Star Wars
Junior Jedi Knights
6
Kenobi's Blade
by Rebecca Moesta
OCR: Ãîëîäíûé Ýâîê Ãðûçëè
upload: 29.XII.2005
In his room at the Jedi academy, Anakin Solo bent over a small
worktable by the window slit. His ice blue eyes studied the project he was
tinkering with. Although the thick stone walls of the Great Temple around
him kept his room cool and dim, Anakin didn't mind. It was bright and hot
outside today, and he needed the light low to see what he was doing. He
found the dimness soothing. Having fewer distractions helped him to think.
A fringe of straight dark hair fell across Anakin's eyes, as it often did,
and he brushed the bangs aside so that he could see better.
"It's almost finished," he said.
On the windowsill, basking in the sun, a furry white creature with
long floppy ears, a fluffy tail, and large blue-green eyes watched Anakin.
The creature sat up to its full one-meter height and asked,
"Are you solving a puzzle?"
Anakin smiled. "Sort of. This is a programmable laser puzzle, and I'm
trying to make a picture out of it-a hologram, really. I think I've just
about got it." Anakin concentrated on blending and focusing the laser beams
into the pattern he had programmed for this light "painting." Suddenly the
hologram came together just as Anakin had planned, and he froze it into the
puzzle's memory.
"There. What do you think, Ikrit?"
Ikrit, the white-furred Jedi Master on the windowsill, nodded.
"Mmmmmm. You show great skill for one so young."
Anakin blushed slightly at the compliment. The red stain on his cheeks
clashed with the orange of his comfortable flightsuit.
"I'm not that young," he pointed out. "I'll be a teenager next year."
Just then a knock sounded at the door and, without waiting for an
invitation, Anakin's best friend danced into the room.
"Hi, Anakin. Good afternoon, Master Ikrit," Tahiri sang.
She took a few twirling steps on her bare feet, and her long blonde
hair swirled around the shoulders of her orange academy flightsuit. "Guess
what?" she said. "Master Skywalker has been called away to Coruscant, so we
won't have any lessons with him for a couple of weeks."
Anakin nodded and smiled to himself. He knew that his friend would
probably keep talking whether he answered her or not.
"We'll be having all our lessons with Tionne and Ikrit for the next
week or two."
Tahiri finally came to a spinning stop beside Anakin's worktable. Her
bright green eyes sparkled as she looked down at his project.
"That's a great hologram of your family, Anakin," she said in a
wistful voice. "You're lucky to have such a nice family. I always wonder
what my parents were really like. I don't remember much, except for what
Sliven told me."
Sliven was the leader of a tribe of Sand People on Tatooine. He had
adopted Tahiri after her parents were killed when she was only a few years
old. Tahiri kept talking, not even stopping to take a breath.
"Isn't that a bolo generator? Where did you get it? And why aren't you
in the hologram? I don't remember seeing it before. Did you have it made
last time you were at home on Coruscant?" She paused for the briefest
moment, and then continued. "So, aren't you going to say anything?"
Anakin shook his head. "I made this myself. I collected images of my
family from everywhere I could find them, chose the best ones, and
programmed them into this hologram. This one," he said, pointing to the
image of Leia Organa Solo and Han Solo, "was from my last birthday. Mom
left a meeting of the Senate to come to my party. To surprise her, Dad came
back early from a trip to the Bespin System. I love that stunned and happy
look on Mom's face."
He pointed to the images of his brother and sister, the Jedi twins.
"I added the pictures of Jacen and Jaina from shots taken here on
Yavin 4 before they went home on break."
"Mmmmm. It is good to remember who your family is and what you are a
part of," Ikrit said in his scratchy voice.
"I got the idea for it in Darth Vader's fortress," Anakin admitted.
"From the hologram he kept of your uncle Luke?" Tahiri asked.
"Yes. I like to think he kept it to remind himself of who he was.
Maybe that's why-in the end, at least-he couldn't serve the dark side of
the Force anymore," Anakin said.
"Sometimes I wish I had holograms of my parents," Tahiri said a little
sadly. She put her hand up to touch the two pendants on the necklace she
wore tucked inside her flightsuit; one held the thumbprints of her mother
and father, the other held Sliven's.
"I do keep a little hologram of our instructor Tionne, though," she
went on. "That's the next best thing. After all, she's the one who found me
on Tatooine when I lived with the Sand People, and-Tionne! Yipes, I almost
forgot! You'll never guess in a million years."
