Star Wars - I, Jedi

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Kun flicked a finger at me, sending me whirling across the courtyard. I tried to gather the Force around me to protect myself, but the shock at my error kept me from it. I slammed into an obsidian wall and heard a bone in my right forearm crack. I clutched the limb to my chest, but Kun spun me again, smashing my flank into a low wall. Ribs crunched with that impact and I felt something inside go, as well.

  Kun was enjoying himself, probably for the first time in mil-lennia, the very thought of which made me vomit. Kun's laugh-ter echoed through his stronghold as he pitched me around, dancing me and rolling me back and forth across the courtyard. I thought his actions were haphazard, especially when he lifted me into the air, then dashed me down, shattering my left leg, but even through the pain I had a clarity of mind. He wanted me thinking, not dead, yet, and that made my stomach roll again.

  Eventually, like a child tiring of a toy, he let me go. I slumped to my side and involuntarily flinched as his shade came to cover me. "Just because you never saw me affect the mate-rial world, it doesn't mean I couldn't. And even if it is some-thing of an effort to do so, here, in my stronghold, it is a pleasure beyond your possible ken."

  I let my words hiss out between clenched teeth. "I think I'll put a wideview holoprojector right where you're standing."

  "Childish jokes from a childish mind." He gestured casually and all the explosive charges I'd placed sailed out of the temple and splashed in the black lake. Glancing down at me, Kun let his voice become icy. "You could have been raised to the level of divinity by my hand. Now you will be destroyed by it."

  Even before I could taunt him again, he gestured and I felt a presence behind me. I rolled over and saw Mirax standing there, her eyes full of fire. "I should have known, CorSec, that you would abandon me. You said you wanted me more than you wanted your Jedi heritage. I gave you all that I am. I want to bear your children. This is how you repay me'? You leave me alone, all alone, dying alone; while you play games with rocks and pictures'?"

  The vehemence in her voice ripped straight through me. It collapsed my stomach and shoved it out through my spine. I wrapped my hands around my belly and hunched forward. "No, Mirax, no!"

  The wailing calls of all the infants who had died on Carida swirled around me to accompany her voice. "Hear them, Cor-ran. They are your sons, your daughters. They are the children you have denied to the world. You accused Exar Kun of being a fool because he destroys life, but you are more of a fool. You could have created it. With me. If you wanted me. If you truly loved me."

  I hugged my broken arm to fractured ribs, folding around the pain in my middle. I knew she was nothing but an illusion Kun had conjured from my mind, but it seemed too real for me to disbelieve it. Kun was feeding back to me my own image of Mirax, and infusing it with everything I feared. Because the attack came from within, I had no emotional armor with which to shield myself. I heard ill her voice exactly the words that terrified me.

  I reached out to her with my left hand, lifting my face toward her. "No, Mirax, no. I do love you!"

  "How can you love her?" My father's voice slashed at me from behind. "Her father hired the bounty hunter who mur-dered me. A murder you could have prevented. Was that it? Had she seduced you even then? Were you her creature? Did she lay warm in your arms so I could lay cold in them?"

  I levered myself around into a sitting position to meet my father's accusing stare, then had to tear my eyes from him. Gone was the man I had known in life. His flesh had become ashen, his eyes holes onto a void. The only color on him came from the blood spurting from his wounds to puddle around him. I heard it splashing from him. I couldn't get the cloying scent out of my nostrils and dreaded the touch of the rivulet slowly snaking its way toward me. "You know that's not true!" "I only know you failed me. You left me to die."

  Mirax chimed in. "As you leave me to die."

  My mother's voice joined them. "He never cared if I died, either."

  Laughter, low and cold, echoed from the obsidian walls. I looked up and saw the image of Lujayne Forge, one of my first friends in Rogue Squadron. The right side of her face had been burned away by blaster fire. "He let me die. He wanted to play the hero, so I paid the price."

