Star Wars - I, Jedi

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The last beast proved more agile than the others and, freed of Kun's waning influence, wheeled through the sky and dove at the Headhunter. I got the nose up and flicked on the shields in time to intercept its attack. The beast rebounded off the for-ward shield, but stabbed out with one clawed foot and snagged hold of the Headhunter's nose. Sparks shot through the cockpit as the forward shield failed, and the short circuit killed the ion cannon. The beast grabbed the nose with its other foot, dura-steel screaming as it sank its talons in. It hunched forward over the fuselage, its wings wrapping the }leadhunter in an embrace, as its heads snapped at me in the cockpit.

  The blasters couldn't hit it and the ion cannon wouldn't fire. I could have hovered the craft, opened the cockpit canopy and engaged the monster with my lightsaber, except I'd left it back in my room. As one thrusting head ricocheted off the trans-paristed canopy, I knew it was only a matter of time before the canopy gave way.

  "Fine." I smiled. "You want to play? Let's play."

  I pointed the nose up and kicked the thrusters in full.

  At top speed it only took a handful of seconds to reach the edge of the atmosphere. Air pressure slammed the beast against the hull and kept it laid out there like a blanket. The friction heated up the ship's durasteel hull, causing bits and pieces of the creature's wings to fry. When it tried to rear back and unfurl its wings to get them off the hot metal, the air pres-sure snapped both of them and swept them in around the mon-ster, then pitched it forward and smashed it down on the hull again.

  Once outside the atmosphere, a different problem presented itself for the creature. The vacuum of space effectively cooled the hull, sucking all the heat out of it. It did the same thing for the creature, leaving the angry and fearful expressions on both of its faces frozen there for an eternity. I killed thrust as the beast cooled, letting the Headhunter drift as my nose ornament chilled rather quickly. I was quite relieved to see the beast wasn't suited to surviving in space's cold void, but then I'd not thought anything originating on Yavin 4 would be.

  Finally, when I thought it had gotten cold enough, I hit the right rudder hard. While the ship's inertial damper field kept me and the Headhunter from feeling any of the effects of such a violent maneuver, the creature was not so lucky. Its body sheared off at the ankles and started a rolling tumble off toward the gas giant, while I looped the Headhunter and started back down toward the Temple.

  Kam met me in the hangar as I brought the Headhunter to a stop. I popped the cockpit canopy and hopped down to the deck. Kam regarded me with cold eyes as I swung under the fighter's nose.

  "There was an attack on Master Skywalker. Where were you?"

  I smiled, then reached up and plucked a talon from where it had lodged in the Headhunter's nose. I tossed it to him. "Target practice."

  "That's not the sort of thing you should do on your own." I frowned at him. "It was the only thing I could do, Kam. I couldn't get up there fast enough to help inside, so I stopped Kun's reinforcements."

  "You don't know it's Kun."

  "I know."

  Kam shook his head and jerked a thumb toward the audience chamber. "But we just learned that, from Luke."

  "Luke's awake?"

  "No, but his nephew and niece can hear him. He said Exar Kun was behind the trouble." Kam's face darkened. "We have to defeat Kun if we are to get Luke back. We're pre-paring a council of war right now to figure out what we're going to do."

  "Council of war, good. Right now, not good." I sighed. "Kun has been defeated tonight. He's not going to be coming back right away."

  "How do you know that?" Hints of betrayal and confusion arced through Kam's question.

  "Trust me on this, Kam, I know it." I reached out with a hand and laid it on his shoulder, but he shrugged me off. "Look, if I was on Kun's side, I'd not have vaped four of his pets, would I? I've got my own lightsaber and I could have filleted Master Skywalker on any of my watches. You can trust me."

  "But you have secrets." Kam's eyes became crescent slits. "You and Master Skywalker have not been wholly forthcom-ing."

  "True, but there are good reasons for this, reasons Master Skywalker himself gave me. His sister, despite the dire circum-stances here, chose not to violate those confidences." I looked him straight in the eye. "You have your reasons for being here, so you can shore up your personality against the weaknesses that allowed you to be seduced by the dark side. My reasons for being here are different, but no less important to me. I want Exar Kun's influence as dead as you do. Together we can ac-complish this, each doing our parts. Mine are just going to be different than yours."

  Kam considered my words for a moment, then slowly nod-ded. "I'11 tell the others you think tonight is not a good time for planning against Kun."

  "Leave me out of it. It's only logical that working on things now will be to no one's benefit. Let's get some sleep and plan tomorrow, during the day. Kun doesn't seem to strike effec-tively during the day." I gave him a solid smile. "We are going to win against him, you know."

  "We've got no choice."

  "Agreed." I slapped him on the shoulder. "Kun's picked the wrong people to fight at the wrong time, and that's the last mistake we'll let him make."

  The council of war convened in what had once been the Rebel command post for the first strike on the Death Star. Dust shrouded the various artifacts that hadn't been hauled away by Imperial survey teams or New Republic museum curators. What remained was largely serviceable and permitted all four-teen of us to sit around comfortably. Despite there being ample room for me at the central table, I hung back and pushed my sphere of responsibility out to fill the room and monitor what was going on with my fellow apprentices.

