a smothering, final black around him.…

  33

  Near the center of the Cauldron Nebula, the two surviving Star Destroyers hung poised and ready to launch their attack on Coruscant.

  Admiral Daala stood tall on her bridge platform, filled with an electrifying new self-confidence and determination. She had not slept in the past day.

  Her officers sat at their stations, keyed up and anxious. A double complement of stormtroopers marched up and down the Gorgon’s halls, fully armed and battle ready. They had had a decade of drills, and now they would use their training to strike the greatest blow they could imagine for their cause.

  “Commander Kratas, report,” Daala said.

  Kratas snapped to attention, barking out his report. “All equipment and weaponry have been transferred from the Basilisk to the Gorgon. Only a skeleton crew of volunteers—all stormtroopers—remains on the Basilisk. Captain Mullinore reports he is ready for his final mission.”

  Daala turned to the lieutenant at the comm station. “Patch me through to Captain Mullinore.”

  The image of the Basilisk’s captain appeared in front of her. The hologram wavered, but the man himself seemed completely rigid and in control, looking stoic as he met Admiral Daala’s emerald eyes. “Yes, Admiral,” he said.

  “Captain, is your ship ready?” She paused, clasping her hands behind her back. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, Admiral. We have reconfigured all weapons systems to increase power to our shields. The stormtrooper crew has rigged the self-destruct mechanism into our primary hyperdrive reactors.” He paused as if gathering courage, but his close-cropped blond hair showed not a glimmer of sweat. “The Basilisk is ready whenever you give the word, Admiral.”

  “Thank you, Captain. History will remember your sacrifice—I swear it.”

  She turned to the rest of her crew and switched on the intraship comm system. Her clipped voice rang throughout the Gorgon. “All hands, battle stations! Prepare to begin our run. We will destroy Coruscant and strike a death blow to the heart of the Rebellion.”

  Kyp Durron piloted the Sun Crusher to the core of the Cauldron Nebula, where Exar Kun had told him Admiral Daala’s fleet lay in wait.

  The controls of the Sun Crusher felt cool and familiar as he sat forward in the hard, uncomfortable pilot seat, looking through the segmented viewpanels. He had helped fly the superweapon during the escape from Maw Installation with Han Solo.

  During that battle they had taken out one of Daala’s Star Destroyers. Now he would use the Sun Crusher to obliterate the rest of her fleet.

  Igniting an entire nebula seemed like an excessive blow to squash an Imperial insect, but Kyp appreciated the irony of destroying them with their own weapons. And it would signal to the rest of the fragmented Empire what was about to befall them as Kyp continued his purge.

  The Sun Crusher’s sensor panels became useless in the ionized discharge from the knot of blue-giant stars that illuminated the Cauldron Nebula. The front viewscreens dimmed to filter out the blazing light.

  Kyp stretched out with the Force, dropping his inhibitions and letting the power burst from him like compressed gas. After the effort of yanking the Sun Crusher from the core of Yavin, finding a few Star Destroyers seemed a simple exercise.

  After only a moment he sensed the arrowhead-shaped silhouettes of two Imperial battleships.

  He piloted the Sun Crusher toward the bloated super-giants at the heart of the nebula. The titanic blue stars were huge, and young, and ripe for destruction. On a cosmic timescale they would burn hot, but briefly, ending their lives in supernova explosions that would send shock waves through an entire region of the galaxy.

  With the Sun Crusher, though, Kyp could ignite the supernovas now, rather than in a hundred thousand years.

  He stared across the soothing rainbow sea of gas and thought of the splashed-color sunsets on his colony world of Deyer, the placid terraformed lakes around the peaceful raft towns where he and his brother Zeth had played. But the Empire had broken into Kyp’s home and taken him and his family away—without warning.

  Years ago the Death Star had approached the quiet and pristine planet of Alderaan and had blown it to pieces with its planet-destroying superlaser—without warning.

  Admiral Daala had captured Kyp and Han and Chewbacca after they had passed through the black-hole maze; but because Kyp had possessed no “worthwhile” information for her, she had sentenced him to death.

  Daala deserved no warning. None at all.

  Kyp increased the radiation shields on the Sun Crusher and approached the mammoth blue-giant stars, seething in their ocean of star material. He powered up the targeting display in front of him.

  A recessed section of the control panel slid aside. A screen popped up, displaying a diagram of closely orbiting spheres. Seven enormous stars crowded in the middle of the nebula, circling in complex orbits as they stole gas from each other. Their intense radiation shone through the scattered hydrogen, oxygen, and neon clouds.

  Kyp’s face was a grim mask as he flicked a row of red activator switches. He knew exactly how the Sun Crusher worked; he had stolen those memories from Qwi Xux.

  Warning beacons flashed across the command-system panels, and Kyp confirmed his intentions to the onboard computer. The torus-shaped generator at the long end of the Sun Crusher powered up, crackling with blue plasma.

  Kyp remembered the New Republic engineers attempting to determine how the superweapon worked, how they had panicked at the sight of a simple message cylinder. The resonance torpedoes that triggered stellar explosions were dense packets of energy, programmed and modulated to make the core of a star unstable. The torpedoes could initiate a collapse and rebound of the outer layers of star material, unleashing a tremendously violent explosion that would rip a star apart.

  Kyp targeted
the cluster of blue-giant stars. He did not hesitate. He knew in his heart what he had to do.

  He pushed the activation buttons. The Sun Crusher shuddered as the superweapon launched seven high-power resonance torpedoes.

  Against the muted swirls of the Cauldron Nebula, he saw sizzling ovoid shapes of electric green, white, and yellow fire. The energy torpedoes streaked out, plunging into the boiling surfaces of the giant stars.

  Kyp dimmed the segmented viewport and fixed his gaze on the blue giants. The cluster would explode simultaneously, and the shock waves would ignite vast oceans of nebular material in a galactic wildfire. It would be a perfectly clear signal to the remnants of the Empire.

  But it would take hours for the torpedoes to tunnel to the stellar cores and set up the chain reaction. The wave of destruction would boil up from the depths of the stars until a flash of incredible force spewed brilliant light, high-energy radiation, and star matter into the Cauldron. The entire sector would become an inferno.

  Kyp felt a cold fist clench inside his stomach. He could not turn back now. Once launched, the resonance torpedoes were irrevocable. These seven stars were doomed to explode in a few hours.

  He pulled away at a leisurely pace, killing time. The Sun Crusher was so small that few sensor systems could detect it, especially within the electromagnetic chaos of the Cauldron Nebula. The weapon was designed to flit into a system, drop its torpedo into a star, and vanish without a battle, without loss of ordnance or personnel. A simple first—and final—strike.

  Admiral Daala would never detect his presence.

  Kyp’s gaze wandered back to the chronometer, impatient to watch Daala’s ships being wiped out in the murderous waves ripping through the nebula. He had the most powerful weapon ever invented, and he had the powers of the Sith that Exar Kun had shown him.

  Where others had failed against the Empire, Kyp Durron would succeed. Completely.