  "No!" I slammed my right fist against the courtyard stones, breaking it and grinding the bones in my arm. I latched onto the pain and used it to recapture control of my mind. Their accusations bored into me, freeing the part of me that second-guessed everything I did. I knew that piece of me well and loathed it. I could replay conversations in my mind for hours when it held sway, wishing I'd said this, wondering why I'd said that, hoping things would not be taken in the worst way, but dreading the fact that they would. When I began doubting my-self, I was paralyzed. The cycle always built on itself, growing, reviewing more things, until I dissected my whole life. And it continues until I get angly at myself and stop it.

  The desire to give in to the anger and cut Exar Kun short almost overwhelmed me. That option hung there, tantalizing me. I could use my anger like a lightsaber. I could slice to ribbons these false spirits, these treacherous phantoms. I would cut down Exar Kun's army, then I would rip into him. He would be nothing before me and my anger. I would sunder him the way my explosives should have sundered his shrine. And then I can find other targets that deserve destruction... I raised my right hand triumphantly, then curled it down into a fist.

  Pain jolted through me again and in its wake came outrage. I slammed my hand against the ground and screamed, then shot Exar Kuna sidelong glance. "No. My anger is not for you to use."

  The Dark Lord towered above me. "Anger is a most sweet nectar. Despair will also suffice."

  Another phantom congealed before me, looking and feeling and smelling and sounding more real than I was myself. The little boy, all tow-headed and grey-eyed, barely older than Jacen Solo, looked at me with his lower lip quivering. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes. He reached out with little stubby-fingered hands and took my broken hand into his.

  "Who hurt you, Daddy?" His innocent gaze searched my face. "I can make it better. I can. Let me. Please..." His voice became a plaintive wail that faded with his image. I felt his grip, feathery and gentle, soothing and kind, fading to be replaced with pain. "Why won't you let me help?"

  The lump rising in my throat strangled me. Through the boy's fading image I saw Mirax, no longer hateful, standing there. She wore a simple white gown. She rubbed her hands lovingly over her swollen belly, the look on her face one of pure, unadulterated joy. The image shifted slightly as the boy reappeared, older, yet still a child, to place his hand against his mother's rounded stomach.

  Then both of their images blew apart into a million razor-edged fragments that burned through me.

  "Just as well," I heard my father say, "any child of that union would have been as disappointing as you have been."

  That simple remark detonated like a bomb inside me. I had forever hoped that I would win my father's approval, that he would like me for who and what I was. He was never stinting with his praise, but with his death I had been left trying to guess what he would have thought about this action or that. Even my decision to become a Jedi had been made to win his approval and to model myself on him.

  Yet in his voice, I heard that I had failed. The sum and total of my life, the'sum and total of the lives of any children I helped create, and whatever they would create; all of it would be worthless in his eyes. One of the anchor points for my life crumbled, eroding in uncertainty, cutting me adrift without a chance of recovering myself. I was lost.

  I was hopeless.

  I was the ultimate failure.

  I could take no more.

  "Is that the best you've got'?" The tone of the voice had enough edge to etch transparisteel and would have flensed me alive, but I knew it wasn't directed at me. Through tear-clouded eyes I looked up and saw Mara Jade sauntering into the tem-ple. "Babies crying and ghosts whispering lies from beyond the grave? The Dark Lord of the Sith I knew would have been ashamed to use s
uch tactics."

  "What?" Exar Kun's voice roared, as if in volume and inten-sity it could batter her down. "Who dares?"

  "Who cares, more correctly." She pointed at me. "Horn here has been worked over by the Empire's best and never broke. Isard would have had you digitized, analyzed and discarded without a second thought, and she wasn't even Force-sensitive. Darth Vader would have found you amusingly quaint, and the Emperor... well..." Mara Jade's eyes flashed mercilessly. "The Emperor succeeded in destroying the Jedi, so he'd see you as the very definition of failure!"

  "Yes, but your vaunted Emperor is dead!"