  I immediately picked up a jet-black strand connecting Streen to Kun. I was sure the old gas prospector had no idea it was there. He was still mortified at his near-murder of Master Skywalker and his dwelling on what he had almost done was what allowed Kun to maintain the link. More fortunately, Streen's emotional turmoil meant any information coursing down that line to Kun was unreliable, carrying with it dour emotional impressions.

  If that were not enough to make Kun think we were hope-lessly incompetent, Ambassador Cilghal's curious logic must have convinced him of it. She dismissed Dorsk 81's fear that Kun could listen in on our planning sessions by saying, "We must operate on the assumption we can still fight him. We have enough real problems to confront-there's no need to manu-facture worse ones from our imagination." As a warrior, I couldn't imagine anything worse than our side remaining will-fully ignorant of the possibility that our enemy knew what we were planning, but in the espionage-laden world of diplomacy, that didn't appear to be so important.

  I kept careful track of what information moved through the conduit from Streen to Exar Kun and found I really needed to inject very little into it, or edit very little from it. Twelve half-trained apprentices and two toddlers planning to annihilate someone who had survived an onslaught by the combined might of the Jedi of his age sounded ridiculous on the surface of it. Tionne carefully told us how our own little council mirrored that of the Great Council of Deneba, when the Jedi united to defeat Kun. She made it sound grand and hopeful, but with only a little push I was able to make it sound hopeless.

  I let Streen fill Kun with our resolve to unite and defeat him, but Kun's contempt for us came rolling back along the line like an echo. He had faced fleets of ships and all the known Jedi. He had slain his own master. His power was unrivaled. He had defeated our Master and beyond our resolve to fight, we had no operative plans and nothing with which to challenge him. We were snacks he would devour at his leisure, not morsels that might choke him.

  His connection to Streen atrophied and died as various of us offered plans that wouldn't trap a stintaril.

  My quiet laughter from the corner brought Cilghal's head around. "This is hardly a matter that is amusing, Keiran. If you will not contribute..."

  I stood and narrowed my eyes. "I'11 contribute. You've plot-ted the right cours
e: uniting is the only way to get him. That's good."

  Brakiss sniffed. "We're pleased you approve."

  ! ignored his comment. "What you've missed is the key.

  Streen, what do you call him?"

  The prospector raked fingers back through his frizzy grey hair. "The Dark Man."

  "Right. Master Skywalker described him to me as a shadow, and that was close to what Gantoris reported as well." I watched Kam carefully. "And that's what I saw the one time he came to recruit me."

  Kam's head came up. "So, what is your point?"

  "My point is that he's a creature of shadow, a creature of the dark side. What has Master Skywalker drilled into us since day one?"

  Kirana Ti's eyes widened. "The antidote to the dark side is the light side."

  "Right. It will have to shine so brightly no shadow can with-stand it." I looked around at all of them. "That's your job. When he comes for Luke again, you give him more light than he can ever handle."

  The Mon Calamari Ambassador cocked her head at me.

  "Our job? You must be with us, be part of our united force."

  "Not going to happen." I leaned forward, holding myself up by posting my arms on the table. "Up to this point, Exar Kun has acted on his own schedule. He's moved when he wants to move, done what he's wanted to do. Not anymore. Tomorrow evening, as night is coming on, we'll force him to act. He won't be ready, but he'll think he can still beat us. He'll be wrong."

  Tionne regarded me with her pearl eyes. "What are you go-ing to do?"

  I shook my head. "You can't know, just as I can't know ex-actly what you want to do. The key is that when we move," I pointed at Streen, "he'll be guarding Luke Skywalker's body." "Streen?" Kam shook his head adamantly. "Impossible."

  "Me?" Streen looked stricken.

  "You, Streen. You're going to be just like the winds you sum-moned the other night. You're going to seem weak, but you'll be strong. You won't break, you'll hold." I smiled. "You'll all hold."

  The Dathomiri witch watched me carefully. "You make it sound as if you will go after Exar Kun by yourself. You know it will be impossible to stand against him alone."

  Dorsk 81 nodded. "He defeated Master Skywalker. Your mission will be impossible."

  "Could be." I smiled, remembering similar assessments of missions with Rogue Squadron. "Then again, I've been to the land of the impossible before. If we all do our parts, I may even survive another little visit there."

  used the Headhunter's blast-ers to burn back enough jungle at the edge of the lake to pro-vide me with a landing site, then I set the fighter down. The landing was a touch rougher than I would have liked. Given that the belly cargo compartment contained a dozen nergon 14 charges all ready to go, I should have focused more on flying, but I couldn't. Using the same technique Luke had showed Streen to shield his mind against picking up the thoughts of others, I was keeping my presence within the Force as unde-tectable as I could. I found it tiring, but took heart from the fact that Exar Kun likewise liked to remain hidden, and had to expend portions of his power to do so as well.