Anakin didn't try to guess, but that didn't seem to faze Tahiri. Her
face glowed with the excitement of her news.
"Tionne invited us to do something special because we helped her find
Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber and the Holocron in Bast Castle. She wants us
all to come and watch while she explores the lessons in the Holocron! She
said to come right away. We're supposed to bring Uldir, too."
Anakin looked at his wrist chronometer.
"In that case, we'd better hurry. You've been here several minutes
already, and this sounds like something we don't want to miss."
Tahiri grinned. "It's almost like going on an adventure-except there
won't be as many stairs as in Vader's fortress."
After stopping to collect Uldir from the kitchen, where he was
working, the junior Jedi Knights and Ikrit trooped up to Tionne's chambers.
They settled themselves in a loose semicircle around the Jedi instructor.
Uldir wiped his hands off on the brown Jedi robe he wore and ran them
through his shaggy chestnut hair. Tahiri noticed that he seemed more
excited than any of them to be able to find out more about the Holocron.
That was good, Tahiri decided. Uldir's parents were cargo pilots for
the New Republic. He had stowed away on a freighter and come to Yavin 4 in
hopes of becoming a Jedi. Even though Master Skywalker had found no Jedi
talent in the sturdy teenager, Uldir had stayed at the Jedi academy to
study the Force.
Anakin, Tahiri, and Uldir had become good friends. But since they had
all returned from Bast Castle-the fortress that had once belonged to
Anakin's grandfather, Darth Vader-Uldir had been so withdrawn and quiet
that Tahiri had been worried. Now that Uldir had found something to be
excited about, Tahiri was glad. After all, she was excited, too. She always
enjoyed taking lessons with her teacher Tionne, of course, but this was
something special.
"We will sta
rt at the beginning," Tionne said in hushed tones. The
silvery-haired instructor's face dimpled into a smile as she sat down and
held the gleaming milky cube lightly on one palm. She spoke in a musical
voice and her enormous mother-of-pearl eyes seemed to shine.
"This is a Jedi Holocron. Each Holocron contains the recorded
teachings of a Jedi Master, like a small library of knowledge. It passes on
the Jedi Master's wisdom to future Jedi."
Tionne nodded to Ikrit, who dimmed the glow - panels for her. The
teacher cupped her palms around the pearly cube. A glowing image sparkled
to life in the air above it.
"Welcome, my children. How may I teach you today?" asked the hologram
of Ash Krimsan, a tiny, plump woman with black hair. She wore a long, soft
gown as red as wine.
"Please, tell us about yourself, Ash Krimsan," Tionne said. Tahiri
shot her teacher a curious look. It seemed a bit odd to ask questions of a
hologram.
Then, to her amazement, the hologram answered.
"I have spent the last two hundred years of my life teaching the very
young," Ash Krimsan said. Her face beamed with kindness and wisdom that
came from the Force.
"How could she hear our questions?" Tahiri whispered. "She's only a
picture."
"When Jedi Masters record their Holocrons, they also program in
answers to the 'questions they think will be asked most often," Ikrit
whispered back. "That makes it easier to find information quickly."
The hologram paused for a moment, then continued.
"I believe that unless we teach future Jedi to use the Force when they
are children, they may never reach the full talent they were meant to have.
"
Uldir snorted. Out of the corner of her eye, Tahiri saw him clench his
fists.
"Master Skywalker wasn't a child when he learned about the Force," he
muttered, "and he's pretty powerful."
In the image, Ash Krimsan opened her hands and held them out as if
offering a gift.
"That is why I have gathered all of my lessons and placed them into
this Holocron for you, my children. These words are for you and for all
Jedi who are to come. Teach your children well, and trust the Force. I will
put this Holocron in one of the great Jedi libraries, so that future Jedi
Masters may share what I have learned when they teach their students."
"Library?" the silver-haired Tionne said breathlessly.
Tahiri perked up. She had never heard of a great Jedi library.
"Can you tell me where it is?" Tionne asked.
With a sweep of the Jedi Master's arm, her image dissolved and a new
one appeared. Robed figures with lightsabers at their sides walked through
gleaming metal passages that curved away out of sight. Plasteel beams
formed arches where corridors changed from one subject area to another.
Large windowports framed triangles of multicolored transparisteel. Small
alcoves filled with spot-lit artifacts dotted the walls. Crystalline data
wafers filled row upon row of archive cases.
"The Jedi library," the voice of Ash Krimsan continued, "is on a space
station in the Teedio System-Exis Station. The vast library there holds the
collected knowledge of many, many Jedi."