  I found my voice again. "Something the two of you have in common, then." I shoved myself up and balanced awkwardly on my good leg. "And something else: he didn't know when he'd lost, either. It's over!"

  Kun regarded me anew and I felt his consciousness stab into my brain. It withdrew quickly, as if it had been stung by the thought I had nestled there. Kun laughed aloud. "A trap? You and your companions seek to trap me?"

  Kun doubled his image's volume and smiled most cruelly at us. "You think your petty plans will work against me? You thought your coming here would defeat me? Never." He looked away toward the Great Temple, then back down at us. £ `This may have been a brave attempt on your part, but your friends have made a grave error. Their defense of Skywalker is only as strong as the weakest person defending him, and they have left him vulnerable again."

  Mara looked at me, clearly alarmed. "What's he talking about?"

  "Luke's hurt." I winced as pain shot through my belly.

  "Streen is guarding him."

  Exar Kun laughed again. "Yes, Streen. My Streen." The Dark Lord's image began to shrink back into the obsidian of his temple. "I will finish him, then come again for you. Tremble in fear. Cower in anticipation."

  His presence faded from the Temple and I tried to straighten up. I.managed a half-staggered step, then went down on one knee. I guess I fell further or faster than I expected because I next found Mara kneeling next to me. "C'mon, Horn, wake up. What's this about Streen?"

  I managed a weak smile. "Bait. Kun's heading into a trap. A big trap."

  She weighed my words. "Any chance he can get out of it?" "Shouldn't be able to. It really is over for him." I coughed once and felt pain in my chest. "Gonna have to help me out of here, because I can't make it on my own."

  "I think I can handle that." She reached down, helped haul me to my feet, then dipped a shoulder and lifted me in a rescue-carry. "Always glad to help a friend."

  The sun had set by the time we got back to my Headhunter and the other one that had brought Mara Jade on her second trip to Yavin 4. She lugged me back to shore and eased me to the ground without complaining about what a burden I'd been. She ran to her ship and got a first aid kit.

  "Sorry for the rough spots out there."

  "No problem. Beats swimming." I coughed lightly. "Besides, a Jedi does not know pain."

  "Need to be more convincing when you say that." Mara shook her head. "Your arm fracture is dislocated. I should set it-unless you want to do it yourself."

  I stared up at her. "Set my own arm'? Only an idiot would set his own broken arm."

  "Some would say only an idiot would go after a Dark Lord of the Sith by himself."

  "Ah, that's big idiot, thank you." I held my arm out toward her. "Do what has to be done-which is what I was doing out here myself."

  Mara crouched beside me and grasped my wrist and elbow. "He worked you over pretty solidly. What little I saw wasn't very pleasant."

  The image of the boy's face surfaced in my mind again. "If I never go through that again, I'll be happy." I looked up at her. "Thanks for intervening. If you hadn't have come in then..."

  "You'd have just broken your other hand." She shrugged her shoulders, then summoned the Force, pulled on my wrist and twisted the bone into place before I even knew what was hap-pening. "There."

  I slumped down on my back, determined not to scream.

  "Sithspawn! Don't ever go into medicine."

  "You're welcome, Horn." Mara tucked a strand of red-gold hair behind her right ear. "I found some stuff out about Mirax, which is why I came back here. Details are on a datacard you can review while you're recovering. Anyway, when I entered the atmosphere I could feel you and Kun tangling. The Force was boiling."

  "And you came anyway?"

  "I owed you. We're even now."

  I leaned my head back and uttered as much of a laugh as I could muster. "If that's how you repay debts, I'll catch remote bolts for you any day."

  "But not today." She reached out and took my left hand. "I'll slave your ship to mine and we'll go back to the Great Temple." "Right, see if Luke is okay."

  Mara paused for a moment, then nodded. "He is, and they know you're incoming wounded."

  I rolled myself forward and stood with her help. "They suc-ceeded?"