  I climbed out of the fighter and opened the cargo compart-ment. I shouldered two packs with the explosives in them, gin-gerly shifting them about to let me maintain good balance. All I needed was to get careless and slip on my way to my destina-tion. Do that and our war against Exar Kun will be lost before it even starts.

  I looked out across the expanse of the lake at the small island centered in it. An obsidian pyramid with smooth sides had been erected there, then a wedge had been chopped out of the cen-ter of it. From the shore, the interior angles drew my attention to a massive statue of a man. I was too far away to discern much in the way of detail, but I had no doubt I looked upon Exar Kun-if for no other reason than someone of his ego never would have let a statue to another be raised on his world.

  I knew this is where I would find him. The clues had been painfully easy to put together. Dorsk 81 had reported traveling in this direction, but the survey logs that Kyp Durron had pre-pared showed no trip here. What little information about this place that had been recorded by the Rebel scout Unnh indi-cated that he found it unsettling and likely a monument to some ancient lord. The fact that it had escaped the ravages of time further suggested it was a focus for Kun's power. In addi-tion, when I'd plotted the direction from which Kun's power had flowed the other evening, the two courses crossed over this location.

  And, as if I needed more proof, I really didn't feel like marching in there.

  I frowned at myself. "You've survived having Booster Terrik for a father-in-law, you can survive this."

  The water surrounding the island picked up orange high-lights from the gas giant, but the system's dying sun still streaked it with jets of gold. I moved forward, stepping on the first of the stones set bare centimeters beneath the surface of the water. One misstep would plunge me deep into the pond's icy depths, so I moved cautiously. I watched where I placed my feet and had a moment of grudging admiration for Exar Kun. By making the pathway to his shrine so tricky and difficult, he forced all who approached him to do so with bowed heads so they could watch their feet.

  Ripples spread out from my every step and lapped against the far shore, but they provided the only activity I saw over there. This pleased me because I was really in no position to deal with Kun's winged terrors. The fact that Jacen Solo, though not quite yet three years old, had managed to hold a trio of them at bay with his uncle's lightsaber did not make me think my chances would be good in dealing with them. Though I thought myself more nimble than a toddler, with thirty kilos of explosives hanging on my back like lead wings, graceful wasn't going to describe me at all.

  I reached the island's shore without opposition and mounted the steps to the temple. Sith hieroglyphs had been incised into the stones, still as crisp and sharp as the day the Massassi had carved them. The Sullustan scout had translated some of them as magics to preserve the temple, and others to call down doom on defilers. Somehow the Massassi script, with hooks and barbs on each glyph, seemed more menacing than any curses they could call down.

  Once inside the pyramid I worked quickly, distributing the nergon 14 charges and arming them. I tried to put them near structural points that would promote the collapse of the whole building, but with that massive sort of block construction, I couldn't be certain it would work. The detonators could either be set for a time and triggered manually, or keyed by remote through codes I could broadcast from the Headhunter's comm unit. Having seen the results produced by such charges in the past, I didn't want to be anywhere nearby when they went off.

  The last charge I brought forward like a sacrificial offering. I paced quickly across the open courtyard and laid it at the base of rite pedestal on which Exar Kun's colossal statue stood. I made certain to wedge the charge tightly against the base and the floor, so when it went off it would open enough of a crater to topple the statue. I measured the height of the pedestal with my eye, then glanced back toward the lake.

  I smiled. "Mon Calamari tourists will get a chance to have a good look at you, once this goes."

  I retreated to the center of the small courtyard, then unveiled my presence. I pushed my sphere of responsibility out, but had barely gotten it two meters before Kun appeared and swal-lowed my reflection in the obsidian stones of the pedestal.

  "So, you have come to me to ask me to help you." Haughti-ness rippled through the Force. "I warned you that I would not be generous with you this time."

  I laughed at him. "I remember. That's not why I'm here."

  Kun's head came up as his face contracted into a fierce scowl.

  "What'.) Why have you violated my sanctuary?"

  "Just the thing I wanted to talk with you about." I stroked my goatee and began pacing back and forth before him. "I checked New Republic law. Property claims are abandoned well shy of four millennia. As a result, I've filed a claim for this place, and now it's mine. I'd love to have you stick around, but your statue is right where the wife will want
the entertainment center. You understand, don't you?"

  "You insolent bug!" Kun opened his shadowy arms wide.

  "You prattle on as if your wit can armor you against my might."

  "And you think you can hurt me?" I scoffed at him. "This is your eviction notice."

  "You're playing with powers more titanic than you could ever know."

  "Save the threats." I yawned. "I've been going over all the stuff you've done, and I've figured out your weakness. While disembodied, you can't affect the physical world."

  Kun's expression darkened. "No?"

  I shook my head. "No."

  "Ah, then I cannot do this." The wraith waved an ethereal hand and sparks shot from each of the explosive packets I'd scattered about. Blue flames flared as the detonators each melted.

  Just like the Jedi Holocron/

  My nose closing against the stink of melted plastic, I glanced up at Kun. "Ooops."