"Exis," Tionne murmured. "I've seen it before."
Uldir jerked upright beside Tahiri. His amber eyes went wide.
"Exis Station? That's where the Mage Orloc said he was from."
The Jedi instructor's pearly eyes opened wide with surprise. She set
down the Holocron, and the glowing picture of Ash Krimsan winked out.
Anakin looked at Uldir.
"How do you know?" Uldir shrugged. "Orloc told me himself, when we
were alone in the hangar bay in Vader's fortress." Tahiri remembered that
when their group went to Vader's fortress on the planet Vjun to find Obi-
Wan Kenobi's lightsaber, a strange man in purple robes had gotten there
ahead of them. After the companions found the lightsaber and the Jedi
Holocron, the Mage Orloc had stolen them. In the race to recapture the
treasures, Uldir had been the first to find the Mage-and had almost paid
with his life. In the end, they got back both objects, but the Mage had
escaped.
"You mean that magician guy lives in a space station that holds a Jedi
library?" Tahiri said.
"Well, not really," Tionne answered. "I know that the library isn't
there anymore. The space station has been empty for a long time now."
"You mean you went there already?" Tahiri asked. "Was it in one of
your research trips?" She knew how much her teacher Tionne loved to study
Jedi history. Every few months the silver-haired instructor went out on a
trip to find anything she could about Jedi Knights who had lived long ago-
stories, songs, tapestries, and so on.
"Yes," Tionne answered with a faraway look on her face. "It was many
years ago. I heard that there was an ancient library in the Teedio System,
so I looked for it. The legends said that a great Jedi meeting was held
there once. I had hoped..." She shook her head. "When I got to the space
station, I found it had been deserted for thousands of years. According to
the station's records, a disaster had happened that made the sun in the
Teedio System send out solar flares and heavy radiation. "The station was
evacuated and the contents of the library were sent to Jedi throughout the
galaxy for safekeeping. The flares lasted for so many years that no one
ever returned to the station."
"Are there still flares?" Uldir asked.
"Every nine years or so the flares come again," Tionne said. "But
there was no danger while I was at Exis. I decided that even though the
library was empty, I had to save the station for what it once was. That was
where Master Skywalker first found me. He was searching for new Jedi
students at the time. I'm not sure exactly how we did it, but the two of us
started the space station's engines and moved it to a safe distance from
the sun."
"All by yourselves?" Uldir asked, looking doubtful.
"Well, we did have the help of Artoo-Detoo and some old space station
droids," Tionne said.
"I'd like to see it someday," Anakin said. "It sounds like a pretty
interesting place, even if it's empty."
"It sure does," Tahiri said with a grin, "but I'm not ready for
another adventure yet-at least, not if it means climbing more stairs."
"How about another lesson from the Holocron?" Uldir suggested.
Tionne frowned. "I'm not sure we should.... Ash Krimsan said that she
made the Holocron to be used by Jedi Masters."
Uldir's shoulders sagged with disappointment.
"Well, what about Ikrit?" he said stubbornly, nodding at the furry
Jedi Master across the circle.
"Mmmmm." Ikrit nodded. "The boy is correct: I am a Jedi Master." He
spread his white-furred paws. "But Luke Skywalker is the master of the Jedi
academy. I will leave it for him to decide how this historical treasure
should be used."
Tionne looked relieved.
"That's settled then. We'll put the Holocron back in Master
Skywalker's chambers until he returns."
She stood, picked up
the glowing pearly cube, and left the room. Ikrit
followed her.
Uldir's amber eyes grew stormy.
"It's not fair," he muttered. "We're the students. We're the ones who
need those lessons. I'm ready to learn more right now."
Tahiri put a hand on his strong arm.
"There are lots of other ways to study until Master Skywalker gets
back. After that, I'm sure we'll get plenty of chances to have lessons from
the Holocron."
"Uncle Luke should be back in a couple of weeks," Anakin added.
"Let's work on lighting candle flames-we can make a game out of it,"
Tahiri offered. She hoped she could distract the gruff teenager from his
disappointment.
Uldir looked interested.
"Okay. That sounds better than trying to lift leaves. We've done that
lots of times. I've never even gotten mine off the ground."
"But you're learning about the Force," Anakin pointed out. "That's
important progress. It's one reason Uncle Luke lets you stay at the
academy."
Uldir snorted.
"Progress? Maybe. It just seems like there ought to be a faster way."
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