  "They did. Exar Kun is no more." Mara smiled unguardedly. "The Jedi academy, it seems, has gotten rid of a Dark Lord, and produced itself a crop of Jedi."

  Exar Kun's attacks had messed me up more than I knew. My left leg and right arm were bro-ken, as well as my right hand. I'd cracked a half-dozen ribs and had bruises and lacerations on my liver and kidneys. My blood chemistry was all off and the Two-Onebee that looked me over thought I'd ejected from a crashing fighter and never had my parasail open.

  In reality I wished I actually felt half that good.

  Upon my return I got immediately dunked in the bacta tank that Tycho had shipped out with the medical team for Luke barely a week and a half earlier. I'd been in bacta tanks more than I cared to think about in my life, but this was the first time in one of the emergency ones. Most tanks are vertical tubes, but this one was a horizontal box. I got to lie there being very still because there was no place to go, and the treatment was broken up into six hour stints because the bacta had to be drained, filtered and replaced.

  Luke visited me a couple of times, and I read Mara's data-card while not doing a bacta-soak, but I was pretty well out of it in the beginning. As I started to come around, Kyp Durron was returned to Yavin after Han Solo had gotten him so Luke Skywalker could judge him for his crimes. I was back in the tank when that took place and by the time I got back out, Luke, Kyp and Cilghal had departed Yavin to destroy the Sun Crusher and heal Mon Mothma of a mysterious malady. Tionne did her best to keep me company after that, and fill me in on details of the academy life, but I wasn't really fit to be around.

  The physical damage Exar Kun had done to me had healed on schedule-had I had access to and used Jedi healing tech-niques I might have been fitter faster, but that really didn't matter. The battering my mind had taken shook me badly. I knew Kun had only plucked my fears from my mind and dis-played them for me in all their ugly glory, but I still had to deal with the fact that they were my fears, generated by me and mine alone to conquer.

  After Master Skywalker returned with Kyp from destroying the Sun Crusher, and after Kyp had healed up from his injuries, I asked to speak to Luke alone. We met in the simple room where he lived. He looked a bit weary, but buoyant nonethe-less. "What is it, Keiran?"

  I leaned against the doorjamb with my right shoulder, taking pressure off my left leg. "I can't stay here any longer."

  Looking up from the bed where he sat, Luke stared through me for a moment. "Not you, too."

  I wasn't certain what he meant by that remark. I suspected it might have had something to do with Mara Jade and her quick departure after delivering me back to the Great Temple. Tionne had said that Mara looked in on Luke while he slept, but left without speaking to him. Luke had clearly assumed that she had come to Yavin when she heard he had fallen ill, and his discovering that was not the case seemed to cause him some discomfort.

  "I can't stay because there are things here that just are not working." I glanced down and added in a smaller voice. "For me, they're not working."

  "Things have not been perfect by any means, but that's no reason for you to leave."
Luke frowned at me. "There could be adjustments. We can fix things."

  I shook my head. "I don't think you can."

  "Give me an example."

  I stepped into the room and found both of my hands balled into fists. "It's a lot of things. Just the way you run this place. If it weren't for the bugs, the monsters and the Dark Lords of the Sith, this place would be a holiday resort. I've had more chal-lenges learning how to eat Twi'lek food."

  Luke's jaw dropped open. "How can you say that?"

  I tapped my breastbone with my right hand. "I've been through a training academy, remember? I recall having my life radically altered. A training camp breaks you down and re-builds you into the person the organization wants you to be."

  The Jedi Master's face darkened. "I don't want to be turning out Jedi clones."

  "You're missing the point. Training academies don't turn out clones. They don't erase the personality of the people they're dealing with, they merely make sure that individual is prepared to handle all of the challenges their new job will thrust at them." I spread my arms wide. "While we did manage to deal with Exar Kun, we could have done things more efficiently and more effectively had we been a team before that, not becoming one because of it."