Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy III: Champions of the Force

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Furgan stared at the beautiful construction, smooth lines, and glossy armor, marveling at the MT-ATs incredible capabilities. “Splendid machine,” he said.

  The stormtroopers paid no attention to him as they finished their preparations.

  Colonel Ardax’s voice came over the intercom. “Your attention, please! After some difficulty with electrical discharges and ionization interference in this system, we have pinpointed the secret base. Prepare to deploy the strike force immediately. Let’s make this a clean and quick kill. That is all.” Ardax signed off.

  “You heard the colonel,” Furgan said as the stormtrooper teams began to clamber aboard their MT-AT vehicles. They would be dropped from orbit on a thunderous plunge through the atmosphere, encased in a thermal-resistant cocoon that would detach upon striking the surface.

  One trooper scrambled alone into his cockpit, hauling extra weapons, interrogation devices, and intelligence-gathering equipment.

  “You!” Furgan said. “Stow all that in the cargo compartment. I am riding with you.”

  The stormtrooper looked at him in silence for a moment, his polished eye visor staring blankly.

  “Do you have a problem with that order, sergeant?” Furgan asked.

  “No, sir,” the voice crackled through the helmet speaker. The stormtrooper methodically removed the equipment and stowed it in the undercompartment.

  Furgan heaved himself into the second seat and strapped in. He pulled two sets of the crash webbing around his body to make sure he landed without injury. He didn’t want to limp in triumph into the defeated Rebel stronghold. He waited impatiently as the rest of the stormtroopers completed preparations, slipped aboard their assault transports, and locked themselves down.

  When the launching bay dropped out from beneath his feet like a trapdoor, Furgan grabbed the arms of his chair and cried out. The transports plunged like heavy projectiles into the waiting atmosphere. Even in its thick cocoon the MT-AT jounced and rocked as if it were being struck by cannon blasts. He tried unsuccessfully to stop his yell of panic.

  Beside him the stormtrooper pilot said nothing.

  Inside the stronghold on Anoth, Leia’s personal servant Winter glanced at the chronometer and at the giggling dark-haired baby. It was time to put young Anakin to bed.

  Though the triple planet Anoth had its own unusual cycle of days, nights, and twilights, Winter insisted on keeping their chronometers set to Coruscant standard time. Outside, the thin skies rarely brightened to more than a dark purple with flashes of searing yellow as electrical discharges blasted across space.

  The planetoid was a stormy world, its surface covered with stone pinnacles like mammoth cathedrals reaching up to the limits of Anoth’s low gravity. Riddled with caves from thousands of geological inclusions that had weathered and volatilized away during centuries of planetary stresses, the rock spires provided a sheltered hiding place.

  Winter picked up the baby in her arms and bounced him against her hip as she went deeper into the facility. Anakin’s shielded bedroom was brightly lit and decorated with soothing pastel colors. Tinkling music filled the air, a cheerful melody mixed with quiet wind and rushing water.

  A boxy rectangular GNK power droid waddled from station to station in the room, charging the batteries of Anakin’s self-aware toys. “Thank you,” Winter said out of habit, though the droid had only minimal interactive programming. The power droid burbled a response and shuffled out in a slow walk on accordioned legs.

  “Good evening, Master Anakin,” said the caregiver droid in Anakin’s chambers. An enhanced protocol model, the TDL droid was programmed to perform a majority of the functions required to care for a young child. TDL models had been marketed across the galaxy as nanny droids for busy politicians, space military personnel, and even smugglers who had children but too little time to spend with them.

  The TDL droid had a silvery surface with all corners and sharp edges smoothed for comfort. Because nannies and mothers were expected to need more than the usual set of hands, TDL nanny droids had four fully functional arms, all of which were covered with warm synthetic flesh—as was the torso—to provide a more nurturing experience for a baby held in robot arms.

  Anakin cooed with pleasure to see the droid, said a word resembling its name. Winter patted the baby on the back, saying good night.

  “Do you have a preference from the large selection of lullabies and bedtime music I have available, Mistress Winter?” the droid said.

  “Make a random selection,” Winter answered. “I want to get back to the operations room. Something … doesn’t feel right tonight.”

  “Very well, Mistress Winter,” the nanny droid said, cradling Anakin in her arms. “Wave good night.” She plucked up Anakin’s pudgy hand and puppeted a wave.

  Winter made it to the door of the operations room just before the intruder alarms went off. She rushed into the control center, scanning the big screens that showed outside images of the stark landscape.

  Sonic booms thundered through the thin air, as large objects streamed down in a tight cluster. Winter saw the last of a group of projectiles impact at the base of the nearest spire of rock.

  Winter activated the automated defense systems. She closed the massive shield doors that covered the entrance to the hangar grotto. Through the rock she could feel the heavy vibration as the metal doors slammed together.

  She saw movement below, just out of range of the cameras. Then a long metal leg bent up on a huge articulated joint; a foot spiked with claws smashed into the rockface, creating traction with explosive bolts. Then the huge machine levered itself out of view around an outcropping.

  Winter enhanced the audio pickup, listening to the groaning sounds of straining machinery, pulleys and grinding engines, the clank of treads.

  Working rapidly, she switched to another set of image enhancers mounted on a distant pinnacle. The picture that appeared made her gasp in amazement and fear—an extreme reaction, considering her usual unemotional and inflectionless manner.

  The smoldering hulks of protective reentry pods lay strewn about the landscape. The metal shells had cracked open like black vermin eggs and unleashed mechanical monstrosities—eight-legged, arachnidlike machines.

  Each of the heavily jointed legs moved along different axes as the clawed feet helped the ellipsoid body scuttle over rugged terrain, finding footholds in the rock and scaling the sheer peak in which Winter and Anakin hid.

  Eight Imperial Spider Walkers swarmed up the stone pinnacle, firing bright-green blasts against the thick walls of the stronghold, searching for a way in.

  13

  The Jedi trainees gathered in the dusty, abandoned war room of the Great Temple. They had chosen it as the most fitting place to plan their battle against Exar Kun.

  On the third level of the ancient ziggurat the war room had once been used by the Rebel Alliance as a control center for their secret base. Here the tactical genius General Jan Dodonna had planned the strike against the first Death Star.

  Cilghal and the others had cleared away much of the debris that had collected in the decade since the Rebels had left the base behind. Multicolored lights flickered on the control panels of the few functional sensor networks; grime-caked viewing plates and cracked transparisteel screens made the signals refract and glitter. Atop a tactical map the tiny hash-mark footprints of a skittering reptile were overlaid with the larger clawed prints of some predator that had chased after it.

  Sealed behind the protection of thick stone walls, the war room allowed no outside illumination. Newly restored glowpanels in the corners made the place shine brightly, but also enhanced the shadows.

  Cilghal looked at the group of Jedi trainees. A dozen of the best … but now they were gripped with fear and indecision, unprepared for the trial forced upon them.

  Some—such as Kirana Ti, Kam Solusar, and, surprisingly, Streen—reacted with outrage to the long-dead Lord of the Sith. Others, particularly Dorsk 81, were filled with an unreasoning fe
ar, afraid to challenge the dark power that had been sufficient to warp other students and defeat Master Skywalker. Cilghal herself did not look forward to the fight, but she vowed to do everything she could against their unwanted enemy.

  “What if Exar Kun can hear our plans?” Dorsk 81 said, his large eyes shining in the harsh lights. “Even here he might be spying on us!” His voice rose, and his yellow-olive skin mottled with panic.

  “The Dark Man can be everywhere,” Streen said, leaning across the cluttered table. His frizzy gray hair still looked windblown. He fidgeted as he glanced around the room, as if afraid someone were watching.

  “There’s no other place we can go,” Cilghal said. “If Exar Kun can find us here, he can find us wherever we go. We must operate on the assumption that we can still fight him.” She gazed at the candidates. She had taken great pains to develop her oratory skills as ambassador for Calamari. She had used her voice and her wits to great success in the past, and now she took advantage of her gift. “We have enough real problems to confront—there’s no need to manufacture worse ones from our imagination.”

  The others murmured in agreement.

  “Tionne,” Cilghal said, “much of our plan depends on your knowledge of ancient Jedi lore. Tell us what you know about Exar Kun.”

  Tionne sat up in a battered and uncomfortable chair beside one of the dilapidated tactical stations. Across her lap lay the double-boxed musical instrument on which she played old ballads to anyone who would listen.

  Tionne had only a small amount of Jedi potential. Master Skywalker had made that clear to her, but she would not be swayed from her resolve to become one of the new Jedi Knights. She had become enamored of Jedi legends, traveling from system to system, digging through ancient writings and folktales, compiling tales of the Jedi from thousands of years before the Dark Times.

  The Jedi Holocron had been a treasure trove, and Tionne had spent much of her time studying it, replaying forgotten legends, clarifying details. But the Holocron was destroyed when Master Skywalker had asked the simulated gatekeeper, the ancient Jedi Master Vodo-Siosk Baas, to tell of his student Exar Kun, who had rebuilt the Brotherhood of the Sith.…

  Tionne flicked molten-silver hair over her shoulders and looked at the other trainees with her eerie mother-of-pearl eyes. Her lips were thin and pale, bloodless with tension.

  “It’s very difficult to find verifiable legends from the Great Sith War. That was four thousand years ago, and it was incredibly devastating—but apparently the old Jedi Knights were ashamed of how they had failed to protect the galaxy. Many of the records were distorted or destroyed, but I think I’ve pieced together enough.” She swallowed, then continued.

  “Kun seems to have built his primary stronghold on this jungle moon. He enslaved the Massassi race to build all these temples as focal points for his power.”

  She looked around, sizing up the Jedi trainees. “In fact, this gathering reminds me of the Great Council on the planet Deneba, when most of the old Jedi Knights met to discuss the dark tide rising through the galaxy. Master Vodo-Siosk Baas—who had trained Exar Kun—became a martyr when he tried to turn his student back to the light side. When Master Vodo did not succeed, the other Jedi banded together in a massive strike force such as had never before been gathered.

  “Though Kun had enormous power, it seems that the key”—Tionne tapped the side of her instrument with a glistening fingernail—“the key was that the other Jedi combined their might. They fought together as a unit where all the pieces fit together, as components in a much larger machine powered by the Force.

  “I’ve found only sketchy information, but it seems that in the final battle the unified Jedi wiped out most of the jungles on Yavin 4, laying waste to everything in their efforts to destroy Exar Kun. Kun drained dry the life force of all his Massassi slaves in one last gambit. The ancient Jedi succeeded in destroying much of what he had built and obliterated Kun’s body, but he somehow managed to preserve his spirit within the temples. For all these years.”

  “Then we must finish the job,” Kirana Ti said, standing up. She wore her reptilian body armor all the time now, unencumbered by a Jedi robe because she did not know when she might need to fight at a moment’s notice.

  “I agree,” Kam Solusar said. His gaunt face held the expression of a man who had long ago forgotten how to smile.

  “But how?” Streen said. “Thousands of Jedi could not obliterate the Dark Man. We are only twelve.”

  “Yes,” Kirana Ti said, “but this time Exar Kun doesn’t have a race of enslaved people to draw upon. He has no resources but himself. Besides, Kun has already been defeated once—and he knows it.”

  “And,” Cilghal interjected, gesturing around the table, “all of us have trained together from the beginning. Master Skywalker made us to be a team. Leia called us champions of the Force—and that is what we must be.”

  • • •

  Standing at the pinnacle of the Great Temple, Luke Skywalker’s shimmering form could not feel the cool twilight breeze as the lumbering orange hulk of the gas giant cast fading light across the jungles. Luke watched a flock of batlike creatures take to the air and swarm across the treetops in search of night insects.

  He remembered his nightmare when Exar Kun, disguised as Anakin Skywalker, had urged Luke to dabble in the dark side. Against the backdrop of history Luke had seen the labors of the broken Massassi erecting mammoth temples, working until crushed by sheer labor. Luke had cast off that nightmare, but he had not interpreted its warning soon enough.

  Now he turned to see the hooded form of Kun standing black against the jungle landscape, but the sight no longer had the power to make him afraid. “You’re growing bolder, Exar Kun, to keep showing yourself to me—especially when your attempts to destroy my body continue to fail.”

  In the aftermath of the reptilian creatures’ attack, Luke had watched Cilghal tend his body’s minor wounds, cleaning them and binding them with the meticulous care and empathy he had sensed from her first days at the Jedi academy. Cilghal was a born Jedi healer.

  She had spoken aloud to Luke’s spirit, though she couldn’t see him. “We will do whatever we can, Master Skywalker. Please keep faith in us.”

  Luke had indeed maintained his faith. He felt it throbbing within him as he confronted Exar Kun atop the temple, where the Sith Lord and Kyp Durron had defeated Luke once before.

  “I have been toying with you.” Kun waved his silhouette hand. “Nothing will affect my plans. Some of your students are already mine. The others will soon follow.”

  “I don’t think so,” Luke said with fresh certainty. “I have instructed them well. You might show them easy ways to glory, but your tricks carry a high price. I have taught them diligence, confidence in their own worth and abilities. What you offer, Exar Kun, is mere parlor magic. I have given them the true strength and meaning of the Force.”

  “Do you think I don’t know of the laughable plans they make against me?” Kun said. The spirit of the Dark Lord seemed to be growing more full of bluster and threats. Perhaps his confidence was shaken.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Luke answered. “They will defeat you anyway. Your imagined power is your weakness, Exar Kun.”

  “And your faith in your friends is yours!” Kun snapped back.

  Luke laughed, feeling his strength and determination increase. “I’ve heard talk like that before. It was proved wrong then, and it will be proved wrong now.”

  The black outline of Exar Kun rippled in an unseen breeze. As the shadow vanished, Kun’s last words were, “We shall see!”

  14

  Standoff.

  Han Solo felt cold sweat spring from his forehead as he looked out from the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. In front of him the Sun Crusher powered up its supernova torpedo launcher.

  Han pounded his fist on the console. “Hold it, kid!” he shouted. “Just hold it. I thought you were my friend.”

  “If you were my friend,” Kyp’s voice
croaked through the speaker, “you wouldn’t try to stop me. You know what the Empire did to my life, to my family. The Empire lied to me one last time—and now even my brother is dead.”

  At the copilot’s station Lando scrambled at the controls. His big eyes flicked back and forth, and he turned to Han, waving frantically for him to shut off the voice pickup.

  “Han,” he whispered, “remember when you and Kyp took the Sun Crusher away from Maw Installation? And Luke and I were there waiting to intercept you?”

  Han nodded, not sure what Lando was getting at. “Sure.”

  “Back then we linked the ships together because the Falcon’s navicomputer wouldn’t work.” He raised his eyebrows and spoke very slowly. “Listen … we’ve still got the Sun Crusher’s control codes in here.”

  Suddenly Han understood. “Can you do anything with that? You’re not even familiar with the Sun Crusher’s systems.”

  “Don’t have much choice, do we, buddy?”

  “All right,” Han said in a needlessly low voice, because the voice pickup was switched off. “I’ll keep him talking—you work to deactivate the Sun Crusher.” Lando, with a skeptical but determined frown, continued his programming.

  Han toggled on the comm system again. “Kyp, don’t you remember when we went turbo-skiing at the poles of Coruscant? You led me down one of the dangerous paths, but I went after you because I thought you were going to fall on your face. Don’t you remember that?”

  Kyp didn’t answer, but Han knew he had struck home.

  “Kid, who got you out of the spice mines of Kessel?” he said. “Who broke you out of the detention cell on the Gorgon? Who was with you during the escape from the Maw? Who promised to do everything he could to make your life worth living again after your years of misery?”

  Kyp answered in a halting voice. “It didn’t work.”

  “But why not, kid? What went wrong? What happened on Yavin 4? I know you and Luke didn’t get along—”

  “It had nothing to do with Luke Skywalker,” Kyp snapped so defensively that Han knew it wasn’t true. “There in the temples I learned things Master Skywalker would never teach. I learned how to be strong. I learned how to fight the Empire, to turn my own anger into a weapon.”